The humble zombie has been through many iterations over the years of TV and movie history, with some particularly terrifying variants on the standard living ᴅᴇᴀᴅ standing out for their danger. When most audiences think of zombies, the slow, shambling hordes of rotting corpses popularized by George A. Romero’s movies may come to mind, frightening in large quanтιтies but dimwitted and able to fight by destroying the brain or removing the head. As time goes on, these garden-variety zombies have been upgraded with some horrific extra powers.

More unconventional zombie movies and TV shows have made the walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ more threatening in various ways, giving zombies the ability to run, climb ladders, open doors, and even talk or have complex thoughts. Some universes also attribute special powers to their zombies, finding new exciting ways to spread the infection or simply pull apart their hapless human victims. Either way, only a handful of special infected can rise the ranks of horror movie and TV show legend.

10

The Buckner Family

The Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods is a creative celebration of all kinds of horror movie tropes, so it figures that the film would get some zombie representation. Of the many monsters featured in The Cabin in the Woods, the Buckner family gets the most screentime by far, acting as the stand-in generic slasher villains for the majority of the story. Described as a “redneck torture zombie family”, the Buckners were psychopathic killers even when they were alive, made all the scarier by their newfound undeath, summoned after the reading of a nauseating journal written by Patience Buckner.

The Buckner’s usage of improvised rusty weapons straight out of their farmhouse immediately gives them a big advantage over regular zombies, able to chop up their hapless victims with terrifying strength. Patience even gets the honor of killing the leader of the mysterious cabal organizing the sacrifices to the old gods. However, Marty is able to defeat one of the Buckners with his extendable coffee cup bong as a weapon, calling their combat skill into question. They may live even after being dismembered, but don’t have the most coordination.

9

The Quartermaster

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

One of the more recent entries in the Pirates of the Caribbean series outside the purview of the original director, Gore Verbinski, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides isn’t exactly the most fondly remembered film in the franchise. However, at the very least the film expands the purview of the series’ supernatural lore, adding in new creatures like mermaids and zombies. In the film, the infamous pirate captain Blackbeard uses a crew of zombified sailors, resurrected corpses that work and kill with absolute loyalty.

Some of the zombies are shown as having a degree of intelligence, particularly the crew’s Quartermaster, who is able to see into the future. He uses this power to accurately describe Blackbeard’s death, which ultimately causes his own demise as well, due to being magically linked to the pirate captain’s servitude. The Quartermaster is an intimidating fighter with a powerful gift of foresight, but he ultimately isn’t able to protect Blackbeard from his fate, leading to his own destruction.

8

The Walker King

The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ: ᴅᴇᴀᴅ City

Though the series began mostly focusing on the generic, slow, shambling Walkers that behaved like classic zombies should, The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ slowly began experimenting with different variants of Walkers from the very beginning. From the lurkers that spring surprise attacks on their victims to the eerily fast cohorts, the series has no shortage of unique zombie types. However, spin-off series like The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ: ᴅᴇᴀᴅ City truly began to experiment with some bizarre and powerful new forms of Walker.

In The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ: ᴅᴇᴀᴅ City, Maggie encounters a horrifying creature in the sewers known as the Walker King. Named after the real phenomenon of Rat Kings, balls of rats that get their tails tangled together, this nightmarish variant is a mishmash of four Walkers fused together, operating as a single multi-limped enтιтy. The Walker King is mᴀssive, strong, and quite intimidating with its four separate heads, each of which need to be taken out before the beast is finally felled. That being said, Maggie is ultimately able to do so, even when caught off-guard.

7

Bloaters

The Last of Us

Just like the video game it was based off of, The Last of Us is able to explore some interesting takes on classic zombie tropes thanks to the versatility of the cordyceps fungal infection. In the series, how long a person has been infected with the parasitic mushrooms determines what kind of zombie they are. Eventually, hosts evolve from the blind clickers into something even more terrifying, the mighty Bloater.

A Bloater is seen in the show for the first time when Joel sees one emerge from the street, with a horde of normal cordyceps zombies streaming forth behind it. These brutes are far tougher than the average zombie due to the mᴀssive clumps of fleshy spores protecting them, and even throw these ᴅᴇᴀᴅly spore pods as projectiles if the game is to be believed. Bloaters can be killed, but they take an overwhelming amount of firepower to bring down, even if they are large and slow-moving targets.

6

Vera

ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Alive

Though Peter Jackson might be best known for the Lord of the Rings movies these days, he got his start as a filmmaker making some nauseating low-budget horror flicks. Chief among them is ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Alive, known as Brainᴅᴇᴀᴅ overseas. This audaciously gruesome zombie spectacle movie sees an outbreak begin thanks to the bit of a mutant rat-monkey hybrid, starting with the overbearing mother of the protagonist, Vera.

The first of the infected, Vera continuously mutates and grows until she’s reached truly monstrous proportions by the end of the film, looking more like a paper mache demon than anything that was conceivably once a human. The fact that she retains her ability to speak and torment her soon well after her living expiration date is all the more chilling. Ultimately, Vera is able to be defeated by being cut apart from the inside out, but she nearly manages to digest her son Lionel in the process.

5

Captain Wafner

Overlord

Overlord is often a bitterly overlooked zombie movie, taking place in the throes of World War II in which an experimental German research outpost has found a mysterious substance and used it to make super soldiers. The only problem is that these invincible soldiers, when reanimated, become dangerous mutant zombies, capable of running and immune to the classic zombie weakness of headsH๏τs. Among them, the deranged Captain Wafner is easily the most dangerous, getting an overdose of the mysterious serum that causes him to grow even more aggressive.

Captain Wafner was scary enough when he was alive, only narrowly stopped from ᴀssaulting innocent civilians. As a mutant zombie, he revels in his sadism, tanking blows to the face that would surely kill even the average zombie and murdering soldiers with superhuman strength. It takes a mᴀssive explosion to finally do away with him, leaving him as one of the most depraved and powerful individual zombies ever put to film.

4

Valentine

Army of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ

Zack Snyder’s Army of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ introduces a unique zombie dicH๏τomy, with the unᴅᴇᴀᴅ mᴀsses falling into one of two categories; Shamblers and Alphas. Whereas Shamblers represent the iconic, slow-moving, dim-witted George A. Romero zombies, Alphas are smart, fast, and eerily social, even having their own hierarchy or prototypical government of sorts. But neither of the Army of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ zombie variants are perhaps as terrifying as the prospect of a single unᴅᴇᴀᴅ tiger.

In Army of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, the zombie infection extends to all living animals other than birds, meaning that a few unfortunate animals that happened to be in the cordoned-off city of Las Vegas when the outbreak hit were turned. The most terrifying of these is easily the zombie tiger named Valentine, who has a penchant for playing with her food. As if a regular tiger isn’t bad enough, a zombified rabid predator acting on the whims of an Alpha zombie leader is next to impossible to fight. With enough firepower, however, the beast could hypothetically be slain.

3

The Unᴅᴇᴀᴅ Hordes

World War Z

Sometimes, sheer numbers are more dangerous than anything else, and no version of zombie emphasizes this better than the unᴅᴇᴀᴅ hordes of World War Z. Though not entirely faithful to the source material, which put an emphasis on the idea of the classic George A. Romero zombie outbreak descending the world into a state of chaos, the Brad Pitt star vehicle focused on legions of unᴅᴇᴀᴅ that could sprint as well as the best human track star. In a sense, this made for a more believable global zombie threat.

Individually, the zombies of World War Z might be bad enough, but their true danger shines when they amᴀss together as gigantic hordes. Almost like ants, these zombies can form mᴀssive piles of bodies that can effectively act as a tidal wave of hungry flesh, scaling walls and even climbing buildings. Moving almost like a giant amorphous liquid, it’s no wonder these zombies manage to threaten human civilization.

2

Ampers

The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ: Daryl Dixon

No spin-off series of The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ focuses on zombie variants quite as heavily as The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ: Daryl Dixon. This Norman Reedus-centric show sees Daryl uncover several new types of Walker in France, created by human experimentation. The worst of them are easily the Ampers, bearing the characteristics of several dangerous Walker types as well as harboring their own special strength.

The Ampers are fast like Cohorts, dropped into herds of Walkers for use as weapons as they tear through their fellow unᴅᴇᴀᴅ out of sheer blind rage in an effort to reach their next human victim. The Ampers are blindingly fast and incredibly strong, capable of ripping through metal chains, and special effort has to be taken to kill them. Even worse, they’re dangerous to fight at all, with the same acidic blood of the Burners scouring any flesh it comes into contact with.

1

ᴅᴇᴀᴅites

The Evil ᴅᴇᴀᴅ series

In the end, no type of zombie can ever hope to outdo the terrifying ᴅᴇᴀᴅites of The Evil ᴅᴇᴀᴅ fame. First introduced in the original The Evil ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, these ancient unᴅᴇᴀᴅ spirits can be summoned by reading from the Necronomicon ex Mortis, the book of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. Upon possessing a body, these depraved, evil creatures get to work torturing and eventually killing any hapless humans they come across. Incredibly dangerous, the ᴅᴇᴀᴅites have a shocking kill rate in their encounters, with Ash Williams being one of the few humans to survive even one encounter with them, let alone multiple.

It’s not enough for the ᴅᴇᴀᴅites to kill their prey. The foul demons use the information they gather from their host’s memories to taunt and psychologically destroy their victims first, reveling in the glee of masochism, torture, and slow, gruesome mutilations. They’re incredibly durable, only going down when chopped up into so many pieces that they can’t move anymore, and sometimes have magical powers such as telekinesis and shapeshifting. No other version of a zombie can hope to be nearly as terrifying.