In popular culture, zombies are people who have died and been reanimated as mindless, nearly invulnerable monsters that band together and attack the living. They are also known as "the living dead," "the walking dead," or "the undead."

Though many people are familiar with zombies from horror movies, TV shows, and video games, their history dates back hundreds of years, to stories in Haitian Voodoo folklore. In the Haitian culture, there are hundreds of stories of people dying and being brought back to life by a witch doctor; the reanimated person has no awareness of who he used to be, though he is not dangerous to others.