Still, Ms. Jones sees zombies' inclusion in gaming as not simply due to their horrifying nature, but due to their ability to be killed without remorse. "...zombies are the perfect fit because they are , but without the guilt of killing one of your own, in fact you're even doing them a favor by killing them. They are the perfect enemy, evil and guilt-free to kill."

By all accounts, recently we've seen the rise of cultural interest in zombies. Dr. Höchsmann sees a "revival" of zombies occurring in 2009 thanks to a "slew of zombie-related movies and other entertainment hitting the shelves." While titles like Resident Evil, Dead Space, and Dead Rising brought zombies back to the forefront of gaming villainy over the last decade, books like and suggest that the cultural obsession with the living dead isn't limited to gamers.

But in 2008, few could have predicted that zombies would be such a cultural force. Other Internet memes were more popular, and the iPhone was still in its infant stages. No one knew what was to come next. George Fan of PopCap Games was simply trying to make a game that hadn't already been made before.

Fan's Plants vs. Zombies originally was launched on the PC in 2009. Despite the beneficial timing of the game's launch, the development cycle occurred before the cultural obsession with zombies was at its highest. "Back when we started, people were still going on about pirates and ninjas. I always joke that leprechauns are going to be the next big thing, and I'm only 90 percent kidding when I say that." Zombies weren't the go-to antagonists at the time, but in large part due to the success of his game and other zombie-themed media, zombies became hugely popular in gaming.