The Last of Us: Are the Infected Actually Zombies?

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Crucially, however, individuals infected with the cordyceps fungi do not die, at least not at first. Though the cordyceps may eventually kill them or they body might waste away from natural causes, the Infected can only operate when biologically alive. Post-mortem, the fungus uses the body as an inert breeding ground for spores. When it comes to a zombie infection, quite literally the first step of the process is to die, before coming back as a reanimation corpse. Is that one difference, albeit a large one, enough to dismiss the Infected as not being zombies?

The question of the Infected’s zombie bona fides has bedeviled The Last of Us fans since the game was first released in 2013. The game’s subreddit is rife with many threads debating the topic. The most common answer among Redditors appears to be “no,” but there are plenty dissenters. Ultimately it seems like an existential conundrum with no concrete answer. And you know what we love to do when we encounter one of those: fly into the discourse with all guns blazing, ready to be supremely confident of our conclusion one way or another.

First, let’s start with the most basic question at play. What, exactly, is a zombie? Not to get all middle school English essay but let’s head to the dictionary.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary‘s primary definition of the word reads:

a will-less and speechless human (as in voodoo belief and in fictional stories) held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated.

Dictionary.com‘s two primary definitions of the word read:

(in Vodou) a mute and will-less body, robbed of its soul and given the semblance of life by a supernatural force, usually for manual labor or some evil purpose.
(in popular culture) an undead creature with a reanimated human body, typically depicted in science fiction or horror stories as contagious to the living by bite and vulnerable only to serious head trauma

Of those three definitions, two of them are clear in indicating that zombies are reanimated corpses. In Dictionary.com’s very first definition, however, corpses are not mentioned in favor of “a mute and will-less body.” While Dictionary.com appears to be leaving room in its interpretation of the word for creatures just like The Last of Us‘s Infected, it’s probably not accurate to do so. Though the definition invokes the religious tradition known as Haitian Vodou (sometimes known in the U.S. as “voodoo”), zombies in Haitian Vodou are indeed reanimated corpses.