Army of the Dead: Some of the Zombies Are Actually Robots

If you watched Zack Snyder‘s new Army of the Dead movie and thought you noticed something strange about a few of the zombies, you aren’t alone. You also weren’t seeing things. A few of the zombies in Army of the Dead aren’t actually zombies at all, but rather robots, existing in a zombie world. We won’t reveal any spoilers about where these zombies are found in the movie, but it’s safe to say that they’re inclusion is wildly unexpected.

Some of these zombies can be spotted throughout Army of the Dead, but they’re much easier to find when you’re looking for them. The most obvious one comes in the third act during a scene inside a casino. When one zombie is shot, skin flies off of his face, and a Terminator-like machine can be seen underneath. This is a blink-and-you-miss-it type of thing, but you can check out a screenshot of the robot below.

You may be thinking that these robot zombies are actually a spoiler, as this seems like an important twist or plot point in Army of the Dead. But that’s not the case. The robots aren’t addressed in the movie at all. Not one time. They’re simply there to be noticed.

It seems at first like maybe the obvious robot is actually some kind of mistake, like some kind of animatronic wasn’t edited in post-production. Believe it or not, Zack Snyder actually addressed these robots before the film even came out. A Q&A with Snyder that can be found Netflix’s Army of the Dead press notes includes a long quote from the filmmaker about the lore of his zombie world. There is an animated series coming to Netflix called Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, which shows the origins of the zombie infection depicted in the film, and Snyder explained that there are things in the movie that will be addressed in the series, including the role of the robots.

“I had the idea from the beginning that these zombies were going to embody an evolution, the they were on their way to becoming something else, not stagnant like the zombies we’re used to. It was a way to make them fresh, while still delivering the zombie canon in some ways,” Snyder said.

“I really wanted this sort of weird ambiguity to their origins — which, of course, we’ll explore in the animated series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas,” he continued. “And without giving away too much… If you pay close attention, there’s a number of zombies that are clearly not zombies. You see normal zombies and then you see some robot zombies. Are they monitors that the government has placed among the zombies to monitor them? Are they technology from the other world? What’s happening there?”

The first scene of Army of the Dead reveals that the original zombie, Zeus, has some kind of ties to Area 51. So there could be an alien connection to these robots, as Snyder pointed out. However, the theory about the government spying on zombies seems to make a lot more sense.

All will be revealed in Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas. For now, we’ll just have to spend some time combing back through the movie for more potential bread crumb trails.

Did you notice the robot zombies in Army of the Dead? Let us know in the comments!