10 Disturbing Easter Eggs in Video Games

08. Half Life 2 -- Zombie Pain

As shocking as this may be the Call of Duty series did not really serve as the driving force nor did it popularize the whole zombie thing in video games. The history of zombies in video games goes way back. That said there are certain games with a zombie presence that come to mind when we get all zombie nostalgic, games that very early on gave the zombie hook their own take and treatment!

Way back in 1993 there was the top-down shooter 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors' that offered gamers what we can only describe as an homage to B-Movie classic zombie horror combined with what is now the classic run-and-gun style of play.

Then there was the arcade light-gun shooters in the zombie category, like CarnEvil (1998), Area 51 (1995), and the long running House of the Dead games (1996 thru 2013). Of course the one thing that all of those games had in common was the fact that zombies were the enemy.

They stumble around, they shuffle around, they moan 'Braaaiiinnsss! Must Eat Braaaaiiinnnss!' and by and large serve as the focal point for an endless series of teenage nightmares. Which is totally and easily understood. After all, zombies are like evil undead, right? But what if, you know, they are also misunderstood or worse, victims who are seeking our help rather than our brains?

Qualifying as both a very sad -- and very creepy -- video game Easter Egg that appears in the romp that is Half Life 2 is more like a realization... A tragic realization.

The force that creates these zombies is called the Face Crabs, and while at first it appears that this Face Crab entity thingy is a side-effect of the zombification process, once you start to get some experience with you know, killing these brain-loving walking corpses, you eventually realize you got that all wrong.

See they are not dead re-animated bodies. They are not really and technically the undead at all! When they were transformed, it happened while they were STILL ALIVE!

That's right, you are killing VICTIMS of attacks by alien thingies. Face Crabs. Need proof? Play the audio backwards and listen to what the 'zombies' are actually saying... Check out the video embedded above to hear it...

So yeah, those undead zombies are in fact not undead zombies at all - they are human victims who are still alive, and judging by their begging for release, very much still aware and feeling what is happening to them. Now if that is not a creepy Easter Egg...