When Did Zombies Start Eating Brains?

One of my kids is obsessed with zombies (or “yombies” as he adorably calls them). I used to tell him and his brother these Halloween poems for kids, one of which was called Daddy is a Zombie, and that one seemed to stick. Once, I told them the events of Night of the Living Dead when they asked me to tell them a scary story, and I was too tired to think of anything original. Again, it made an impression, as the kid will occasionally say, “Tell us about the yombies in the big house!”

Coincidentally enough, the kid also loves superheroes, and has covered his eyes whenever we fire up the TV to see an ad on our landing page for the new Marvel Zombies show or movie or whatever it is. I genuinely have no idea, which feels astounding. The kid likes zombies, but not if they’re devouring his favorite heroes. But then again, he’s not one hundred percent sure what zombies eat, because I’m in the same boat.

Zombies eat flesh. That’s how it’s always been in my mind, which is wild, because I didn’t watch any traditional zombie movies until I got older. Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead was the first movie of the undead that I saw in theaters, and I knew enough about them at that point to know that their running was pretty exciting (I had not seen 28 Days Later yet). The majority of my zombie knowledge came from The Simpsons for the longest time.

Dial Z for Zombies is a segment from the second Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Halloween special. In it, Bart accidentally raises the dead, and they menace the residents of Springfield, attempting to eat their brains. It’s silly and fun and… wait. They eat brains? That’s what Zombie Krusty asks for. The other zombies shuffle around Springfield, yelling for the same.

The Simpsons were spoofing something very specific, but even my wife, who is not a big horror movie or Simpsons person, has yelled “braaaains” when pretending to be a yombie for our son. The idea that zombies eat brains had to come from somewhere. It then took hold of popular culture. This is all thanks to a man named Dan O’Bannon, and a film he wrote and directed called The Return of the Living Dead.

O’Bannon was no stranger to genre when he gave the world a new spin on zombies. The man wrote Alien, one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made. He helped with SFX on Star Wars. The man’s bonafides have bonafides. When he got to deliver his take on the undead, he made them funny, crazy, and hungry for the soft meat inside our skulls. The film, released in 1985, was a modest success, but it would go on to become a cult favorite, spawn a host of sequels, and leave a mark on pop culture’s perception of zombies.

I never assumed that The Return of the Living Dead was where brain-eating zombies originated, in part, I think, because I knew that the first film was funny, and so were The Simpsons. Surely, they wouldn’t spoof anything that’s already a spoof? But that’s seemingly what happened. I had even seen The Return of the Living Dead pretty early on, but it never appeared to me as something that was breaking any new ground. If anything, seeing a zombie in Night of the Living Dead casually chew on a hand felt more like a game-changer to me!

The Return of the Living Dead continues to have an impact. There’s actually a sequel set 18 months after the original that has already started shooting and will star Devon Sawa! Brain-eating zombies may not be the norm, but the franchise that started that trend is still going strong.