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Popcap's P.v.Z. 'Dancing Zombie' is HIStory?

Posted on Tuesday, July 27 @ 18:47:31 Eastern by Chris_Hudak

The foulest stench is in the air...

...and it's coming from the party-poopers of the Michael Jackson estate. Apparently, one of these mental-giant guardians of pop culture only just recently got around to realizing that the Dancing Zombie in PopCap's hugely-successful iPhone game Plants Vs. Zombies bears more than a passing resemblance to the late great King of Pop, in his Thriller incarnation: the red-and-black jacket, the tight stylish high-waters, the exposed white socks, the blank-eyed zombie pallor.

What do you know, folks... they have a problem with it, and they're muscling PopCap to cease and desist, and to implement an update removing the offending, funky character—first from the iPhone version, with other platform versions of the game to follow suit..

PopCap, understandably, won't dignify the (dick-)move with anything more than a terse blanket statement:

"The Estate of Michael Jackson objected to our use of the 'dancing zombie' in PLANTS vs. ZOMBIES based on its view that the zombie too closely resembled Michael Jackson. After receiving this objection, PopCap made a business decision to retire the original 'dancing zombie' and replace it with a different 'dancing zombie' character for future builds of PLANTS vs. ZOMBIES on all platforms. The phase-out and replacement process is underway."

The Dancing Zombie is an entertaining visual gag, and only a small part of the game's extensive roster of lawn-stomping, reanimated dead: the best, of course, being the zamboni-riding zombie, the 'Zombonie”. But just the same, some people apparently just can't appreciate an awesome, well-meaning Epic homage when they see it. Way to show 'em how funky-wrong is your fight, Jackson Estate.


POST A COMMENTComments
  • UglykitteN
    UglykitteN - Joined: Mar 30, 2006
    Did this game come out before, or after he died?
    0 0Like or Dislike?
    Posted: Jul 27th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
  • cyberjim2000
    cyberjim2000 - Joined: Feb 28, 2010
    Before. The PC version of Plants vs. Zombies was released in May 5, 2009. MJ died June 25, 2009.
    0 0Like or Dislike?
    Posted: Jul 27th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
  • LinksOcarina
    LinksOcarina - Joined: Nov 9, 2005
    Bad timing :(.


    They should not remove this!
    0 0Like or Dislike?
    Posted: Jul 27th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
  • TheDiesel
    TheDiesel - Joined: May 4, 2009
    My question is this. If this was such a huge deal to the Jackson Estate, what took them so long?
    0 0Like or Dislike?
    Posted: Jul 27th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
  • UghRochester
    UghRochester - Joined: Jun 5, 2006
    Doesn't Popcap (like most developers) have a warning that says something like "any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental"
    0 0Like or Dislike?
    Posted: Jul 28th, 2010 at 9:55 am
  • Chris_Hudak
    Chris_Hudak - Joined: Nov 2, 2005
    This is one of those sad, senseless potentially-litigious situations where what the players, fans (and indeed, the publishers) want is alas at odds with what is probably Prudent. There's no libel or defamation here--indeed, it's a pretty awesome tip of the hat, if you ask me--but the publisher doesn't need the headache of dealing with the flatliners who can't see that. It's like the equally-lame situation with NIS America a while back: They were actually pressured into changing the name of Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This?....because of a comparable dick-move perpetrated by, of all people, the 'guardians' of he Batman franchise/empire (even though nobody has associated The Dark Knight with the cheesy cry of "Holy (insert ANYthing here) for probably, like, 30 years or more. Lame, lame, lame. What Circle did Dante assign to the Frivilously Litigious, again?
    0 0Like or Dislike?
    Posted: Jul 28th, 2010 at 11:21 am

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