reread my one post where i ramble about pvz lore as i lay in bed and it made me remember that in zomboss's original pvz almanac entry it mentions him being in a subdivision or something to that effect; implying that at some point he may have been implied to not be the only one in charge of the zombie army.

granted every other piece of pvz media has him be the only mastermind leading the zombies, but the idea that mayhaps it was planned for him to be one of many is a little ominous to think about. its like the only part of his almanac entry that never gets brought up again and thinking about it now just keeps me wide awake.

"I don't want to do the hard mode survival for the fog level, so I'll just finish the nighttime hard mode survival--"

Oh. Oh no.

I'm fucked.

@the-reblogging-fish took me a while to find the image from GW/GW2 with the previous version of zomboss's younger design! i swear this isnt my bias showing, but this gw/gw2 design for young zomboss is kinda endearing? lookit he's got a bowtie and a pocket protector :3!!

sidenote: i've also realized how utterly cursed dave's original young design was, thank god PvZ3 gave him that glow-up.

slight tangent but it is kinda funny how the science fair event implies that, at some point, the people of neighborville weren't terrified of zomboss. which makes sense given he's assumedly a teen at that point in time (which is kinda funny, given he already looks like a grown ass man) and this is before he tries to take over. maybe there weren't a ton of zombies back then and people just thought he was a human with a weird skin condition ala zim. (i'm assuming comics like bully for you aren't canon to game lore here) we never really get a lot of concrete info on zomboss or dave when they were younger. apparently in one of the comics zomboss interacts with his younger self, but i have no idea of thats true; though if it is, i hope their interactions gave some kind of lore about this dude's past. like it really shows how dedicated pvz is to giving us as little info on the lore as possible when we barely know anything about the main antagonist's backstory.

I still like my headcanon that zomboss really went down his villain arc after getting second place, maybe he wasn't as much of a jerk before then, given how the gw2 newspaper clipping shows him crying rather than being a sore loser? then again, those could be crocodile tears; and he could have always been a jerk. still pretty fun to think about!

i like that pvz3 uses zomboss's design from the 'bully for you' comic when showing a flashback to the science fair, but i still think about his clean shirt and bowtie look from gw2's newspaper clipping showing off his younger self.

personal headcanon that he swapped to the stereotypically 80s backwards cap and letterman jacket after he lost as like a visual shift to him fully becoming a petty jerk.

speaking of zomboss designs, i wish they made his design in the garden warfare series as like his permanent design. the voice thingamajig (yeah thats what its called) and black gloves really made his design much cooler. its so weird that it showed up for like a few games and then never again.

@the-reblogging-fish if you mean the pvz3 image, then i got it. granted zomboss is kinda in the corner a bit bc the image in the game mainly focuses on dave, but you can clearly see its his bully for you design!

i like that pvz3 uses zomboss's design from the 'bully for you' comic when showing a flashback to the science fair, but i still think about his clean shirt and bowtie look from gw2's newspaper clipping showing off his younger self.

personal headcanon that he swapped to the stereotypically 80s backwards cap and letterman jacket after he lost as like a visual shift to him fully becoming a petty jerk.

i like that pvz3 uses zomboss's design from the 'bully for you' comic when showing a flashback to the science fair, but i still think about his clean shirt and bowtie look from gw2's newspaper clipping showing off his younger self.

personal headcanon that he swapped to the stereotypically 80s backwards cap and letterman jacket after he lost as like a visual shift to him fully becoming a petty jerk.

PvZ3 is hot dog-water, but the cutscene where Dave and Patrice send Tugboat into fuckin' low earth orbit is really funny. Goodbye my son.

Playing PvZ2 (with the Reflourished mod) and one animation detail I've noticed but never really aknowledged until now is how Bonk Choy just uppercuts a zombie's head off as a finisher, which gives it a little bit of personality and looks really cool. It makes using Bonk Choy so satisfying and I'm so mad PvZ3 got rid of it.

BRO I AM SO MAD I DON'T GET THE VAGUELY HORNY DREAMS LIKE YOU DO

that sounds so good tho, i'm mad jealous of you armordulla; what i wouldnt do to have a dream like that >///>

Stuck thinking about the whole zomboss kidnapping you cause he wants to marry you thing but him being way more sinister and threatening..

Whether it be the normal version of him or my version/redesign of him..

May need to post any art about it to my twitter tbh cause it wouldnt be tumblr safe

Tho I can still totally draw tumblr safe versions still I suppose

semi-rambly OC info dump below the cut

Dr. Hellena- A 'Necro Biologist' who moves to Neighborville to study its abnormally high zombie population in their 'natural habitat', as she calls it. She's kind of zombie-like herself; with her pale skin, greasy short black hair, and vaguely corpse-like smell, but she just doesn't get a lot of sun due to her nocturnal work schedule and is a normal human. She's utterly fascinated with zombies, having absolutely no fear of them; especially Zomboss. She kinda has an obbsession with him, finding the idea of an intelligent zombie fascinating--Zomboss tolerates her incessant questions because she occassionally compliments him. (and because he like, wants to eat her lmao) She wants to vivisect him, he wants to eat her brains, they both think the other person's thinnly veiled desires to do so are elaborate attempts to flirt.

maybe i'll post art of her, but don't count on it bc i cant really draw human characters that well

Heya Tom, it’s Bob, From the office down the hall. Good to see you buddy, How’ve ya been? Things have been okay for me, Except that I’m a zombie now. Really wish that you would let us in. I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand Why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demands, But here’s an FYI - you’re all gonna die, screaming. All we wanna do is eat your brains We’re not unreasonable, I mean no-one’s gonna eat your eyes All we wanna do is eat your brains We’re at an impasse here, Maybe we should compromise. Open up the doors, We’ll all come inside and eat your brains. I don’t wanna nitpick Tom, but is this really your plan - Spend your whole life locked inside a mall? Maybe that’s okay for now, But someday you’ll be out of food and guns, And you’ll have to make the call. I’m not surprised to see you haven’t thought it through enough - You never had the head for all that ‘bigger picture’ stuff. But Tom, that’s what I do, And I plan on eating you, slowly. All we wanna do is eat your brains We’re not unreasonable, I mean no-one’s gonna eat your eyes All we wanna do is eat your brains We’re at an impasse here Maybe we should compromise Open up the doors, We’ll all come inside and eat your brains I’d like to help you Tom, In any way I can. I sure appreciate the way you’re working with me. I’m not a monster Tom - well, technically I am…I guess I am… I’ve got another meeting Tom; Maybe we could wrap it up. I know we’ll get to common ground somehow. Meanwhile I’ll report back to my colleagues, Who are chewing on the doors. I guess we’ll table this for now. I’m glad to see you take constructive criticism well Thank you for your time, I know we’re all busy as hell. And we’ll put this thing to bed, When I bash your head open. All we wanna do is eat your brains We’re not unreasonable, I mean no-one’s gonna eat your eyes All we wanna do is eat your brains We’re at an impasse here Maybe we should compromise Open up the doors, We’ll all come inside and eat your brains yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

A glimpse of what shits like when youre kidnapped as a lab rat and your new residence is Dr. Edgar Zomboss' lab.

i know pvz3 isn't the shining peak of story writing, but its still so hilariously dumb how zomboss uses a drugged taco to knock crazy dave out for like three whole months but then didn't have anybody finish him off. like i know pvz3 is mostly for tiktok children and they wouldn't try to have one of the mascots get murked, but like.. don't have the zombies capture him or something? i don't think zomboss would just let his mortal enemy for god knows how many games just lay in a hammock for three whole ass months where he could be woken up.

its honestly out of character for zomboss, like he's overconfident, but he's not an idiot. same thing for when he hacks into mo, but all he makes mo do is murder plant children; and not the two humans right next to mo. okay.

i was gonna make a post talking abt that one cursed plant waifu game from the chinese pvz mini-game series but i had to cancel it because im. im starting to get content farm pvz vids on my youtube feed. my brainrotting over this series has started to attract the mold. ohhhh no i dont like that.

i like to think all the weird brothers crazy dave has from the chinese versions (and previous versions of PvZ3, if the one guy from that was related to dave, i dont remember) are all canon.

This is lowkey angsty and I'm kinda loving it?? Zomboss probably got upsetti about losing because he's a jerk with a planet sized ego, but I like the idea that he wasn't the only highly intelligent zombie-boss at some point and that helped contribute to his overconfidence; either having 'normal' parents (for a zombie at least) or more likely some kind of creator. I mean the bastard had to come from somewhere.

Ramble about the lore of the funny plant and zombie game below. Its basically gonna be me going

for like a few paragraphs

I know PvZ's timeline and lore is already weird (its literally a predestination paradox, and they explain nothing ever) but I always think about how the world just handled zombies before there were sentient plants, and the plants themselves and how they became a thing. Now I know there's that 'The Guide to Protecting Your Brains' that has some info, but much like a lot of non-game content for this series, I can't find an actual full scan of it outside of a few low quality pics of some pages on the wiki as well as the transcipts of plant and zombie descriptions from the wiki. So if the book clears up anything, I wouldn't know. (why is it so hard to find supplemental material for this series) I'm mainly going off info from the few scattered iceberg and lore vids on youtube, mainly choopo's video.

First, the zombies. Now we know they've existed for so long because of PvZ2's predestination paradox and Zomboss putting them there. But how did humans deal with them? I assume pre-plant era humans used normal weaponry; and because I doubt Zomboss stayed in the past eras after you beat him in PvZ2's adventure mode, that any zombies left behind in the past kind of just became a non-threat with nobody to command them.

But then we get to the Zombie War of '76. Yeah, Imitater's PvZ almanac entry mentions that there was a zombie war, and its so weirdly specific that I doubt its a joke or not meant to be taken as lore. There's a lot to unpack here.

We know that at least some plants fought in this war, as Imitater was apparently a part of it, and Bloom and Doom Seed Co. was establisted in 1968; but none of the plants we know in PvZ were in that war; because that generation of plants were made by Dave. Now Dave is assumed to be at least thirty six, and NMT has him state that he was a kid in the eighties, so he had to have been born in 1973 (according to my shitty math). So I have to assume Bloom and Doom Seed Co. had plants of their own in the war against the zombies during the '76 Zombie War.

Maybe there were some humans in it too, maybe it was mostly humans and the plants were like some hair-brained back-up plan, given we don't have many plants in the series who could have been in the war aside from Imitater and maybe Colnel Corn. (given his lore in GW2, but I have no evidence for this) I have no idea if this is true, but somebody in the comment section of choopo's PvZ lore vid said that the zombies are immune to bullets, but if that is actual lore then I can imagine why the plants would be there.

Here's another thing about this Zombie War that also fucks with me: Who was in charge of this zombie faction? Because I'm like... 98% sure it was not Zomboss. Now we know that Zomboss and Dave are somewhere in th same age range, because of the science fair incident, and Zomboss does age like a human does from that same science fair (and Bully for You); so he probably came into existence at the same time Dave was born. Now I know the counter could be "Well time travel is canon" but only in PvZ2, and there is not a single world in PvZ2 or PvZ2 China that is even close to being in a 70s war setting, so I can't consider that as a remotely canon-compliant explanation.

And the zombies have been shown to not be able to organize themselves for shit without somebody to command them, there had to be some kind of commander there. I'm sure it probably was Zomboss and Popcap just never bothered expanding on any of this Zombie War, but this random bit of lore compels me so much.

Like where was this war fought? What were the stakes? What was the zombie army like? Did people die? If it wasn't Zomboss leading the zombies in this war, who did? Or was it like a World War Z type 'war' where the zombies just swelled in numbers and overwhelmed whatever location they were in? And most importantly; has anybody made fanfic based on this concept and if so, where can I read it?

Stuck thinking about the whole zomboss kidnapping you cause he wants to marry you thing but him being way more sinister and threatening..

Whether it be the normal version of him or my version/redesign of him..

May need to post any art about it to my twitter tbh cause it wouldnt be tumblr safe

Tho I can still totally draw tumblr safe versions still I suppose