Zombie jokes are Halloween’s most reliable material, because the entire genre runs on about five words that already mean two things. Dead, brains, grave, guts and living all do double duty in ordinary English. This page has oneliners, dad jokes, kids’ riddles with answers and party ideas, plus the answer to a question a lot of people are genuinely asking: whether the CDC’s zombie apocalypse preparedness plan was a joke. It was not, and the real story is better than any of the puns.

What Makes a Zombie Joke Work?

Zombie jokes work because dead is one of the busiest words in English. Dead serious, dead tired, dead heat, dead ringer and dead on your feet are all ordinary phrases that become jokes the moment a zombie is involved. Add brains, grave and the living room and you have a complete joke engine. The category is also unusually clean for a horror theme nothing about a zombie joke requires gore, which is why they dominate school Halloween parties.

• Dead appears in a dozen ordinary English phrases
• Brains, grave, guts and living all carry second meanings
• Spooky in theme but harmless in content
• Punchlines are usually two or three words
• Peaks sharply in October but works all year
• Children can memorise and perform them easily

The Zombie Pun Bank

Almost every joke below is built from this short list. Learn it and you can invent your own in seconds, which is useful in the runup to Halloween.

• Dead  dead serious, dead tired, dead heat, dead ringer
• Brains  and its vegetarian variant, grains
• Grave  grave point average, the gravevine
• Corpse / corps  the army joke lives here
• Living  the living room, making a living
• Decay / dedicated  dedicated covers a lot of ground

Best Zombie Jokes and OneLiners

These are the general purpose zombie jokes: short, clean and usable anywhere from a classroom to a Halloween party. They need no context and no particular audience.

• What do you call a zombie who doesn’t joke around? Dead serious.
• Why don’t zombies eat comedians? They taste funny.
• What’s a zombie’s least favourite room in the house? The living room.
• How do zombies keep in touch? Through the gravevine.
• What do you call a zombie wearing a bell? A dead ringer.
• Why don’t zombies ever win arguments? They keep losing their heads.
• Why did the zombie visit the doctor? He was completely falling apart.
• What’s a zombie’s favourite kind of bean? A human bean.
• Why did the zombie skip breakfast? He wasn’t feeling himself.
• What do you call a zombie who runs a kitchen? A dedicated chef.
• How does a zombie greet you? Nice to eat you.

Zombie Dad Jokes

A zombie dad joke is delivered in October, slowly, to someone holding a bag of sweets. The formula is the usual one: obvious pun, straight face, no explanation. Zombies are excellent material because the puns are so visible that the groan is guaranteed before you finish the sentence.

• Why are zombies bad at maths? They can’t put two and two together without losing a finger.
• I’d tell you a zombie joke, but it’s been done to death.
• Why did the zombie become a gardener? He was already outstanding in his field.
• What do zombies drink at breakfast? Decaf.
• Why was the zombie such a slow worker? No drive, no heart, no rush.
• My zombie joke went down badly. Total dead silence.

Zombie Jokes for Kids

A zombie joke for kids needs a simple word and an instant punchline, and crucially no gore at all. These are ideal for Halloween parties, classroom warmups and party invitations, because they are spooky in name only. Expect each to be repeated for the whole of October.

• What’s a zombie’s favourite party food? Finger food.
• What do you call a zombie who sleeps all day? Lazy bones with a bad attitude.
• Why did the zombie go to school? To improve his education.
• What’s a zombie’s favourite shape? A decagon.
• Why was the little zombie so happy? He’d finally made a friend to pieces.

Zombie Knock Knock Jokes

Knockknock jokes work well with zombies because the format already involves someone arriving at a door uninvited, which is most of the premise.

• Knock knock. Who’s there? Zombies. Zombie who? Zombiefore you know it, I’ll be inside.
• Knock knock. Who’s there? Dead. Dead who? Dedicated to answering this door all evening.
• Knock knock. Who’s there? Brains. Brains who? You clearly don’t have any, you opened the door.

The Zombie Riddles People Search For

These are the specific zombie riddles that turn up in search, usually because someone half remembers one and cannot recall the answer. Every one has a fixed punchline that has been circulating for years.

How Did the Zombie Get Into College?

With a very high grave point average. It is the most searched zombie riddle and one of the best constructed, because the pun swaps a single letter and the meaning still fits perfectly.

• Q: How did the zombie get into college? A: A very high grave point average.

What Does a Vegetarian Zombie Eat?

Graaaains. This is the sharpest joke in the whole category, because the punchline is not a word but a way of saying one it only works out loud, drawn out in the same groan as brains.

• Q: What does a vegetarian zombie eat? A: Graaaains.
• The vegan version has the identical punchline
• It only lands spoken aloud, never written

Who Won the Zombie Football Match?

Nobody it was a dead heat. The same punchline covers every sport version of this riddle, which is why it turns up under soccer, football and racing.

• Q: Who won the zombie football match? A: It was a dead heat.

Why Did the Zombie Take a Nap?

He was dead tired. The closely related riddle asks how you know a zombie is tired, with the answer that he is dead on his feet two ordinary English phrases doing all the work.

• Q: Why did the zombie take a nap? A: He was dead tired.
• Q: How do you know a zombie is tired? A: He’s dead on his feet.

Why Did the Zombie Join the Army?

He heard about the corpse. It is a homophone joke on corps, and it is the one adults tend to appreciate more than children.

• Q: Why did the zombie join the army? A: He heard about the corpse.

Is the CDC Zombie Preparedness Plan a Joke?

A surprising number of people search this, and the honest answer is that it is real  but it was always meant to be funny. In May 2011 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a blog post on its Public Health Matters Blog titled Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, written by then Assistant Surgeon General Ali S. Khan. It used a zombie outbreak as a hook to teach genuine emergency preparedness ahead of hurricane season: build an emergency kit, make a family plan, know where to go. The joke was the packaging; the advice underneath was completely serious.

• Published in May 2011 on the CDC’s Public Health Matters Blog
• Written by then Assistant Surgeon General Ali S. Khan
• Timed ahead of the June hurricane season
• The preparedness advice in it is genuine and standard
• The zombie framing was a deliberate communication strategy
• A CDC spokesperson made the point that preparing for zombies prepares you for any hazard

Why It Worked So Well

The campaign was a spectacular success by any measure. The blog normally received a few thousand hits a day; the zombie post drew tens of thousands within hours and crashed the server. It went on to win public relations awards, and the CDC followed it up with posters, teacher lesson plans and a graphic novella on the same theme. It is now a standard case study in how humour can carry a public health message further than earnest instruction ever does.

• The post crashed the CDC blog within hours of going live
• Traffic ran vastly above the blog’s normal levels
• The campaign won national public relations awards
• The CDC produced posters, lesson plans and a graphic novella
• It is now taught as a health communication case study

Halloween Zombie Jokes and Party Ideas

Zombie jokes peak sharply in October, and the Halloween versions lean on costumes, trick or treating and parties rather than anatomy. These work on invitations, decorations and card messages, and they keep everything firmly in the funny rather than frightening column for younger guests.

• Why don’t zombies trick or treat? They prefer takeaway.
• What’s a zombie’s favourite costume? Whatever it was already wearing.
• Why was the zombie the last to arrive at the party? It takes him a while to pull himself together.
• What do zombies say at the end of a party? See you when I’m dead and buried, so, Tuesday.

Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit Joke Gifts

A joke survival kit is one of the better novelty gifts, because half the contents can be genuinely useful. Build it around a real emergency kit and add the gag items on top  that way the joke lands and the recipient ends up with a torch that works.

• A real torch and spare batteries, labelled for the dark times
• Tinned food with the labels replaced by handwritten ones
• A jar of jelly beans labelled emergency brains
• A printed emergency checklist  genuinely useful and part of the joke
• A cheap first aid kit, which is the actual point of the gift
• A hand drawn map of the nearest shop, marked the last outpost

Jump into Other Related Article

• Food Jokes: Deliciously Funny Jokes That Will Make You Hungry
• Monthly Jokes: A Month Full of Laughs
• Weekly Jokes: A Funny Joke for Every Day of the Week
• Funny Jokes That Will Make You Laugh
• Animal Jokes: Funny Animal Jokes That Will Make You Laugh

Conclusion

Zombie jokes last because the dead is doing so much work in everyday English that the puns write themselves. Save three from this page: the grave point average for adults, the vegetarian zombie for anyone who will hear it out loud, and a knockknock for children. And if the CDC zombie plan comes up, the true story is a better conversation than any of the jokes. A government health agency once used a zombie outbreak to teach hurricane preparedness, and it worked better than everything they had tried before.

• One riddle for adults, one spoken joke, one knockknock
• Build new ones from dead, brains, grave and living
• The CDC story is the best zombie fact you can carry