Mongo is Appalled
A podcast covering all novels of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Discussing outlandish ideas and ridiculous notions that no one should have to endure. For those of you that have read all the current books and are just waiting for the next one, this is your respite until the next book for Dungeon Crawler Carl comes along. WARNING: This podcast contains definite spoilers and preposterous ideas that may make your brain melt. Listen responsibly.
Mongo is Appalled
Zombies
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Mike and Corbett get appalled at Zombies in Dungeon Crawler Carl. Are the zombies "zombie" enough or are they too "zombie?" The world may never know.
Welcome to Mongo is appalled, and today am I appalled? I find zombies appalling. Thanks for bringing that up, Mike. I am Corbett, and I'm not dead, but not undead. And with me is my co-host, Mike, who might or might not be dead, depending on if you open the box. Schrdinger's zombie. Mike, I was just gonna see what your thoughts were. Because I know, I know, I don't know if you know this, but you do another podcast about the apocalypse. Really? I don't believe you. Well, you have to drink heavily before you do it.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a good survival tactic for any apocalypse is drink heavily.
SPEAKER_00But any good any good apocalypse has zombies in it. And this uh technically, I know this is hard to believe, but Dungeon Crawler Carl is an apocalypse. And there are some zombies in it, but not really a lot. The undead don't get a lot of good footing. Unless maybe you count a lady who likes goats. So what are your thoughts on zombies, Mike?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's interesting you bring up Found in the Ruins, because I had forgot when I had originally pitched the idea to you, or talking about I thought about undead in general, but yeah, zombies came yeah, I had totally forgotten about zombies because I'm used to thinking about zombies as flesh-eating zombies taking over the earth, and that's kind of Sergeant Crawler Carl is basically set up as an RPG, and zombies in a say the original DD or A D D, that sort of stuff, were more voodoo zombies. So they're kinda like that, but I do think if you were like bitten by a by one of the zombies in Dungeon Crawler Carl, you could get infected by it. Although it was fairly easy to heal, from what I remember, at least in Bedlam Bride. But yeah, you really only get zombies in the sixth book, I think.
SPEAKER_00Demon eviction event is it prompts the first zombies, and they do they do specifically say don't get bitten by them. I remember them calling that out. They didn't they didn't really have a moment where somebody was bitten and turned into a zombie.
SPEAKER_01No, I mean it you would get bitten and you would get the debuff, you know, you've been infected, but it was fairly easy to heal. Of course, you know, it was the showrunners that introduced the concept with those zombie turkeys.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. So they kind of prompted it.
SPEAKER_01They prompted it. Yeah. It certainly spread like the traditional zombie apocalypse sort of bite and that sort of thing. But we don't really get a lot of things other than zombies in there. I mean, there's what are you calling the hinky jinkies or am I saying that right?
SPEAKER_00Uh the the jinky the jinky ninkies. The ones in Iron Tangle. They describe them zombie-like, but they don't say they're zombies.
SPEAKER_01Or they the uh I always thought of them as kind of ghouls.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Again D ghouls, you know, which are based on the Lovecraft ghouls. Well, but they're also good bellhops, so well, apparently. Ghouls always struck me as kind of weird because it's like, well, they eat the flesh of the dead. I'm like, well, don't we all really? A little bit. How many yeah, who eats a live steak? Unless you're talking cellular.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you know what? I just remembered. I I it just jumped into my head, which is dumb because it was book two. Uh but the first instance of zombieism, book two, The Circus.
SPEAKER_01Right. Right.
SPEAKER_00It's hard to like pay attention to that because it feels like it's its own little encapsulated thing.
SPEAKER_01And they really weren't trying to bite or infect or anything. They just tried to throw knives at you or Well, they were worm zombies. Rip you to shreds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was the maggots, and then you became because he slowly was starting to become but he was like becoming mind controlled. I don't think it was zombiism per se.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It was sort of a telepathic link with the shrubbery that Grimaldi had become.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, I was just thinking of the bear when he kills the bear and so sad. Yeah. Which is sad. You're like, you're feeling sad for a dead bear.
SPEAKER_01A bear that that really wanted to die at that point, so there was that at least.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I like how he talked about she had entertained people with her skating and and tricks, and now that she's undead and ripping them to shreds instead of entertaining them, in her heart, she's happy. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like a pair. But yeah, okay. I stand corrected. Although again, those were definitely more voodoo zombies. Or yeah, like worm zombies like from Night of the Creeks.
SPEAKER_00They weren't zombies per se in the exact that's the thing. Everything is kind of zombie adjacent without going straight zombie. I don't know if Dinner is trying to avoid it, or if he just really has an aversion to it.
SPEAKER_01Or again, it's it fits the plot, whatever the plot requires.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, the zombie chickens, he does say they're zombies. And then the zombie turkeys, yeah. Yeah, the yes, thank you. Then everything else starts getting zombified, and then the demon eviction happens. But the inevitable ruin uh in that one when the demon eviction event happens, like you I didn't even notice there was an eviction happening. There's so much other stuff happening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it almost seems seemed like a feted cherry on top of all this.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Technically, you could you could kind of say the war mages are zombie to a degree because they're flesh on bone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And they're not like living per se. They're they're an undead creature, just animated skin initially, until it starts getting more and more different absorptions and becomes intelligent. The the war mages always struck me as kind of Dinnaman's serial number scrape off of liches from DD.
SPEAKER_00Hmm.
SPEAKER_01Because they're all casters.
SPEAKER_00Well, they're definitely a different type of lich, but they're definitely an undead doing very much.
SPEAKER_01They're undead with major magical mojo, and they're very tough when they reach sentient level. Except when the crawlers are even higher level, as what's his name found out in Parade of Horribles. When he got his jiggly bits frozen off by Ellie and Well, she didn't get torn off, she bashed him into bits. Well, she froze them first, but yeah, and then shattered.
SPEAKER_00You know, I didn't even think about that. I I must have missed it. I wasn't paying attention very well, I guess, because the they they do the turkeys in the the fight, and after that fight they do they deal with his dad, so you deal with turkeys and family, and then they go have Christmas. And I never realized that sequence of events. I wonder when he wrote this book.
SPEAKER_01The gut reaction to turkeys is Thanksgiving, but it's chicken, but it's uh Christmas too.
SPEAKER_00But we'll see the thing, he does they fight the turkeys, then he goes and deals with his dad. Alpha Carl, right the family.
SPEAKER_01And the family.
SPEAKER_00And then he goes back to the family he cares about and has Christmas. Which he then leaves and goes and spends alone.
SPEAKER_01And and the the dog that helps him decide not to blow up the solar system after all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh Lightning Lou.
SPEAKER_01Lightning Lou.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The dog who was alone for Christmas, and I can understand how that would affect him and make it feel bad and everything, but all I can think of when I was reading that is he's a dog. It's a day. He doesn't know, oh my god, I'm alone on Christmas. He's a dog, he doesn't care. It's just a day that his people aren't around. It could be Arbor Day, it wouldn't matter.
SPEAKER_00Well, Donut did have very distinct memories before she was sentient, so Lightning Loom might know. Maybe he is sad.
SPEAKER_01If he is, yeah, it's not specifically because it's Christmas, I guess, is the point I'm making.
SPEAKER_00No, I just didn't realize I never thought about it, and I was like, wait a minute, there's turkeys and then they have Christmas. Wait a minute, then there's turkeys and then there's family, and then they have Christmas. Huh. I wonder I don't think there was a rabbit.
SPEAKER_01Or cranberry sauce.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I just I it just correlated my brain all of a sudden because it's early. Yeah. But I I can say I I would agree with you in the fact that they do have ghoul-like things running around, and they do specifically say that turkeys are zombies and the fish. I think the the fish that appeared, they were trying to avoid the fish even though they had to stomp on it.
SPEAKER_01Right, and the fish were hopping up on the on the on the beach.
SPEAKER_00And they did say don't let them bite you, but they didn't have an event where anybody was bitten per se. Right. The closest we've seen that anybody turns into a zombie-like thing is when Carl eats the ice cream back in book two.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah. The worm scream ice cream.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But you never see Dawn of the Dead zombies or even like World War Z zombies or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01Right, not apocalyptic zombies.
SPEAKER_00Which is kind of weird because if you think about it, the entire population, or at least half of the population of the planet, has been encoded and put into data storage.
SPEAKER_01Which what's more zombie than that? Yeah. What I find interesting is we only have one vampire.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah. That's wrong. I even mentioned that at the beginning.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Miriam, and it specifically says she was cursed, which seems to imply that yeah, she wasn't bitten or anything. She just was at the end of a of a nasty magical curse.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01So that was curious, because you know how popular vampires are.
SPEAKER_00Well, they're popular enough that there was an entire show in the dungeon that was it revolves around hunting down vampires.
SPEAKER_01Right. Kind of the the blade ripoff guy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01With his pterodactyl or whatever the hell it was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, super, super sexy vampire hunter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Vampire Hunter D ripoff here. Supported by the plenty.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That was curious because normally, you know, in a lot of fantasy settings, you've got vampires running around sooner or later, because everybody loves vampires.
SPEAKER_00Well, but in this case it was put in as a joke. I felt bad for her for that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was let's take arguably the nicest person in the dungeon, with the possible exception of Amani, and let's make her into a vampire. Blah ha. Isn't that funny?
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. They never really even met either. Amani and Miriam. Miriam. Yeah, they never know. Yeah. That's a shame.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think I got along really well.
SPEAKER_00Amani doesn't like prepotente a lot. Well, yeah. They met as close as they got was in the Iron Tangle when she was on the other side of the hole.
SPEAKER_01Was that the one where Amani goes, Bitch, what?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, basically. Like, I will smite you or something like that. I don't know what he says.
SPEAKER_01It takes a lot to get Amani pissed, but if you do, watch out. Whereas Ellie'll kick your ass just for looking at her funny. So yeah, uh there's not quite as many undead as I would expect in a fantasy setting.
SPEAKER_00Actually, you know, the jinky ninkies remind me more of Shawn of the Dead zombies. I don't know if you've ever seen Shawn of the Dead. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh god, yeah. No, no, I've never seen Shawn of the Dead.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't know. But every all the zombies just repeat what they did in life, which makes it humorous because it it's a it is the direct parable of the zombieism as a as a story correlation.
SPEAKER_01Right, but it's actually a takeoff of the Romero zombies that are perform shown in Dawn and Day of the Dead.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Or Land of the Dead, you know, they would you know they get stuck repeating what they did in life because it's so meaned.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's supposed to be the the parable of the the story is that we as humans have given up our life and therefore repeating exactly the same things over and over and over.
SPEAKER_01We have meaningless lives of repetition.
SPEAKER_00Which is honestly kind of cool mythical storytelling. So if you think about that's not the point. The uh the more that the the jinky ninkies remind me, because they just he describes them walking around the the um the train yards and stuff, and they're just kind of lumbering from one place to another and picking up boxes and moving them back over. Like, why would they need to do any of that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. On the other hand, he hires them as mercenaries in a parade of horribles.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So not literally try to take a bite out of anyone in the RV in the in the chicken mobile, so it's are they alive? Are they undead?
SPEAKER_00Somewhere in between, for sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's uh interesting point. So yeah, it's uh undead, the gift that keeps on giving.
SPEAKER_00Well, I guess uh that that we all have our limitations.
SPEAKER_01And they will not bite, I mean break us. Rrr, rrrrr. Well, that's okay. Amani will give us a heal. We'll be there.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much sounding wing racist than I intended.