Left 4 Dead 2 (Video Game)

New friends. More zombies. Better apocalypse.

Coach: "Report unusual behavior. Barricade your homes. Avoid all contact with infected individuals. Wait for official instructions." [laughs, tossing away instruction sheet dismissively while eating a chocolate bar] "Wait", my ass.

Ellis: Kill all sons-a-bitches. [racks shotgun] That's my 'ficial instructions.

The 2009 sequel to Left 4 Dead.

The plot is roughly the same as the previous game: a deadly virus epidemic has claimed the United States and zombies prowl the streets. You play as one of four survivors using guns, swords and Improvised Weapons to make their way though bloodthirsty hordes of mutant infected to reach safety. The difference this time is the setting, which is located somewhere around the Louisiana area.

The game sports a few new features such as three new "Special Infected" (zombies with enhanced powers): the self-explanatory Charger, the acid-puking Spitter, and the body-clinging Jockey. Also introduced is the new Scavenge mode, an eight-player mode similar to Versus where the point isn't to reach the safe room; it's to collect gas cans and dump them into a generator, the winner determined by which team can get more into the generator before they're overwhelmed. Also introduced is Realism, where most auras are removed (including the ones around teammates), Witches instantly kill on any difficulty except Easy, there are no rescue closets (dead players only respawn at the start of a new level), and a few other things. The narrative to the game has also changed as each campaign now leads into the next one rather than being standalone (for the most part) like the first game did.

The lead-up to the game saw much controversy after it was announced at 2009's E3 and was set to be released in November that year, a single year after the release of the first game. Unfortunately, Valve's claim at launch of the original game that they would update it following the model of Team Fortress 2 updates promptly backfired, as large numbers of people were outraged that they were expected to buy content they were under the impression they'd either get for free, or get as a mod rather than an entirely new game; this gave rise to the biggest outburst of "ruined!" cries ever: a 40,000+ people boycott. A couple months before the sequel was due, Valve flew both leaders of the boycott to Valve's headquarters to playtest the game, where they admitted that it was "well-made". After Valve's release of a new campaign for the original, "Crash Course", and the leaders admitting that the boycott had since become just a general anti-Valve group (most members of which had bought the game they were threatening to boycott anyway), they decided to shut it down.

This was followed by the Left 4 Dead 2 DLC "The Passing", which features both the old and new Survivors working together and "The Sacrifice" for both games, which lets players choose who makes the ultimate sacrifice and was preceded by a free comic. The latter update also made the L4D1 campaign No Mercy available in the sequel, complete with the original Survivors as the playable characters. Cue rumors that Valve planned to make the entire first game available for free in the sequel (which they did) and more cries of the first game owners being ripped off.

The game also received massive critical acclaim for both its Myth Arc style narrative — the parts of the story they don't tell you, as well as the interactions between the survivors — and for its Emergent Narrative, in which different aspects of gameplay combined with elements of randomness mean that every single time you play a new story emerges.

Like the first game, Left 4 Dead 2 is effectively a love-letter to the zombie films of The '70s and '80s, with survivors armed to the teeth giving the undead hordes of the apocalypse a taste of their own medicine.

In 2014, a Japan-only arcade version, using the NESICA arcade board was developed by Neilo and published by Taito. It features Japanese voice acting, an entirely new cast of survivors, and unlockables including all new weapons, character models, and weapon skins, but tones down the violence and gore to the same level as the German version of the original game. It was discontinued in July 2017 where existing functional machines can only play single player or local link multiplayer only. Unlike usual arcade shooting games, the game plays like the base game, with a repurposed Nunchuk and a standard issue PC mouse serving as the controls, and instead of playing with Video-Game Lives, the game is "rented" by having coins buy SVP (Survivor Points), which serves as both time-to-play and additional currency to buy exclusive items.

On September 24 2020, Valve greenlighted (after a long ten year gap) a new mega update called "The Last Stand". Made by prominent modders and community members, it featured a new campaign, added dozens of Survival maps, two new melee weapons (the shovel and pitchfork), rebalanced PVP, improved AI, improved weapon models, new character animations, fully implementing the Counter-Strike weapons^note, adding weapon skins as rare drop variants of existing weapons, and implementing in previously Dummied Out voice clips.

Please take a look at the character sheet to learn more about the characters (both human and infected) and the Shout-Out page for countless pop culture references.

Left 4 Dead 2 provides examples of:

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A-D

Abandoned Warehouse: Nearly every campaign features one.
Ability Depletion Penalty: If the mounted machine gun overheats completely, it becomes inoperable for a long cooldown period.
Absurdly Spacious Sewer: In The Passing and The Parish, though both are nearly devoid of any geometry and only require the players to move in a straight line from the entrance to the exit.
Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Melee weapons would technically break after extended use in real life (this was actually going to be a mechanic at one point, but this was dropped when it was found to be too frustrating) and Coach could never run for a while without being winded due to his knee injury and excess weight, but these things are ignored for the sake of simpler gameplay.
Actually a Good Idea: Dark Carnival has the survivors make their way through an Amusement Park of Doom, eventually reaching the concert stadium area. Coach realizes that they can use the pyrotechnics and sound system to signal a nearby helicopter to help them escape, basically invoking The Power of Rock to help them live another day.

Nick: That's the stupidest plan I've ever agreed with.

Adjustable Censorship: Gore can be set on either "High" or "Low" in the multiplayer options menu. The latter only disables Common Infected gibbing; gory corpses will still be seen as map props, and Boomers will still explode into Ludicrous Gibs and leave behind their disembodied legs.
A.I. Breaker:
- Tanks normally attack and chase the closest Survivor. If said Survivor is standing next to an incapacitated Survivor, the Tank will choose to beat on the downed Survivor while ignoring the healthy one^note. Players knowing this can use the downed Survivor as a decoy while the rest wail on the Tank. This isn't as effective on Expert difficulty, due to the Tank's boosted damage output.
- Any custom map that has hazardous terrain (lava, toxic sludge, electrified water, etc.) is bound to make mincemeat of your AI followers. Since it’s not a mechanic present in the base game, the bot will blindly walk into the harmful area even though it's hurting them, which likely will incapacitate them, which will make another bot rush in to help them, which will incapacitate them as well, which will make the other bot rush in to help until you are the sole remaining player.
A.K.A.-47: As with the first game, most guns are given generic descriptors, though a few guns, both old and new, are now referred to by their real names. Also, according to the sign in Whittaker's gun shop, the Magnum Pistol is a "Desert Cobra" rather than a Desert Eagle.
The Aloner:
- In Last Man On Earth, you are the only remaining human other than the rescue vehicle pilots, Whitaker, and the church guy (there also aren't any Common Infected or Boomers), in a game built entirely around co-op, no less. Since there are still Special Infected, expect tons of Things That Go "Bump" in the Night horror (particularly so, since you're alone and any Special Infected could potentially kill you by itself) and Jump Scares. In a normal game, if you are a long distance away from any of your teammates, every once in a while your character will shout out something like "Hello?" or "Where is everybody?". As you're the only Survivor, the character you're playing as will periodically give out these shouts for the entire game, to have nothing but the sounds of the Special Infected answer back. Bonus creepy points for the Survivor you're playing as talking as if the other survivors are still there, giving directions, pointing out supplies/weapons on the map, spotting Special Infected for "other people", etc. And, as each campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 is connected to the last, and your character still talks as if there were other Survivors, in whatever campaign you're playing, this mode gives off the feeling that you were somehow separated from the other Survivors between this one and the last one, but since there are also no longer any "normal" zombies anywhere, it suggests that something must have happened along the way, too.
- The Lone Gunman Mutation operates on the opposite principle of Last Man on Earth: you're still on your own, but instead of Special Infected, all you fight are Common Infected and Boomers. Your only weapon in this mode is a Magnum Pistol and Common Infected deal greatly increased damage, so you'll need to make every shot count and not get puked on.
- There's the All Alone Custom Mutation, that works on mostly the same principles as Last Man On Earth, except instead of Special Infected, all there is are Common Infected. It's even more tense, as while they're slower and random hordes are cut, the infected still jog at just below a healthy Survivor's pace, making outrunning a horde difficult, and they hit like a tour bus — each arm swing of theirs on Easy hits harder than regular Advanced difficulty, on Normal they deal 25% more damage than on Expert, and on Expert itself, they're a One-Hit Kill.
Alternate Continuity: The Last Stand campaign (not the survival map it was based on) involves a What If? where the survivors used a pickup truck near John and Amanda Slater's boathouse to escape Riverside in Death Toll rather than the Slaters' boat. They're still rescued by the Slaters at the end.
Ambiguous Ending: The chronologically last campaign, The Parish, ends just like what you expect. However, the Survivors on their way to the bridge discover the fact that the military has been shooting asymptomatic carriers of the Green Flu, potentially including immunes like the player characters. Furthermore, The Sacrifice comic confirms, yes, the immunes are also carriers and if they contact the military, there's a chance that, as Nick said, "they just line us up at the wall and shoot at us". However, as of now, nothing further is shown in the game after the Survivors escape the bridge on board a military helicopter.
Ammo Resupply: Ammunition Upgrades are ammo boxes that can be found, carried, and deployed by players to upgrade their primary weapons with one magazine of either incendiary or explosive rounds depending on the type of upgrade.
Ammo-Using Melee Weapon: The chainsaw is the strongest weapon in the game, able to tear through anything in the game in seconds if you're brave enough to walk up to it and hold down the trigger. But it still runs on gas, and when it runs out, it's useless. Unfortunately, there's no replenishing it, even with the containers of gasoline you'll occasional find lying around the map.
Amusement Park of Doom:
- Whispering Oaks, the setting of Dark Carnival. Complete with Monster Clowns, the Uncommon Infected for that campaign, along with playable carnival games.
- One of the many custom campaigns for the game, Journey to Splash Mountain, has the L4D1 Survivors travel through large swathes of the original Disneyland in Anaheim, complete with working rides and numerous other amusements for them to enjoy.
  Description: The Survivors head to Disneyland after hearing it is a military evacuation zone, only to find it completely overrun by zombies. Might as well have some fun while we're here.
Animal Maul Attack: The Charger's whole schtick. They barrel into a Survivor (or Survivors) and grab them to repeatedly pound into the floor until they or the Charger dies. But the Charger cannot be shoved off on account of its size, meaning the only way to save the Survivor is to shoot the Charger dead.
Anti-Entrenchment Mook: The Chargers and Spitters are introduced specifically to counter the "turtle in a corner" strategy that became ubiquitous in the first game. The Charger can plow through an entire team with a Foe-Tossing Charge, forcing everyone to get out the way (and often out of cover) lest they be hurled into another hazard. The Spitter spits burning goo that steadily increases in potency the longer the Survivors stand in it, forcing them to leave cover if they don't want to lose all their health.
The Artifact:
- The Last Stand, a unique Survival map from the first game, was ported to the sequel in the titular 2020 update and made into a two-map campaign. The poster's tagline, "It doesn't end well", is no longer true since the Survivors can actually escape (not so in Survival mode), thus the campaign actually ends well for everyone.
- Starting with The Sacrifice, the Unique Enemy status of most Uncommon Infected has been ditched in favor of adding them wherever appropriate in new/ported campaigns. With the exception of Fallen Survivors appearing as parachutists in Swamp Fever, this has not been applied to the L4D1 campaigns and The Passing, despite dead CEDA workers being spotted in The Parish, and the game's population file being set up to let Mudmen occasionally spawn during Hard Rain's rainstorms.
- After porting No Mercy, Valve decided the rest of the first game's campaigns would use the second game's corpse piles instead of the first, matching the Common Infected models used. The Last Stand update brought back the L4D1 Infected models for its campaigns while corpse models made for the second game still litter them.
- Although Guns Akimbo is no longer the only upgrade for the players' secondary weapon slot, the Left 4 Dead survivors still refer to any Pistol they see/pick up as an extra Pistol, even if they're swapping their melee weapon or Magnum for a single one.
- With the exception of the Pump Shotgun and Pistols, all of the L4D1 weapons still use their models and textures from that game despite the new weapons having a flatter appearance. This is particularly noticeable on the Hunting Rifle as it also reuses all of its animations from the first game, including the more exaggerated L4D1 walk cycle that none of the other weapons retain, making it stick out a lot more.
Anti-Frustration Feature:
- Getting hit by a flying car punched by a Tank normally incapacitates you instantly. The finale of The Parish takes place on a bridge filled with cars and a Tank will spawn halfway through the trek. For this chapter only, a car punched by a Tank will only cause major damage instead of an instant knockdown.
- Incapacitated Survivors no longer deal friendly fire damage, letting you blast away from the ground to cover your rescuer without fear of accidentally bringing them down as well.
- Survivor bots will never carry melee weapons. This is likely due to them treating secondary weapons as Pistols (as a remnant from importing the AI from Counter-Strike: Source), thus them attempting to use a melee weapon at range is averted in practice.
- As a Survivor is standing up from being pinned by a Special Infected, the Survivor is completely immune from most forms of damage, including things like Commons attacking in a group and a Spitter pool that was shot underneath you. This is because the Survivor is locked in place for a few seconds, which would normally make them an easy target for cheap shots. However, this does not apply to everything; pinning Specials can still pin you again, and Tanks and Witches bypass this immunity entirely.
- The Infected cannot trigger car alarms, despite the undead jumping all over cars on the regular. Likewise, Tanks can't trigger car alarms – if a Tank punches an alarmed car, the alarm breaks, disarming it.
- The Headshot Mutation enforces a rule where Common Infected can only be killed with headshots. Riot cops are exempt from this rule since they already can only be killed with shots to the back.
- The Last Man on Earth Mutation alters the Special Infected behavior where, if you get pinned, they will back off once they reduce your health to zero and the player automatically revives in black-and-white mode so that you can regain your bearings. However, this mercy is not given if you get incapacitated by any other means, including a Witch or Tank.
- A Spitter's spit that lands in an elevator will leave behind a much smaller pool and will fizzle out more quickly so that the survivors aren't cheap-shotted when the doors are closing in. Similarly, if a Spitter is killed inside an elevator, the pool doesn't spawn at all.
- For any fall that a player is required to take, fall damage is disabled, even if the player jumps in the air before taking the fall. This includes instances like the gully slide outside the motel in Dark Carnival, the tallest drop of the rollercoaster, and the drops into the sewers in both The Passing and The Parish.
- If a Survivor is trying to help an incapacitated teammate up, the process will normally be interrupted if either one is hit by a Common Infected. Bots are immune to this, and can get you back on your feet even with a horde wailing on them (or you)^note.
- When playing single-player, Scavenge finales do not require you to collect all of the gas cans, to compensate for the Survivor AI not being coded to do so.^note
- Survivor bots cannot set off alarmed cars, even if they jump on top of them. However, they fire their guns less around alarmed cars anyway, which offsets the immunity.
- The Director isn't merciless when it comes to Witch spawns and behavior;
  - Much as Survivor bots can't set off alarmed cars, they also cannot startle a wandering Witch with gunfire (they can still startle her by running into her, but this is far less likely of an occurrence). If anything, a bot shooting a wandering Witch is actually helpful, as they still scream for a split second and narrow down their position relative to you. Additionally, wandering Witches have a much smaller radius where a Survivor can stand around them before they get mad compared to their sitting counterparts, giving you a better chance of walking around them.
  - While this is not as strict of a rule, Witches and Tanks usually don't spawn in the same place, meaning you won't have to worry about watching your step and your fire while the strongest enemy in the game is running after you. Even if a Tank spawns in the sugar mill during Hard Rain, the area he's in is usually cleared of Witches.
  - Speaking of the sugar mill, there are far fewer Witches in Versus than there are in the regular campaign (though there will still be 3-4 as opposed to a regular level's 1-2), which makes up for the fact that the Special Infected are now controlled by players. However, to compensate, you cannot earn the achievement "Sob Story"^note in Versus.
  - Witches can spawn in regular Crescendo Event areas (and they can even spawn directly in the path required for a gauntlet), but they cannot spawn in the location of a Finale (though they can spawn at some point during the level, they can't spawn in the actual area you will be fighting the final horde in); notably, this means that a Witch will never spawn on the bridge in The Parish. Even if a Witch is modded into a Finale, it will always be sitting down (even in Dead Center and The Parish, where they would otherwise be standing up).
- When a Survivor dies, their main gun and all other items are dropped except for their secondary weapon (Pistol/Magnum or melee weapon) so that if the dead Survivor is brought back to life with a defibrillator, they'll still have a weapon to defend themselves with in the event that their fellow Survivors looted their corpse previously.
- The riot uncommon infected spawns in every map in The Parish campaign except for the finale. This is because the riot infected can't be harmed unless they're attacked in the back, set on fire, or hit with explosions and having them appear in a finale where you have to keep moving forward and avoid pitfalls while the horde is on your ass would be more difficult if riot zombies appeared in the mix.
Armor Is Useless: Averted by the riot cops, who can endure anything other than explosions or fire; so long as it strikes them in the front. Rather hilariously played straight when you throw a Molotov at them, since that's what real riot armor is built to withstand.
Art Evolution: The higher polygon count and upgraded lighting effects compared to the first.
Artificial Brilliance: While the Special Infected can be quite stupid at times, it doesn't happen too often.
- Most of the times, they are quite smart and are very wary of the presence of the players. Hunters and Boomers will always try to hide around corners or behind thick shrubs so that they can ambush the players. The two may also tag-team players if one is caught by a Smoker. Smokers and Spitters will attempt to run away if their attack fails and Hunters will escape by repeatedly jumping away if they are shot at from a distance. Generally speaking, the Specials all try to get to places that the Survivors can't reach easily before attacking or after being spotted.
- Tanks are now much smarter than in the original. They try to avoid fire the player makes, assuming the player sets the fire off too early. When they down someone, they will usually go chase the other Survivors instead of just pounding one till they're dead and become a sitting duck. Though pounding one of the Survivors to death is occasionally a smart move and somewhat terrifying, there's a reason you were never encouraged to do that in Versus.
- The Common Infected themselves show signs of this — instead of running straight towards the Survivor, they tend to run around in circles, avoiding bullets while attacking the Survivors to the sides or even the back.
- A simple matter, but AI Survivors will usually pair up with them if two human players split up. Additionally, if two human players stand back-to-back during a horde event, the other two will usually cover the two remaining sides, creating a diamond formation that covers all four directions.
- Though the Survivor AI has many infamous quirks, they handle Boomers excellently; they will rarely if ever shoot one if doing so will cover someone in bile, and they're specifically programmed to shove it back and then step further back if they're at risk of being exploded on, meaning they handle Boomers in basically the same way an experienced player would.
Artificial Stupidity: Although it could be a good deal worse, the Survivor AI has many infamous quirks. This is a great reason to play the game with actual people. See this YouTube video as a hilariously shameful example from around release.
- The AI seems to have been improved since the first game, though some of the achievements cause it trouble. Of particular note is the "Sob Story" achievement, requiring the player to complete a stage without killing a Witch. The AI is not remotely suited to sneaking missions.
- Survivor bots are absolutely hopeless with scoped rifles. They never use the scopes to begin with, and since their AI patterns are mostly inherited from Counter-Strike: Source, they'll all too frequently switch to their secondary weapons when an enemy gets up close. Since this is a zombie horde shooter game, the odds of this happening are extremely high. This more often than not results in said bot having the least amount of kills by a mile (especially if the bot is Ellis or Zoey, whose preferred weapon types are scoped rifles). Too often there will be instances of a player getting caught by a Charger, and said bot resorts to dinky little Pistols rather than using the scoped rifle which would kill that Charger far more quickly. Survivor bots using shotguns tend to do this in reverse, switching to Pistols if they spot an enemy to fight that's far away, but that's far more beneficial as said enemies are usually not a threat at that distance and it helps the bot preserve precious shotgun ammo.
- The "Chainsaw Massacre" Mutation amplifies the Survivor bot's stupidity to new levels. They will either run ahead or lag badly behind and not do too well in saving you from Special Infected. This was corrected later causing the AI to rarely stray far from players, but they still have issues, the main one being the bots' ineptitude with melee weapons.
- Survivor bots can't see through scenery and have a disturbingly short attention span. In Versus mode, the Survivor bots will quickly forget about Special Infected if they so much as crouch behind a car.
- When near car alarms, Survivor bots will very much hesitate to use their guns, even when being attacked by a single zombie. This is to mimic player patterns to avoid hitting the car alarm, but since the weapons of survivor bots are Friendly Fireproof, this is a needless redundancy. It's probably better to set it off and get them to fight back again.
- If a Jockey grabs on to you, the AI rarely, if ever, just shoots the Jockey, and when they do, they'll try to target the Jockey from close range and miss horribly instead of, y'know, shoving the Jockey off. The tendency for computer-controlled Jockeys to randomly decide they can't be killed until they've at least done some damage to a Survivor doesn't help.
  - A similar case also happens for Smokers. In the first game, the Survivor bots would usually be really quick in saving someone caught by a Smoker. In the sequel, they now will sometimes wait until you take damage before they free you. In the worst case scenario, they'll sit and watch as the Smoker chokes you to death, not even bothering to shove the tongue off. Additionally, even though every Survivor has lines referring to "shooting the tongue", they never attempt this strategy at all, so if they can't see the Smoker, you're a sitting duck until they catch up to you.
- It gets pretty close to Spiteful A.I.: Survivor bots always place human players between themselves and their target so they can shoot through the players and throw off their aim, they typically take forever to rescue humans from Special Infected but immediately drop everything if another Survivor bot is in danger, and if they manage to piss off a Witch they will once again place the player between them and said Witch, presumably in the hopes that it goes after the player instead.^note
- Whenever you encounter a Spitter, bots will make no attempt to avoid their acid until they've already stuck their feet in it, at which point they will back out of it and stand completely still until it dissipates.
- Even garden-variety Common Infected can give the Survivor bots trouble. If they get mobbed by Commons, the AI has an alarmingly high chance to just stand there and blindly shove in all directions without even bothering to try and shoot or run, inevitably getting mauled in the process.
- If the bots get close to the saferoom, they make a beeline for it and stay there regardless of the threat level in the immediate surroundings. This can lead to you getting pounded to death by a Tank and swarms of Infected while the bots cower in the saferoom. Doubly annoying considering that in most other situations, the bots are too dumb to keep up with you if you aren't constantly stopping and looking over your shoulder. This also means that if a Witch is either in the saferoom or right by it, she will get startled, and the bot will have nowhere to run.
- And lastly, Survivor Bots are specifically programmed not to mess with throwables like bile bombs, gas canisters and molotovs. This would probably be a blessing if not for the fact that that the two "Scavenge" finales involve collecting them... and spawn higher densities of zombies if you take too long. Mercifully, these finales also require less gas cans to complete in single player mode to offset the fact that you'll be doing literally all the work.
- If you play in single-player mode often, Game Mods such as Left 4 Bots: Improved Bots are a good way to avoid breaking your monitor in frustration. They're still not nearly as good as good human players, though it helps that their reaction time to being pinned or snagged is shorter, they can grab and use throwables, share items, and even in custom maps they hardly get stuck because of bad path-finding. The linked mod also allows to have bots take over being the leader along with returning the leader role to player in case of getting stuck, ability to use "warp" chat command to teleport survivor bots to your location, and added feature for bots to be able to scavenge gas cans in campaign stages with scavenge objectives.
- As of The Last Stand update, Survivor bots' AI have noticeably improved, like how they maintain a great deal of distance to minimize friendly fire, defeat Infected, Common and Special alike, faster, almost never visibly teleport (a known pathfinding issue workaround), as well as their visibly improved reaction time. However, they have some quirks like prioritizing killing Special Infected over bashing Survivors to save them (such as Smoker; if the Smoker is out of the bot's line of fire, then it's a large chance that the bound survivor is left for dead). The distancing might also cause problems on several custom maps, where they won't close in on small boxed areas like escape points or elevators (due to fixes on nav files, the official campaigns have no issues), making it possible to get stuck.
Artistic License – Physics: The Silenced Submachine Gun has a little cloth strap dangling off its front, serving as a foregrip. When you reload the gun, tilting it this way and that, that little cloth strap continues to stick straight down perpendicular from the frame. Averted after The Last Stand update, which gave the strap jiggle physics.
Artistic License – Medicine: You do not give adrenaline to a bleeding person in reality without patching them up first. As adrenaline increases the patient's heart rate once administered, a wounded person will actually bleed out faster.
Aura Vision: Used to find teammates (and bile-bombed Infected) as well as nearby items as Survivors and used by Infected to see where Survivors are going and what health level they're at. Averted in Realism mode.
Asymmetrically Jacked: Chargers has an enormous, overmuscled right arm... and an almost completely atroped left arm. The jacked arm is used to grab survivors and keep pounding them to the ground.
Autobots, Rock Out!: The finale to Dark Carnival is triggered by starting a Midnight Riders concert.
Awesome, but Impractical:
- The mounted machine guns available in certain areas (most notably the Finales of Swamp Fever and The Sacrifice) are bar none the most powerful weapons in the game, being able to take down Tanks in a short period of time, have unlimited ammo, and never need to reload. However, they're often placed in inconvenient locations, only swivel around a 180 degree arc (meaning that your backside is completely exposed), you must stand completely still to use it (leaving you at the mercy of Spitters, Hunters, Chargers in your blind spots), shooting it for too long will cause it to overheat and render it useless for an entire minute, and Tanks will still come after you and throw rocks at you, the latter throwing you off the machine gun and making you a sitting duck. In fact, Tanks are specifically programmed to go after the Survivor on the mounted machine gun ''first'', though this can also be exploited to draw aggro. As a result, it's often more convenient to get down and dirty the old fashioned way, but Louis handles it just fine in The Passing. In short, use it if you can, but do so at your own risk.
- The M79 Grenade Launcher, which requires much practice to use effectively – that is, kill as many Infected as possible without blowing your own team up in the process. It is the only weapon that has splash damage outside of grenades which in theory makes it great against hordes; additionally, it will one-shot most Special Infected with a direct hit and stagger them with a near miss. It also deals extra damage against Tanks, killing them in four hits on regular difficulty. However, the slow speed and arcing trajectory of its projectiles makes it difficult to hit moving targets at long range, and the explosion radius is just small enough to make it very easy to miss. Furthermore, it is a liability in close quarters, detonating on contact with the first object or surface it hits: unless you are on elevated ground, you will likely end up hitting yourself and your teammates. It also reloads very slowly after each shot. As with all special weapons, the grenade launcher cannot be refilled at ammo piles, though its generous reserve of 31 rounds makes it rather more forgiving than the other two.
- The M60 Machine Gun fires bullets that shred infected, much like the mounted guns: its shots will gib Common Infected in one shot and pass through multiple bodies. Its high damage per shot, fairly rapid fire, and ammo capacity of 150 rounds will allow a player to fairly easily mow down an entire horde or tackle a Tank on their own. Its main drawback is that you cannot refill its ammo at all (not even with special ammo pickups) and you only get one full box. And once you run out, you automatically discard it, leaving you with only your secondary weapon unless a new primary happens to be on hand. It also has the same accuracy as the AK-47 (that is, pretty bad unless you're crouching or standing still), making it easy to carelessly waste bullets. In official campaigns, it only spawns randomly in The Passing (the update that introduces the weapon) and Cold Stream, in addition to a guaranteed one in The Last Stand.
- The chainsaw is the melee counterpart to the M60; it has limited fuel, cannot be refilled, and is discarded after it is emptied. It mows through Infected like there's no tomorrow, including Witches, which it can kill without alerting. However it also takes time to rev up if you switch to it, and attracts all nearby infected to you due to the noise. Highly unadvisable to carry this weapon AND one of the above, since if you run out of ammo for both before a resupply point, all you have left is a single Pistol.
Back Stab: Shoving an idle, unaware Common from behind is a One-Hit Kill.
Badass Boast:
- In the "Zombie Survival Guide" trailer, Nick says this particular gem during the climax of the trailer:
  Nick: I have not... come this far... to die now!^note
- Another trailer proclaims, "You and your friends vs. 10 million zombies... they're gonna need more zombies."
Badass Normal: All of the Survivors. The main reason why they survive all the shit hurled at them is that they're asymptomatic carriers of the Green Flu.
Bad Boss: The Director (if it can be considered the Infected's boss) in Versus mode hates Infected players even more than the Survivors, spraying the map with first aid kit spawns and often not bothering to send a horde after a Boomer attack.
Bag of Spilling: Happens between campaigns, for varying reasons.
- Lampshaded in Hard Rain. After being dropped off at the Burger Tank by Virgil, the survivors realize that they left their bag of guns on the boat.
  Virgil: I'll drop the anchor just off shore, waitin' for ya. Signal at me when you get the gas.
  Nick: What are we supposed to signal him with?
  Ellis: Oh, there's flares in the gun bag.
  Nick: What gun bag?
  Ellis: You didn't grab the guns?
  Nick: Me?! Who died and made me gun monitor?
  Ellis: Pretty much everybody.
Balcony Escape: In the first chapter of Dead Center, you have to go through the balconies of a burning hotel.
Baseball Episode: The Batter Up trailer shows the Survivors fighting zombies in a baseball field^note, with commentators acting like it's a genuine game.
Commentator 1: Their opponents tonight are a real hungry bunch.
Commentator 2: The intensity is infectious.
[Coach picks up a baseball bat]
Commentator 1: Well, it appears that the Coach has a plan.
Battle in the Rain: Hard Rain and The Passing both feature rain. In Hard Rain, it starts off as a drizzle and evolves into a hurricane, with random bursts of extreme rainfall and gale winds that make it difficult to see and hear; the rain intensity in The Passing is randomly selected by the Director at the start.
Batter Up!: Among the melee weapons, there are baseball and cricket bats. Sometimes a Survivor will say this when they grab one.
Belligerent Sexual Tension: There are some hints of this between Nick and Rochelle. They tease each other a lot and he even calls her "sweetheart."
BFG: The M60 Machine Gun. Most survivors will even call it out as a "big-ass gun" or something similar. With decent fire rate and extremely high damage, the M60 can easily chew up hordes, but has a limited supply of 150 ammo that can't be restocked.
The Big Easy: The game's campaigns chronicle the Survivors' trip from the city of Savannah, to the last remaining evacuation zone in New Orleans, culminating in their escape from the overrun city in The Parish.
Bite the Wax Tadpole: The zombie hand on the cover is holding up 2 fingers in the same manner as someone in the U.K. would when telling you to do something unpleasant... Apart from the UK version, where the hand is photographed from the other side, making a "victory" sign.
Blackout Basement: The official campaigns do a good job of averting this in favor of Chiaroscuro lighting, but all bets are off with custom campaigns (one of which is titled the exact name of the trope).
Blatant Item Placement: Zigzagged. A lot of guns are found by dead Survivors, Whitaker's gun store in Dead Center, security room gun lockers, or a suitcase that contains money as well as pistols, explosive items are usually found near generators, and axes, crow bars and guitars spawn where they'd be used. But on the other hand, a lot of items spawn in very illogical places. There's ammo piles in meeting rooms, sewers or in a certain bathroom, pain pills can spawn in urinals, a motel is full of both Bile and pipe bombs, and the store next to Whitaker's usually has a Molotov. There are entire lockers full of Molotovs or pipe bombs in various buildings, and just past a wedding are several tents full of guns. Whispering Oaks has a bizarre number of guns for a kids theme-park, explosive ammo and incendiary ammo just spawn in the back of trucks, there's almost no reason for a really sharp katana to spawn anywhere, and the list just goes on.
Bloodier and Gorier: Mowing down the Infected wasn't necessarily a clean ordeal in the first game, but thanks to the updated gore system in this entry it's way messier and more detailed. High-caliber gunfire can tear chunks out of their torsos, poorly-aimed headshots rip off their jaws, melee weapons leave deep slash marks, and the really big weapons can mutilate them beyond recognition.
Body Horror: The Special Infected have undergone horrible and probably quite painful mutations between games — the Smoker especially. The new Special Infected haven't had it easier, either; just look at the Spitter◊, who can launch deadly acid from her melted mouth.
Boom, Headshot!: Played straight, to Your Head A-Splode levels with Common Infected if you use a caliber bigger than pistol ammo. Headshots instantly kill Common Infected and deal greatly increased damage to Specials, and on higher difficulties and Realism, most Infected take reduced damage if shot in anywhere but the head. Mercilessly averted with the Tank, which takes no extra damage from headshots.
Bottomless Magazines:
- The players must reload, but they have endless ammunition for their sidearms and ammo piles provide infinite replenishment for non-unique primary weapons^*.
- Exaggerated in the Gib Fest Mutation, which gives all four Survivors M60s with unlimited ammo.
Bottomless Pits: The two main forms are long drops (like the balcony of the Hotel in Dead Center) and deep water (namely Swamp Fever). Watch for Chargers around these.
By the Lights of Their Eyes: Zombies and the Witch.
Calling Your Attacks: Played straight by Survivors throwing grenades, invoked with the Special Infected's vocalizations giving them away.
Camera Perspective Switch: The game is mostly played in first-person view, but the camera will switch to third-person view when the player is doing an action or pinned by a Special Infected.
Celebrity Survivor: The Midnight Riders. Possibly averted by Jimmy Gibbs Jr., who can occasionally spawn as a unique Uncommon Infected in the Finale of Dead Center.
Chainsaw Good: The chainsaw has peerless damage dealing abilities, but has a fairly long starting time, only 60 seconds of "fuel", provides 50% damage resistance to Common Infected, and is replaced with a single pistol when it runs out of fuel or the user is incapped. The "Chainsaw Massacre" Mutation is all about chainsaws: the only weapons that spawn are chainsaws with unlimited fuel.
Challenge Run: On top of several Video Game Achievements, there's the Mutation mode which adds different mechanics for players to tackle. Challenges include the whole team being forced to use swords only (Four Swordsmen), doing a solo run with the Magnum only (Lone Gunman), playing a Versus game where all Special Infected are buffed-up Jockeys (Riding My Survivor), and many others.
Chandler's Law: The Director pulls this quite frequently: stay in one place too long instead of advancing and you'll get a bunch of Special Infected coming at you.
- It's also more likely to send a horde at the Survivors at any given moment the slower they're progressing through the level. This can be something of a vicious cycle when playing on Expert.
Character Filibuster: The other survivors have to tell Ellis to shut up whenever he rambles on about Keith (and Zoey in the The Passing).
Chekhov's Gun: In the first chapter of Dark Carnival, a Bile Bomb will often spawn in the same spot every playthrough. Almost no others spawn for the rest of the entire campaign. If you keep that jar till the end of the Barns chapter, it can be used to almost completely bypass the otherwise-extremely-difficult Crescendo Event guarding the saferoom.
Cherry Tapping: It's possible to kill even the Special Infected, except Tanks, Witches, and Chargers, just with the secondary melee attack. Just don't try it on the Boomer.
Chiaroscuro: Actively exploited by the developers to guide the players, after they noticed playtesters' tendency to move toward the brightly lit areas.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
- Unusual, in that the Director is supposed to be continuously tweaking the challenge of the game up and down based on how well the players are doing. However, on Expert, its moments of mercy are extremely brief.
- This goes for the Survivor bots too, as they have aimbot accuracy, and cannot directly cause friendly fire (being able to literally shoot through others) yet chide you (and add it to the friendly fire incident list in the end results) for doing it because of how often AI Survivors run around, especially in Crescendo Events. It works, as a half-decent human player is still more efficient overall (due to other factors like bots not being able to use grenades or any particular strategy beyond shooting things), yet a team isn't completely screwed if a player leaves mid-game.
- Under certain conditions, Survivor bots will grab items through walls. Players can't.
- The game has been accused of adding a degree of Fake Difficulty by having multiple Special Infected spawns in Campaign mode, but these are glitches... The Hard Eight Mutation notwithstanding.
- AI Tank rocks, affectionately called "rofl rocks" can clip through some geometry in order to reach a player.
- Any Special Infected (other than Witches or Tanks) can slash you with their claws if you manage to shove them. No "attacking while staggering" animation or anything, blood literally just pulls itself out of your chest.
- In co-op and other modes where the Special Infected are AI-controlled, the Specials can spawn inside the saferoom at the end of the level, leading to fun times. In versus, where the specials are human-controlled, you cannot spawn in the ending safe room.
Climactic Elevator Ride: In Dead Center, the Survivors take an elevator down to the ground floor of Liberty Mall, where Jimmy Gibbs Jr.'s car (and their best chance of escape) is parked.
Clown-Car Base: Occasionally, you may see a horde of 30-or-so Commons emerge from a closet or bathroom, or even more ridiculously, a saferoom.
Cluster F-Bomb:
- The survivors in both games say "shit" a lot.
- Ellis has a line consisting of almost nothing but the word "shit".
Cool Car: The Jimmy Gibbs Jr., a Plymouth Superbird NASCAR race car that serves as the rescue vehicle in both Dead Center and The Passing.
Contrasting Sequel Main Character: While they are both a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, the L4D1 Survivors have been working together for 2 weeks, while this crew starts the game as complete strangers.
Cosy Catastrophe: Ellis and Francis have little difficulty adjusting to the Zombie Apocalypse.
- Ellis apparently even got an appropriate tattoo in advance, if his dialogue is to be believed.
- Turns out this is the fate of the surviving L4D1 Survivors: they sail to the Florida Keys and spend the rest of their lives in a zombie-free tropical paradise.
Crazy Survivalist: The survivors, with NPCs taking it to extremes.
Creator's Culture Carryover: An example involving different American states rather than different countries can be seen in The Passing: Like the campaigns it's set between, Dead Center and Dark Carnival, it's set in Georgia, but the Scenic Under the River Tour is based on Bill Speidel's Underground Tour in Seattle, Washington, which is close to Valve's headquarters in Bellevue. Somehow, Rochelle states that it would only pass for a museum in the Deep South, while also being aware of the Seattle Underground Tour.
Creepy Circus Music: The entirety of Dark Carnival.
- Peanut Gallery Music, while not exactly weird, is still offputting.
- When powering up a merry-go-round (and alerting a horde of zombies) to get through to the other side of the carousel, the song that it starts playing is stereotypical creepy carnival music that's very slow-paced and ominous-sounding. Makes you question how well it did back when the carnival was still actually in operation.
Critical Existence Failure:
- Averted with the Survivors. When seriously injured, you run slower and jump lower. After taking Pain Pills or Adrenaline, or having just been revived by a teammate, your health is constantly dropping, and at 1 HP you slow to a crawl. If your health gets taken all the way out and you're not on your "last down", you drop to the ground, only able to use Pistols, and slowly bleed out until you either die or are revived by an ally.
  - Your health also affects the Test Your Strength attraction in Dark Carnival. A full-health survivor can hit the full strength, while a low health one couldn't.
- Played straight with the Common Infected. Play long enough and you'll see a zombie run up to you that has had both of its arms shot off. (What does it plan to do then, bite you?)
The Croc is Ticking: Every single type of Infected has their own distinct sound/musical cue to warn you of their arrival, including a few who will switch from low growls to all-out screams or roars as soon as it has one of the Survivors in its line of sight. Because the Survivors can be overrun very quickly on just about any difficulty if they aren't being attentive enough, listening for them is so essential that you almost can't play it without the sound up reasonably high (which doesn't help a whole lot with the Jump Scares).
Crossover: The L4D2 Survivors, in addition to the Witch and mini-Tanks, are Downloadable Content for the PC version of Resident Evil 6, appearing in The Mercenaries.
Crowbar Combatant: Taken straight from Half-Life with the bright red color scheme, it's about as common as the Fireaxe. One of the slower weapons in the game, but has the unique quirk of being able to literally rip a zombie's face off, if you like that sort of thing.
Cryptic Background Reference: The only parts of the story that are completely laid out for you are from the four-chapter The Sacrifice comic, and the short character bios that each of the Survivors get, (neither of which are found in-game). The rest of the plot that's given to you will only be through random (often campaign-specific) character dialogue, about 99% of which isn't even guaranteed to trigger (usually requiring multiple play-throughs if you want to catch everything), or occasionally from significant pieces of the map, but most of all from the writings on the walls of different saferooms (and occasionally elsewhere) of other people who have passed through that area, describing bits of their experiences as messages to others, agreement or disagreement with what the military is/was doing, just how bad CEDA failed, how fast somebody changes into a zombie after being infected, and so forth, but not even those people are in 100% consensus about whatever's been going on, and nobody really has any idea what even started the whole thing.
Cycle of Hurting: In addition to the previous game's Hunters and Smokers inflicting helplessness up until death on players they successfully hit (be it themselves or the player), 2 adds the Jockey and Charger Special Infected types for two more flavors of "Stick together or die alone and powerless".
Damage-Sponge Boss: Tanks, full stop. Four Survivors starting a level have a group total of 400 HP. On Normal difficulty, the Tank has 4,000.
Dead-Hand Shot: The box art depicts the hand of a dead person, like the first game. This time, it's clenching the ring and little fingers.
Death Course: The finale in The Parish differs from the others, instead tasking the Survivors with racing across a bridge to a waiting military helicopter while fighting off continuously-spawning waves of Infected trying to stop them.
Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying does not mean you are forever gone from the game. You will just respawn in a closet, come back in the next map, or get revived on the spot from a defibrillator. Versus and Realism modes prevent you from coming back until the next map, and dying during a Finale on any mode gets you Killed Off for Real.
Death Is Cheap: You can be revived on the spot by a defibrillator, rescued from a closet in Campaign mode, or just simply respawn in the saferoom in the next chapter.
- The Ironman Mutation attempts to avert this, but only removes saferoom respawns.
Death or Glory Attack: Cr0wning (headshotting) the Witch. If you succeed, you've eliminated a very dangerous enemy instantly. If your aim is just a bit off, said dangerous enemy is now standing less than a foot in front of you, taking a swing.
Dedication: If you die during the Finale you don't get to respawn, but as long as at least one character escapes, you will win^note, with the credits starting with "In memory of [Player Name(s)]".
Deep South: Dead Center, the chronologically first campaign, starts in Savannah, Georgia, and the rest show the Survivors' journey across the South to New Orleans.
Determinator: Keith, if Ellis's stories are to be believed. The man has been inflicted with almost every injury one could think of (half of which are essentially fatal), and he not only survived, but was one of the first people out on a rescue chopper.
Deus Ax Machina: Fireaxes are understandably a fairly common melee weapon, given that you're trudging through the remnants of civilization. They have a fairly slow swing rate, but the widest range in the game, making them excellent for chopping down hordes. They can even randomly be found frequently in Swamp Fever where you're mostly trudging through swamps, though the places you find them suggest they may be used as a stand-in for woodcutting axes.
Developer's Foresight:
- In Dead Center, the first campaign of the game, when the Survivors reach the elevator they use the brief lull to introduce themselves to each other. If somebody dies before this point, the other characters will bring this up and introduce that character in their place. Additionally, if the player tries to use a button to call out to another Survivor before they reach the elevator, they'll use nicknames (like "Girl" for Rochelle or "Suit" for Nick) since they don't know each other's names yet.
- In the 'Special Delivery Mutation, Boomers and Bile Bombs would normally be useless since there's no Common Infected. Turns out they reprogrammed them so they attract all the Special Infected instead. Similarly, the Tank Run Mutation makes Pipe Bombs detonate quicker so they'll be more useful against Tanks.
- Scavenge finales revolve around grabbing gas cans which are, in essence, just reskinned versions of the ones normally used to start fires — as such, if you bring any into the Finale, they can be used to fill up the necessary machine.
- If anyone speaks while standing in front of the microphone at the Dark Carnival Finale, effects are applied to make it sound like they're actually speaking into the mic.
- In custom campaigns, if the L4D1 Survivors are inserted into the level as guest characters ala The Passing, Louis will be unable to provide supplies since he's normally programmed to man the turret in said level. Bill, on the other hand, can toss out supplies just like Francis and Zoey, despite being canonically dead as shown in The Passing.
- In the Terminal chapter of the ported Dead Air campaign, after activating the car to summon the horde, an invisible wall spawns around the path of the car to prevent the Survivors from being run over (though it's mostly to counter a speedrunning trick from the first game, which would shove players through the fence before the car knocks it over).
- The M60 has a reload animation, just in case a Game Mod gives it the ability to be reloaded.
- The soldiers heard over the radio in The Parish will eventually remark about seeing small arms fire across the river (i.e. the Survivors) if you let their dialogue go on long enough. As of The Last Stand update, using the radio after this point will change the Survivors' and soldiers' dialogue accordingly, with the Survivor shouting for them to wait and one of the soldiers telling the chopper pilot to stand down.
- Normally, achievements can still be unlocked even if they're done in a game mode that makes it easier (such as the Gib Fest Mutation). However, "Sob Story"^note cannot be obtained in Versus mode, as the game compensates for the Special Infected being player-controlled by spawning fewer Witches. Similarly, the "Tank Burger"^noteKill a Tank with only melee damage achievement can't be unlocked in the "TAAANNNKK!!" Mutation since there are four Tanks active at any given time.
- The survivors have specific lines for if you commit friendly fire while you're fighting a Tank.
  Nick: It's the size of a truck, how are you missing?!
- In the Finale of Swamp Fever, Virgil will ask how many Survivors are in the group, to which the Survivor who used the radio will usually respond with "four." If there are less than four Survivors present (whether due to Survivors being dead or removed from the game with mods/console commands), the speaker will respond with the appropriate number of Survivors alive in the group. They even have a response for when they are all alone.
- Ellis has a line for picking up the Counter-Strike knife in all languages, not just German. This is because even though the CS weapons were supposed to be a Regional Bonus for Germany, prior to The Last Stand adding them to all versions of the game, international players could still use Game Mods or have a German join them to get the weapons to spawn.
- Jukeboxes on survival maps will never play "Re: Your Brains", due to the song triggering the Horde if it gets to the chorus.
- During development of The Passing, Valve also took the time to add deliberately Dummied Out voicelines for custom campaigns. Some are catch-all voice clips for enviroments survivors will never encounter in the vanilla game, like trainyards^note and snowy areas, but others are meant for specific custom campaigns, such as the survivors prompting each other to push the cart for a port of Team Fortress 2's Badwater Basin, and Francis saying "I hate mountains" for the sake of giving the campaign of the same name a Title Drop. invoked
Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: As in the first game, the best way to distract a Tank from beating on somebody is to get right up against him and melee him. Unfortunately, since he no longer focuses on downed Survivors, it's not as necessary a tactic anymore, but it's still effective if he has a teammate trapped in a corner.
Difficult, but Awesome:
- The grenade launcher can clear out hordes with one well placed shot, make most Special Infected stumble (making it great to free pinned Survivors without worrying about accuracy), and a direct hit to the Witch can make her stumble and buy you time to get away or kill her quickly. The difficulty in using the weapon is you have to reload after every shot (and each reload takes about 4 seconds) and you can't get more ammo for it. Unless you are skilled enough, you may cause lots of friendly fire damage to yourself or the team. You will be using your Pistols or melee weapons a lot to make up for the grenade launcher's weaknesses.
- It is entirely possible to counter every single Special Infected's pinning attack (Smoker's tongue, Hunter's pounce, Jockey's riding, etc) with a well-placed shove, shot or slice. Even the Charger, which normally takes two melee swings to kill, can be slain mid-charge by a well-placed melee swing to the head (you earn an achievement for doing so). However, the window for you to perform these actions are measured in a fraction of a second, but it feels completely awesome to do so.
- Several Source Engine quirky movement physics such as bunny hopping can also be done in this game, as long as you know how to do it. You can even bunny hop as a Tank in Versus mode, turning an already fast brute into an even faster freight train that no survivors can outrun, since bunny hopping also ignores Tank's weakness to fire damage stagger.
- Cr0wning is a name given to a specific move where a player maximize the amount of hits dealt to a Witch's head using any shotguns in order to instantly kills her. The catch is that it requires you to basically move and crouch slowly towards them, which can easily startle them if you're not careful or quick enough to unload your shotgun to their faces. It's highly recommended to master cr0wning since there are a lot of moments where a Witch can block your way to your objective/destination, especially in higher difficulties and Realism mode, where one Witch attack is lethal enough to bring even a healthy survivor to zero.
- The nightstick is the fastest melee weapon out of the entire melee weapon set. It swings very fast, but it's blunt and has a narrow swing arc, which makes it difficult to consistently hit zombies that are swarming you.
Drumbeat of Chaos: The game features the horde theme mechanic, with the addition of unique versions of the theme specific to each campaign which are accented by different instruments.
Dual Boss:
- Unlike most campaigns, the finale of Swamp Fever will spawn two Tanks at the same time near the end, which both have to be fought in an area filled with confined spaces.
- The finale of The Passing throws Tanks at the Survivors in pairs to offset the increased firepower from both groups of Survivors being in play.
Deliberately Monochrome: After being downed and revived twice, you see the entire world in monochrome, complete with blurry peripheral vision and item highlights turning from blue to red. If you're not healed, you will die. The developers included this because playtesters were frustrated when inexperienced players were repeatedly going down and delaying the group.
Dirty Business: In order to halt the spread of the Green Flu and save what ever non-infected people they can, the military in The Parish made it their policy to gun down Carriers by the hundreds, maybe thousands. Whether this makes them Anti Heroes or Knights Templar is open to debate.
Divergent Character Evolution: In terms of the male Survivors' animations. Bill, Louis, and Francis all use virtually the same animations, whereas Coach, Ellis, and Nick have more distinct animations showing their personalities and how much experience with guns the three have.
Dungeon Bypass: Guarding the doors and windows is all well and good, but more often than not the horde just crashes through a wall.

E-M

Easter Egg:
- In The Parish, going up the stairs of the store-made-safehouse, you can find a door with an orange light outline.
- In the additional map Suicide Blitz 2, you can find a strange white place called "Aperture Science Urban Zombie Testing Facility" which is filled with companion cubes, zombies and cake.
Edge Gravity: If your character steps off a ledge (or is ridden off by a Jockey), he or she will automatically dangle off the ledge, holding on with their hands for dear life for as long as they can until a teammate helps them. You can also grab onto a ledge if punted off by a Charger or Tank... if you're lucky.
Elevator Snare: The very first campaign, "Dead Center", gets its first lull in action when the characters ride an elevator to safely get to the first floor. While inside, they are protected from the zombies that had been pursuing them. In the PvP mode, it often happens that the players on the zombie side are only temporarily deterred by this, instead climbing downstairs through the walls—or pressing the "teleport near the Survivors" button. This allows them to gang up on the characters as soon as the elevator's doors open.
Elite Mooks: Pretty much every Common Infected becomes one on Expert Realism difficulty, the "REAL zombie apocalypse" as it's advertised. To put it into perspective, on Normal difficulty one Survivor can hold off and kill over a dozen Commons in close quarters without much difficulty. On Expert, a single Common Infected can potentially down or kill multiple Survivors if they're not paying attention. To make it even better, they still appear in huge numbers. Likewise on Expert Realism, Commons are tough to bring down with anything other than headshots, capable of surviving multiple point-blank torso shots from assault shotguns before biting the dust.
- Also the Uncommon Infected that appear in certain campaigns, which are generally tougher than their common counterparts.
Elevator Action Sequence: There are a few elevators and lifts to take much like this. The most prominent is the elevator in the Hotel chapter of Dead Center, which breaks down when the building is set on fire, and forcing it open causes a Crescendo Event.
Elite Zombie: The Special Infected.
Enemy Summoner: The zombies dressed as clowns in Dark Carnival, in addition to the Boomers.
Epic Hail: Are you telling me that summoning a helicopter through a rock concert with fireworks isn't epic?
Escape Convenient Boat: Virgil's in Swamp Fever and Hard Rain, as well as in The Last Stand.
Escort Mission: Played with with the "Guardin' Gnome" achievement, which is earned by winning the garden gnome from the shooting gallery in Dark Carnival and carrying it through the rest of the campaign and onto the rescue chopper.
Everybody's Dead, Dave: The only non-zombies you hear in the game are the playable Survivors, the (sometimes) unseen pilots and drivers who rescue you at the end of each campaign, the occasional psycho/weirdo, and occasional gunfire off in the distance.
Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Coach. When the Survivors introduce themselves to each other, Coach states that all his friends call him as such and that the other survivors may as well do the same.
Exploding Barrels: Gas cans, propane tanks, oxygen tanks, boxes of fireworks, and actual barrels in The Sacrifice.
Explosive Bullets: One of the two Ammo Upgrades that can be deployed and used is fragmentation rounds. When fired, they cause small explosions where they hit the target that can cause Splash Damage, making them very effective at crowd control.
Expy Coexistence: During the Under the River Tour in The Passing, Rochelle may mention the Seattle Underground Tour, the real-life attraction it's based on.
Falling into the Cockpit: The Infected team in Versus mode. While a player can run through the Campaign mode to build up their Survivor skills before going in, Infected players have to learn it all on the fly for their randomly assigned characters.
Fake Difficulty: The Hard Eight and Special Delivery Mutations spawn Special Infected at an increased rate, which is a good challenge for players who know how to deal with each Special and move along. Unfortunately, Spitters tend to be spammed, especially in tight spots, which forces you to either run through its acid or wait it out (a terrible idea with the constant stream of powerful zombies). And if you do the latter, chances are another one will spawn immediately after it dissipates.
Fatal Fireworks: The finale of Dark Carnival gives players a number of fireworks boxes that function the same as gas cans, covering the ground in a hazard zone that ignites anything that walks into it. The spark jets on the stage can also set Infected on fire when activated.
Fetch Quest: The Streets chapter of Dead Center require the survivors carry a sixpack of cola to Whitaker for a Crescendo Event, carrying the gnome to the helicopter in Dark Carnival gives players an achievement, and there have been a few Mutation gametypes requiring the gnome.
Film Posters: One for each campaign, used as loading screens.
Fire-Forged Friends: The Survivors.
Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Nick as Cynic (pessimistic), Ellis as Optimist (naive), Coach as Realist (leader) and Rochelle as Apathetic (level-headed).
From Bad to Worse: Leading up from the first game, there is evidence that much of the urban parts of America are completely overrun and that the Infected are changing even more, less than a full month after the first case.
- There's a CEDA map in the Hotel chapter of Dead Center with markings suggesting that the entire eastern half of the United States has been written off as unsalvageable, with the exception of New Orleans.
Frying Pan of Doom: One of the weapons with the slowest swing rate is a frying pan, although each swing is decently fast and it makes a satisfying "SPANG" on contact with a zombie skull.
Game-Breaking Bug: In the Finale for the ported Death Toll campaign, the back of the boathouse where the first aid kits are located is glitched and Survivor bots won't go anywhere near it. This means they won't pick up new weapons, ammo, or health, and they'll do nothing to help an incapacitated Survivor back there even if there's nothing whatsoever preventing them from reaching you.
Game Mod: From adding extra custom campaigns to correcting scripts like bot behavior or gun realism, and including changing the flashlight's texture so that it becomes useful or funny, these add-ons were always popular in the game. The Workshop update made them even more so due to the ease to install and manage them.
- Left 4 Grief mod, made by the same maker as "Left 4 Bots: Improved bots", allow the player to turn off friendly fire completely for all supported gameplay modes (including single player) along with several minor new gameplay tweaks such as punishing "rushers" and make friendly fire bounce back damage if enabled.
Genre Savvy: Nick asks the group, after they reach the hotel elevator in Dead Center, if anyone has been bitten. Not that he's on the right track asking this, as they're all immune⁺technically, asymptomatic carriers, the disease has airborne mutations, and quite frankly there's a pretty low chance of them not getting bitten anyway.

Nick: Did anyone get bit? Isn't this how this works?

Gardening-Variety Weapon: The pitchfork, one of the new weapons added in The Last Stand update.
Gatling Good: You get the odd mounted minigun here and there. It's set up so that the gunner will have to be covered by the other Survivors, though. It's also not actually that good, as while it shreds Infected like no other, it overheats after about ten to fifteen seconds of continuous fire, takes nearly a full minute to cool back down to usable levels, and is never in a place that allows it to actually be effective.
Golf Clubbing: Added with The Passing. And it has the same attributes as the Katana to boot, and just like in Team Fortress 2, it can decapitate if you aim high (you even get an achievement for beheading enough zombies with one). Unfortunately, for official campaigns, it was only found in that campaign until The Last Stand update.
Gone Horribly Right: The result of Valve trying to squash the Game Breakers from the first game; melee shoving abuse and corner camping. The sequel added new Special Infected to discourage Survivor players from corner camping and added running events where the Survivors have to move in order to stop the event. However, this backfired greatly since most Survivor players will now rush the entire time in every map and rarely stop, making it difficult for infected players in Versus mode to land an attack on them.
Goomba Stomp: Jumping on a Common or Uncommon Infected's head is a One-Hit Kill — Special Infected are immune, however. Physically being on top of a zombie counts as a stomp, which leads to a hilarious moment where you can literally walk over a zombie lying on the ground and kill it from just stepping on it.
Gorn: The damage modeling borders this, even more than the first game. Torso wounds gape, expose bones and can spill out the zombie's guts, heads may be only halfway destroyed, Pipe Bombs exploding a mob of enemies went from the first game's cloud of red to a shower of assorted body parts and intestines, and anything that catches fire will have a charred appearance by the time it stops burning.
Gravity Barrier: Keeps you away from a zombie breeding ground and to keep you moving along to your safehouse.
Grenade Launcher: The M79 Grenade Launcher.
Griefer:
- Playing as the Infected is basically griefing the Survivors as the goal of the game. The griefers are getting their kicks from the game itself most of the time!
- The Room for One Mutation gametype defies the normal logic of the game by only allowing one Survivor to escape and encouraging team killing at the last minute.
Guns Akimbo: All characters can find and dual-wield a second Pistol for doubled fire rate and extra ammunition in the magazines. Interestingly, unlike in the first game, where all Pistols on the ground were the same model as what you started with, here the characters mix-and-match their beginning pistol (a customized P226) with an entirely different model (a lengthened Glock 26), although this does cause some issues where both guns can transform into one another, such as turning another player's dropped P226 into a Glock because you already have one, or dropping a melee weapon for a Glock found on a table and somehow getting a P226 from it.
Hammerspace: If you have a melee weapon and are incapped (or a chainsaw runs out of gas), this is where the pistol comes from.
Hand Cannon: The Magnum Pistol is a powerful enough sidearm to practically be a primary weapon, killing all Common Infected in one shot and most Special Infected in two or three — even in Realism mode, where even the Common Infected are tough enough to tank two or three shots from the otherwise-similarly-powerful scoped rifles. Its only real downsides are very poor accuracy when moving, high recoil, and a small magazine, making it rather ineffective against Infected with large amounts of health, like Tanks and Chargers, or against large hordes of weaker ones.
Harder Than Hard:
- Expert mode lives up to its name. Infected deal around five times the damage they normally would, the Witch's claws are a One-Hit Kill that bypass incapacitation, Tanks can instantly incapacitate with normal punches and not just thrown props, the Director spawns hordes constantly, and friendly fire is at 100% power, so one misaimed shotgun shell can put down your fellow survivor. Only the experts or the stubborn can expect to get through this.
- Realism mode is a setting independent of the standard difficulty settings. This mode removes all the auras allowing you to locate other Survivors, items, and infected which are pummeling other survivors. Commons take less damage when shot anywhere except the head, and survivors only respawn at saferooms. It can also be set to Expert mode, which gives you an achievement if you manage to survive. One odd quirk of the mode: the Magnum Pistol still instantly kills Common Infected with body shots, which greatly increases its value; an early Magnum can make a big difference in survivability.
- Apparently, Realism mode is nothing compared to Ultra Realism Mode. It removes all of your HUDs, making getting important information such as how much health you or a teammate has, what items your teammates has without directly observing them, and how much ammo you have to spare, all a big guessing game^note.
Health/Damage Asymmetry: Each of the survivors has up to 100 health. Besides Boomers and Spitters, all Special Infected have at least twice as much, with the Tank starting out with at least 3,000, yet the Survivors can pick off Special Infected with a few shots of the right gun, and Special Infected do damage slowly over time. Subverted on Expert mode, when it's just the damage that is symmetrical — Infected deal very high damage per hit, and will happily shred through your entire health bar if your teammates are distracted.
Heroic Sacrifice: The light chopper pilots were making repeat trips into the infection zone, getting infected for their trouble. They still kept the rotors spinning right up until the bitter end.
He's Just Hiding: Literally. Whenever one of the Survivors dies, they're found later trapped in locked closets (or respawn in the next saferoom). It was meant to reflect how survivors get rescued in zombie films.
- Averted in the final chapter of each campaign after the rescue vehicle has been summoned. Being literally Left for Dead means that the play will be (non-canonically apart from Bill in The Sacrifice) in "memory" of those who are left for dead.
Hide Your Children: The Infected are invariably adults.
- It becomes especially weird when you go to a playground & a theme park.
Hit-and-Run Tactics: This is usually the best way to deal with the Tank, by setting it on fire with a molotov and/or pumping it full of lead while evading it. Just make sure that you're healthy enough that you can run fast, and that there's room to run.
Hitbox Dissonance: Hitboxes for Hunters and Jockeys move in front of them when they pounce, which makes them extraordinarily difficult to knock out of the air with even the slightest bit of lag. Compounded further by how little time there is to stop a Jockey pounce.
- This game somehow just has inferior collision detection. It isn't common, but it certainly isn't rare to hear the impact and see blood fly from a zombie you just smacked in the face with a crowbar just ignore it and continue anyways...Even when playing offline where lag couldn't account for it.
His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Coach never actually states whether it is or isn't his job and/or name. If Coach dies, Rochelle may jokingly ask "do you think Coach was his first or last name?"
Hold the Line: Occurs in all crescendos and finales(except a couple in The Parish) as well as survival mode.
Hollywood Darkness: Valve uses a fog effect in some areas to mimic the Hollywood technique of "smoking the set", which conventionally uses a fog machine to help create atmosphere in "dark" areas. The fog catches the little light available, which makes everything slightly brighter, and allows viewers and players to see the silhouettes in the distance when they would otherwise be indistinguishable against the dark background. The Darkness Falls Game Mod defies this and makes the game very dark, essentially impossible to progress in without using your flashlight.
Hyperactive Metabolism: The various mushrooms found during the "Rocketdude" Mutation. Since all health kits are replaced with pills, the only way to regain permanent health is finding and consuming mushrooms found throughout the map. Each color restores a different amount of health with white recovering the least and yellow/gold recovering the most. Green ones give a speed boost, dark blue ones give grenades, and black ones injure you while also making nearby gas cans and propane tanks explode.
Hyperspace Arsenal: Generally averted, except for one peculiar instance. If a survivor drops their handgun for a melee weapon, they will produce another handgun when they are incapacitated, which disappears as soon as they are hauled back onto their feet. Same for if they grab a chainsaw and then run its fuel dry.
Idiot Ball: The reason Hard Rain ends with you defending a fast food joint with a bright sign is that at the start of the campaign, while getting off the ferry, the Survivors simply forgot to bring a flare gun with them. All four of them assumed that someone else was going to be carrying the gun bag.
Idle Animation: The Infected alternate between leaning on the wall, sitting in despair, barfing up their guts (literally) and killing one another. The Survivors alternate between stretching, wiping their faces, or rubbing their noses.
Incendiary Exponent: Every Special Infected can attack you whilst on fire. Hunters will actually do more damage while aflame.
Incongruously-Dressed Zombie: Lots of 'em.
- The Uncommon Infected usually boil down to this, being dressed in construction, hazmat, clown, riot, etc. gear.
- All of the Infected at the wedding in The Passing are dressed in fancy attire, including the Witch bride.
- Possibly taken to its limit in the popular custom campaign Suicide Blitz 2. The finale takes you through a football stadium, and once you reach the middle of it, two Tanks in football gear run in from both ends of the field. It's hilarious, but the realization that even young, possibly college-age athletes in their prime fell to this plague is a bit disheartening.
Incredibly Obvious Bomb: The pipe bomb is one, but with good reason — its red light and high-pitched squeal attracts Common Infected, making it less a question of where to throw them and more a question of when.
Inexplicable Treasure Chests: The footlockers in The Passing. There may a justification for when they're full of pain pills or even adrenaline, but why do people need that many pipe bombs and Molotovs? And why are they found in offices, underground tours and weddings?
Instructive Level Design: Dead Center is set up in a way to teach players, both new and veterans from the original, about the new additions to the game:
- In the Hotel chapter, melee weapons are available right from the start and a Magnum Pistol is set to spawn early on, giving players access to the new secondaries immediately. Additionally, Bile Bombs very frequently spawn in hotel rooms and can be dropped by the CEDA workers that often show up, and the stage being set in a burning highrise means you can make good use of them by chucking them off the building or into a fire and watching the Infected eagerly run to their deaths. Adrenaline shots and a defibrillator are likewise guaranteed to spawn.
- The Streets chapter features a gun store, giving the Survivors opportunity to try any weapon in the game, including the new additions (even the Counter-Strike weapons as of The Last Stand update can all be found in the closet next to the stairs), and also gives access to laser sights. You also get to fight a Crescendo Event that requires you to find an item and return it to a specific location right after to test out your new gun.
- Because the campaign is set in broad daylight, all Witches will spawn in wandering mode, showing off their new daytime behavior.
- The finale in Liberty Mall is a Scavenge level, showing off the new game mode.
Instrument of Murder: Guitars as melee weapons. Functionally, it's roughly the same as the fire axe, though restricted to Dark Carnival, The Parish, and the ported Dead Air.
Interface Screw:
- Your vision becomes monochrome with highlights turning from blue to red if you're incapped twice without using a first aid kit, as a warning to get one before it's too late.
- A variation also occurs with a lightning storm in Hard Rain. When the storm is passing overhead, players' microphones are automatically quieted, to the point the players will literally have to shout to be heard by their teammates. Using third-party chat programs such as Discord gets around that limitation at the cost of ruining the immersion.
Invisible Wall: Only the Infected in Versus mode will run into them, and if you get close enough they stop being invisible... instead they become labeled "wrong way!"
It Can Think: The Director is actually a rather well working AI system. Depending on the difficulty, it will decide when to place more zombies to hinder your efforts. On Expert difficulty, it just wants you dead and doesn't pull any punches.
It's Quiet… Too Quiet: In the "Last Man On Earth" Mutation, not only does your Survivor continually talk as if the other survivors are still there, they occasionally shout out something along the lines of "Hello?" or "Is anyone out there?".
- There is also a lack of Common Infected, which makes the gameplay overall much quieter, but also gives the eerie feeling that something else is going on...
It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Invoked and played with by the Midnight Riders. In the final saferoom of Dark Carnival, a bunch of well-wishers and mourners lament the loss of the Midnight Riders... until a graffiti says they were safely airlifted out. Then the graffiti turns to angry "they sold out and were never good" insults.
Jerkass: Nick doesn't usually go out of his way to be nice.
Katanas Are Just Better: Played with. Damage-wise, katanas in the game aren't any better than other melee weapons due to all melee weapons doing the same amount of damage to zombies. The advantages the katana has, however, is its sharpness (meaning it can cut Smoker tongues), its relatively quick swing time, and consistent wide swing letting you take care of swarms of zombies at once. The "Four Swordsmen" Mutation is all about these, being the only weapon available.
Killer Game Master: The Director. Particularly on Expert mode, when he stops even pretending he doesn't hate your guts.
- There are some maps where the Infected charge out of the saferoom, or very close to it. However, the Director will stop the attacks when all four players are in the room but with the door still open (but existing Infected will still charge).
Kill It with Fire: Molotov cocktails, gas cans, and incendiary ammo packs. Very useful against Tanks and Witches, as not only does it deal continuous damage until death (or until the Tank wades into a body of water), it slows them down^note. Also great against hordes, as fire kills Common Infected instantly. Additionally, burning Tanks in the Finale of Hard Rain will eventually be extinguished by the rain, and incendiary ammo only ignites Special Infected for a limited duration (enough to kill most Special Infected, but Tanks and Witches can outlive the burning).
The Last Man Heard a Knock...: Although you're the only Survivor in the "Last Man On Earth" Mutation, there are still rescue vehicle pilots and the gun store owner.
Last Stand: Survival mode.
Leitmotif: Every Special Infected gets two of their own tunes, one that plays when they spawn, and another that plays while they're attacking a Survivor.
Left for Dead: A regular occurrence in the rush for the rescue vehicle. With an incoming Tank that must not enter the rescue vehicle, this choice must be made often.
- Not to mention what this game was named after.
Left the Background Music On: An inversion, where in-universe music provides the same mechanical foreshadowing of the rest of the games OST. The Dark Carnival Finale involves using rock concert setup at the stadium you're holed up in to signal a rescue chopper as you defend the landing zone from the Infected. The solos for both songs that end up playing sound as if they're simply that... until you realize the solo is built around the leitmotif of "Tank" as the big lug himself comes thundering into the stadium.
Letters 2 Numbers: Left 4 Dead. No explanation should be necessary.
Level in Reverse: Hard Rain has two chapters heading from the Burger Tank towards the gas station. The following three involve the trip back to the Burger Tank in a slightly different path, with the addition of flooding to slow the players down and monsoons to obscure vision and dialogue.
Limited Loadout: You can carry one of each item that occupies a slot, such as the following:
- Primaries: Shotguns, automatics, sniper rifles, the light machine gun, or the grenade launcher.
- Secondaries: A pistol which can be dual-wielded with another, a larger Magnum Pistol, or a melee weapon.
- Kits: The token medkit, a defibrillator unit to revive dead Survivors, or kits to give everyone a single magazine of explosive or incendiary ammo.
- Grenades: A Molotov cocktail, a pipe bomb, or a Bile Bomb.
- Temporary health: A bottle of painkillers or an adrenaline shot.
The Load: Completely aside from the issue of bad players, any time you engage in an Escort Mission, the party is effectively reduced to three members, as the person carrying the required item cannot use their weapons without dropping the item in question or simply shoving zombies, which does very little damage.
Loophole Abuse: Many achievements require specific stipulations in order to be unlocked, such as beating every campaign on Expert. The same achievements are still credited if you do them in any Mutation mode, even if said mutation makes it easier to achieve (such as "Gib Fest", where all Survivors have the strongest gun in the game with unlimited ammunition, or "Room For One", where the players start the campaign at the Finale). Similarly, Versus-based achievements can be unlocked in a local split-screen game, which makes them far easier to manipulate.
Loveable Rogue: Nick has a somewhat shady (and probably violent) criminal past, and he starts out with a lone wolf-style attitude, but because of the circumstances he's in, as the game progresses, he's slowly forced to shed that attitude, and learns to trust and respect his teammates (well, respect MOST of them) and almost grows close to them, and sticks with them through whatever they go through. He probably has the most Character Development out of any survivors because of this.
- It also helps that he's the character providing most of the game's Deadpan Snarker. He bounces some of the best lines off of Ellis because of this.
Luck-Based Mission: Depending on where enemies spawn and what types they are, along with what items you find, you can either have a smooth sailing game or a nightmare of just trying to survive.
Ludicrous Gibs: The first game went more for Pink Mist with Common Infected, but a better game engine allows this one to really show messy dismemberment of zombies. It also has a lot more options for scattering zombie bits across the floor, between various melee weapons, explosive ammo, and the grenade launcher.
- The "Gib Fest" Mutation amps it up to extremes by only having weapons that cause this. Namely, the M60. With a Magnum for when you're incapacitated or when you want a little more precision. The AWP produces the same results as a single M60 bullet.
Machete Mayhem: One of the better melee weapons available, as it's decently fast (only slower than the Nightstick), severs limbs like no one's business, and is relatively common in the campaigns it shows up in. Now go pretend you're Jason Voorhees fighting zombies.
Made of Plasticine: It's not uncommon for the Common Infected to be graphically dismembered by a shotgun blast, a few stray bullets, or being bashed with a rifle butt.
Magical Defibrillator: Capable of bringing players back from the dead.
Major Injury Underreaction: A Survivor's typical response to friendly fire? Some variant on "Stop shooting me!"
Manchild: Ellis, a goofy, happy-go-lucky mechanic who cheerfully espouses his love of everything redneck (like NASCAR), believes his friend's wild stories of everything, ever, and gets absolutely pumped when the group reaches Whispering Oaks' Kiddie Land.
Mêlée à Trois: Examining the saferoom graffiti in The Parish suggests that the population in New Orleans eventually got split into three groups, all of whom were hoping to evacuate safely; the military, who enforced a draconian system to screen and evac people, the Carriers, who unwittingly posed a risk to everyone around them, and the regular people who just wanted to get out of the city. Eventually, the tensions between the three groups (especially the Carriers) escalated into outright warfare (including massacred uninfected individuals outside of the bus station and a helicopter that was shot down), leading to the three groups whittling each other down until the Green Flu came and wiped them all out anyway.
Message Board: Saferoom graffiti really acts like this, although people who leave the saferoom probably don't return. Ever.
Mercy Invincibility: Getting hit by a Common Infected gives you a split second of immunity to attacks from other Common Infected, so that players have a fighting chance against hordes.
Metal Slime: The Fallen Survivors in The Passing. They only appear once or twice, have as much health as a Witch, and will run away the minute you attack them. They also carry items like pills, pipe bombs, molotovs, and first aid kits, so killing them is always worth it.
Militaries Are Useless: Averted. While CEDA is quickly overwhelmed by the zombie invasion, the military is both far more ruthless and more efficient at dealing with it; the evacuation points of the army are still operational, and for what we know of it, they do manage to save people from the zombie invasion.
Mini-Game: "Dark Carnival" has three games for you to play, which are the Shooting Gallery, Test Your Strength, and Whack-A-Mole with the park's mascot! They each are tied to an achievement as well. They also alert a horde of zombies if you successfully complete any one of them.
Molotov Cocktail: Practically a staple of the series, and essential to block off an infected access routes. Also great for chipping away at Tanks and the occasional Witch.
Mood Whiplash: Thanks to the automatic in-game dialogue, survivors can often go from on the verge of death to excited and loud at a moment's notice.

Ellis: ...Y'all... Y'all, I'm hurt.... Look, guys, KIDDIELAND!

Mook Chivalry: The "Last Man on Earth" Mutation makes it so that Special Infected (whose clutches you would normally need a teammate to escape) back off once they've taken off your first health bar. They're not as kind the second time around, however.
- Jockeys and Hunters may sometimes decide to stay where they are and slash you the second you get up, which may cause death due to your health being so low after getting self revived. It will often end with your death if a Hunter stays around on Expert, as it will claw you the instant your Mercy Invincibility expires.
- Occasionally, after reviving from a pinning attack (e.g. getting pounced by a Hunter), the Jockey will just flat out ignore the rule, approach you while you are getting up and ride you. Rarely the Smoker also just snares you with his tongue, though it's not as common as the Jockey situation. Chargers can also do this, though they usually turn a corner before returning to try to finish you off with a charge.
- Regardless of the above mentioned rule, if you get hit with a claw attack instead of a pouncing attack, you will go down and be forced to restart the chapter. This comes up most with Tanks, Witches, and Spitters, though the other Specials (most often Chargers due to their charging attack having a longer cool down timer) can also kill you in this way if they miss their primary attack.
More Dakka: The mounted miniguns have been replaced with noticeably-slower single-barreled M2 machine guns, but for personal use, The Passing added the M60, which carries 150 bullets, just one of which is enough to tear a regular zombie apart and which anything bigger doesn't last long against.
Moveset Clone: The SG552 has mostly the same stats as the M16, its only differences are that it has a scope and a much longer reload.
Muscles Are Meaningless: The Witch is a small girl with relatively thin limbs (apart from the vicious claws)... limbs with which she can knock you down/kill you outright faster than any other Infected. Including the muscle-mountain Tank.
Musical Spoiler: Musical warning is given for when a horde appears, a Tank appears, or when a Witch is nearby. It also plays softly whenever any special infected are nearby, making those who know each one's theme music able to know one's nearby even without hearing them or seeing them.
The Musketeer: It's possible to have a melee weapon as reserve instead of a pistol. Certain mods go even farther and give melee weapons their own unique inventory slot, allowing the survivor to carry a main gun, a sidearm and a melee weapon of their choice.
My Rules Are Not Your Rules: AI-controlled infected can spawn anywhere (even in direct view of a player, which they aren't supposed to do, depending on the circumstances), melee while stumbling, climb things player-controlled infected cannot, and AI-controlled Hunters even have a lunge move players cannot perform.

N-R

Named in the Sequel: The disease that's turning the population of America into zombies is revealed to be called the "Green Flu" in this game.
Near Victory Fanfare: "Skin of our Teeth", a fast-paced, intense tune that plays when the rescue vehicle arrives.
Never Split the Party: The game is built on this trope. Get separated or lose track of your teammates and You Are Already Dead, because four different Special Infected are capable of single-handedly immobilizing and killing you if no one's around to help.
- Occasionally averted in Expert and Versus matches when one Survivor staying in the saferoom with the door closed can be the difference between success or failure.
- There are also a few jarring situations in which you have passed a Point of No Return and cannot go back and help your teammates. This just reinforces the original lesson, since you are forced to soldier on short-handed.
- This spawned the meme of Karma Charger, where a random Charger would come and pounce on you if you ever leave the main group. Fittingly, the Director prioritizes lone wolves who ditch their friends, and would actually spawn a Hunter to deal with them. Of course, this lead to players finding ways to singlehandedly counter said "karma".
Nerf:
- In the original, players could "shiva stack" (wait in a corner or secluded room, all bunched up, and repeatedly melee). This made it nigh-on impossible to extricate them with anything other than a Tank. Left 4 Dead 2 stopped stacking with the introduction of the Charger and the Spitter.
- Melee weapon damage to Tanks has been nerfed since the game's release. Damage is now 5% per hit instead of 10%, which means now that survivors will most likely have to resort to kiting now instead of everyone running up to a Tank and smashing him with four Frying Pans Of Doom.
- And the shove motion itself has been nerfed by making the fatigue mechanic (shove too many times without giving yourself time to rest and the game starts applying an increasingly longer delay before you can shove again) apply to all modes rather than just Versus. This punishes the fact that you can get completely surrounded and need to shove your way out.
- Also, auto-spawning in Versus finales being removed made it more enjoyable for the Infected team and more difficult for the Survivor team.
The Nicknamer: The Survivors will refer to each other and the Special Infected by various nicknames over the course of Dead Center (for instance, Rochelle calling Nick "Suit", Nick calling Ellis "Overalls", Coach calling the Charger "one-arm", Nick referring to the Hunter as a "scrawny little bitch I'm gonna kill", etc.). The Tank gets a nickname as well, though none of the survivors are in the right state of mind to think up one when they encounter the first one.
- Nick's description of the Tank fits it best:
  Nick: HOLY SHIT! BIG FREAKING ZOMBIE!
Night of the Living Mooks: The Director pretty much shuffles the horde's character models at random. Also gives so much variety of appearances for individual parts of the zombie that the chances of seeing the exact same zombie twice is maybe 1:1000.
No Animals Were Harmed: Parodied. This is how the final kill count is presented:
[X] zombies were harmed in the making of this film.
No FEMA Response: CEDA tries to respond to the Green Flu, but gets overwhelmed. Inevitably, every time the Survivors try to get to a CEDA evacuation point, it'll be destroyed with nothing but corpses to show for it, and they'll end up having to escape another way.
Non-Fatal Explosions: Zigzagged; while explosions from grenade launchers, pipe bombs, propane/oxygen tanks and barrels will deal lethal damage (and then some) to any infected within range, they'll hurt survivors for maybe 5-10 damage at most, even on Expert.
Non-Standard Game Over: The Finale of The Sacrifice requires at least two Survivors to be alive to complete it. If three Survivors die, the game will inform the players of this rule, causing a game over.
Nothing Is Scarier:
- Hearing a sobbing Witch and knowing she's close and you have to be careful or you'll startle her and she'll screech and try to rip you apart — and sometimes you just don't find her...
  - This is even more scary in the infamous Hard Rain campaign. It isn't bad enough to have 20 Witches, it isn't bad enough to have them walk around, it isn't bad enough that all but three of the Special Infected can push you into one (and will appear absolutely out of nowhere), and it also isn't bad enough to have to fight Tanks during this, but they also had to throw in the sugar cane fields (where your vision is reduced to about 2 feet in front of you).
  - And then it gets even worse on the way back through! Whenever the storming starts up, all the witches in the area will HOWL IN RAGE yet the odds of you actually running into one are pretty low. This continues right up until the finale, and you can never tell if that howl is on the other end of the level or just around that corner...
  - It doesn't help that the sounds made by the storm can resemble startled Witches.
- Sometimes you hear a Special Infected or its musical cue long before you see it or you know it's around the corner but don't want to be the guinea pig. The worse still, is when the Tank music starts playing but takes its time finding you so players are left frantically trying to spot it whilst trying to stick together or rethink their plans.
- The worst scares you can get are in the Mutation "The Last Man On Earth", where it's single-player with no bots, and no Common Infected. It can get very eerie walking through the level alone while hearing the growls of Special Infected sneaking up on you, and since you're alone they are far deadlier.
  - What's even worse than that is the fact that the single character's vocal script is unchanged, meaning that they talk to thin air — even taking to specific Survivors who aren't there anymore.
Nostalgia Level: All of the first game's campaigns have been ported into the second.
"Not How I'm Dying" Declaration: One of Nick's voice lines when he's on his last life and bleeding out is a strained "I did not come this far to die now."
Not Using the "Z" Word: Played straight and averted. The survivors call them zombies, but subtitles consistently refer to them as "infected" regardless of the dialogue.
Obvious Rule Patch:
- Versus mode's scoring was altered to be more close and fair between teams. The first game had scoring be sorely based on who made it to the safe room plus a multiplier and if a team got killed beforehand, their score would be a lot lower. This game has the score be purely on distance traveled so that you still had a chance of catching up if you didn't make it to the saferoom.
- Explosive ammo was removed from Versus mode after some time due how easily Survivors could stop attacks from the Infected players with it. Defibrillators were also given a 25 point penalty for its use in Versus mode so Survivors are punished for having a teammate brought back to life in a way.
- The game takes several steps to make sure corner camping isn't as viable as it was in the first game: The Charger and Spitter are both meant to be hard counters for it, the melee fatigue system from Survival and Versus Mode has now been added to all modes, and most of the new campaigns employ Gauntlet Crescendos, which don't stop until either one survivor presses a button to make them stop, or all survivors make it to the safehouse.
Odd Name Out: The folders for major updates to the game are "left4dead2_dlc1" (The Passing), "left4dead2_dlc2" (The Sacrifice), "left4dead2_dlc3" (Cold Stream), and "update" (The Last Stand).
Oh, Crap!:
- The first time the characters see a Tank in Dead Center, they panic (every other time as well, but not to the same extent).
  Coach: Holy shit! What is that?! Some sorta... super-ass zombie!?
- At one point, they climb out of a sewer to find... an impound lot. Full of alarmed cars.
  Nick: Whoawhoawhoawhoa! Watch where you shoot!
- Getting chased by the Witch has the survivors flipping their shit:
  Nick: SHOOT THE WITCH! SHOOT THE WITCH! SHOOT THE WITCH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? SHOOT HER!
Only Six Faces: Subverted with a better common infected random generation system. However, there are less face textures overall for the sequel's Common Infected than there were for the first game's, and L4D1's face textures would include things like alternate hair colors and distinctively black or Asian facial features. This is especially true with The Last Stand update, which brings back skins cut from the first game's beta alongside its retail skins.
Our Zombies Are Different: Of the Infected, easily-enraged sort much like in 28 Days Later and various types of Elite Zombies.
Pre-Order Bonus: The baseball bat, which spawned in the start of every single campaign provided at least one player had preordered the game. When The Passing update was released, baseball bats now randomly spawn in the maps with the other weapons instead of always being in the start.
Painting the Medium: The ending to Dark Carnival has you activate the stage effects for a band that was originally going to play. The next two Tank cues then have a very distinct rock feel to them over the original orchestral.
Nick: Hate to break it to you, Coach, but your heroes lip-sync. There's a tape back here labeled "Finale".
Palette Swap:
- While Left 4 Dead only did this with the Common Infected's shirts, the sequel swaps palettes around for their skin and clothes. When the Last Stand update added the original Infected models to L4D1 maps, however, they lost their palette-swapping ability, but compensated by readding skins removed in the first game's beta.
- Left 4 Dead: Survivors adds palette-swapped variations of both the game's weapons and Special Infected. The weapon palette swaps come in two flavors: Purple means they have more ammo in their magazines, Teal means they have more accuracy without needing Laser Sights.
Parachute in a Tree: Corpses of paratroopers hanging from trees are frequently found. Upgraded weapons can be found on their bodies.
Permanently Missable Content: One achievement, Beat the Rush, requires you to earn a medal in a Survival round using only melee weapons. In order to count for the achievement, the medal has to be one you didn't already have; if you got all medals in all Survival maps before getting the achievement, it becomes unobtainable.
Poison Mushroom: The "Rocketdude" Mutation has black mushrooms, which will inflict heavy damage on you with an explosion and cause your ears to ring, effectively making you deaf for a few seconds. Unlike other mushrooms that have their glowing outlines become visible as soon as you're in range, black mushrooms won't have their distinctive red glow appear until you're right next to them. Black mushrooms are usually placed inside doorways or other areas that you go through as the main route, forcing you to either find another way around them or risk jumping over without touching them. The Finale of Dead Center has a nasty spot for a black mushroom; if a pair of gas cans spawn on the third floor near the elevator, there'll be some black mushrooms right in front of the gas cans. Touch them and the explosion will ignite the cans.
Poor Communication Kills: This will literally be your game-ender online if you or the rest of your team fail to talk or at least call for help if being pinned by the infected, especially in Realism and Realism Versus modes where you can't spot each other with glows anymore. Lots of games have been lost due to people simply not speaking up.
Post-Apocalyptic Traffic Jam: Dark Carnival starts with the gang being unable to progress through an intense traffic jam caused by the zombie apocalypse. The final chapter of The Parish requires the protagonists to make their way across a bridge filled with Infected to reach an evacuation helicopter. Naturally, there are periodically cars with alarms along the road, which attract Common Infected if you shoot or or stand on them.
Powerful, but Inaccurate: The AK-47's main advantage compared to the other assault rifles is its high damage per shot; on Normal difficulty, it one-shots Common Infected. However, its accuracy is much worse, forcing you to stand still or be lucky enough to grab a laser sight if you want to reliably hit anything smaller than a Tank. This also goes for the M60, which has even more power than the AK-47 but the same accuracy.
Power Glows: Witches inexplicably cast a red light in darker areas where you would otherwise have a hard time noticing them.
The Power of Friendship: Literally. Nothing will get you killed faster than leaving your fellow survivors behind and trying to Rambo your way through the next level alone.
Pretty Little Headshots: Headshots on Witches remain effective but lack the gruesome aftermath and One-Hit Kill. Unless you cr0wn one with a shotgun.
- Headshots with Tier 1 weapons leave the head intact. Except for the shotguns, obviously.
Previous Player-Character Cameo: The main appeal of The Passing is this trope. The survivors from Left 4 Dead assist you in the finale with cover fire and extra supplies. Bill, however, is dead, but you can take his assault rifle from his (literally) cold, dead hands.
Punny Name: One of the mascot characters for the titular amusement park in the Dark Carnival campaign is a pistachio with a moustache named "Moustachio".
Randomly Drops: CEDA workers with Bile Bombs, riot cops with nightsticks, and Fallen Survivors with first aid kits, Molotovs or pipe bombs, and pills. The Last Stand update also gave infected policemen, originally just a random Common Infected skin in the L4D1 campaigns, a chance to drop nightsticks.
- During the holiday season, gift boxes were randomly dropped by Special Infected in Versus mode, linked to an achievement and a Steam sale raffle.
Ranged Emergency Weapon: Downplayed with the pistols. Despite being outclassed by primary weapons, they're rather decently accurate, damaging and fast-firing unless you're incapacitated.
Real Is Brown: Used for how a zombie would see the world. Players taking the role of the zombies in Versus mode will see the world completely brown.
Regenerating Health: Inverted trope. Pills, adrenaline, and getting picked up from incapacitation add a temporary buffer of XX health to your HP (differs from action to action), which is lost over time.
- Played straight with the "Healing Gnome" Mutation. All health-related items are removed from the maps and the only way to heal is to hold a special gnome that regenerates health as long as you hold it. Of course, this also reduces the amount of firepower the team has.
Reimagining the Artifact: Among the first game's Common Infected models were reflective vest-wearing airport workers, something Left 4 Dead 2 players are supposed to associate with the construction worker Uncommon Infected, but they were no different from any other Common. With The Last Stand update giving most uncommon infected L4D1-style models for use in the ported campaigns, and how they might've been working near loud airplane engines loading baggage into planes, these airport workers can now occasionally spawn with a helmet and earmuffs, repurposing them into being Uncommon Infected like in Hard Rain.
Respawning Enemies: All infected respawn endlessly, except the Witch and Tank.
Rising Water, Rising Tension: Hard Rain takes place during a heavy rainstorm, which intensifies with every stage. Other than limiting visibility and attracting the Infected, the levels eventually get so flooded they severely hinder movement on the ground. This prompts players to instead seek higher ground and travel along walkways and ledges to keep up the pace.
Rocket Jump: The "Rocketdude" Mutation is all about this. You're given a grenade launcher with infinite ammo and you can propel yourself high and far by shooting at your feet. To compensate for the flying around and self inflicted friendly fire, fall damage is disabled and friendly fire damage is set to the minimum. The mode also makes physics on objects like dumpsters and cars go flying when hit with the grenade launcher. You're also encouraged to use rocket jumps to reach healing mushrooms that cannot be reached by normal means.
Rule of Cool: In contrast to the previous game's more grounded finales, the finales for this game can sometimes stray into the absurdly awesome.
- In Dead Center, the Finale involves the survivors fuelling up a stunt car and proceeding to drive it through the mall's front doors and the zombie horde.
- Then, in Dark Carnival, the survivors have to defend against the zombie horde whilst using a rock concert to attract a nearby rescue helicopter. The music even changes to a appropriate remix of the Tank theme once the Tanks show up!
Running Gag: Ellis' stories about Keith.
- The "shooting the pilot" snafu in Swamp Fever counts as a running gag from the original game; Crash Course starts off with the L4D1 Survivors standing at the site of a helicopter crash — the news chopper that saved them from No Mercy — and the various possible dialogues make it clear that Zoey killed the pilot after he turned (to which Francis is very likely to snark at her over).

S-Z

Scare Chord: One plays briefly with a piano when a Witch is startled.
Schmuck Bait: Go ahead, play some Midnight Riders at the wedding. You know you want to. We're sure the bride won't mind.
Scripted Event: Generally not used, but there are a few such as the military bombing a bridge in "The Parish".
Ship Mates: In-universe example—Ellis makes a suggestion to Rochelle that her and Francis should double date with him and Zoey.
Shipper on Deck: Rochelle and Coach don't mind pushing Ellis towards Zoey. Nick... not so much.
The Smurfette Principle:
- Each group of survivors only has one female. This is justified in-universe by the genetics of the Green Flu: the carrier gene is said to come from the father, and not the mother.
- Averted by Taito's arcade adaptation of this game called Left 4 Dead: Survivors, where Coach and Francis are replaced by a Japanese school girl, making for two females per group.
Shooting Gallery: In Dark Carnival, you can stop to participate in a shooting gallery whose prize is a lawn gnome; carrying the gnome all the way to the rescue chopper earns you an achievement.
Short-Range Shotgun: Averted. The shotguns are a viable weapon choice, even at a reasonable distance. The Remington 870 Chrome Shotgun, in particular, has the tightest pellet spread out of all the shotguns, giving it a decently effective range, and the SPAS-12 isn't much worse.
Shovel Strike: One of the two new melee weapons added in The Last Stand update.
Situational Sword: Explosive and incendiary ammo's effectiveness depends heavily on what weapon you're using them with. On the one hand, using it with a submachine gun or assault rifle greatly ups its effectiveness due to their large clip capacity letting you fire off a lot of One-Hit Kill bullets against Common Infected; on the other hand, it's not as great when paired with a scoped rifle since it was doing that already, and unlike its normal bullets, the special ammo lacks overpenetration, meaning it's only helpful against Special Infected (and given that a Sniper Rifle can kill most of those with a single headshot, even that might not be the case unless you run into a Tank or Witch).
Sliding Scale of Continuity: The game is pretty firmly level 3 (Subtle Continuity), with the start of the next area being a direct result of what happened at the end of the last. For example: fueling up a race car to escape from a zombie infested mall only results in them abandoning the car when they reach blocked traffic, thus having to travel through a dilapidated carnival on foot.
Sniper Rifle: A proper sniper rifle appears in addition to the Hunting Rifle from the first game. As expected, it has pinpoint accuracy when scoped in or when fired from a stationary position and deals decently high damage (enough to take out common Infected with a single hit below Expert), and also has a decent magazine size, making it usable for firing into crowds at close range as well. The Last Stand update, which enables the Counter-Strike weapons for all regions, also gives access to the Steyr Scout and AWP, both of which also have excellent stopping power (with the AWP in particular having the highest damage per bullet in the game), but being bolt-action rifles, both are very slow to fire, making them less efficient at close range.
Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: Major gameplay-changing events (horde attacks and Tanks or Witches being startled) change the music. Special infected spawning are accompanied by their unique theme (except in Versus) and their vocalizations give them away; especially for players using surround sound.
Standalone Episode:
- Averted with the core campaigns, which lead into one another. L4D2 also retroactively applies this to the first game's campaigns with the addition of The Sacrifice and The Passing, connecting the story as a whole together.
- Played straight with Cold Stream and The Last Stand, which don't fit into the canon of the story and are considered What If? scenarios (Judging from the set-up, Cold Stream seems to be an alternate Swamp Fever while The Last Stand seems to be an alternate Death Toll). Both of them are community-made campaigns that were added to the game by Valve.
Standard FPS Guns: Pistols, magnums (albeit played much differently than normal), shotguns, assault rifles, mounted machine guns, sniper rifles, grenades, and melee weapons.
Sticks to the Back: Every weapon and inventory item except pistols (they get holsters), pills/adrenaline, and grenades, which all go on the survivor's belt.
Straw Nihilist: A lot of the graffiti is this. It gets shot down by both the cast and other graffiti.
Super Drowning Skills: Any map that has a river in it. Unlike the first game where being underwater too long would drain your health eventually, being submerged will instantly kill you.
- The only exception is when the water is knee-height, and getting incapacitated puts you below the surface. After a moment, however, you start taking a reasonably large amount of extra damage (aside from the automatic bleed-out damage) until you either begin to get picked up, or you die.
  - Also applies when crouched underneath the water in the Finale of the ported Death Toll.
- The water in Left 4 Dead 2 is so fetid that it will kill an Infected that's in ghost mode. Causing their corpse to pop out of thin air, natch!
Super Mode: While not as flashy as most examples, Survivors gain a minor one when taking adrenaline. In addition to giving a small amount of temporary health, it also temporarily: removes melee fatigue and lets you shove as much as you want, lets you perform actions like healing and reviving teammates faster, gives you a speed boost, and lets you ignore effects that hinder your movement speed like knee-deep water, Common Infected attacks, and low health.
Superpower Lottery: As far as zombies go, the Tank and Witch have won this. Versus mode takes the trope literally where if a Tank spawns, a random player on the Infected team will be chosen to play as the Tank.
Suspiciously Apropos Music: In "The Passing", you can play a song about leaving someone (by the Midnight Riders) near a Witch who was infected at her wedding. Should you do this, it will piss off both the Witch and the congregation, triggering a Crescendo Event.
Take That, Audience!: In the second chapter of The Passing, when approaching the stairwell leading into the sewers, there's a sign that says the rest of the underground tour will be finished in the year 2010. Rochelle or Coach may quip about how the first phase of the "museum" is nowhere near finished and wonder how there can be a phase 2 already. This is a jab at the fan base that cried out how the first game wasn't finished when Left 4 Dead 2 was announced.
Take Up My Sword: In the Finale of The Passing, you can find an M16 in the hands of a deceased Bill. You can pick it up and finish the job that he started.
Taking You with Me: At certain points, a well-aimed Charger can grab a survivor and bring them both careening to instant death. A particularly hilarious situation can happen should you bait a Charger into trying this, only to step out of the way and watch as they run straight over the edge to their death far below.
Tattered Flag: The Sacrifice begins with the survivors trekking through a zombie-infested dockyard that had been occupied by the military and CEDA with the camera prominently showcasing a tattered US flag flapping in the wind. Doubly significant because of the canon death of Bill, a veteran of The Vietnam War at the end of the campaign.
Technically Living Zombie: "Zombies" in the game are the ones who got infected with the Green Flu. They might still even be curable, according to the military... But this is most likely wishful thinking.
Temporary Online Content: One of the still-listed achievements is tied into the long-gone Valve Gift Grab 2011 event.
Terrified of Germs: Nick plays it straight.
Nick: A little hand sanitizer and we wouldn't be in this mess.
—>Nick: A germ just wiped out the world."
—>Nick: I am NOT jumping into the- ah screw it, let's go." (In reference to the New Orleans sewer in The Parish.)
"Test Your Strength" Game: There's one in Dark Carnival. You have to use adrenaline in order to beat it, which earns an achievement.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-Universe example: Coach calls the Midnight Riders' new albums "no good" when he mentions having all their albums.
Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: The Special Infected warning sounds. Especially so in the "Last Man On Earth" Mutation.
Tier System: Left 4 Dead 2 retains the system seen in the first game, but also adds "Tier 3" weapons in the form of the Chainsaw, Grenade Launcher, and M60, and besides being even stronger and rarer are all Awesome, but Temporary: The Chainsaw has limited fuel, the Grenade Launcher can't have its reserve ammo refilled, and the M60 has zero reserve ammo.
Toilet Humor:
- The Passing contains a large amount of graffiti scribbled around a toilet, asking if zombies poop and complaining about the lack of toilet paper.
- Also in The Passing is a spawn room located inside a porta-potty. And because its entrance is considered a door, Common Infected will occasionally try to break it down, as though they really need the bathroom.
Token Minority: Played straight with Louis. Averted with Coach and Rochelle, both being black Survivors.
Total Party Kill:
- "Hey guys! Check out my grenade launcher!" (Not actually that much of a problem on Normal or Easy, but God help you on anything higher.)
- A few Specials can cause this singlehandedly: Tanks (especially when narrow spaces and cars get involved), Chargers (be careful around high ledges), and (if your team is spectacularly incompetent) Hunters.
- Averted with the Witch, who is programmed specifically to only be aggressive towards one Survivor. Not that things don't go Off the Rails anyway.
Trick Bullet: Frag or incendiary ammo boxes provide one magazine of it before switching back to regular rounds. They are much more powerful than the normal bullets; Explosive bullets can blow up several enemies at once, and incendiary bullets burns enemies up.
Tutorial Failure: For Versus mode, the game does a poor job in explaining how to use the Special Infected to the fullest. During gameplay, you're only told of the basic controls and the actual tips aren't shown until the round is over. The game also encourages Tank players to rush in and attack the Survivors (likely due to the mechanic where Tank players will lose their turn as the Tank if their aggression meter empties out), but this is a horrible strategy since a half-competent Survivor group can simply focus fire on the Tank to kill it quickly or set it on fire to put it on a death sentence.
Typhoid Mary: All of the playable Survivors are asymptomatic carriers of the Green Flu.
Understatement: During the finale of The Parish, the group, who at this point have fought infected all the way from Savannah down to New Orleans and then fought their way through New Orleans, are asked by soldiers if they've encountered the Infected. If Nick is the one speaking to them, he replies "Yeah, you could say that."
The Unintelligible: The Charger is clearly saying something, but no one can really agree on what it is.
Unintentionally Unwinnable:
- There's a bug in the collision detection of the rescue boat that ends Swamp Fever and Hard Rain; depending on where your character is standing, this can result in them drowning as it sails out from under them. It is both depressing and hilarious to die in this way.
- Just before the Finale of The Passing, the Director can spawn boredom hordes and Specials if you take too long before talking to the L4D1 Survivors. If you do, activating the elevator will make the Director think you have lowered the bridge, and it will begin throwing the infinite Tanks and hordes at you... Even though you haven't lowered the bridge or even collected one gas can. And the best part? This doesn't reset if (when) you game-over. The only way to correct is to quit the campaign and start from the beginning.
Unique Enemy: Each campaign in L4D2 has an "Uncommon Infected" unique to it, though The Last Stand update has made most of them spawn on more maps:
- Dead Center has infected CEDA workers, whose Hazmat suits render them impervious to flames. There is also a zombified Jimmy Gibbs, Jr., who is also immune to flame, can obscure vision with motor oil, and won't be sidetracked by pipe bombs or Boomer bile.
- The Passing has Fallen Survivors, infected men in militia gear who will run when attacked, has high health, is impervious to flames, and drops valuable items on death. There is also a Witch in a bridal dress.
- Dark Carnival has infected clowns, whose squeaky shoes attract more zombies.
- Swamp Fever has Mudmen, who can move more quickly than other zombies, are harder to hit due to their hunched posture, and their attacks can obscure your vision with mud.
- Hard Rain has infected construction workers, whose ear defenders prevent them from being lured by pipe bombs, and whose hard hats make them more resilient to melee weapons.
- The Parish has infected riot cops, whose body armor makes them invincible to melee attacks and gunshots from the front.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: Lampshaded by Coach when he sees the riot cops in The Parish.
Coach: "That zombie's got armor.." [Beat] "I want armor!!"
- Inverted in that some Uncommons do carry usable equipment, but (being zombies) never actually use it.
Useless Item: The oxygen tank is an explosive item that goes off a few seconds after it is shot. The infected generally won't wait for the tank to explode, making it nearly worthless to use effectively. The Last Stand update gave the oxygen tank a secondary effect where the hissing it creates after being shot will attract nearby Common Infected towards it like a pipe bomb, including the construction worker Uncommon Infected which normally ignore pipe bombs, making the item more viable to use.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: There is just something so fun about jumping on top of a lone Survivor as a Hunter, laughing in delight as you tear them apart, knowing they're completely and utterly helpless.
- Versus mode is based around being as cruel as possible, as it actively encourages you to take notes during your own Survivor playthrough and consider when is the worst possible time for your particular Special Infected to appear, and to use it when it's your turn to be the zombies.
Video Game Setpiece: At the end of The Parish, several explosions dismantle the bridge you crossed in cinematic fashion.
Violation of Common Sense:
- Downing a whole pack of pain pills at once would be fatal in real life, but somehow is a good idea if you're low on health.
- In the zombie apocalypse, TRUE survivors don't even need to remove the cap to swallow a whole bottle of pills!
- If you get mobbed by Common Infected, setting yourself on fire with Molotovs or blowing yourself up with the grenade launcher will usually clear your space a LOT faster than to keep shoving them away or trying to hack at them all with melee weapons. You'll suffer self-inflicted friendly fire damage, but that will be small compared to trying to clear out zombies invading your personal space without the said methods.
- There are some cases where team killing is actually justified. If someone is about to die and there's nothing to heal with, players will usually kill the wounded Survivor and then let them respawn in a closet or revive them with a defibrillator: both methods bring the Survivor back with 50 points of health. If no one speaks of this and does the deed, they could be mistaken for a Griefer. If the opportunity to fall to one's incapacitation provides itself, it's probably better to do it this way as this saves ammo.
- Melee weapons always do 5% of a Tank's maximum health per hit (meaning 20 melee hits will kill them). This doesn't amount to much on lower difficulties, but it's certainly a lot of HP on higher ones, where the Tank's HP is doubled from Normal to Advanced & Expert. Obviously, trying to get close to a Tank when it can instantly incapacitate you is usually a bad idea, but being able to deal about 1,000 damage in 2 seconds without using ammo is something worth noting.
- Riot cop zombies are Immune to Bullets — even large sniper rifles and heavy machine guns — but go down instantly to improvised fire bombs; real riot armor is usually built with the opposite priorities.
- Due to Artificial Stupidity rendering bots unwilling to shoot when near car alarms, it may be simpler to set off the car alarm anyway to wake them up, even if it means fighting more zombies. The impound lot in The Parish takes this up to eleven.
We Cannot Go On Without You: If there are any bots on the team in any non-Versus mode, you'll have to start the level all over again if all the human players are dead, regardless of if there is a bot player alive. It becomes mind-boggling when playing against a team of bot Survivors in versus mode and they are capable of moving through the level on their own without the guidance of a human player. Fortunately, there are Game Mods that fix this, although sometimes the only difference it makes is that you have to wait longer before restarting the level.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: In The Parish, it is revealed that the military began killing zombies and humans alike due to the possibility of immune humans being carriers of the Green Flu. Given the fact that the zombie outbreak has pretty thoroughly wrecked at LEAST large portions of the continental US and utterly destroyed several major cities within three weeks, it is fairly understandable why at some point in time the Joint Chiefs and the President dialed it in and decided to save the remaining half of the country by completely annihilating anything trying to get out of the destroyed half.
Wham Episode: In The Passing, Bill is dead. You find his corpse in the Finale next to the generator, still clutching an M16. You don't specifically have to sacrifice Bill, but you do have to sacrifice someone to complete The Sacrifice, and Bill is the canonical choice. There's even an achievement if Bill sacrifices himself.
Wham Line:
- For many an Infected team, seeing "You will become the Tank — Get ready to attack the Survivors"^note means that shit is about to get real, as a Tank's actions (and the Survivors' response to it) can singlehandedly make or break a Versus round.
- Near the end of The Parish, the soldier over the radio asks the chopper pilot "Are you equipped for carriers?", confirming that the survivors are all asymptomatic carriers, and have unwittingly been infecting some of the NPCs throughout both games.
What Happened to the Mouse?: The loose ends of the people that rescued the L4D1 Survivors are tied up in "The Sacrifice" comic (the pilots from "No Mercy" and "Dead Air" turned into zombies, the boat rescuers from "Death Toll" kicked the Survivors out, and the evac truck from "Blood Harvest" took them to the military base). L4D2 shows or explains what happens to all in the next campaign.
What the Hell, Player?: Shoot one of your fellow Survivors, and they'll call you out for it with scripted responses.
- Or trigger a few car alarms in the impound lot in The Parish:
  Coach: WILL YOU STOP SHOOTING THE GODDAMN CARS!?
- As of The Last Stand update, they'll really call you out if you outright kill a fellow Survivor:
  Bill: He was on our side!
  Zoey: You REALLY have to be more careful!
  Louis: What the hell, man?!
  Francis: That was not cool!
  Nick: WHAT?! This is hard enough without you helping the freaks!
  Ellis: You're a sick man.
  Coach: Keep goin' at em like that and you gonna be the last man on Earth!
  Rochelle: ''What is going on inside that head of yours?!
"Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Although not in the game itself, Word of God has stated that the L4D2 Survivors do make it safely to a cruise ship via the military chopper that picked them up at the end of The Parish, and the L4D1 Survivors make it to the Florida Keys via boat according to The Sacrifice comic (excluding Bill, who pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to save the others). Thanks to Valve's track record on making third installments, we will probably not get any more expansion on what happens to any of the Survivors for a long, long time to come.
Where It All Began: The first landmark in "Hard Rain" is a run-down Burger Tank. This is also the campaign's Finale, except this time the Survivors have to contend with a raging storm and flooding.
Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The Last Stand update brought back Infected skins from the beta version of the first game, some of which mention a location called Hillview. Given that the Pennsylvania Survivors traveled all over the state throughout the first game, and the L4D1 campaigns all now feature plenty of Infected wearing Hillview shirts, it's hard to pinpoint where exactly Hillview would be.
With Catlike Tread: The Special Infected are very noisy by nature, yet they can be quite capable of launching surprise attacks on the Survivors without them being noticed.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Special Infected which are stuck or otherwise unable to catch up to the Survivors will occasionally be killed off by the Director, with the death noise often being faintly audible to human players.
- Infected players can manually trigger this when they are at a certain distance behind the Survivors, allowing them to skip the respawn time that would happen if they jumped off a cliff instead, and most notably allows them to keep using the same Infected instead of being assigned a new one at random.
Your Head A-Splode: Shots to the head of regular zombies with primary weapons leave only their neck and a Pink Mist.
You ALL Look Familiar: Common Infected actually have a small number of basic models but are made to look different with various filters, like clothing and blood spatter. The Uncommon Infected all look exactly the same since they wear uniforms, and some of the Special Infected have two models in the second game (the Boomer has a female version, the Witch gets a one-off version wearing a wedding dress in The Passing), but only one in the first.
Zerg Rush: The Director will send these at you at random, when a Boomer vomits on a Survivor, in pre-programmed Crescendo Events where you're forced to make a ton of noise to continue moving, or if you accidentally set off a car alarm, or whenever he's bored, which is all the time. Common Infected also like to rush pipe bombs because of the smoke alarms rigged to them, and Boomer bile (whether from Bombs or Boomers directly) for obvious reasons. There is an achievement for hitting a Tank with a Bile Bomb.
Zombie Apocalypse: Duh.
Zombie Gait: How individual zombies walk until they see you.
Zombie Puke Attack: Boomers and Spitters. Boomer's puke blinds the player and attracts a horde of zombies if it hits, and they release a blast of it when they die. Spitter's puke is acidic, damaging players who stand in the puddle it creates and igniting gas cans during Scavenge missions.

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