George A. Romero in Call of the Dead: his lightning entrance in the water of the starting area, the calm and berserk states, the stage light and the Electrified Zombies, his health, the Random Perk Bottle and Death Machine he drops, and what he means for a First Room game.
George A. Romero, the horror film director, is the special zombie of Call of the Dead. In the story he was shooting his new film at the Siberian lighthouse when a real zombie carried him off over a rail and into the water; he comes back infected by Element 115, a stage light in his hands. Romero lent the map only his likeness: the voice is someone else’s, and he did no motion capture. Unlike the Hellhounds or the Space Monkeys of other maps, he has no round of his own. He is there from round 1, and he never stops coming.
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His entrance
At the start of every game, lightning strikes the water of the starting area and George walks slowly out of the steam and the foam. He heads for the closest player, and keeps doing so for the rest of the game: he rides the ziplines, uses the Ice Slide, which he surfs down standing, and can make very high jumps to close the distance. In a First Room game he is on the shore with the players from the first seconds.
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Calm and berserk
Calm
He walks slowly, groaning, surrounded by a blue aura, with orange eyes. In this state he looks almost human. He only swings his light at a player who comes too close.
Berserk
Shooting him, or landing a hit, makes him roar and switch state. His clothes tear open on rotten flesh and he runs after the closest player.
The roar
It turns the zombies around him into sprinters, even when he roars in his calm state.
The stage light
He strikes the ground with it to electrocute players and zombies around him; the zombies it touches become Electrified Zombies that shock the player on contact.
Back to calm
Leading him into water calms him down. A shot of V-R11 calms him for 10 to 15 seconds; the upgraded V-R11 Lazarus keeps him calm until he is hurt again.
His light deals 90 damage a hit, against 50 for a zombie: two hits down a player, three with Juggernog. After a fit of rage he sometimes says, in a frightened voice, “I’m okay, I’m okay”. Shot while he stands in water, he roars but does not go berserk.
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Beating him
George cannot be killed for good. His health does not grow with the rounds: it depends on the number of players when the game starts, 250,000 per player, so 1,000,000 in a four-player game. Insta-Kill and Nuke do nothing to him, and the Wunderwaffe DG-2 only deals him one point of damage.
His light changes colour
The blue aura around the stage light starts to flicker as he takes damage, then turns orange. In that last state he moves faster and roars more often.
He retreats
Beaten, he walks back into the water and leaves a Random Perk Bottle and a Death Machine. A player who owns the Easter egg achievement gets a Lightning Bolt, the Wunderwaffe DG-2, instead of the Death Machine.
He comes back
Two rounds later, counting the round in which he was beaten.
The V-R11 Lazarus shortcut
One shot of the upgraded V-R11 while he stands in water sends him away for the round, but drops nothing.
The best weapons against him are the ones that hit hardest per shot: the upgraded Dragunov deals 10,000 per headshot, enough to beat a solo George in 25 shots, and the upgraded Scavenger, the Death Machine, the upgraded Ray Gun and the upgraded light machine guns all work. PhD Flopper’s explosion also hurts him.
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George in the First Room
On the shore, with the doors closed, George is a second opponent who does not follow the round counter, and the only source of perks. Each time he is beaten he drops a Random Perk Bottle, so the players can collect perks one by one without ever opening a door. With the M14 of the bridge, beating him takes about twenty minutes of shooting each time. The Death Machine he drops alongside is replaced by the Wunderwaffe DG-2 for a player who already earned Stand-in or Ensemble Cast in another game; the Wunderwaffe kills up to ten zombies a shot and is refilled by Max Ammo.
Quiet on the Set
Beating him earns the only achievement of the map that a First Room game can give, “cut the lights on the Director”.
B2’s rule
The shock immunity exploit for George Romero is allowed in a First Room game. It is the only rule B2 writes for Call of the Dead.
The water of the shore
It calms him, and he walks into it to retreat. It also freezes the players who stay in it too long.
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Odd behaviours
He laughs when a Nuke goes off.
The power-ups he drops sometimes appear in another pool, often in the starting area, instead of where he left. George then vanishes before reaching the water, and Samantha giggles.
Beaten in the starting area, his orange light can be seen reflected on the rocks near Quick Revive, and he can be heard tapping it.
Shot just as he grabs a zipline while the player jumps off without riding it, he can sprint after the player without changing his look or roaring.
Beaten by the upgraded Scavenger, he sometimes walks to the players’ spawn point and idles there, unable to hurt or be hurt.
Some of his sounds were reused for Brutus in Mob of the Dead, and his glasses are a tribute in Tag der Toten, added after his death in 2017.
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