Dead Island 2 is the long-delayed sequel to the cult 2011 co-op zombie survival game Dead Island. It was originally announced at E3 2014 for release the following year, again published by Deep Silver and to be developed by Yager Studios (of Spec Ops: The Line fame), taking over from original developer Techland. However, Yager was moved off the project, with another developer, Sumo Digital, taking their place in 2016, only for Sumo Digital to get moved off as well and replaced with Dambuster Studios in 2019. After several years of radio silence, Dambuster’s version was revealed at Gamescom 2022, and finally released on April 21, 2023 for 8th and 9th generation consoles, and for PC as an Epic Games Store exclusive.
It's been more than a decade since the events of Banoi and Palanoi, and now the United States government has placed the state of California in a full quarantine due to a zombie outbreak. But are the citizens freaking out, living what could be their final days in fear? Nope, not by a long shot! Instead, Los Angeles, now known as HELL-A, has become a super-bloody paradise for those who either don't want to leave the Golden State or want to do their part in the zombie epidemic and deal with them by force. Or do it just because it's fun. The story follows six of these survivors; a stuntman, a Paralympic athlete, a roller derby skater, a male stripper, a motocross rider and a street hustler, as they make the most of the apocalypse and slay their way through HELL-A, helping who they can and turning who they can't into a fine red mist.
Check out the E3 2014 trailer right over here
, or the 2022 Gamescom re-reveal here.
This game provides the following tropes:
open/close all folders
The Cancelled 2014 Version
- And Then John Was a Zombie: In the E3 2014 trailer, aside from the jogger himself, the rollerskater and the overweight man with the shotgun both reappear as zombies running alongside him.
- Body Horror: The E3 2014 trailer alone had a healthy-looking jogger devolving into a zombie over a timelapse, complete with a Gross-Up Close-Up of his flesh decaying.
- Denser and Wackier: While there's no shortage of gruesomeness, compared to the dramatic trailers of previous installments, the E3 2014 trailer takes more of a Black Comedy approach.
- Fake Muscles: In the E3 2014 trailer, the jogger's biceps are revealed to be implants when his infection turns him into a zombie and his decaying flesh and skin can't keep the implant in one of his arms in place. The skin on his nose also falls off to reveal he's had a nose job, he has a wig that flies off as he runs after turning, and his perfect white teeth are veneers. Ironically, the prominent billboard seen at the end suggests that the man was running a fitness gym advertised by his good looks.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: The jogger in the E3 2014 trailer has on some headphones which start blaring out "The Bomb" by Pigeon John, and so he fails to notice the escalating chaos erupting behind him: a woman rollerskating that is attacked by zombies and screams at him for help, a guy shotgunning zombies who eventually gets overwhelmed, an out-of-control limo which almost clobbers him, and then a helicopter crashing. It's then subverted when it turns out he was already infected before he started running, implying that he was simply trying to Face Death with Dignity.
- Hellish Copter: In the E3 2014 trailer, a news chopper careens into view with (presumably) zombies hanging from the landing struts. It crashes into a building and explodes.
- Hotter and Sexier: The 2014 male player characters were more macho and the female player characters were more sexualized compared to those from first game, or their final versions in the final 2023 release of the game. The character designs overall were also much less Totally Radical and much closer in tone to the first game. Unsurprising since all media is inevitably a product of the times in which they are created.
- Incongruously-Dressed Zombie: One of the zombies seen in the mob at the end is a surfer with her surfboard still attached to her ankle.
- Robbing the Dead: In the E3 2014 trailer, after the zombified jogger gets killed (well, disassembled) by a melee weapon in the face by two survivors, one of them gets out and steals the shoes the zombie jogger was wearing.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The E3 2014 trailer has a guy jogging to the tune of Pigeon John's "The Bomb". As he's going, it turns out that he's jogging in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. Hell's breaking loose, innocent people are being attacked left and right, but is he freaking out? Nah.
- Stock Scream: In the 2014 trailer, the Wilhelm Scream is used towards the end when a bat-swinging survivor gets overpowered by zombies.
- What Might Have Been: A incomplete build of this specific version ended up being leaked, from shortly before the developer cut ties with Deep Silver, allowing people to see how far the game had got into development.
- While Rome Burns: In the trailer, a man is out on a jog, headphones on, completely uncaring of the Zombie Apocalypse raging around him. However, he's already been infected by a wound he concealed under his armband, and he eventually turns, still running through the streets in the company of the undead.
The 2023 Released Game
- And I Must Scream: Bursters can sometimes be heard begging for help, even as they're shambling towards the Slayer. While it's possible their use of speech is only a leftover fragment of humanity being used to lure people closer, the more horrifying option is that even after being transformed, these zombies are still conscious and trapped in their own zombified bodies without control of their actions.
- However, they can also be heard mockingly pleading for a hug, apologizing outright, or even gleefully declaring "Boom!" It's not uncommon to hear them gurgle a "Bye-bye" as they wind up the detonation, too.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The Storage Locker allows you to put away any weapons you want to keep and not sell, and also has an option for "Unclaimed Property" that allows you to retrieve weapons that spawned that you didn't or could not pick up for any reason. It ensures that, whether from having a full inventory already, being forced to flee from too many zombies, etc., you still have a way to acquire and use any potentially useful weaponry.
- Unlike the first game, light attacks don't cost stamina, so even at low stamina you'll still be able to do basic attacks instead of being completely vulnerable if you wind yourself.
- Removing a mod from a weapon will give you back half of the crafting materials that were used to make it. This is less obvious with weaker mods that mostly only need 1 of a resource, but it becomes clear to see with the stronger ones, in addition to weapon perks that utilize zombie parts.
- Armies Are Evil: Mostly Averted. With some exceptions, the Military was trying to save as many people as possible while not allowing the outbreak to spread and not dying. They have draconian containment methods (like rigging evacuation buses to incinerate their passengers if one is infected, or standing orders to shoot down planes carrying infected) but considering how terrible a zombie outbreak is, they can scarcely be blamed. One or two commanders seem to have decided that separating the healthy from the infected-but-not-yet-turned was too dangerous, and thus ordered their troops to treat all civilians seeking evac as infected, but they seem to have been the exception rather than the norm.
- Armor Is Useless: Some of the military zombies still wear their army helmets which do nothing and pop off the second they take a blow to the head. Subverted hard with zombies in riot gear, which completely protects whichever body part it's covering until it's destroyed.
- Artifact Title: The game takes place in Los Angeles, which is decidedly not an island. Ditto for earlier versions of the game that were in a nonspecified California location. Emma does make a reference to feeling like a castaway and Hell-A is a Closed Circle like an island but it's a stretch.
- Artistic License – Medicine: At the start of the game, the Slayer begins their adventure by awakening to find themself impaled by a piece of debris from the crashed airplane. They immediately yank it out, then go stumbling around to find a medical kit with which to patch themself up. Any medical professional will tell you that you should never just yank something out of your body if you've been stabbed with something, as the item being there is what will keep you bleeding out. Especially with something as serious as a gut wound that could have potentially punctured any organs. Granted the Slayer is definitely in an emergency situation, but even in a state of shock they would've been better advised to have left it in when they went searching.
- Bruno, The Smart Guy of the Slayers, does the same as everyone else (because the script says so) but of them, he's the one who chides himself for doing this form of Worst Aid. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"
- Asshole Victim: It's hard to feel bad for the many walking corpses throughout Hell-A, as the game gladly leans into every "Pampered rich brat" stereotype. Special mention goes to the "GOAT Pen" crew of bratty influencers who spread misinformation and stir up trouble for views. Or Ronnie, black-market fixer who sold a fake snow leopard to a poacher, whose first response to seeing said poacher zombified into a Screamer is to start flinging insults from the safety of...a set of glass sliding doors. But listing them all would require a page all its own.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: When Reuben Reed first discovered the Autophage in 1998, he eventually calculated that the "zero point" for humanity, when the Autophage would begin to activate on its own, would take place in 2160, with a 12-year margin of error. This meant he, and the extremely well-funded secret organization he is working with, had a mere 150 to 174 years from time of discovery to try engineering a way to fight the Autophage. Instead, concluding that the cure can only be created by combining the blood of his bioengineered daughter with the blood of a Numen, he causes a gigantic epidemic in Los Angeles, apparently just praying that he can find the cure before the CDC sites are overrun (he doesn't), and the blockade of the city inevitably fails under the sheer numbers of millions of zombies. And he doesn't even apparently realize the military is prepped to nuke the city if the walls fail, with W.O. Rodriguez already primed to hit the button at the Venice Beach FOB.
- Badass Normal: Anyone able to traverse Hell-A without being The Immune certainly qualifies. Special mention goes to the VCLA Bobcats, a group of college students found doing various zombie-killing experiments in various sidequests and who are playable in the Neighborhood Watch game mode; they're not Numen, as shown by the fact they have "signature attacks" rather than Fury mode, but are able to explore and survive the zombie-infested city quite well and even defend their safehouse from a zombie horde attack.
- Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: After the survivors in Emma's house discover the Slayer is bitten and close to passing out again, Michael is left holding the gun and forced to make the call on shooting them. The Slayer collapses and the screen goes black as a gun goes off. Only for the Slayer to wake up again an unspecified time later, handcuffed but alive, without so much as a gunshot wound. Emma reveals that Michael actually fainted under the stress and fired the gun on his way down; the round went wild but thankfully never actually hit anyone. Though Emma gripes that it was close.
- Beef Gate: Unlike the first game, where zombies were universally scaled to your level, Dead Island 2 has areas where the zombies have a fixed minimum level (i.e. some locations on the first map have level 8 or level 12 zombies when you're just level 2). Trying to fight a zombie that's more than a few levels higher than you is a good way to get killed in just a couple of hits while doing Scratch Damage with your own attacks. This forces you to wait until reaching a certain level before you can explore many areas, and may be a way to obfuscate the game's smaller maps compared to the original.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Like you wouldn't believe. The first game is already one of the most gruesome of its kind, but this sequel cranks it up to new heights never seen before.
- Body Horror:
- Thanks to the "Fully Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids” AKA the F.L.E.S.H. System, Dead Island 2 is capable of procedurally generating anatomically correct layers of skin fat and muscle which can be ripped away to reveal breakable bones and internal organs that are individually destructible. This means that every enemy in the game can be torn asunder in a myriad of ways with a disturbingly realistic level of detail.
- The mid-game story quest "The Giant-Slayer" goes into some small detail about zombie anatomy. As the Slayer and Patton discover from a crude autopsy on a Crusher, the Apex Infected are actually developing completely new organs that let them do what they can do, simultaneously allowing Slayers to harvest those organs in order to use them for creating weirder and more dangerous types of weapon mods. At the same time, though, the Slayer realizes that if the zombies are mutating like that, there's a very good chance that their own immunity to the Autophage could do something similar to them.
- Boring, but Practical: Impactor mods just slightly boost your weapon's physical damage and either regain small amounts of stamina with each hit (for melee) or increase the knockdown on zombies (for ranged). Not as exciting as fire, electric, or caustic damage, but it also means your weapon will be able to damage every enemy and won't be ineffective against elemental resistant enemy types.
- The Cameo: Sir Radzig's sword from Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the MacGuffin of that game, is a stronger-than-normal, purple-quality claymore sword that can be obtained for free from the trader at the Serling Hotel, about 3/4ths of the way through the game.
- Cast from Hit Points: Several of the stronger skill cards, such as Flare-Up, Anger Mismanagement, Hot-Footed, and Lightning Strike, buff your skills in exchange for making them cost health.
- Cast Full of Rich People: Given the game takes place in many of the wealthier areas of Los Angeles, like Bel-Air, Hollywood Boulevard, and Beverly Hills, many (though not all) of the people the Slayer comes across are well-off celebrities or people who are wealthy through other means.
- Celebrity Survivor: The game takes place in L.A., so several of the survivors you meet are (fictional) celebrities. Emma Jaunt, a famous horror movie actress, is one of the main supporting characters in your survivor group. Sam B returns, taking on the role of a mentor figure.
- Chekhov's Gun: In the cutscene where the protagonist meets Emma after the plane crash, she's seen ripping off her high heels and throwing them in a bout of frustration. Later, when bitten and knocked on their back by the zombie that bit them, the protagonist spots one of her discarded shoes. Then immediately uses it to stab the zombie in the eye to stop it from killing them.
- Clown-Car Grave: More like Clown Car Everything, but zombies will emerge in seemingly endless numbers from the ground, particularly around the beach, or else every single vent or grate around. No area is ever totally safe except designated safe zones. Justified in that the army melting down the infected bodies and flushing them down the sewers has resulted in a giant autophage biomass underneath the city which is constantly spewing out fresh zombies.
- Continuity Nod:
- Sam B advises the Slayers to use the sewers to travel around Los Angeles in relative safety, stating that was how he was able to escape Banoi in the first game, and also advises you against trusting the voice on the radio promising solutions. In one piece of ambient dialogue he also mentions Logan, Xian Mei, Purna, and either John Morgan or John Sinamoi, implying that the other Banoi survivors are still alive but that the group broke up after the events of Riptide due to an unspecified incident on their escape boat.
- A newspaper gossip column that can be found mentions Logan being spotted living under the radar somewhere out in the Midwest, with a dog.
- A journal found on the Santa Monica Pier implies that at least one other veteran of Banoi or Palanoi was hired by the U.S. military to assist with the containment efforts, although they work under a codename.
- Completing the 'Fool's Gold' sidequest will reward the player with one of Xian Mei's knives that she used in the previous Dead Island games.
- The trophies "Who Do You Voodoo?" and "I Got a Zombie Army and You Can't Harm Me" are both lyrics from Sam B's hit "Who Do You Voodoo?" from the intro of the first game.
- Crying Wolf: The quest to find Laura, who was locked in the Venice Beach police station just as the apocalypse was kicking off, has a journal titled "Crying Wolf" in which she desperately tries to get officers' attention because her friend, who is locked in the cell with her, turned into a zombie and started attacking Laura. Because her entire stint locked up consisted of her raising false alarms, no one believes her and the officers are thankful that she finally shut up not realizing she was really in trouble and they now have two zombies locked up.
- Dash Attack: One of your three special attacks lets you Wesker dash forward a couple dozen feet in a split second and punch a zombie, which deals enough damage to kill Shamblers and halve the health of Walkers. Additional skill cards cause the punch to send zombies Punched Across the Room as well as healing you when you do so.
- Deadly Gas: Although the danger of Caustic-X is more about getting it on the skin (since the Slayer can walk through an entire sewer polluted with the stuff and hardly cough), a Superior-tier ranged-weapon mod can be used that causes the death of a zombie to generate a gaseous form of Caustic-X that has a slower DOT effect but still accomplishes the same goal of dissolving zombie flesh off their bones.
- Degraded Boss: The game's Elite Zombie enemies typically start showing up after you defeat a King Mook version of them as a boss battle.
- Design-It-Yourself Equipment: Different types of mods can be added to weapons to make them more powerful or give attacks certain traits, like setting enemies on fire when hit.
- Dirty Coward: According to Curtis Sinclair, his nephew, Tony Sinclair, tries to survive the party by sacrificing one of the maids by throwing her at a zombie. For that reason, Curtis doesn't feel too bad for Tony once he is infected and encourages the slayer to kill the now-zombified Tony out of spite.
- Don't Celebrate Just Yet: In the intro, after the plane takes off to escape the zombie-infested city, all of the passengers are cheering with relief believing they've all managed to survive and escape HELL-A. However, as an unlucky fangirl finds out, Robert Steele concealed a zombie bite that leads to him turning shortly after takeoff and begin attacking the other passengers. The military receives a Code Zulu from the flight crew, and they use AA guns to shoot the plane out of the air so as to prevent the infection spreading. Most of the passengers are killed while once more the survivors are stranded in HELL-A.
- Elite Zombie: There are a wide variety of zombies across HELL-A. Some types are a returning threat from previous games, some reworked as substitutes of previous types, and entirely new ones introduced in the series.
- For the Common class of zombie, there are quite a few types. The Infected return now known as Runners. Elemental Zombie threats comes in the form of Burning variants and Shocking variants. Riot Gear Walkers are Armored Zombies. An Insect Swam Walker is a normal zombie backed up by Undead Animals (in this case, a swarm of flying infected insects). Caustic-X, Hazmat and Firefighter variants act as Hazmat Zombies. There are also the Spiky variants, zombies covered in broken glass or barbwire that shred their victims on contact.
- Special Infecteds are now known as Apex Variants. The Butcher and the Screamer are back, with the Butcher now acting more like a Hunter combined with a Regenerator. The Crusher replaces the Brute-like Thug. The Burster replaces the Trap Suicider. The Slobber replaces the Vomiting Floater. A new Special/Apex Infected is the Mutator, which initially looks like a regular Walker, but when provoked, transforms into a powerful and vile looking creature.
- Emergency Weapon: Should they break or otherwise find themself with no weapons, the slayer will resort to using their bare fists to fight the infected.
- Establishing Character Moment: All of the Slayers are seen during brief moments in the introductory cutscene, which gives the player a succinct impression of their character.
- Amy literally runs her way onto the scene, and meets a soldier guarding the gates to the airport. Explaining that she'd just sprinted twelve miles from the other airport in Long Beach through zombie infested HELL-A because she'd given up her seat on a plane there to someone else. Along with an introductory shot of her prosthetic leg to prove she's a Handicapped Badass to boot.
- Ryan, dressed in his firefighter's uniform, is seen dumping several items from his suitcase (including handcuffs and an advertisement from a strip club) which prove he's actually a stripper and not a genuine member of emergency services. And the only thing he grabs from his belongings is a small keychain that's clearly a gift from his younger brother. Before he grabs a fire extinguisher and runs to catch the plane pretending to be a real firefighter, showing he's quick to get into any role he needs.
- When Bruno is waiting in line to get into the plane loading zone, he takes advantage of an earthquake that distracts everyone to surreptitiously take a picture of the boarding pass of the person behind him with his phone. So that he can then present it to the guard in front of him and pass it off as his own ticket.
- Carla rides onto the scene on her personal motorcycle like a true Badass Biker, rather than on the bus with other passengers to be. Screeching to a halt just in front of the airport's loading gate and casually tossing her keys to the soldier guarding it before strutting up the ramp.
- Jacob firmly establishes himself as a fearless badass with a devil-may-care attitude by managing to hitch a ride on the plane's landing gear as it took off. Sporting a cocky grin and smoking a cigar as he gazes out over the burning HELL-A landscape below him before he climbs up into the cargo bay.
- Dani literally pops out into the scene by jumping out of a band chest plastered with punk band stickers, having snuck onto the plane via the luggage storage. Where she meets fellow Slayer Jacob, exchanges casual banter with him, and then takes his cigar straight from his lips.
- Evil Poacher: Before the zombie outbreak, Nikki Gutte would hunt down endangered animals, though Ronnie was the one who brought the animals to her in Los Angeles. In "Justifiable Zombiecide," she's the first Screamer you meet when the Slayer, Sam B and Ronnie go to her house to steal her guns. She and several zombies kill Ronnie, and it's up to the player to finish her off. Blood Knight Carla is notably the only Slayer to speak approvingly of Nikki's hunting activities.
- Faking the Dead: It's implied Sam B has been living off-the-grid for the past decade (out of concern They Would Cut You Up if his status as an immune survivor was known), and the few showbiz people who know of him think he's dead.
- Feet-First Introduction: The first thing we see of Amy is a shot of her running legs, which gives us a view of her prosthetic leg.
- Foreshadowing: When the Slayer discovers that a CDC outpost still exists in Santa Monica with a guarantee of escape if they can prove their immunity to the doctors, they voice their intent to go with the Bel-Air survivors who cynically reject the idea. In particular, Sam B says that getting involved with government types is likely to backfire since They Would Cut You Up. Later on, after hacking the Skope network, they learn that Reuben was always lying about getting them out of Hell-A and just wanted their immune blood to complete his cure for the Autophage.
- It's a Freeze-Frame Bonus blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but when the Slayer finally reaches Michael at Monarch Studios and defeats their first Slobber, when they enter Emma Jaunt's trailer, they find Michael presiding over a Romero statue and medical supplies. But if one looks past him at the sink nearby, they'd see a pile of bloody cloths, looking very freshly used. It's an early hint that Michael tried to clean up and disguise the zombie bite that eventually turns him into a Runner and forces the Slayer to execute him right in front of Emma before they leave for Santa Monica.
- Sam B makes one notable outing early in the story before spending most of the rest of it cooped up in the mansion, occasionally complaining that he has the flu. After the player and their retinue, which includes Sam B, arrive at the Hollywood Walk Of Fame to confront the antagonist, Sam collapses from his symptoms, and he realizes that his immunity to the disease back in Banoi has only slowed his infection by the current crop of infected instead of made him completely immune.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- In the intro movie, while Bruno's being checked through security, Robert is in the background bribing a soldier to let him, Emma, and Michael onto the evac plane. Notably, that soldier does not check any of their temperatures, which lets Robert conceal his Zombie Infectee status just long enough for the plane to take off...
- In Bruno's portion of the intro, you can see a man in a hat, sunglasses, and letterman jacket two places in front of him in line. Then the same man is seen in the bus that Ryan and Amy's bus passes by, where he's bitten by a newly turned zombie before the sprinklers set the interior ablaze.
- If you pause when looking at Ryan's firefighter hat in the intro, it can be seen that the front of it says "SEXY DEPT." under the number, giving extra proof that he's not a genuine firefighter. Along with most of a sticker on the back which looks like it's from a partially ripped off "99 cent" price sticker.
- The zombie Carla is punching on the character select screen is the unlucky fangirl who got mauled by Robert Steele.
- Late in the story, when Reuben abandons the Serling Hotel, the Slayer goes through the paperwork on his desk while speaking with Emma. This includes four sheets of paper that display photos of Jacob, Amy, Carla, and Dani all using the same Blood Drive machine in the CDC camp in Santa Monica. This carries the implication that any Slayer who isn't currently in your group is making their own way through Hell-A, including making contact with Reuben.
- Gender-Inclusive Writing: To account for the fact that the Slayer can be either a man or a woman, other characters will always refer to the player's character with "they/them" pronouns.
- Glass-Shattering Sound: Screamers' shrieks are loud enough to break glass and strong enough to send the slayers flying.
- Gorn: Thanks to the "Fully Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids” or F.L.E.S.H. you can mutilate and eviscerate the undead in a myriad of different ways. The system is mostly procedural so you can mangle and deform nearly every inch of flesh, bones, and organs in graphic detail.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Both Bruno and Carla have a habit of using various Spanish phrases and curse words throughout their dialogue.
- The Ground Is Lava: During the mission "The End of the Line" players have to navigate a flooded room where the floor is electrified, traversing it via crates and other elevated objects. While the initial crossing is relatively simple, the other end of the room is missing a circuit breaker, which may lead to players taking the risk of getting into the (also flooded) side rooms to see if the missing breaker is there. It's not. It's in a different room that also has an electrified floor.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Joshua, the man trapped under a piece of plane wreckage that the protagonist will try to help at the game's start, ends up being bitten and infected by his zombified wife. Which leads to the now-zombie Joshua proceeding to free himself by ripping his upper half from the still-trapped lower half of his body, trailing his intestines along the ground behind him while clawing his way towards the protagonist to attack them.
- Hand Cannon:
- Revolvers fire the same heavy rounds as bolt-action rifles do, and deal way more damage than a regular pistol. However, realistically, they still only do about 2/3rds as much damage as a comparable bolt-action rifle, due to their much shorter barrel giving much less space for propellant gases to build up before the bullet exits out the front. They do benefit from a somewhat higher rate of fire to compensate.
- A Legendary revolver that can be acquired from a sidequest after the main story fires explosive shotgun slugs.
- Hellish L.A.: The game's tagline is literally "See You in Hell-A", and it portrays the city as a land of vapid decadence even before the Zombie Apocalypse.
- Hide Your Children: A note at the Santa Monica CDC base states that the government successfully evacuated 94 percent of LA's child population. Hence why you don't see any child zombies in the game.
- Hollywood Acid: Caustic-X, despite explicitly being said to be an alkaline base in composition. It's green, it steams, and it breaks down human flesh in seconds, which is actually realistic since bases like alkali are more dangerous to human tissue then acids when concentrated. Yet the Slayers can stand next to a swimming pool filled with the stuff and even traverse a sewer tunnel that was flushed with it while breathing the fumes in and never have to worry about dying from lung damage.
- Hope Spot: The game’s intro is one big example. Just when it seemed the Slayers and many others had successfully escaped HELL-A on the evacuation flight, Robert Steele, Emma Jaunt’s husband, got infected way before he boarded the plane; he turns shortly after takeoff and begins attacking the other passengers. The military receives a Code Zulu from the flight crew and shoots the plane out of the sky with AA guns to prevent the infection from spreading. Most of the passengers are killed, while the few survivors and the Slayers remain trapped in the city.
- I Choose to Stay: Despite having a chance to escape Los Angeles with Emma and Sam B, the Slayers decide to stay in order to find the still missing Tisha as well as help the other survivors still trapped in the city.
- Incongruously-Dressed Zombie: The first Crusher to be encountered by the player is dressed as a bride, presumably having been infected during her reception. The first Butcher meanwhile is a clown at an amusement park.
- Goofy-outfit non-boss zombies include food delivery people with a backpack full of healing items on their back, roller derby enthusiasts, or zombies with a full tank of pure drinking water on their backs (making them easy targets for Shock-type weapons) apparently because in life they were walking water vendors to tourists.
- Infinity -1 Sword: The unique hunting rifle "Peggy," belonging to Curtis Sinclair, which you can obtain by doing a sidequest for him after reaching the Serling Hotel, just a little over halfway through the main quest. It deals noticeably more damage than a regular hunting rifle and with a couple decent damage mods, it can One-Hit Kill non-boss Apex Zombies with just a single headshot (especially reliable in taking out Mutators before they can transform), and even bosses other than the Final Boss go down in just a few headshots from it.
- Infinity +1 Sword: Bodycount, a legendary automatic rifle from a hidden sidequest, can delete any single enemy in the game in seconds. Once you've got it, it will chew through anything that isn't either immune to bleeding damage or unique Mutators, and there are only a couple of the latter present in the game.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Funny enough, the players are on the other side of this. When rescuing Curtis in his side quest, they have to wait for him to slowly ride down a chair lift as he can't lower himself down the ruined staircase due to damage that decades of stunt work has done on his hip.
- Irony: When he lets the Slayer into Emma's house the first time, Michael says that it's a miracle that they weren't bitten on the way there. It takes only a few seconds for him to realize he was very wrong about that fact.
- Interface Screw: After going toe-to-toe with Butcho the Clown you find a sign with the same map of Los Angeles you use to fast travel between safehouses. The prompt to fast travel even pops up, but when you use it... the sign and half the boardwalk collapses into the ocean. Fortunately you wake up the next morning washed up on the beach and no worse for wear.
- Ironic Name: HELL-A, which looks like "hella", a slang term that peaked in the 00s and that Angelenos at the time of the game's release distinctly loathe due to it being near nationally passé along with its Bay Area origins and continued usage there.
- King Mook: The game's bosses are all Elite Zombie enemies with a lot more health. Even the Final Boss is the same as the boss you fought a few missions before (a Mutator), just with more health and infinitely spawning reinforcements including Apex Variants.
- Lampshade Hanging: The Slayers get just as fed up with the missing breaker boxes as the players do.
- Last Episode Theme Reprise: The song from the intro movie plays during the final escape sequence from Hell-A.
- Lighter and Softer: Despite the much higher body count and the heightened gorn of the F.L.E.S.H. system, the tone of the game seems to be lighter than the original games. All six of the playable character were happy or content with their lives before the game's events versus being dysfunctional has-beens and/or dead-end-job workers. Then there is the fact that, contrasting the previous games' notion that survivors can only hope to resist but not stop the zombie outbreak, even if a cure isn't found, there WILL be survivors of the Autophage and humanity WILL survive. It's more a matter of just how many will die in the meantime and how much the remnants will be changed.
- Dialogue from Sam B also reveals that all the player characters from the previous games survived those endings, negating the implications that they all died and/or turned into zombies at the end of Riptide. Though he also indicates they ended their association on bad terms when finally rescued.
- Lodged Blade Removal: When the Slayer wakes up after the plane crash, they find themself impaled by a piece of the debris. Which they immediately grab hold of and yank out of their body. This, unsurprisingly, leaves the Slayer with a large, bleeding wound in their gut which they then have to stumble around through the plane's wreckage with in order to find a med kit to patch themself up.
- Mad Artist: In Beverly Hills, you get a series of sidequests from an artist named Francesca who wants you to donate zombie parts. It starts off with donating infected flesh from basic zombies before gathering parts from each apex variant. When it's done, Francesca has made a horse out of the parts with a dead zombie "riding" it, the piece being called "Channel the Charnel Horse." Each Slayer has their own interpretation of the work, but regrets helping bring a horrific piece of art into Hell-A.
- Mercy Invincibility: The first Numen skill you unlock does this. When you take lethal damage, instead of dying, your Fury bar will instead drain to zero and you'll have a couple seconds of invincibility. Your health is still 1, though, so you'll need to heal it back quickly.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: When Jacob encounters Butcho the Clown, many of his insults include referring to the thing as a child predator.
- Monster Clown: The debut of the Butcher class of Apex Infected involves an encounter with one named Butcho the Clown at the Santa Monica Pier.
- Nail 'Em: A nailgun is one of the firearms available in the game. It deals somewhat less damage than a real pistol, and the projectiles are slower than bullets and not hitscan, but it can still kill zombies with a handful of headshots.
- No Ending: By the end of the game, the only main plotline that is resolved is making sure Emma and Sam B escape Los Angeles. Other major plotlines such as the true intentions of Konradt's Numen movement, the Eschaton Group's research into the Autophage, and Tisha's ultimate fate after fleeing her father's lab remain unresolved. The DLC provide a few additional answers, but since they're designed to fit in the middle of the main quest instead of after it, they're unlikely to add further to the game's sudden abrupt ending.
- No-Sell: Certain enemy types are immune to certain damage types, encouraging you to have a varied loadout.
- Enemies infused with fire and electricity are immune to their respective elements.
- Firefighter zombies are immune to fire, corrosion, and shock.
- Slobbers, Hazmat and Caustic-X zombies are immune to corrosion.
- Spiky zombies, Putrefied Slobbers and Clotters are immune to bleed damage.
- New Game Plus: Added in the sixth patch, this mode allows the player to restart a max-level character in a second slot that carries over all the weapons and items on the character while still allowing the original version to be played. To wit: Zombies hit harder and come out of being stunned faster; every Apex Infected variant can appear in all districts right from the start; Fury Mode is available from the start; the level cap is raised from 30 to 40; and lastly, there is one Nominally Important Apex Infected per district that is ranked a few levels above the Slayers per the higher level gap, making them a good bit stronger, while also dropping unique weapons when killed, collectively known as Revenants with assorted names like The Hellfire, the Maw, the Impaler, The Inferno...
- No One Gets Left Behind: MASSIVELY averted. In the chaos of trying to escape zombie-ridden HELL-A, panicking people are doing everything they can to get themselves out, even if it means dooming others. The most blatant example being the pair of soldiers guarding the door into the plane in the introductory cutscene. When another tremor hits and they get a radio call warning that zombies have breached the perimeter, they declare they do not intend to stay there and slam the door shut before telling the pilot they're clear to go and that they need to go now. Even though they're leaving behind more people who are still standing on the loading ramp just outside the door yelling to be let in.
- Noodle Incident: The entire Downer Ending of Dead Island: Riptide is rendered this in one ambient conversation, where Sam B. admits he and Purna are no longer on speaking terms after "the incident on the boat".
- Not Using the "Z" Word: Largely averted as most everyone is fine calling them zombies, but certain characters also have their own terminology. Sebastian calls them body snatchers (presumably as part of his sci-fi cosplay schtick) and Melissa Rodriguez memorably calls them 'fuppets'.
- Organ Drops: About halfway through the game (and right after unlocking Fury Mode), the Slayers re-encounter Patton, a strange man who's been living in the sewers, with one arm elbow-deep up a zombie's corpse (and a giant glove thank god). He reveals that the mutated Elite Mook zombies all have strange special organs in them that let them do otherwise impossible things. For example, making a tiny steel hammer tough enough to explode a zombie head with a tap. From then on you can start harvesting all sorts of useful materials from zombies and special blueprints to make use of them.
- Outside Ride: Though he doesn't get the whole way this way, Jacob manages to hitch a ride on the last flight out of HELL-A by climbing up the plane's landing gear during or before takeoff. Waiting until the bird was already in the air before climbing the rest of the way up and making his way into the plane proper.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: The first appearance of the Inferno Crusher zombie in-game comes at the same time as an aftershock which crumbles part of the nearby highway, spilling fuel all over the lot you're in, which rings you and the Crusher, Dillon, in flames.Jacob: Oi! Dillon! Welcome to my day job.
Dani: Then let's get into it, ye melter!
Ryan: Come on, big boy. Let's fucking do it.
Carla: I'm ready, meathead! Let's light it up! - Properly Paranoid: Say what you want about the US Military but they were prepared for a possible outbreak on US soil. Complete communication blackout to prevent panic, evac shuttles rigged to catch fire in case of an outbreak onboard, Anti-Air missiles to shoot down any planes that has an outbrak on board, temperture checks, alkali designed to break down human tissues to dispose of bodies. It still wasn't enough due to the sheer scale but points for thinking things through.
- Razor-Sharp Hand: Amy's fury makes her fingers as sharp as claws and she's easily able to slice through zombies with just her hands.
- Red Shirt Army: Despite the military fully mobilizing to quarantine Los Angeles, the forces they actually deploy inside the city to man the evacuation centers ultimately collapse and they're all (un)dead aside from a few isolated holdouts by the time the Slayers investigate their overrun bases.
- Sequel Hook: The game essentially ends on a Cliffhanger since the plots revolving around the Numen, Eschaton Group, and Tisha remain unresolved.
- Sequel Number Snarl: Despite being titled as the second game in the series, Dead Island 2 is actually the third game, with Riptide as the actual second game.
- Shoe Slap: The protagonist uses Emma's discarded high-heeled shoe (tossed aside during an outburst she had after the plane crashed) to stab a freshly turned zombie's head when it suddenly revives and attacks.
- Andrea finally loses her temper with the spoiled Emma and lazy (infected) Sam B., and beats them with both with her chancla. The slayer gets to listen to the beatdown over the open radio.
- Shout-Out:
- While trying to find out where Michael is, Jacob can ask Andrea where to find "the last of us".
- After killing a clown zombie, Jacob will report that he has gained an appreciation for "the little things", a subtle nod to Zombieland.
- In Hollywood, there is an award ceremony taking place where the winners are given a trophy called a Romero.
- Jacob occasionally uses "Wakanda" as a synonym for "awesome."
- While blasting the acoustics at Rikky's manor during a sidequest, Jacob will spout the line "All your bass are belong to me".
- You can find a couple of cabinets for arcade adaptations of TimeSplitters and Dambuster's Homefront: The Revolution.
- At one point, Dr. Reed walks you through taking a blood sample from yourself. He then asks you if there are any worm-like creatures inside the blood, to the Slayer's shock. He then remarks that he was just messing with you.
- When Ryan finds Tisha Reed at the Thalia Residences, he responds to her request for help investigating her dad Reuben by saying "this isn't Scooby-Doo."
- One of the challenges is called "Live Long and Prosper".
- It probably isn't a coincidence that the actress known for playing the tough, no-nonsense female lead of a spacefaring science fiction series is named Sheppard.
- In all three sidequests involving Sarah Sheppard and "Ensign" Sebastian, Jacob acts the role of a Space Fox crew member and introduces himself as "Jay-Jay" before quickly stating "no, not that one."
- There are several achievements/trophies that are named Max Headroom, Hotel California, Can't Handle the Truth and Down with the Sickness.
- The Flavor Text for crowbars give one to Half-Life."Whether dealing with alien invasions or the zompocalypse, a crowbar never lets you down. Facts."
- Red's Demise has a Pulp Fiction reference in the Flavor Text. This doubles as a mythology gag for the original Dead Island, where another katana, Zed's Demise, was one of the best melee weapons in the game."Red's dead, baby. Red's dead."
- Completing the postgame sidequest, "Beacon of Hope," gives you a Legendary-tier sword called "The One" modeled after the Kurgan's sword.
- One quest requires you to find the dog tags of a soldier named Mike B. Hicks. Looking at dog tags lying around also reveals the name Abby Rhodes.
- A whiteboard listing radio frequencies at the life guard tower in the Venice Beach sector reveals several military FOBs codenamed Rachel, Phoebe, and Monica
- An instrument manufacturer is called Hisaishi & Ennio
- The sixth game patch includes the introduction of New Game Plus, in which one of the new unique weapons, dropped by killing the "Ravager" Revenant, is a fire axe named "Johnny"
- Smoking Is Cool: At least two of the Slayers (Jacob and Dani) are known smokers, and when they're shown doing it, it's meant to emphasize their badassery and devil-may-care attitude.
- Soft Reboot: Due to the change in developers and likely disfavor over Techland's defection from Deep Silver (coupled with the original writers being long gone), the game is almost a complete departure from the story of the original Dead Island games. Whereas Dead Island, Riptide, and Escape from Dead Island were all fairly closely tied in terms of plot, Dead Island 2 completely abandons every plot thread from the original games, offering a completely different explanation as to the source of the zombie disease (it's a genetic "killswitch" that was always in humanity's DNA, that seems to be unrelated as Sam requires the cure in the end despite being previously immune), a completely different Ancient Conspiracy as the Greater-Scope Villain (the Eschaton Group instead of GeoPharma/The Palm Garden Order), and a completely different Transhuman Treachery group acting as a Wild Card (the Numens instead of Charon). About the only tie to the original games is the presence of Sam B. in a supporting role as Emma's ex-boyfriend, though he does confirm the outbreaks in the first two games did indeed occur, even directly namedropping Banoi at one point. Collectible notes also indicate that the virus Eschaton is using to artificially trigger the Autophage is a variant of Geopharm's pathogen from Banoi, potentially meaning that Eschaton is related to or at least cribbing from Geopharm/The Palm Garden Order.
- Stripped to the Bone: Caustic-X melts zombies down to their skeleton. When their health gets low, it even does this while they're still "alive".
- Take Up My Sword: During the final mission of the main story, after the Slayer makes the choice to stay in Hell-A in order to find the missing Tisha and protect other survivors, Sam B acknowledges their bravery and gives them his weapon, a Legendary-tier sledgehammer named Emma's Wrath, before he and the namesake Emma board Patton's helicopter to escape themselves.
- The Apunkalypse: One of the odder examples seeing as the Slayers were Punk or Punklike before the apocalypse.
- Theme Music Power-Up: After killing the final boss the Slayer has to cut through a horde of zombies between the boss arena and their friends at the helicopter. The music (with lyrics) from the intro cutscene comes on and all the zombies spawn with minimal health and go down in one hit, making it a cathartic and bloody sprint down Hollywood Boulevard.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The government is taking no chances regarding the outbreak, and if a single passenger in an evacuation vehicle suddenly turns zombie measures have been taken to make sure the entire vehicle and everyone on board is completely destroyed. Evacuation buses are equipped with sprinklers loaded with gasoline to incinerate the driver and passengers, and any airplane that reports a zombie on board via radio is immediately shot down via missile.
- Too Dumb to Live: You can find a note about one person's plan to get evacuated first because the sick and wounded are being prioritized before everyone else, which involves riding a bike into a speeding ambulance. If you want to know where you find this note, it's on a corpse stuck underneath the wheel of the ambulance in question.
- Truth in Television: The particular type of prosthetic leg that Amy uses (often called a Running Blade) is an actual type of prosthesis used by real life disabled athletes. As opposed to prosthetic legs that look more human in shape, running blades are designed to have better shock absorption and provide bounce that allows for more comfortable and efficient running, and are much more durable than an everyday walkable prosthetic. Something very valuable for an aspiring Paralympic medalist (or a survivor of the zombie-riddled streets of HELL-A).
- Caustic-X, the substance brought in by the military to dispose of zombie corpses, is actually alkali in nature rather than acidic as its appearance may suggest. Bases are actually far more damaging to organic tissue than acids, and penetrate much more deeply much faster.
- The Unfought: Unlike the first Dead Island or Riptide, or the Dying Light series for that matter, there is no combat against human enemies in Dead Island 2, despite a few notes mentioning the presence of opportunistic criminals with guns robbing people during the chaos. Somewhat justified; there were relatively many human enemies in the first game because the gang situation in Banoi was vastly more dire than even the worst American city, with heavily armed criminals forming an entire strata of society and the local military commander noting that, outside the highly controlled resort area, the island was worse than any of the major conflict zones he had served in. By comparison L.A. would only have a fraction of the number of armed criminals, so you never meet any.
- The Virus: You pass through a number of CDC research sites on the Venice Beach waterfront where lab workers have tried, and largely failed, to understand the Autophage. None of them live long enough to realize the issue, which is that the Autophage isn't a virus; it's a prematurely activated genetic kill switch that just looks like it's being transmitted virally. An Eschaton note you can obtain from Konstantin clarifies that the L.A. outbreak is caused by HK1, an engineered virus that artificially triggers the Autophage prematurely before its set activation date of approximately 2160. Dr. Reed used the virus to cause the L.A. outbreak in order to find Numen for his research into curing the Autophage. It appears to be a variant of Geopharm's HK pathogen from the original Dead Island games, which seemed to act on a similar principle.
- Wearing a Flag on Your Head: When the Screamer formerly known as Nikki Gutte is encountered, she can be seen wearing a pair of shorts/underwear that are clearly bearing the stars and stripes.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The true nature of the Autophage, the fact that it is not actually a virus, but rather an ancient genetic "killswitch" hidden inside humanity's DNA, with potentially some kind of tie to an extradimensional entity or entities is eerily similar to the ending reveal of Dester's Gene from Odium (Gorky 17 in the East). Coincidentally, the music composer of Odium also did work on Dead Island 2, and both Odium and the original Dead Island were made in Poland, but there are no other direct ties between Dead Island 2 and Odium.
- You Are Too Late: The missing persons sidequests all inevitably end with you finding out the missing person you've been looking for is either dead or a zombie. At one point you successfully find one of the missing persons alive, but they absentmindedly walk around a corner to look for a reward for you and promptly get eaten within seconds. Your character even ends up lampshading this in the later missing persons sidequests. One missing person sidequest does end with the Slayer discovering the missing person seems to have managed to escape the city, giving them some feeling of relief, and the final missing person sidequest does end with the Slayer actually managing to save someone, though the Slayer is disappointed that of all the people they've searched for, the only one they managed to save is an eccentric director who put himself in danger by trying to finish his tv show using the zombified cast.
- Your Days Are Numbered: For all of humanity. Reuben reveals in the final act that the Autophage isn't a plague or virus that can be quarantined, but genetic killswitch hidden in all human DNA programmed to exterminate humanity at a predetermined time. And given Reuben's desperation in finding a way to stop it, that time appears to be coming up very soon. Somewhere around 2160 (give or take a dozen years) according to one note of his you find.
- Younger and Hipper: Similar to other concurrent games such as Rage 2, Back 4 Blood, and Ubisoft's XDefiant, Dead Island 2's characters and game world are a considerable tonal and artistic shift towards a more Totally Radical aesthetic, with much more of a "punk mosh pit" design than the characters and environments from the original game.
DLC # 1 - Haus
The Slayers are offered a strange invitation to a house in Malibu that belongs to a mysterious cult, which seems to worship the Konstantin OS. It's set during the events of the main game and can be pursued at any point after the Halperin Hotel mission.
- An Arm and a Leg: For reasons clear only to the cult members, they all had to lose their right arm as part of their "Ascension" and you see lots of their stored bodies perfectly preserved, all missing their right arm.
- Bait-and-Switch: The more the Slayer learns about the cult the more convinced they are that it's a scam that lures members in with debauchery and doomsday warnings before subjecting them to brutal Trial by Combat and mutilation. However, when they meet Konstantin in "person" and save the Ark and it's uploaded human minds it's revealed that the Haus is a Benevolent Conspiracy that is trying to save humanity by preserving those that prove themselves strong enough to survive adversity. This is even more apparent if the Slayer has already completed the main storyline and learned about the Autophage from Reed.
- Benevolent A.I.: Konstantin is a surprising example even though he is responsible for the Slayer being infected in the first place by sending the young couple to meet the Slayer in the prologue. As "he" explains, the Slayer was the best chance of saving the Ark and its stored human minds from the Dark Brains and is genuinely thankful for their help (and the plane was going down anyway thanks to Robert hiding his Zombie Infectee status, the couple Konstantin sent just insured the Slayer got bitten at just the right time to make it to Emma's.)
- Bottomless Pits: "The Deeper" is the second gauntlet within Haus. It vaguely resembles a bizarre nightclub rave house basement minus anything to actually rave to. It's got concrete walls, panels of bright lights against dark shadow, piles of televisions, loads of beer bottles, and above all else, bottomless pits that kill you (or zombies) instantly. All the Slayers have various Bond One-Liners for kicking zombies into the pits.
- Brain Monster: The 'Dark Brains' have surpassed control over their former bodies, and have transformed into the controllers for the Meat Moss that has been consuming the Haus. They can regenerate from damage almost instantly, so the Slayer has to fire specially-designed crossbow bolts that turn their abilities against them, causing a brain-a-splosion.
- Brain Uploading: This is apparently the goal of the Haus cult, though the only supposedly-uploaded member you interact with is a voice of Hope until you take the post-campaign Missing: Zahra where Hope's mother is forced to ride shotgun in your Brink Implant until you can get her uploaded to the Ark to be with her daughter. Further confirming the Brain Uploading is returning to Haus later so you can listen in on a conversation between the two where Zahra is doing a My Beloved Smother routine on her daughter for not applying herself further in the doomsday cult they both joined.
- Chaos Architecture: Some of the locations in the Haus seem to move on a semi-regular basis. Your hand-drawn map has scribbled out an area where the Well in the forest "used to be". You don't see too much of it in action yourself, but at least once when you emerge out of the houses in the fake neighborhood, the grass-free path has disappeared. And it's back the next time you're there.
- Cyborg: How the Ascended achieve their transhuman state. The Slayer becomes one after saving the Ark as a "reward" and is apparently modified enough to serve as a Body Backup Drive for the titular Zahra during the Missing: Zahra quest until they can be uploaded into the Ark by Sharing a Body.
- Devil in Plain Sight: Two of the three main members of the cult are friendly (if unsettlingly weird) but all the recordings you hear of Yong Ho make him *incredibly* sinister, not helped by the fact that his latex suit has full on demon horns coming out of the head. The Slayer only meets Yong Ho, in a sense, after they've been turned into a Screamer by the Autophage, but the Missing: Zahra quest reveals he had Hope's mother sacrifice both arms when she returned to the Haus after running away, so at the very least he wasn't the forgiving type.
- The Secret of Long Pork Pies: Long Piglets, the diner in the forest of Haus, has a pile of human remains inside of it, and is the site where people are forced to eat their sacrificed arm.
- Space Whale Aesop: Invoked trope. Initiates are punished for stepping all over other peoples' lawns by being assaulted with the thralls hidden underneath them, made even worse when said thralls are zombified.
- Tempting Fate: There are signs in the first trials area warning you to stay off the grass with good reason to do so. Later on the Haus covers the sidewalk with grass and forces you to fight zombies trigged by the inevitable stepping.
DLC # 2 - SOLA
The Slayers receive a transmission telling everyone to stay away from the SOLA Festival at all costs... so of course they have to check it out. They find a festival besieged by a living sound wave that instantly turns all who hear it into zombies.
- Bee-Bee Gun: The "Hornet's Nest" Curveball is a grenade version and can take a fair amount of health out of zombies as the swarms of insects will track enemies for a surprisingly long time; it's also easy to find as the game puts it in the path of your main objectives.
- Brown Note: The "Beat" that turned over thirty thousand people at the SOLA Festival into the undead through special speakers placed by the Festival's management. Thanks to Cadenza and the Player Character assembling the audio samples the PC finds, the Beat comes very close to doing this to the entire human race before they correct their mistake. Even then it's acknowledged by all the characters that the Beat is still out there and just contained.
- Call-Back: One of the locations in the new map is a tiki bar called Sinamoi's, where you can find a note about a cocktail named the Svetlana which mentions champagne and diamonds.
- Cassandra Truth: Grace Park tried to tell everyone who attempted to create a festival on her property how dangerous an Eldritch Location it was until the promoters of SOLA finally beat her legally and went ahead with their plans. Given the Mood Speakers and their ability to instantly zombify people that hear the Beat through them, it's blatantly clear SOLA's backers knew damn well what they were doing the entire time.
- Chainsaw Good: The Ripper you can buy from Grace's vending machine is a club type of this trope, revving up as you damage and kill zombies to increase your damage with the sawblade visually spinning faster to indicate your progress. It's no good against the Clotter Apex Variants or any Bleeding-proof zombies, but anything else can get ripped to shreds in seconds at max speed.
- Combat Tentacles: A singular variant. The new Apex Variant the Whipper are Always Female zombies that mutilated themselves enough that they can use their intestines as ranged melee weapons, the first one the Slayer encounters is an independent musician outside Grace's home whom they have a Western-style face-off with before the fight proper starts. Even worse, Whippers can cause the Muffled status effect that prevents you from using your Fury Mode as long as they are around.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: One of the first things you see when you start SOLA is a bunch of people who've been killed by being pushed through a locked security turnstile. It turns out that hundreds of people got turned to zombies at once by the Beat, which triggered a "crowd crush" that turned many of the concert attendees to human soup. Several locations on the SOLA grounds are covered in a textured red stain that's all that's left of them.
- Defector from Decadence: Grace Park, the only surviving person in SOLA, wasn't always a Conspiracy Theorist as she worked in a large engineering firm before becoming disillusioned with how little impact she was having on the world, not to mention the utter soulless-ness of the corporate lifestyle. And then the SOLA festival literally appeared around her and no one heeded her warnings. By the end of the DLC, she's become a Numen, helped save the world from the Beat and is more optimistic despite the Zompocalypse still going on because she knows she's not alone anymore.
- Demonic Possession: When Cadenza fully unleashes the Beat it takes control of her and she starts chanting in an unknown language (a collectible suggests it's ancient Sumerian) while fighting the Slayer to keep them from stopping the Beat and eventually starts attacking the Slayer directly. It takes Grace and the Numen Hivemind to break them out of it and start the Final Boss fight of the DLC.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Beat is the first true example of this in the Dead Island franchise. It's some sort of entity that can activate the Autophage in humans through sound alone (and is all but implied to either have created the Autophage in the first place or at least takes advantage of it) when helped by technological means and if brought into the world by itself would zombify the entire planet almost instantly. It's not even defeated by the end of the DLC, just having the metaphorical door slammed in its face by killing its avatar the Dirge. While the game had inklings of Cosmic Horror Story trappings before, the Beat tips the entire franchise into the trope.
- Eldritch Location: The land around Grace's home is host to a Thin Dimensional Barrier (the main reason why Grace moved there in the first place was to study it) that allows easier access to and manipulation of orgone energy which the promoters of the Festival take advantage of zombify over thirty thousand people using the Mood Speakers. It also has connections to The Multiverse as seen when the Slayer talks to other Cadenzas that are looking for different portions of the Beat for her Quest for Identity. This makes it an ideal spot to bring the Beat through and zombify the whole planet, as the Slayer and Cadenza almost accidentally do. Grace says in ambient dialogue that the Slayer wouldn't believe the weirdness that had occurred around her home over the years.
- Fate Worse than Death: A post-game side mission gives the Slayer a telepathic connection with several people who were killed in the crush when the Beat hit the Main Stage at SoLA. These people have ended up trapped in what's left of their bodies, which is little more than a chunky red smear across the venue's floor. Fortunately, the Slayer is able to perform a mercy kill by destroying a Clotter that's using the shredded flesh as a body.
- Hive Mind: Explored further than in the main game with the main quest and several side quests, the Autophage hivemind even gets an avatar of sorts in the Dirge that can't be defeated by the Slayer at first. The Numen hive mind in particular is key to defeating the Dirge and stopping the Beat as Grace accepting the help of past Numen (and possibly future Numen she theorizes) allows her to break Cadenza out of her Beat-driven psychosis and help the Slayer in the final battle.
-
Hilarious in Hindsight: Konstantin, via the Konstant app, informs the slayer that Cadenza is "a bad girl who is not allowed on the sofa", as she has wandered off without Konstadt's permission. This weird statement is a lot funnier if you beat Haus prior, and now that Konstantin the AI is an uploaded dog. - Humanoid Abomination: The Clotter Apex Variant is this even more so than the other Apex as it's made from the viscera of the slaughtered festival attendees that forms into a tall and lanky humanoid form. The Arc Villain the Dirge materializes as the first of this type with the other Clotters being weaker variants (i.e. you can actually damage them with regular non-bleeding weapons unlike the invincible Dirge). At least one side quest has another Clotter King Mook called the Urge that has trapped the minds of several festival goers within itself which fulfills the "abomination" part of the trope.
- Hypocrite: The Sola Festival is supposedly about being eco-friendly and sustainable as well as promoting good life balance and mental health, but just from a glance at the excess amounts of trash in the receptacles, the blatant merchandising and wanton disregard for the actual environment and safety of the festival attendees (see the red sands used in the Utopia area which are beads of plastic that can melt from high heat and they used them in Southern California to boot which sent at least one person to the hospital.) It makes more sense from the lore you can recover that the whole event was built to capitalize on the Eldritch Location around Grace's than the false message the festival was promoting. Considering it's an obvious dig at the Fyre Festival from Real Life, that's to be expected. For another good example of how fake the whole festival was, an email collectible states the floating turbines that are supposedly supplying green power to the festival are actually fake with the turbines being spun using power from the grid below, and another states that the system that purifies waste water for drinking uses a cooling device so inefficient, that for every gallon of fresh water filtered, almost two gallons are used to cool the purification system.
- Lovecraft Lite: Ho boy. The SOLA storyline outright confirms that the Dead Island franchise takes place in a Cosmic Horror Story with the reveal of the Beat, some sort of extradimensional audio being that can trigger the Autophage without a viral component (and may even have created it) and wants to do it to the entire human race way ahead of the schedule Reed discovered in the backstory. Thanks to Cadenza's desperate yearning to learn more about what being a Numen means, she and the Slayer almost summon it into reality before Grace breaks them free of the Beat's influence and they stop its avatar the Dirge, yet the Beat still goes on and none of them expect it stay silent forever.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Enjoying that new Ripper you got from Grace's vending machine and it's amazing Bleeding damage? Sure you are! Now meet the Clotter Apex Variant who also does Bleeding damage and is immune to your little chainsaw on a stick. Oh, and the Final Boss the Dirge is also a Clotter, so save the Ripper for the other zombies and use your other weapons on them.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: The audio samples the Slayer gives to Cadenza allows her to start bringing the Beat fully into existence to get answers about what Numens are, but almost results in the entire human race being zombified before she and the Slayer kill the Dirge and stop it. In the Slayer's defense they were looking for information about stopping the Beat from reoccurring and only got on board with Cadenza's plan after they gave Cazenza the various parts of the Beat collected from the others.
- Shout-Out: One of the quests is tilted Don't Stop Retrievin'.
- Saw Blades of Death: Grace's specialty when it comes to weapons. You can get the Ripper from her vending machine (with blueprints for it on her walls) and completing the DLC gets you a sawblade launcher that can charge up and shoot several blades at once.
- The Multiverse: During the main quest line the Slayer interacts with different versions of Cadenza via visions who are all searching for a complete sample of the Beat and give the Slayer their own findings to give to their Cadenza. Which is not a great idea.
- Turbine Blender: As the Slayer fights their way to the main stage, they will encounter a downed wind turbine (actually an electric fan) blocking their way, and once it activates, the Slayer is supposed to lure the surrounding zombies into it and turn them into slurry.
- Wind Turbine Power: Aside from solar pannels, the SOLA music festival is powerd by airborne windturbines, which are actually electric fans, set up to make it seem that the festival is sustainable, when it really isn't.