Zombie

Zombies stand a rung below the vampires who make them, forming a secondary class of undead produced by anyone who has put on the Stone Mask. Nearly any material can serve as raw stock, from long-buried remains to stitched-together hybrid bodies. The usual method is bloodsucking: a vampire drains a victim while passing along a vampiric extract, and the drained person rises again as a creature that no longer registers pain. Trained practitioners of the Ripple are able to fight off the transformation before it takes hold.

Whatever their origin, zombies move with greatly amplified strength and speed. The undead of the first storyline tended to be weaker specimens that lacked the regeneration and other gifts of true vampires, but that gap grows fuzzier in the second and third parts of the saga. A number of them cling to a corrupted echo of their living personality, and because their fighting instincts are often rooted in how they behaved as humans, each one attacks in its own hard-to-predict way. Rotting odor, a grotesque form, and an endless craving for human flesh are common markers, though many conceal their monstrous state behind disguises. Bruno Bucciarati is a rare exception, since his undead condition stems from a partial revival by Gold Experience.

Certain zombies wield specialized methods. Four of Dio's servants, Page, Jones, Plant, and Bornnam, share the Blood Vessel Needle Attack, sprouting small antennae from their skulls to drink blood, which they turn on Straizo all at once. A different flavor appears in the sixth story, where the Stand Limp Bizkit spins zombie-like beings into existence as tangible yet invisible spirits that crawl free of their own corpses; its user, Sports Maxx, takes on similar power and hunger, and these entities are labeled corpses rather than zombies. In the spin-off novel JORGE JOESTAR, the undead Antonio Torres slays the Motorize siblings and William Cardinal, who rise as zombies themselves and set out to kill Jorge.