Video Game / Plants vs. Zombies: Fusion

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Plants vs. Zombies: Fusion is a Unity-based Fan Game of Plants vs. Zombies 1 developed by Chinese game developer Blue Fly. It was first released on June 14, 2024, and is constantly updated up to this day.

Fusion plays like the original Plants vs. Zombies, except that you can place compatible plants on top of each other to create fused plants with capabilities of both their fusions, or even new abilities entirely. This is fortunate, as the game also introduces a variety of new zombies with their own special capabilities, as well as several minigames that will put your skills to the test.

Compare to Plants vs. Zombies Hybrid Version, a fangame that also features many combinations of plants.

Plants Vs. Zombies Fusion contains examples of:

• Ability Rewrite: If a Squash is placed within a Squash Pumpkin, they function differently — they will no longer leap onto zombies, but will spawn a mini version of themselves every 3 seconds that bounces over to zombies up to 6 times to repeatedly crush them for 1/8 the damage of the squash inside. Like their full-sized counterparts, a Mini-Inferno Squash will also cause a Jalapeno flame effect upon each bounce but much weaker than a full-sized one, while a Mini-Squalour will spawn a Squash seed packet every time it kills a zombie.
• Abnormal Ammo: This is par the course for most plants, but some of them stand out:
  • Chomp-Shooter and Chewzilla fire zombie pieces after eating a zombie, which pierce through zombies they hit.
  • Salad-Pult throws "tacos" with the filling being corn and cabbage, and the shell being a watermelon rind. These explode into a corn melon projectile and a stuffed melon projectile, which were used by two of its possible pre-fusions Corn-Pult and Stuffed Melon.
  • Wither-Pult, an upgrade of Salad-Pult, also throws "tacos", except the filling is cabbage along with an entire garlic. These too also explode into multiple projectiles, except also adding the garlic poison effect.
• Achievements in Ignorance: The zombies ignore Shroomageddon's attempts at nuclear deterrence in what is implied to be a sort of Lensman Arms Race for the Odyssey characters because they don't understand what a nuclear explosion can do to begin with; being hit by his non-radioactive freezing spores is just another Tuesday morning for the Odyssey zombies.
• Action Bomb: Besides the usual Jack-in-the-box zombie, there's also more variants of it:
  • King Clown zombies are upgraded Jack-in-the-box zombies. Every second, they have a random chance to prime themselves, somewhat akin to a Jack-in-the-box zombie exploding, but more likely. When killed while primed, they explode a 3x3 area then turn into a Jack-in-the-box zombie. Magnet-shroom removes this ability by taking away its box.
  • Pogo King Clown zombies have a lot of health and will bounce in place near the back of the lawn, then jump forwards 4 squares, bypassing Tall-Nuts. They then hop over plants like a Pogo Zombie but can now be blocked by Tall-Nuts afterwards and lose their pogo stick. Receiving Knock Back from an Umbrella Leaf variant will also make them lose their stick. If they're killed while still having a pogo stick, they explode a 3x3 area and turn into a King Clown, but if their pogo stick is broken, this won't happen on death.
  • Queen Jill-in-the-Box is a King Mook version of all of these. Not only can she summon a 5x5 area of King Clown or Pogo King Clown zombies, but she can also create an explosion across the column she's in, which bypasses the resistance of plants specifically made to protect from such explosions. Furthermore, any Jack-in-the-box explosion (including her own) will heal her for 3000 of her 32000 HP.
  • The Undying Wraith will explode like a Jack-in-the-box Zombie when killed, taking out most Plants in a 3x3 area. This makes things especially dicey when combined with its Dash Attack that passes through plants, even Tall-Nuts.
• Adaptational Badass: Some original plants got a Balance Buff to make them much more viable in Fusion, while some zombies got reworked into becoming stronger.
  • Split Pea is now obtained by fusing Peashooter and Repeater. To balance this out, it will fire both forwards and backwards when a zombie is within its forward or backwards range, and its backwards projectiles will now turn around and go forwards as soon as they reach your house.
  • Umbrella Leaf now gains the ability to stop Mecha-Nut Zombie and Giga Mecha-Nut Zombie.
  • The freaking Fertilizer from Zen Garden also gets this, as it's used outside that mode, instead of just growing plants, it restores the HP of Wall plants, fully recharges a plant's cooldown and can act as a substitute Upgrade seed packet.
  • Dancing Zombies were reworked into acting as Pole Vaulting Zombies that spawn four more backup dancers upon successfully vaulting, which are now Pole Vaulting Zombies as well. The Michael Jackson version is also back as Michael Zombie, now summoning four Dancing Zombies.
  • Zombie Bobsled Team was changed to be a slower red Zomboni that has more health, doesn't leave an ice trail, and becomes much faster when on a Zomboni's ice trail.
  • Yeti Zombie now has a freezing aura that freezes plants in a 3x3 radius around it.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The Zombotany Zombies, previously one-off creations for their respective minigames, are now a mainstay of most gamemodes. While Wall-nut and Tall-nut Zombies are typically only shorthand for higher health and damage resistance on other zombie types, many different flavors of Peashooter Zombies are also introduced to up the danger factor, all the way up to the miniboss Professor Cherry-Z, a Lightning Bruiser Cherry Gatling Zombie who is also stated to be Dr. Zomboss's mentor.
  • Hypno-Shroom's idea that the zombies are Not Evil, Just Misunderstood is a more widespread movement in this universe. While most followers are simply other Hypno-Shroom fusions, Napalm-Shroom also dreams of being able to cook for both the plants and the zombies one day.
• Adaptational Superpower Change:
  • Coffee Bean has been removed as a normal Plant, since Mushrooms are now always awake but cost 75 more sun during the day. Instead, it's been remade as a currency item used to upgrade Silver plants into Gold plants, and trigger the Limit Break of those Gold plants.
  • Since you're allowed to pick two of the same Plant in a loadout (with the additional plant costing more), Imitater now functions as a 100-cost, long-recharge Plant cloner. Planting Imitater on another Plant will give you a seed packet of that plant, which can then be planted in a suitable spot.
  • Magnet-Nut from Plants vs. Zombies Hybrid Version is a Wall-Nut/Magnet-Shroom hybrid that has high HP like Wall-Nut and attracts metallic items like Magnet-Shroom. In Fusion, its ability is entirely different — it causes non-star straight-shooting projectiles that enter a 3x3 radius to form an Orbiting Particle Shield around it that damages zombies who touch the projectiles.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Sun-Shroom in the original Plants Vs. Zombies hates sun and feels that "sun is crass". Over here, they embrace it and feels that it is indispensable.
• Airborne Mook: Besides the classic Balloon zombie, there are also a few more:
  • The Bucket-Copter zombie is an upgraded Balloon Zombie with a robotic bucket helicopter in place of a balloon. This makes it immune to the Blover, and when it's removed, you still have a buckethead-durability zombie to deal with.
  • The Zomppelin is a slow flying enemy with a ridiculous amount of health that drops incredibly powerful bombs on plants it flies over. It also doesn't get instantly blown away by Blover, although Blover and its variants will push it back a bit.
  • The Kirov Zompellin is a slow flying enemy that spawns Kirov Drones, each of which also fly and drop bombs on plants. It sports even more health than the regular Zomppelin and is only pushed back a bit by the Blover.
  • The Purgatory Zombie Skystrider Mecha initially starts off as a grounded unit, but once it loses half its health it turns into an airborne foe that drops bombs on your troops while summoning Kirov Zompellins in every lane every few seconds.
  • The UFO Yeti flies over plants, stunning those underneath it for a few seconds, but turns around and retreats once it reaches near the house. If it manages to flee, it summons a number of winter zombies.
• All Your Powers Combined: In many cases, a plant fusion shares the same abilities as its constituents, but often boosted even further. Cherrizilla for example is made from a Peashooter, a Wall-Nut, a Cherry Bomb, and two Chompers. It can tank damage like Wall-Nut, eats zombies like Chomper, and spit out projectiles like a Peashooter, which explode a 3x3 area like a Cherry Bomb, but has many more additional abilities on top of that like healing itself when biting/eating zombies, regenerating from cherry explosions, or blocking jumping zombies.
• Alpha Strike:
  • The Sniper DLC has the Golden Commander Snipea's special ability, which allows the player to click on it to target a zombie. All Snipeas will then target that zombie and shoot it all at once. This can be very useful against Purgatory Zombies, but it has a hefty 30 second cooldown.
  • Buck-Shroom Squad's side-grade Iron Drone Squad allows the player to click the drone controller to generate a crosshair, then click a specific square to target it and have its drones focus on attacking that square. Holding Ctrl while targeting a square using one of them will cause all of your drone controllers on the field to send their drones to attack that square.
  • Napalm Shroom's side-grade Lava Shroom acts as one for Napalm-Shrooms. When clicked on, it will launch its attack, and all Napalm-Shrooms in a 3x3 area around it will also launch their napalm melons at the highest HP zombie on its row or adjacent ones.
• Alternate Continuity: There are a number of Story Breadcrumbs implying the game's universe has rewritten the original franchise's story to acknowledge the fusion mechanic and stronger zombies:
  • Zomboss is no longer an isolated instance of an intelligent zombie; here, he got his canon knowledge from Professor Cherry-Z.
  • An arms dealing organization known as the Gfishtus Corps is the presiding technological superpower, rather than Z-TECH.
  • With increased emphasis on Hypno-Shroom's hypnotism mechanics and a number of details implying plants and zombies can still cooperate without coercion (or at least did once), their ideas of making peace with the zombies has a bigger following, complete with different ideas on how exactly that can be accomplished. The Grand Garden and RV used in Harvest Mode are also shown to be managed by a non-hypnotized zombie, indicating at least a handful of them work directly with the plants.
  • There are references to rampant bioengineering using knowledge shared by both plants and Zombies, Mutagenic Food, and extremely rapid adaptations, implying the fusion mechanic (and the establishment of Zombotany zombies as an actual population) is the product of mad science and reckless endeavors by both sides causing an outbreak of new species.
• Anti-Air:
  • Most Blover fusions will blow away Balloon Zombies. However, these only pushes back/slows down Zomppelins and Kirov Zomppelins, and does not affect Bucket-Copter Zombies.
  • Any fusion with Cactus will turn a plant into one of these, usually giving them properties that attack aerial foes. Notably, Magneto-Cactus (Magnet-Shroom + Cactus) as well as Magnetar (Stardrop + Magneto-Cactus) have unique properties with their projectiles — any Zomppelin or Kirov Zomppelin that gets hit by 10 of these magnetized anti-air projectiles will instantly crash regardless of health.
  • Downplayed with Magnet-Shroom. Its ability to take away metallic objects means that it can and will One-Hit Kill the explosive-carrying flying drones spawned by the Kirov Zomppelin.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • Considering you're going to need a lot more copies of plants, especially ones with long recharge times like Cherry Bomb, the game allows you to select each seed packet twice, albeit with the copy being twice as expensive as the original one.
  • Starting from 2.6, Radiant Pot in Odyssey and Odyssey Purgatory will now turn into Radiant Pad when the level changes to Pool, instead of being turned into normal Lily Pads. They will change back once the level becomes Roof.
  • Gatling Frenzy-Shroom will immediately blow itself up should any zombie get within its scaredy-shroom radius. The only exception is Bungee Zombie, since it randomly spawns right on your plants and would be unfair if it triggered the self-destruct.
  • Laser Pumpkin has a recipe as complex as any other Epic Odyssey plant, but to prevent having to replant it over and over, the Common Odyssey Mechanized Pumpkin has the much simpler recipe of one Pumpkin and two Magnet Shrooms and if in the same magnet network as a Laser Pumpkin, all but one of the Mechanized Pumpkins will be turned into Laser Pumpkins.
  • In 3.2, plantable versions of buckets and football helmets were added, allowing them to be summoned on demand to complete any associated fusions (particularly Football-Shroom, which is a precursor to Napalm-Shroom) at a small price. However, Jack-in-the-Boxes and Chrono Cores still need to be looted or generated by a Sun Magnet respectively.
• Anti-Armor: Many plants whose fusions incorporate Magnet-Shroom or Buckets often have the ability to deal extra damage to enemy armor.
• Anti-Regeneration:
  • The Giga Football Striker is a Purgatory Zombie who not only prevents all plants on the field from regenerating while it's alive, but also steals a percent of any would-be regeneration effects, healing itself instead.
  • One Purgatory effect makes the Giga Rugby-Nut prevent any plant it bites from regenerating any health for a short while.
• Anti-Structure:
  • The Cursed Ladder Zombie has a ladder that is only placed on defensive plants. Once that happens, all damage (up to 8000) dealt to the Cursed Ladder Zombie will instead be redirected to the plant it's placed on, causing your own plants to destroy your own wall.
  • Zombies that apply Curse stacks are made to kill walls. When curse is applied, curse stacks proportionate to the plant's max HP is added. Once this amount exceeds the plant's current HP, the plant instantly dies. This means that curse-applying zombies can kill Obsidian Tall-Nuts and even the otherwise Nigh-Invulnerable Bedrock Tall-Nut, bypassing whatever Scratch Damage reduction they have.
  • When Ancient Yeti Whale Knight is in its enraged state, its cherry shot attacks add a Percent Damage Attack that bypasses the Scratch Damage of several defensive plants. This starts low, but increases by 0.3% per shot fired, up to 30% of a plant's Max HP.
• Anti-Vehicle: Many Spikeweed Fusions can instakill weaker vehicles like Zombonis, or Catapults. However, stronger vehicles are able to survive this, though they take very heavy damage per hit:
  • Spikesidian (Spikerock + Ice-Shroom mixed with Spikerock + Jalapeno) is the premier anti-vehicle unit, capable of not only dealing massive damage to grounded zombies and especially vehicles, but also has a massive amount of HP alongside regeneration to make sure it doesn't die. Its Odyssey upgrades take this further, with one of them making it take 95% less damage, and another making it deal 5x damage while also unlocking Obsidian Spike-Nut, which can be placed on water, is crush-immune, and block aquatic vehicle zombies.
  • Spike-Spreader (Spikeweed + Threepeater) fires piercing spikeweed projectiles down three lanes that deal 5 damage to non-vehicle zombies on the ground. If they hit a grounded vehicle, however, they deal 30% of that vehicle's Max HP.
• Aquatic Mook:
  • Zombarine and Sharkmarine act as the aquatic equivalent to Zomboni, having high HP while moving forwards and instantly killing any plants they touch. However, they are both faster, especially the Sharkmarine.
  • Whale Rider Yeti is a variant of Dolphin Rider Zombie who rides a Beluga Whale that jumps forward three squares, bypassing Tall-Nuts, and then turns around to eat your plants from behind after landing. There are also three Zombotany versions of these that can fire pea shots or exploding cherry shots while riding a red dolphin. These make them aquatic equivalents to the Peashooter Zombie, the Cherry Bomber Zombie, and the Gatling Cherry Newspaper Zombie.
  • Inverted with the Ancient Yeti Whale Rider, who is a King Mook of the Whale Rider Yetis and its variants, but is actually a grounded zombie riding a terrestrial whale monster and does not move on aquatic lanes.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • Football-Shroom, is obtained by fusing Fume-Shroom with Magnet-Shroom, then giving it a Bucket and a Football Helmet. Not only does it deal extra damage to zombies with armor, but it will deal its full damage to both the armor and the zombie underneath it.
  • Napalm-Shroom is a fusion of Football-Shroom and Summer Melon, and all damage from its melon projectiles ignores enemy armor. With the right Odyssey Buffs, it's possible for a Napalm-Shroom setup to kill an Abyssal Gargantuar before removing its helmet.
• Ascended Extra: The Chinese Vampire zombies in Plants vs. Zombies were a one-off Easter Egg that could be seen if you scrolled down the achievement page. Here, they're an enemy in their own right called the Undying Wraith.
• Asteroids Monster: When Michael Zomboni is defeated, it splits into a Michael Zombie, a Zomboni, and a Bobsled Zombie.
• Attack Drone:
  • Fusing Blover with Cactus produces a Thornball drone which attacks aerial enemies in its lane, and does not occupy any grid space, allowing a plant to be planted in the same spot (except other Thornballs).
  • Fusing Windgourd with Cactus gives Bloverthorn Pumpkin, which not only periodically spawns Thornballs in the 8 adjacent squares around it, but also has its own Thornball wingman which homes in on aerial foes on the lawn and repeatedly fires spikes at them.
  • Fusing Bloverthorn Pumpkin with Magblover gives Laser Pumpkin, which not only periodically spawns Laser Drones in the 8 adjacent squares around it (and replaces Thornballs in those squares), but also has its own Laser Drone wingman which homes in on aerial foes and repeatedly fires a piercing laser at them. It has a sidegrade in Chaser Pumpkin, whose drones act as Action Bombs that fly into an enemy and explode like a Cherry Bomb, and are regenerated slowly.
  • Fusing Buck-Shroom Squad with Blover gives Iron Drone Squad, which acts as a drone tower with a drone that can be repositioned to attack a tile of the player's choice, functioning similar to the Mortar Monkey or Heli Pilot from Bloons Tower Defense. The chosen square will be pelted by a massive hail of metal bullets, dealing high damage (especially against armor) and causing a lot of Knock Back.
  • On the Zombie side, the Kirov Zompellin will constantly spawn Kirov Drones that fly over plants and drop bombs on any plants beneath, often one-shotting non-defensive plants.
• Author Avatar: An Endoflame is often used as Blue Fly's avatar. Meanwhile, artist Gfishtus is represented as the collective Gfishtus Corps, an arms dealing conglomerate responsible for designing the Giga Mecha-Nut and Sharkmarines.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Starry-Shroom is a fusion of Starfruit and Scaredy-Shroom, which fires projectiles in a 5-way like Starfruit, but much more rapidly. However, it becomes afraid... as soon as a zombie goes within its 5-way attack range, turning it useless. It however pairs well with Bold Pumpkin (Scaredy-Shroom + Pumpkin), which removes the fear from all Scaredy-Shroom fusions within.
  • Gatling Frenzy-Shroom is a fusion of Gatling Doom with Scaredy-Shroom. It has a Gathering Steam ability, allowing it to shoot both normal projectiles and mini Doom-Shrooms faster than Gatling Doom. However... if a non-bungee zombie goes within a 3x3 range of it, it blows up like a Doom Shroom and dies. Again, Bold Pumpkin can remove this weakness.
  • All the non-defensive base Titan fusions count. They take up two spaces, and while they may have 1000 HP, they lack resistance to instakills and crushing, and while their capabilities are powerful, they can often be outdone by two separate plants. However, many of these Titan fusions can be further upgraded into Odyssey Fusions which do live up to their size and power.
  • Though the minigames teach the player that the "official" strategy for dealing with Abyssal Gargantuars is to make a Cobliterator, this is heavily RNG-dependent in regular Odyssey modes (requiring the player to roll for his unlock and the option of his modifiers.)
• Badass Boast: Four of the Purgatory zombies have one in their almanac entries.
  Pozeidon: The tides are mine to command. Run if you wish — but no one outruns the sea.
  Giga Football Striker: No matter where you run, I will find you.
  Skystrider Mecha: Aerial dominance achieved. Your defenses are obsolete.
  Jackson Worldwide: You think this is a game? This garden's my stage now. Let's see how long you last.
• Bad Moon Rising: Normally, fusing Helios Cabbage with a Plantern will give you Selene Cabbage, which summons a moon that heals all your plants on the field. However, if you perform the fusion at night, there's a very rare 2% chance you get Arteris Cabbage instea, which summons a blood moon that spawns souped-up hypnotized zombies on your side.
• Balance Buff:
  • Split Pea is formed by fusing a peashooter three times. While this would normally have been a Power-Up Letdown in the original game, in this game, the reversed shots will change direction after reaching the house, giving it essentially 3x the firepower of a peashooter.
  • Threepeater has a sun cost reduction of 50, making the amount required for one be 275, not only that, when one is placed in the top-most and bottom-most lanes, it acts like a Repeater in the top-most/bottom-most lane.
• Bandit Mook:
  • When Solar-Nut zombie is on the lawn, it will drain 25 sun from you every 15 seconds.
  • When Twin Solar-Nut zombie is on the lawn, it will drain 5 sun from you every 15 seconds. However, like Twin Solar-Nut, it's a Scratch Damage Enemy that takes at most 20 damage per hit, and when it gets hit it will drain 5 sun from you.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Millennium Dragon and Warden is a Sequential Boss. In its first three phases, it'll steal your mallet, your glove, and your shovel respectively, preventing you from using them for the phase while also using them against the player. In its final phase, it'll steal all three and use them against you every few seconds.
• Begin with a Finisher:
  • Doominactus (Doominator-Shroom + Cactus) will unleash a rapid Spread Shot spray when it's initially fused or planted. After this, it won't use this attack unless you fuse it back to Doominator-Shroom and then plant a Cactus on it to fuse it again.
  • Snow Queen's first attack is highly likely to be her Sword Beam, which deals 1000 damage to all plants in front of her. If your squishier plants (mostly 300 HP) aren't in a Pumpkin or next to an Obsidian Tall-Nut or Giga-Mecha Nut, say goodbye to them, and those that do survive will also be inflicted with a freeze status that makes them a sitting duck unless they're immune to it.
• Boom, Headshot!:
  • Every six attacks, Sniper Pea will perform a headshot that will One-Hit Kill any zombie that isn't a Purgatory Zombie or Dr. Zomboss. This can be reduced to three with one of Buckshot Commando/Synchronizer Snipea's Odyssey upgrades.
  • Every six attacks, Alpha Hitman will perform a headshot that will One-Hit Kill any plant it targets — including those that normally take Scratch Damage or are flat-out invulnerable to damage.
• Boring, but Practical: Obsidian Tall-Nut provides defense and no offense (unless you go for the Potato Mine variant). It however, is ridiculously good at doing so — it has a gargantuan amount of health, blocks jumpers, takes a maximum of 200 damage max per hit, and can't be instantly killed by crushing attacks. They also heal a bit when an Ice-Shroom is used or if a Jalapeno explosion happens in their lane. Furthermore, all Obsidian Tall-Nuts divide the damage among themselves whenever one takes damage, but they can all heal over time to counteract it. Its Odyssey buffs make it an extremely good tank — Protection allows it to take damage in place of the plant to the left and right of it (and spread it out across others of its kind), and the other triples its already massive 32000 HP to 96000 HP.
• Brother–Sister Incest: In a Black Comedy spin on the Peashooter/Sunflower ship, the Peashooter half of the Pea Sunflower is described as a siscon for his Sunflower half verbatim. He's in complete denial and tells everyone he's just practicing good form for lawn defense.
• Butt-Monkey: A number of Sea-Shroom's fusions make Sea-Shroom itself into one. In order to activate the abilities of these fusions, they need to have a Sea-Shroom planted onto them... where they proceed to eat/consume that sea-shroom to activate their ability.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • The Titan Apeacalypse Turret loses health whenever it fires a shot, until it gets to a certain threshold. However, it also has a Critical Status Buff ability that allows it to deal more damage and shoot faster the lower its health is.
  • Winter Bamboo Shoot has 1500 HP, and deals damage equal to the hp of the zombie that touches it while losing an equal amount of health. If its health is lower than the zombie's, it'll deal its remaining HP in damage to the zombie and die. This recoil damage cannot be absorbed by plants that take damage in place of other plants. Most of its fusions have Regenerating Health, or Regenerating Shield, Static Health to mitigate the damage.
  • Winter Bamboo Archer's (Winter Bamboo Shoot + Spruce Archer) projectiles deal 60 damage, and will use its own HP above 300 to deal extra damage up to the target zombie's current HP. Unlike Winter Bamboo Shoot, this recoil damage can be absorbed by plants that take the damage in place of it.
• Cast from Money: Sun Starfruit functions like the Magnifying Grass from Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, where it needs to be tapped to attack at the cost of 25 sun. In this case, it fires out a spread of much stronger-than-normal starfruit projectiles.
• Chain Lethality Enabler: Whenever Magical Cattail kills a zombie, she will summon a magic drone that fires 60 shots in front of her, each dealing 100 damage. A zombie killed by this triggers this ability again, allowing her to summon even more magic drones. This can be made easier by her Odyssey abilities, one of which makes her basic attack go from 160 to 800 damage, and the second makes her drone's shots deal 3x the damage.
• Challenge Run:
  • Odyssey Mode is quite difficult already, having you go through 21 levels of increasingly powerful zombies. Odyssey Purgatory takes that a step further, forcing you to choose a Zombie buff at the end of each level after you pick a plant buff, and every three levels you have to add one more Purgatory Zombie for the next end-of-zone level.
  • Then, there's Odyssey Purgatory's Cursed Mode, which gives several restrictions to Odyssey Purgatory. Firstly, you cannot buy any upgrades with more than 15000 initial point cost, meaning that the very powerful, 20000-point 5% Damage-Increasing Debuff per hit upgrade is straight out, while you're prohibited from any way to get or save more points (Avarice-Shroom and Gold Stygian Kelp are banned). Secondly, plants take 2x damage. Thirdly, all Plant healing received is cut by 30%. Fourth, zombies receive a further 50% less damage and their health scaling over levels increases faster. Finally, you can select up to two Plant buffs at the end of a level... but for every Plant Buff you choose instead of skipping, you have to pick a Zombie buff.
• Character Select Forcing: Odyssey Evolution has the Evolved Pogo King Clown zombie that will cause an explosion and regenerate to full if he's killed while still having his pogo stick by most plants. Not only that, he does not lose his pogo after taking Knockback from Umbrella Leaf fusions. Because of this, you need to have very specific plants to beat him, such as Tall-Nut fusions or Tesla Magnet (which take away his pogo), Chomper fusions (which eat him whole) or Hypno-Shroom fusions that fire hypnotizing projectiles (which turn him into your indestructible unit).
• Charged Attack:
  • Melon-Shroom (Melon-Pult + Fume-Shroom) will charge its shot if no zombies are in its 4-tile range in front, giving it +30 damage for every second it charges up to +150.
  • In addition to acting like Melon-Shroom, Napalm-Shroom can also be used like a manual plant akin to Cob Cannon. However, it has a short reload time, but allowing it to hold its charge (maximum 4800) will increase its already high armor-piercing splash damage even more. One Odyssey upgrade allows it to charge up even further to 13200.
• Chinese Vampire: The Undying Wraith is a zombie that resembles a classic Chinese Jiangshi. Not only does it hit extremely hard, it also performs a Dash Attack that bypasses even Tall-Nuts and deals massive damage to plants in its path. Since its basic attack is performed by clawing and not biting, it can kill Hypno-Shrooms without getting hypnotized. Finally, its threat doesn't end when beaten, as it explodes a 3x3 area after it's killed. Strangely enough, the Undying Wraith doesn't move by hopping, but rather by floating slightly off the ground.
• Clone by Conversion: If a Laser Pumpkin is in the same magnetic system as more than one Mechanized Pumpkin, it will transform all but one of them into more Laser Pumpkins. The one remaining pumpkin isn't transformed, as having one in the magnetic system allows the Laser Pumpkin to become immune to Jack-in-the-box explosions and also forces Digger Zombies to surface.
• Combat Medic:
  • Tesla Umbrella is not only capable of using a targeted laser to attack up to 6 zombies (including airborne ones), but also has a 3x3 area aura shield that takes damage for other plants, and it can also provide healing to plants within a 3x3 radius, at 5% max HP per tick multiplied by Lumos level. Each of its two Odyssey buffs strengthen its attacking power or its healing/defensive power respectively.
  • Boreal Lifereaver has a powerful sawblade attack that deals incredible amounts of constant, single-target damage and homes in on new targets should its current target be vanquished, gaining energy stacks as it does so. Once it has 60+ energy stacks, it can expend stacks to heal all plants around it, with the healing divided by the number of plants affected. Each of its two Odyssey buffs strengthen its attacking power (by increasing the lifetime of the sawblade projectile) and defensive ability (no longer causing the heal to be divided).
• Composite Character: Peashooter and most of the pea plants introduced in the first game besides Threepeater, are separate seed packets from each other, with Gatling Pea being an upgrade plant for the Repeater, in PvZ Fusion, all of the latter are fusions of the former, requiring either an Ice Shroom (for Snow Pea) or another Peashooter (for Repeater, Split-Pea, and Gatling Pea) to get them on the lawn.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Purgatory Zombies are immune to all forms of Hypnosis, and cannot be eaten by Chompers. They also don't get instakilled by the Teleportation effect, instead taking damage. Furthermore, they have a maximum damage cap per hit, meaning that a Snipea's Boom, Headshot! won't instakill them. The only exception is Dark Rugby Gatling Marshal after his horse is killed and he's forced to dismount.
• Cowardly Mooks: Dolphin Newspaper Zombie is a newspaper zombie with a good bit of health as well as newspaper health (720 each). When his newspaper is destroyed, he'll immediately turn around and flee, and if he manages to go offscreen, he'll come back in fully healed with an intact newspaper.
• Cower Power: Floaty-Shroom (Scaredy-Shroom + Blover) creates a floating drone that causes all Scaredy-Shroom fusions in a 3x3 area to become invulnerable when in their cowering state, getting ignored by zombies which will go on to attack those behind it.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: As a Chinese work, the Almanac semi-frequently references wuxia and xianxia tropes (which the country codified) and their native inspirations as part of the in-game setting, despite it being visually unchanged from American suburbia.
• Critical Status Buff: Both Titan Apeacalypse Turret and Titan Apeacalypse Railgun get increasing amounts of damage the lower their health gets. This is combined with their odd quirk where attacking will also cause them to lose HP until it reaches around 500.
• Crutch Character: Sunshooter is one of the very first fusions that you can make and it's intended to be an early-game plant. While it can produce sun like a Sunflower and its shots do good damage while producing sun, this ability falls off greatly later as the player finds much better ways to obtain sun, and fusions with far more impressive abilities start becoming available. Notably, Sunshooter is one of the few Peashooter fusions that doesn't have a further fusion.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff:
  • Kelp projectiles cause a stacking debuff on Aquatic Mooks that makes the affected zombie take more and more percentage damage. Once this reaches 30 stacks, the zombie is instantly killed regardless of health.
  • The Enflamed status causes zombies to take 50% more damage from attacks, in addition to making the zombie explode on death and spread the status. An Odyssey modifier changes this to 150% more.
  • One of the gold-tier Odyssey modifiers makes zombies take 5% more damage every time they're hit by any attack, and this stacks without limit. This makes a swarm of Laser Pumpkin drones exceptionally useful, as their Death of a Thousand Cuts will also increase this debuff extremely quickly.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Gatling Doom, despite being a fusion of Gatling Pea and Doom-Shroom with the destructive power you'd expect from it, is stated to be one of the friendliest Plants in the Almanac, despite others calling it dangerous and forbidden. Of course, the zombies turned to ashes would like to disagree.
• Death Dealer: The Magneton's alternate skin makes it into one, up to replacing the texture of its projectiles to cards.
• Death or Glory Attack: Using the Avarice-Shroom. When it explodes, it summons a Purgatory Zombie based on the current area on its tile and the elite minions of that Purgatory Zombie in each row. If you manage to defeat the Purgatory Zombie, you get a massive amount of sun, coins, five random plant boxes, and valuable points to use in the Points shop. Of course, given that it spawns a boss-level enemy as well as one tough enemy in each row, you had better make sure you have the ability to defeat them, or your run is over. It used to be even more risky/rewarding before Patch 2.6, where it summoned an Abyssal Gargantuar on top of all this, but killing both the Abyssal Gargantuar and Purgatory Zombie gave an even heftier amount of points.
• Difficult, but Awesome: One of Vulcannon's Odyssey buffs allows it to cause a Thermonuclear Explosion if its cob projectile or explosion hits a Cherry Bomb or Jalapeno. This is extremely tricky to pull off as the Jalapeno/Cherry Bomb has a rather short fuse before it explodes, and you need to time it right for the cob to hit. However, if you're successful, you get either multiple 3x3 explosions in an area (Cherry Bomb), or a fiery fullscreen nuke that hits all lanes (Jalapeno), demolishing all but the toughest zombies.
• Discard and Draw: A number of Odyssey-tier Fusion Plants have a subspecies variant of themselves, which loses some capabilities but gains others. These are considered a "side-grade" and can be switched back:
  • Gatling Cherrybomber can be turned into Cherrybomber drone via a Blover. This makes it become a drone, which doesn't take up any grounded space and can be placed over a plant. However, its fire rate is reduced. If there's a straight-shooting plant under it, its fire rate will sync with their fire rate, making it fire blindingly fast with Doom Railgun or Gatling Frenzy-Shroom.
  • Cherrizilla can be turned into Garlizilla via a Garlic. It gains the traits of Garlic, taking 15 damage from any zombies that bite it and diverting them to other lanes (which makes it a poor blocker), while its cherry projectile is changed to a garlic projectile that poisons zombies it hits. However, it no longer heals from cherry explosions, but is immune to them.
  • Obsidian Tall-Nut can be turned into Obsidian Mine-Nut via a Potato Mine. It's no longer capable of blocking projectiles or jumping zombies, but can force Diggers to surface. Furthermore, for every 1000 damage it takes (before Obsidian Tall-Nut's damage reduction), it will release a Potato Mine explosion on its spot.
  • Empress-Shroom can be fused with Cherry Bomb to become Cherry Empress-Shroom. Similar to her normal variant, she summons hypnotized zombies from time to time, except more specialized as the zombies that Cherry Empress-Shroom summons are always cherry-shooting Zombotany variants.
  • Laser Pumpkin can be fused with Cherry Bomb to become Chaser Pumpkin. Instead of having laser Attack Drones, it has slowly-regenerating Action Bomb cherry drones instead, which seek out an enemy and explode like a Cherry Bomb. Furthermore, as a Cherry plant, it also absorbs damage from enemy Cherry projectiles and all Cherry explosions.
  • Magnetar can be fused with Blover to become Pulsar. It doesn't deal any damage, rather, it acts like a beefed-up Star Blover, catching all star projectiles in a 5x5 range (up to 60), boosting their damage by 3x, before launching them at zombies at fast speeds.
  • Midas Umbrella can be fused with Melon-Pult to get Aegis Umbrella. While it's no longer able to boost and bounce lobbed-shot plant projectiles at zombies, it instead becomes an Attack Reflector like Melon Rind, sending back enemy projectiles that hit it, but taking a lot less damage from all sources compared to Melon Rind.
  • Spikesidian can be fused with Wall-Nut to get Obsidian Spike-Nut. It now functions more like a damaging Wall-Nut, dealing damage to zombies that touch it, while also reducing all damage taken to a maximum of 1000 (50 if the Tempered Steel upgrade was taken). Furthermore, it is also immune to instant kill attacks like crushing.
  • Calamity-Shroom can be fused with Marigold to get Avarice-Shroom. It changes its ability completely, instead of hypnotizing and turning zombies in a massive radius into walking nukes, it instead... spawns an Abyssal Gargantuar (pre-2.6) and a world-dependent Purgatory Zombie on its spot, along with one of each of the latter's minions in every lane. However, if you manage to kill the bosses, you get a massive amount of Sun, a massive amount of coins (to use as Mana), five random plant boxes, and most importantly, a massive amount of points that you can use in the shop to buy upgrades.
  • Titan Apeacalypse Turret can be fused with Snipea to become Titan Apeacalypse Railgun. It exchanges its rapid-fire knockback bullets with a laser that fires much more slowly, but hits all zombies in its path for huge damage five times in succession. It can also now hit airborne enemies, and can target zombies within a 10-degree angle of itself, allowing it to attack other lanes. Furthermore, its laser can be refracted into a Spread Shot of three by Atomheart Plantern to cover even more area without losing any damage, and in 3.5 and beyond can be configured to constantly shoot through a specific Atomheart regardless of positioning.
  • Shroomageddon can be fused with Plantern to become Atomheart Plantern. It now plays a more Support Party Member role, with a smaller radius of effect, but can now affect Airborne Mooks. Its damage is now dependent on the Lumos level it has, with each Lumos level adding +100% more damage to it (notably averting No Self-Buffs, due to its own light giving it a +100% power boost from the get-go). Furthermore, if Titan Apeacalypse Sniper's laser passes through it, the beam refracts into a 3-way Spread Shot, allowing it to hit a much wider area.
  • Squash Infernowood can be fused with Starfruit to become Inferno Star. Instead of spawning a Spicy Squash once enough peas pass through it, it instead spawns a Spicy Starfruit which explodes like a Jalapeno. Furthermore, it transforms Cherry Pea projectiles into Cherry Star projectiles instead of Cherry Squash projectiles, which home in on enemies (prioritizing Airborne Mooks first, making it an Anti-Air plant).
  • Paradox Kernel-Pult can be fused with Wall-Nut to become Paradox Wall-Nut. It becomes a purely defensive plant with 16000 HP, crush immunity + repelling crushing zombies, and taking maximum 1000 damage from instant kills. It can also teleport away zombies eating it, restore its health to 3 seconds ago after taking 4000 damage, has a 1/3 chance to No-Sell damage, and fully heal itself if not taking damage for 30 seconds.
  • Helios Cabbage can be fused with Plantern to become Luna Cabbage, a Support Party Member. It goes from sun-themed to moon-themed, its damage is based off Lumos levels instead of your current sun, and summons a bright moon instead of a solar flare. This moon heals your plants for 50 per Luna Cabbage per second, multiplied by 3 for the lowest percentage HP plant, and is multiplied by 2 if Helios Cabbage's sun is out. Helios Cabbage's first upgrade instead allows it to deal more damage per Lumos level, and the second upgrade now increases the moon healing by x3. There's also a 2% chance where a Blood Moon Cabbage is obtained instead of a Luna Cabbage when this is done at night, who changes the moon into a Blood Moon that no longer heals, but spawns very souped-up hypnotized zombies on the player's side of the field.
  • Coblivion Cannon can be fused with Melon-Pult to become Meloblivion. It functions more like a melon cannon now, firing four giant nuke melons that target a spot chosen by the player and hit the whole screen, while also raining down a barrage of smaller projectiles that deal huge splash damage in a 3x3 area, both of which freeze and permanently reduce the speed of any survivors.
  • Buck-Shroom Squad can be fused with Blover to become Iron Drone Squad. Rather than being a Jack of All Trades, it now becomes a drone tower with a rapid-fire tri-drone that can be manually positioned on the lawn to provide concentrated fire and heavy knockback on a specific tile.
  • Phoenix Threepeater can be fused with Blover to become Phoenix Tri-Drone. It no longer takes up grounded planting space, but fires at a slower rate. This makes it useful as a Support Party Member that can spread the Enflamed status without taking up a tile.
  • Tesla Magnet can be fused with Sunflower to become Dyson Magnet. Instead of removing metallic objects from zombies, she rapidly dispenses fusable objects by herself like a Solar Magnet on steroids, providing rapid healing for Mecha-Nuts and easy access to Chrono Cores (which do not spawn naturally outside of gacha modes.)
  • Tycoon Torch can be fused with Plantern to become Magnate Plantern. Instead of acting like a Torchwood, it now acts like a focus for Apeacalypse Railgun's laser attacks, splitting its beam into a 3-way Spread Shot that also generates coins from enemies it hits, and can be both powered up by and power up Photon Splitters' lasers.
  • Boreal Lifereaver can be fused with Bamblock to become Soulrender Bamboo. It goes from an attacking plant into one of the ultimate counter-attack damage plants, dealing massive damage to zombies that touch it (usually the Zombie's HP in damage) but taking the same amount in return, but spread out as Damage Over Time, which means it won't die instantly if something big touches it, and an Ice-Shroom explosion will stop this health drain.
  • Napalm-Shroom can be fused with Kernel-Pult to become Lava-Shroom. It now acts as a support commander for Napalm-Shrooms, gaining charge from fire plants around it, and when the player manually taps onto it, it will launch lava butter at zombies which butters and hits with a Jalapeno effect, and also cause all Napalm-Shrooms in a 3x3 area around it to perform an Alpha Strike on the highest HP zombie on its lane or adjacent ones.
• Discount Card: One of Gold Stygian Kelp's Odyssey upgrades gives a 30% discount to upgrades in the point store.
• Downloadable Content: The Sniper Expansion Pack is an official downloadable mod that gives us new Snipea fusions, as well as the Snipea Zombie.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Giga Rugby Striker, a boss-level zombie who not only causes Anti-Regeneration and doubles its own attack and increases its attack rate while healing 6000 HP every 3 seconds, can be dealt with by a Common Fusion — Melon Nut. Melon Nut stores damage taken, and after absorbing 1000 or more damage (up to 8000), it will Counter-Attack with a Splash Damage attack that deals the amount absorbed and give itself the same amount of shield that depletes over time. This shield takes damage in place of health first until it is depleted, and is unaffected by Giga Football Striker's anti-healing ability. Since Giga Football Striker continuously amps its damage and attack rate, most of its damage will go to Melon Nut's shield, causing it to take very little damage while returning out increasingly powerful retaliation and gaining more shields at an increasingly faster rate, overwhelming the boss' regeneration.
  • The Gods: Pantheon serves as the culmination of the first four The Gods minigames, using all of the plants and their upgrade paths from them (minus one of your choice due to the seed packet limit) against a ten-flag assault. However, the third flag onward spawns an Obsidian Gargantuar, leading to an Early Game Hell situation from its damage reduction and the crowd that spawns with it that seems extremely difficult if not impossible — unless you invest all of your sun into upgrading the Kernel-Pult into a Cobliterator, as its damage is just barely strong enough to pierce the damage reduction and clear the surrounding horde. With this in mind, the minigame's difficulty drops down to a more reasonable step up from the micromanagement The Gods revolves around.
• Elite Zombie: Purgatory Zombies are zombies which are effectively miniboss battles, each having a massive amount of health as well as very deadly special abilities to ruin your plants with.
• Energy Absorption: Shroomageddon has an Odyssey upgrade that not only makes it immune to explosions (i.e. Jack-In-The-Box, Cherry shots), but also cause a huge Doom Shroom explosion on its spot for every 10000 explosion damage absorbed.
• Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Some Zombies can drop their metallic equipment upon death or if removed via Magnet-Shroom, and these can be used on certain plants in order to give them abilities pertaining to that equipment (often requiring a Magnet-Shroom fusion first). For example, a Magnet-Pumpkin fused with a Jack-in-the-Box will become immune to all Jack-in-the-Box explosions. This trope is Zig-Zagged because Sun Magnet-Shroom is also capable of producing these equipment, meaning that you don't need to fight Zombies to get them, but the Giga Mecha-Nut parts dropped from Giga Mecha Nut Zombies is not among the list of items it can produce.
• Explosive Breeder:
  • Mine-Shroom (Potato Mine + Puff-Shroom) will spawn a copy of itself on its tile every 20 seconds, until there are up to three of them.
  • Umbrella-Shroom (Puff-Shroom + Umbrella Leaf) will spawn a copy of itself on its tile every 30 seconds, until there are up to three of them.
  • Fish-Shroom (Puff-Shroom + Sea-Shroom) will spawn a copy of itself on its tile every 15 seconds until there are three of them. If there's no space left, they drop a Fish-Shroom card, which can be planted on an empty water tile to produce more, planted on some Sea-Shroom fusions to feed them and activate their abilities, or automatically feed one of those fusions if the Fish-Shroom shoal is directly behind it.
  • Beach Michael Zombie is a sand-colored Michael Zombie that summons four inanimate statues around it (or on the path, if encountered in Tower Defense Beach mode). These statues will each turn into a new Beach Dancing King if they're left alive for a few seconds, which than spawn even more if left unchecked.
• Exponential Potential: There are over 300 plants and fusions in the game. Almost all of them can be used alongside one another, giving players various strategies and loadouts. Wall-Nut in particular has a fusion with every other base plant from the original Plants Vs. Zombies.
• Fantastic Nuke: The Doom-Shroom's explosive potential leans into this portrayal here, with its fusions treating its power as an obvious allegory for nuclear weaponry. Actual radiation, used by Shroomageddon and Atomheart Plantern, is feared even more in-universe, with both plants vowing only to unleash the full fury of their nuclear cores as a last resort (i.e. if they are eaten) and otherwise only using it for deterrence (which the zombies are too dumb to understand) and power generation (to supercharge and refract Apeacalypse Railgun rays) respectively.
• Feed It with Fire: Defensive Cherry Bomb fusion plants like Cherry-nut, Cherrizilla, or Cherry Pumpkin absorb damage from enemy cherry shots (and the explosions from said shots) instead of taking damage. This makes them vital at defending against Explodoshooter Zombie, Cherryshooter Newspaper Zombie, and especially Gatling Cherry Newspaper Zombie, the latter whose rapid-fire cherry shots will heal the plant about as fast as it can eat them.
• Finishing Move: Alchemist Umbrella, Midas Umbrella and Aegis Umbrella have their Limit Break, which bounces zombies back in a slightly wider area than normal. However, if those non-boss zombies have less than 25%/10% (50%/25% for the latter two) of their max health, they'll be turned into silver/gold statues respectively, which eliminates them. Notably, this is one of the very few Plant abilities that can harm (and is guaranteed to kill) an Alpha Squad Zombie in its incapacitated state, bypassing their Gemini Destruction Law altogether.
• Floating Limbs: The Snow Queen's hands appear to be detached from her body. This is justified as she's revealed by the devs to be a Cyborg zombie.
• Fusion Dance: The main gimmick of the game. Players can plant or use the glove to place certain plants on top of each other, creating fusion plants that are stronger or have vastly different capabilities of its constituents. The Jicamagicker takes this even further, allowing one to fuse three plants together when planted on the middle plant if the left and right plants are correct.
• Gatling Good: While Gatling Pea is in the game, there are fusions that make it look downright harmless in comparison:
  • Fusing Gatling Pea with Puff-shroom gives Gatling Pea-shroom. Puff-shrooms can be stacked 3x on one square, and fusing them with Gatling Pea gives you 12x the firepower of a peashooter.
  • Fusing Gatling Pea with Ice-shroom gives Gatling Snow, which adds stacks of chill onto zombies.
  • Fusing Gatling Snow with Puff-shroom gives Gatling Icicle-Shroom, which not only can be stacked 3x on a square, but their projectiles also penetrate up to 3 zombies each.
  • Fusing Gatling Pea with Cherry Bomb gives Cherry Gatling, which fires at the same rate as Gatling Pea, but does 3x the damage of Gatling Pea.
  • Fusing Gatling Pea with Doom-Shroom gives Gatling Doom, which not only fires powerful shots that deal 15x the damage of Gatling Pea, but will also fire a mini-Doom Shroom every four salvos, which deals massive area damage but causes Gatling Doom to rest for a few seconds.
  • Fusing Cherry Gatling with Cherrybomb-shooter gives Gatling Cherrybomber, which fires explosive cherry shots that deal 15x the damage of Gatling Pea in a 3x3 area around the point of impact.
• Gemini Destruction Law: Alpha Squad zombies are Elite Mooks that always appear in pairs or more. When one is "killed", they drop down to the ground in a semi-invulnerable state, becoming immune to most attacks. Those in this state will only die if all Alpha Squad zombies on the lawn are in this state. If they're left like this for too long, they'll recover to full health, perform a Dash Attack that deals very high damage on the plants they move through, and causes a Jack-in-the-box explosion on those plants. Fortunately, they can only perform this trick once, but there is an Odyssey Purgatory zombie buff that allows them to perform this indefinitely.
• Glass Cannon: Gatling Cherry Newspaper Zombies have rather low health for an Elite Zombie^note 1500 for the zombie after removing his 1500 HP newspaper, compared to 7770 for a Giga-Trident, 12000 for a Michael Zomboni or 15000 for a Giga-Rugby Nut, but it has a fast eating rate and once the newspaper is gone, he'll move extremely quickly while firing a barrage of Cherry shots that deal incredible splash damage per shot and will detonate your defenses in seconds if you lack a counter.
• Going Critical: Photon Splitter is capable of providing energy to Atomheart Plantern, normally up to 10k with full modifiers and +2 lumos level. At this cap, Atomheart Plantern will have its attack cooldown dropped to 0.02 seconds. However, they have a special synergy modifier that allows the latter's energy cap to reach 100k, and if Atomheart Plantern gets to this limit, it'll turn into a supermassive black hole that instakills non-miniboss zombies, then blow up to deal 1 million fullscreen damage, 100 times to every undead still remaining. This is enough to one-shot almost every Purgatory Zombie even with their 5000 damage-per-hit cap.
• Guest Fighter: Hamburger Shooter from Plants vs. Zombies Hybrid Version is a playable plant in this game thanks to a collaboration. Hybrid also managed to get a Fusion plant of its own in its game, Phoenix Threepeater.
• Hard Mode Perks: Starting in 3.4, gacha modes received toggles to enable or disable Epic Odyssey zombies, Purgatory zombies, and Evolved zombies from spawning. Enabling all three grants a 10% chance that plants spawned in will be their Starbound variant, if one exists.
• Hazard Attack: On their initial hit, Napalm-Shroom's explosive fire melons will leave behind a temporary patch of flames that deals very high constant damage to zombies that weren't already decimated by the melon explosion itself. One of its Odyssey upgrades further extends the duration of the hazardous flames.
• Human Shield:
  • The Cursed Ladder Zombie places a ladder on defensive plants that causes the affected wall plant to take all damage in the zombie's place, until the zombie dies (via getting eaten or hypnotized), the plant dies, is replaced via fusion, or the ladder is removed after transferring 8000 damage. To make matters worse, a normal Magnet-Shroom can't remove the ladder.
  • Any plant in a 3x3 impact of Dark Rugby Gatling Marshal's tackle gets cursed for a few seconds. During this period, all damage that would have been dealt to the boss is instead dealt to the cursed plants.
• Hybrid Power: The core mechanic of the game, combined with Fusion Dance. Several of the strongest Plants are obtained by fusing many different plants together.
• Immune to Mind Control: There are a few zombies that are completely immune to being hypnotized (although mods can allow you to spawn hypnotized versions of them).
  • All Purgatory Zombies have immunity to all hypnotizing abilities, as part of their Contractual Boss Immunity.
  • Alpha Squad Zombies aren't boss enemies but they too are immune to hypnotizing attacks.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy: Giga Rugby Striker is one of the Purgatory miniboss Zombies. It already starts out with high HP and armor as well as 200 bite damage, and every three seconds, it heals 6000 HP, doubles its attack damage, and increases its attacking speed, allowing it to tear down walls quickly. Anything that isn't a wall will be one-shotted and spawn a high-HP, high-damage Gigarugby-Nut Zombie, worsening things even more.
• Invincibility Power-Up: Chrysanctum (from Plants Vs Zombies: Ultimate) is an instant plant that makes all plants in a 3x3 area around it completely immune to damage for 6 seconds. Even Zomboss' stomp attack, which normally has No Saving Throw and will one-shot crush-immune plants, will do nothing against plants protected by Chrysanctum.
• Jack of All Trades:
  • Buck-Shroom Squad is comprised of three Bucket Puff-Shrooms, each with a different capability. The front one attacks with 4 gatling metal peas that deals 4x regular pea damage each, instantly breaks shields, and causes Knock Back on zombies it hits. The top one uses a sniper attack that targets a random zombie in front of it, then deals huge damage, and can be upgraded to always cause headshots. The bottom one uses an Anti-Air attack that deals good damage and also causes Knock Back to zombies it hits. Finally, as they're a bucket fusion, they have an innate 4000 HP that can withstand a Wall-Nut's worth of damage for an offensive plant.
  • Tesla Umbrella has several different abilities rolled all into one. Firstly, as an Umbrella Leaf fusion, it bounces away bungees and cause Knock Back to zombies, removing pogos and stopping rolling Mecha-nut zombies. Secondly, it can target 4 zombies in a large radius with lasers, prioritizing Airborne Mooks and dealing 3x damage to them. This goes up to a range of the whole screen and 6 zombies if there are two Tesla Umbrellas vertically adjacent to one another, also periodically causing an explosion if 6 zombies are being attacked. It can act as a healer by using up some of its regenerating energy to heal plants in a 3x3 radius of it. Finally, as a Plantern fusion, it also provides Lumos levels to surrounding areas, clearing fog as well as increasing Lumos levels, boosting plants that benefit from it.
• Joke Character: Ashen Threepeater is obtained by planting a Jalapeno onto Scorched Threepeater, and is completely burnt out and doesn't even attack. However, this plant is a prerequisite to the powerful Phoenix Threepeater, and serves as the ashes for it to rise up from once a third Jalapeno is planted onto it.
• King Mook: Every Purgatory Zombie is a souped-up Mini-Boss version of a regular zombie, with abilities similar to theirs while adding several new ones. Most of them also have the ability to spawn their lesser versions:
  • Professor Cherry-Z is one to the Gatling Cherry Newspaper Zombie as well as the Giga-Catapult Zombie. When his newspaper is broken or his wheelchair tires are popped, he will turn several zombies on the field into Gatling Cherry Newspaper Zombies (with their newspapers broken), and then charge forward at a very fast pace while spamming cherry gatling projectiles forward and lobbing cherry bombs like Giga-Catapult Zombie's at the back lane.
  • Giga Football Striker is one to the football zombie line, especially Giga Football-Nut Zombies. It's fast, immune to knockback, increases in damage and attack speed while healing itself every 3 seconds, and it also steals the regeneration of your plants to heal itself. On top of all this, any non-defensive plant it kills will spawn a Giga Football-Nut zombie.
  • Jackson Worldwide is one to the Zomboni, as well as all the Dancing Zombie line such as Michael Zomboni and Superstar Zombie. Not only does it summon Superstar Zombies frequently, but it also crushes plants and even splits into two Michael Zombonis when killed.
  • Skystrider Mecha is one to the Kirov Zomppelin as well as the Zombarine and Sharkmarine. It initially starts out as a fast-moving enemy that crushes plants it moves into, similar to the latter two. However, once it loses some of its health, it takes to the sky, dropping bombs forwards on your plants and summoning Kirov Zomppelins in all lanes every few seconds.
  • Pozeidon is one to the Trident Zombie, Giga-Trident Zombie, and Trident Hwacha zombie. When he enters the lawn, he spawns a Giga-Trident Zombie in each lane. He will throw his massive trident into your lawn, one-shotting most non-defensive plants, and it will explode to damage your plants in an area after some time unless it takes 300 separate hits. While he's present, any Giga-Trident Zombies get Bottomless Magazines, and all thrown tridents deal five hits instead of one (a single hit deals 20% of a Plant's current health or 20 damage, whichever is more).
  • Queen Jill-in-the-Box is one to the King Clown and Pogo King Clown zombies. She can explode the entire column she's in, for non-explosive damage that bypasses explosion resistance. She can also summon King Clowns and Pogo King Clowns on all squares on the 5th column onwards, and she heals whenever any explosion (including those she makes) touches her.
  • Ultra Mecha-Nut acts similar to a Mecha-Nut zombie or Giga-Mecha-Nut zombie, colliding into plants for massive damage and bouncing off them ala Wall-Nut bowling. However, it boasts way more health, and while it's alive, all damage that other zombies take will be transferred to it at a reduced percent, essentially making other zombies invulnerable until it goes down.
  • Snow Queen is one to all the ice-based zombies and Alpha Squad zombies. She crushes plants she touches like the Snow Beasts, uses a slash attack on your troops like the Alpha Squad zombies, and her attacks freeze your plants like the Yeti, Yeti UFO, and Snowball Launcher. Besides this, she can also summon a snowstorm in the ice levels.
  • Giga Football Archduke is one to all the animal-riding zombies such as the Horsemen zombies, as well as the (Giga) Storm Gatling Zombies. It can summon Rugby Horsemen zombies in all lanes, fires a stream of metal peas, charges at plants to one-shot non-crush-immune ones and inflict curse on defensive ones in a splash radius, a status that kills the plant once curse stacks exceed the plant's health. When killed, the rider will drop off and act as a stronger version of the Giga Storm Gatling Zombie, firing metal peas at an extremely fast rate.
  • Ancient Yeti Whale Rider is one to the various Whale Rider Yetis. Its rider fires barrages of cherry gatling shots, and every 10 seconds it will go into an angry mode that lasts 10 seconds, performing a forward leap that bypasses plants on doing so while changing its ammo into exploding cherry shots. Curiously, unlike its base counterparts, it's a grounded foe instead of an Aquatic Mook.
  • The Abyssal Gargantuar is one to the Gargantuars themselves. Not only does it boast a metric ton of health, every smash it makes produces Abyssal Imps that charge forward a few tiles past your plants, and this zombie's mere presence on the field causes all zombies to take 90% less damage.
• Knock Back:
  • Many plant fusions with Umbrella Leaf can knock zombies back (and also remove Pogo sticks in the process), making them vital against foes with Dungeon Bypass. Some also come with other effects, such as Umbrella Corn buttering those it knocks back, or Garlic Umbrella and its derivatives also pushing them into adjacent lanes.
  • Fusing Peashooter with a Bucket will give Grey Pea/Buckshooter, whose metal pea projectiles will knock back zombies it hits in a similar manner to Primal Peashooter from Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time. This can be fused with Puff-Shroom to get Buck-Shroom, giving you 3x the number of projectiles. A group of three Buck-Shroom can be further fused with a Magnet-Shroom to make Buck-Shroom Squad, giving the front one a gatling that fires 4x metal peas, as well as an Anti-Air that can knock back Airborne Mooks.
  • Fusing Blover with Sea-Shroom will push back all Aquatic Mooks in its water lane.
  • Fusing Blover with Hypno-Shroom gives us Hypno-Blover, which pushes back all hypnotized Zombies towards your house so that they can stay on the lawn for longer.
  • Fusing Blover with Buck-Shroom Squad will give Iron Drone Squad, which has an Attack Drone that fires metal peas at a target area a rate of three gatling peas put together. Needless to say, most zombies aren't even moving forwards within its zone of attack.
• Last Chance Hit Point:
  • Cherrizilla has a unique ability where, if it's reduced to zero health, it will become invulnerable for a few seconds while keeping at 1 HP. Once it expires, the ability goes on cooldown for a while. Considering that Cherrizilla has plenty of ways to replenish health, this ability is often a last resort.
  • Cryolina Reaper gains charges for every 500 zombies that die (hypnotized or not). When a Cryolina Reaper has at least one charge and a plant dies on the lawn, it'll consume one charge to leave that plant at one HP... and then restore 50% max HP to all plants on the field, release a Jalapeno effect on every row, and an Ice-Shroom explosion.
• Light 'em Up: Many Plants that utilize Plantern as a Fusion have the ability to utilize the Lumos system. Plants like Plantern or some its fusions can add Lumos levels to nearby squares, and some Plantern fusions are strengthened depending on the Lumos level on their square. For example, Lumina Cactus (Cactus + Plantern) normally fires spikes, but if it has at least two Lumos levels it will now fire lasers that pierce the entire lane, while Stardrop (Starfruit + Plantern + Magnet-Shroom) will now fire Homing Projectiles at Lumos level 1 or above, with higher Lumos levels increasing its detection range.
• Luring in Prey:
  • Fusing Chomper with Plantern gives us Lantern Chomper, which appears to be a brown Chomper with an anglerfish-like light. After it finishes chewing, it will attract nearby zombies from adjacent lanes akin to PVZ 2's Sweet Potato, allowing it to eat them.
  • Fusing Lantern Chomper with Giant Chomper gives us Ultimate Lantern Chomper, which has the Giant Chomper's Titanic Devour to eat scores of zombies in one gulp, and after it finishes chewing, it will drags in mass amounts of zombies from adjacent lanes into its lane.
• Mana: Oddly enough, since there is no shop in this game, coins are instead repurposed as this game's version of Magic Points. It's primarily produced by Marigold and many of its fusions' attacks/abilities, and can be spent to upgrade silver plants (Marigold + another plant) into gold plants and to use the Limit Break abilities of gold plants.
• Mass Hypnosis:
  • When Calamity-Shroom explodes, all zombies within its Doom-Shroom range that aren't boss-zombies (or Alpha Squad Zombies) will not only be hypnotized, but will also turn into living bombs that explode like a Doom-Shroom upon death. According to the Almanac, Calamity-Shroom states that they're "reborn in the illusion".
  • Hypno Cattail Girl (Cattail Girl + Hypno-Shroom) has a 50-second max cooldown ability that allows her to target a square ala Cob Cannon, and hypnotize all zombies in the target area. One of her odyssey buffs increases the radius of her hypnosis effect to 1.5 squares horizontally, allowing her to target more zombies.
• Mercy Invincibility: The Alpha Squad zombies are a rare case when this applies to an enemy. If any Alpha Squad zombie on the screen is reduced to zero HP, they will become incapacitated and turn into impervious meat shields as long as there are any active Alpha Squad zombies on the lawn, and after ten seconds, they'll return to full health and perform a Limit Break. Normally they can only do this once, after which they'll become killable, but one zombie buff allows them to do it an unlimited number of times, necessitating the entire Alpha Squad to be downed simultaneously to keep them down.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack:
  • Stardrop and Magnetar have the ability to summon a giant star meteor that deals huge damage to all zombies on the lawn (including Airborne Mooks and underground Diggers) and explodes into a massive Spread Shot of projectiles. Magnetar's projectiles from its red meteor will also home in on zombies.
  • The Odyssey buff for Helios Cabbage and Magnetar, "Star-God Unity", takes this even further. When there are at least 10+ Helios Cabbage and 10+ Magnetar on the field, they will regularly summon a Sun God Meteor that deals an insane amount of damage to every zombie on the lawn and drops a huge amount of sun.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Soot-Shroom, the fusion of Fume-Shroom and Doom-Shroom. It must be manually tapped/clicked on to make it attack, but its doom fume attack deals a cherry bomb's worth of damage to the entire lane in front of it. After this, it will go on a very lengthy cooldown before it can be activated again.
  • Napalm-Shroom fires flaming melons that deal extremely high armor-piercing damage and splits into two flaming melons that hit adjacent lanes, and the initial projectile leaves behind a patch of fire that deals very fast damage to zombies in it. Its damage output is so high that a few shots can defeat an Abyssal Gargantuar, and it's not a Glass Cannon due to its nature as a Football-Shroom fusion giving it 3000 HP. The downside? Napalm-Shroom's attack rate is one of the slowest of all plants at a minimum of 7.5 seconds^note 6s cooldown +1.5s minimum charge-up time. In 2.6, it gained the ability to also act like a manual plant ala Cob Cannon, and the longer it holds its shot, the more damaging it will be. One upgrade allows it to gain massive amounts of charge, making the resulting shot deal massive area burst damage if held long enough.
• Minmaxer's Delight: In Odyssey Purgatory, the player is forced to choose a Zombie Advantage at the end of the level. Some of them are either easily remedied, or can be outright beneficial to the player.
  • Any zombie buff that buffs Sharkmarine after the Fog area has been completed. Since Sharkmarines are Aquatic Mooks and the remaining three worlds are fully grounded, they flat out can't spawn at all, turning this into a free pick. Even if you chose it before the Pool levels, the buff that increases their health becomes an entirely non-issue if Gold Stygian Kelp is chosen as an Odyssey Plant (which is often a good pick due to the Discount Card buff it can get), as it can drag zombies down an infinite number of times, bypassing durability altogether.
  • One of them causes Bungee Zombies to not only have 90% damage reduction, but also gives them a chance to drop down with a dangerous Ultimate-level zombie. This disadvantage is completely nullified by having proper Umbrella Leaf (or Umbrella Leaf drone) placement, the former of which is required in successful strategies due to the Knock Back. They will bounce the Bungee Zombies away without losing any health, preventing even scores of them from getting down on the lawn in the first place and negating any Ultimate Zombies they would have deployed.
  • "Increase the maximum limit of zombies per wave to 100" causes many more zombies to appear. Considering that each zombie killed gives you points, which gives you more currency for the Points store every three levels, this can help to get you more upgrades easily, especially if your build is a Splash Damage build that doesn't really care much about the extra zombies.
  • "Undying Wraith: Sprint Interval Reduced. Attack Power Greatly Increased" does what it says — it reduces the interval of their Dash Attack, and greatly increases their damage output. This enemy is only encountered once you reach the Roof, and by then, your plants' DPS should be able to remove Undying Wraiths quickly, while your use of Stone Wall plants that take Scratch Damage will make the increased damage a non-issue.
  • "Kirov Zomppelin: Drones' HP Greatly Increased" makes the spawned drones' HP go from a measly 200 to a much greater 10000, nearly thrice that of a Gargantuar. This would normally be a huge problem, but for a player using Tesla Magnet, this becomes a non-issue as the plant will straight-up One-Hit Kill a Kirov Drone regardless of HP by ripping their jack-in-the-box explosive out, with a very short interval of 0.5 seconds, and if the "Attract 3 items at one go" upgrade is bought, these drones will drop like flies.
  • "Trident Hwacha: Attacks In Advance" makes the Trident Hwacha attack with its cluster tridents immediately before entering the lawn instead of when encountering a plant in range. This hits up to the fifth column from the right and cannot bypass plants, shortening the effective range of the Hwachas. By the time Trident Hwachas appear your frontline defenses should be enough to easily withstand the attack especially with wall plants that sport a damage cap.
  • "Set your sun to 0" is normally a huge detriment, but it can be mitigated by having a single Gold Sunflower, which stores sun over time up to 10000 sun. As soon as the player takes this, they can activate Gold Sunflower's gold bean ability at the start of the next level and get back 10000 sun. Alternatively, having lots of Radiant Pots also helps to mitigate this, as they spawn sun much faster the lower your sun count is, down to a speedy 50 sun per 3 seconds when you have 0 sun.
• Money Mauling: Tycoon Torch turns any projectile that passes through it into two silver coin projectiles which deal the original projectile's damage and one gold coin projectile which deals twice that. The silver coins spread out to adjacent lanes before converging back in on Tycoon Torch's lane.
• Mook Commander:
  • The strongest zombie in the game (besides Zomboss) is the Abyssal Gargantuar, whose mere presence on the lawn makes all zombies except itself take 90% less damage from all attacks. Most run of the mill zombies will become damage sponges, to say nothing about the Elite Zombies that will turn into minibosses of their own with this level of protection.
  • Pozeidon not only summons a Giga-Trident Zombie in each lane, but while it's alive, all Giga-Trident Zombies will have Bottomless Magazines (they normally only can throw five Tridents) and each Trident hits five times. Considering that a Trident deals 20% of a Plant's current HP in damage or 20 damage, whichever is more, the hail of buffed Tridents can easily decimate your lawn if you lack the proper defenses.
• Mook Maker:
  • Kirov Zomppelins lack any direct attacks, but summon a constant stream of Kirov Drones that will rain Jack-in-the-box explosives on your plants unless taken down fast.
  • Empress-Shroom and her Cherry variant are Player Mook Makers, summoning in hypnotized zombies every 30 seconds (10 with an Odyssey Buff).
• Mundane Utility: A recurring theme in the Almanac is a number of heat-based fusions also being really good chefs, for obvious reasons.
• Mutagenic Food: Several Zombotany zombies and plants are mentioned to have become the way they are from eating certain things. Perfume-Shroom, for example, implies his hypnotic fumes are the result of Hypno-Shroom rinsing out his mouth on a daily basis, and the Buck-nut Zombie ate a large amount of walnuts that were enriched with iron.
• New Game Plus: Apart from the original mechanic for Adventure mode from Plants vs. Zombies 1, 3.3 introduces Starbound Adventure, which uses the same level progression as the basic Adventure mode but adds stat tiers to zombies, boosting their health and attack strength. In exchange, various challenges can be attempted to unlock permanent upgrades for plants, along with minigames that reward points to spend on a skill tree.
• Nice Guys Finish Last: Tesla Magnet, described as having the mindset of The Good King, is actively struggling to find a relationship. It may have something to do with the fact that he specifically desires someone that can contrast his brutish skillset, which necessitates a certain taste in short supply.
• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • Miner Star (Starfruit + Magnet-Shroom + Digger Pickaxe) is not only untargetable by most zombies, but is also completely invulnerable to all damage, including crushing, explosions, and all other Area of Effect attacks. The only ways for it to die are via Bungee Zombie abduction, Zomboss' crushing attacks, every sixth shot from Alpha Hitman Squad, or damage received from Cursed status.
  • Quasar combines the trait of Miner Star along with Iron Star and Jokestar, making it untargetable by most attacks too.
  • Bedrock Tall-Nut takes Obsidian Tall-Nut's durability to the max. It is completely immune to normal damage, and also cannot be mined by all variants of miner zombies (Minecraft Bedrock can't be mined). The only ways for it to die are via Bungee Zombie abduction, Zomboss' crushing attacks, every sixth shot from Alpha Hitman Squad, damage received from Cursed status, or cherry gatling shots from Ancient Yeti Whale Knight in its angered state.
  • On the zombie side, we have Bedrock Tall-Nut Yeti, who has a massive 160000 HP and doesn't take damage. If hypnotized, they lose their invulnerability and go to a measly 1600 HP as an Obvious Rule Patch. Fortunately, they will only move until the 5th column from your house before turning back, and plants that devour like Chomper and its fusions will still One-Hit Kill them.
• No Item Use for You: The Purgatory Zombie Millenium Dragon and Warden will steal one of your three tools in each of its first three phases and use them against you, preventing you from using that particular tool for the duration of that phase. In its final phase, it'll steal all three, preventing the use of your mallet, gloves, and shovel until it's defeated.
• No Saving Throw:
  • One of the very few Plant abilities that will one-shot the non-airborne zombie it hits without fail is Tangle Kelp (and its fusions') dragging. If it's somehow hacked onto land, it will take down even Purgatory Zombies, which normally take a maximum of 5000 damage per attack, and cannot be eaten or hypnotized.
  • Only three zombies can kill any plant they attack, bypassing Scratch Damage defenses and crush immunity. These are Bungee Zombie's abduction, Dr. Zomboss' stomp and caravan, and every sixth shot from Alpha Hitman Squad's sniper rifle.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Discussed. Shroomageddon and Atomheart Plantern both canonically weaponize nuclear energy, but originally intended to use it purely for deterrence and non-offensive purposes as they both understood the full consequences of deploying a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately, the zombies are so dumb and so persistent that they literally cannot recognize the threat a nuke poses to the world, leading both plants to decide they must teach them the hard way if it comes to that. In-game, this manifests as what happens if they are eaten, triggering an empowered Doom-Shroom explosion as a last resort.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • To prevent Sequence Breaking, Zen Garden plants carried into Harvest Mode can only be planted once per run. By comparison, plants obtained within the mode can be planted up to 80 times, and this amount can be regenerated in large portions between runs using the same maintenance mechanics as the Zen Garden.
  • Bedrock Tall-Nut Yeti has a massive 160000 HP (more than Purgatory Zombies) and immunity to damage, and turns around to leave once it reaches the 5th column, blocking shots for the zombies until then. If hypnotized, it drops to a measly 1600 HP and loses the damage immunity, unlike most other zombies that keep their HP and abilities when hypnotized, as having an un-nerfed version on your side would be insanely broken.
• Off with His Head!: Buck-nut zombies and Bucket-Copter Zombies have a Buck-Nut for their heads, giving them lots of health. Unfortunately for them, it's also magnetic, which means that a Magnet-Shroom will instantly decapitate them by attracting their heads.
• Percent Damage Attack:
  • Thrown tridents are a mix of this and Fixed Damage Attack. They deal 20% of a Plant's current HP, with a minimum of 20 damage. This makes them especially dangerous at whittling down the health of plants, unless the plant has an ability to take Scratch Damage.
  • Cherrizilla's non-devouring bites (used during instant-devour cooldowns) are partially Fixed Damage Attack and partially this trope. They deal 1000 damage plus (3% + 0.2% per Devour stack^note obtained via instant-devour bite) of any affected zombie's max health. A well-fed Cherrizilla can potentially deal instant kill damage to any non-boss target it hits.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: It's implied Cherrizilla was an experiment created by Professor Cherry-Z that Escaped from the Lab.
• The Phoenix: Phoenix Threepeater invokes this. By planting a Jalapeno on a Threepeater, it causes a 3-lane wave of Jalapeno fire and turns into Scorched Threepeater. Planting another Jalapeno on it turns it into Ashen Threepeater... which is totally burnt out and cannot even attack at all. However, planting a Jalapeno on Ashen Threepeater covers the entire six lanes in Jalapeno fire as it becomes Phoenix Threepeater, which fires powerful piercing fire shots down three lanes that inflict the enflamed status.
• The Power of the Sun: A number of plants shoot sun projectiles that deal damage and also drop small amounts of sun.
  • One of the very first fusions the player is likely to come across is the Sunshooter (Peashooter + Sunflower), whose projectiles deal 5x the damage of a pea shot and produce 5 sun per hit, but are fired at a slower rate compared to a peashooter.
  • Helios Cabbage is an odyssey-level fusion that's all about this. It fires barrages of sun projectiles that hit hard, bounce off enemies (200 sun = +1 bounce), and produce sun per hit. It has a Odyssey buff that increases the damage further based on excess sun^note Each projectile consumes 0.5% of excess sun above 15k to add 20x that amount in attack damage. Every 30 seconds, or if the player plants a 1000-coin gold bean on it, it'll summon a solar flare/mini sun. While it's active, the natural sun drop rate is increased, and it hits all zombies on the entire screen every half-second, dealing 60 + 40 x (number of Helios Cabbage on-screen) per interval. If the player's sun is 15k or above, the solar flare will drain 200 sun per second to triple its damage. Helios Cabbage also has an odyssey buff that triples the damage of the solar flare again. Finally, its "Star-God Unity" unique odyssey buff with Magnetar makes the solar flare permanent while also causing sun meteors to drop, which deal massive damage and give 1250 sun on impact.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • Cherrizilla's sidegrade Garlizilla is often considered a downgrade. It cannot perform its duties as a wall as well as Cherrizilla as it forces zombies biting it into an adjacent lane (while moving slightly forwards), and while it's still immune to cherry shots, it no longer heals from cherry explosions from your side or from zombie-side cherry shots, hampering its longevity.
  • Gatling Solaricle-Shroom is a sun-based sidegrade of Gatling Icicle-Shroom that initially seems like a good sun-producer by giving you 5 sun for the first two zombies its projectiles penetrate, but for every zombie it penetrates after that, it deals 2x damage... and subtracts 5 sun per zombie hit. It normally only hits up to 3 zombies, however, the Odyssey buff that makes it penetrate infinitely turns it into a detriment with more zombies around. Furthermore, it loses the capability to chill/freeze zombies, an important buff that Gatling Icicle-Shroom had that allowed it to not only crowd control, but also deal 4x damage to frozen zombies.
• Piñata Enemy:
  • Defeating a Mystery Zombie or any of its stronger variants has a chance to unlock a random Odyssey modifier, but also spawns a random zombie, even ones as powerful as Gargantuars.
    • Inverted with the Random Zombie Box, which has a sun cost of negative 100 (In other words, gives you 100 free sun) but spawns a Gold Mystery Zombie on the tile it's placed on.
  • Invoked with the Avarice-Shroom Odyssey fusion. When fused, it spawns a zombie holding a copious amount of sun, coins, points (Which can be used to buy updates) and five random plant boxes for you to loot once you kill it. The catch? The zombie is an extremely powerful Purgatory miniboss accompanied by an elite minion in every row and (Before Patch 2.6) an even stronger Abyssal Gargantuar.
• Prongs of Poseidon:
  • Tridents are one of the enemy projectiles that zombies can use, specifically thrown by the Trident Zombie, Giga-Trident Zombie, and the Zombie Trident Hwacha. Each trident projectile is a mixture of Percent Damage Attack and Fixed Damage Attack, dealing 20% of a Plant's health or 20 damage, whichever is more.
  • One of the Purgatory Zombies is called Pozeidon and he is a King Mook version of the Trident-based zombies. Not only does he buff the damage of Tridents, but he also wields his own massive, single-use trident that one-shots most non-defensive Plants it hits, then sticks on the lawn, becoming a Scratch Damage Enemy that blocks and absorbs 300 individual hits. If not destroyed in time, it explodes, dealing massive damage to all plants in a 3x3 area around it.
• Purple Is Powerful:
  • Obsidian Plants like Obsidian Tall-Nut and Obsidian Spikerock are very powerful Odyssey fusions. These can take a lot of damage or dish out a lot of it.
  • The strongest non-Zomboss enemy is the Abyssal Gargantuar, clad entirely in a dark purple armor. Not only does it have a lot of armor and health, it also makes all zombies take 90% less damage as long as it's alive.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: Twin Sunflower and Gatling Pea are upgrade plants to Sunflower and Repeater respectively in the first game, here, they're a result of fusing two of them together.
• Related in the Adaptation: Wall-Nut and Tall-Nut are somewhat related plants unrelated in the first game's gameplay, here the latter is the former's upgrade similar to Cattail to Lilypad and Spikerock to Spikeweed.
• Removed Achilles' Heel:
  • Plucky-Shroom (Scaredy-Shroom + Fume-Shroom) is one of the very few Scaredy-Shroom fusions that doesn't cower when zombies are near. In fact, if a zombie gets close (within 3 tiles), they change from a double long-ranged shot into a mid-range piercing attack akin to Fume-Shroom.
  • Bold Pumpkin is a fusion between Scaredy-Shroom and Pumpkin. Any Scaredy-Shroom fusion within it will no longer become afraid when zombies are in their threat range.
  • Chomper's greatest weakness is its long chewing time. Both Chewzilla and Cherrizilla greatly mitigate this by having the ability to perform powerful but not instakill bites while in their chewing cooldown.
  • Both Pogo Melon Zombie and Pogo King Clown have a one-time long jump that propels them four squares forward and also bypasses Tall-Nut fusions. Their weakness is instead Umbrella Leaf, which can bounce them away, and if bounced back before they perform their long jump they will lose their pogos.
  • Whale Rider Yeti has a whale that functions like Dolphin Rider Zombie's dolphin, but it can jump a few squares past any Tall-Nuts.
  • The Bucket-Copter Zombie is an upgraded version of Balloon Zombie who sports a mechanical copter in place of a balloon. This makes it immune to the Blover, which otherwise one-shots Balloon Zombies.
  • Pogo King Clowns can get their pogo sticks removed by being bounced back via Umbrella Leaf fusions, severely reducing their threat. In Odyssey: Evolution, the three evolution variants of Pogo King Clown do not get their pogo sticks removed when being bounced back, necessitating either a tall plant or a Tesla Magnet to remove those.
  • Downplayed with Burglar Bungee Zombie. If bounced away by an Umbrella Leaf, it will drop back down on a column near the right-hand side of the lawn and drop a Mystery Gargantuar there. However, if it's bounced away a second time, it won't return.
• Rare Random Drop: The Random Plant Box gives you a random plant when planted. In Odyssey Random mode, there's a very small chance for it to give you the Diamond Mine-Nut, a weaker reskin of Obsidian Mine-Nut. While this may make it seem worthless, shoveling it up gives you a 500 free points to use in the Odyssey shop.
• Scratch Damage Enemy:
  • Pozeidon's trident takes 300 separate projectiles to be destroyed, ignoring the amount of damage dealt. Fail to do so within a few seconds, and it explodes to take out most plants around it.
  • Ultra Mecha-Nut Zombie takes a maximum of 100 damage from any attack. Furthermore, it takes damage that all other zombies would have received... then reduces each source of that damage received to 100.
• Secret Character:
  • In Odyssey Random mode, using a Random Plant Box gives an extremely small chance for it to give you the Diamond Mine-Nut, a weaker reskin of Obsidian Mine-Nut. Shoveling it up gives you 500 free points to use in the Odyssey shop.
  • Transforming Helios Cabbage into Selene Cabbage on Night or Fog has a 2% chance to instead turn it into Arteris Cabbage. Instead of summoning a healing moon, Arteris Cabbage summons a blood moon that spawns a group of powerful hypnotized zombies. Notably, you cannot use Imitater to clone these.
• Self-Duplication: Beach Dancing King is an Underground Monkey version of Michael Zombie, who spawns in four immobile Backup Dancer statues from time to time. These statues do nothing, but if not destroyed within a few seconds, they will turn into a Beach Dancing King with less health, but with the same summoning ability.
• Sequential Boss: The Millennium Dragon and Warden is an Odyssey Zombie that a King Mook version of an existing zombie. Instead, it's a Stationary Boss with four phases, each with 15000 HP and the ability to steal your tools, locking your ability to use the stolen tool(s) for the duration of the phase. When a phase is destroyed, it lets out a series of Jack-In-The-Box explosions around itself. On phase 1, the warden steals your mallet, uses an opening attack to deal 1000 damage to each plant on the lawn, before targeting the plant with the highest HP in each row and hitting them for 1000 damage every 3 seconds. On phase 2, the warden steals your gloves, and will use it every 4 seconds to move the right-most zombie in each row that isn't a Mini-Boss or Airborne Mook forwards by 2 spaces. On phase 3, the warden steals your shovel, and will use it to shovel the cheapest plant on the lawn every 5 seconds. The final phase has the warden depart and the dragon awaken, wherein it steals your mallet, gloves and shovel and use the attacks from the previous phases in one go every 5 seconds.
• Shapeshifter: Every 30 seconds, Barley transforms into a random non-ultimate plant, keeping its ability. Obsidian Barley does the same, except it only transforms into Ultimate Plants (including subspecies) with the exception of Avarice-Shroom.
• Ship Tease: Dyson Magnet is implied to have something to do with Tesla Magnet's search for love as mentioned in his Almanac entry. The manner in which is done depends on the translation; their original names in Chinese call them queen and king, while the Blooms English translation instead makes the connection in Dyson's Almanac entry (which is blank in the original script) in the form of her wanting to settle down with Tesla.
• Shooting At Your Own Projectiles:
  • Paradox Kernel-Pult's Unrealistic Black Hole projectiles can be shot at with its own kernel projectiles to increase the size and damage of the black hole's eventual explosion. An Odyssey upgrade allows the black hole to suck in both your projectiles as well as zombie projectiles, causing the black hole to unleash massive, screen-clearing explosions.
  • One of Vulcannon's Odyssey upgrades allows its cobs to cause a massive explosion chain reaction when their explosions hit a Cherry Bomb or Jalapeno before the instant explodes, requiring very precise timing.
• Shout-Out:
  • The game has several references to Minecraft as well as its mods:
    • Endoflame and its moe-ified version Queen Endoflame are based on the plant of the same name from the Minecraft mod Botania. In addition, Saw-Me-Not and Twin Saw-Me-Not are based on the Shulk-Me-Not from the same source.
    • The Trident Zombies are essentially PVZ versions of the Drowned.
    • The Miner Zombie (not to be confused with Digger Zombie) attacks your plants with an iron, gold, or diamond pickaxe. There's an upgraded version that attacks with a Netherite pickaxe.
    • One zombie type is an Imp riding an oversized chicken zombie, making it the equivalent of a Chicken Jockey.
  • One minigame is Zuma but with Wall-Nuts.
  • Another minigame is basically 2048 but with Peashooter variants.
  • Helios Cabbage bears a striking resemblance to the True Sun God from Bloons Tower Defense series, especially with the giant sun ornament behind its head. It also attacks with a rapid-fire sun attack.
  • Apeacalypse Railgun's Almanac entry states that his electromagnetic abilities are noted in-universe to resemble the Railgun, Mikoto Misaka.
  • Astro-Nut's Almanac entry mentions him visiting an Earth whose shores were covered in Tiberium.
  • The Garlic Sniper functions very similar to the Virus from Command & Conquer series, being a sniper unit whose attacks cause a virus cloud on killing a target, which spreads to other targets and makes them explode into more virus clouds if they die.
  • Crimson Lotus, a Purgatory Zombie added in 3.8, is an Evil Counterpart of Blue Fly's Endoflame avatar and its visual design is nearly identical to that of Plantera from Terraria but with a different color scheme, even having both the "closed" and "open" phases.
• Shrink Ray:
  • Popcorn-Pult (Kernel-Pult + Puff-Shroom) fires mini butter bullets in place of butter. Any non-boss zombie that gets hit will be shrunk, losing 30% of their max HP. Shrunken zombies instead get stunned by butter. If an Imp gets hit by these, they die instantly due to being shrunk to oblivion. Other minified Pults such as Sprout-Pult (Cabbage-Pult + Puff-Shroom), Slice-Pult (Melon-Pult + Puff-Shroom), and Rot-Pult (Wither-Pult + Puff-Shroom) also cause this shrinking effect against zombies they hit.
  • As a Fusion of Popcorn-Pult and Chrono Kernel-Pult, Paradox Kernel-Pult's regular butter also inflicts this effect onto zombies it hits.
• Sibling Fusion:
  • Cabbage-Pult, Kernel-Pult, and Melon-Pult are brothers in the original Plants Vs. Zombies. Here, it's possible to fuse all three of them together to get Salad-Pult, which not only causes splash damage like Melon-Pult, but also hits zombies twice like some Cabbage-Pult fusions, has a chance to apply butter like Kernel-Pult, and also comes with a 42% chance to rapid-fire.
  • Wall-Nut and Tall-Nut are brothers in both the original and Fusion. By placing a Tall-Nut between two Wall-Nuts and using a Jicamagicker on them, they will be fused into Fortress-nut, which not only has massive HP and can block jumping zombies like Tall-Nut, but also comes with crush immunity and damage reduction based on the number of nut fusions on the lawn.
• The Smurfette Principle: Queen Jill-in-the-Box was the only female zombie in the game before the Ice Queen was added.
• Solar and Lunar: Helios Cabbage is a sun-themed cabbage pult whose abilities all revolve around the sun, with its projectiles generating sun and it also has the capability to summon a miniature sun that damages all zombies on the field. Its subspecies/sidegrade is Selene Cabbage, a moon-themed Helios Cabbage that relies on Lumos levels to increase its damage and summons a miniature moon that heals all plants on the field. Selene Cabbage also has a very rare 2% chance to be spawned as a Blood Moon Cabbage during night-time levels, which replaces the moon with a Blood Moon that no longer heals plants, but summons a number of beefed-up hypnotized zombies on your field.
• Summon Backup Dancers:
  • Dancing Zombie now looks and acts like an upgraded Pole Vaulting Zombie. After it successfully jumps over a plant, it summons four Backup Dancers around it, each of which act like a Pole Vaulting Zombie that can jump over another plant.
  • Michael Zombie takes this even further. When encountering a plant, it summons four Dancing Zombies around it, each of which can summon four backup dancers if they leap over a plant. Superstar Zombie acts the same, except it enters the lawn at super speeds while taking massively reduced damage as it moves in, almost ensuring it will summon its Dancing Zombies. In total, 20 extra zombies can be spawned in.
  • Jackson Worldwide is the King Mook of Dancing Zombies, and fittingly summons groups of four Superstar Zombies at regular intervals. One spawn can potentially spawn up to 84 Zombies, many of which will have vaulted into your defenses.
• Support Party Member:
  • Most fusions involving Sunflower, Wall-Nut, Pumpkin, Magnet-Shroom or Flower Pot are these, giving players high defense or utility.
  • Tesla Magnet (Lumina Magnet + Cherry Magnet) is a Magnet-Shroom on steroids. It has the ability to attract magnetic items at a much faster than normal Magnet-Shroom (0.5 seconds). Like Cherry Magnet, it will throw the magnetized items out at zombies to damage them, and like Lumina Magnet, its range also increases with more Lumos levels. One of its upgrades allows it to attract from twice the distance (which stacks multiplicatively with the Lumos level range buff) and another allows it to attract three items at one go.
  • In an interesting way, Gold Stygian Kelp's Odyssey upgrades make it into this once the Pool and Fog levels are over and it can't be used. The first gives you +5% more damage every 1000 points, up to a maximum of 400%. The second is a Discount Card that makes all store items cost 30% less points, which is huge considering the limited amount of points you can get.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Nuclear deterrence only works in warfare if the opposing side is actually aware of the threat and consequences of nuclear weaponry. While this is (theoretically) not a problem with humans, most if not all of the zombies have no understanding of the concept. As a result, Shroomageddon's attempt at using the nuclear core in his body for intimidation is only a justified Informed Attribute, though anyone who eats him or Atomheart Plantern will immediately learn what they've been holding onto the hard way.
• Suspicious Video Game Generosity: The very first level in any Odyssey mode will have several Giga Mecha-Nuts show up, at which point rushing them down is a trivial matter, and the only time Giga Mecha-Nuts will appear after that is in the much later roof levels. As the waves get increasingly brutal, you'll find you're expected to use the shells they drop to make allied Giga Mecha-Nuts that your defense will quickly revolve around via their ability to take damage in place for the plants around them and pay very close attention to them, as while the zombies drop plenty of metal to keep them healthy, they can't be replaced.
• Taking the Bullet:
  • Spicicle (Jalapeno + Ice-shroom) absorbs damage for all other plants on the lawn while it's active. compared to other options, however, this one can only do so for a maximum of 15 seconds, as every 3 seconds, it deals 8,000 points of damage to itself (with a max health of 32,000).
  • One of the possible upgrades for Obsidian Tall-Nut is Protection, which allows it to take damage in place of the plants to its left and right. Considering its massive health, regeneration, as well as reducing all damage done to it to a small amount, it's often one of its best upgrades.
  • Mecha-nut and Giga Mecha-nut take damage in place of other plants in a 3 x 3 area around themselves. To assist in this, they heal themselves with metal objects that zombies or Magnet-flower drop, and can exceed their maximum HP when doing so (Up to quadruple for Mecha-nut, and no upper limit for Giga Mecha-nut).
  • Midas Umbrella forces trident-throwing zombies to target it instead of other plants.
  • On the Zombies' side, there's the Purgatory Zombie Ultra-Mecha Nut, which not only has a lot of health, but absorbs damage for every zombie on the lawn. It also reduces all that absorbed damage from each zombie to a maximum of 100.
• Team Killer: There are some Plants that kill other plants, whether intentionally or not:
  • Downplayed by Doom Chomper. When it bites down, it will create a crater on the tile next to it. This will kill any plant that was on that tile, even bypassing damage reduction abilities.
  • Jalapeno Sunflower will burn all plants in its lane, giving sun for each plant killed that way.
  • Doom Jalapeno will also burn all plants in its lane, causing a Doom-Shroom explosion on the spot where each plant was.
  • Death Mouth Chomper (Doom Chomper + Doom Jalapeno) eats and kills the plant in front of it... but that plant will drop its seed packet, allowing it to be planted again with no cost. It appears to be used for triggering on-death effects, and becomes a duplicator/triplicator for Puff-Shroom fusion plants, each of which in the tile will drop a seed packet that can be used thrice, giving you up to nine plants for the cost of three.
• Time Master: Apocalypse-Shroom (Ice-Shroom + Doom-Shroom) not only deals massive damage to and freezes zombies on the screen, but even freezes the wave timer, preventing new zombie waves from spawning within 10 seconds of planting it.
• Turns Red: In both a literal and trope example, the Snow Queen will start turning from blue to red and begin attacking more aggressively as she takes damage.
• Unrealistic Black Hole:
  • Chrono Kernel-Pult throws "butter" that creates miniature black holes which slows down zombies in its radius and explodes after a few seconds, dealing damage.
  • Paradox Kernel-Pult throws similar black holes in place of butter, but these black holes can be shot at with more of its kernels to expand them to a bigger size. After some time, the black hole explodes with radius and damage proportionate to the number of projectiles it sucked in. One Odyssey upgrade allows it to suck in both Plant and Zombie projectiles, quickly making the black hole deal massive amounts of damage to the entire screen upon exploding.
  • Photon Splitter and Atomheart Plantern's synergy raises the latter's energy cap to 100k. If the former transfers enough energy to the latter to reach the cap, the Atomheart Plantern will go critical, and turn into a black hole that sucks in all non-boss zombies on the screen, before exploding the whole screen for 1 million damage 100 times.
• Underground Monkey: Alongside the canon red-eyed Giga-Gargantuar, who's defined by having double the health of a normal Gargantuar, Fusion adds three other different upgraded variants of the Gargantuar.
  • The blue-eyed Turbo Gargantuar moves and throws his Imp twice as fast as a normal Gargantuar.
  • The green-eyed Shepherd Gargantuar creates Imps whenever he smashes a plant.
  • The yellow-eyed Volley Gargantuar throws five Imps in a cluster, instead of throwing a single Imp.
• Villain Shoes: The Night Snow levels are flashbacks from the perspective of Iceborg Executrix, who in that time was the leader of the Assassins seen in Odyssey levels, as visualized by the journal in their colors left behind after her bossfight. As a result, hypnotized weaker Assassins periodically spawn while playing levels in the world, which lack their dash attack and Gemini Destruction Law abilities.
• War Elephants:
  • The Elephant Zombie is a Giant Mook with more health than a Gargantuar. It attacks by using a stomp that crushes most plants and pushes smaller zombies forwards by a bit, allowing them to bypass walls after a few stomps.
  • The Black Olive Elephant is a stronger version of the former who has three times the health of the former, uses a rapid tusk attack that deals 1800 damage, as well as stomps that one-shot most plants and push zombies forwards. Furthermore, they will take damage in place of Giga Football Striker and Giga Football Archduke.
• Weaponized Teleportation: The "Teleportation" Status Effect is inflicted by Chrono Pea's shots. This initially doesn't seem to do much other than stun zombies, but if the effect lasts for a number of seconds equal or greater than 1/30th of their current health, it instakills them by teleporting them away. If the effect ends before that, the zombie takes 30x the number of seconds elapsed in damage. Subsequent Chrono Peas hitting an affected zombie add 1 second to the Teleportation's effective time. If Chrono Kernel Pult's Unrealistic Black Hole hits a Teleportation-affected zombie, it adds 30 seconds to the effective time, while Chrono Melon Pult's projectiles' splash damage spreads the effect from an affected zombie to other zombies, though neither inflict this effect directly.
• Why Am I Ticking?:
  • The Enflamed status is inflicted by many fire plants (but not flaming peas, unless an Odyssey upgrade is bought). When an Enflamed zombie dies, it explodes, dealing damage to and inflicting the Enflamed status to zombies within a 3x3 radius. This status however gets removed by Chilled/Frozen.
  • Curse-Shroom (Doom-Shroom + Hypno-Shroom) turns the zombie that eats it into a hypnotized, doom-shroom charged zombie. Should that zombie die or move off the end of the lawn, it explodes like a Doom-Shroom.
  • Calamity-Shroom (Curse-Shroom + Doom-Shroom) turns all non-boss zombies within its area of explosion into hypnotized, doom-shroom charged zombies.
• Wolf Pack Boss: The Omega Squad Purgatory zombie is a miniboss version of the Alpha Squad Zombie with all of the same abilities taken Up to Eleven, including having no limit on how many times they can get back up after being incapacitated, which necessitates killing all twenty-five of them (Five in each lane) to defeat them.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Normally, the chilled status and the enflamed status will cancel out each other. However, the synergy odyssey upgrade for Doominator-Shroom and Napalm-Shroom, "Elemental Reactions", will allow both statuses to coexist, and if a zombie with one status gets afflicted with the other, an explosion that deals 300 true splash damage and ignores any damage reduction will be created on their spot.
• You Are Fat: Doom-Nut acts like a stereotypical comic nerd and looks like a chubby Doom-Shroom to the point where Quantum McCornics once mistook him for such.
• Zerg Rush: Puff-Shroom uniquely has the ability to be stacked in threes on one tile, which carries over to almost all of its subsequent fusions. While most of these tend to be weaker than usual, some of them have the same output as the non-Puff-Shroom version (like Gatling Icicle-Shroom), tripling its attack power.