Plants vs Zombies is one of PopCap’s most beloved games, and is one of the best casual games ever made. While everyone recognises the name today, PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka explained that the game was originally set to be called “Lawn of the Dead”.

Speaking to FRVR, Kapalka revealed that they sent horror maestro and Dawn of the Dead creator George Romero a “special request” to try and get it over the line. However, the iconic horror film director denied the game developer’s request.

Plants vs Zombies is arguably one of the best-known games from the studio, which ended up being acquired by EA in 2011. While it was initially called Plants v Zombies, it’s been known for some time that for a majority of its development cycle it was actually referred to as “Lawn of the Dead” – an obvious play on Romero’s 1978 masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead. Despite Kapalka and team keen to use the name, they were advised by lawyers that this was a “bad idea”.

“It was originally called Plants versus Zombies for a while because that was the obvious title, but for most of its development time it was referred to as Lawn of the Dead,” he told us.

“Ironically, a few years later the production company came contacting us to see if we would do a Plants versus Zombies thing for one of his later zombie movies… We also said no.”

Jason Kapalka

“We thought it would be OK eventually, and it might have been at some point, but it was around the time they were making a Dawn of the Dead remake,” he continues. “We were warned that was also a bad idea. At one point we actually sent a special request to George Romero to intervene, in, like a video with people dressed as zombies and other stuff, begging for us to help us keep the name and he said no.”

During this period, despite the fact that the brilliant horror-comedy Shaun of the Dead had already released, Dawn of the Dead rights holder MKR Group was particularly defensive of the IP. While Plants vs Zombies was in development, Capcom was embroiled in a lawsuit with MKR Group over the game Dead Rising which was later ruled to not be infringing on any protected copyright.

Despite this rigamarole, Kapalka, who went on to found Blue Wizard Digital, recalls having the last laugh. “Ironically, a few years later the production company came contacting us to see if we would do a Plants versus Zombies thing for one of his later zombie movies… We also said no.”

Kapalka also revealed that at one stage, there was even talk of a ‘Diablo style’ game set in the PvZ universe, something he “would have liked to do” – but the deal fell through. “At one point we were in talks with, we were going to acquire the studio who did Torchlight, Runic, because that was our idea of if PopCap was doing Diablo that was what it would look like. Unfortunately that deal fell apart, but that would have been the kind of thing we would have liked to do… things of that nature.”

The name may not have stuck, but that didn’t stop PvZ becoming a huge success, with millions of downloads across multiple different platforms. Still, Kapalka admitted he was “surprised” EA hasn’t done more with the IP.

“I’m a little surprised that EA hasn’t done more with the brand and, you know, other licenses,” Kapalka told us. “There’s some comic books, but they haven’t really done TV shows or movies, which I’m a little surprised by.”