14 DAY TRIAL // PopCap has decided to remove the Dancing Zombie from Plants Versus Zombies because of a complaint formulated by the Michael Jackson estate. The very popular enemy was a parody of the character portrayed by the King of Pop in the famous Thriller video. The Dancing Zombie will not disappear completely, but it will be replaced by a version that will not look like the recently deceased celebrity.
MTV Multiplayer reached out to PopCap to comment on this development. The publisher replied that, “The Estate of Michael Jackson objected to our use of the ‘dancing zombie’ in Plants vs. Zombies based on its view that the zombie too closely resembled Michael Jackson. After receiving this objection, PopCap made a business decision to retire the original ‘dancing zombie’ and replace it with a different 'dancing zombie' character for future builds of Plants vs. Zombies on all platforms. The phase-out and replacement process is underway.”
The current versions of Plants Versus Zombies on platforms still contain the Michael Jackson rendition of the Dancing Zombie, but all future updates will remove it in favor of one that does not offend the sensibilities of Michael Jackson's estate. It is unclear whether there was any mention of a lawsuit, but PopCap probably wanted to play it safe and not risk any problems with one of is most successful games to date.
Xbox 360 owners that will buy the future XBLA version of Plants Versus Zombies will probably miss out on of the game's best gags. It is hard to see why would Jackson's family find this parody irreverent, as Plants Vs Zombies was released before the tragic events that lead to the pop star's death and it is quite clear that they are no way connected. Plants Versus Zombies will launch on XLBA sometime in September for 1200 Microsoft Points.