The Newspaper Zombie comes from Plants vs Zombies, the tower-defence game released by PopCap in 2009, where it shuffles toward the player's lawn reading a newspaper. When plants destroy that newspaper, the zombie drops its reading material, groans in anger and suddenly moves much faster, turning a slow joke enemy into a sudden threat. That transformation made the angry sound easy to lift from gameplay footage, and it has since circulated on soundboards and in short gaming edits as shorthand for a calm character snapping.