Well, look at the current situation of zombie media...
No one stereotype prevails, just that they *are* zombies, and they usually can infect people.
Thus, it would be better to just say that the zombie media covers every concept of zombie that it does in Real Life, and then some additional ones that no movie has considered yet.
Better yet, maybe have a bunch of binary states to decide what zombies are like, with each sde to each state having advantages and disadvantages. Example: either they shamble along but can revive even from death given time, or they are just as fast as a regular player, but death is final.
Each state-pair would have it's state chosen randomly.
There could be an admin menu with the various state-pairs, and an override to have both of neither(though the initial randomization would pick one or the other, and neither none or both)
Maybe have it so they are slow and only can die from head injuries because reviving after death would make them impossible to kill, oh and add a genetic way to revert them, so they can be saved, and add a Genetic injector launcher that can be built, so they don't have to get close.
Zombies dont heal without 02. Simply put, kill, then eject into space.
"Edit" Im not liking the idea of making the geneticist better. I mean, he can already make himself superman without anyone suspecting anything, till its too late.
The pill would be alright, I guess. Though, it should have a random chance to fail. "Instead, I gave you super powers! Hehe" or "I killed you, crap" or "Nothing happens". This would mean for a traitor trying to stuff one down another's throat, that it might not work as intended.
I would say like a 40% chance of working, 20% chance of doing nothing, 20% chance of killing you(its a virus, duh), and 15% chance of adding random disorders(instead of what was intended), and a 5% chance of adding super powers. In this way, it cant be exploited to get yourself super powers, since your more likely to die.
Only one of these would work. I dont know coding, like at all, but it go something like "system chooses a number from 1-100, whatever number/percent range it happens to be in, that event happens".