The series stars Pegg and Nick Frost, with several other actors, including Bill Nighy, Rafe Spall and Martin Freeman, also appearing in all three films.

[3][4][5] In addition to brief references to the Cornetto ice cream brand, the films plots have other common elements: each depicts romance and struggles with maturity.

Pegg plays Shaun, a man attempting to gain focus in his life as he deals with his girlfriend, his mother and stepfather in the midst of an apocalyptic uprising of zombies.

The film follows a group of friends, led by Pegg, reattempting an epic pub crawl of their youth and discovering an alien occupation of their home town.

[10] Wright had written in Cornetto ice cream as a hangover cure for Frost's character in Shaun of the Dead, based on his own experiences.

[2][14] Shaun of the Dead features a red strawberry-flavoured Cornetto, which signifies the film's bloody and gory elements,[15] Hot Fuzz includes the blue original Cornetto, to signify the police element to the film,[16] and The World's End features the green mint chocolate chip flavour (though shown only by a wrapper caught in the wind) representing "little green men" and science fiction.

Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Rafe Spall, Julia Deakin, Patricia Franklin, and Garth Jennings appear in each of the films as well as other projects by Wright and Pegg.