Though they don't really have much to say themselves, the zombies in The Walking Dead
definitely have a story.
From production decisions to the makeup and lore, here's the truth about those mysterious walkers.
Walkers in The Walking Dead are an ever-present threat to every character on the show, but
they're a relatively manageable one.
It's established early on in the series that the walkers generally adhere to classic tropes.
For instance, the undead hordes usually only travel at a walking pace.
There's a reason the show isn't called The Jogging Dead.
Also, despite the fact that zombie bites cause the victims to turn into the undead, there
are solutions to this dilemma -- such as when Rick was able to prevent Hershel from turning
by severing his leg above the zombie bite.
When a person turns into a walker, they lose almost all remnants of their former self.
High-level thinking is unavailable to them, and while they might remember small things
like how to open doors, that's about it.
Their driving force is an insatiable hunger for the flesh of living things, a drive that
can't be quelled unless the brain of the walker is destroyed.
One of the biggest questions that's plagued fans is how exactly the zombie outbreak started.
Unfortunately, neither the original comics or the television series provide concrete answers.
Though he's been reluctant to disclose the virus' root cause in his works, Walking Dead
author Robert Kirkman apparently unveiled the genesis of the zombie apocalypse on Twitter.
According to the now-deleted Tweet, the virus started from some sort of "space spore."
This explanation immediately raised a few eyebrows, and considering Kirkman's history
of inserting jokes about aliens as the source of the zombie virus, that particular answer
seemed a bit suspect.
Though the space spore explanation caused some curiosity and debate, it would soon be
confirmed that Kirkman was once again playing a prank on his fans.
Shortly after he deleted his initial tweet confirming space spores started the zombie
outbreak, Kirkman again took to Twitter explaining that he'd only been joking.
Ultimately, The Walking Dead's lack of an outbreak cause is most likely a tribute to
legendary filmmaker George Romero, who never fully explained why the zombies were reanimating
in his original Living Dead films.
One of the key creatives behind the show is Greg Nicotero, a long-time Hollywood veteran
who has more practical experience with zombies than just about anyone in the world.
Nicotero got his start working with zombies when he joined the crew of George Romero's
1985 film Day of the Dead.
While there, he worked with legendary monster makeup artist Tom Savini to help create undead horrors.
Years of experience have given Nicotero innumerable opportunities to hone his craft.
Soon after wrapping up work on Day of the Dead, Nicotero dipped his toes into many other
iconic horror franchises, such as Evil Dead II, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Texas
Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and Hostel, among others.
But Nicotero didn't just limit himself to horror films.
He also did makeup for Spy Kids, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D, Transformers,
and the Kill Bill movies.
Throughout the series, the walkers in The Walking Dead are fairly consistent beings.
They don't have any wants outside of flesh, and their means of finding food are limited
to clumsily biting what prey they manage to stumble upon.
Aside from the sheer power presented by a horde, walkers are simple creatures with no intelligence.
However, while the walkers never stray too far from being mindless, hunger-driven creatures,
there are some notable examples where they display some amount of intelligence.
Specifically, the walkers in season one are notably more resourceful than the walkers
in later seasons.
For example, Morgan's undead wife attempts to turn the doorknob to their home before
mindlessly bashing at the front door.
More impressively, some walkers can be seen using tools like rocks to break into buildings,
demonstrating that they're capable of more advanced problem-solving skills than just
running and biting victims.
Series creator Robert Kirkman provides some insight in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything", saying,
"Fresher zombies, which there were more of in season one, can do more than older, more rotted zombies."
In other words, the walkers in season one are newly minted and at their prime, whereas
in later seasons, they've started to rot and lose their physical and intellectual capabilities.
Bringing the undead to life for TV is no small feat.
An underappreciated element of The Walking Dead's walkers is the excessive amounts of
blood used to make them all the more terrifying and realistic.
Special effects designer Greg Nicotero told CBS News:
"The Walking Dead probably uses up the most amount of blood that we've ever had on any
show.
I would say per episode, we're usually somewhere in the 20 to 30 gallons range."
But not all fake blood is created equal.
Nicotero explains that the blood is made on set, and depending on the scene, varied recipes
are used for different effects.
"We have dark zombie blood, we have dried blood, we have coagulated blood.
If you have a shirt like my shirt, which is dark, and you want to see the blood on it,
it has to be brighter, otherwise it would just fade in with the color."
Nicotero even revealed a surprising ingredient in his blood concoction to get the right consistency.
In an interview with Allure, Nicotero admitted using K-Y Jelly as a thickening agent for the blood.
Besides makeup and all other hands-on aspects of creating walkers, there also exists the
difficulty of doing all of that work justice by finding the best way in which to film them.
In an interview with Digital Trends, Greg Nicotero noted that The Walking Dead was initially
conceptualized in various shooting formats.
During the production of the first season, the series was tested using Panavision, a
RED digital camera, and even 35 millimeter film before the showrunners ultimately settled
on the Super 16 format.
During a test using Panavision, a walker was placed under green trees, resulting in the
walker's makeup looking green.
Though color correction could be used to solve the issue, Nicotero and The Walking Dead production
team decided to use Super 16, the medium that would result in the best-looking shot before
color correction and editing.
For each episode of The Walking Dead, the necessity of special effects is a given.
There's likely to be some effects applied to background shots in order to make a given
shooting location look different.
Characters are also sometimes enhanced by airbrushing blemishes, adding sweat, or making
bloody, oozing wounds more visceral.
Any scene with a walker getting stabbed with a weapon will have a prop extended to go through
the shambling corpse.
For the episodes that require a hefty amount of effects, it sometimes takes quite a while to finish them.
Showrunner and executive producer Angela Kang remarked:
"From the start of an episode getting locked [...] through the end of the VFX process — it's
a weeks-long process — on the short end, like a month.
But really you want, ideally, at least a couple months to do it."
Because The Walking Dead is filmed in Georgia, the actors, crew, and all of the extras are
sometimes subjected to extreme weather.
Temperatures in the summer can reach well into the 90s, with humidity making everything feel hotter.
During the colder months, temperatures on the set can sink below freezing.
These intense filming conditions have created several complications for the special effects
masters of the show.
According to makeup artist Toby Sells, traditional materials used in climate-controlled sound
stages, such as gelatin, melt in the summer sun.
"The conventional wisdom led us to find a really big stage, which we did here at Pinewood,
and build multiple sets for the various settings that take place throughout the script"
Some of the workarounds used to keep extras and actors more comfortable are pretty creative.
For example, David Morrisey — who played the Governor in the show's third and fourth
seasons — had ice packs sewn into his leather jacket.
But nevertheless, keeping everyone cool and safe is always a challenge.
As costume designer Eulyn Womble explained, during the hotter days of filming:
"Fighting the humidity is the hardest part.
We have to keep the zombies hydrated.
We have a medic on staff.
If you see somebody who looks dehydrated, you do whatever you have to do to keep them comfortable."
So what happens when the temperatures drop?
According to Womble:
"In winter, we can layer the zombies properly, and we have a Snuggie wrangler.
He literally runs out and puts Snuggies on the zombies when it's cold."
With each new season, the walkers become more noticeably more decomposed.
As the apocalypse rages on, it's only natural that the undead would continually fester away.
However, Greg Nicotero has expressed that while the walkers may become more visibly
decayed, there's a line in the sand that the visual effects and makeup teams are unwilling to cross.
Though The Walking Dead has been more inclined to show sagging skin and rotting flesh in
newer seasons, the walkers will never decompose to the point of becoming walking skeletons.
In an interview with SlashFilm, Nicotero stated:
"[Showrunner] Scott [M. Gimple] has one very specific thing that he is conscious of, which
is that it can't be a Ray Harryhausen.
It can't be a walking skeleton.
It always has to be muscles.
It always has to be something that is motivating the movement."
So while the walkers may grow more ragged over time, Walking Dead fans can rest assured
that they'll never wind up watching a modern-day version of Jason and the Argonauts.
Instead, they'll get to appreciate all the new ways that walkers will decompose within
the show's self-imposed limit.
The most commonly associated word with undead people walking around is "zombie."
However, the term is notably absent from The Walking Dead.
Shedding some light on this discrepancy in a conversation with Conan O'Brien, Robert
Kirkman explained why the characters never say the word.
According to Kirkman, zombie fiction simply doesn't exist in the world he created.
He explains:
"We wanted to avoid that notion of, 'Hey, why doesn't that character just shooting that
zombie in the head because it saw all those movies I saw.'"
As such, the works of George Romero, the creator of the Living Dead films that established
many tropes in the modern zombie genre, are absent from The Walking Dead's world.
Kirkman further explains that without Romero's works, the people within this fictional realm
have no conceptualization of conventions and rules outlined in zombie media.
He states:
"It felt like having people not use that word would kind of separate it from that, make
it a little bit more clear."
There have always been a few particularities that make The Walking Dead seem a bit far-fetched.
For example, as the main cast treks through the United States, they seem to regularly
be in short supply of firearm ammunition.
But according to the Brookings Institute, over 400 million guns are in the United States,
likely with ammunition in vast quantities, as well.
Additionally, the show's survivors are frequently shown driving years after the start of the
apocalypse, despite regular gasoline degrading in less than a year, according to J.D. Power.
However, there's been an even more persistent trend that seems to run counter to what one
may expect in a real-life zombie apocalypse situation.
In The Walking Dead, almost all of the walkers are skinny people.
This doesn't quite vibe with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's data for
Georgia in 2019 -- which recorded that self-reported obesity was at 33.1%.
Given this disparity between real-life demographics and the population of the undead, series creator
Robert Kirkman offered an answer.
In a letter column for The Walking Dead #111, he wrote:
"Frankly, it's hard to ADD to big people to make them look like zombies.
Keep in mind, to make those walkers look real, you have to build stuff, on top of real people.
[...] You start adding to people my size, and well [...] we start to look a bit too
padded, if that makes sense."
Though Rick and his band of survivors typically use the word "walker" to refer to each undead
specimen, other names are offered throughout the series.
For instance, the denizens of Alexandria refer to the walking corpses as "roamers."
Others include "rotters," as heard in season five, and "biters," as they're called by the
residents of Woodbury in season three.
And of course, there's also "stinker," the nomenclature used by Connie, Kelly, Luke,
Magna, and Yumiko in seasons nine and ten.
These varied alternatives to the word zombie coincide with Kirkman's longtime tribute to
Romero, who specially avoided the Z-word in his Living Dead films as well.
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