For those of us who are fans of the zombie apocalypse drama series, The Walking Dead, it’s no surprise that when the show began airing in 2011, it captured the hearts of viewers worldwide. However, what may be a surprise is that original creator Robert Kirkman never wanted the zombies to “evolve” over time. In an interview with AMC TV during Comic-Con this year, Kirkman said: I think originally we were going to have these characters who would get bit and then turn into zombies. But I was like, “No, I don’t want them to evolve.
I want them to stay human. Zombies are scary as hell when they’re mess up. They’re not scary as hell when they’re just walking around. So I changed it so they would become zombies. And then people were like, “Oh man! They’re evolving!” But I was like, no, they became zombies because they got bit. This decision has paid off; The Walking Dead is one of the most popular shows on cable TV and has been reference in countless other works since its release. It
The Walking Dead’s Zombie Never Actually Changed (For A Good Reason)
When it comes to zombies, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” has always been a bit different than most. For one, the zombies have never really changed much throughout the show’s seven seasons (although they’ve done some interesting things with them in recent years). For another, creator Robert Kirkman never wanted them to evolve too much.
According to Kirkman, there are two reasons for this: One is that he doesn’t want the zombies to be less scary; after all, if the monsters are too human-like, viewers become complacent and may not be as scared when they encounter them on screen. Secondly, Kirkman doesn’t want the show to devolve into a Romero-style zombie movie where everything is over-the-top gorey and unrealistic.
This mindset carries over into Kirkman’s comics as well. In his source material (which predates “The Walking Dead” by several years), zombies are human corpses that have been reanimate through disease or violence (ala “Night of the Living Dead”). In subsequent comic book adaptations, however, Kirkman has tended to make smaller tweaks to this basic concept – eliminating certain details (like sharp teeth), changing others (reintroducing skin tags and other minor body mods), or simply focusing on different aspects of zombie life (for example, turning undead hunters into feral cannibals). This flexibility is partly because each medium has its constraints – TV can
What is The Walking Dead?
The Walking Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror television series create by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. The series is produce by AMC Networks and stars Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, Lauren Cohan, Danai Gurira, and Melissa McBride. Set in the aftermath of a pandemic that has killed most of the population and left civilization in disarray, the show follows a group of people traveling around America searching for safety and resources. The zombies are originally present as mindless creatures only interested in eating human flesh. Still, as the series progresses, they are shown to be much more cunning and dangerous.
