The Walking Dead: Interesting Facts About the Smash Hit Show

The Walking Dead was a hugely popular post-apocalyptic zombie series that aired for 11 seasons and has bearthed recent successful spin-offs Dead City and Daryl Dixon. In celebration of this brilliant show, we decided to bring you five interesting facts about the show.

Five Facts About The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead: Zombie School

Greg Nicotero (executive producer) used to hold a Zombie School at the beginning of every season. During this school, people would be selected on their looks and performance. The idea would be to find actors with thinner bone structures – perfect for a background zombie.

The show’s focus on creating the most realistic zombies is admirable in a world where many creators default to CGI.

S.W.A.T. Visits the Set in Atlanta

The character of Daryl was created specifically for the show alongside his brother Merle (Michael Rooker). The scene in Atlanta where Merle was shooting zombies attracted the attention of some worried locals who called the police, who sent out a S.W.A.T. team to investigate.

The scenes in Atlanta were memorable, where Merle cut off his own hand – later found with a makeshift hand and working for The Guvnor.

Too Violent for HBO

It’s common practice to shop shows to different networks before they are snapped up, and The Walking Dead was no different. Finding its home on AMC allowed this show to prosper into the phenomenon it became. Before the show found its forever home – NBC and HBO received pitches.

Most surprising was HBO deciding the show was too violent despite previously presenting shows such as The Sopranos and True Blood.

Michonne Really Hit Rick

Before we saw the Rick and Michonne love story, Rick began to develop feelings for Jessie at Alexandria, who was having to live with her abusive and alcoholic husband Pete.

The two men had a huge fight, which gave us a glimpse into how far Rick can go when pushed – and Michonne decided to shut it down by hitting him on the back of the head in what looked like a realistic scene. The scene had realism because it was actually real. Danai Guirira (Michonne) admitted at a Comic-Con panel that she hit Andrew Lincoln by mistake. Rick was ok, and the rest is history.

Dale Demanded to Be Killed Off

The Walking Dead was fast becoming a phenomenon as it rolled into season two. Living in a post-apocalyptic world, it was always a matter of time until the main characters started to die. In season two, we saw Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale) die a violent death.

The killing of the character – was not a straightforward one, as DeMunn asked for his character to die in protest at the treatment of Frank Darabont. The two were friends, having worked together on The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, and the moving The Green Mile.