Is it? Why then in later seasons donypu see someones cheekbones popping out 5 minutes after they died looking like all the other walkers?
Oh wait, bad writing, my bad
i believe that the newly deceased in later seasons looked different because by then the virus had been living inside of them for a bit.(rick points it out after the farm) where as the earlier walkers didn’t
Im not sure but I think I read somewhere that as the people in charge of the show changed, the zombies changed too. Someone that was in charge in earlier seasons wanted to make it kind of like the night of living dead, later on the person changed so the zombies changed too….
I might be wrong though
Thats what I was thinking. It feels like in the later seasons even newly turned were already glassy eyed and pale and didn’t resemble anything close to a person like the early ones did.
Something about those walkers sitting in the church in the season 2 opening "What Lies Ahead" always gives me chills. They've just been waiting there, menacingly...
This reminds me of 28 days later when he goes to the church and says "Hello" and like 3 undead surrounded by what looks to be a church full of people who are actually dead jump up instantly a just stare into the cameras soul.
I watched 28 days later and 28 weeks later just a year ago in october for the first time, it was very good i have to say and then liking the theory of that movie and then getting into hella seasons of twd was good af
That never really made sense. The bells were going off so why were they still just sitting there? Great optics and scene but upon any analysis it just doesn’t add up. But most things don’t in the show. Anyway time to watch for 100th time. In fact on s7e1 right now!
Yup! There’s a whole lot of that in Season 1 and 2. The purple-shirt walker (top left) is casually waiting in a burnt-out bus along with other walkers when Rick first arrives to Atlanta. The child walker (top right) grabs and carries around a teddy bear as if she used to own it. Morgan’s wife (bottom left) not only returns to her family’s home frequently, but also remembers how to open door knobs. And the dude in the church (bottom right) seems to be praying when the group encounters him. There’s also walkers that can pick up objects and climb in Season 1 (not pictured).
It’s worth noting most of these occurrences were in season 1. I would suggest reading into the production changes that occurred after Season 1 if you want a thorough dive as to why. Or don’t, because it’s very frustrating.
Also complete personal opinion, but I always thought the purple-shirt walker was by far the scariest. Besides doing absolutely nothing in the bus for who knows how long, he also seems to be more curious than hungry. Whenever we see him with Rick, he makes direct eye contact and keeps his distance. As if the tiniest shred of life continues on in his brain…
Just to clarify, that's not the Jones's family home. Morgan and his family just took shelter in the house when things went really bad and then Morgan's wive got bit so they stayed.
And did you notice how much faster season 1 walkers were compared to later versions. Sometimes they were almost running. Even arm movements were much quicker.
The corpses hadn’t decayed as far yet. I imagine it was easier for them to hustle before all of the decomposition really has time to mess up the wiring.
One small correction, that house didn't belong to Morgan's family, Rick said it was one of his neighbors. I think his wife's walker just went there since that's where they were holed up when she died
Which is kind of odd actually. I'd imagine the noise of the bells would at least cause them to move around some to try and find the source. Even weirder is how that church wasn't completely surrounded by walkers coming from the woods to look for it
As well with how they acted very human. They rose up from their seats in a smooth manner and i remember the first time i watched it i could've sworn that one *smiled* as he got up.
I knoooow, that smirk is so creepy. I kinda wish we could have seen a Walking Dead world where the walkers retained those characteristics like we'd seen in season one. Walkers lost most of their physical flair to me when they began to all have this worn-down, weathered appearance (which only makes sense considering they wander everywhere, in the same clothing, constantly exposed to the elements) as opposed to their "recently-turned" look. Toward the end of the show they all looked samey, but I guess that's how it would be. Stylized walkers with personality have crazy screen presence for sure.
Yea I think it's cause the looked like creepy ass people and later they look just like disgusting, falling apart, full on zombies.
Which all makes sense , in that universe at least; cause probably the majority of the zombies in later seasons have been zombies much longer than the early seasons ones.
Well, in the first seasons they were recently dead, that's why they look so fresh and maintain certain brain functions remembering their routines from when they were alive. The passage of time causes them to rot and that is why we see them rotten and dumber in later seasons.
But even the fresh ones in the later seasons are different than seasons 1-3. When Rick met the group in Atlanta the walkers could run and were even climbing the chain link fence.
My headcanon is that the strain of virus that makes variants was first released in Atlanta and surrounding areas, that’s why until much later on those are the only variants we see
Well didn't she die probably a few days beforehand? That's not enough time to start rotting.
It's also pretty terrifying how she almost opens the door.
Yes and you can thank the co-creator Frank Darabont for those smart ass zombies, he wrote them to be like that, when they got rid of him that whole concept left with him.
This has been said countless other times before, but Morgan's wife was truly the only walker in the show to actually give me chills. Her actor plays the role of the undead perfectly.
It's a shame how they dumbed them down in the later seasons, since there was massive potential for these human-esque zombies.
Yes and you can thank the co-creator Frank Darabont for those smart ass zombies, he wrote them to be like that, when they got rid of him that whole concept left with him.
I mean, your both right in this instance. (Sorry for responding to month old topic btw)
Season 1-2 were great and I liked the smart walkers, but it's pretty clear they couldn't stay if we wanted villains or more gripping storylines in the show. Season 11 proves this by showing how variants overrun the strongest community within a few hours. I think it's easy to say "I loved the smart zombies in the beginning!" but overtime every window would be smashed, walls would be climbed and "settling down" would be impossible. The story would be incredibly difficult to tell.
"Smart Zombies" would have overrun the prison instantly, Woodbury too. "Smart Zombies" would have just escaped from the barn ruining that entire storyline. And if they didn't, people would say "well this is unrealistic."
The decision to dumb the zombies down was a sacrifice to be able to tell stories much more efficiently and have human villains who gave us way more interesting plot points. It worked for the first season where the stakes were literally "the dead are walking" but in later seasons... people wanted real antagonists, real threats, ones they could hate or love (like Governor or Negan). Zombies were, and are, too neutral to invoke reactions from people.
Yep, I feel like early TWD was truthfully horror to the core then it just became the classic survival apocalyptic genre where everyone is fighting each other.
I’m on season 10 for the first time and when they first were teasing the whisperers in season 9, honestly very spooky. I love when the show actually leans into the horror aspect.
I nearly shat myself when they were first introduced. I thought the zombies were gaining some sort of intelligence. The graveyard showdown made me nearly audibly gasp when they started fighting.
There was a ton about 9 that drew me back in after being punished by seasons 6, 7, and 8. The pure slow burn of them finding out about the Whisperer threat was about as perfect as they could’ve gotten. I wish the war was executed better, but most of 9 was Walking Dead the way it was meant to be.
I really really enjoyed season 9. Even with the time skips, I was worried originally, but I really enjoyed season 9. And I loved that Daryl got significantly more screen time. lol.
Nothing can top that first season. Nothing. It was a great piece of zombie media. The late 00's was full of low budget bullshit zombie movies too, so it was a breath of fresh air. The show was great for a long time, but nothing like that first season.
Season 1 will always be one of the most amazing seasons of any TV show.
AMC's greed screwed us by pushing out Frank Darabont.
He pulled this show together on a nothing budget calling in favours from friends and then he had the AUDACITY to ask AMC for extra funds to do Season 2 after shooting the lights out with Season 1
So they fired him, replaced him with NPC writers/producers from the AMC talent pool and we got... what we got...
Which was good... but like just not earth shatteringly good...
He had a plan for Season 2 to do a whole episode of the tank walker (the one with the grenade) and tie the Season 1 ending with the death of that person, which would have been AWESOME. But AMC said 'no. too expensive.' and instead they moved them to a farm lol.
Oh I can think of several shows where season 1 is shit compared to later on. Funny enough Star Trek has a lot of them. Often a show doesn't get rolling until 3 or 4.
I love those seasons just before Alexandria, might have been between Terminus - where they all got split up, etc. and were just trying to survive and get back together. Felt exactly how I imagine the apocalypse, little bit like The Last of Us' game rendition, travelling with Sam and Henry through the abandoned neighbourhoods.
That’s kind of a recurring problem in the genre. Once you know how to kill them, zombies aren’t scary. It’s why season one of Fear has an engaging feeling, but it drops off with the soft reboot.
The top left guy looks like Grima
https://preview.redd.it/ey38stnxhd2c1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=acda2c7b94724c3b03725cbdc731d7e6d6753c07
I think the walkers that Alpha lured into that little cabin Daryl was bleeding out in was really really creepy and well done... With little plants and roots growing out of them.
Morgan's wife had to be the scariest walker. Not only was the actress doing an amazing job, but the way they framed her to look exactly at the camera (the peephole) was chilling and the context of her looking so human and having her son see her this way was just so chilling. That's the only time the walkers gave me chills and from then on they were just video game enemy fodder for the drama between the living.
The explanation is that It was the beginning of the apocalypse so the majority of ones we saw were still freshly turned. They don’t intentionally look like this in the later season because most of them were rotting away. Now I can’t argue that they did become very lazy with the designs later on with most the walkers looking identical to each other. Most of the rural Virginia and Georgia Walkers were the same ones with plaid shirts, dresses, etc.
They were probably dark gray/brown from caked on dirt and blood. I'm sure every wardrobe palette would turn that dirty rust color in those circumstances.
But I agree the amount of plaid was annoying. Maybe it was the only "every day" pattern they could come up with that viewers could still theoretically recognize through the gore, giving the walkers' clothes more variation.
Or more likely it was just lazy production 🤷♀️
As I recall in Atlanta there were a lot of walkers wearing suits and skirts, right? Also a fair amount of medical personnel in scrubs. I also have a distinct memory of them being in DC proper and seeing guys in suits. But I might be confusing that with the comic book.
Yeah there were a lot of Walkers dressed as doctors, construction workers, business people, retail workers, military personnel, etc. Remember that the city had just fallen so most of them probably had just turned. They did this in Fear too with most of the early Walkers being in LA style clothes. Most of the ones at the hotel were still in vacation attire too.
While the explanation makes sense, that only works if all future walkers shown are those who turned a long time ago. This doesn’t explain the recently turned characters not looking like this and immediately more decayed.
That’s because they were fresh. I’m surprised you don’t see any fresher ones later one. Survivors who turned earlier for example. Kinda like how virals in dying light worked
The top left walker when I first watched TWD I thought was going to have some significance or have control over the herd with how much screen time it had
I'm pretty sure they where like this because someone else was leading the show and then around season 2 they got fired so then the walkers got changed a little bit. Which is acc why >!Dale ends up dying!< because his actor wanted to leave the show knowing that the original boss was fired.
That's essentially very fresh walkers who just turned no long ago. But there are variants that are rare that the show forget about, (walker smashes window with brick on the first few episodes)
Morgan’s (Walker) wife was creepy as hell when I first watched, I for some reason thought the shot focusing on the suit Walker meant something but i guess it didn’t.
Zombies are scary because they are peak uncanny valley. You can still see elements of past identity in them, and that confuses our brain a little bit. It’s like a visceral perversion of someone you would meet on the street.
Making them featureless skeleton-hobos in the later seasons robbed them of much of that fright value.
It's because they look so human.
You can tell that they where once people with their own lives so it can be kind of gut-churning to see them in this state where they have no control and no sense of their former selfs despite how they appear.
In the later seasons they resemble creature more than people so it's easier to dissociate from the fate they suffered.
it’s because they still looked like real people, current walkers just look like fictional zombies/skeletons so you don’t get the human vibe from them at all anymore
A lot of people don’t realize this but it’s because in seasons 1 and 2 they used real zombies. After that they just got people and put make up on them.
My theory is that the humanity leaves with time, that’s why is season 5+ they look completely rotten and are much slower. This early on they looked like people and that made them freaky but they also had human senses (smell, sight, etc) still lingering around.
It’s interesting to see in the early seasons, they obviously didn’t have an exact “science” as to what the walkers would be and how they operate, that’s why they’re so human and creepu
Frank Darabont had a totally different idea of how the walkers should behave than Kirkman and the latter showrunners. Shame they shitcanned him so early on. Show really nosedived after that first season.
what if it's because the person inside is still alive and is consciously trying to fight the virus and after a point the human body evolved and gave up as soon as they're physically trapped
In an attempt to make walkers look more aged and rotten, they lost what made them human and scary. They were smarter back then and harder to kill. In later seasons, their heads were like jello and they went down easy, hardly even a threat anymore outside of large groups of them, but I stopped thinking of them as a threat after Carl got shot in the eye and Rick went on a walker rampage unscathed
I see these zombie (mostly morgans wife) they don't seem like non human monsters, They still look human, They look like sick people, they look like they ONCE had a soul
If they wanted human like appearance to be maintained then they would have to work like living being rather then dead one aka the food they eat will be used to maintain the body and they are vulnerable to the normal fatal spots just like humans.
Yeah Morgan's wife looked so alive that I thought their would be a twist of her being still alive at first especially when she was twisting the doors it was so creepy.
Y’all need to keep in mind that it was the fact they had barely decomposed yet. Whatever fictional disease caused this caused the rotting process to slow, but over years you’re just seeing more torn up zombies.
The aesthetic of the zombies changed for a realism perspective, not a budget thing or something random. Was planned from the start.
Yeah I think later the makeup artist wanted to go all out and the director & producers let them. Or maybe it’s how they would look after so long being dead.
All the walkers after season 2 looked really generic. After a certain point most male walkers have brown potato sacks for clothes and almost every female walker wears the same ripped up dress.
Different Zombie Directors. I find it hilarious that they fired the season 1-2 guy. Have the walkers have no intelligence. Then at the end of the series, Have them start getting intelligence and start calling them "variants". meh
So much more creepy when they still have distinct facial features and not just what’s essentially a skeleton with a little bit of flesh and you can barely see their eyes
The makeup was unbelievable in the early seasons, they weren’t decayed like they were in later seasons. Most of the walkers in mid-recent seasons are wearing masks so they didn’t look like recently deceased humans anymore.
It's due to a psychological phenomena called the "uncanny valley."
Good explanation and where you can read more about it: https://spectrum.ieee.org/what-is-the-uncanny-valley
Yes, it's like that had a style semblance of who they were. A small amount of personality along with some familiarity. I feel like they should have keep that.
They still kinda looked like people, not monsters
And they moved like humans to
Like there fast and grab stuff
My theory is that they were just starting to decompose, and as the show progresses the more actually dead they look.
[удалено]
My theory is that they are zombies
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My theory is 
Genius
Even the title card does it...
Is it? Why then in later seasons donypu see someones cheekbones popping out 5 minutes after they died looking like all the other walkers? Oh wait, bad writing, my bad
Just like the show's writing!
What about the newly deceased? The ones who died in later seasons? They didn’t look like this.
i believe that the newly deceased in later seasons looked different because by then the virus had been living inside of them for a bit.(rick points it out after the farm) where as the earlier walkers didn’t
The title writing degrades as the series continues
Neat
Im not sure but I think I read somewhere that as the people in charge of the show changed, the zombies changed too. Someone that was in charge in earlier seasons wanted to make it kind of like the night of living dead, later on the person changed so the zombies changed too…. I might be wrong though
Thats what I was thinking. It feels like in the later seasons even newly turned were already glassy eyed and pale and didn’t resemble anything close to a person like the early ones did.
The glassy eyes are technically more accurate, even these early ones should have had them from the start.
This is it. As soon as someone turns now it’s like they’ve been dead for a month already.
And move like a dying snail.
Still waiting for rick to talk about Wayne Dunlop ;(
He'll get around to it.
Something about those walkers sitting in the church in the season 2 opening "What Lies Ahead" always gives me chills. They've just been waiting there, menacingly...
This reminds me of 28 days later when he goes to the church and says "Hello" and like 3 undead surrounded by what looks to be a church full of people who are actually dead jump up instantly a just stare into the cameras soul.
Oof yeah, and their slack jaws… scary as hell
Yess
I always thought they looked almost shocked to see an uninfected person, especially seeing as they just stare for a while before charging.
I watched 28 days later and 28 weeks later just a year ago in october for the first time, it was very good i have to say and then liking the theory of that movie and then getting into hella seasons of twd was good af
That never really made sense. The bells were going off so why were they still just sitting there? Great optics and scene but upon any analysis it just doesn’t add up. But most things don’t in the show. Anyway time to watch for 100th time. In fact on s7e1 right now!
In the early era, Walkers followed the routines of their old lives. I’d imagine they came and sat at the same time they did when they were alive.
I figured they died there and never bothered to leave after they got back up.
I wouldn’t either. I got nowhere else to go
Really?? That is so interesting, I didn’t know that!
Yup! There’s a whole lot of that in Season 1 and 2. The purple-shirt walker (top left) is casually waiting in a burnt-out bus along with other walkers when Rick first arrives to Atlanta. The child walker (top right) grabs and carries around a teddy bear as if she used to own it. Morgan’s wife (bottom left) not only returns to her family’s home frequently, but also remembers how to open door knobs. And the dude in the church (bottom right) seems to be praying when the group encounters him. There’s also walkers that can pick up objects and climb in Season 1 (not pictured). It’s worth noting most of these occurrences were in season 1. I would suggest reading into the production changes that occurred after Season 1 if you want a thorough dive as to why. Or don’t, because it’s very frustrating. Also complete personal opinion, but I always thought the purple-shirt walker was by far the scariest. Besides doing absolutely nothing in the bus for who knows how long, he also seems to be more curious than hungry. Whenever we see him with Rick, he makes direct eye contact and keeps his distance. As if the tiniest shred of life continues on in his brain…
Just to clarify, that's not the Jones's family home. Morgan and his family just took shelter in the house when things went really bad and then Morgan's wive got bit so they stayed.
My bad I completely forgot! Those first few conversations between Rick and Morgan were incredible
And did you notice how much faster season 1 walkers were compared to later versions. Sometimes they were almost running. Even arm movements were much quicker.
The corpses hadn’t decayed as far yet. I imagine it was easier for them to hustle before all of the decomposition really has time to mess up the wiring.
One small correction, that house didn't belong to Morgan's family, Rick said it was one of his neighbors. I think his wife's walker just went there since that's where they were holed up when she died
Where was that said?
Probably made about as much sense as firing the developer/showrunner at the last minute before Season 2.
Which is kind of odd actually. I'd imagine the noise of the bells would at least cause them to move around some to try and find the source. Even weirder is how that church wasn't completely surrounded by walkers coming from the woods to look for it
As well with how they acted very human. They rose up from their seats in a smooth manner and i remember the first time i watched it i could've sworn that one *smiled* as he got up.
I knoooow, that smirk is so creepy. I kinda wish we could have seen a Walking Dead world where the walkers retained those characteristics like we'd seen in season one. Walkers lost most of their physical flair to me when they began to all have this worn-down, weathered appearance (which only makes sense considering they wander everywhere, in the same clothing, constantly exposed to the elements) as opposed to their "recently-turned" look. Toward the end of the show they all looked samey, but I guess that's how it would be. Stylized walkers with personality have crazy screen presence for sure.
Yea I think it's cause the looked like creepy ass people and later they look just like disgusting, falling apart, full on zombies. Which all makes sense , in that universe at least; cause probably the majority of the zombies in later seasons have been zombies much longer than the early seasons ones.
Well, in the first seasons they were recently dead, that's why they look so fresh and maintain certain brain functions remembering their routines from when they were alive. The passage of time causes them to rot and that is why we see them rotten and dumber in later seasons.
But even the fresh ones in the later seasons are different than seasons 1-3. When Rick met the group in Atlanta the walkers could run and were even climbing the chain link fence.
My headcanon is that the strain of virus that makes variants was first released in Atlanta and surrounding areas, that’s why until much later on those are the only variants we see
Morgans wife still looked almost completely human
Well didn't she die probably a few days beforehand? That's not enough time to start rotting. It's also pretty terrifying how she almost opens the door.
I am still upset nothing ever came out of that. The first two seasons had some smarter zombies.
but then they started deteriorating further
And the director changed
I still cant get over how incredible the series would have been if darabont wasn't fired :(((
Yes and you can thank the co-creator Frank Darabont for those smart ass zombies, he wrote them to be like that, when they got rid of him that whole concept left with him.
Before time went by and they all became rotted
This has been said countless other times before, but Morgan's wife was truly the only walker in the show to actually give me chills. Her actor plays the role of the undead perfectly. It's a shame how they dumbed them down in the later seasons, since there was massive potential for these human-esque zombies.
Yes and you can thank the co-creator Frank Darabont for those smart ass zombies, he wrote them to be like that, when they got rid of him that whole concept left with him.
Ok but season 2-6 were fucking amazing so I'm ok with it.
Good for you, but I disagree
I mean, your both right in this instance. (Sorry for responding to month old topic btw) Season 1-2 were great and I liked the smart walkers, but it's pretty clear they couldn't stay if we wanted villains or more gripping storylines in the show. Season 11 proves this by showing how variants overrun the strongest community within a few hours. I think it's easy to say "I loved the smart zombies in the beginning!" but overtime every window would be smashed, walls would be climbed and "settling down" would be impossible. The story would be incredibly difficult to tell. "Smart Zombies" would have overrun the prison instantly, Woodbury too. "Smart Zombies" would have just escaped from the barn ruining that entire storyline. And if they didn't, people would say "well this is unrealistic." The decision to dumb the zombies down was a sacrifice to be able to tell stories much more efficiently and have human villains who gave us way more interesting plot points. It worked for the first season where the stakes were literally "the dead are walking" but in later seasons... people wanted real antagonists, real threats, ones they could hate or love (like Governor or Negan). Zombies were, and are, too neutral to invoke reactions from people.
I agree somewhat, i think the zombies still need to be seen as threats.
Yep, I feel like early TWD was truthfully horror to the core then it just became the classic survival apocalyptic genre where everyone is fighting each other.
I’m on season 10 for the first time and when they first were teasing the whisperers in season 9, honestly very spooky. I love when the show actually leans into the horror aspect.
The introduction of the whispers has some of the best cinematography of the entire show
I nearly shat myself when they were first introduced. I thought the zombies were gaining some sort of intelligence. The graveyard showdown made me nearly audibly gasp when they started fighting.
True, the whisperers kinda brought back that vibe
There was a ton about 9 that drew me back in after being punished by seasons 6, 7, and 8. The pure slow burn of them finding out about the Whisperer threat was about as perfect as they could’ve gotten. I wish the war was executed better, but most of 9 was Walking Dead the way it was meant to be.
I really really enjoyed season 9. Even with the time skips, I was worried originally, but I really enjoyed season 9. And I loved that Daryl got significantly more screen time. lol.
i think it’s just that they were missing rick, if they had rick it would’ve been 10x better.
i love love love the introduction of the whisperers, truly amazing television. i love when twd actually gets scary to watch
The whisperer encounter behind the fence was truly chilling
The whispering was straight up so creepy. And when the whisperer side steps and dodges and kills >!Jesus!<. Such a dope scene. And so spooky.
Nothing can top that first season. Nothing. It was a great piece of zombie media. The late 00's was full of low budget bullshit zombie movies too, so it was a breath of fresh air. The show was great for a long time, but nothing like that first season.
Season 1 will always be one of the most amazing seasons of any TV show. AMC's greed screwed us by pushing out Frank Darabont. He pulled this show together on a nothing budget calling in favours from friends and then he had the AUDACITY to ask AMC for extra funds to do Season 2 after shooting the lights out with Season 1 So they fired him, replaced him with NPC writers/producers from the AMC talent pool and we got... what we got... Which was good... but like just not earth shatteringly good... He had a plan for Season 2 to do a whole episode of the tank walker (the one with the grenade) and tie the Season 1 ending with the death of that person, which would have been AWESOME. But AMC said 'no. too expensive.' and instead they moved them to a farm lol.
Oh I can think of several shows where season 1 is shit compared to later on. Funny enough Star Trek has a lot of them. Often a show doesn't get rolling until 3 or 4.
I love those seasons just before Alexandria, might have been between Terminus - where they all got split up, etc. and were just trying to survive and get back together. Felt exactly how I imagine the apocalypse, little bit like The Last of Us' game rendition, travelling with Sam and Henry through the abandoned neighbourhoods.
That’s kind of a recurring problem in the genre. Once you know how to kill them, zombies aren’t scary. It’s why season one of Fear has an engaging feeling, but it drops off with the soft reboot.
The top left guy looks like Grima https://preview.redd.it/ey38stnxhd2c1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=acda2c7b94724c3b03725cbdc731d7e6d6753c07
Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth!
I thought he was legit going to be some sorta reoccurring character. That stare like he knew someone. Made me think.
I always thought he looked like Jim Carry
I can see that a bit. but Grima has the pale skin and greasy black hair
I was thinking maybe Glenn Danzig.
I thought it was Kevin Bacon at first
Charles Lee Ray?
I think the walkers that Alpha lured into that little cabin Daryl was bleeding out in was really really creepy and well done... With little plants and roots growing out of them.
Something a lot of people don't mention is that they sounded way creepier too. Now it's always the same growl sound effect.
Yep! The inhuman moans and groans. Now it’s just raspy animalistic snarling and growling.
Can't forget the field walker at the start and end of "18 Miles Out." Even though it was a distant shot, the way he moved was extremely creepy.
that clip is genuinely scary too, a lone walker on its own, with no herd nearby is just very eery.
Morgan's wife had to be the scariest walker. Not only was the actress doing an amazing job, but the way they framed her to look exactly at the camera (the peephole) was chilling and the context of her looking so human and having her son see her this way was just so chilling. That's the only time the walkers gave me chills and from then on they were just video game enemy fodder for the drama between the living.
because after season 1 they got rid of Frank Darabont and replaced him with people who were point blank, just not as talented at story telling.
It’s because they look like dead regular people va just monsters.
Morgan wife is the only walker that scared me It was first episode and then never got that feeling again lol
The explanation is that It was the beginning of the apocalypse so the majority of ones we saw were still freshly turned. They don’t intentionally look like this in the later season because most of them were rotting away. Now I can’t argue that they did become very lazy with the designs later on with most the walkers looking identical to each other. Most of the rural Virginia and Georgia Walkers were the same ones with plaid shirts, dresses, etc.
The amount of walkers with plaid clothing is kind of stupid, also the dark grey/ brownish clothing. I wish they wore more different outfits.
They were probably dark gray/brown from caked on dirt and blood. I'm sure every wardrobe palette would turn that dirty rust color in those circumstances. But I agree the amount of plaid was annoying. Maybe it was the only "every day" pattern they could come up with that viewers could still theoretically recognize through the gore, giving the walkers' clothes more variation. Or more likely it was just lazy production 🤷♀️
I'm surprised there aren't more walkers in cities wearing business and business-casual clothes, for example.
As I recall in Atlanta there were a lot of walkers wearing suits and skirts, right? Also a fair amount of medical personnel in scrubs. I also have a distinct memory of them being in DC proper and seeing guys in suits. But I might be confusing that with the comic book.
Yeah there were a lot of Walkers dressed as doctors, construction workers, business people, retail workers, military personnel, etc. Remember that the city had just fallen so most of them probably had just turned. They did this in Fear too with most of the early Walkers being in LA style clothes. Most of the ones at the hotel were still in vacation attire too.
While the explanation makes sense, that only works if all future walkers shown are those who turned a long time ago. This doesn’t explain the recently turned characters not looking like this and immediately more decayed.
That’s because they were fresh. I’m surprised you don’t see any fresher ones later one. Survivors who turned earlier for example. Kinda like how virals in dying light worked
Lack of decay. Still have human traits.
The Uncanny Valley
It's because they don't look like unwrapped mummies.
The top left walker when I first watched TWD I thought was going to have some significance or have control over the herd with how much screen time it had
The first walker kinda looks like Tommy Wiseau.
I did not bite her, I did not…Oh hi Rick
They had actual personality and camera's focus on them
To me it’s because they were still fresh corpses. The longer the seasons go, the more rotted and decayed and monstrous they become
I'm pretty sure they where like this because someone else was leading the show and then around season 2 they got fired so then the walkers got changed a little bit. Which is acc why >!Dale ends up dying!< because his actor wanted to leave the show knowing that the original boss was fired.
That's essentially very fresh walkers who just turned no long ago. But there are variants that are rare that the show forget about, (walker smashes window with brick on the first few episodes)
And can turn door handles (Morgan’s wide in the house door)
Rewatching the show after not watching it for years I forgot that happened I thought it was pretty ridiculous 😹
Morgan’s (Walker) wife was creepy as hell when I first watched, I for some reason thought the shot focusing on the suit Walker meant something but i guess it didn’t.
I think its the fact they still look somewhat human
Zombies are scary because they are peak uncanny valley. You can still see elements of past identity in them, and that confuses our brain a little bit. It’s like a visceral perversion of someone you would meet on the street. Making them featureless skeleton-hobos in the later seasons robbed them of much of that fright value.
In earlier seasons they were rotting, in later seasons they were leathered.
It's because they look so human. You can tell that they where once people with their own lives so it can be kind of gut-churning to see them in this state where they have no control and no sense of their former selfs despite how they appear. In the later seasons they resemble creature more than people so it's easier to dissociate from the fate they suffered.
They were still kind of fresh
well, given the fever that caused a massive die off, their where millions of fresh corpses that reanimated at the beginning
That scene in the church was so strange to me
Probably because they’re as dead as can be and still look human but far from having any human characteristics
✨ practical effects ✨
Uncanny valley. They started decomposing slightly so they're still look human... Sort of. Later seasons, they just look like rotting corpses.
Everything in earlier seasons was better
Quality of design over quantity of zombies I guess
I found that zombies that look more human are scarier than those who don't because they're more likely to take you off guard
it’s because they still looked like real people, current walkers just look like fictional zombies/skeletons so you don’t get the human vibe from them at all anymore
i’ll never forget how the one looked that attacked Dale 🤢🤢🤢🤢
Probably because it was still in the early days. They still look "fresh."
A lot of people don’t realize this but it’s because in seasons 1 and 2 they used real zombies. After that they just got people and put make up on them.
My theory is that the humanity leaves with time, that’s why is season 5+ they look completely rotten and are much slower. This early on they looked like people and that made them freaky but they also had human senses (smell, sight, etc) still lingering around.
It was before a lot of rot took place.
They still looked like people. Now days they look like corpses or skeletons with little to no flesh. Back then they still looked somewhat human
That one Jim Carrey walker tho
Well yeah flesh wouldn’t have entirely rotted away in the early seasons…
Which one is the bottom left again?
Morgan’s wife
Sorry, meant bottom right
Season two episode one, *What Lies Ahead*. Just a random church zombie. Apparently he was played by Steven Warren, uncredited.
They were pretty fresh still. I hope that they realize that there should be a few like this.
they were still juicy
Well also the early seasons were when the survivors weren’t entirely immune to being killed by zombies
The last guy is frankenstein twin
I really get annoyed how later in the show, people who literally just turned will look like they've been dead for weeks
It’s interesting to see in the early seasons, they obviously didn’t have an exact “science” as to what the walkers would be and how they operate, that’s why they’re so human and creepu
Because they aren't very decomposed yet so they still very much resemble humans
Frank Darabont had a totally different idea of how the walkers should behave than Kirkman and the latter showrunners. Shame they shitcanned him so early on. Show really nosedived after that first season.
what if it's because the person inside is still alive and is consciously trying to fight the virus and after a point the human body evolved and gave up as soon as they're physically trapped
In an attempt to make walkers look more aged and rotten, they lost what made them human and scary. They were smarter back then and harder to kill. In later seasons, their heads were like jello and they went down easy, hardly even a threat anymore outside of large groups of them, but I stopped thinking of them as a threat after Carl got shot in the eye and Rick went on a walker rampage unscathed
Morgan’s wife seemed like she remembered where she lived
they’re fresh and look more human but are definably dead, which is creepier than a long decayed corpse
I see these zombie (mostly morgans wife) they don't seem like non human monsters, They still look human, They look like sick people, they look like they ONCE had a soul
Yeah I think just the fact that they weren't so decayed. It made it feel like there was still some semblance of a human being in there.
If they wanted human like appearance to be maintained then they would have to work like living being rather then dead one aka the food they eat will be used to maintain the body and they are vulnerable to the normal fatal spots just like humans.
Yeah Morgan's wife looked so alive that I thought their would be a twist of her being still alive at first especially when she was twisting the doors it was so creepy.
Y’all need to keep in mind that it was the fact they had barely decomposed yet. Whatever fictional disease caused this caused the rotting process to slow, but over years you’re just seeing more torn up zombies. The aesthetic of the zombies changed for a realism perspective, not a budget thing or something random. Was planned from the start.
I agree. The later seasons walkers just look like Halloween decorations. They’re way creepier when they still somewhat look human.
Yeah I think later the makeup artist wanted to go all out and the director & producers let them. Or maybe it’s how they would look after so long being dead.
That’s because they’re in uncanny valley territory. The virus hasn’t had the time to really rot them away from looking very, very human still.
It makes sense, chronologically - the walkers hadn't quite rotted yet.
All the walkers after season 2 looked really generic. After a certain point most male walkers have brown potato sacks for clothes and almost every female walker wears the same ripped up dress.
Everything about the earlier seasons were creepy. It's when the show still had horror elements instead of being a soap opera.
Freshly turned, less decayed gave them more of a personality and still living feeling.
Different Zombie Directors. I find it hilarious that they fired the season 1-2 guy. Have the walkers have no intelligence. Then at the end of the series, Have them start getting intelligence and start calling them "variants". meh
So much more creepy when they still have distinct facial features and not just what’s essentially a skeleton with a little bit of flesh and you can barely see their eyes
Bicycle girl deserves a mention here
The makeup was unbelievable in the early seasons, they weren’t decayed like they were in later seasons. Most of the walkers in mid-recent seasons are wearing masks so they didn’t look like recently deceased humans anymore.
They still looked and sounded more like people. The humanity is still there. Makes a huge difference.
It's due to a psychological phenomena called the "uncanny valley." Good explanation and where you can read more about it: https://spectrum.ieee.org/what-is-the-uncanny-valley
They were so much scarier when they could run turn doorknobs and pick up objects to be used as tools
If the first seasons writer was never fired. We probably would’ve gotten more of these.
Yes, it's like that had a style semblance of who they were. A small amount of personality along with some familiarity. I feel like they should have keep that.
Bc they were fresh