The Walking Dead: Why are the zombies called Walkers?

The 11th – and final – season of The Walking Dead airs begins on August 23 (Picture: Josh Stringer/AMC)

As the final season of The Walking Dead staggers onto our screens, there is one question that still bugs the most ardent of fans – why don’t they use the word zombie?

Zombies have been striking fear into audiences for years, from the lumbering re-animated corpses of George A. Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead in 1968 to the fast, organised aggression of this year’s Army Of The Dead.

But ‘the zed word’ has never been used throughout The Walking Dead – instead, the characters call the ravenous undead walkers – for the most part anyway.

As the characters of Rick Grimes, Darryl Dixon and Maggie Greene have made their way across the post-apocalyptic landscape, they’ve met many other groups of survivors with their own names for the undead.

These names range from rotters to creepers, deadheads, geeks and biters – but no one in the show has ever called them zombies.

If you’re hungry for answers, Walking Dead fans, we may just have them…

Why are the zombies called Walkers?

There have been a number of different names for the undead in the show across the years (Picture: Josh Stringer/AMC)

While we may be overrun by loads of zombie stories in our world, from movies to TV shows, video games and books, that is not the case for the characters of The Walking Dead.

In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Robert Kirkman – the creator of The Walking Dead comic-book and show – said that ‘Zombie lore is very popular and we wanted to avoid the notion of, ‘hey, why isn’t that character just shooting that zombie in the head because of all those movies I saw?’

‘We wanted to give you a sense that The Walking Dead takes place in a universe where zombie fiction doesn’t exist.’

So, that means the characters of the show have never seen Romero’s undead masterpiece or even witnessed Simon Pegg hold up in the Winchester to avoid insatiable hordes.

With a lack of mass exposure to the idea of zombies, the characters in the show have no cultural foundation to call upon when it comes to having to deal with the dangerous and violent world they find themselves in.

Therefore, it makes sense that different communities in the show would have their own names for them based on their experiences – with no zed-word in sight (at least, not yet).

Where can you watch The Walking Dead season 11 in the UK?

The 11th and final season of the hit show will premier in the UK from Monday August 23, after premiering in the US on AMC tonight.

The 11th season will consist of 24 episodes and is set to be released on a weekly basis.

Fans in the UK can keep up with all the zombie – sorry, Walker – mayhem if they have a Disney Plus subscription.

The new series, along with all the previous seasons, can be watched on Star on the Disney Plus app, with subscriptions currently costing £79.90 for 12 months or £7.99 per month.

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