The Walking Dead is one of the most famous examples of zombie fiction ever, but there’s a very logical reason it doesn’t actually use the word zombie. The zombie as the world knows it today was of course essentially invented by late, great director George A. Romero with his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. Every piece of zombie pop culture since owes Romero a creative debt, and The Walking Dead is certainly no exception to that rule.

Before making its way to AMC, The Walking Dead began life as a popular comic book series, created by Robert Kirkman. The comic run came to a sudden end in the summer of 2019, with Kirkman choosing to conclude the story on his own terms. For now though, The Walking Dead TV series continues unabated, as does its spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. A third series, The Walking Dead: World Beyond is slated to premiere before the end of 2020.

The Walking Dead refers to zombies by many alternate names, most often Walkers, but also sometimes Biters, Creepers, Geeks, Lurkers, and to The Whisperers, Guardians. That makes sense, as it’s not like Rick Grimes’ group got naming rights of the monsters overrunning the world. So why doesn’t the show just call them zombies? Kirkman himself once explained.

Why The Walking Dead Really Doesn’t Use The Word “Zombie”

According to Robert Kirkman, the reason the word “zombie” is never said by anyone in The Walking Dead universe is that both the comic book and the TV shows it spawned take place in a world where zombie pop culture was never a thing. George A. Romero’s movies never existed in the world of The Walking Dead, and neither did zombie fiction as a whole. Thus, the word zombie essentially doesn’t exist to Walking Dead‘s characters, at least not in the context of referring to an undead flesh-eating monster. That’s why, absent anything obvious to call them, Rick’s group, and every other group of survivors, has been forced to come up with a word they feel is applicable.

Such a conceit is actually fairly common in zombie movies and TV shows, as after all, it’s an entirely different creative dynamic if zombie fiction exists in a work of zombie fiction, as when a zombie first appeared, everyone involved would immediately say “look, it’s a zombie, shoot it in the head.” Some movies – mostly horror/comedies – have been able to make that setup work, using it to subvert expectations when it turns out the rules of “real-life” zombies aren’t the same as in Romero’s films. In a serious zombie story like The Walking Dead though, it makes sense not to have the characters start with built-in knowledge of the undead and how they’re supposed to operate.