“The Walking Dead” is one of the most noteworthy horror shows in television history. While its ratings aren’t nearly as gargantuanly impressive as the early days, “The Walking Dead” is still arguably a big staple of pop culture. The show is currently in the midst of its 11th and final season and deals with the main survivor group’s encounter with the Commonwealth, a large network of various survivor communities. While the show has evolved over the years to be more focused on human threats, its zombie threat has remained ever-present.

As many know, zombies (called walkers in “The Walking Dead” universe) in “The Walking Dead” are former living humans who now terrorize and feast on humans, and they severely outnumber the survivors. While these zombies eat human remains on the show, obviously, the reality is quite different. So how exactly do the clever people behind “The Walking Dead” make the gruesome zombie death scenes look so real? Well, now we finally know exactly what the actors playing the walkers are eating.

The walker actors on The Walking Dead are eating BBQ
AMC/YouTube
During an interview with Mother Jones in 2014, “The Walking Dead” producer, director, and makeup specialist Greg Nicotero talked about the process of what it takes to become a walker on the show, and apparently, it’s a very in-depth one. An interesting bit of behind-the-scenes information that he provided was that the zombie extras on the show are actually eating BBQ during the gory human death scenes.

“All the feasting scenes, anytime someone’s eating guts, we use barbecue,” Nicotero said. “We soak it in edible fake blood. Sometimes we’ll use cooked sausage. It just has to feel like real meat.” While this is a fascinating factoid, it’s important to note that this particular interview is from 2014, during the second half of Season 4, so there’s every chance that the makeup artists and producers have chosen to use something different since then.