Dawn of the Dead (2004): 10 Things You Didn’t Know
By Jeremy Dick
Image from Universal
3. The word “zombie” is never spoken in the movie.
Most fans of The Walking Dead have noticed how the characters on the show have never actually used the word “zombie”. Whether they’re calling them walkers, biters, geeks, lamebrains, rotters, or whatever the case may be— only the audience is calling them by their most commonly known name.
A lot of people might be surprised when they first realize that they’ve never heard the Z-word on The Walking Dead, but that’s not even entirely original for the show to avoid using that terminology. In 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, the word is never uttered once by any characters.
The Dawn characters aren’t quite as creative in naming the infected, though. There are no walkers or lamebrains here, with the survivors usually just calling them “things”. I suppose that makes sense, given how the movie The Thing was about parasitic life forms controlling the bodies of their human hosts.
As for why the word is never used in certain zombie fiction, like this movie and The Walking Dead, is because zombie fiction doesn’t already exist in these stories. These people have never seen or heard of a George Romero film— these “zombies” are completely new to them, and don’t have any kind of established name.
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