50 Fun Facts About The Walking Dead Season 1

The Walking Dead's pilot first aired in 2010 on which holiday?

Halloween gave the series its debut, and 5.35 million people tuned in. No series premiere on its network had ever drawn a bigger audience.

After abandoning his patrol car on the road to Atlanta, what does Rick Grimes ride into the city in The Walking Dead?

A horse taken from a farm whose owners lie dead carries Rick into Atlanta. Walkers bring the animal down once he rides into their horde.

Swarmed by walkers on a downtown Atlanta street, Rick Grimes crawls to safety inside what in The Walking Dead pilot?

A tank abandoned in the street saves him: he squeezes underneath and finds a trapdoor in its belly. Moments later a stranger's voice crackles over its radio.

In the opening scene of The Walking Dead pilot, the little girl walker Rick Grimes shoots is holding what?

A teddy bear hangs from the girl's hand as she turns to face him. Addy Miller, who played her, came back as a walker in the show's 100th episode.

Where have Shane, Lori and the other survivors pitched their camp outside Atlanta when The Walking Dead begins?

Beside a quarry, whose lake keeps the group supplied with fish. The farm and the prison only become homes in later seasons.

Which English actor, familiar to many from Love Actually, leads The Walking Dead as Rick Grimes?

Andrew Lincoln, born Andrew Clutterbuck in London, plays the Georgia lawman with a Southern drawl. His audition began with a single scene he taped himself.

Which actor joined The Walking Dead in its third episode as Daryl Dixon, a hunter invented for television?

Norman Reedus turned Daryl, who has no counterpart on the printed page, into one of the show's longest-running and most popular characters.

What tool does the handcuffed Merle Dixon use to free himself from an Atlanta rooftop in The Walking Dead?

A hacksaw, and because its blade is too dull for steel cuffs, Merle cuts off his own hand instead. The rescue party finds only the hand.

In The Walking Dead's second episode, Rick and Glenn smear themselves with walker remains to hide what from the horde?

Their scent is what marks them as alive, because walkers are used to the smell of death around them. The pair shuffle through the crowd draped in entrails.

What puts Rick Grimes into the coma he wakes from at the start of The Walking Dead?

A gunshot wound, suffered while he and Shane chase down criminals, puts him in hospital. He wakes to find the building ransacked and deserted.

What job gave Glenn Rhee his expert knowledge of Atlanta's streets before the outbreak in The Walking Dead?

Pizza delivery taught Glenn his way around the city, which is why the group trusts him with its most dangerous supply runs.

Which cable network, already known for Mad Men and Breaking Bad, launched The Walking Dead?

AMC ordered the pilot in January 2010, ending four years in which its developer had struggled to sell the project anywhere.

What is the name of Rick and Lori Grimes's young son, found safe at the survivors' camp in The Walking Dead?

Carl is played by Chandler Riggs, who was cast at the age of ten and stayed with the show until 2018.

Which elderly survivor owns the RV that serves as the heart of the Atlanta camp in The Walking Dead?

Dale Horvath is the group's voice of conscience, never afraid to speak his mind, and advises first Shane and then Rick.

What signature weapon does the hunter and tracker Daryl Dixon carry throughout The Walking Dead?

A crossbow became as much Daryl's trademark as the motorcycle he takes over from his brother Merle when the group abandons Atlanta.

The Vatos gang's hideout in The Walking Dead's fourth episode turns out to be sheltering what kind of place?

A nursing home lies hidden behind the gang's base, and its tough-talking members turn out to be guarding their own families rather than preying on strangers.

Test Subject 19, whose recorded death Dr. Edwin Jenner replays in The Walking Dead, was which person in his life?

His wife volunteered to be recorded after she was bitten, hoping the footage would help find a cure. She had worked alongside him at the CDC.

Which actor, later Marvel's Punisher, plays Shane Walsh, Rick's best friend and fellow officer, in The Walking Dead?

Jon Bernthal came across the pilot script during pilot season and liked it so much he told his agent he would gladly appear as an extra.

Frank Darabont, who developed The Walking Dead and directed its pilot, earlier directed which acclaimed prison drama?

The Shawshank Redemption began as a novella whose author granted Darabont the film rights on a handshake deal.

Which writer, creator of The Walking Dead comic book, scripted the fourth episode of the TV series himself?

Robert Kirkman earned his first writing credit on the show with Vatos, and based its closing attack on the camp on a sequence from his own books.

Which young woman is bitten when walkers overrun the camp and dies in her older sister's arms in The Walking Dead?

Amy dies at the close of the fourth episode. Emma Bell, who played her, had known from the start that the character would last only a few episodes.

Which survivor digs holes at camp after a dream, then later asks to be left by the roadside in The Walking Dead?

Jim is bitten in the attack on the camp and, feeling himself begin to turn on the drive to the CDC, chooses to be left under a tree.

Which abusive camp member does Shane Walsh beat severely for striking Carol in The Walking Dead's third episode?

Ed Peletier becomes the outlet for Shane's fury just after Lori ends their affair, and the watching women plead with him to stop.

Which survivor accidentally drops the handcuff key down a drain, stranding Merle Dixon on a rooftop in The Walking Dead?

T-Dog cannot retrieve the key, so before fleeing he chains the roof door shut to give Merle some protection from the walkers inside.

Glenn Rhee lures walkers away from the store with the blaring alarm of which muscle car in The Walking Dead?

A Dodge Challenger carries Glenn out of Atlanta on his own, while the rest of the group escapes in a box truck.

What sudden event ruins Rick and Glenn's gory disguise as they walk among the horde in The Walking Dead?

A rainstorm rinses the gore from their clothes mid-walk, and the pair have to drop the act and sprint for the truck.

What do the Vatos demand from Rick Grimes in exchange for the kidnapped Glenn in The Walking Dead?

His bag of guns is the same one Rick dropped in the street when the horde closed in, and fetching it was one reason he went back to the city.

Which British actor plays Morgan Jones, the first fellow survivor Rick Grimes meets in The Walking Dead pilot?

Lennie James later carried Morgan over into the spin-off Fear the Walking Dead, playing the character until 2023.

Which actor, later Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy, plays the racist troublemaker Merle Dixon in The Walking Dead?

Michael Rooker liked to ad-lib, and his improvised swearing pushed the show past its cursing limit more than once.

What does Dr. Edwin Jenner do to Rick Grimes just before the survivors flee the CDC in The Walking Dead?

Jenner whispers a secret in Rick's ear that viewers did not get to hear. Rick only tells the group what was said in the second-season finale.

Which actor, later FBI agent Stan Beeman in The Americans, guest stars as the CDC's last scientist in The Walking Dead?

Noah Emmerich earned a Saturn Award nomination for playing Edwin Jenner, and came back to the part in a spin-off finale in 2021.

Dr. Edwin Jenner tells the survivors in The Walking Dead that scientists in which country came closest to a cure?

France seemed near a breakthrough, Jenner says, before the facilities he had been talking to around the world went silent.

What sets off the CDC building's self-destruct countdown in The Walking Dead's first-season finale?

Its fuel running out is fatal by design: once the generators die, the facility destroys itself so that none of the diseases stored there can escape.

What does Dr. Edwin Jenner demand from every survivor as the price of shelter at the CDC in The Walking Dead?

A blood test shows Jenner that nobody in the group is infected, and only then do they get to enjoy the building's running water, food and alcohol.

Laurie Holden, Jeffrey DeMunn and Melissa McBride of The Walking Dead all appeared in which Frank Darabont film?

The Mist, his 2007 monster film, supplied a run of future cast members, and its star Thomas Jane was once in line to play Rick.

Frank Darabont, developer of The Walking Dead, became a zombie fan at fourteen thanks to which director's 1968 film?

George Romero made Night of the Living Dead, which hooked the teenage Darabont at once; he later insisted that the show's walkers shamble slowly rather than run.

The Walking Dead's first season is by far the show's shortest, running for only how many episodes?

Only 6 episodes were ordered at first, and strong ratings won a second season of 13 before the first had even finished airing.

Which broadcast network first developed The Walking Dead with Frank Darabont, then passed once it read his gory script?

NBC liked the idea of a zombie show, Darabont recalled, until he handed in a script in which the zombies actually behaved like zombies.

The Walking Dead's first season owes its grainy, stark look to being shot on which format?

16 mm film gave every frame a stark, bright quality that reviewers singled out for praise, and the pilot was shot on it in anamorphic widescreen.

Which effects artist, who learned his trade on Day of the Dead, created the walkers for The Walking Dead's first season?

Greg Nicotero also stepped in front of the camera as one of his own walkers, and went on to direct 37 episodes of the series.

The Walking Dead's pilot earned three Primetime Emmy nominations and won in which category?

Prosthetic makeup brought the series its first Emmy, for the rotting faces of its walkers; the pilot's sound editing and visual effects were nominated but lost.

Which producer of The Terminator and Aliens steered The Walking Dead onto television as an executive producer?

Gale Anne Hurd read the stalled pilot script and suggested the cable channel that finally bought it, and Darabont credited her with getting the show made.

Which publisher launched The Walking Dead comic book, the source of the TV series, in 2003?

Image Comics published all 193 issues, almost entirely in black and white, until the story ended without warning in 2019.

The Walking Dead comic opens in Cynthiana, a real town in which state, before the TV series moved Rick to Georgia?

Kentucky is home to Cynthiana, the hometown of the comic's creator, who set his first issue there.

Which title does The Walking Dead's pilot episode share with the first collected volume of the comic book?

Days Gone Bye was written and directed by Frank Darabont, whose original script was split in half and expanded to make the opening two episodes.

Rick Grimes waking alone in a ruined hospital in The Walking Dead recalls the opening of which 2002 British horror film?

28 Days Later also has its hero wake from a coma in a deserted hospital, and it reached American cinemas only months before the comic's first issue.

Rick Grimes serves as a sheriff's deputy in which part of Georgia before the outbreak in The Walking Dead?

King County is where Rick worked alongside Shane, his best friend since high school, and where he first meets Morgan Jones.

The Walking Dead episode Wildfire takes its title in homage to which Michael Crichton novel?

The Andromeda Strain also follows scientists studying a lethal organism in an underground laboratory, much like the episode's scenes inside the CDC.

The CDC headquarters seen in The Walking Dead's first season was really what kind of Atlanta-area building?

A performing arts centre that houses the Atlanta Opera stood in, because the real CDC's tight security kept the crew from even photographing its interiors.

Which survivor leaves Rick Grimes's group with his family, heading for Birmingham, in The Walking Dead's first season?

Morales was not seen again until the eighth season, when he resurfaced as an enemy and faced Rick in an armed standoff.