Summary
- Robert Kirkman confirms zombies in The Walking Dead cannot swim due to decay gases.
- The comic book issue of The Walking Dead Deluxe #103 addresses the long-debated question.
- Fear the Walking Dead shows sea zombies, contrary to The Walking Dead’s rules.
Although certainly a huge nuisance, The Walking Dead wouldn’t be the iconic show it is without its bloodthirsty, bone-munching living dead that seem to show up at the most inconvenient of times. Most people wouldn’t want to meet a zombie under any circumstances, but the age-old question about whether zombies can indeed swim has finally been answered by the AMC series’ creator, Robert Kirkman.
Spanning across comics, television, and video games, The Walking Dead has seen a huge amount of success where it was nominated for several awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama and the Writers Guild of America Award for New Series. Even though viewership declined during the show’s later seasons due to lackluster storylines and the deaths of many popular TWD characters, the series amassed a hugely loyal and dedicated fanbase throughout its eleven seasons. Even though The Walking Dead‘s finale episode ended on November 20, 2022, interest in its post-apocalyptic world, spin-offs, and zombie facts never seem to fade.
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Can Zombies Swim in The Walking Dead? Robert Kirkman Has the Answer
As reported by Screen Rant, a recent comic book issue of The Walking Dead Deluxe #103, by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Dave McCaig, and Rus Wooton, which showcases Rick getting the boot out of the group by Negan, altering the dynamics of the team’s leadership, answers the long-debated and fought over question regarding if zombies can actually swim or do they just…float?. In a section of the comic, Kirkman replied to fans’ burning questions and this seemed to be a popular one. “Do [zombies] float or sink? Would a river carry them away? Would they just walk into a river if someone was on a boat attracting them?” asked The Walking Dead fan, with the creator stating that water and zombies aren’t a good combination as they would end up decaying.
Kirkman went further into this particular query by saying that the gases inside zombies would seep out, ultimately making them sink to the bottom before they had much of a chance. Touching on the point about zombies being smart enough to be able to actually cross a river, Kirkman wasn’t completely buying into the idea of giving them that much brain power. “While I do not subscribe to the idea of smart or evolving zombies, I would say that there can be some zombies that are more intelligent, or rather, more driven than others… so some might, some might not [try to cross the river].”
With that answered once and for all regarding The Walking Dead zombies, its spinoff series, Fear the Walking Dead, seems to not have received the memo that zombies cannot swim. In the series premiere episode of season two, zombies can be seen swimming in the sea as Victor Strand’s yacht, the Abigail, mows them over with its propeller. In an interview with EW, executive producer Dave Erickson explained the situation by stating that “They can wade. That’s something we experimented with when we shot the first episode. We’ve figured out the best ways to shoot water zombies. They don’t drown. They keep floating back up.”
Season two of The Walking Dead: Dead City doesn’t have a release date just yet, but it is slated for release sometime in 2025.
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Source: ScreenRant