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There's a Return of the Living Dead easter egg hidden in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, as revealed by Greg Nicotero
In the first episode of season two, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon pays homage to one of the most iconic zombie movies of all time with a barrel hidden in a barn.
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When you’re making any sort of zombie fiction, it is always important to pay homage to what came before you. In the case of The Walking Dead, that means throwing in a couple of Easter eggs from iconic movies and shows. During The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, they even included a fleeting reference to one of the greatest zombie movies of all time – The Return of the Living Dead.
It is an incredibly quick Easter egg that appears during Season 2 Episode 1 of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. The episode sees Carol visiting a farm owned by a man named Ash as she tries to make her way to France. The final shot of the episode is Ash and Carol fleeing the farm in a plane as undead swarm around – but there is also a reference to The Return of the Living Dead hidden in the barn of Ash’s farm.
The reference was revealed by episode director Greg Nicotero, who enjoyed throwing references to past zombie films into his episodes. “The fun part on The Walking Dead,” Nicotero explained during a panel at New York Comic-Con 2024. “Was we would always do tribute zombies… In Ash’s barn in Episode 1, Season 2, and also at the junkyard, there’s a barrel in the background that has Trioxin painted on it from Return of the Living Dead. And if you look in the barrel, we actually created the zombie from the opening of Return of the Living Dead that becomes the Tar Man. And that barrel’s in the background.”
It is such a throwaway reference that it is no surprise it was something of a last-minute addition to the episode. “I was like ‘We should just put the barrel from Return of the Living Dead in there as if maybe that’s where the zombies came from. So, you go back and look at it, you’ll see it.”
As though we needed an excuse to do another The Walking Dead watch, now we need to go scour for all the references to past zombie movies we may have missed.
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