Did You Catch The Walking Dead’s First Nude Walker?

Back in February, The Walking Dead‘s special effects make-up guru and executive producer Greg Nicotero teased a first for the show: a fully nude walker! This didn’t exactly generate a wave of excitement among Walking Dead fans, since it’s hard to get too excited about a naked rotting corpse. What’s more, the actual reveal of the much-touted nude walker was so understated that you could be forgiven for not noticing it at all in the latest episode, “The Key.”

The naked zombie appears about three-quarters of the way through the episode, when Dwight and Simon are searching for Negan and instead find only his crashed car. The walker begins shambling over while Dwight is deliberating over whether or not to support Simon’s plan to write Negan off as dead and return to the Saviors. However, in the shots where the walker is featured it is a long way away and often out of focus. Moreover, it has no visible breasts or genitals, and it’s so covered in dried blood that it could be mistaken for just another walker wearing clothes.

Related: Rick & Negan’s Brawl Was The Walking Dead at Its Best

Nicotero shared a high-res photo of the walker to his Instagram account after the show, which makes it clear why it’s so unclear that the walker is nude: it has a hole where its genitals should be. Speaking on Talking Dead, Nicotero explained, “There’s some bite marks strategically placed… This person died very painfully.”

The nude walker (and its strategic bite wounds) actually represent the rather bizarre double standard when it comes to what kind of adult content The Walking Dead is allowed to show. Gore is a free-for-all: heads getting chopped off and bashed in are fine (bulging eyeballs and all), as are limbs being severed, characters being mowed down with guns, flesh being ripped from bone, children dying in horrible ways, and all other manners of carnage. However, the show’s restriction on swearing was only recently relaxed, and nudity is still a big no-no. AMC can show rotting corpses with horrific wounds, but not breasts or genitals.

A similar amusing example of this occurred on NBC’s Hannibal, when a scene featuring two flayed corpses had to be digitally censored because the corpses’ butt cracks were visible. Showrunner Bryan Fuller offered to fix the problem by filling the corpses’ butt cracks with blood, and the network agreed.

Got to keep things family-friendly!

More: Who Died On The Walking Dead This Week?

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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Hannah Shaw-Williams
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Hannah has been with Screen Rant since 2013, covering news, features, movie premieres, Comic-Con and more! You can follow her on Twitter @HSW3K

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