With less than a week until Rick Grimes and your friendly neighbourhood Walkers return to screens in AMC's fourth season of the hit Walking Dead adaptation, fans are chomping at the bit for more information on how the show will pan out. New show runner Scott Gimple has said this season will see more of a "greatest hits approach" to the show, channeling his own high-points as a writer of some of the best episodes yet made (in the shape of "Pretty Much Dead Already" and "Save The Last One) to make more great episodes in their vein. Worries about Gimple's take-over from Glen Mazzara should prove unfounded, as the former writer knows the show well, and he knows exactly what makes it successful. Hopefully, though, in the quest for grander, more dramatic episodes, he won't lose track of the details and references that make The Walking Dead one of the most enduring programs on TV. It isn't merely that The Walking Dead is a soap opera with zombies, or that it is gloriously gorey and action-lead when it needs to be - the show is a culmination of the geek-love and genre-worship of many zombie fans, and as this article will make clear, they have shoe-horned filmic references into the Walking Dead universe wherever possible. The AMC show is bursting with nerd-friendly Easter Eggs, such as the presence of Star Wars: Force Unleashed actor Sam Witwer as a walker, or the fact that Jenner's full-name, Edwin Jenner, references English scientist Edward Jenner, who developed the smallpox vaccine in the 1790's. It is that sort of attention to the kind of blink-and-you'd-miss-it references that adds another level to the show's brilliance, and that deserves to be celebrated on the near-eve of the new season.
Honourable Mention
Dead Island
The zombie game might not have quite lived up to the promise of its first trailer, but Dead Island was a fairly good actioner all the same, especially for zombie game fans, and the shooter featured its own nod to The Walking Dead in the shape of this familiar message. Open world zombie game State Of Decay also features a similar nod, though a much harder to find one. During gameplay the player can come across advertising-style boards with the name of the local sheriff... one Richard Grimes.
