10 Army Of The Dead Easter Eggs You Totally Missed

Snyder has repeatedly stated that Army of the Dead is not a successor to his first effort in the zombie genre, but some of the film's callbacks have fans believing that it is at least a spiritual successor to Dawn of the Dead.

Beyond the aforementioned elevator reference and many more, the film features one of the characters looking at a news article that revolves around a zombie outbreak in Milwaukee that occurred in 2004. This is especially noteworthy as Snyder's cinematic debut was set in this city and released in the same year.

Leading up to the film's release, the director did mention that AoTD was initially conceived after the 2004 remake was released but he felt that he needed to create his own universe separate from that of Dawn. This was the right call to make as these two films are very thematically different and Snyder is not beholden to his first film's sensibilities while creating new films later down the road.