10 Most Spiteful Horror Movie Easter Eggs

While it's absolutely fair to say that George A. Romero's better filmmaking days were long behind him when he made 2007's found footage zombie movie Diary of the Dead, the director nevertheless decided to make fun of the tendency for the undead to move fast in modern zombie flicks.

In one of the film's opening scenes, filmmaker Jason (Joshua Close) is shooting a horror film and tells his undead cast member that he's moving too fast, exclaiming, "Dead things don't run! If you run that fast, your ankles are gonna snap off."

Jason insists that the actor "shamble" instead, and there are numerous other sly references to the running zombies popularised by not only the remakes of Romero's own Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, but also films like 28 Days Later.

If there was somehow any doubt about Romero's intent, he confirmed as much in an interview with Vulture:

"I took a big swipe at [fast zombies] in this film: There's a running gag in the movie that dead things don't move fast. Partially, it's a matter of taste... In the original Halloween, Michael Meyers never ran, he just sort of calmly walked across the lawn or across the room. To me, that's scarier: this inexorable thing coming at you and you can't figure out how to stop it. Aside from that, I do have rules in my head of what's logical and what's not. I don't think zombies can run. Their ankles would snap! And they haven't yet taken out memberships to Curves."