2. General Custer's Last Stand
The markings on the front of the helicopter above should be familiar to anyone with much knowledge of the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. The abandoned chopper features the symbol of General Custer's 7th Cavalry, who he disastrously lead to their deaths at the Battle Of Little Bighorn, known as Custer's Last Stand. One of the lesser noticed details in the pilot, this little military reference comes with some fairly weighty reasoning when you think about it. The Battle Of Little Bighorn was numerically imbalanced, just as the "war" in The Walking Dead, and each was lead by a discernible, usually dependable leader, in Custer and Rick Grimes. Obviously, the fact that the helicopter, as well as the rest of the military equipment is abandoned gives the impression that a major military operation was organised and proved tragically unsuccessful, with no bodies found. The same could be said of Bighorn, where soldiers were buried, but not retrieved thanks to the financial restrictions on the army at the time. And finally, and most interestingly, the Battle of Bighorn became notorious for the mutilations that the dead American soldiers endured: they were left to decompose for three days before burial, and they wore the marks of serious mistreatment - beheadings, disembowelments and more - and it isn't inconceivable to imagine them as a tragic band of Walkers.