The Walking Dead: Check Out Tales From the Crypt’s Grimsdyke

That undead unfortunate, played by Star Wars and Dr. Who and the Daleks veteran Peter Cushing, can be seen at right…and, yeah, it’s easy to see why eagle-eyed fans who spotted things like George Romero’s Bub and the in-jokes ranging from The Boondock Saints to An American Werewolf in London, didn’t immediately pounce on this one. It’s a solid likeness, but hardly identical…mostly because of how far effects have come since Cushing’s day.

It isn’t that the effects aren’t great on Nicotero’s end — it’s that the look they were mimicking came from a time when the effects weren’t that great, and it would have been odd and out of character for The Walking Dead to have a walker look just like him — so it was more “in the style of,” rather than a more direct copy, and that made him a touch harder to spot.