‘The Walking Dead’ Reveals New Name For Zombies

The Walking Dead has revealed another clever name for zombies: “Guardians.”

Spoilers for The Walking Dead Episode 9×13 follow. Major spoilers!

After a herd of the undead attacked the Whisperer camp in the woods, several of the group’s members were left bitten, scratched or both as they awaited the infection taking over their body. This, as fans known, means death is coming and unless someone puts them down by causing damage to their respective brains, the victims will become walkers.

The Whisperers, however, use the walkers in The Walking Dead universe as disguises and shields. As a result, Ryan Hurst’s Beta was seen in Sunday night’s Chokepoint episode talking to a member of his Whisperer group as the infection was claiming him. Beta did not empathize with the dying man, though. He encouraged him to look forward to being among the “guardians” and protecting the Whisperers.

“Guardians” is now one of many names for zombies in the Dead universe. The first popular term for the undead was “walkers.” Some would later call them “geeks” and the Governor brought the term “biters” to the series in Season Three.

These are examples among the long list of zombie nicknames including creepers, cold bodies, floaters, lamebrains, lurkers, dead ones, monsters, and roamers.

“One of the things about this world is that people don’t know how to shoot people in the head at first, and they’re not familiar with zombies, per se,” The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman said on an episode of Talking Dead (via Quora). “This isn’t a world the [George] Romero movies exist, for instance… because we don’t want to portray it that way, we felt like having them be saying ‘zombie’ all the time would harken back to all of the zombie films which we, in the real world, know about.”

The nicknames for the zombies shows the total lack of preparation for a zombie apocalypse in the world of The Walking Dead. “These people don’t understand the situation,” Kirkmans said. “They’ve never seen this in pop culture, this is a completely new thing for them.”

Which term to describe zombies is your favorite? Do you have any of your own? Share them in the comment section!

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET. Fear the Walking Dead will return for its fifth season in 2019. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter and watch ComicBook.com’s After The Dead each Sunday night following new episodes.