The Walking Dead: Where You’ve Seen Dead City’s Dormant Zombies Before

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 episode “Novi Dan, Novi Početak.”] It’s said that New York is the city that never sleeps, but the same can’t be said of its undead denizens. The penultimate episode of Dead Cityseason 2 sent Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) on a mission in search of antibiotics for Ginny (Mahina Napoleon), his wounded ward suffering from a worsening infection. Learning that Bellevue Hospital holds a stash of old but better-than-nothing medicine, Negan made his way to the hospital teeming with walkers, only to find them… slumbering?

Negan gingerly navigated his way through a room full of reanimated children that subtitles described as “dormant walkers,” which stood around unmoving but open-eyed — even as Negan maneuvered around them.

Although this behavior is uncommon, these aren’t new walkers: “dormant walkers” have appeared as far back as The Walking Dead pilot, when Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) first made the trek into overrun Atlanta.

Robert Kirkman’s comics coined the term “lurkers” for walkers who lie dormant, only for Aaron (Ross Marquand) to use the same terminology as he discussed the variant walkers capable of climbing walls and open doors in season 11 of The Walking Dead. “There are roamers and lurkers,” Aaron said of the two main types of zombies: active (roamers) and inactive (lurkers).

It was a dormant walker that bit Hershel (Scott Wilson) way back in The Walking Dead‘s third season. As Rick, Hershel, Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Glenn (Steven Yeun), T-Dog (IronE Singleton), and Daryl (Norman Reedus) cleared the prison halls of walkers, they passed by a seemingly dead walker without incident.

But when Hershel went back into the darkness to find Maggie and Glenn, stepping over a walker that appeared dead, it suddenly sprung awake and bit him on the heel, forcing Rick to amputate Hershel’s leg before the infection could spread.

The Walking Dead season 11 premiere, “Acheron: Part 1,” also featured dormant walkers in a sequence where the Alexandrians scavenged a military base for MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat). In the mostly silent, nearly 10-minute scene, the group snuck past lurkers lying on the floor, only to then have to fight their way out as the dozing dead were awakened. (You can watch the sequence in the video below.)

“We know that we have some different kinds of walkers in the show already,” The Walking Dead showrunner and executive producer Angela Kang explained at the time of those so-called “sleeper” walkers. “We started the season with this idea of the lurkers, which are the ones that can go dormant sometimes but are still dangerous when they wake back up.”

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 finale airs Sunday, June 22, on AMC and AMC+.