The Walking Dead has been aping Z Nation

Z NATION is a crazy blender that sucks up influences from everywhere and over the years, it has incorporated several bits and pieces from THE WALKING DEAD. Less noted, TWD has also been swiping from ZN ever since ZN appeared. Moreover, most of TWD's best moments in its last few seasons are, in fact, made up of these purloined elements

Carol's great 3.0 personality transplant, the sly, wisecracking schemer variant, appeared in eps produced in the months after ZN's debut. Within the context of TWD, it came out of nowhere--Carol had been portrayed as a dour, perpetually frowning character and TWD itself simply had no real sense of humor before this (the very rare stabs at humor that had appeared drew fan complaints). In the next season, Daryl's very funny liquidation of the initial group of Savior bikers with a grenade launcher was perhaps TWD's first excursion into outright ZN zaniness. Another great example is season 7's hilarious "zombie lawnmower" sequence, wherein Rick and Michonne jumped in a pair of cars with a long cable strung between them and affixed to each and drove them, in tandem, at a high speed right through the middle of a zombie horde, mowing down the dead. This wasn't just the highlight of that ep, it's the high-point of the last three seasons of TWD.

That same season saw the introduction of the Garbage People, perhaps TWD's most prominent effort to appropriate ZN's crazy blender approach. Rick and co. appeared to have dropped into a pocket universe wherein the Max Max flicks are set; where characters with weird names and inexpressive faces dressed in black and grey Max Max-like gear stand around and speak through a monotone in clipped, half-sentences as if they've grown up in the aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse and regular conversation is strange to them. Their home is a maze of piled-up car-wrecks and trash that stretches to the horizon and they interact with our heroes while in the distance, a rusty car-door blown by the eternal winds of the wastelands atmospherically squonks away. At one point, Rick is even made to prove himself by fighting against a Medievaled-up zombie in the Garbage Pail equivalent of Thunderdome. None of it made any[/i] sense--TWD's universe is less than 2 years into its zombie apocalypse--but it was [i]very funny. The Garbage People signed up to fight with the Alexandrians and later in the season when they showed up to do so, they arrived in--what else?--garbage trucks!

There have been plenty of other signs of ZN's influence. Last season's zombie-overrun carnival and its associated gags were funny. It doesn't always work--the ep where Jesus first appeared, for example, where the creators seemed to resist fully giving in to the zaniness they'd introduced--but the writers have definitely been watching ZN and taking notes.