Army of the Dead takes zombie fans into territory that The Walking Dead fears to enter. Such is the popularity of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman's comic and its wildly successful TV adaptation have come to define the modern zombie, but Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead is offering an entirely different take on rotting folk. The Walking Dead's zombies are slow and dumb, almost beast-like in their constant hunt for flesh. At least some of the zombie contingent in Army of the Dead, however, are fast, strong and intelligent, forming organized attacks and command structures.
Another vital difference between the zombie rule books of The Walking Dead and Army of the Dead is the fate of animals. In The Walking Dead, animals are completely immune from the virus. They don't reanimate upon dying or after being bitten, and don't enter a man-eating rage upon exposure to the virus, unless already that way inclined. In Army of the Dead, animals are very much on the menu in terms of virus victims, with a menagerie of creatures confirmed to appear in the Netflix movie and its spinoffs. As revealed by Zack Snyder, only birds are immune from Army of the Dead's contagion - our feathered friends remain blissfully unzombified in both fictional worlds.
But The Walking Dead's animal rules led to a huge missed opportunity in seasons 7 & 8. When Khary Payton debuted as Ezekiel, leader of the Kingdom, he was eventually revealed as a zookeeper who had bonded with a tiger named Shiva before the outbreak. When hell was unleashed, Ezekiel saved Shiva, and the two survived together in the wilderness before founding the Kingdom, with Shiva showing unusual loyalty for a cat and staying by Ezekiel's side. Although The Walking Dead's lore made it impossible, fans were desperate to see a zombie Shiva - the same undead horror of regular walkers, but with the animal savagery of a tiger. Sadly, this could never happen in The Walking Dead, and because CGI tigers don't come cheap, Shiva was promptly killed off.
Army of the Dead is finally giving zombie fans what The Walking Dead teased but couldn't deliver - a zombie tiger. When Army of the Dead's protagonists storm Las Vegas to rob a vault of $200 million dollars, they're not only confronted with organized zombie opponents, but organized zombie opponents who command undead animals, as the film's trailer reveals a reanimated Siegfried and Roy-style white tiger. Proving how popular zombie Shiva would've been in The Walking Dead, the white tiger became the biggest talking point after Army of the Dead's trailer landed online, creating huge amounts of intrigue among fans. Finally, Army of the Dead will show what happens when zombies meet the animal kingdom in all its gory glory.
Although The Walking Dead's animal rule meant fans never got the undead Shiva they were secretly wishing for, the approach worked for Kirkman's story, just as Army of the Dead's rules complement Snyder's premise. Since The Walking Dead's outbreak is a global affair, and the show itself is based heavily on survival, it makes sense for the animals to be virus-free. The threat remains firmly on the actual zombies, and animals can be hunted to account for characters managing to eat. In Army of the Dead, the contagion is bound within Las Vegas, meaning there's no reason to exclude animals from the fun (other than birds because they can fly over barricades). Whatever the reason, Army of the Dead will give fans a taste of the carnage Shiva could've unleashed if animals could turn in The Walking Dead.