The beginning of The Walking Dead might've brought on a sense of déjà vu for fans of 28 Days Later. Danny Boyle's horror classic isn't technically be a zombie flick, since the rabid Londoners are infected with rage rather than undead, but the styles, themes and tropes are all consistent with the zombie sub-genre. The story begins with Cillian Murphy's Jim waking up from a coma after being knocked off his courier bike. Instead of awaking to concerned doctors and tearful family members, Jim finds London eerily deserted, and soon discovers that a virus has devastated the UK, leaving only a handful of sane survivors not trying to tear him limb from limb.

The Walking Dead's opening sees Deputy Rick Grimes on patrol with his partner, Shane, and taking an errant bullet from a gang of criminals. Rick falls into a coma and awakens some time later to find the hospital more or less abandoned. After working his way through empty corridors and discovering that most of the city has turned into zombies since he was last conscious, Rick meets Morgan and learns of the outbreak that has swept across the US, leaving a post-apocalyptic landscape behind. Many have pointed out the similarities between The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later's opening sequences, noting the coma and protagonist walking through an abandoned city concepts in particular.

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The first issue of The Walking Dead was published in October 2003, with 28 Days Later arriving almost a full year before in November 2002, making the case The Walking Dead's to answer. Addressing the similarities, The Walking Dead's creator, Robert Kirkman, has acknowledged how similar both openings are, but claims that he only saw the Danny Boyle movie after writing the first chapter of The Walking Dead, shortly prior to the first issue's publication date. Despite realizing Jim's first steps into a rage-infested London were strikingly similar to those of his own creation, Kirkman claims that he thought the comparison would go unnoticed, since the 2 stories deviated heavily the further they progressed. Obviously, The Walking Dead would then go on to become one of the most popular comic books of all time, and people did notice the 28 Days Later connection.

Walking Dead Comic

While Kirkman was mistaken in thinking nobody would connect his zombie comic to Danny Boyle's movie, he was correct in the assessment that The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later developed in very different directions. Rick assumes leadership of a group of survivors, fights against his old partner Shane and eventually brings his people to a prison, only to strike up a conflict against another community. In 28 Days Later, Jim does fall into a small band of survivors, but Naomie Harris' Selena is more the leader figure. Rather than building a community, Jim's group seek refuge with the armed forces, only to realize the Major (played by Christopher Eccleston) has gone rogue, forcing Jim to run wild on their manor house HQ.

Some have suggested that the closeness between The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later's 'protagonist in a coma' concepts is too much to be a coincidence, but it's worth looking at the zombie sub-genre as a whole. Without blending genres altogether (as Shaun of the Dead did with comedy), zombie stories by their very nature are bound by shared tropes and common features. Any filmmaker who has ever dabbled in the undead (or, indeed, the rage-virus-infected) owes a great debt of George Romero, without whom horror in general would look very different.

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