QuickList: The 8 Best Zombies to Date on The Walking Dead

(And by "to date" I mean "to this point," not "someone to take out for a romantic dinner on Valentine's Day")

8.Organ Donor (Episode 1.2, "Guts"): This walker isn't all that visually remarkable, but after his brains are bashed in with a baseball bat, Rick's group (in a neat reversal of human-zombie relations) grossly eviscerates him in order to smear themselves with grue and disguise themselves with death-stench.

7.The Deer Eater (Episode 1.3, "Tell It to the Frogs"): A gray-skinned carnivore with a yen for venison, this walker is the first to wander near the survivors' camp.  He's decapitated by Dale's machete, then gets a Daryl arrow through the eye for good measure, but the undead that will soon follow in his wake won't be so easily dispatched.

6.Unhappy Camper (Episode 2.1, "What Lies Ahead"):  Before being shivved by a screwdriver, this walker that stalks Andrea inside Dale's RV provides plenty of shivers.  His wispy hair and skeletal visage evokes the iconic Phantom of the Opera.

5.Head and Shoulders (Episode 2.6, "Secrets"): Maggie's maggoty attacker inside the pharmacy gets his head nearly knocked off by the shelf wielded by a rescuing Glenn.  The walker's sidewise, dangling gourd furnishes one of the show's most arresting images.

4.Woodchuck Guts (Episode 2.1, "What Lies Ahead"): Suspected of having noshed on the missing Sophia, this downed walker is subjected to an impromptu autopsy by Rick and Daryl (who discover that only woodchuck had been on the lunch menu).  What really makes this ghoul so memorable, though, is that he looks like a zombified Tom Petty.





3.No Wheels (Episode 1.1, "Days Gone Bye"): Who can forget this sun-scorched, legless wretch crawling next to an abandoned bicycle in the show's premiere episode?  Rick's mercy killing of the pathetic figure set the tone for the entire series, demonstrating that The Walking Dead takes its plague victims seriously.




2.Sophia Found (Episode 2.7, "Pretty Much Dead Already"): Her climactic barn-exit (and subsequent execution) formed one of the most heart-wrenching, gut-punching scenes I have ever viewed.




1.The Well Dweller (Episode 2.4, "Cherokee Rose"): Undead and bloated, this walker who stumbled into a well on Hershel's farm gives new meaning to the phrase "morbidly obese."  But by the time the show's heroes get done with him, he's half the dead man he used to be.