THE WALKING DEAD : GRIMSDYKE NICOTERO TRIBUTE

Comicbook.com reports today: WALKING DEAD tribute to Cushing's Grimsdyke: On tonight's episode of AMC's Talking Dead, host Chris Hardwick and special effects guru Greg Nicotero revealed that the walker pictured above and at right was, in fact, an homage to the classic Tales From the Crypt ghoul known as Grimsdyke.

That undead unfortunate, played by Star Wars and Dr. Who and the Daleks veteran Peter Cushing, can be seen at left...and, yeah, it's easy to see why eagle-eyed fans who spotted things like George Romero's Bub and the in-jokes ranging from The Boondock Saints to An American Werewolf in London, didn't immediately pounce on this one. It's a solid likeness, but hardly identical...mostly because of how far effects have come since Cushing's day.

It isn't that the effects aren't great on Nicotero's end -- it's that the look they were mimicking came from a time when the effects weren't that great, and it would have been odd and out of character for The Walking Dead to have a walker look just like him -- so it was more "in the style of," rather than a more direct copy, and that made him a touch harder to spot."

More on this: HERE 

The Arthur Grimsdyke make up was created by Hammer / Amicus make up legend, Roy Ashton.