Pretty much all these zombie and zombie-type stories are just copying George Romero's zombie movies, particularly the original Dawn of the Dead. It's such a specific subgenre that it's barely a subgenre at all, more a small collection of story elements, themes, and imagery that appear in every single iteration. The band of armed survivors barricading themselves against the zombies, the military imagery, the hospital scenes, the inevitable scene where they raid a store for food and supplies, having to take people out when they get infected, and of course the theme that the living/uninfected people are at least as bad as the zombies it's all just rehashing Dawn of the Dead over and over again.
Hell, the entire idea of hoards of zombies (or infected living people in this case, though the difference is superficial) rampaging around killing people was invented by Romero. There wasn't even such a story until he made Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, JACKASS!
. .

TWD creator Robert Kirkman and the directors of the show have stated numerous times they have been inspired by many zombie shows and have paid homage to them by including similar storylines in TWD graphic novels and TV show. So yeah they did rip off some aspects of 28 Days Later, as well as NotLD, DotD, etc.

the walking dead is based off of a comic book series by robert kirkman, all of the first season is virtually how the comic plays out, Robert Kirkman has stated that he was inspired by many of the classic zombie films such as George Romeros dead trilogy, this film and others, both the film and the walking dead have incredibly effective openings so I dont see the issue, if something is done well it does not matter how cliche it is.

crissttigaldames December 03, 2015 05:00 AM
Member since December 2004
Come on, The waking up in a hospital to find civilization has ended to a zombie (or zombie like) apocalypse pretty much has to be a rip off. It's too obvious.
PS:
The walking dead comics came AFTER this movie's release.

Come on, The waking up in a hospital to find civilization has ended to a zombie (or zombie like) apocalypse pretty much has to be a rip off. It's too obvious.
PS: The walking dead comics came AFTER this movie's release.

Not to mention the similarities to Selena and Michonne
www.thecultofhorror.blogspot.com

TWD is based on a graphic novel. Not sure when that first came out but maybe 28 ripped off THAT novel?

I believe it was a coincidence. People have similar ideas all the time, and if a writer was toying the premise of having the protagonist wake up to discover the world had effectively ended, waking from a coma would spring to mind quite quickly.
As for the other elements you thought TWD copied, they're fairly common tropes in this type of story.
Robert Kirkman says he didn't see 28 Days Later until after he'd started on The Walking Dead, and I actually believe that.

holy crap, seems like walking dead really is inspired by this film series
i have no doubt about that
both are great though and i refuse to compare them

The similarities in the points you brought up didn't really bother me, though I thought 28 Days Later executed these things better.
What really caught my attention, though, was the laziness in some of the soundtrack music for The Walking Dead Season 1, which oddly enough doesn't seem to have made it into the soundtrack release, or at least I don't think it has. The specific song I remember being either blatantly ripped off from 28 Days Later or copied as a tribute to the song in 28 Days Later, is the music used in the third episode of the first season of TWD when
Rick is reunited with Lori and Carl outside of Atlanta
.
Here's the song used in 28DL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCQ937L9slc&index=19&list=PL118AD9ADA54875D6
And here's the scene in TWD (Spoilers, kind of. Sorry for the poor quality, it's all I could find.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl07xgwQrAQ

'wake up in a hospital during a zombie outbreak '
That's the one that can't be ignored. I'd seen the film already when I first read the comic and I couldn't believe it
I think that the rest are just what comes naturally once one decides to build such a story.

I think once you have seen one Zombie apocalypse movie you have seen them all, in that there is a large percentage of zombies and a much smaller percentage of survivors intent on further survival.
The difference is believability, special effects, characterization and acting. The Walking Dead scores on all points and frankly I think is superior to the majority in the same genre. Although I have to applaud World War Z just because the Zombies moved like lightening and that was seriously scary.
But as for copying - how do you copy something that is done over and over again?

And they might have ripped off George Romero's movies or some other earlier zombie movie.
What's with anime/asian film fans who seem to assume that those movies are originals in their genre?
Most movies released in the last 20-30 years are either inspired by an earlier movie/tv show/etc or are an adaptation of a novel (which could be inspired by an earlier novel/movie/tv show/etc)
Let's face it, everything rips off everything else, nothing is entirely original

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The coma plot device keeps reappearing because they want to drop a relateable character directly into the fictional world they've created. It also allows the protagonist to ask the questions the audience needs to know.
People keep mentioning resident evil. What they haven't mentioned is that Alice gets amnesia early in the film. If Alice knew everything that had happened and what everything did you wouldn't have as much suspense and you'd have a harder time justifying exposition. Same principal.

its a slightly different situation in the walking dead.
Everyone already IS infected, but the virus remains latent until the host's death
, which explains why the survivors can get away with getting blood in their eyes/mouth/etc.
"Don't talk to strangersunless you want to meet anyoneever"

The Zombies seem more aggressive in 28 days and one drop of their blood will turn you. People in the Walking Dead get blood all over them (and probably in their mouths and eyes when they are hacking them ect) and they don't turn. I was surprised in the scene where Selena is hacking that guy that just turned in Jim's house that the blood didn't splatter in her mouth or eyes! Love both this movie and the Walking Dead!

Can't remember when the horrible Resident Evil movie franchise started, but didn't the main character do the exact same thing at the end of the first movie.leading into the sequel??

All Zombie films are similar. There's no way you can write a zombie story with all new things in it, they wouldn't be zombies then

Yeah i agree to some extent. But exactly, remember that it has different characters and some smallish plot changes still and as u said, tweaks.
Maybe they copied on purpose or maybe didn't. But yeah, dont really care if they did copy. Still like TWD

Several people still don't know that Walking Dead DID NOT start as a TV Show. the TV Series is based off of the graphic novel/comic that started in October 2003. Yes the comic was published after the movie came out, but a deeper a deeper analysis of the show and/or the comic it came from (The comic is still in publication) would suggest that neither are copying 28 days later. perhaps some commonalities, but no copying.

This movie CAN'T have copied The Walking Dead comic, it was released the year before the first TWD comic
And whilst 28 Days Later was released in the US the same year as TWD comic, there is a chance Kirkman might have seen stills from the movie or even seen the movie before it's official release in the US (DVD import, been in the UK when the movie was on general release or via other means)
Or the whole 'waking up in a hospital during a 'zombie' (technically the infected in 28DL aren't zombies as they're still alive (a lot of them are dying of starvation by the end of the film)) apocalypse could be a coincidence.
I doubt either Resident Evil or 28DL copied each other's 'waking up during a zombie outbreak' seeing as both movies came out the same year, maybe one of the later RE movies copied 28DL's 'waking up in a medical facility during a zombie outbreak' but Alice waking up during a zombie outbreak (in a medical facility or not) seems to a theme of the RE movies and the first time she wakes up in a medical facility is at the end of the first movie (scene repeated in the second one) so they can't have gotten that from 28DL
Well, at least TWD and RE gave Rick/Alice some sort of hospital gown (such as it was in Alice's case), the director's reasoning was that Jim's nakedness was to symbolise his rebirth in a new world, but come on it's highly unlikely that hospital staff would leave a patient without a hospital gown, heh, I guess staff must have been in the middle of giving Jim a bed bath when they were forced to flee

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This again? Not only was the walking dead comics made in 2003 and obviously written before that, you can probably say that it's just as likely that this movie copied that.
Then there's the fact that very little is original in these types of movies. Every writer everywhere gets their inspiration from something stop being such simple minded fools.