Spoilers for The Walking Dead series!The Walking Dead and Transformers franchises are far cries from one another in just about every way that counts, yet according to The Walking Dead’s creator, writer Robert Kirkman, every single death that occurred throughout the series' almost 200 issues was inspired by childhood nerd trauma inflicted after seeing The Transformers: The Movie!
Killing off dozens of characters both inconsequential and fan-favorite throughout The Walking Dead’s sprawling story, Robert Kirkman touched on this surprising Transformers connection during a recent interview with CBR about his new “Energon Universe” — a brand new kind of comic continuity that features characters from Transformers and G.I. Joe.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Saying that he would race home from school every day to watch Transformers and G.I. Joe on TV and that 1986’s The Transformers: The Movie was one of the first movies he ever saw up on the big screen, Kirkman goes on to recount how one scene in particular deeply affected the way he eventually treated the idea of dying in The Walking Dead: the death of Optimus Prime.
From infamously killing off Shane too early to putting a bullet through Lori Grimes and her newborn daughter to letting Negan gleefully bash Glenn’s head in to making the controversial choice of murdering the book's main protagonist in Rick Grimes, and much, much more, Kirkman always found ways to keep his zombie epic fresh by introducing scores of compelling characters that fans could connect with and root for, only to pull the rug out from under them when their favorite survivor...
Optimus Prime's Death Influenced How Walking Dead Characters Were Killed It makes total sense that Kirkman’s love of Transformers and subsequent traumatization by it influenced his approach in how he handled killing his characters in The Walking Dead, as the feelings he felt in that movie theater in 1986 have translated a little too well into his tale of the zombie apocalypse.