Putrefaction is the stage of death where decaying corpses produce gases like methane, but one zombie went method on the set of The Walking Dead. According to actor Ross Marquand, who played Aaron on seven seasons of the AMC zombie drama, his second-ever episode of the series contained what might be a first for The Walking Dead: a farting zombie.
To recap, the season 5 episode titled “The Distance” saw Aaron lead a suspicious Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), Michonne (Danai Gurira), and Glenn (Steven Yeun) to his home community of Alexandria. When their blood-splattered car runs down some walkers and stalls out, Aaron, hands still bound, panics and runs into the woods as Michonne removes severed limbs from the grille. Glenn gets separated from Rick and Michonne, and he finds Aaron backed up against a tree trunk and kicking away a hungry walker.
We have the moment cued up for you in the video below:
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During a panel at Awesome Con in Washington, D.C., Marquand recounted how a gassy zombie made for his “funniest” moment on The Walking Dead.
“I get cornered in the middle of the woods by this walker who keeps coming at me, and we had just finished lunch. We had just come back from a very big lunch,” Marquand said. “The lunches down there were amazing. They had the best catering spread. We were all just eating tons of food.”
“And this poor guy, it was a stunt guy, he had a pad [on his stomach]. And I had to kick him because my hands were tied up,” he continued. “I was just kind of pushed up against this tree, and I kicked him every time. And every time I kicked him, I kid you not, he would fart so loud. He would not stop farting.”
An amused Marquand recalled that the take couldn’t be used, something he confirmed with then-boom operator Cooper Andrews (who would later join the cast as Jerry).
“Our sound guy was [Andrews] that day. Jerry from The Walking Dead was actually our sound guy before he was an actor on the show, fun fact. I just looked over at him and I was like, ‘We can’t use this, right?’ He’s like, ‘No. We can’t,’” he laughed. “We had to kind of yell cut and say, ‘Do you need anything? Do you gotta go to the bathroom?’ He’s like, ‘Sorry, man, I just had a big lunch.’ So that was probably the funniest thing on the set.”
Marquand also took the opportunity to reflect on a gross-out scene from Yeun’s final episode. In the season 7 episode “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” Glenn is brutally murdered by Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan, who used a barbed-wire-covered baseball bat to beat Glenn to death.
“The eyeball was just dangling out of Steven’s head” between takes, Marquand recalled. “Remember those paddle balls you play with? His eyeball was bouncing around as he was talking. It was like, ‘What are you going to do after this?’ He’s like, ‘I think I got a new role on Voltron [Legendary Defender], I’m going to do some voiceover work.’ I was like, ‘Can you just stop moving your head for a second? I’m going to throw up [laughs].”
“It looked so disgusting,” Marquand said. “It’s a credit to the special effects team. I mean, they make all of these terrible moments look real.”
Watch Marquand’s panel appearance above.
The post The Walking Dead Star Recalls Scene That Couldn’t Be Used Because of a Farting Zombie appeared first on ComicBook.com.
