'Fear the Walking Dead': Robert Kirkman says new show contains clues to the original

We already know that Fear the Walking Dead will show the zombie outbreak as it happens. That is a departure from the original Walking Dead series, which showed us the world Rick Grimes woke up to after a multi-month coma.

That got us wondering: Could those previously unseen details about how the disease first appears and its early stages theoretically be applied to the other show as well? In other words, do the events in Fear the Walking Dead shed light on The Walking Dead‘s missing days and weeks and months? We went to the man who created The Walking Dead comic and serves as an executive producer on both programs, Robert Kirkman, to find out—and he assures us that what we learn in Fear will indeed apply to the first show.

“Everything that happens in Fear The Walking Dead is in the same universe as The Walking Dead,” says Kirkman. “So any rule that we find out and anything they see in the early days is definitely something that was happening in the past of the other show. These two shows are very intertwined in the same world, even if their characters aren’t necessarily going to interact because of geographical distances. So yeah, anything that you learn from Fear the Walking Dead will apply to the mythology of The Walking Dead and vice versa. So you are going to get to see that the characters learn that they’re all infected in a much different way. But all the rules do apply and are the same. That will be some of the fun if you’re watching both shows.”

Did you catch that nugget he dropped there, about the characters learning “in a much different way” that they are all infected? Interesting. Very interesting. And it will also be nice to see what exactly happened to society while Rick Grimes was snoozing away in a hospital gown. We’ll finally get that glimpse when Fear debuts in August on AMC.

For more ‘Walking Dead’ intel, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.