Trivia for
Land of the Dead (2005)

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• George A. Romero was so impressed with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) that he asked them to appear in this, the fourth part of his "Dead" series, and they appear as the photo-booth zombies in the carnival/bar-room sequence. They also feature prominently in the artwork for the unrated directors' cut.
  
  
• This is the first film of George A. Romero's "Living Dead" series which uses digital effects.
  
  
• An amputee actor played the legless zombie climbing the back of the Dead Reckoning.
  
  

• One working title for the film was "Dead Reckoning," but it was changed to avoid confusion with the Humphrey Bogart film of the same name.
  
  
• There were four titles before "Land of the Dead" was chosen: "Dead City," "Dead Reckoning," "Twilight of the Dead," and "Night of the Living Dead: Dead Reckoning."
  
  
• Susan Wloszczyna, a reporter for USA Today, appeared as one of the zombies. She was there interviewing her fellow zombies as well as the director. She spent nearly an hour and 45 minutes in the make-up chair.
  
  
• A non-union zombie would make CDN$9 per hour, while a union zombie, for a minimum of 8 hours, would make CDN$158.
  
  
• Asia Argento (Slack) is the daughter of noted Italian horror filmmaker Dario Argento, who was the co-producer and co-composer of one of the previous entries in George Romero's zombie series, Dawn of the Dead (1978).
  
  
• George A. Romero intended to make this film in his home town Pittsburgh--the story is set there and it's where he made his other zombie films; however, the producers insisted on filming Toronto in order to take advantage of Canadian tax incentives, creating a setting that retains Pittsburgh's geography with physical locations of Toronto that have been altered.
  
  
• This is the fourth film in George Romero's zombie series, which Romero says takes place after Night of the Living Dead (1968) with no specific time frame. The last zombie film he wrote and directed was Day of the Dead (1985), which was released nineteen years before "Land."
  
  
• George A. Romero's daughter appears in the film. She is the soldier who shoots the zombie on the electrified fence.
  
  
• Partly based on the original, much longer script for Day of the Dead (1985).
  
  
• The view of the zombies rising from out of the river is an homage to the classic scene from Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962) where the dead rise out of the Great Salt Lake before the dance sequence.
  
  
• The rifle carried by Charlie is an M-1 Carbine, a weapon developed during World War II. It was noted for its superb accuracy (for a carbine) and also hated by the Marines for its puny stopping power.
  
  
• The name of the military vehicle mainly used in the movie is Dead Reckoning, one of the film's original titles.
  
  
• "Fiddler's Green" is a song about the place where cavalrymen go when they die located "Halfway down the trail to hell" and, in the end, advocates suicide by pistol when death is certain and the hostiles are closing in. "Fiddler's Green" possibly originated in England at least to the 19th century and is still sung today. The song speaks of a place where fisherman go if they don't go to hell. It found its way to the U.S.A with the help of Cornish settlers. The fictional place of Fiddler's Green is also the final resting place for pirates.
  
  
• The assault rifle Big Daddy finds is an Austrian Steyr Aug.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [George A. Romero] his voice can be heard as one of the puppets in the children's show, saying, "Take that, you smelly zombie."
  
  
• Movie theaters showing this film in the USA were given a replacement track for the typical music and commercials usually heard playing over still images of advertisements before a movie starts. This track consisted of sound bites of music and lines from Night of the Living Dead, the original version, and Day of the Dead. Along with an advert for then upcoming airings of Day of the Dead on a pay per view network.
  
  
• Dennis Hopper based his performance as Kaufman on Donald Rumsfeld.
  
  
• John Leguizamo's character's name "Cholo" is a pejorative word used in South American Spanish to refer to Ecuatorians, Peruvians, and Bolivians who have strong Indian features.
  
  
• Cameo: [Boyd Banks] Boyd Banks, the actor who played Tucker in Dawn of the Dead (2004) (a remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978)) and "White Man" in Romero's Diary of the Dead (2007) also plays "the butcher" in Land of the Dead.
  
  

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