The Clocks On The Walking Dead Were Set To Very Specific Times

When creating a postapocalyptic world that feels plausible, the attention to detail has to be on point. Cities that have fallen apart over time, broken-down cars that have been stripped and siphoned for fuel, and scattered settlements with groups of survivors who will go to any lengths to survive are just a few staples across this genre.

"The Walking Dead," in which a virus that has infected everyone in the world reanimates the dead in order to feast on the living, followed the familiar zombie outbreak model, requiring its creators to consider additional details such as how the infected will look, what time will do to an animated corpse, where they're likely to be, and how massive hoards end up congregating.

One thing that may not seem all that important in the zombie apocalypse is the time of day. Of course, there are some characters who still wear watches in Season 1, including Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn), who keeps his wound. Most clocks on-screen, however, are broken, and the time each one is stopped at is among the small details you might have missed on "The Walking Dead."

When Hershel (Scott Wilson) accepts Glenn (Steven Yeun) as Maggie's (Lauren Cohan) partner, he gives him a silver pocket watch as a sign of welcome. The watch has since been featured in multiple episodes of "The Walking Dead," notably the Season 5 premiere, in which Rick (Andrew Lincoln) uses its chain to fashion a makeshift shiv.

During a panel at Atlanta's Walker Stalker Con in 2014, executive producer Greg Nicotero talked about the significance of the time on the pocket watch in this scene. "The time is 5:01 on the watch, because that was episode 501," he explained. "So if you look at any of the stuff in the show...even when Carol picks up Rick's watch off the table, it says 5:01."

But the Season 5 premiere isn't the only episode affected by this phenomenon. In fact, the showrunners decided that any clock or watch appearing on-screen will follow that same format.