The Walking Dead's zombie variants can be divided into types, depending on the abilities they possess and the manner in which they came into existence. For the most part, zombies in The Walking Dead are slow, incapable of mental reason, and driven only by a desire to chomp on the nearest source of flesh. Gradually, however, AMC's zombie apocalypse franchise has introduced higher grades of undead referred to as "variants." Many questions about the true nature of these souped-up zombies remain unanswered, but different classes of variant are already beginning to emerge across The Walking Dead's various shows.

For the purposes of this list, variants will be defined as zombies that are inherently different to a standard victim of The Walking Dead's zombie virus. This excludes regular zombies that have been superficially altered by their environment, such as the rock-covered corpses from The Ones Who Live...