While The Walking Dead: The World Beyond continues to struggle in its freshman season and Fear the Walking Dead rebounds in its sixth (and this week’s Fear episode is every bit as good as last week’s), we continue to see connections between all three shows in The Walking Dead universe.
For instance, the CRM — one of the main storylines in The World Beyond — looks as though it will eventually lead us to the whereabouts of Rick Grimes, who was taken by the CRM on The Walking Dead. We have also seen the CRM — still in its infancy — appear on Fear the Walking Dead, and it looks quite possible that Isabel, a character who appeared on Fear the Walking Dead, is the daughter of Elizabeth, the leader of the CRM on The World Beyond.
Let’s add one more potential connection to the mix: Last week’s episode of The World Beyond was called “The Blaze of Gory,” or BOG, for short. The BOG is an area seemingly in Nebraska where thousands of tires have been burning for over a decade. In other words, The BOG is a literal tire fire that the teenage characters on The World Beyond have to navigate through to get to their destination in New York.
It is not, however, the first time in The Walking Dead that we’ve seen a reference to The BOG. In fact, at least two of Althea’s tapes on Fear the Walking Dead reference The BOG:
It’s possible, of course, that these tapes just coincidentally reference an acronym from The World Beyond, but I don’t think so because we actually know some details about The Bog tapes. Althea tried to give one of The Bog tapes to the likely daughter of Elizabeth from the CRM, Isabel, when Isabel was going to kill Althea. However, when Althea told Isabel what was on the tape, Isabel couldn’t bring herself to kill Althea (also, because she was in love with Althea). The Bog tape, in other words, saved Althea’s life.
What was on the tape? According to Althea, it documents a fight that breaks out between the National Guard and the Army, which Althea captures. Unfortunately, while she’s doing so, she leaves her brother Jessie alone, who ends up dying during the early days of the outbreak.
Obviously, the tire fire happened a long time ago in Nebraska, and Fear the Walking Dead is several years behind The World Beyond’s timeline. However, we know that this tire fire has been blazing for a decade, and we also know that Althea has traveled around the country extensively. We know, therefore, that Althea could have been in Nebraska when the tire fire ignited. That tape is also important in Fear lore because not only did it save her life when she offered it to a CRM soldier, but the incident documented in “The Bog #7” was the impetus for Althea’s decision to collect other people’s stories on camera.
It makes sense, therefore, that Scott Gimple would use the tape as a way to find another intersection between the two shows.
Tune in to the third episode of The World Beyond tonight on AMC to see them continue to traverse The Bog, while on a very good Fear the Walking Dead, the action will center on Alicia and Strand.