Greg Nicotero, "The Walking Dead's" special effects make-up artist and producer, is detailing what kind of nastiness fans can expect from zombies in the upcoming season.

As Season 5 is later in time in the zombie apocalypse, the zombies will be even more decayed. To do this, Nicotero had to find faces to "build upon so that it can actually look like we're subtracting mass, [it] is very tricky and very challenging," he told MoviePilot. The artists used tactics like building up zombies' cheeks so their noses seem smaller and making their lower jaw larger so the teeth look more "inset."

"In Season 5, we've done a lot of that in terms of being able to see zombies that are even more rotted and decomposed looking than ever before -- even breaking out some teeth here and there; the teeth being less perfect makes them feel older, like they've been wandering around and rotting for a lot longer," Nicotero said. "We're a year-and-a-half into the zombie apocalypse. ... We wanted to make these things look as putrefied and disgusting as possible."

Nicotero also alerted fans to keep their eyes open for an in-joke tribute.

"I'm curious if people will catch or not, it's not a make-up it's an actual reference to another movie," he said.

According to the producer and sometimes-director, the season premiere of Season 5 is especially memorable.

"The first episode is f*cking amazing," Nicotero said. "It's thrilling, and it's touching, and it's scary, and it's suspenseful and it's moving. It's amazing that by the time you get to the episode that you've been taken on such an incredible emotional journey that I can't think of a better way to reintroduce the world to our characters."

Later in the season, there will also be a "a swimming pool of pea soup with walkers falling apart in it," as Nicotero told the Los Angeles Register.

"We've been able to take situations that the walkers would occur in, like a flooded basement or something, and imagine if they had been in there a year or so, what elements would they have faced," he said.

Season 5 of "The Walking Dead" premieres on AMC on Oct. 12 at 9 p.m.

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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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