The Walking Dead Named Negan's Iconic Bat After a Classic Movie You've Not Seen Before

In The Walking Dead ’s comic continuity, the ruthless villain known as Negan was a constant thorn in Rick’s side, with Negan and his weapon of choice, a barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat affectionately dubbed “Lucille,” being just another problem for Rick to contend with daily. But what originally inspired The Walking Dead’s creator to name Negan’s bat “Lucille”? According to Robert Kirkman, Lucille’s name was inspired by a classic movie many Walking Dead fans may not have seen before.

Introduced in The Walking Dead #100 alongside her foul-mouthed master, Lucille made a name for herself by issue’s end, with Negan using her to murder longtime Walking Dead character Glenn in a gory display of brain matter and blood.

Asked by a fan in the “Letter Hacks” section of The Walking Dead Deluxe #104 whether Lucille got her name from a fan-favorite episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or possibly from the way B.B. King names his guitars “Lucille,” Robert Kirkman reveals that neither is true, citing the 1967 award-winning classic Cool Hand Luke as Lucille’s inspiration instead!

Negan’s Iconic Bat Lucille Was Inspired by the Classic Film Cool Hand Luke

Cool Hand Luke - 1967 (Directed by Stuart Rosenberg and Written by Donn Pearce and Frank R. Pierson)

Featuring an Oscar-nominated performance by Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke follows World War II veteran Lucas “Luke” Jackson after being sentenced to hard labor on a chain gang in 1950s Florida. One scene, often referred to as “the car wash scene,” saw Newman’s Luke and his fellow prison pals ogling over a young woman they dub “Lucille” as she washes her car in a manner they highly enjoy. Admitting that “Lucille was on my mind because of the scene in Cool Hand Luke,” Robert Kirkman solidifies this classic film as an integral part of what would eventually become Negan’s Lucille.

Constantly talking about Lucille while wielding her and sometimes even to her as if she were a real woman — a nod to the way Cool Hand Luke’s characters talk at their Lucille, no doubt — Negan often projects his sadistic thoughts and feelings through Lucille, with her becoming just as important a “character” as the man who swings her. Furthermore, the chain gang in the film assigns a name to Lucille because, according to them, “anything so innocent and built like that just gotta be named Lucille,” a line that sounds like it could have easily come from Negan’s troubled mind.

Lucille Was Named After Someone Close to Negan in The Walking Dead's Comic Continuity

Though Kirkman may have gleaned “Lucille” from Cool Hand Luke’s iconic car wash scene, the canon reason behind Negan using it in comics comes from his cancer-stricken wife, also named Lucille — a moniker that makes sense for Negan’s signature weapon after knowing the entire story behind his relationship with his late partner. Cool Hand Luke may not be a film readers are familiar with, considering it’s swiftly approaching its 60th anniversary, but it’s still a movie worth watching, especially now that it’s been revealed it was the sole inspiration behind Negan’s Lucille in The Walking Dead’s zombie-infested comic book universe.