"The Walking Dead" has returned for a new season last Sunday night, and it came with a very artistic way of portraying past events and future. Initially, though, the season six pilot would have looked very different if the original version only panned out right.

When "The Walking Dead" promised more zombies come season six, they were not kidding! In "First Time Again," Alexandria faced a great threat of a large horde of zombies. With the truck separating the horde from the town becoming more and more fragile by the day, the group devices a plan to lead the walkers away. The plan, of course, fails as one still unknown person blares the horn in Alexandria.

The interesting thing about the pilot is that the planning stage was well-interspersed with the execution in well-thought out flashbacks. Director Greg Nicotero used black and white shots to distinguish past from present. It was a very interesting approach, but one that they did not originally intend. According to him, they originally wanted to use a different approach.

"We always knew there was gonna be a visual cue. When we shot it, I think Scott [Gimple] and I had talked about the idea that it was probably gonna be desaturated flashbacks, and then oversaturated present. Every sequence that takes place in present-day is very action-packed. The camera's always moving, very fast-paced, people are running, people are screaming, people are firing guns. So in the first version of the episode, we had oversaturated the present day and desaturated the past," Nicotero shares with Entertainment Weekly.

So why did they decide to shift? He said the finished product looked like a page out of "The Wizard of Oz" and the world seemed too alive - not a very good way to depict a world haunted by zombies. He adds that using black and white alluded more to the graphic novel version.

Check out if the people behind the show have more tricks up their sleeves. "The Walking Dead" airs new episodes on AMC every Sunday night, 9  p.m.