After that bold, The Walking Dead," you know there's no way Greg Nicotero, the series' co-executive producer, effects supervisor, and director of the episode in question, is going to offer even a hint as to which of Rick's band of survivors ended up on the fatal end of Negan's barbed-wired Louisville Slugger.

But Nicotero was perfectly willing to offer a little insight as to how the show ended up at a moment that left the fan faithful looking at several months of nail-biting ahead before the doomed member of the Grimes group is revealed and his thoughts on the explosive fan reaction to the scene. He also plants a very persuasive seed of doubt for when the cast appears in shots taken during the production of the upcoming season -- meaning don't start your process of elimination when shots from the set of Season 7 show up online...

Moviefone: Tell me how you came to the decision, creatively, to end the season in such a spectacular fashion.

Greg Nicotero: Well, thank you for saying "spectacular fashion," because so many people are so angry about it. I appreciate you saying that! [Laughs]

With the comic book, we had a great blueprint. The blueprint gets darker and darker as the comic book progresses. So we weren't very shy about lining up where we were going to land: it's whichever comic book panel we stopped on and started on. I'm proud of the story that we told, of our actors and the performances that they gave.

Still today, I was getting texts from Josh [McDermitt] and from Steven [Yeun]. Josh told me that his wife screamed at the television because she didn't know. She thought, "It wasn't you, was it?" It's just amazing.

Did the reaction line up with what you thought? Or was there a little more outrage than you expected?

Well, I don't know if I would have expected quite so much outrage. But people are passionate about it. Listen, if the next morning everybody woke up and went, "Oh yeah...," just had their coffee and went on with their day, then we would have done something wrong. I'm not saying we did it on purpose, but people care and people are passionate about it. They want to feel something.

So how are you going to deal with letting your cast members be in public in any way, shape, or form, where they're going to be getting grilled? How are you going to release images and footage for next season without giving away at least part the secret?

The minute you see somebody not on their knees in front of Negan, you may have an inkling. But listen, sometimes the show has flashbacks and sometimes the show jumps the timeline a little bit. I mean, this season, the first episode jumped the timeline a bunch of times. So we could potentially shoot footage that would have taken place before that.

Is there any kind of fun Easter egg that you guys put in the finale that the fans should look for on the second or third viewing? Maybe something subtle about one of the walkers?

Oh, there's an interesting thing: the walker that Carol fought near the dumpster, I hired two twins because we did the before and after. Because Carol grabs the hair and pulls it, stretches the face off. It was the two girls that play harp at the conventions, these two blonde girls. And Ashton Kutcher's sister [Tausha Kutcher] was a zombie in the scene where we had the Red Rover walkers. "The Walking Dead" Season 7 premieres October 11th.