Oct 03, 2016 01:44 PM EDT By Raymond Valledor, UniversityHerald Reporter

Fans of the zombie hit show "The Walking Dead" are giddy with anticipation for the start of the latest season, which is happening in a few weeks. Aside from finding out who it is that Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) killed in the previous season, fans are also eager to see the latest addition to the cast - a Bengal tiger named Shiva.

The co-creator of the show and the comic book it was based on, Robert Kirkman, is an expert on raising the stakes to a higher level. He and the rest of the writers of the show have been known to take out a major character or two just to add more excitement into the series; however, in "The Walking Dead" Season 7, they'll be adding a tiger into the mix, which raised the stakes even more.

Kirkman spoke with Entertainment Weekly recently to talk about their latest "The Walking Dead" Season 7's cast addition. He said that he first thought of adding a tiger to the show just to see if the producers would pick up on it, although eventually, he realized that a real tiger would not only be unsafe but it will also be costly.

Instead of getting a real tiger, they came up with a virtual one; however, from what the trailer has shown, it seems that a computer-generated one looks just as authentic as a real one.

Kirkman told the same publication that the audience will notice if something is fake, so they were careful in developing the tiger for "The Walking Dead" Season 7. He said that his crew spent hours trying to develop a tiger that almost looked real, and according to him, the outcome was enough to convince even the most skeptical TV fans.

Meanwhile, according to Screen Crush, Khary Payton joins "The Walking Dead" Season 7's cast as King Ezekiel, the leader of a group of people who reside in an abandoned high school. Ezekiel was once a zookeeper prior to the zombie apocalypse, and it seems that he took a great liking to a tiger and decided to keep her as a pet when the dead came back to life.

Although no real tigers were ever used in any of the scenes in the show, Nicotero and the digital effects team did an excellent job in creating a virtual one. "The Walking Dead" Season 7 will air on Oct. 23 on AMC.

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