Negan was introduced in The Walking Dead‘s sixth season and, since then, the cruel and egotistical villain proved to be a complete nightmare for Rick Grimes and his group. Although many things could be said about the former leader of the survivors due to his horrendous behavior, Negan was seen as somewhat of an antihero towards the final seasons of AMC’s The Walking Dead, having changed his tune after being imprisoned in Alexandria for seven and a half years.

Noted for his creepy whistle in an attempt to intimidate others and show his dominance, Negan’s iconic bat, Lucille, has played just as big of a part in The Walking Dead as he has. Whenever his late wife passed away from suicide, in a bid to end her suffering from pancreatic cancer that had plagued her since before the post-apocalypse, even though Negan constantly scavenged for chemotherapy and taught himself to administer it, the heartbroken character ended up naming his beloved bat after her so that she would always be with him in some form to give him strength. However, that’s not where his iconic, head-bashing sidekick initially got its name from.

Negan’s Bat in The Walking Dead Was Named After a Classic 1967 Movie

As reported by Screen Rant, Negan’s barbed-wired and usually blood-soaked baseball bat got its name when The Walking Dead creator, Robert Kirkman, watched the classic movie, Cool Hand Luke. In a section of The Walking Dead Deluxe #104 comic where fans can ask Kirkman questions, one person asked him whether Lucille got her name from an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or was it inspiration taken from the late blues musician B.B. King, who always named his array of guitars “Lucille.” However, neither was correct, as Kirkman replied that he got the idea after watching the 1967 film starring Paul Newman, Dennis Hopper, and Jo Van Fleet.

For those who might not have seen the classic film or maybe haven’t even heard of it, Cool Hand Luke follows the story of Lucas “Luke” Jackson who is imprisoned after committing a petty crime and sentenced to manual labor as part of the chain gang in 1950s Florida. Kirkman reveals that one scene stood out to him where Paul Newman’s character Luke and his inmate buddies are watching a woman washing her car, which they were enjoying a bit too much. This particular scene stuck with Kirkman, as he expressed that “Lucille was on my mind because of the scene in Cool Hand Luke,” which later would become Negan’s murderous wooden villain of its own, Lucille.

It’s fair to say that some fans may even miss the old Negan and his sometimes humorous, if not downright evil, shenanigans. If the latest trailer for The Walking Dead: Dead City is anything to go by when it arrives for a second season this year, it seems like the once villain could be reverting to his previous destructful self now that he’s once again reunited with his bat. Dead City fans can catch up with the show’s next season when it airs this year sometime.