Wright has said both that he suggested the film when in a cab with Pegg after the excitement of filming the zombie scene in "Spaced", and while watching a horror film with both Pegg and Nick Frost. He began developing it in earnest after playing "Resident Evil" late one night himself, and going out in the early hours of the morning wondering what a British person's reaction to the zombie apocalypse would be. He considered the lack of assault weapons typical of American zombie movies, and his experience of the dazed early-morning walk to the shop turned into a scene in the film where Shaun does the same thing. Another influence from Wright's life came from how he missed the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic by simply not having paid attention to the news for a fortnight, turning his television on one day to see cattle being burnt, leaving him confused. Because of this, he said "it's plausible that the world could be ending and these two guys could be the last to know" as they also skip over the news on television in the film. The gag about Shaun and Ed spending all their time at the Winchester also comes from the actors' lives, as Pegg and Frost "always used to go to the same bar all the time", according to Wright, who had been trying to convince them not to.