"Land of the Dead" movie? (spoilers)
 

When Cholo goes to Fiddler's Green to see Kaufman and happens upon the man hanging himself...how did he know right away he was going to turn?
and if the people in Fiddler's Green don't usually venture out, especially not out past the electric fence, how did the man get infected in the first place?

Everyone that dies turns. That's how Cholo knew and that's how the man got "infected".

Yup. you don't have to be bitten to turn. You just have to die.

has that always been the case, in every "Dead" movie? why does simply death bring on the infection? i always thought they had to be bit. that is why everyone asks if they have been bitten or not...to see if they will turn.

In George Romero's dead films, yes, any kind of death makes you a zombie. Kinda creepy, because it shows that the disease is really inescapable, unless you blow your own head off.

Same with the 1990 'Night' remake, written by Romero and directed by Tom Savini. Uncle Regis dies of a heart attack on the day that the zombie outbreak begins. He returns to life as a zombie, but he was never bitten. My guess is that it is an airborn virus that lays dormant in everyone's system until their time of death. Being bitten causes a massive amount of this virus to be running through your bloodstream, so of course it speeds up the transformation and causes you to die within hours/days of being bitten.

In the Dawn of the Dead remake, which is NOT a Romero dead film, NO, simply dying of a heart attack will not make you a zombie. In that film, only bitten people will turn into zombies.

"When there is no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth"

I don't ever recall it saying "When the live are bitten, they shall walk the earth"

Seems very simple. Something in the body kicks in when you die. A bite will simply kill you because of infection, but you will be a zombie when you die regardless of being bitten or not.

Truth be told, it could be an easy thing to miss. Romero never included a lot of people dying by other means and turning. I don't think that happens to a single person onscreen in Dawn or Day.

So the confusion is warranted I think. Honestly it's one aspect of the story I was never fond of, I was happy to see it underplayed.