The Walking Dead (TV series)

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And where do you think you're going?

The Walking Dead is a Live Action Adaptation television series based on the comic of the same name. Like the comic, its story focuses on a group of survivors struggling to stay alive in a world overrun by undead humans. Rick Grimes, the leader of the group, awakens in the hospital from a coma to find everything has gone downhill. He sets out to find his family, and the rest of the show focuses on him and the rest of the characters as they adapt and relate to each other in a terrible new world.

The series premiered on October 31, 2010 on AMC, and is produced by Frank Darabont, Glen Mazzara and Gale Anne Hurd. Comic creator Robert Kirkman is also heavily involved with the production, including being the writer of the fourth episode. The show has finished its ninth season.

After the Season Two premiere broke cable records among the 18-49 demographic, AMC announced on October 25, 2011 that the series had been renewed for a third season.

The series has its own homepage. It includes a series of webisodes and other extra content, including online content for the Talking Dead talk show accompanying the series. A flash-based adventure game entitled "Dead Reckoning" is also available on the website, and shows Shane's initial encounters with the walkers when the outbreak begins.

The show takes liberties with its source material, so comic readers, don't except to come into this knowing everything beforehand.

Has a character sheet.

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Tropes used in The Walking Dead (TV series) include:

• Abandoned Hospital Awakening: Rick does this, in the first episode. He knows that something is wrong when he notices that for some strange reason, somebody locked the door to the morgue, and there seems to be something trying to get out.
• Aborted Arc: Andrea and Dale were originally set to become lovers as it was in the comics. This changed when Dale was killed in the ante-penultimate episode of Season 2.
• Absentee Actor: A fair chunk of the male beta cast seems to have the day off in "18 Miles Out". Glenn, Dale, Daryl, T-Dog, and Herschel are all completely absent, the action at the farm focusing on the women and Rick and Shane dealing with the prisoner.
• Abuse Is Okay When It's Female On Male: Averted when Dawn beats up Noah. It's portrayed seriously, and he has visible injuries afterwards, so it's not cartoonish, either.
• Action Girl: Andrea, Maggie, Carol, and Michonne.
• Adaptation Expansion: The series only follows the comic in Broad Strokes, so those who have read the comic don't assume the outcome of the series is a foregone conclusion, introducing new characters and scenes in addition to the ones that showed up in the comics.
• Adult Fear: During "Bloodletting", T-Dog looks through a car for medicine, then notices a baby's car seat in the back seat—splattered with blood.
• All Asians Are Alike: In "Vatos", Daryl tells Glenn "You got some balls for a Chinaman."

Glenn: I'm Korean. Daryl: Whatever.

• The Alcatraz: Rick and his group choose this as a base for this reason...they can use fences to prevent the walkers from getting inside. It works well until the Governor forces them to leave.
• The Alcoholic: Hershel has been in jail a few times because of this.
• All There in the Manual: The story of how Hannah became the "Bicycle Girl" walker is in the webisodes.
• Almighty Janitor:
  • After Glenn comes up with a strategy of military efficiency to get Rick's bag of guns off the swarmed street, Daryl asks him what he used to do for a living. He says he used to deliver pizza.
  • The leader of the Vatos used to be a custodian.
  • Ezekiel used to be a zookeeper. Now he's a king.
  • Negan used to be a used car salesman. Now he's the leader of the Saviors, a group that has managed to subjugate Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom.
• An Arm and a Leg: Hershel is bitten on the leg by a walker, but cutting off the leg saves him.
  • Unfortunately, cutting off Tyreese's arm does not save him. Not because the fever had already gotten to him, but because of the blood loss.
  • Bob has his leg eaten by cannibals...but it doesn't really matter to him because he had already been bitten. He remarks that the cannibals were eating tainted meat the entire time...though that actually wasn't where he was bitten.
• An Axe to Grind:
  • Rick uses one to chop up a dead body as part of a plan to sneak past the walkers and escape Atlanta.
  • Daryl in "TS-19" uses one on the door to the CDC, on a walker in mid-run, and almost on Jenner's head because it's not designed to withstand a rocket launcher. One of his axe kills actually has him using two axes to behead one walker in one swing.
• Annoying Arrows: Averted. Daryl's crossbow is used effectively against the undead. Later, Daryl accidentally impales himself on one of his own arrows and is shown significantly impaired by it. One could argue that it's more effective than an actual gun, as a gun doesn't make noise that potentially draws the attention of walkers.
• Anyone Can Die: A truly unique example, in that the source material pushes anyone can die. The series compounds the Anyone Can Die right of Kirkman with an Anyone Can Die in the independent universe of the show. Sophia and Dale, comic survivors, died early in the show.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: There's discussion on whether the Chupacabra is real, and it's Lampshaded that they're having this conversation in a world where the dead walk. On the other hand, there's actual evidence of the walking dead, whereas Daryl was tripping balls when he thought he saw the Chupacabra. Not altogether arbitrary.
• Asian Drivers: Daryl makes a joke about this towards Glenn in the second season finale.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The criminals in the opener. Their car is turned over, they're outnumbered by cops, and each cop has a weapon aimed at them, and they come out shooting anyway. Two are promptly gunned down. The third, who goes entirely unnoticed in the initial shootout, and could have gotten a decent head start since nobody had seen him yet, breaks from cover and starts shooting.
• Audience Sucker Punch: In the mid-season finale for Season 2, it's discovered that Sophia was turned into a walker. Also, when Dale is killed by the zombie that Carl accidentally released.
• Audience Surrogate: As Rick had been unconscious during the beginning stages of the apocalypse, Morgan explains to him and the audience what's going on. Of course, the audience already knows at some level what's going on considering what the title of the show is.
  • Ironically enough, Rick later explains to the audience as well as his fellow survivors that a walker bite isn't required to become a walker. As long as you meet your maker (unless, of course, you've been stabbed in the brain or your corpse has been immolated), you become a zombie.
• The Atoner: Eastman becomes this when he leaves a man to starve in a cell for murdering his family. He realized that it didn't make him feel any better about his family's deaths. Eastman was planning to go to Atlanta to atone for what he did, but when he got there, the zombie apocalypse had already began. So, he instead decided to vow not to kill again.
• Auto Erotica: The episode "Secrets" includes a scene where Shane and Andrea get busy in the car they're in, just after they've escaped a housing development that was full of walkers.
• Automaton Horses: Real horses don't even take well to living crowds without special training, yet the one Rick rides into a city crawling with walkers barely snorts in nervousness. When attacked, it just stands there whinnying hopelessly and gets eaten alive rather than kicking, bucking or fleeing. Justified since it was running until it got cornered. On the practical side, realistic bucking/kicking would need a very skilled stunt rider. It would also be dangerous for the extras playing walkers.
• Awesome but Practical:
  • As Daryl points out, crossbows are far better for killing walkers than firearms: they make less noise (meaning less risk of drawing the attention of more walkers) and you can reuse the shafts. As shown in season two, one can also create more bolts in the field if need be, something that can't be done with modern ammunition.
  • Rick makes the mention of using knives to not attract more walkers.
• Ax-Crazy: Negan, though he does apologize before killing Glenn.
  • The Governor, the zombie apocalypse has driven him off the deep end.
• Badass Boast:

Rick: If you want to kill me, you're gonna have to do better than a wrench.

• • His retort when Merle says that he won't shoot him, because he's a cop:

"All I am anymore is a man looking for his wife and son. Anyone who gets in the way of that is going to lose."

• Bait the Dog: It seems that the Governor is a good man...but in truth, he's more of an extremist. And he has a creepy tendency to collect severed heads and put them into fish tanks, which reanimate into walker heads.
• Bang Bang BANG: Warning—firing a gun inside a tank may cause pain and temporary hearing loss.
• Batter Up: Bats are occasionally used as weapons, with the second season's second episode having Maggie on a horse charge up and hit a walker upside the head that was threatening one of the group. Negan in particular uses this as his signature weapon. He names it "Lucille" and refers to it as a vampire bat as a double entendre. It references his playful yet sadistic personality, as he just so happened to have put barbed wire on the top to make it more lethal.
• Behind the Black: In the Season 2 finale, Patricia is grabbed and killed by a walker that was just off camera, though the characters should easily have seen it right off their path.
• Berserk Button:
  • Shane tells Rick that he thinks Rick can't keep his family safe, Rick and Shane start whaling on each other.
  • In "Judge, Jury, Executioner", Daryl shows Randall that he should have kept his mouth shut instead of telling Daryl about an incident with a man and his two teenage daughters.
  • The Governor doesn't take it well when Michonne kills his daughter...from his perspective, anyway. She was a zombie.
• Big Bad: The Governor serves as this for Season 3. During Season 2, Shane served as the villain. Generally however, Shane was only a threat to Rick. The Governor is a threat to everyone.
  • Negan eventually takes the role. He's the leader of the Saviors, and they have Rick and his group outnumbered. However, he spends his time behind the scenes until his formal introduction.
  • Alpha is the first female example. She's the leader of the Whisperers.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Played with. Rick, T-Dog, Daryl, and Glenn return to camp just in time to save the camp from walkers. Then Rick and Shane have an argument as to whether the losses would've been greater or worse if the group had never left the camp in the first place.
  • Shane looks resigned to Rick abandoning him while he's stuck in the school bus in "18 Miles Out", until he looks over and sees Rick and Randall (who's driving the car) barreling into the lot at top speed to rescue him.
  • Andrea delivers one to Carol when the latter somehow manages to get separated from the group in the second season finale, and is promptly abandoned by everyone.
  • As Andrea is about to meet her fate at the hands of a walker after being separated from everyone, she's saved at the hands of a mysterious hooded figure. Fans of the comic will instantly identify the hooded figure as Michonne.
• The Big Guy: Rick's group has a variety of these, depending on the season. For example, there's Tyreese, though he's initially a member of the Governor's forces. There's also T-Dog, before his death in Season 3.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: Occasionally.
  • T-Dog dies after being bitten by a walker, though he at least gets the opportunity to perform a Heroic Sacrifice for Carol's sake.
  • Tyreese is also bitten by a walker. Fortunately for Tyreese, the heroes are able to amputate his arm before the infection can spread. Unfortunately for Tyreese, he ends up dying anyway due to blood loss.
  • Abraham also dies, but strangely enough it's not because of a walker. Negan wanted revenge on Alexandria for killing his men, so he decided to kill Abraham to teach the others a lesson.
• Big No:
  • Merle gets a few in when he's stuck on the roof and believes that nobody is coming to help him, not even his own younger brother.
  • Daryl does it too upon reaching the roof and finding Merle's severed hand, but no Merle. It must run in the family.
  • Rick several times, after Andrea tries to prove her worth by shooting an incoming walker. Turns out it wasn't a walker, but a wounded Daryl. Thankfully, she only grazed him.
• Black Cloak: In "Beside the Dying Fire", the "hooded stranger (Michonne)" uses a variant of this during her entrance.
• Black Best Friend: Michonne becomes this to Andrea. Unfortunately, Michonne can't persuade Andrea to leave Woodbury.
• Black Dude Dies First: Discussed when T-Dog is feverish and suffering blood poisoning. Fortunately, T-Dog does not die first...that would be the abusive husband Ed.

T-Dog: How old are you? 70? Dale: 64. T-Dog: And I'm the one black guy. Realize how precarious that makes my situation? Dale: What the hell are you talking about? T-Dog: I'm talking about two Good Ol' Boy cowboy sheriffs and a redneck who's about to cut off his own hand because I dropped the key. Who in that scenario you think would be first to get lynched?

• Book Ends: The first and last episodes of Season 1 both feature scenes of characters enjoying the now-rare luxury of a hot shower.
• Boom! Headshot!: With walkers, it's the only way to be sure.
• Bottomless Magazines: Averted for the most part over the course of the series, but there are a few exceptions:
  • In "Guts", Merle fires a great many more rounds than his rifle could physically hold. However it's not unreasonable to assume Merle reloaded his rifle in between his scenes.
  • Plays a vital, if background, role in "Beside the Dying Fire", when Shane's stealing some of the ammunition for himself in "Judge, Jury, Executioner" leads to Andrea having not nearly enough for herself when she's on her own in the forest trying to evade an entire herd of walkers.
  • Also in "Beside the Dying Fire", Herschel is seen (and heard) unloading many more rounds from his shotgun that is physically possible. The first time he's seen firing into the walkers heading towards the house from the barn, he fires nine shots on-screen, and is heard immediately afterward firing at least six additional shots without pausing to reload as Lori walks out and asks Carol where Carl is. Later on, when the action cuts back to him after most of the cars have left, he fires ten shots in succession as he retreats backwards.
• Bound and Gagged: Randall in "Triggerfinger".
• Brother-Sister Team: Tyreese and Sasha. Initially, they're part of Woodbury...but they eventually join Rick's group after they hear about what happened involving the Governor's sanity. They would have accompanied the Governor to attack the children...but they figured they would look after the elderly and children while the Governor was gone.
• The Brute: During his time when he works as the Governor, Merle becomes this, kidnapping both Glenn and Maggie and delivering them to the Governor.. Though he's not necessarily stupid as he remembers Glenn abandoning him from his perspective. (Glenn had come back for him, but he didn't know that.} He later decides to do the same thing for Michonne, but he ultimately decides not to and instead decides to try to kill the Governor, resulting in his death.
  • Tyreese also serves the Governor...but he's more of a Token Good Teammate.
• Call Back:
  • In "Nebraska" and "Judge, Jury, Executioner", Daryl is shown making himself an arrow to replace the shafts he's lost.
  • In "18 Miles Out", Rick hides from a small swarm of walkers by covering himself with a dead walker, similar to how Daryl and T-Dog hid from the large swarm in the Season 2 premiere.
  • In "Better Angels", Andrea and Glenn are attempting to fix the group's RV, and Andrea offers Glenn a screwdriver. The shot lingers on the tool a second before Glenn accepts it. Referencing Andrea's encounter with a walker in "What Lies Ahead" where she kills a walker by stabbing it in the eye with a screwdriver.
• Camera Abuse: Blood and/or brains are often splattered onto the camera, usually resulting from a gunshot, blunt object, or axe to the head.
• Canon Foreigner: Quite a few - Merle, Daryl, Ed, the Morales family, Jacqui, Jenner, the Vatos...
  • Season 4 introduces Tara, who behaves much like a sister to Glenn after he decides to help her escape from the walker-overrun prison despite her siding with the Governor earlier (she had assumed that he was a good man, but in truth, the zombie apocalypse had driven him insane).
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Shane. Every time he tries to kill Rick, someone gets in the way. First time it was Dale, second time it was a horde of walkers. And the third time Rick just goes ahead and stabs him in the stomach, not wanting to take any chances. Finally.
• The Cavalry:
  • When Andrea is ambushed by a walker in the forest, Maggie suddenly comes riding in on a horse and armed with bat.
  • Happens multiple times in "Beside the Dying Fire". Andrea arrives to rescue Carol, Rick shows up at the last second to save Herschel from a walker bearing down on him when he paused to reload, and Andrea is saved by Michonne after she runs out of ammo and gets pinned to the ground by a walker.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Averted. Jenner says a French research facility was the last still operational when he lost contact, working to find a cure until the end.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The grenade Rick picks up in the first-season episode "Guts" gets used in "TS-19" to blast open an escape route.
  • Rick's sheriff uniform, which he consistently wears rather than more practical or comfortable gear, ultimately defuses the situation with the Vatos when one of the elderly they're protecting recognizes him as a police officer and asks for his help.
  • The damaged radiator hose on Dale's RV is mentioned several times in passing throughout the first season, and conks out once in "Wildfire" and again in the second-season opener "What Lies Ahead".
  • Another was loaded and set on the mantelpiece when Dr. Jenner whispered in Rick's ear. This was eventually revealed in "Beside the Dying Fire", where Rick reveals what Jenner had told him - everyone is infected, and unless they die by head-shot, they will return as walkers. Which explains why Rick shot Tony in the head at the end of "Nebraska" after killing him.
  • In "18 Miles Out", after explicitly noting that the Mert county deputies were infected without bites, we see Randall and Shane become zombies without being bitten. This is later explained in "Beside the Dying Fire".
  • Daryl's gun, which Carl steals from his bike in "Judge, Jury, Executioner", which Carl later uses to put a bullet in the zombified Shane's head.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The walker Carl inadvertently frees from being stuck in the mud at the riverbank in "Judge, Jury, Executioner" shows up at the end of the episode and kills Dale.
• The Chick: A variety of them depending on the season.
  • In Season 1, there's Lori and Carol.
  • In Season 2, there's Beth.
  • In Season 3, there's Sasha, though she's initially part of the Woodbury group.
  • In Season 4, there's Rosita. She's hooked up with The Big Guy Abraham incidentally.
  • In Season 5, there's...well, he's not technically a chick. But Noah's more girly than most of the male survivors of the group.
• Children Are Cruel: Sam shoots Carl's eye out, though he at least cares about his father Pete despite the abuse he dished out towards his mother. He also attempts to kill Rick.
  • lizzie murders her own sister Mika.
• Children Are Innocent: Lizzie takes this trope and subverts it...but Mika plays it straight. Also, Ron.
• Christianity Is Catholic: In the second season premiere, the gang stumble across a small country church, which is explicitly identified as being "Baptist" on its signage. Inside on the altar is a very large crucifix. Baptists are one of the least likely Protestant denominations to have something so "Roman" in their church.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Glenn and Rick. Shane even calls them out on it.
• Close-Call Haircut: Andrea mistakes Daryl for a walker and shoots him. Fortunately, her aim is bad.
• Closest Thing We Got:

Lori: You're a doctor, right? Hershel: Yes, ma'am. Of course. A vet. Lori: A veteran? A combat medic. Hershel: A veterinarian.

• Comforting the Widow:
  • In the time Rick was in the hospital, Shane and Lori were beginning to form this kind of relationship. However, Rick eventually woke up, and he survived long enough to reunite with Lori. Ironically enough, Rick became widowed in Season 3 following Shane's death.
  • And again with Daryl and Carol, though Carol doesn't care about Ed leaving her too much as he was already established as a terrible husband and a terrible father to Sophia to boot.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Andrea, to Dale. Justified, in that Andrea only left the CDC because Dale refused to leave without her.
• Conspicuous CGI:
  • The wrench that Shane hurled at Rick in "18 Miles Out".
  • The CGI (and jawless, and armless) walkers that Michonne/the "hooded figure" appears with in "Beside the Dying Fire". The scene looks almost surrealistic compared to the rest of the episode.
  • The zombie that Glenn nearly decapitates in the pharmacy.
  • The flames when the walkers in the barn are set on fire by Carl and Rick.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The "fish fry attack" from the first-season episode "Vatos" continues to be a sticking point between Shane and Rick (with both of them arguing over whether or not Rick was justified leading a mission to rescue Merle and retrieve the guns) long into the second season. "Pretty Much Dead Already" namechecks the event again, with Shane specifically mentioning Amy and Jim (who both died as a result of the attack).
  • Shane's pre-apocalypse flashback in the first-season episode "TS-19" gets referenced again when he tries to make amends with Rick in "18 Miles Out".
  • Glenn mentions his friends that have died to Enid in Season 6. This includes Dale who died back in Season 2, but it also includes characters that had died more recently such as Hershel and Tyreese.
• Contrived Coincidence: In "Beside the Dying Fire", a group of walkers, attracted by the same helicopter that Rick saw in Atlanta in "Days Gone Bye" (and apparently happening at the same time, no less) makes its way towards the direction of the helicopter, and eventually masses more and more walkers who fall in step with the original group. The horde of walkers eventually smashes through a strong wooden fence and onto the Greene farm.
• Cool Car: The car that Rick and Glenn use to draw the walkers away with the car alarm is a brand new Dodge Challenger. Glenn is understandably happy over being able to drive out of Atlanta with nothing but open road in front of him and no police to pull him over.
• Cool Hat:
  • Rick's police hat. Glenn even jokes that Rick risked going back into Atlanta not to recover his lost guns but the hat instead. Later he gives it to Carl.
  • Dale's hat is either thought of as this or thought to look goofy by the characters themselves.
• Cool Old Guy: Dale, and after "Triggerfinger", Hershel.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: The farmer and his wife's suicide note, in the series premiere, is written on the wall in blood.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Resorted to in the webisodes in a touchdown pass with the Idiot Ball. There's no reason this person should be attempting this, and it doesn't end well.
• Crapsack World: Par the course for any Zombie Apocalypse tale.
• Creepy Child: The zombified little girl that Rick shoots in the pilot. And he does the same to Sophia.
  • On the living side, there's Lizzie. It's rather disturbing that she thinks the walkers are her friends, considering that the walkers wish to eat her along with everyone else.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Noah and Otis are devoured by walkers, due to the actions of their own comrades. Other survivors though don't experience such horrible deaths.
  • Jessie and Sam also share the same fate. They tried to disguise themselves as walkers, but the walkers ended up seeing through their disguises in the end.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Simon's solution to rebelling survivor communities (the Kingdom, for instance) is to simply wipe them out and move on to other communities. Negan tells him that while that may be the easy thing to do, it is not the right thing to do. Negan will kill one or two survivors of a community to keep them in line, but he's not willing to wipe out entire communities, and he specifically tells Simon not to wipe out the Scavengers. Unfortunately, Simon does it anyway.
• Cute Little Fangs: Accidentally revealed if you're paying attention to teeth in "Vatos" while Amy is in the boat.
• Cute Monster Girl:
  • Morgan's zombified wife, who looks fairly normal except for rings around her eyes and the expression on her face. She is one of the more recent victims, so she hasn't decayed as much as the others.
  • In the webisodes, the female walker who Judy mistook for unconscious or in distress. Judy gets part of her face ripped off for her troubles.
• Daylight Horror: Frequently. Noah in particular is eaten by walkers in broad daylight in front of Glenn, though they're not quite outdoors when it happens.
• Death by Adaptation: Sophia, who (compared to her continuing presence in the comic) is killed after the group finds her in the barn, having been turned into a walker and also Dale, as of "Judge, Jury, Executioner". In the source material, he survived all the way past the prison arc (which is the plot of the third season) until the "Fear The Hunters" arc.
• Deep South: The show takes place in Georgia, thus many characters have southern accents. The Governor happens to be an evil example of a southerner.
• Deliberately Bad Example: Simon represents who Negan would do be if he lacked the redeeming the qualities of the former.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Jenner crosses this around the time that he realizes that everyone could potentially become a zombie, depending on whether they lived or died. Jacqui decides to die with him.
  • Andrea, before Dale guilt trips her out of it. She's initially not happy about it, but she regains her will to live.
  • Hershel and Beth, after the massacre of all the zombies in the barn, which included Hershel's wife.
  • Morgan hits the Despair Event Horizon around the time that Rick encounters him again, sometime after Morgan decides to help Rick survive in the grisly new world he's found himself in. However, Eastman brings him back to his senses.
• Determinator: Merle may be an ass, but one has to admire his stubborn refusal to die. {{{1}}}.
• Zombie Gait: Some of the walkers do this. And Daryl too, due to his injuries and the ordeal he endured to get back to the farm. It results in him being mistaken for a zombie by Andrea.