The Walking Dead is often a bleak series where bad things hurt even the best of people. Almost every person on the show faced tragedies based on living in the post-apocalyptic world. However, there are also many characters who entered the show already suffering from their own personal tragic backstories.
RELATED: 5 Characters Rick Grimes Could Call Friends (& His 5 Worst Enemies)
In the first season of The Walking Dead, it was all about regular people realizing they needed to fight for their survival and learning how to work together. As time went on, Rick Grimes and company met other survivors, many of who already suffered tragedies before joining up with the group. They had to learn how to move on from their heartbreaking backstories and start a new future.
Father Gabriel
Father Gabriel Stokes first showed up in Season 5 of The Walking Dead. When the group found him, he had barricaded himself in his church alone, hiding out from the zombie apocalypse. When the group got inside, they slowly learned about his tragic backstory and how he ended up locked in there.
When the zombies first attacked, Gabriel boarded up the church. He refused to open the doors to allow anyone else in, and slowly descended into despair as he listened to his parishioners screaming for help as the undead swarmed them. It crushed his spirit and hardened him. It took a long time for Father Gabriel to find his faith again.
Lori Grimes
Lori Grimes was already struggling when The Walking Dead began. Her husband, police officer Rick Grimes, was in a coma after an escaped convict shot him. While he was in the coma, the outbreak started and she had to keep their son Carl protected.
She found help in Rick’s best friend, Shane Walsh, who fell in love with Lori. Knowing she needed to do what she could to survive while thinking her husband was dead, Lori fell to despair before Rick finally woke up and set out to find her.
Abraham Ford
Abraham Ford showed up in The Walking Dead Season 4 and he brought military strength and precision with him, traveling with Rosita and Eugene. Abraham believed Eugene could save them all with a cure, even though it was a lie. Before Abraham joined the two and eventually the main group, he hid with his wife and two children. However, Abraham's war-time experience left him moody and his temper made him difficult to deal with.
When some survivors found them and sexually assaulted his wife, he murdered them in front of his family. His wife feared Abraham more than the walkers and ran with the children. When Abraham found them, the walkers had already devoured all three, leaving the veteran contemplating suicide.
Morgan Jones
Morgan Jones is an interesting story, one of the few people who appeared in The Walking Dead Season 1 who is still alive to this day. The main character from Fear the Walking Dead first met Rick Grimes in Atlanta but remained behind rather than traveling with the lawman.
RELATED: 10 Underused Walking Dead Characters That Needed More Screentime (But Are No Longer On The Show)
Morgan returned for a quick episode in Season 3 and he had changed because of the tragedies he witnessed. His wife had died before he met Rick in Season 1, but he still had his son. Between that encounter and Season 3, his son also died, and Morgan kept him as a walker until Rick found and helped him.
Negan Smith
Negan named the barbed wire bat he uses to kill people with Lucille after his wife, who he loved more than anyone. This also explains why he was so obsessed with keeping this barbed wire bat safe and seemed to love it more than even the living people around him.
Lucille received a cancer diagnosis right before the apocalypse and Negan dedicated his life to helping her. While Negan was searching for chemo medication for her, Lucille took her own life to save Negan from having to continue caring for her. This tragic backstory led to Negan's brutal behavior down the line.
Hershel Greene
Hershel Greene seemed relatively well-adjusted when Rick Grimes and his group of survivors came across his home. This is likely because he had a belief in God and felt that even the walkers were just sick people who needed help. As a child, Hershel’s father abused him, leading him to work to be a better man and father himself.
After his first wife died Josephine died, he cared for their two daughters, Maggie and Beth. When the apocalypse began, his second wife Annette and her son Shawn became walkers, but Hershel locked them in the barn, hoping to save them. He finally faced facts and eventually left them, joining Rick.
Lydia
Lydia had it bad from the second she appeared on The Walking Dead in Season 9. Her mother was The Whisperers' brutal leader Alpha. Throughout her time on the series, Alpha tortured her daughter and made her want to escape when a chance for a better life rolled around.
However, her tragic backstory showed this was common in her life. Alpha was an abusive mother long before the apocalypse. At one point when Lydia was a child, she almost suffocated while playing with a plastic bag. Alpha just watched and slapped her when she got out of it as punishment. The only person who showed Lydia love was her dad, and Alpha killed him after the zombie apocalypse.
Michonne
Michonne showed up on The Walking Dead and was clearly like no one else before or after her. She walked up, carrying a sword and holding two walkers on chained collars, traveling with both of them. These were former friends, and she lopped the heads off both when she joined Rick and the survivors.
However, her tragic backstory came earlier. She had a baby named Andre, and while she was out on a supply hunt, her two friends accidentally let walkers in and her baby died in the attack. This caused Michonne to become the cold warrior that she did.
The Governor
The Governor was one of the most sadistic villains in The Walking Dead's history. He was even worse in the comics. However, as prequel novels showed, Philip Blake (Brian in the comics) was not always an evil man. He even worked hard to help people in Woodbury from the start. After an abusive childhood, Blake grew up and married a woman, and had a daughter named Penny.
His wife died over a year before the apocalypse and his daughter ended up infected after it. The Governor kept his daughter chained up in his apartment, keeping the only thing left he loved around to remind him of his pain and loss.
Carol Peletier
There is a reason Carol is one of the toughest survivors on The Walking Dead. She married Ed, an abusive husband who beat her and verbally abused her as well. She escaped the Atlanta outbreak with Ed and her daughter Sophie, and eventually met up with Shane Walsh and the survivors.
Ed continued to abuse Carol and Sophia. His dominating personality transformed Carol into someone who had succumbed to his abuse and given up on life by the time he died. Eventually, Sophia died as well. Carol let no one mistreat her again, using her tragedies to become stronger than anyone.