Warning: Article Contains Graphic Comic Panels!
Award-winning writer Robert Kirkman's calamitous world of The Walking Dead is not an environment that supports its main cast of survivors or its fans. Throughout the long-running post-apocalyptic Image Comics series, several leading characters have come and gone in some of the most brutal fashions ever depicted in the pages of comic books.
The 193-issue comic book series does not skimp on deaths, which become even more frequent and brutal the longer the central survivors must adapt to their harsh new surroundings. This pattern carried over into the television adaptation, which quickly established that anybody could die and that everyone was fair game. The possibility that any of their favorite characters could be next has kept readers and viewers on the edge of their seats since The Walking Dead comic was first published in 2003.
Though Kirkman ended The Walking Dead comic series in 2019, its legacy lives on. As AMC's hit The Walking Dead television series returns to the screen, now is as good a time as any to look back at some of the darkest deaths, including some that did not even make it on the airwaves.
Glenn
An original member of protagonist Rick Grimes's survivor group is former pizza delivery boy Glenn. Glenn quickly evolves into a valued member of the survivors and serves as the moral compass of Rick's group to help maintain their humanity amidst their terrifying circumstances. Unfortunately, the survivors are forced to part ways with their moral system when Glenn meets his end in the series' landmark 100th issue, during the survivors' first encounter with unfiltered new antagonist Negan. Rather than a quick and swift demise, a conscious Glenn is bludgeoned in brutal fashion with Negan's baseball bat Lucille in front of not only his lover Maggie but also a large fragment of Rick's group. While Glenn's death may not have been entirely unexpected, the story left many readers in mourning due to the fact that he was one of the few survivors maintaining a stable romantic relationship, with a child on the way. Even AMC's The Walking Dead cable television adaptation made sure to keep the brutality and hopelessness of the issue #100 comic moment well intact.
Chris & Julie
After being forced to leave their original Atlanta camp, Rick and his survivors quickly cross paths with football linebacker Tyreese. Accompanying Tyreese on his journey are teenage daughter Julie and her unusual boyfriend Chris. Though Tyreese's trio helps Rick overtake a "vacant" prison complex, the future of their safety remains vastly uncertain. Convincing Julie to participate in a secret suicide pact, Chris kills Julie before she herself has the chance to kill him. Upon finding his daughter's lifeless body and being forced to witness Julie perish once again as a zombie, Tyreese immediately proceeds to strangle Chris without hesitation. The repercussions of this incident further the tension between Tyreese and Rick, leading to the prison's ultimate downfall. The death of Chris and Julie drastically alter the emotional psyche of Tyreese, who had taken up the coveted role of Rick's right-hand man.
Billy
In the world of The Walking Dead, it's cautioned that nearly any child encountered can be just as dangerous as their adult contemporaries or even the zombies. Losing both their parents to a pack of zombies earlier in the series, twin brothers Billy and Ben find themselves in the care of surviving couple Andrea and Dale. As the harsh environment begins to take a toll on his mind, young Ben takes the initiative to stab his brother Billy and leave the body to rest in the forest, convinced that his brother will imminently return not as a human but as a zombie. Billy's death reinforces the notion of mental illness spreading among survivors, which may occur at an accelerated rate during a zombie apocalypse. Without any form of treatment for mental illness existing, Ben and soon thereafter Billy are unfortunate casualties of the world's own fall from grace.
Lori Grimes
While Lori Grimes' marriage to Rick is far from perfect, the two ultimately have nothing but love and admiration for each other. When Woodbury's twisted figurehead Brian Blake a.k.a. The Governor comes to the survivors' prison safe haven for revenge, Lori and her newborn baby Judith are among the resulting causalities. Running and clutching Judith in her arms to avoid oncoming gunfire, Lori is shot at point-blank range in the chest. This is a moment that even AMC's television series couldn't bring to the small screen and that is for good reason. The ensuing conflict causes a wounded Lori to immediately fall to the ground, which seemingly crushes her own child under her weight. Similar to Tyreese, Lori's demise has a huge effect on the mental stability of Rick moving forward in the series. Not only has Rick lost his prison stronghold to the enemy but his wife and newborn child are both collateral damage that he could not save from death.
The Anderson Family
Though Lori' Grimes' tragic death is quite horrific, Rick Grimes eventually steps back into the dating ring upon arriving in Washington D.C.'s Alexandria Safe-Zone community. The traumatic loss of Lori has obviously left Grimes afraid to love again, but the future of their world is all but guaranteed. After settling a conflict with Jessie's abusive husband Pete, Rick and Jessie officially become a couple... until their moment of fate comes calling. During the six-issue No Way Out storyline, Rick and son Carl are forced into a zombie herd that has finally come upon Alexandria, along with Jessie and her younger son Ron. When Ron finally gives in to his fear, the boy is immediately destroyed by zombies but Jessie is unwilling to let go of her boy as well as Carl. Jessie's hold on not only Ron but Carl strengthens, forcing Rick to literally cut his screaming love loose and make the ultimate sacrifice in order to protect what matters most to him.
From the very beginning of The Walking Dead, central characters are murdered in shockingly gruesome fashion without warning, which helped earned the series its widespread reputation in a sense. It is the character deaths that act as the payoff for months or years of storytelling that allow fans to become invested and responsive to their fates. Just as the human characters set themselves apart as cool or fun-loving or capable, the ways in which characters would exit The Walking Dead are as memorable as they are traumatic.