The Walking Dead: World Beyond spinoff proves that a fateful scene involving Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead season 2 was actually foreshadowing. Back when The Walking Dead premiered on AMC in 2010, it's doubtful anyone involved realized how big a deal the franchise would become. Sure, Robert Kirkman's comic books were popular with comic readers, but there's a big difference between the reach of a popular TV show and a popular comic book. While it took a few seasons to really take off, The Walking Dead stands as one of the biggest phenomenons of the 2010s.
It's fair to say that the Walking Dead franchise isn't quite what it used to be. Regardless of what one thinks of its current quality, its popularity has noticeably dropped from the towering heights of pop culture dominance it once enjoyed. Still, the Walking Dead world retains millions of devoted fans even after this tumble in the ratings, and AMC shows no signs of envisioning their network without a future Walking Dead series on it at all times.
As expected, latest spinoff The Walking Dead: World Beyond, despite mostly doing its own thing so far, has some interesting connections back to the main series. One of those recalls one of the first instances in which Rick had to get cold-blooded.
World Beyond Proves Rick Was Right About Nebraska In The Walking Dead Season 2
In the season 2 Walking Dead episode titled "Nebraska," Rick, Glenn, and Hershel found themselves away from the farm, at a bar with two strangers. The men, named Dave and Tony, while trying to maintain a pretense of friendliness, desperately tried to get Rick to take them back to the farm, and away from the more dangerous areas they had been living in. Rick is smart enough to realize these two can't be trusted, and refuses. When asked where they should go, Rick tells them "I hear Nebraska's nice." This has become a famous line, but some do forget it was a response to Dave and Tony's earlier speculation that Nebraska would be okay due to a low population and lots of weapons among the populace.
It turns out that Rick, and by proxy Dave and Tony, were right all along. As revealed in The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Nebraska's Campus Colony and neighboring Omaha were both once a safe haven from danger, but that's since changed due to the deadly actions of the Civic Republic Military. Still, a new generation of people managed to grow up there, so clearly safety could be had for a long time. Perhaps if Dave and Tony had just gone to Nebraska instead of putting pressure on Rick, they might still be alive, and not shot to death by the former cop.