The Walking Dead and Alternate Realities

by Chris Vegvary

I don’t know how many of you out there are fans of the comic books of The Walking Dead, but I’ve read all issues so far and am completely current on my knowledge of all things regarding both the comics, the TV show (minus what’s about to happen when the show comes back from its mid-season break, because I’m trying not to ruin it for myself), and the 2012 video game by Telltale Games that is based on the comics. For those of you with a similar mindset to mine, you wanted to see more influence from the comics in the TV show, and you felt that season 1 should have been long enough to include the death of Shane, because that is a major plot point in the sixth issue of the comic.

In my mind, the universes of the comics and the TV show are the same, up to a point. I’m not sure at what point from the TV show skews off in a different direction because the events that cause this to be an alternate reality from the comics would have occurred before the events in the show, as evidenced by conversations and events playing out differently from the very beginning of the first episode, but whatever this event was caused certain characters to not appear, certain other characters that shouldn’t have been seen appeared, and it caused many a ripple in the space-time continuum. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.

After the Walkers attack the camp in the first season of the show, Rick was supposed to blame Shane for the massacre, and then a little while later, Shane was to go crazy with jealousy over Lori and attempt to kill Rick before being shot in the neck by Carl. In the first season, this “ripple” caused a similar conversation between Rick and Shane, but the outcome was changed due to the fact that Dale was nearby, watching Shane take aim at Rick with his shotgun, which caused Shane to change his mind for the moment. This caused Shane’s life to be spared then, and events began to play out differently from there. Although there were some differences before, this is what I like to think of as the focal point in the show, where everything really started to change.

This is when Shane was supposed to kill Rick,
according to the comic

Because Shane was spared, Andrea and Dale never became a couple due to the fact that they went to the CDC instead of moving on to Hershel’s farm, and in going to the CDC, the group did not encounter Tyreese until much later. Things played out differently at Hershel’s farm because the group still had Shane with them, who was becoming more dangerous by the moment, and Rick never met up with the Governor and had his hand chopped off because Andrea was driven off the farm by Walkers, and was subsequently the first to meet Michonne. While Andrea is still alive in the comics, this “ripple” caused her to be killed in the last episode of the third season. It also caused Lori to die in childbirth, because Rick never encountered the Governor first, got his hand chopped off, and met the doctor who delivers Lori’s baby.

I can go on forever about how one man’s actions screwed everything up (I’m talking about you, Shane) due to a rip in space and time from some unknown event. Whatever it was, it caused characters to switch places, or appear very late, or in some cases, not appear at all (yet, anyway). However, it can be considered lucky that it played out this way, because without this alternate universe, we wouldn’t have Daryl Dixon.