Headscratchers / The Walking Dead (Telltale)

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Season 1

• Why doesn't Lee get on the tractor that's pinned Shawn rather than try to push it?
  • There was a walker behind the fence that could easily grab anyone on the tractor, as evidenced by it easily grabbing Duck when he was on the tractor. If Lee got on the tractor to save Shawn, it'd be like offering the Walker a nice little snack.
• Why does Lee destroy the front gate of the drug store to get to the pharmacy keys instead of doing the sensible thing and just go through the back door? You know, the one characters had been using to get in and out of the drug store multiple times previously? That just felt like a really bad case of But Thou Must! just to move the plot along.
  • It's safe to assume that the way around was blocked, either by debris, since Macon was obviously in pretty bad shape even before the military tried to intervene, or more zombies. Even if it wasn't, a walk around the block would have run more risk of alerting the massive horde out front rather than just a straight shot to the pharmacy key through the front gate.
    • Right. That back door lead to where they could find Glenn's car and Kenny's truck. Getting seen by walkers and running back that way would just lead them all into the alley and to that door, blocking off the shortest, safest route to the vehicles that clearly wasn't a big focus for the walkers given how often it's used. In such a situation, compromising your only real escape route from a locked-down location is a very, VERY bad idea, and a good way to effectively commit unwilling suicide.
• In Episode 3, where would the first two train station zombies come from? They didn't enter from the door, and they weren't lying behind the boxes...
  • I thought that they were the survivors from the house beside the train station and it seemed to me like they came through the door.
    • One was trapped with Clem, though. And one comes at you from the side. Zombies have an odd way of just appearing out of thin air, and not making noise at all until they're looked at, in which case they start shuffling and groaning immediately. It's unbearable the amount of times that a zombie gets the jump on the survivors or just appears out of thin air.
    • The one trapped with Clem makes sense — why else would the barred room be locked with the keys hanging on a hook on the inside? Guy probably locked himself in for protection, died from blood loss or a bite, and got up because of the amount of noise in the room.
• In Episode 3, Lilly shows us a broken flashlight that she found in the trash and later we find an X made out of pink chalk. But I don't remember either of them having a reason of being there, neither Ben or the bandits]] would have any reason to make an X or throw a flashlight out.
  • It wasn't clearly explained, but I'm assuming Ben marked the X to let the bandits know that he had made a drop, and did it at night so the group wouldn't see him.
    • And when he almost got caught, chucked the flashlight quickly.
• During the Sadistic Choice where you have to Mercy Kill Duck after he was bitten, Kenny raised a valid point. Why shoot him in the head when you can just give him a drug overdose?
  • Three reasons. Firstly killing him that way will ensure that he will rise as a walker, the very thing that his parents don't want him to be. Secondly, drugs are far too precious to use for a suicide considering that they could save someone's life later. Thirdly, dying from drug overdose will take a while, and during that time he will just die naturally and reanimate anyway.
    • Oh...yeah. I hadn't considered that. Also, it's likely they may not even have had the pills anyway, much less enough to cause Duck to overdose.
  • Also, while a headshot is more violent, it is quick and most likely painless.
• In Episode 2, Lee sports a thick coat with a few layers of clothing underneath it. From the looks of it, this coat is either leather or a thick denim. This troper is perplexed as to why he ends up sporting a light-blue collared shirt over a long-sleeved white shirt in Episode 3, considering that it's supposed to be getting colder out with each day. This is ESPECIALLY perplexing in playthroughs where Lee decides to take from the station wagon in Episode 2, in which he claims that Clementine will need the hoodie "because it's getting colder out".
  • Maybe it got ripped up/damaged/lost between episodes? Occam's Razor would be that the developers wanted to put the coat model in episode three and onwards but used the wrong model and didn't fix it before the release, or wanted to make a new model but ran out of time/funds and decided to use an old one, and picked the blue shirt one due to an oversight.
• When the group sees the overhanging gas tanker, Kenny wisely brings the train to a halt, as a full-speed collision would almost definitely rupture the tanker. However, the tanker is hanging off a bit to the side. Why couldn't Kenny just start the train up again and use the train's low start-up speed to ease past the tanker? It probably wouldn't have been that much more dangerous than what they end up doing, dropping the thing from a height.
  • Would you risk being in the train while pushing a full tanker of gasoline? Sure it's not likely to explode but it is likely to damage the train, you know the only mode of transport they had at the time.
  • You're forgetting that metal grinding against metal has a tendency of creating sparks. Combine that with the holes in the tank that such an impact would probably cause, and... well...
  • Even simpler solution to trying to move the whole tanker — open the taps and drain all the fuel from the tank. Sure it's dangerous to have fumes and gasoline all over the ground, but it means the train can much more easily push past the (much lighter, non-explosive) hanging tanker without causing damage to either.
    • That still carries risk—such concentrated levels of fuel would have equally concentrated levels of fumes. Combine that with metal tank grinding against metal train engine, creating sparks, and...
    • What's notoriously wall-banging about that tanker, is that it's specifically stated to be filled with diesel fuel. Diesel fuel is not like gasoline; it is notoriously difficult to ignite (its more viscous than gas, such that sparking it would do nothing, diesel engines don't have spark plugs), it requires heat and compression to ignite diesel fuel. The train could have easily edged by that tanker car with no issues except it potentially falling and causing a lot of noise.
    • It's not unfair to assume that they may not know that diesel is relatively safe. Even knowing how hard it is to set on fire, not to mention that train tracks get lit on fire in the winter months, I'm not sure I'd want to risk riding over tracks coated in diesel. If anything can provide heat and pressure, several tons of locomotive can.
• Why do we see police cars, helicopters and SWAT vans going into Atlanta in episode 1? Doesn't Atlanta have its own police presence? If these are reinforcements from neighboring departments, then shouldn't the city have been thrown into chaos long before the police from other areas got there?
  • Possibly it already was. There are conflicting stories at the start of the game just when this all started; Clem says two days, Kat says three and that's assuming that we lost at least a day passed out in the car. Either way life would have continued same as ever until "riots" overwhelmed local forces, wouldn't have affected a standard prison transfer.
  • Who says they're all going specifically to Atlanta? I assumed they were responding to a variety of calls from a variety of districts as the first incidents occur.
• In Episode 1, Why is Carley unable to just use her free foot to kick the walker that's grabbing her ankle, or better yet, club the thing over the head with her solid metal pistol?
  • She's panicked and fixated on using the gun as a gun and not a club.
    • Also, take a good look at the pistol—it looks like a Glock, which is a gun model that is very, very much NOT solid metal—it has a combination of metal and plastic parts, to make it light, and easy to use. And like most modern guns, it's clearly not designed for hitting people with anyway—pistol whipping is actually a VERY ineffective maneuver in reality, and never recommended by professionals for close quarters combat against the living, who might at least get surprised or stunned by the action. Try doing that against a walker with a lightweight handgun, and see what happens. You'll be lucky to not lose that arm (and thereby your life) in the process.
• How long was Lee out in that police car? When he crashes the apocalypse looks like it's starting, but when he wakes up its all gone to Hell already.
  • This bugged me when I first saw it. But when I learned that everyone who dies turns it made a bit more sense, and if you accept the theory that the virus killed people who were susceptible to it on its own, it makes even more sense that everything could turn out poorly in a matter of days.
    • Still, for Lee to be unconscious in the back of that car for days is fairly extreme. Realistically, it should probably still be Day One all the way up to getting to the Greene Farm.
    • He was probably only out for a few hours. It seemed like he crashed in a suburb of Atlanta, and that probably meant that there were walkers around in the city and its outskirts. The few hours Lee was unconscious was probably enough time to for the police response to break down. Keep in mind that we hear the military get involved apparently at the end of day 2, meaning things weren't completely fallen apart yet.
    • This all gets further confused when Clementine says something when she meets Lee about hearing her babysitter getting attacked a couple of nights ago, and then there are messages from Clementine's mother on the answering machine that suggest that Lee was out for more than just a few hours — it wouldn't make sense for Lee to be driven to a new prison and the officer to act relatively normal if the apocalypse was under way already and Clem's neighbourhood was already overrun. I have to agree with the troper below and state that Lee must have been in a small coma for a day or two. (It is also perplexing why the walkers are so rotten when the apocalypse is only just underway, but I guess that's a design oversight).
    • Well, in the show and comic Rick was in a coma unattended for days. Maybe there's something about the infection that sustains people who are knocked out?
• This has bugged me for a while, actually. If Clementine is 8 years old, why is she still in the First Grade? When I was 8, I was in the Third Grade. The game characters say something about how smart and mature she is for her age, so why is she an eight-year-old in the First Grade?
  • Adult writers often have a poor grasp of what stage kids are at for their age. See also: Jason from Heavy Rain.
  • Does the game actually say she's in first grade? I thought she was just telling someone what it was like in first grade.
  • The hint following that line says "You learned Clementine is in first grade.", but considering how much the interface lies, it's entirely possible that it represents Lee misunderstanding. He has no kids, he teaches adults at a university, so it's entirely possible that he took Clem telling Katjaa about first grade to mean she's in first grade.
  • Walking Dead is vague on exact dates, but Season 1 takes place over 111 days (outbreak on day 0), and it starts over "spring break" which is either in March or April. Clementine's ninth birthday was "six days earlier" on day 105. This means Clementine has a birthday during summer break, sometime in July or possibly August. School years in America begin at the end of August or early September. This means Clementine is right on the cut-off point for when she should attend school. It's likely her parents held her back a year (or even two) before enrolling her in kindergarten so that she would not be the youngest kid in the class. Clementine does say that first grade is "easy," suggesting her intellectual development is advanced enough that she is not challenged by the work.
    • Nope! Her birthday was sometime after October. Check episode 4 when the group reaches Savannah. Somewhere it was written something about October.
• If Crawford is all about survival of the fittest and not taking in any weak people, why do they have medicine to accommodate a chronic condition like diabetes and morphine to be used in cases of debilitating pain as caused by extreme injury?
  • The "Only the strong will survive" mentality wasn't initially their policy. Remember that both Molly and Vernon's group used to be in Crawford before their leader got more and more hardliner about it, then were forced to flee. Likely, as supplies dwindled and the Horde grew, the leader became increasingly fanatical to the point where even diabetics and the temporarily injured were too much to care for.
  • Besides, the more autocratic it became, the more likely it would be that it would start dividing into classes, and the people in charge would obviously want medicine for themselves.
  • I'd imagine insuline can be very valuable for some traveling traders who almost certainly visit Crawford, either for them or for further trade.
• In Episode 2 where Mark has his legs cut off for the St Johns to feed to the others, why do they cut off BOTH legs when this will obviously lead to him dying from blood loss and, according to Danny, will leave the meat "tainted"? Another point diverging from this: throughout all their time of killing and eating people, the only time when their meal died on them and became a zombie was when Lee and the gang showed up? Really?
  • Well, they had guests. More mouths to feed.
  • It was the mother who did this one—previously the sons had, and it's presumable they were more adapt at keeping their victims alive. Since it had to be the mother (as she was entrusted with Mark's care), she did a sloppier job of it.
• Riddle me this: What kind of range does Clementine's walkie-talkie have anyway? Admittedly, I'm shaky on the tech involved, but isn't the UHF range of those things pretty much determined by what the surrounding terrain looks like, unless you're bouncing off repeaters? My point is: has Clem's mysterious friend been following the group around at a distance of a couple miles at most the entire time?
  • I didn't conclude that he'd been following them. Rather, as Clem and the gang approached Savannah, Clem just tried to contact her parents and managed to contact that guy. If he was up high atop a building or something, it seems reasonable that they'd be able to reach each other.
    • Good point, and far more plausible (Molly keeps to the rooftops when travelling through Savannah, after all). It keeps the poignancy of Clem talking to her (presumably dead) parents intact as well. And "guy hears voice of little girl over the radio, and tries to lure her away from her guardian" is such a cheerful thought.
    • Actually the guy has been following them. That was his car and his supplies in Episode 2. He's been following them in his car.
• Speaking of St. Johns Dairy when the group were starving to death, living in a motel with a makeshift wall around it; why didn't anybody think about staying at the farm or at least taking some of the food? I can understand not staying at the place (especially if you didn't kill the "boys") but they had ample food even ignoring the non-kosher meat. Surely it would have been better in the long run if we stole all that food and then left. Also before the whole Mark getting shot Kenny was already thinking about taking the place from the St. Johns by force.
  • Did they really have ample food? They only had the one dairy cow and they didn't seem to have much in the way of crops. Plus it's surrounded by angry bandits.
  • They didn't have any food to take. That's why they were cannibalizing people.
  • No, it wasn't. They clearly were plentiful in milk and butter, and you actually see tons of corn on the farm. They weren't cannibalizing to survive, they were cannibalizing because they wanted an excuse to get as depraved as possible fast, so it didn't feel like they were forced to give anything up.
    • They weren't looking for an excuse to get as "depraved as possible." They were all clearly already a little crazy, probably even before the apocalypse hit. It takes time for crops to grow and mature, and here's a free tip about crops in a world where you can't just by planting seed by the bucketload: you have to wait for them to mature enough not just to be edible, but to produce seeds so you can plant MORE. Also keep in mind that it's a dairy farm—and there's only ONE cow. One they can't afford to kill for meat (because they still need the milk and butter). Meat which, if you listen to Andy talking to Dan outside the barn when he's guarding it, they're using to trade (for gas, and most likely to keep the bandits off their backs). Most likely, they started out killing some of the cows for meat so they wouldn't have to trade off their veggies. Then chances are one of their farmhands was fatally injured, and they took that mad leap to use his body for food—most likely to trade. They had to have been at least slightly off-kilter to already consider this a valid idea at all, so all the above in mind, it's not a stretch of the imagination to consider that if they feel it's good enough to give others to eat, it's surely good enough for them to eat, too.
  • Because the electric fence that was supposed to keep out bandits and zombies had run out of gas, and a whole army of zombies were walking into the dairy the moment you beat "the boys". Even if you could come back a while later, after the zombies might have dispersed, there is a likely chance that the nearby bandits would have moved in for food first.
• Why, in episode 5, does Kenny stay behind to kill Ben? There was a good minute after he decided to Mercy Kill Ben where he and Lee were dicking around talking about bullets. If he had just killed Ben, like Ben wanted anyway, he could have gone back up with Lee.
  • Sloppy writing, Telltale couldn't think of a better way to kill off Kenny. I suppose you could justify it as Kenny being a Death Seeker after the loss of his family, but that sort of flies in the face of his anger at the couple who committed suicide for just giving up five minutes earlier.
    • Notice how every single time Kenny is about to die, it's in the name of someone else. My theory is that he wants to die, but won't die for absolutely nothing/wants to die for someone.
    • I felt it was a little sloppy too, but when he was angry over the couple committing suicide I'm sure he was mostly upset about Katjaa doing the same thing. That doesn't mean he wouldn't do it to himself if he wanted to — remember, Kenny is pretty much defined by hypocrisy, such as killing Larry while refusing to even entertain the thought with Duck. Not that that's not an understandable reaction, as his father.
    • Honestly, it flies in the face of his entire character. He had been established as a man who wants to survive, who will fight to survive no matter what. He had plenty of time to shoot Ben and get out with Lee.
    • I disagree; it fits perfectly with his character arc. He wanted to survive no matter what because he had a family. Once they died, he stuck to his plan no matter how delusional or dangerous it was, because focusing on a goal was the only thing keeping him going. But it's very obvious that the strain was breaking him down. Even his anger at the couple was directed mostly at himself; he stuck it out, did what he had to, and what did that get him in the end? He's filled with regret that if he had done 'more', his family would be there. As for dying with Ben, a lot of his character is defined by fatherhood. He felt guilt about Shawn dying, at how Duck getting bitten was because of his failures, and then he realized that he treated Ben like shit without realizing that he was a scared kid with no family. He might have failed Shawn and he might have failed Duck, but he was NOT going to fail Ben. He was going to protect him like he was his own, like he 'should' have with the first two sons. From that point, his character has nowhere to go but to die 'redeeming' himself as a father. Of course, you're all free to disagree. There's heaps of times that I disagreed with how a character was written. But that's what I believed the writers were going for.
    • Short version: Due to his desperation and feelings of failure, he felt it better to be Killed than to Die.
  • It can already be deduced by what has happened in season 1, but season 2 definitely confirms it; this was actually Fridge Brilliance. Kenny has a legitimate Death Wish, but because of what Katjaa did, Kenny can't shoot himself, so he is essentially trying to perform suicide by zombies. Season 2 reveals he didn't really change his mind about Ben (Kenny refers to him as "shitbird") and his reckless behavior consistently escalates as he continues to lose people he cares about.]]
  • In addition, Kenny only shot Ben at the very last minute when they were completely surrounded by walkers. He didn't shoot Ben earlier because he didn't want to Mercy Kill him in the first place; he wanted to actually save him, which does tie in with his anger at the dead couple earlier. Rather than take the easy way out by putting Ben out of his misery, he tried to save his life until it became obvious he couldn't.
• Why does no one think to tie up potential Zombie Infectees? If it's clear they'll turn, kill them. If not, let them go. They all act like it's kill now or die immediately.
  • Because they don't know how long that person will have until he/she turns, all they know that its going to happen eventually. In the case of the three Zombie Infectees Duck, Lee, and arguably Larry, consider the situations they were in:
  Duck was Kenny's and Katjaa's child. Strapping him to a tree and abandoning him would seem very, very cruel to them. Even if Zombie!Duck didn't break out of his restraints, someone else would've gone by and just shot the kid. Remember that scene where you and Kenny find a zombie kid in the attic in the next chapter? How it looked like Duck? Had they restrained Duck, another party of survivors would've found his zombified corpse and done the same thing to him. And let's assume they weren't going to restrain him to a tree and leave him, let's suppose they tied Duck up and left him at the back of the train. Duck still becomes a zombie, and his parents' worst fears are realized. They wanted to make sure Duck died before he turned.

  Larry was a big strong guy. Even if they somehow restrained him, that would've bought them only seconds until he ripped his restraints off. There was a reason Kenny was freaking out like he was. If Larry were turning, they'd be stuck in the freezer with a huge, strong, muscular zombie who could easily overpower them.

  Lee had to find Clem. Christie and Omid knew this, so they weren't about to restrain him. They wanted to help him continue for as long as possible.

  • What do you mean abandon him? They could have just released him. I mean keep him bound and with you. And what about in the drug store? No one thought to suggest tying him up? It might have been a bit scary, but it's a reasonable suggestion that doesn't end with anyone hurt. And not if they weighed his arms down with those salt licks. They were heavy enough to burst open his head. I think they could have held them down long enough to attempt to revive him, with Kenny waiting in the wings to kill him.
  • In the drugstore/meat locker, the characters were in the middle of panicking for multiple reasons. (Larry was belligerent and already mad that the group got let in, Kenny and Lilly thought their family members might be about to die, and Kenny thought a huge zombie was about to come to life and kill everybody in a small space.) You could argue that Lee should have been able to think of a more reasonable solution, but it's hardly the only time the player's choices are limited to keep him within certain set boundaries established for the character/plot. The family members probably wouldn't have reacted well to the suggestion in any case.
  • It's unlikely that Kenny would have agreed to restrain Larry if it had been brought up; as far as he was concerned, Larry was dead as soon as he hit the floor, and every single second they spent doing anything but killing him was an opportunity he had to spring back up and tear them all to shreds. He might have also assumed, not unreasonably, that restraints of any kind, even salt licks, wouldn't hold down a zombified Larry for any good length of time, and that he would just tear himself free even if it meant losing some limbs in the process.
• How did the survivors not pass through the waves of zombies on the train or RV? They must have been ahead of the group in order to have reached them so quickly—after all, you're only delayed for a short while (not even an hour), and they've already caught up to you at their incredibly shambling pace. If they were attracted by the noise of the train, where did so many of them come from? As we see from the sound of bell ringing, loud noises only attract them for a brief period before they lose focus and start mindlessly shambling. And then they keep heading towards Savannah? Why? They don't track, as pointed out by the group. There was no reason for all of them to head in one single direction for such a long time, and then just stop in Savannah.
  • Wall of Text warning:
    • There wasn't a single wave of zombies on the way, all of the zombies were attracted individually by the train and came through the forest after them.
    • As for why they kept following it, the comics (which the game is set in the same continuity as) explains this a fair way into it (around book 5 of the collected issues). Basically due to the way they operate, if one zombie brushes up against a door handle and gets a reaction from it, the other zombies near it focus on the door and try and get past it (reasoning that there is something behind it). So once Zombies start gathering in a group, they tend to stick in a group, with each zombie following the others because the others are following it. Then one group runs into another group and the two combine, eventually creating a herd (we see one in book 5 and it's absolutely massive, although not to the size of what we see in Episode 3). Telltale just took that concept and ran with it; when the train passes by the woodlands, the noise attracts all the zombies in the area who head towards the sound, and some of those zombies converge and form a group, which continues to head in the direction because the presence of the other zombies is confirming to it's mind that food is in that direction. You stop for an hour, but it's enough to attract every zombie that was within earshot of where you stopped, plus any others just out of earshot who were already heading in that direction and end up merging with the now growing herd. The zombies in the back will keep following the herd for food, and the zombies in the front will keep going forward because all of the zombies around it are going forward. And they only have a short attention span as invididuals, which was the case in Episode 4 when the herd was still coming to the city. They weren't packed in enough for them to form groups.
    • Then why did they all stop in Savannah? If they were formed together as a group, why didn't they keep on walking? They all spread out nice and evenly. There were cities in between Macon and Savannah, and the road does not stop there.
    • They stopped in Savannah because there were loud noises keeping them there, and there's no indication that all of them were stopping in Savannah; they arrive at the end of Episode 4, and episode 5 takes place in less than a full day. Any members of the Horde who weren't pulled off the Herd by the bell or munching on survivors they come across may very well have left Savannah the next day and kept walking past the city until they hit an obstacle they couldn't cross and just lingered around. Depending on the size of the herd it could take days for it to pass through the streets, especially seeing as there are several sections (like Crawford) which are blocked off, more zombies getting into the sewers, others being drawn away from the herd by seeing or hearing something the others don't, and you get the mess in Episode 5.
• In almost every scenario, it's understandable why the Stranger starts hating Lee. But in the scenarios where Lee does everything nicely and correctly, I can see him wanting to "rescue" Clem still, but why hate Lee for it? Sometimes there's literally nothing for him to call Lee out for. I understand he was going crazy, but his crazy was directed in most scenarios, except this one.
  • Lee was still part of the group that took the food, and he was the surrogate parent of the girl he'd decided to kidnap and start his new 'family with'. That's presumably reason enough for him to rationalize hating Lee after he's gone crazy.
    • But why not Kenny? He's crazy, but he's still rational and focused enough to understand who slighted him. And sometimes he has good reason to hate Lee. But it feels like Telltale either ran out of time or money when it came to scripting a sequence that didn't involve the Stranger blaming Lee.
    • He does hate Kenny; he specifically mentions Kenny and Katjaa when he talks about looking for revenge, at least if you didn't take the food. Kenny's just not the one who showed up at the hotel, nor is he the one whose kid is always playing with a walkie-talkie.
    • He specifically targets and talks about Lee, even when they're not at the hotel, though, remember? This just comes across as a huge case of 'have to make it about the protagonist', even when logic and reason flies in the face of it.
    • When does he specifically target Lee? Kidnapping Clem is more about 'rescuing' her than getting at Lee (hence he doesn't make demands or tell you where he is), and his only way of communicating with the group is via the walkie talkie, which is always being held by Lee or Clementine. Not sure that his "stand outside the yard menacingly and then running off" is really sufficient evidence of him singling Lee out for revenge, which is the only other time I can think of that he shows up.
    • He whispers things to and about Lee once you get to Savannah. Specifically referencing him. On the walkie-talkie. Being that the Stranger didn't move, I'm going to guess that it was entirely a ploy to get Lee to show up. If he didn't want that, he would have taken Clementine in the station wagon long before Lee arrived.
    • What's an example of him singling out Lee during a conversation? The conversations I remember are telling Clem to look for her parents (mentions Lee, but only in a "do what I say even if he says not to" way), telling the group to get out of the street when walkers were coming (only "to Lee" in the sense that Lee was holding the walkie talkie), and the conversation at the end of Episode 4 (the only suspect one, but Clem was the one who initiated the call and it's not that hard to envision reasons for it that are not "getting revenge on Lee".) as to being at the hotel, the city was recently mobbed by zombies; a group that size would be difficult at best to just power through in a station wagon — remeber, Kenny had to get out to deal with running over just one in the RV.
  • The shortest answer is that the guy is insane (he's carrying around his wife's head) and thinks that Lee is doing a terrible job as a parent, so his pain over losing his own family is causing him to target Lee because he already had made up his mind that he was going to adopt Clem.
  • I would chalk it up to a combination of things. The Stranger calls Lee a murderer several times; he could be referring not just to what he's done in the game, but also to his prior murder conviction, which he could easily have found out about from Clementine or other sources. This would be reason enough to consider Lee an unfit guardian, but the Stranger is probably at least a little jealous of the fact that two otherwise unrelated individuals such as Lee and Clem were able to do something he could not with a wife and biological children; not only establish, but also maintain, a familial bond. The Stranger's motivation is strongly implied to be, on some level, quite selfish; he sees raising Clementine as his one chance at redemption and/or validation, regardless of what kind of father Lee actually is, or how happy Clementine is with him.
• What exactly was the point of killing of kids in Crawford? They seemed to be under the impression it was the end of the world, no saving it, and Crawford somehow being their permanent solution. Their society was obviously going to be useless in forty years, with there being only sixty year olds alive, with everyone else having been killed for aging too much, and the kids all slaughtered.
  • The point at the time was that it would have taken up food to keep the kids fed whilst they couldn't contribute anything to the community. From the dialogue from the doctor in the second tape this was a temporary measure and that eventually they would ease this restriction once the situation was better.
• Zombies are always presented as groaning, shuffling noise-makers...except when they manage to sneak up on you some how. Zombies tend to just appear out of thin air in the game all the time. When Sean was trapped under the tractor, Lee runs over not two seconds later and there are ALREADY zombies there, even though it was an open field and they are loud and slow. How did he not notice? And the aforementioned issue with zombies just appearing in the train station without anyone noticing. And how quickly a horde of zombies manage to make it to the camp when the bandits showed up. And how long it took Ben to notice the extremely loud herd of zombies coming towards the train. And when Lee gets bit. They are loud and slow...except when the game needs you to be taken by surprise.
  • However, this is true in pretty much all examples of zombie-related fiction.
    • Wall of Text INCOMING:
    • To be fair in the case with Shawn, the farmhouse was surrounded by a cornfield—a very large one. And he was busy hammering away loudly at a fence, completely focused on that task. This troper has actually wandered through a cornfield in it's final stages of growth before the harvest (on a dare, don't ask), and I can tell you right now that such an environment is not only disorienting, but also surprisingly noisy thanks to even the slightest breeze causing all those stalks to hit against each other, and the literal millions of loud, noisy bugs all chirping, clicking and god-only-knows what else all throughout. Even in a calm, it's fairly hard to hear a noise that ISN'T the crunch of someone stepping on a dry stalk, and even harder to tell just where it's coming from. And that was when this troper WASN'T loudly hammering away at a fence. Next to a loud, hyperactive kid on a tractor. Also keep in mind that the tractor had started and ran over Shawn's leg before the zombies showed up—chances are, Duck was being, well, Duck, and started the damn thing without realizing it, running over his leg, the sound of the tractor and Shawn's scream of pain attracting whatever walkers were wandering in the field by that point. Also, it's worth noting that this game takes place in the comic universe, and that there are different "types" of walkers based on their behaviors. A good number of them DO shamble and groan while shambling, but there are several who don't groan or moan while they shamble to their target—and those who don't even shamble, let alone groan. Try shambling—not like a walker who sees food and is going for it in all earnest, but just wandering about idly and slowly—on a number of floor types like a zombie would—carpet, stone, metal, grating, etc.—and see how much noise each situation makes. Depending on the gait of the shamble, the force of each step and the surface area's friction and composition, even a shambler could feasibly be relatively quiet until they start moaning and groaning or increasing their pace. Lastly, let's look back on all the moments that walkers suddenly pop up out of nowhere on the protagonists, Shawn's case aside. 1: In Clemetine's house, with zombie babysitter. Lee was busy talking to Clementine with a normal indoor voice, and focused on that and looking through the window. 2: zombie!Coachguy or zombie!Travis attacks Katja—she was less than a foot away, there was little stealth needed. 3.1: Zombie 'Copter Pilot: The drug store was already FULL of loud, groaning walkers, case closed. 3.2: Zombie walks in from offscreen to bite bandit in neck—yeah, okay, that one's kind of out of nowhere, despite the loud gunfight going on, surely the bandits would've seen it and the other walkers approaching, though the chaos of such an undisciplined force making an attack might have something to do with the lackluster response. 3.3: Small Train Depot: Lee is busy talking with Clem on how to get what's behind the bars. While the damn door is left propped open, and it's hinges have been shown to NOT be squeaky. Also, the zombie behind the bars was clearly a lurker. 3.4: Herd that shows up going for the train: They were pretty far away when Ben noticed them—and they weren't moaning before then, so probably only started moaning once they saw food moving about on top of and next to the train, starting a nightmarish moaning chain reaction. Episodes 4 and 5 don't really have these sudden ZOMBIE SURPRISE moments in calm, quiet settings.
• Georgia going to absolute shit, with deserted desolate streets within 3 days is frankly absurd.
  • I have a theory that the zombie virus made some vulnerable people sicken and die almost immediately, meaning no one was prepared and a bunch of people got attacked by zombies right away. This isn't wide spread news because they either a) died immediately or b) killed everyone around them. The people still alive simply weren't susceptible. But that's just a theory.
  • People die every day, in not-so-inconsequential numbers. So take everyone who would ordinarily die in a single day in the state of Georgia, then take into account that everyone who was next to those first people are going to get bitten first. People panic and gather in communities before anyone knows what's going on, leading to plenty of uninfected people being next to someone who turns and starts biting everyone there. The situation rapidly escalates until you have thousands of people infected within the first day and it's still spreading fast. By the third day everyone whose not dead would have to start holing up or getting the hell out of dodge.
    • If you are one of the folk who think Lee was in a small coma in the cop car for a few days this gives more time for things to go downhill, though it can still be hard tyo believe.The impression I got from the series was that the infection started in the outlying towns then spread to the cities, then back into the outlying country as the walkers found food to become sparse.
• What did Vernon see from the Crawford belltower to make him ask whether Lee's group arrived by train? The question can even be repeated in Episode 5's recap, and was perhaps one of the motives for Vernon to steal the boat. Was it simply a dropped plot thread, or will Season 2 have and import feature, giving you a nightmare start if you told Christa and Omid to wait for Clem by the train?
  • He saw the horde of approaching walkers, which is what led him to run away with the boat. He guessed they had been attracted by the sound of the train coming in.
    • That said the developers could have included a scene where you see the thousands of walkers heading in before cutting back to Vernon's response.
    • It was supposed to be a surprise to you, and to make it less obvious Vernon would betray you.
• Why the hell was there a walker hanging from the bell in the bell tower?
  • Probably someone's idea of a joke. Crawford wasn't adverse to using walkers to make a point (see the walkers impaled on the borders of their territory).
  • Suicide. The Walker was Crawford Oberson, who hung himself after it was obvious that Crawford was done for.
• Why does Vernon get mad if you state that Clementine's your daughter? Yeah, Clementine and Lee aren't even blood related and basically had no real connection until Lee found her...but she basically considers you her guardian at that point in the game, and guardian/parent are usually considered one in the same. How did Vernon even figure out, anyway? Did he ask Clementine? I mean, it makes sense for her to say "no" because 1. it's the truth and 2. she's looking for her parents, but come on, Lee's basically the only one focused on her until the others want to help you find her when she gets kidnapped, so cut him a bit of slack.
  • Maybe he doesn't believe it because there's a lack of family resemblance?
  • Vernon finds out when Lee reunites with Clementine and she asks if Lee had found her parents. He considers Lee's lie a sign that he is an unfit and dangerous leader for the group, and an unfit surrogate parent for Clementine, prompting Vernon to offer to take care of Clem himself.
• In episode 4, how did Lee get back into the school after jumping over the barbed wire fence in the alley the second time? That fence is a one-way trip; Lee only got back the first time because Molly was able to help him through the garage. The second time, Molly's not around, and the garage is closed. Telltale seemed to acknowledge this impossibility, as the game simply cuts to Lee reentering the school once you've gotten the item you went out for.
  • He could have climbed the fence high enough to grab onto the roof, or used some items around there to build something up to grab onto it.
• How'd the helicopter crash? The walkers don't have anti-aircraft guns! Fuel loss? Friendly fire?
  • The pilot might have been bitten at a previous time, and then succumbed mid-flight?
  • Helicopters are some of the most complicated machines in the military's arsenal, and they require an enormous amount of maintenance to stay air-worthy. If the thing was operating non-stop trying to keep up with the ongoing fiasco, or the maintenance crew died or fled, it could have crashed just from that.
  • Or it's possible that a soldier on the ground was bitten or dragged down while still firing and the stray bullets hit the pilot of the 'copter, causing it to lose control and crash.
• I understood that Lily was paranoid in Episode 3, but why did she accuse Carley of being the traitor instead of Ben? If you save Doug, she actually accuses the right person.
  • She disliked Carley. She liked Doug, and didn't dislike Ben.
    • It was heavily implied that she shot Carley less because she thought she was the traitor and more because she was pissed off due to the heavy "The Reason You Suck" Speech smackdown Carley just laid on her.
• We see some zombies trying to attack flowing water. Given that they're attracted to noise and motion, wouldn't zombies eventually congregate around the surf of the ocean? The noise and motion should be endlessly distracting, and with no human activity the ocean would be louder then anything else in the area.
  • My theory is that the zombies don't worry about constant sounds that were already there. Like the crackling of fire for a burning building or a river or stream. It's when there's a sudden new sound that gets their attention. Otherwise, survivors could just wait for a thunderstorm and escape with ease while the zombies are spazzing out due to senory overload.
  • Episode 1 seems to bear this out with the static-y TV screens. Turning them while they're behind glass is only mildly distracting. Breaking the glass and letting the full-volume static blare gets them all. But they all eventually get "bored" and spot Lee.
• In episode 5 how exactly did Vernon steal the boat? Boats that size weigh several tons and require a truck to tow them. The previous episode made a specific point that every car in the whole city had been stripped and Crawford was overrun.
  • Replaying the episode, I could swear the boat is shown already resting on some sort of platform (what looks like the back of a truck, complete with a license plate) in the brief time its shown in the garage. I don't think Vernon stole the boat, I think he stole the vehicle the boat was on and drove away in it.
  • That was a boat trailer. A boat that small would usually be stored on such a trailer, which would require a license plate just like any other trailer, and would be hitched behind a pickup or van to be pulled out to a launch ramp. You would then back into the water down the ramp, submerging the trailer until the boat floats free, then return to forward and drive, pulling the trailer out of the water. These sorts of trailers CANNOT be moved by hand without great effort, as they only have two wheels, or possibly four if the boat is big enough. Even with four, the wheels are simply not spread out enough to keep the trailer from tipping forward into the ground, because it's made to be pulled by another vehicle which will provide the support for the front end. While storing, you would use a chock to hold that end up, which is no good for moving it. Either they have some very strong guys hold the front end up while moving it (Good luck!), or they pushed a pickup into position, hitched it, and pushed the pickup out.
    • Vernon was a former resident of Crawford, which was dead when he and Brie went to help gather the things everyone needed. He knew what Crawford had in terms of supplies, and it was made plainly obvious that they had working vehicles. Remember when the zombies hit the mansion in Episode 5? Brie, who was killed back in Crawford, was there, because Vernon had stolen a vehicle from Crawford to take the boat with, and the zombies there (including Brie) had followed the noise to the mansion.
• 400 Days, is there ever a way to learn what was in the bag that Deb has stolen?
  • Medical supplies from Shel's camp. Dee was the thief who hit them shortly before Shel's chapter starts.
• How did Vince get a picture of himself?
  • Well, we know that the 400 days takes place somewhere close to Macon, where Vince lived beforehand. He could have tried to swing by home and took a picture with him when he left.
• After the conversation about Eddie's dick, what exactly did Wyatt mean by "lost ammo"?
  • Exactly what he meant. Somehow, I assume, Eddie managed to misplace some bullets for the revolver at some point in the past. That's what you get for smoking pot during a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Ah. Forgive me for my crudeness. When after the penis talk, "lost ammo" was in quotation marks in the subtitles, so I thought it was some sort of euphemism for semen.
  • As I recall, it was "lost" that was in quotes, not ammo. Which would tend to indicate that Wyatt thinks that Eddie hid it in the glove compartment and said he lost it, rather than actually forgetting it was in there.
• At the end of Episode One, Larry tries to kill you, no matter what you do. He punches you in the face and leaves you to be devoured by the horde of zombies breaking into the pharmacy. The only reason you live is because Kenny steps in to save you at the last minute. Under those circumstances, why is the relationship between Lee and Larry portrayed as if he's nothing but a Jerkass with an obnoxious personality rather than, y'know, the dangerous psychopath who straight up tried to murder you in cold blood? I'm sorry, but after attempting to leave you to be devoured alive, the time for humble gestures of reconciliation is pretty much past. Yet you're never given a chance to confront him or Lilly or anyone else about what he tried to do beyond a single line of dialogue and afterwards Lee acts almost like it never happened. Certainly it should have been an option to remind Lilly rather forcefully as she's weeping for what you did to her dad, or whining about how you treat him, that he was openly trying to kill you.
  • At that point Lee's still trying to hide his past isn't he? Bringing it up will probably lead to questions about Larry's motivation that Lee would want to avoid.
  • Why doesn't Kenny or someone else bring it up though?
    • Maybe Larry deserves a little more credit. He knows Lee is a murderer, and in the conversation he has with him afterward, he makes it clear that he's concerned not only for Lilly's safety, but Clementine's as well. Larry took an opportunity to get rid of someone who was a potential threat to his daughter and, as far as he knew, someone who might have also kidnapped and been doing any number of horrible things to a little girl. It may not be justifiable or sympathetic, but he has more motivation to try and kill Lee than simple dislike, and on some level Lee probably understands this.
    • It's not clear that anyone but Lee and Larry knows what happened. Larry did wait until he was alone with Lee before socking him.
    • Actually, Clementine is heard shouting "no!" and Mark asks about it in episode 2, to which Lee confirms that he was indeed knocked flat by Larry. So if even Mark, who wasn't with the group at the time, knows, it does make one wonder why people don't make a bigger deal of it.
    • Lee is likely trying to avoid a very bad situation. Things are tense enough between everyone already. Yeah, he could confront Larry about it, but then what? You divide the group. Which would be bad even under normal "zombie apocalypse" survival circumstances, but it's made even worse in this case, because Lilly and Larry are military. Lee and Kenny prove they're tougher than any human has any right to be, but against two trained soldiers, one of whom is armed? Carley might be of some help in that fight, and later on Mark as well, but the worst-case scenario is an absolute bloodbath. Lee's just trying to avoid that, not least because Clementine's survival is his priority.
• The St. Johns' Cow just up and vanished late in episode 2. The last we see of it was when Katjaa was standing by it, preparing it to calve. Where'd it go?
  • Y'know, I was wondering about that too. Truth be told, it's probably just a content oversight. Considering that several of your team of survivors, including your Morality Pet, are now in the clutches of self-professed cannibals they didn't put it in because more pressing issues were happening at the time.
  • Actually, the cow appears one more time. When Kenny and Lee escape from the meat locker and hide in a stall in the barn, the cow can be heard mooing off-screen, and Danny comforts it. Presumably, she remains locked up somewhere in the barn throughout the rest of the chapter.
• Why is it that when Duck is bitten and Kenny and Katjaa realized they have to put the poor little boy out of his misery, Katjaa shoots herself? I mean, yes, she couldn't cope with the fact that her own son was dying and either she, Kenny, or Lee had to shoot him, who would? But for Pete's sake, her husband was still alive and healthy. She couldn't just abandon him.
  • Fun fact: People whose loved ones are dying horribly in a zombie apocalypse situation do not always do the sane and rational thing.
  • Katjaa: "I love our son more than life, itself."
• In Episode 5, that certainly is a lot of Zombies going down the Train Tracks because of how loud the Train was... A few Days before... You think other noises, like other survivors, would distract them. But nope, a Train going down the road a number of days before kept their attention For Days... How?
  • There could be a few theories regarding it. Maybe some walkers peeled off from the group and went off after other stimuli, while the herd mentality continued the group moving forward. The show has depicted some very large herds traveling in specific directions for quite some time. A second theory is that following the tracks was just the path of least resistance and the Walkers just followed it for a while before hearing the train stop at the tanker truck crash site and continuing the chase. Another theory is that train tracks vibrate for a long ways and somehow the Walkers picked it up? A grosser idea is that walkers can sense survivor waste. If any of the survivors relieve themselves from the train, maybe it draws Walkers? Bah, probably just New Rules as the Plot Demands
• I think I must have misunderstood something, but how has the Stranger been following them since they stole food from his car? I can't imagine that the car can keep up with a train (and presumably he didn't have that much petrol in it). If he knew they were going to Savannah, then how? And how does he get hold of Clementine's parents' walkie-talkie before the group arrives in Savannah (the first time we hear him talk from it is on the train). If he didn't follow them and instead somehow got to Savannah ahead of them... well, how would he even know to do that? He couldn't get close enough to overhear Clementine talking to someone about it, could he? The first time they even mention the Marsh House is on the moving train.
  • It's never explained how he gets that walkie-talkie, but given he makes a point of saying he's been listening to Lee every step of the way let's assume he finds it by chance in Clementine's house after scavenging it. After his car is robbed he begins stalking the group, talking to Clem through the walkie-talkie, posing as a friend and telling her to keep him a secret. Through her he learns they are heading to Savannah and that she wants to get to the Marsh House, and drives there straight away to head them off - there was fuel on the abandoned St. John's farm if that was ever an issue. Remember that Kenny takes a while to fix the RV, giving him a head start, and then the group are held up for a while three times with the train. It's feasible he could have gotten to Savannah ahead of them.
  • That's pretty far-fetched. Clementine lived in a suburb near Atlanta, whereas the Stranger lived somewhere between Macon and Savannah. His walki-talkie looked like a different model than hers, so I assumed that he just happened to be listening on the frequency she was using.
• OK, so in the scene where Ben confesses to Lee that he was the one who gave the bandits food, thus starting the chain reaction that ended with Katja's and Duck's deaths, there's an option where Lee can threaten to throw Ben off the train stating that, "No one will even know." Um, except they would. If Lee actually did throw Ben off the train (not that he would), wouldn't the rest of the team figure they were minus one person eventually? After they just lost two already? What, was he going to bank on them being idiots and not noticing that Ben was suddenly, inexplicably, missing?
  • I think Lee would be referring to no one knowing that he threw Ben off the train. The rest of the group would think that Ben just fell off by not being careful.
• Why did the St. Johns resort to cannibalism so quickly? The world ended "only" three months ago, and they apparently have enough food that Andy and Brenda still look pretty well fed. Why would they even consider it? "I was raised to never let anything go to waste" is still a fair jump from eating your fellow people, especially since at least Brenda doesn't seem very proud of it.
  • It's honestly been a while since I've played the game, but I remember enough to feel safe in saying that the family was likely a little "off" long before the outbreak. So I don't think it was so much that they resorted to cannibalism immediately so much as they were very family-over-everything isolationists that were able to dehumanize other survivors, which facilitated murder. I think it started off as simply currency mining, since food—especially fresh meat—obviously had a high value in the barter system in which they found themselves (remember they were trading it to the bandits to keep them appeased, and likely trading it to other unsuspecting people for various things like gas) with the recipients of the meat none the wiser (no one of your party in the dinner scene seems to notice anything unique about the taste or texture). I believe that over time, the slippery combination of becoming desensitized to the process of viewing other people as a commodity and processing them and the increased scarcity of alternatives lead them to take a "well if it's good enough for them" view on the act.
  • Even if the St. Johns were a little crazy to start with I can't understand why they would eat other humans before the 1,500 pound cow.
  • The cow is a producer of milk, and therefore too valuable to eat.
• Why does nothing in Lee's behavior imply that he killed a man in a crime of passion? I understand that the game is about choices, but you can't say Lee is fully a vessel for the player and doesn't have any character of his own. There's not a single moment where Lee is jealous or aggressive, he's very calm and reasonable the entire game. The most violent thing he can do is to kill both Saint John brothers and MAYBE kill Larry (though I'd argue with that, since he didn't kill him due to anger but to potentially protect the group). I understand that it was added for tension in the group, but I feel like this backstory could've been changed to Lee being a drunk driver or something and it wouldn't change much.
  • The whole affair is meant to be ambiguous to a degree. It is implied, but I think never outright stated, that Lee caught his wife and her lover on act, the situation escalated to a brawl from there, and the fight ended with the other guy dead. Quite a tragic situation that could indeed have happened to a mostly calm and reasonable individual. Also, there is likely a situational factor at play. Lee doesn´t appear jealous because the survivors don´t really date among themselves (even his fling with Carly didn´t really go anywhere), and doesn´t appear agressive because he is on the defensive, as some survivors know his secret, and overall trying making the best of his situation, meaning he is having to keep his nasty side in check.

Season 2

• At the beginning of Episode 1, why didn't Clementine use the same bathroom as Christa. Clementine sharing the bathroom with Christa could have prevented Omid's death.
  • They didn't know that a crazy person was hiding there, and just assumed Clem wanted some privacy.
  • My bigger issue was that Omid stayed outside to keep watch but then let a stranger in? How did she get past him? Furthermore chasing the water bottle seemed a severe But Thou Must! on my second playthrough, because there's nothing you can do to stay near the gun...even after Clementine was just told to keep her possessions close.
  • I was under the impression that Omid went into the bathroom with Christa to wash up or whatever. Did he actually say he was going to keep watch outside? As for the water bottle thing, from Clementine's point-of-view she was only going to be away from her gun for a few seconds. What were the chances some bandit would wander in during that time?
  • Christa and Omid went to have sex in the men's bathroom. That was pretty heavily implied. Why on earth would they have Clem take the other bathroom otherwise? That was the reason why no-one was keeping watch.
    • When was it implied?
    • [1] Go to about 2:55 and look at the ... uh, look Christa gives Omid after he says "Vegas Weekend". That's probably the biggest thing (Heheh) implying it.
• In Episode 1, when Clementine was feeding Sam the dog, why did he turned aggressive and bite her after they were being friendly to each other. I understand Sam was hungry but that moment came right out of nowhere.
  • This troper has a family friend who trains police dogs, and when I asked him about it, he said that it would have been out of character for a dog not to attack given the conditions. As to why it was friendly, he explained that the dynamic can be explained in the terms of hunting. When an animal is domesticated, the first thing they are taught is not to attack other animals for food, as the human will provide it. The humans are the hunters for the animal, hence why they have no need to look for food. When humans are taken away, a dog will quickly slip back into hunting for it's own food. Clementine came in the situation, and promised the dog food, so Sam slipped back into his role that he had assumed with his previous family. Any well trained, friendly dog would. Then, when Clementine denied him food, Sam had to become a hunter again as Clementine was essentially another wild animal.
  • Because Clem had snatched food from a starving dog when he was in the middle of eating what was likely his first meal in a long time. Wild/feral dogs, as with other animals, do ''not'' take this lightly. What Clem should have done was simply let the dog have that can, then go find food for herself. In her mind, they had to share. In the starving dog's mind, she was robbing him of his chance to live, and he reacted accordingly. It sucked, and it was a big Tear Jerker considering what Clem has to then do to the dog after their fight, but in the animal kingdom, that's how things work. "You steal my food, you pay the price."
  • Not even just wild dogs. Even nice old domesticated dogs can turn really violent if you take their food away or mess with them while they're eating. I grew up with dogs in my house, and the first thing my parents ever taught me about handling them was never, ever to touch them while they ate.
    • Whoa there. You need to tell your parents right now that the most important thing you teach your dog is that you're its leader. That includes being able to interfere with your dog eating without it reacting. When my dog was a puppy we made sure to sometimes pet her while she ate and also remove her food a few seconds to teach her we were allowed to do so. The result is that when she was grown up, I could even pull food from her mouth if I wanted to, she knew I was in charge so she had to let me. What you describe about never touching your dog when it's eating is counterproductive, you're teaching it that you're supposed to stay away when it eats and thus it can turn on you if you do. And from what you describe as "really violent" behaviour, that indeed sounds like what happened. It's completely unaccetable of a pet dog to turn on its owner for interfering with it eating, and at least in my country (don't know if it counts everywhere) a dog is even supposed to be put down if it bites someone. If you were talking about a dog you didn't know that would be another story, but when you're talking about your own dogs I couldn't help but point this out. If your dog doesn't deal with you interfering while its eating, it's been trained wrong.
  • The dog's reaction seemed believable to me the way she drops the can; playing again makes it worse because Sam attacks no matter what you choose]] which feels like But Thou Must! if the player is thinking of cautious methods before Clementine acts: Like SCOOPING a small amount of food onto the ground from up high. I did not expect her to offer him the can because...I never would have. Is that because I'm adult or because I'm familiar with how to treat feral dogs? I don't know, but I found it rather implausible Clem wouldn't be more cautious WITH A STRAY ANIMAL after she's learned how violent PEOPLE can be. I tiptoed around Sam the second he was introduced, but the game offered no methods to exercise my mental caution. It's a problem with making certain choices too linear for the sake of plot even when the player is actively thinking around corners. Very little is as frustrating on screen as, "I specifically thought of a way to prevent that but the game forced me to do it anyway."
    • Yes, it's because you're an adult and you're familiar with how to treat a feral dogs. What makes you think that a child would act rationally and like she has full, experienced knowledge in a situation she clearly has never encountered before? Everyone isn't a badass expert.
    • And you really can't compare her experience with humans with her experience with dogs. As far as we know, since the first game started, she had never confronted anything other than humans, humans, and more humans. Given her age and her limited experience with wild dogs, she probably figured that this one would, if anything else, be all cuddly and understanding because, y'know, it's a dog, not a person.
    • Also, the attack was the first moment, barring their initial meeting, that the dog had acted hostile. Before that, Sam had been acting just like any pet, really — letting you pet him, following you around, barking and wagging his tail. You can even throw the frisbee for him and he'll chase it, and when he started begging for food he was sitting there waiting patiently like most pet dogs will do.
    • She has also just lost Christa, her last friend and protector in what's been a series of losses since the zombie apocalypse began. She might feel inclined to latch onto anything friendly out of desperation not to be alone.
• Speaking of Sam's sudden aggression, if he was really that desperate, why was he friendly with Clementine from the word go? Why didn't he try to eat her instead?
  • As stated before, dogs lose their shit when they are hungry and the idea of being fed is threatened. Even trained dogs will snap their jaws at you if they think you're a risk to a good meal. You can find a photo during the abandoned campsite that shows Sam had owners so it's entirely possible that he was trained as to why he didn't attack Clementine immediately. Strays in real life can be friendly and Sam previously had owners so he might have sensed Clementine might not be a threat. But as I've already stated dogs do not play nice when it comes to food. No matter what your choice is, if you feed Sam he gets overly hungry since you only offer him a few mere beans and he knocks the can over. Clementine bending down to get it posed a threat and he snapped. And refusing to feed him angered him in the same way. To shorten things up; Sam is a friendly rover companion to Clem until the idea of him eating gets threatened.
  • The dog didn't see her as prey. It saw her as an equal. When she tried to grab its food, she became a rival that needed to be fought.
• Another question about Sam the dog. Sam attacking Clem over the food made perfect sense, but when Clem kicked him off, why did he attack again in an attempt to kill her? I mean, she managed to prove that she was healthy enough give him a good, solid kick with little effort, and if I recall, animals are pragmatic cowards who know when potential prey is going to have none of that sass. Bear in mind I forgot where the bean can was, but it would seem more realistic that Sam would have tried to take the easier route, snatch the can of beans, and wing it while Clem was down rather than try to take her on directly. Then again I know very little about domestic dog behavior in survival situations.
  • Because Sam was basically a feral dog half-starved for God knows how long. At that moment, he turned into a vicious hunter that looked at Clem as a giant walking bag of meat. This, or a paltry can of beans? His instincts are gonna direct him at the said walking bag of meat.
  • Also thanks to the domestication process feral/stray dogs are much more aggressive and fearless than wild canines like wolves or coyotes, they simply don't know that they should be more cautious.
• How does Clementine have that photo of Lee? I previously thought it might have been from Kenny and Lilly (made a WMG on it) but if Clem was with Christa and Omid until the latter's death to which she was just with Christa up until after the timeskip]] where else could she have got that photo? The photo was in the pharmacy and episode 3 shows that a majority of the pharmacy is destroyed by that airplane. Who else would have found the photo and decided to take it? Clem visiting the pharmacy once more seems pretty hard to believe.
  • IIRC, there was a three-month time skip when the group held themselves up in a hotel somewhere. It's likely during that time, Lee showed Clementine a picture of himself as a younger man (possibly when he was with his wife) and allowed Clementine to keep it.
    • But the photo of Lee Clementine has is clearly the one he himself tore up in episode one of Season 1. The white shirt he wore is the same plus it's torn off exactly like it. It's the very same one he ripped up in episode 1. It wasn't a different photo.
  • Maybe she decided to walk around the store while you were out front with Doug, trying to get the keys from the Pharmacy, went in the back, saw the picture on the floor (I forget if Lee actually disposed of that part or not) and picked it up?
    • I highly doubt that. Clementine only knew Lee for a day at the very least then. Her taking a photo of a man she only knew for a limited amount of time doesn't seem likely.
    • Well, she may not have necessarily took it for sentimental reasons. She may have picked it up wondering why there was a picture of Lee there and forgot to ask him later. Or, alternatively, she actually DID see Lee rip the photo earlier and decided to see what that was about later since, as you said, she didn't know him that well and didn't feel comfortable asking him. Really, seeing a ripped-up photo of the guy who's taking care of you in such a seemingly random location such as that would raise enough questions that she might decide to keep it just in case. As for why she's still holding onto it, I assume after she bonded with Lee it became a memento.
• This may be answered by a revelation in a future episode; but from what information we have now... Is there a reason Winston (The dude chasing Clem in "All That Remains") would save Clementine from the walkers? If you're not quite quick enough dodging that female walker and you trip while trying to avoid it he knocks it down and stomps it's head in before turning his attention back to you. There's also that instance when that Walker stuck behind the tree grabs you and then HE grabs you and pulls you away from the Walker, tearing it's arm off. I almost felt bad letting the Walkers have him until I saw some Game Overs where he kills you if he catches you. His saving you and trying to kill you at the same time is just really, really confusing. Is there any type of explanation for this?
  • Could be that he simply wanted to kill Clem himself, considering how huge of a thorn in his side she's been, and didn't want to give the Walkers the pleasure.
  • There's another possibility, as suggested by S 1 E 2: Cannibalism. The men may assume that if she dies by walker, her meat is tainted.
  • If he wanted to kill Clem straight out, he had a gun. If he catches her, he drags her until one of his friends tells him they have to go right now and to forget about her, at which point he shoots Clem in the head. Clearly the initial intent was for Clem to be interrogated so they could find out where her non-existent group was, chop Clem up and use her for food, or whatever other nasty fate they had in mind.
• What happened to Christa's baby? She's pregnant and then after the timeskip, it's far enough along that she should have a year old baby, but there's no infant. Did she miscarry? Abandon the newborn? Did it just die offcamera?
  • The game never says one way or the other. It could be Tell Tale using Nothing Is Scarier; Though I'm hoping they'll show what happens later via Flashback. Maybe during Episode 3. (The slide shows Clem with Rebecca, maybe delivering a baby? It would be the perfect time.)
  • The implication would be that the baby is dead, since Christa's only help with delivering it would be a nine-year-old girl and she just saw her husband murdered and either reanimated or head-shotted to stop it. I doubt there will be a flashback as that is something that has never been used in the series; even an audio version was used exactly once and then discarded. Best we're likely to get is Clem talking about it.
• From Episode 2: When you climb the radio tower and see the flashlights across the bridge (warning you that it's Carver), Clementine is cut off from warning Luke and the others by the arrival of Kenny's group. She then completely forgets about this crucial information for the entire visit, and never warns anybody, despite it being quite suicidal. But then later on, it turns out that Rebecca knows about the lights on the bridge, because apparently Luke told her: But this didn't actually happen in the game?
  • She isn't cut off, she does directly warn Rebecca and Alvin, which prompts Carlos to say that they're leaving at dawn. It was just rotten luck that "dawn" turned out to be too late and Carver's group showed up in the middle of the night.
  • When asked in one scene, Clementine can say that she saw the lights turn back into the woods, giving them the false confidence to stay the night.

• How does Kenny know that Lee is dead without Clementine telling him? His heroic sacrifice happens before Lee dies. Sure, Lee was bitten, but I chose for the group to cut off his arm, and as far as Kenny knew there was a chance he was still alive.
  • Because he's not there. Considering how big of a Papa Bear Lee is if he was still breathing he'd be right there with Clem.
    • "I half expected to see Lee to walk up next to you." supports this.
  • Kenny learned Lee was bitten in Episode 5, and during that very episode he wasn't convinced the amputation would save him. He assumed Lee would have been dead regardless.
• Why isn't there an option to Cruel Mercy spare Carver and leave him to the Walkers? I can almost guarentee that what Kenny did to him would be merciful compared to what the Walkers would've done. What Kenny did was brutal, yes, but quick. The Walkers would've had him die slowly and painfully.
  • Well, Tavia, Troy and a bunch of other guards were still alive at that point. They could've possibly rescued him and maybe the group wanted to make sure that wasn't an option. There's also Luke. Luke wanted to just spare him and leave and and only begrudgingly went along with letting Kenny beat him to death with a crowbar. Pretty sure he'd have some serious objections if they tried to do something that cruel.
  • For that matter, if Kenny hates Carver so much, why hit him in the head? If he passes out, he won't be conscious enough to finally drop his smug badass act and plead for mercy while Kenny gives none.
  • Two reasons: (1) They didn't want to give the guards time to rescue Carver. (2) Kenny isn't irredeemable. He may be a brutal piece of work, but at least he's quick about getting the job done. He doesn't relish in prolonging pain if he can help it, so he's not going to needlessly drag it out.
    • Kenny absolutely did drag it out. He could have shot Carver in the face the first time, but made a big show of blowing out his knees and choosing a crowbar to finish the job.
    • While this is true, there are degrees of sadism. The most efficient and humane method would have been to shoot Carver in the head. The most sadistic would have been indulging in some Cold-Blooded Torture before finishing him, leaving him conscious to feel every second of it. Bashing his head in with a crowbar found a middle ground, making Carver's death messy and painful so Kenny could get some payback but without turning Kenny into a man nearly as monstrous as the one being killed.
  • It's also karmic on Kenny's side. Kenny's got a few reasons to hate Carver for showing up right the f*ck out of nowhere, killing one of his men, Clem being abducted and even scarred by his men, etc. but the one that merited the brutality Kenny displayed rather than a simple headshot - what made it personal - was the beating Carver gave Kenny after he claimed responsibility for the radio theft to protect Clem. For a man desiring vengeance, there is something appropriate in responding to Carver beating Kenny half to death with a blunt instrument, by beating Carver fully to death with a blunt instrument. Vengeance feels better when it's reflective of the crime.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?. Carver is too evil and dangerous to simply trust that at death trap will finish him. For their very survival, the group has to ensure that he dies. I can think of several characters over the course of the game's run that were left for dead among the zombies but show back up again to cause problems.
• Why are the cabin survivors worried about there being guards outside the truck while it's moving? It seems to be the only truck available, and it's still moving. Unless Carver has The Flash escorting the truck home, there shouldn't be any guards to see Kenny and company make their escape unless one happens to be looking at a sideview mirror at the right time.
  • Wouldn't the door to the back of the truck be locked?
  • It doesn't take long to stop a truck. Even if the door was open, if Troy or one of the others saw them escaping, they could easily gun down most of the group (if not all of them) before they had a chance to get far.
  • Kenny wasn't planning on jumping out of the truck while it was still rolling down the highway. His plan was to ambush whoever opens the door, "punch the first guy I see, grab his gun, and shoot the next guy." Carlos rightfully pointed out that the person who opens it is going to be Carver and he's going to be flanked by several guys with guns just in case something like this happens, but Kenny wasn't listening.
• ... Carver, it seems, is a big fan of "Weeding out the Weak". But he has a large group of "Rebels", who are not only determined to escape, but have done so in the past and are currently attempting to do it again. So what does he do? Tries to kill one of them... For someone who likes "Weeding out the Weak", he certainly doesn't let the Strong Grow. And I understand they're a threat to him, but why is he just trying to make them hate him even more when he could've done what Lotso in Toy Story 3 did and say "Kenny, you showed guts; they might of been against me, but they where guts none the less. You've at least gained my respect"? It would certainly prolong the groups attempts to escape if he picked the "Stronger" of the group and was more friendly to them...
  • You're operating under the assumption that his philosophy is reasonable on any level. As you say, his method of bringing the cabin survivors back into the fold is blatantly self-defeating and a rational person would see that. As such, its hard not to get the sense that an awful lot of Carver's social darwinism is just a mask for his sadistic impulses. He talks about weeding out the weak so the strong can survive but really just enjoys bullying and terrorizing people into submission, no matter how strong or weak they are. Bonnie seems to think he's changed over time and I think that change can be summed up as 'losing his sanity.'
  • I got the impression he was doing something like that. It just wasn't with Kenny, or Luke, or anyone else you'd expect. He honed right in on Clementine and showed genuine respect for her. I doubt if Kenny or anyone else had smarted off to him like Clem can when he interrogates her, that they'd be walking out of there unharmed like she does. No matter what else he may have been, Carver was intelligent and recognized potential when he saw it.
  • It's possible he didn't view Kenny or Luke or any of the other "Rebels" as "strong" in the first place, though. The only two we know for sure he viewed as being stronger are Rebecca ("strong woman surrounded by weak men") and Clementine. But even then he said he would "put a bullet" in Rebecca and her baby before he let them run away again so maybe just being "strong" by his standards doesn't mean he's going to let you do whatever you want. He's the one in charge here and strong or not you're going to do things his way if you want things to go well.
  • I got the impression he has a soft spot for kids... though only because he truly believes in the 'next generation will be stronger' crap. He wants young minds he can mold into some super race capable of surviving the wasteland.
  • It should be noted that there are only two members of the cabin group Carver seems to have it in for; Alvin (for being Rebecca's husband) and Carlos (for being the group's leader, more or less). He only takes notice of the rest of the cabin group when they don't do the work they're told to do and keep actively planning to escape with Rebecca; there's no reason to think that Carver wouldn't have accepted them into the settlement if they had fallen into line in the way that he wanted. Even when he beat down Kenny, Carver wasn't actively trying to kill him. He wouldn't have cared if he died, of course, but if Kenny had survived and groveled sufficiently afterward, he probably would've been welcomed into the fold eventually. Carver was, from his own perspective, not only following his philosophy but being magnanimous by allowing most of the cabin group the chance to reintegrate; even Carlos was only humiliated once before being put back to work as a doctor. Carver gives the group what he calls chances, but not only do they not take them, they try to take Rebecca and her baby away, which is something he can't abide.
• What kind of lousy doctor can't tell the difference between a dog bite and a human bite? Dogs and humans have completely different mouth shapes and teeth patterns. There should have been no doubt from the beginning that Clementine was telling the truth that it was a dog bite.
  • While this is indeed a bit stupid, it can be slightly absolved by the fact that walkers are capable of ripping people and animals open with their bare hands and teeth. I don't know if you've ever tried ripping open someone's neck or stomach with just your hands or teeth, but its actually not very easy. Certainly it would take a lot more work than the walkers seem to put into it. It thus stands to reason that whatever causes the dead to turn into walkers also affects their bite in some way, perhaps resulting in different bite patterns compared to a living human.
  • Also, everyone's fresh off of the last person they took in turning and biting Nick's Mom so Carlos wanted to make absolutely sure it was a dog bite. Plus it probably wasn't a clean dog-bite, considering the circumstances. (Sam held on pretty long and Clementine was probably trying to pull her arm away. There's also all the punching, bludgeoning or stabbing she was doing while he was holding on which may have affected the bite.) So Carlos couldn't have been sure.
  • The bite also doesn't even really look like a bite. It looks more like a cut with hardly distinctive teeth patterns.
    • This. The dog thrashed so much that it's not really a bite anymore, it's a huge gash running the length of her arm, made by some manner of teeth. Frankly, it's a stroke of luck that Clem even has that arm anymore.
  • The idea that Carlos did know that it wasn't a walker bite and was just trying to get Clementine killed is also possible.
• Alright so why exactly can you not negotiate with Arvo for his medicine? Maybe tell him you need it for Rebecca, a pregnant woman? I can't help but think he wouldn't have come back for revenge if things were done a bit more peacefully.
  • Which is weird; even if you don't rob him, give him back all his medicine, and tell Jane to spare him, he STILL comes back for revenge. He tells his group you and Jane robbed him, but all Jane took was his gun. You'd think he would play it on the safe and moral side and avoid coming to conflict with the group!
    • Judging from some of the dialogue of the Russians they're used to robbing people for supplies, which with Winter coming in the second year of the apocalypse are more and more vital with each passing day. And even if you did give him back the meds you still robbed him of the gun and he was threatened, it's not unreasonable he'd hold a grudge. Plus, Arvo is not being portrayed as the leader so it's not his call to make.
    • I think he's hiding drugs for himself (after all ,we did catch him hiding it in a garbage bin) and is blaming it on you to absolve him of suspicion.
    • I'm part of this camp. I got the vibe that Arvo was probably hoarding the drugs to get high and/or save for his sister. Arvo hiding them and claiming that a group of assholes took the drugs removes any suspicion from him and gives his group motivation for confronting Clem's gang and possibly disposing of them. Arvo's perspective is that this group threatens his and he's pissed over Jane. What really makes it sad is that Arvo puts a bullet in Clem no matter how merciful she tried to be to him. If anything Arvo should direct his anger at Kenny considering of how big of a Jerkass he was being.
  • You can't negotiate with him because Jane isn't having any of it, plus the last time Clem saw people stealing from others it set off a chain of events that got almost the entire group killed. And keep in mind that in that context "negotiation" is "we're not taking all of your stuff;" with Jane pointing a gun at him he's being robbed just with the pretence of it being negotiated.
• If you kill Nick and convince Sarah in Amid the Ruins, Luke will tell Rebecca about the former and she begins to cry. Although the she and Nick have seldom interacted (at least in the time we've spent with them), it is understandable that she would react in such a way. However, when Sarah dies, she doesn't even notice it. Is that strange that she would sob over Nick's death and not Sarah's?
  • There are more than a few time skips at the end of episode 4 where such grieving could take place. But during that time she's just given birth with all of the emotions that brings and she's also in the process of slowing dying, her emotional state can't be too great.
• So... How, exactly, is it that Clem knows nothing about pregnancy and birth? Even if Christa miscarried, she was very far along in her pregnancy before the timeskip. Surely, Clem would have been able to help Rebecca? It might be brought up later, because it seems like an obvious point to draw attention to.
  • If I remember correctly, it had been 18 months between the time Christa was pregnant and when they were separated (with the baby being born just a short while after Omid's death.) Between the time skip and all that horrible stuff Clem went through after the separation, she probably just plain forgot about it. Plus, Kenny was there so she likely assumed he'd have a better handle on the whole situation.
• Why didn't Rebecca think to plan on what the group should do with her baby?
  • Surviving day to day is a small miracle in and of itself, the group has a lot of things to worry about on a daily basis and the situation you spoilered happens over one single day. You can forgive her for not planning out every single eventuality.
  • Rebecca even mentions that the baby is coming a lot sooner than she was expecting it to. Even if she did have any plans in place, all of those went out of the window when she she gave birth early. For all we know she did have plans but never got the chance to bring them up before she died.
  • She had a plan. She fled with her husband and a doctor, along with several strong men to help deliver the child and protect it. However, Carver's intervention killed off just about all of those people she was relying upon and left her desperate. There was no way to plan for what to do after escaping Carver's compound because they didn't go that way the first time, and she had no idea what they'd find or who would survive the escape attempt.
• What was the point of not leaving Sarah in the trailer? It does little to the plot and either way she ends up dead. One would think that saving her would lead to her surviving since from the way it plays out with the Rousing Speech and the slap and how Sarah does act the most realized she's been all season but nope, she ends up dead by the end of the episode. Aside from a few bits of added dialogue why did they bother adding in an option to save her?
  • Because they want to give players the illusion of choice. If you want to try and save her, you do so. But it's expensive in a rendered 3d game to have a properly branching story like you'd find in a Visual Novel, so anyone who might die due to your decision will die shortly someplace outside of your control just to trim the branches. Doug/Carley probably taught this to them, which is why the real screen time for such characters between saving and Plotline Death has been getting smaller and smaller with each episode.
  • It also proves Jane right. Clementine can't save her, only put off the inevitable.
    • If we're going with that line of thinking, what's the point of saving anyone? It's not like Sarah wouldn't have been able to survive, at all. There was potential for her to be able to adjust to the world around her, and Sarah had a very strong support group behind her.
  • Not really. When Sarah tries to learn how to use a gun, she treats it as more of a toy and doesn't understand what she's being told about how to use it. When she tries to hide from Carver, she grabs his attention by slamming a door and leaves behind a photo of herself that clues him in to who's living in the cabin. If Clementine tells her about Pete's death, she goes into a Troubled Fetal Position and abrubtly changes the subject. Jane and Luke didn't want to leave her in the trailer park out of simple spite, annoyance, or some kind of premeditated "survival of the fittest" mentality; they wanted to leave her because she was at that point endangering their lives (after having indirectly done so a few times already) by more or less committing suicide by walker and refusing to budge or let herself be touched even though Luke had spent hours trying to snap her out of it. Ambiguous disorder or not, you can't save someone if they actively refuse to be saved. Did Sarah deserve what happened to her? No. Was she doing it on purpose? Probably not. But neither of those things really matter at the moment people's lives are on the line. It's not advocating Social Darwinism to acknowledge that.
    • That Aseop might work if Clementine had to force her to leave the trailer, or if her second possible death was unabmigiously depicted as her fault (she tries to jump off the balcony before it collapses and begs for help removing the rubble, obviously not having the strength to lift it herself. It's not clear whether Jane succeeded in freeing her). But Clementine can snap her out of her out of her hysteria, and she leaves willingly. So unless the moral is "don't try to save someone who has one notable moment of potentially fatal moment of despair, because circumstances beyond your or their control will contrive to see them dead either way, I think we can chalk this up to the same pragmatic development reasons that underline the whole series.
• What the actual crap was Jane's plan in Episode 5?! She leaves AJ alone in a freezing car and tells Kenny that she accidentally got him eaten by walkers. Now, the plan was to get him to lash out at her, right? But if you kill Kenny, she states that she didn't think that he would go that far. What did she think he was going to do, slap her around and scream at her? If she thought that that would prove his danger to Clem, Clementine had already seen him do that to Arvo! She would already know that Kenny is dangerous! And on top of that, what was Jane going to do if Kenny DIDN'T lash out at her? It would be highly unlikely, but what if all he did was scream or slap her once or twice? Was she just going to sheepishly admit that AJ was alive and that she was trying to convince Clementine that Kenny was dangerous? What the crap was she thinking?!
  • She probably didn't expect that she'd lose the fight. When she was trying to rile up Kenny in the car, she made several cracks about his age and his handicap. Jane seems like she's still young and/or immature enough to assume that everybody significantly older than her, like Kenny, is some derelict old man. And just thought him being near-blind would make him an easy opponent. Basically: she picked the fight because she was cocky enough to assume that she'd be guaranteed to win.
  • Arvo was an enemy of the group who had been forced to help them (and Clem has the option of arguing that Kenny's treatment of him was justified anyway). The point Jane was trying to make wasn't just that Kenny was a dangerous person, but that he was a danger to the group he was trying to lead, and a danger to Clementine in particular; how long would it be before he came up with an excuse to turn on her the way Carver turned on so many of the people in his settlement? It's one thing to be merciless and antagonistic to your enemies, it's another to act unstable towards your allies and rule over them with an iron fist. What Jane was trying to drive home (in her own ill-conceived and deceitful way) was that Kenny was unstable to the point of being untrustworthy.
    • Alright, but that still leaves the question of what Jane thought he was going to do, if she didn't think he'd go "that far".
    • I agree. If Kenny were such the psychotic threat she made him out to be, then yes, him exploding and attempting to murder her would not be out of character. Maybe she didn't predict that Clem would shoot Kenny to end the fight.
  • It could be that she expected him to become violent, just not so violent that he would try that hard to kill her (to the point where not even Clementine, his Morality Chain, could talk him down), or it could be that she misread how the fight would go and didn't expect it to end the way that it did. Or it could be that she's simply throwing out weak excuses at that point to rationalize her actions and make herself look sympathetic to Clementine.
    • Wait, wait, wait, wait! That's actually true! When Kenny has Jane pinned down and has the knife to her chest, he says "I'll kill you!" Guess what her response is? "I knew you would!" Jane WAS lying to Clementine! She knew Kenny would do that, she said so herself!
  • Her plan was to trick Kenny into "outing" himself as an unstable monster, then win the fight and murder him in a way that would be palatable to Clem. If Kenny survives, he rightfully points out that Jane could have ended the fight at any point just by saying that AJ is alive and revealing what she'd done. Her claim to have not expected how far Kenny would go is a bald-faced lie; killing Kenny was exactly what she wanted out of it, and she'd been trying to provoke him into attacking her ever since Clem woke up in the truck, making unwarranted personal attacks about his loved ones and hurling every manner of offensive statement she could think of in his direction.
• What did Kenny see that "confirmed" AJ's "death?" Since we find out He's alive and well shortly afterward, what made him so certain if he Never Found the Body?
  • It's possible that he didn't "find" anything. Maybe, when he saw Jane come in without Alvin, he went outside in a daze, like he was stunned, and came back to lash out on Jane without looking for proof.
  • That actually would be in character for Kenny. He's more emotional than pragmatic, so if Jane came without Alvin and she acted as if Alvin were dead, it's not long before Kenny's rage takes over and he wants to beat the shit out of something.
    • That is totally in character for Kenny. He never found anything, but he had time to piece things together, and his mind went to the same place mine did the first time I saw that scene: Jane had been constantly talking about how the baby is a burden, referring to AJ as "it", implying to Rebecca while she was still pregnant that she should dump the baby immediately after birth, etc. Once he had time to think about how hard Jane had discouraged them from caring for AJ, his mind shot straight to Jane murdering AJ at her first opportunity to be alone with him, and he came back roaring for a fight.
    • This is what I figured, as well. Given that Kenny was calling her a baby killer, that's almost certainly where his mind had gone. Kenny's not always fair in his insults to others, but typically he at least believes his own insults. If he thought it was an accident, he would have been calling her a shitbird and raging about how he should have learned from Ben, not accusing her of infanticide.
• With the reveal in season 2 that Kenny survived, where is the sense of his actions in season 1, episode 5 where he slams the gate shut to keep Lee out and puts Ben out of his misery? Way before the reveal, it could be put down to the fact that he wanted to be killed due to all the trauma he suffered over the last few days but he turns out to be alive in season 2. It's already been asked before but with this new light, why didn't Kenny shoot Ben and then just go along with Lee and the others?
  • To begin with, Kenny didn't want to shoot Ben unless he had absolutely no choice; he would've rather died trying to keep him alive than kill him and run off. The impression I got was that he really was trying to "die by walker", but for whatever reason the herd passed him over, at which point he regained the will to live long enough to meet Sarita and bury his issues for the time being. It's also worth noting that if he's shot in the season 2 finale, he'll have a brief moment of I Don't Want to Die; it's quite plausible that he went into the situation intending to be killed only to regret it immediately after.
• In Episode 5, is the scene where Clem imagines herself with Lee in the RV after being shot a dream, or a memory?
  • It could be both. Whatever you say technically would have happened if it were a memory. The memory could have also involved a different bad dream that Clementine awoke from, not the events of Season 2.
• If you leave Wellington with Kenny, Edith tells you to check back in a few months to see if they have more room. If you stay in Wellington, Edith does not tell Kenny to do so. Why?
  • She's obviously concerned with seeing Clem safe, maybe due to being a mother herself, or just fond of kids. Kenny is a large, uninjured, armed male, and she likely figures he'll do just fine out there.
    • I wouldn't exactly call Kenny "uninjured" with the way his face looks after Carver. He also shows no sign of being armed. However, it was most likely done to make it clear that if Clem went inside, her and Kenny wouldn't see each other again.
  • He's not exactly a weak old man. The loss of an eye was just a minor setback, and getting a weapon would probably be among the top five on Kenny's 'to-do' list, assuming Clem didn't give him her gun when she went in.
• As soon as school and work ends, people quickly forget what day of the week it was. So how the hell did Clementine remember when it was her Birthday? And the same goes for Luke (at least he said "near enough").
  • Silly question perhaps, but do either of them have a wristwatch? Because mine has the date on it, and if it is an analogue, there is no reason it shouldn't still work as the batteries on those things last for years.
• In Episode 5 of Season 2, do you think that Clementine should have been able to survive being shot at by Arvo, because it looks a little too close to her heart or lung? And even if those weren't hit, she lost quite a bit of blood. And it isn't even explained how she got patched up, if at all. I figured she's a little too tough for her age, given that she was able to move around okay when/if attempting to save Arvo from Kenny in the half-finished house even after being submerged in freezing water...
  • There's a fleshy area just above your heart that, if shot, you'd be able to survive. It's also good that the bullet went straight through, otherwise that would have been difficult. And I'd imagine they used some scraps of cloth from clothes, or perhaps, whatever Kenny uses to bandage his eyes. When you get submerged in freezing water, it's not that you can't move at all, it would just be unlikely.
• Carver's settlement is implied to be in either Virginia or North Carolina, so why did he send Tavia all the way down to Georgia to look for survivors/potential soldiers in the finale of 400 Days? Gasoline doesn't grow on trees, so you think he'd want someone closer to home.
  • People closer to home probably already know about him and what he's like.
  • North Carolina and Georgia share a border. Since we don't know exactly where the people were camping at the end of 400 days, so it might not have been that far at all.
    • Howe's is in Virginia, I'm pretty certain.
• Why does Luke get more flak for having sex than Jane? Shouldn't they receive the same amount of flak since Jane was the one who offered?
  • The Unfair Sex
  • Nope, nothing to do with Sexism. Jane and Luke each had their own Task. Jane's was to basically find a safe place and secure it. Which she does, so she has no task at that moment. Luke on the other hand had the task to guard the area and watch for any Walkers that might come (too close). It's because Luke rather had sex instead of doing his task that the Walkers got so close to Rebecca and the group, and get's potentially Sarah killed. Sure, Jane should not have kept Luke "occupied", but still, he should have been mature enough to realize the importance of his task.
• Why can't you just camp outside of Wellington? Why did Clem and Kenny walk away from the camp? They wouldn't let them in but that doesn't mean that they can't be at least a few feet away from there? What if Wellington had night guards who could shoot away walkers that come by near the camp? Then they'd be safe! Even if Clem and Kenny would still want actual shelter, they still shouldn't stray too far from there.
  • They're going to need supplies from someplace and Edith says she's only supposed to give one bag of supplies per group. Also, having two survivors just out in the open could seem like too much of a liability to the people of Wellington
• If, in the ending, you shoot Kenny, how come Clementine doesn't finish him off with a headshot? If you let Kenny kill Jane and then shoot Kenny anyways, then he gets a headshot. Won't he turn into a walker? And isn't that considered extremely disrespectful? Sure, most people killing Kenny probably don't like him, but it's very out of character for Clem to not shoot him in the head. There should have been a choice, like in the end of season one. It's hard to imagine Clementine being okay with having zombie Kenny walking around.]]
  • It's likely she wasn't thinking very clearly at that moment in time (she had just killed one of her old friends, after all, even if he was a raving lunatic at that point). That combined with Jane's revelation that AJ was okay threw her even more off her game, and especially if you decide to forgive Jane and leave with her, it's likely the last thing either of them want to do is turn back just to put an extra bullet in the head of the already dead guy that they both had a hand in disposing of. It's not like they would ever be around long enough for his reanimated corpse to start following them.
• Why doesn't Sarita ever ask about what happened to Matthew?
  • For a while, it might not have come up or crossed her mind if being gone for awhile or longer than intended was normal for him, and no one else in her group was acting too worried. He did have a cot down there after all. Once Carver showed up she probably thought Carver happened to him.
  • She likely pieced it together when Carver's group raided the Ski Lodge, or was told about it off-screen.
• Anyone bothered\suprised that Clementine doesn't seem to miss her parents that much? I know she talks about them a lot in the first season, but she was still hoping they were alive at that point. She only talks and remembers Lee, almost like her parents never existed. I don't doubt Lee was a big influence on her, but still. I'd understand if they were potrayed as neglectful or abusive, but no, they're shown to be nothing but kind and caring. It always came off to me as weird, that she just got over them like it was nothing.
  • She talks about them a few times over the course of the whole series, but it does seem like they didn't have a huge impact on her. It's likely because she was very young through most of her time with them, and her life with them was completely different from what it is now, so recollections of her previous life don't have as much applicability to her current situations. The Doylist explanation is, of course, that players never knew her parents, so her reminiscences of them won't have any impact on the player as opposed to recalling previous characters they've seen.

Season 3

• Just whatever happened to Clementine's finger in the new teaser?!
  • Infection from an injury and it had to be amputated? Honestly, we won't know until the game's released.
  • Clem loses her finger in the "Alone with AJ" ending. A Walker slams a car door onto her finger.
• And for that matter, where's her scar from the dog bite??
  • It's still there, she shows it to Javier in Episode 4. Javier gets stabbed and needed stitches, so he goes off to find Lingard, only to find the latter unconscious, so Clem volunteers to help him stitch it up, and from there you can see the scar from the dog bite.

• Why didn't Jane Find abortion pills when she found out she was pregnant? If there was non-expired pregnancy tests still around in the store warehouse then pills would be lying around too? Doubles as Fridge Horror if it turns out that Jane wasn't pregnant but the test showed a false postive because they were expired?
  • Abortion pills aren't available over-the-counter in the US. She would have to find a doctor's office that had them in stock, as that sort of thing wouldn't be available in a store. You might be thinking of the Morning After/Plan B pill, but that only works before conception and would be useless after the pregnancy has begun.

• Why didn't Jane perform an abortion or have the kid and then mercy-kill it? That's what she seemed to be suggesting Rebecca could do. This troper just can't get the idea of Jane committing suicide over a pregnancy through her head. Jane was a hardcore survivalist. It feels too out-of-character.
  • having a child is a health risk to a woman, ESPECIALLY without medical care on hand. If she kept the baby to only kill it later she would be putting her body through a LOT of stress that could have killed her eventually. It was just the two of them. Abortions are also hard without medial help and run the risk of seriously injuring herself. I can understand why she felt boxed with no opens and I'm sad that she died. For the hardcore survivalist part its hinted that she's depressed, not feeling like Clem needs her because she can take care of herself and she had been thinking about having a kid before hand when they talk about A.J.'s middle name, suggesting she knew she was pregnant for a while. Jane has lost a lot, and the prospect of bringing a child into the world when they can barely keep AJ safe might have driven her over the edge.

• If the New Frontier is so established and dreaded, why don't they mark their stuff instead of just leaving it around looking abandoned? Most of the drama could have been averted if there was a big ol' "THIS IS THE PROPERTY OF THE NEW FRONTIER, LEAVE NOW" sign plastered over the junkyard.
  • In addition, why did members of the New Frontier leave an unnecessarily large supply of things like pudding and gasoline in the Junkyard, which must be a decent drive from Richmond; which seems to be their current base of operations. They're lucky members of Prescott or Clementine hadn't found it first.
  • Maybe bait for any "fresh meat" that might be looking to steal their stuff?

• What exactly is Clementine's race? Her parents are black, I know that. Word of God states that she is African-American, but in Season 1 she was very pale which led me to believe she was adopted. In Season 2 she looked somewhat Asian, and now in Season 3 she's... Hispanic, maybe? Anyone have an explanation for why this is?
  • Since the developers say she's African-American, that's what she is. I could understand the confusion. In the first game, she looked mixed and it seem as if she's getting lighter and lighter. I don't know if it's an error or if they're doing it purposefully. Her mother is light-skinned, maybe she's mixed and Clem takes after that side of the family.
  • The character model was based on a developer's daughter, who is at least part-Asian. The developers also decided to make her parents look African-American. At one point in development, Clem's mother was actually her stepmother, but this never gets mentioned in the finished product. So basically, it seems the developers made Clem's appearance first, and then the justification for her appearance got lost in the various story revisions, until there's really no in-game explanation for it. The developers have said that she is African-American, but that she might have other unspecified ancestry as well, so it's just a big case of Ambiguously Brown.
• Why did Javi or Clem not say anything to Ava and Gabe about Dr. Lingard injecting himself with some kind of medicine? Speaking of, what DID he inject himself with?
  • They probably didn't care or were more concerned with other factors. Judging by the drug's effects and the fact that he's addicted to it, it's almost certainly morphine.
• When Clementine is exiled from the New Frontier why do they take A.J. away despite the fact they keep saying he's a lost cause? Wouldn't that just be a drain on resources in that case?
  • While the New Frontier acted cold, I doubt any of them wanted a dead baby on their hands, and letting Clem leave with A.J. in their minds might have doomed them both. I doubt they thought a little girl could survive on her own, much less with a child. People tend to treat Clem as an adult, and didn't feel that much loss when they exiled her, and the worst punishment they could give her was taking A.J. away.
• How come that Jesus lashes out on Javi when you bash Badger to death, yet if you let Conrad do it (that's if you let him live at that point), you don't get called out for it?
  • Conrad kills Badger with a slick Pre-Mortem One-Liner and a painless bullet to the brain. Javi caves the man's head in with a baseball bat. Admittedly, Badger was a sadistic and sociopathic asshole, but Jesus (living up to his nickname) still believes that even the worst people deserve a good death.
• Why does the game go out of its way to frame Kate and Javier's potential relationship as some sort of betrayal or source of friction if it got out when it's revealed David is not dead? They and David reasonably thought the other was dead for four years. I'm sure Kate would have been entitled to move on during that time period and David shouldn't have faulted anyone for it.
  • The game itself never really frames it that way. If anything, it pushes Javi and Kate together harder than some players would like, and it's only David's inability to accept that Kate moved on from him that acts as a crutch in the relationship.

Season 4

• Why didn't Clem go back to the New Frontier after she found A.J.? The New Frontier is a secure now-civilized town that would doubtlessly welcome them in. There was no need for them to live on the road.
  • This is something that is supposed to have been explained. Richmond was referenced in Episode 2.
  • Abel mentions that every major community from Richmond to the coast is at war with one another, and it's revealed that the Delta group's attacked them.
  • It is finally revealed during the flashback to when Clem rescued AJ from the ranch. Richmond in fact did become a war zone, and Clem decided against going there for AJ's safety
• Did Mitch really think he was going to successfully attack Lilly? She's someone who has military training, not to mention whatever training she has now with the raider group.
  • Mitch didn't know Lilly, or that she has military training. He probably thought she was just a random survivor with average fighting skills. That, or he was panicking. Either way, it didn't turn out great for him...
  • Plus, they'd spent weeks planning to make a stand against the raiders. Why would he suddenly decide to stop fighting back?
• If the Delta are planning on turning the Ericson kids into Child Soldiers, what's the point of grotesquely maiming them? Wounds can easily get infected in times like these, not to mention it would only make the kids more scared of/pissed off at them. Plus, in the case of Louis being kidnapped, he could have very easily bled out or choked on his own blood when his tongue was cut out. If the Delta wants to use him, why take the risk?
  • At that point the Delta probably cared less about preserving Louis' life and more about striking fear into Aasim, and Omar, precisely so they'd be to afraid to resist.
• Um, Clem, why did you just shoot an innocent woman to save AJ back at the ranch?
  • Because said innocent woman panics and was about to shoot Clem.
• How did Clem survive? It's obvious the infection's spread given her pallid complexion; and she'd her leg was infected for a fair amount of time before it was amputated — by an axe covered in walker gore, no less. Lee waited too long before getting his arm amputated, but Sarita had her infected limb lopped off right away — depending on player choice — and she still died.
  • Her complexion can be tossed up to physical exhaustion. And it doesn't actually appear that she was infected for that long prior to the amputation. If you look closely in the scene at the bridge, you can see the sun is beginning to rise in the distance, and her leg is amputated when it's still clearly early morning. It was probably less than an hour between her being bit and her leg being amputated. As for Sarita, it wasn't the bite that actually killed her. If Clem severs her hand, Sarita screams and draws several walkers to her and she is promptly devoured. Finally, we don't actually see AJ amputate Clem's leg, it's possible that with the swing we saw, he originally DID intend to kill her, but changed his mind mid swing and missed. Then off screen he used something (probably the straw) to clean the ax and THEN he cuts her leg off. The reason this wasn't put on screen would probably be because it would would ruin the scene's dramatic tension.
    • Except, she was clearly showing signs of paleness and weakness when she was struggling to stand up, and it was not because of her bad leg (because she already showed she could limp around prior to entering the shed with AJ), but because she was bitten in a badly open wound, so the infection spread faster. She experienced the same symptoms as Lee did in the same situation (pale skin, too weak to move, yellow-shot eyes), and yet all it took was an amputation, and she just simply lived. No, I'm pretty certain that the ending where she does die is the real canon, it's just that obviously fans would be pissed if they couldn't at least been allowed the option to save her, logical consistency be damned... and it's the one time Telltale made choice matter before getting shut down after Episode 2.
    • It's possible that the amputation resulted in a good deal of the infection flowing out of her body as she lost blood before AJ cauterized it. Plus, Clem didn't look nearly as bad as Lee did when he was turning, and Minerva's attack takes place in early dawn and Clem has her leg amputated by sunrise. That's much less time than Lee took before he could potentially get his arm cut off.
    • Clem got bitten by a walker in the leg cut up by an axe. Lee got bit on the hand, which was fine earlier. Infections spread a lot faster for the former than the latter. Clem showed all the signs of "turning" in a shorter time frame because of this, so by all rights, she shouldn't have survived such. Infections don't just "pool out" (at least not enough for someone to save the infected person), otherwise Lee would have survived too (since he clearly bled out a lot more). Lee had more time, but Clem had way less time due to a wound bitten, and she already proved that by the signs given when she sat down in the barn, that it was too late for her. Telltale just gave the option to save her because it was the only choice that mattered for fans, in the end... especially since all other moments before then didn't make a difference in the overall story.
    • It’s equally possible that the apparent signs of her turning could’ve just been due to the blood loss from her open wound rather than her actually turning. And although I might be wrong about infections “pooling out”, the blood she was losing from her open wound would’ve slowed the infection process down to some degree, and AJ cauterizing the wound would’ve gotten rid of it completely. The only reason Lee died is because he had been unconscious for hours (which could be enough time for the infection to spread so that blood loss wouldn’t change his fate), while Clem at max had her leg hacked off after 30 minutes. Not to mention that the hand is much closer to the brain than the bottom of the leg. Even if Lee bled out more, there was still less time for the infection to spread in Clem’s case, and I don’t see how her being bitten in an open wound would speed it up faster; if anything, it would’ve hindered it.
    • For what it's worth, Clem's also much younger. Lee is almost forty, Clem just eighteen. Not to mention Clem's been dealing with walker infection and other health issues for far longer. Her immune system is almost certainly superior.
• What's the deal with Tenn? He's so young he must've been an infant/toddler when the apocalypse broke out, who would send a child that young into a boarding school for troubled kids? If Sophie and Minnie got sent to Ericsons' before Tenn, how were their parents able to adopt?
  • It´s possible only one of the twins was ´´troubled´´ enough for Eriksson, while the other twin and Tenn either made their way to the school after the outbreak or were there but not as students (visitation, family function etc.). As for how their parents were able to adopt, maybe whatever happened wasn´t severe enough to blacklist them or something.

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