Trivia / The Walking Dead (Telltale)

• B-Team Sequel: Zig-zagged; Due to Telltale Games shutting down, Skybound Entertainment handled the completion of the final two episodes of The Final Season. However, Skybound made sure to hire as many people involved with the previous episodes as possible.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: The fact that William Carver is voiced by Mr. Blonde is a good indicator of what sort of person he is. Also, James is voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch.
• Creator Backlash:
  • A mild form. The writers admit that they wish that they could have made the choice between saving Carley or Doug far more difficult, attributing the reasoning to people getting to know the former more than the latter.
  • Season 2's writers admitted they hated Sarah, which is one of the reasons her death is completely unavoidable no matter what you do in "Amid The Ruins".
  • Kent Mudle, the director of Season 4, stated he was dissatisfied by how Season 2 was handled — particularly how Sarah died no matter what choices the players made, and strove to make it so that the player's choices had weight as to whether a character lived or died in Season 4.
• Creator Killer: A rare example of a successful game doing this. After the success of The Walking Dead Season 1, Telltale sped up game production to compensate for the fact that no game after it reached its level of success, churning out licensed games at an unsustainable rate under the mistaken belief that they just needed to use the money The Walking Dead made them to churn out a dozen more games like it that would automatically make them a dozen times as much money. Unfortunately for them, The Walking Dead's dwindling popularity and the equally dwindling quality of their Acclaimed Flop games, as their increased production time and Strictly Formula policy prevented any of the kind of innovation that made The Walking Dead a success, which lead to their announcement on September 21st 2018 that they'd downsized to just a skeleton crew of 25 left to finish a contractual obligation, followed by that skeleton crew being let go in November. An effort was made in 2017 to streamline the company, with plans to rectify many of the problems, but despite The Walking Dead's final season being heralded as a return to form it proved too little, too late.
• Creator's Pest: Sarah was loathed by the writers of season 2, who had her unceremoniously killed off regardless of player choice.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: AJ in The Final Season is voiced by a woman.
• The Danza:
  • Brie is based on Brie Rosenholm, the Telltale contest winner.
  • Mark's voice actor is Mark Middleton.
• Dark Horse Victory: Won the 2012 Spike TV Video Game Awards.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Melissa Hutchison has been voicing child to teenager Clementine while in her thirties, and as of The Final Season, is voicing 16-year old Clementine while being 43.
  • Alvin Jr. (AJ) in The Final Season is 5-6 years old and is voiced by 25 year old Taylor Parks.
  • All of the residents at Ericson's School for Troubled Youths in The Final Season are teenagers, but many of them have voice actors in their thirties or even forties.
• Enforced Method Acting: During an episode of "Playing Dead" Bonnie's voice actress, Erin Yvette, said she had no idea Bonnie was scouting the Cabin for Carver when she was recording the scene where Walter gave her food in "A House Divided". Later, in "In Harm's Way", Bonnie said Carver didn't tell her beforehand that he was going to hold up The Cabin group like he did. It's probable TellTale didn't tell Erin what Bonnie was doing because Bonnie didn't know what she was doing.
• Flip-Flop of God:
  • Clementine's ethnicity has been a topic of debate within the fandom ever since Season 1, with a number of sources reporting that she is African-American and Asian; stemming from Clem originally being modelled after artist Derek Sakai's daughter, as well as statements made by writer Sean Vanaman in the 2013 "Saving Doug: Empathy, Character, and Choice in The Walking Dead" conference and by her voice actress Melissa Hutchison in the "Walking Dead 'Cast 247: The Walking Dead: A New Frontier" podcast. However, the lead animator Jessica Brezzo stated in an interview with the The Walking Dead Interviews wiki that Clem is African-American when asked about her ethnicity. In February 2019, an anonymous commenter claiming to be Brezzo issued a statement clarifying that at the time of the interview she hadn't spoken to Vanaman or Hutchison about the topic, didn't realize it was a topic of debate among the fandom, and never stated that Clem was solely African-American.
  • When asked at an interview panel how old Clementine was in Season 4, Melissa Hutchison stated she was seventeen; though in a later collab video with Heroines she stated Clem was actually sixteen. This was again contradicted on Twitter, when Telltale stated that she was seventeen and AJ was six.
• Follow the Leader: Within less than two weeks after Episode 2 of Season 1 was released, Activision announced a first person shooter based on The Walking Dead (yes, a game that Telltale said that Walking Dead wouldn't be) featuring our favorite rednecks, the Dixon brothers, and promises "choices" just like the Telltale game. Fans of the Telltale series didn't hold out hope. And they were right not to if the Metacritic scores (32 for the Activision game, 92 for Telltale's) are anything to go by.
• No Dub for You: Due to Telltale going bankrupt, the Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese dubs were axed. The European French and German dubs are still going, as dubbing in those countries is mandatory by law, which is not the case in the American continent. Also related with this, none of the games were translated and dubbed to European Spanish, using the Latin American translations instead, much for the chagrin of the Spaniard players. This is justified in a way, as Telltale was an American company, and the translations was catered for Latin America in mind, not Spain.
• Playing Against Type: Roger L. Jackson as Chuck, the hobo in Episode 3 who's a clearly benevolent, well-composed character as opposed to the hammy villains Jackson usually plays.
• Prop Recycling:
  • Kenny's and the Stranger's cars can be seen driving by in the first scene of episode 1.
  • Chuck's leftover whiskey bottle is reused whenever Kenny grabs a drink in Episodes 4 and 5 (and when Nate offers Russell a sip in 400 Days).
  • Dr. Logan's locker, shown in Episode 4, reappears in Episode 1 of Michonne as a locker Greg is hiding inside on the abandoned boat. Logan's name is still clearly labeled on the door.
• Real Song Theme Tune: Dorothy's Gun in My Hand serves as one for the Michonne mini-series.
• Recycled Script: Kenny's life in Season 2 is quite similar to Season One. The love of his life dies, he's obsessed with a goal that some see as non-existent (Wellington rather than the boat), and when he finds it, it's too good to be true.
• Sequel in Another Medium: Following the completion of Season Four, a comic entitled Clementine Lives was launched in July 2021 as an official continuation of Clementine's story, showing her leaving AJ behind at Ericson's to go on a new journey by herself. This was followed by the The Walking Dead Clementine graphic novel picking up where the one-shot left off.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The writers were thinking of cutting Clementine due to having difficulties finding an actor for the character before Melissa Hutchinson caught the role.
  • The game was envisioned to be in the first person, but management didn't like it.
  • Episode 2 of Season 1 has a large number of Dummied Out lines still hidden inside the game's files:
    • In a cut conversation between Danny and Lee, Danny states that he used to be an insurance salesman and once practiced taxidermy on his Mother's Cat (for a "Mother's Day Gift").
    • There was a nightmare sequence where Doug/Carley (or rather, Lee's Conscience) berates Lee for not saving him/her in the previous episode.
    • There was also going to be an option between staying at the dairy and going back to the Motor Inn. If you chose to go back, you'd return to most of the group upset that Lee decided not to stay, and they would take a vote.
    • Mark would have been shot while he and Lee were kicking walkers off the fence. Instead of Mark, Lee would encounter Ben and Travis's teacher in the bathroom, both legs cut off.
    • One of the audio files had Larry tell Lilly that he loves her before he died. Other files indicate that Lee would have been able to steal heart medication from the St. John's and administer it later during Larry's heart attack, though it is likely the scene would have played out the same regardless.
  • Season 2:
    • According to the voice actor, Mike was originally meant to be one of the men who capture Christa during Episode 1. When Christa attempts to escape, a member of Mike's group would have accidentally shot him and took out a chunk of his left ear. Clem would have been distrustful of him in later episodes due to his involvement in Christa's disappearance. While Mike is still missing part of his ear in the final game, the reason is never given and Clem mostly stays on good terms with him.
    • "A House Divided", "In Harm's Way", and "No Going Back" were originally titled "Don't Look Back", "In Cold Blood", and "Better to Sleep" respectively. The last of these was used for the Play Station Network's "No Going Back" trophies before the episode came out.
    • Originally, at the end of the second season, there was a choice that would involve Clementine shooting and killing Mike when he tries to leave with Bonnie and Arvo. Eventually, this didn't make it into the game... but they left it in the PlayStation 3 port initially before it was patched out.
    • The title cards for Episodes 3 and 4 show events that seem to indicate that there was supposed to be a completely different plot for those episodes. In fact, the title card for Episode 3 originally featured Clementine and Rebecca in what appeared to be a different store before being changed to the depot store, possibly to compensate for the change in plans.
    • Unused audio files suggest that you could originally save Luke from drowning in Episode 5. In the final game, Luke drowns no matter what the player does. The final confrontation would take place between Luke and Kenny, not Jane and Kenny.
    • Clementine was originally supposed to die at the end of Season 2. Here's a video explaining the ending. It was cut since, while they didn't know they were going to do a third season, they were told to "not screw [themselves]" in case they did make another one (which ultimately was the case).
    • The final confrontation between Kenny and Jane was originally a lot more even, with the latter getting in more hits and the fight ending with both of them struggling to kill the other. The player then had the option to shoot either of them, or look away. Because playtesters overwhelmingly favoured Kenny, the scene was reworked to the final version where Kenny has the upper hand in order to create a scenario where even players who like Kenny might feel the need to kill him to save Jane.
    • There was a scene cut late in the development of episode one where Clem would go with Alvin, Nick, Pete and Luke to check traps the group has set up in the nearby river to catch fish. This is where Pete would likely get bitten.
    • The segment right at the start of the game, where Clem gets swept by a river away from Crista would've been interactive, and not just a cutscene like in the final product.
    • Season two went through three versions of the script: The one written right at the start, a second one written when main writers left (called "dark script", due to its more mature nature) and the third one we got in the end. The original script focused more on Crista, with her being along for the ride until the last scene. Kenny was always a part of the script, but he played a more minor role and was supposed to die at some point earlier in the story. The final scene involved Clem, Crista and their group of survivors ending up in a community that was likely a very early version of Wellington. Everyone in the group had to go through an interview, during which it would be revealed that this community operates on a sort of two cast system. Everyone from Clem's group would be placed in the lower cast, while she would get a choce on where she wants to go, because the leaders of the community couldn't agree on where to place her due to her age. The player would have to make a choice if they want to be a member of the upper class and have better quality of life, or the lower class and stay with their friends. This choice would factor on how season three would start.
    • Very early in development there was an idea related to Clementine finding a zoo with her group of survivors. The people would get slowly picked off as the night progressed, leading the members to believe that there was a new type of walker out to kill them. It would be revealed later that it wasn't any type of walker, but instead a tiger that escaped its enclosure due to post apocalyptic wear and tear.
    • There were talks of a setpiece that took place in an abandoned nuclear powerplant, but no details were given, other than it being talked about very early in development along the tiger sequence mentioned above.
    • Concept art, a few leftover animations and assets and an unused slide for episode three seem to imply that Rebecca was going to give birth in the lodge's bathroom, with Clementine assisting her in some way.
    • The fight scene with a walker in the shed was more dynamic, with Clementine jumping around with some kind of a blade. The animation was discovered in one of the lead animators' portfolios. It's worth noting that Clementine has her backpack there, which she loses during her struggle with bandits in the final game. It's unclear if this has any significance to where that scene was originally placed in the story.
    • The scene where Clem falls into a river and is taken by a rapid originally involved Winston (one of the men who tried to rob her and Crista) grabbing her, but losing his footing, causing both of them to fall into the river. In the final game, Clementine pushes Winston away into a group of zombies who attack him.
    • Nick and Luke had different designs. Luke used to wear a hat, that was later given to Nick.
    • AJ wasn't always in the script and seemed to be added quite late.
    • Vine posted by telltale games seemed to show a cut "examine" option, where Clementine could look through a window and see Rebecca and Luke arguing, likely about what to do with Clementine during the sequence when you sneak around looking for medical supplies.
    • Kenny was supposed to go crazy and fulfill the role of a "Carver-type" character.
    • Before any work on season two was started, the developers considering focusing the story on a new group of survivors or revisiting the backstories of characters like Kenny. They also considered playing as another character who would become a "mentor" to Clementine, until they settled on making her the playable protagonist.
    • It seems like there were more flashbacks with Crista, and we wouldn't know Omid's fate until a flashback in episode two.
    • After Pete was bitten, you were supposed to be able to take him back to the lodge. You could either tell others that he was bit, or keep his secret, waiting for him to turn. This scene was replaced with Carver showing up unannounced, while in earlier scripts he was supposed to be seen in the third episode. Pete would decide to volunteer to be left behind if Carver and his people show up, to buy the others some time.
    • The hostage scene at the end of episode two was supposed to be the opening for episode three.
    • There was an idea of making the group fight a bear when they were escaping the transport to Carver's compound. The characters were supposed to wander in a snowstorm, with Clem and either Luke or Kenny having to take out a few walkers. Then the bear would appear and attack the zombies.
    • The travel from the cabin to Howe's was supposed to take up the entire first half of episode three. The group would escape and wander through the woods, only to end up caught and brought to the hardware store.
    • Reggie was supposed to play a very minor role, but was expanded with time.
    • There was a scene planned where Luke would sing a song and play the guitar during a campfire, possibly the one from episode five.
    • The characters from 400 days were more interwoven with the main story, but had to be cut due to budget constraints.
    • Rebecca was supposed to spit in Carver's face after he was beaten.
    • There was more to the trailer park where we find Sarah in episode four. The walkers were supposed to be remnants from a raider attack on a local community, with barricades prepared by the survivors.
    • The city you can see in the distance in episode four was the original destination for the group.
    • Arvo's group was supposed to be made up of Spanish speakers, but it was cut due to many players likely knowing Spanish, taking away from the tension of the scene.
    • Troy was originally fulfilling Carver's role, but Michael Madsen's voice didn't fit the character. Carver was created, with Troy being changed into his enforcer. Some of Carver's animations use Troy's name in their names. Note that even in the "next time on..." preview at the end of Episode 1, Clementine is shown opening the door of the cabin to Troy instead of Carver.
  • Season 3:
    • Joan was going to be Eleanor's mother.
    • Unused audio and animation files suggest that there were plans for a pre-season 1 flashback, with Clementine seeing her babysitter be attacked by a walker and having to escape to her treehouse.
    • There was an entire opening scene that took place in a slaughterhouse that was turned into a prision for humans and walkers that was run by the New Frontier. Javier was supposed to be separated from his family and thrown into a cell with Clementine, who was separated from AJ. The two would team up to escape and find their missing loved ones. The animations left in the game seem to suggest Max would chase them, but he would get stuck in a turnstyle and could either be mercy killed or left to be devoured by walkers. This idea seemed to get pretty far in development; other than the mentioned leftover animations there was quite a lot of concept art released. There's even a promotional image of Clementine and Javier in the slaughterhouse that was used to promote the game before it was released.
    • Kate was originally named Grace and had a different design. (Grace's character model is still used in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background photograph that seems to show David and his ex-wife. This has led to a fan theory that Grace still exists in-universe as David's first wife and Gabe and Mariana's mother.)
    • New Frontier was led by a man named Mason, with half of his face scarred by burns. Melissa Hutcherson allegedly recorded voice lines for a scene where he and his people take AJ from Clem because she was deemed "unfit" to care for him. His model is repurposed in the final product by doctor Lingard. The scene likely took place in an unused area called "Richmond alley" that is used in promotional images and in the game's main menu, but is never seen in-game. There are unused animations left in the gamefiles that likely relate to the scene, where Clementine gets injured.
    • Another version of the story involved Javier and his family being taken hostage by the New Frontier and branded against their will. Javier managed to escape, but still needed to help his family (David, Gabe and Mariana, Kate didn't exist in this version of the story). This is where he'd meet Clem, who wanted to save AJ from the New Frontier, and the two would decide to work together. It was cut because it "didn't feel like an authentic Walking Dead story", according to the developers.
    • Javier's knowledge of spanish was supposed to play a bigger role. He would talk to his family in spanish. There was also a chained up mechanic in the New Frontier camp, who was forced to work against his will. Javier could speak to him in Spanish to get past Ava, who was his guard. The mechanic's model was briefly used in episodes 4 and 5.
    • Ava was envisioned as an MMA fighter, not a soldier like in the final version. She used to be more of an enforcer-type character instead of David's second in-command.
    • Clint didn't exist in an earlier version of the script.
    • Kenny was originally supposed to commit suicide by drowning. He would lose his mind, and walk into a river while singing a song. The only thing we have left from that scene is concept art and an audio of a lake left in the game files that went unused.
    • It's possible the game was supposed to have a capricorn motive. The brands used by the New Frontier are reminiscent of the zodiacal sign of capricorn, and the cut slaughterhouse used to belong to a company called capricorn farms.
    • Mariana had a couple of different death scenes. In the final game, she gets shot in the head and dies immediately. There were versions where she gets shot in the neck and a version when she's zombiefied when we come back to the junkyard and we either had to put her down or have somebody else do it, though the in-game leftover animations only show Javier killing her.
  • Season 4:
    • The whole outline of the plot was different: The school was supposed to be destroyed in the first episode, and the rest of the season would be a roadtrip narrative with Clem, AJ and Ericson's kids looking for a new place to call home.
    • An even earlier version of the plot was described as "True Grit like adventure, with horseback adventures, and bandit encounters and playing kids games at the ranch".
    • Tenn's backstory was supposed to be fleshed out in one of the episodes. There's an unused model in the game called "tennyson_head_flashback", which likely means that we would be shown how Tenn got the scars on his face.
    • Kent Mudle stated that before his team joined the project, AJ was "more of a Macguffin than a character" and that he was once again more of a thing for Clem to follow after like in season 3.
    • James' barn was originally a part of a small community that lived near the school, and it was the place Clem would wake up after her car crash and got to the school on foot. Ruby was originally from here, but the team liked her, so she was turned into a member of the Ericsons'.
    • Delta's boat used to be a normal boat used for travel. There are concept art for the characters called Capitain and First Mate that were related to that concept, but were scrapped when Delta came into the picture.
    • Aasim would have a whole philosophy based on salt, that it would be a currency in an adult-free world. He had a jar of salt buried in the forest and could show it to Clem if she chose to go check the traps with him and Louis in episode one.
    • Kent really wanted to include a scene where Clem would give AJ a haircut in episode three, but it was impossible due to budget restrictions.
    • There was a cut character, an Asian girl named Jeanne, who was supposed to just be an extra and didn't have a big role in the story. She and a few other extras were cut due to time and budget constraints.
    • Old versions of the story featured a character named Jill, who was described as a "wanderer" and would meet Clem after she left the school.
    • The school was supposed to be a semi-opened world, where kids would slowly reclaim more parts of the school that used to be overrun by walkers, each episode giving access to new rooms. The gym, seen in some concept art, was one of them. There was a scene where the kids seal up the broken wall behind the main building, after which the area would be open for exploration.
    • Combat was supposed to be a bigger focus, with a breakable weapons system that would force the player to strategize more and actively look for new weapons.
    • The player was able to pick out clothes for Clementine, but it's unclear if this would happen once or multiple times through the story.
    • The collectibles system was once conceptualized as "food system", where the player could find scattered food in exploration segments. It could be used as barter in some situations and would have effect on combat, for example, if the player didn't find enough food, button mashing during the walker fights would be more difficult. It was rejected due to it being too complex to implement and because the developers thought finding food just lying around almost 10 years into the apocalypse was unrealistic.
    • Lily was to have a scar on her face if you left her to fend for herself in season one. It was scrapped because she was already notoriously difficult to translate well into the season four artstyle.
    • The party scene was going to be more open, with the player being able to freely walk around, with some more AJ, Louis and Violet interactions.
    • There was an idea for a freewalk section, where the player would have to track down Rosie, who was taking and hoarding thing that belonged to kidnapped or dead members of the school, like Louis' Chairles or Mitch's knife.
    • There was an idea for Clem and AJ to come back to Clementine's family home in Georgia, back when the characters of Capitain and First Mate were still planned and could take them there with the boat. It was scrapped because there was no logical reason for Clem and AJ to do this, other than fanservice.
• Word of Gay:
  • According to Telltale, Paige has feelings for Samantha.
  • Writer Adam Esquenazi Douglas has stated that Javier is bisexual, with players briefly having the opportunity to flirt with Jesus in episode 5.
  • Kent Mudle specified the sexual orientations of a few LGBT characters in the final season on his Tumblr: Clementine is bisexual, Violet is a lesbian and James is gay.
• Word of God: As said by Kent Mudle, Tenn is Happily Adopted.

---