5 Walking Dead Characters Who Survived On The Show Way Longer Than In The Comics

"The Walking Dead" is famous for killing off its cast, to the point where the vast majority of the Season 1 survivors are long gone by the final season. The show even killed off characters like Andrea, (Laurie Holden), despite the actress thinking it was a mistake, and would later kill off Carl (Chandler Riggs), even though he survived the entire run of the comics. 

Not every death scene was popular with fans, but they did at least help establish "The Walking Dead" as a show where the stakes are always high. Unlike with the vast majority of TV shows, it seemed, "TWD" fans truly couldn't take any characters' survival for granted. That's why it's such a pleasant surprise when a character on the show doesn't just survive, but outlives their comic counterpart. For a series that is so often cruel to its characters, it offered these five far more time among the living than comic fans would've guessed.

In the comics, Shane is killed by young Carl at the end of the sixth issue, or the end of the first volume. If the show followed its source material more strictly, Shane would've died near the end of Season 1. Instead, live-action Shane (Jon Bernthal) survives until the penultimate episode of Season 2. TV Shane is still shot by Carl, but only after he's killed by Rick (Andrew Lincoln) first and returns as a walker. 

Why the delay? As Bernthal explained to SciFiNow in 2011, Season 1's showrunner, Frank Darabont, saw a lot of dramatic potential in Shane and Rick's relationship that the comics sped through. "Frank looked at the source material and said, 'there's something there. This story about two friends, it's a huge part of what this thing is. It's two friends, and how does friendship endure?' ... Here's a little wound that has been opened up by the comic — let's dig it out."

The comics' creator, Robert Kirkman, who served as co-creator on the show, told the Hollywood Reporter that Shane's tenure benefitted from Season 1's short, six-episode season: "If the first season had been 13 episodes instead of six, Shane's story would have been told all in that first season," he said. Because Season 1 was too short to do Shane's comic death justice, they saw an opportunity to expand on him and make the entirety of Season 2 a build-up to his climactic comic end. 

The TV show's Morgan (Lennie James) survives not just "The Walking Dead," but its spin-off series, "Fear the Walking Dead." It's a far different story in the comics, where Morgan dies less than half-way through the series' run after being absent for most of it. Comic Morgan is largely defined by his grief from his wife and son's death, and he dies before he can go on the pacifist transformation his TV counterpart would go through in Season 6. 

Robert Kirkman has explained that he tried and failed to give Morgan more to do in the comics before his death, and the show's treatment of the character appears to be a response to that regret. "Morgan was originally going to meet back up with the group much sooner, and when I realized I wouldn't be able to logically get him back in the book sooner, I created Tyreese to do some of the things Morgan was going to do," Kirkman explained while responding to readers' questions in "The Walking Dead Deluxe #61." The TV franchise had a second chance to give Morgan a proper long-term storyline, and it took full advantage.

Carol (Melissa McBride) seemed like a total goner back in the first two seasons. A domestic abuse victim with no fighting skills, TV Carol often felt like she was heading straight towards her comic counterpart's sad fate: Dying by suicide in the middle of the prison arc. TV Carol does have a near-death experience in the Season 3 prison arc; Not only does she survive it, though, she thrives for the rest of the series. This version of the character grows to be a stone-cold fighter, someone who easily holds her own with characters like Rick and Daryl.

"It has been amazing to play this character," McBride told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. This was the first season it became clear just how much of a hardcore survivor Carol had grown into. McBride continued, "She just started out complicated and it's gotten more complicated. But there's so much evolution and so much change just dictated by the world that they're in. Yes, she has been an actor's dream for me."

Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) is introduced in Season 5 as a useless coward, someone you certainly wouldn't expect to outlast tough guys like Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman). But whereas comic Gabriel dies in a somewhat undignified manner — he panics and breaks his leg falling off a ladder, and is quickly killed off by a Whisperer — TV Gabriel survives the entire series and develops a sense of courage along the way. 

"I didn't think he was long for this world at all," Gilliam admitted about his character to Entertainment Weekly. "I thought way back in the day, three episodes, and he's gone." Gilliam recalled being told from fans of the comics about his characters' fate in the source material: "They were very excited to show it to me, about how graphic the death was. That was my first hint that the Whisperer war would not end well for Father Gabriel, but that really turned out not to be the case."

This is the survival that stretches credulity the most: How does a baby, who can't understand she needs to be quiet when there are walkers around, survive a zombie apocalypse? Robert Kirkman seemed to think Judith didn't stand a chance in the world he'd created. That's why, in the comics, he has Judith get shot down along with her mother in the war against the Governor.

The TV show pulls off a fake-out death in Season 4 at the very end of its own prison arc, only to reveal two episodes later that one of the survivors rescued her off-screen. For the next five seasons, fans watched Judith slowly grow into a toddler, before Season 9's time jump caught up with her as a shockingly competent nine-year-old.

New showrunner, Angela Kang, told Business Insider that the time jump let them give Judith a similar role to Carl in the early seasons, and that she found an aged-up Judith made for an exciting storytelling opportunity. "It doesn't even make sense that she survived. If you're looking at this world, there's no reason why this child should have survived infancy and yet she did," Kang explained, "because this community banded around her to protect her and to help her thrive, and she has this amazing mother in Michonne."