The Walking Dead: 10 Big Differences Between The Comics & TV Show

8. Daryl Only Exists On TV

Daryl Dixon is everybody's favourite Walking Dead character. Not that he had a lot of competition, at least in the early days. Whilst the rest of the cast were poorly-developed cyphers and plot contrivances who spouted awkward dialogue, Daryl was the cool, stoic redneck with a troubled past, a lack of trust, and a dab hand with a crossbow. Daryl Dixon is everything the rest of the cast weren't. His arrival was preceded by his far less palatable brother, the racist hick Merle Dixon, briefly a part of Rick's crew before he goes apesh*t on T-Bone and they handcuff him to a roof, promising to come back for him...which of course they don't do for ages, returning to find that he sawed through his own hand. Merle turned up in the third season, having being rescued by The Governor, and had a none-too-cheery family reunion with Daryl, who had a slightly less combative relationship with the Grimes posse. They seem like vital parts of the plot, right? And yet neither of the Dixon brothers exists in The Walking Dead comic book, invented by the writers to test the group's moral compass early on.