The Walking Dead: 10 Questions That Always Confused You
These questions have been EATING at the fanbase for a long time.
There's no denying that The Walking Dead is one of the most popular TV shows of the last decade-plus.
And as its mainline run soon prepares to wrap up - though the many spin-offs will keep the wheels turning - it's fair to say that there's still plenty that fans are a bit confused about.
Over the course of more than 175 episodes across 11 seasons, The Walking Dead has offered up an enticing - if uneven - journey, and left fans to ponder a number of mysteries which have been left unresolved within the show itself.
From enigmatic imagery in the very first episode, through to a certain credibility-straining moment in a more recent one, these are the questions that have compelled and even haunted fans most over the years.
In some cases there are deeply plausible fan theories that more-or-less make sense of these questions, while others have received canon-ish answers from crew members in interviews, and yet many are simply left totally up in the air.
We probably shouldn't expect all of these mysteries to get sewn up before the main show ends its run, but here's to hoping...
10. How Long Was Rick In A Coma?
One of the most-discussed aspects of the show since its very first episode has been the length of time that Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) spends in a coma after being shot and then reawakening in the midst of the undead apocalypse.
The timeline of Rick's recovery has never been concretely confirmed within The Walking Dead itself, with fans regularly speculating that he was probably holed up in that hospital bed for at least a month or two.
But in 2015, while promoting spin-off Fear the Walking Dead, its showrunner and executive producer Dave Erickson told Tech Insider that the comic's creator, Robert Kirkman, had given him a rough timeframe. He said:
"Robert has said for him, the coma, Rick was probably out four to five weeks."
As for how Rick was able to survive that long without food and water? It's been theorised that he was taken care of by Dr. Gale Macones (Ellen Greene), who was shown to be caring for patients in the same hospital in the webisode series "The Oath."