20 Most Hated Characters In TV History
8. The Walking Dead - Lori Grimes
Until her violent and traumatic departure in season three, Lori Grimes was almost certainly the most detested character in The Walking Dead… and not intentionally so.
Written and portrayed as a strong, generous and loving mother and wife, her persona was at odds with her actions. After all, this was a woman who’d embarked upon an affair with her supposedly deceased husband’s best friend.
That’s the kind of set-up that provokes strong responses: but here audiences seemed to focus all of the blame for the affair with Shane directly upon Lori, although it clearly takes two to tango. Even her swift decision to reconcile with husband Rick upon his return - a man who she had been having significant issues with even before the zombocalypse began - didn't seem to soften viewers towards her.
It’s been said that some of the blame falls on Sarah Wayne Callies, the actress that played her. A similar issue had occurred on Prison Break, the show she’d starred on before The Walking Dead, with her character - the conflicted but noble prison doctor Sara Tancredi - receiving a disproportionate amount of venom from audiences. Perhaps she just doesn’t do ‘sympathetic’ very well.
A good proportion of the problem can also be explained by the audience’s identification with Rick as the hero-protagonist of the show: Lori’s habit of taking Rick to task and questioning his decisions made her appear shrewish and unreasonable to an audience already pre-disposed to dislike her.
Whatever the reasons, and whether they're fair or not, Lori became the most reviled character in the show in season two. While the original comics chose to have the psychotic Governor simply shoot Lori in the back, the TV show’s producers elected to have Lori die in the prison after the horror of delivering her baby by spontaneous caesarian section… without the aid of anaesthetic.
This was supposed to be a moment of grim heroism, the mother sacrificing herself to save her baby. Sadly, hatred for the character had swelled to such a degree that fans reported cheering and celebrating as she bled out on screen, and even laughing when Rick later found what was left of her after the walkers were through eating her corpse.