9 Scenes You Won’t Believe Were Cut From The Walking Dead

Whether it's Hershel Greene's leg or a zombie's head, things are always getting cut off in The Walking Dead, but occasionally it's entire scenes that get the chop.

This is the case with most movies and TV shows, though where the hit AMC series is concerned, some of the content that ended up on the cutting floor would have enhanced the story, shed light on some of its mysteries, and even resolved plotholes.

Fortunately for the fans, this nixed footage has wound up on the DVD and Blu-ray boxsets or surfaced online, giving them the opportunity to see what would have happened to Rick and co in an alternate universe.

Deleted scenes are a Walking Dead tradition dating all the way back to season one, and much like the show's zombie plague, there are no signs of them dying out. Indeed, the series has just kicked off its eighth season and unused footage from its predecessor has already made its way online.

Rick's hand may have been spared the chop (so far, anyway), but there's plenty of great material from the show that wasn't so lucky.

Remember the heady days of The Walking Dead season one? When Rick and his gang were more concerned with staying alive than rebuilding the world, Glenn looked about 12, and Andrea and Dale were still alive?

During the fourth episode, the survivors arrive at a nursing home in Atlanta and find a gang called the Vatos holed up there, protecting their family from the endless tide of walkers. Rick leaves guns and ammunition behind for them before hitting the road.

Going purely off the footage which aired, the Vatos' fate was left open-ended, but a deleted scene from season two's premiere reveals exactly what happened to them, and it wasn't pretty.

Rick and his crew return to the nursing home to find it overrun with zombies and littered with corpses. All of the Vatos are either dead or undead, and on closer inspection, the former sheriff realises this was the handiwork of human pillagers, rather than zombies.

Yeah, it's pretty grim, but that's not why it was cut. Season two's premiere was actually two episodes spliced together as a result of a subplot involving Shane being nixed at the last minute, so the showrunners were forced to axe everything bar non-essential footage to keep the runtime from spilling over.