History Recap / TheWalkingDeadS01E01DaysGoneBye

* MundaneLuxury: Rick, Morgan, and Duane enjoy a shower for the first time in weeks. Morgan and Duane are visibly euphoric about it.

%% * TheLostLenore: Morgan's wife.

->''"Hey, you. Dumb ass. Hey, you in the tank. Cozy in there?"''

* TheCameo: As revealed in an interview several years later, an uncredited Sam Witwer (''Series/{{Being Human|US}}'') plays the soldier who Rick is forced to shoot inside the tank. This was part of an unrealized story that would have followed Witwer's character until he got bit and passed away while hiding in the tank.

** Morgan's wife seems a fair degree more intelligent than the other Walkers, as she tries to open the house by twisting the doorknob, and even looks in through the peephole. Also counts as EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, as the Walkers never demonstrate this sort of intelligence again.

** This is the only instance in the series where a character's inner thoughts are heard as a voiceover, with Rick's internal monologue saying, "Lori... Carl... I'm sorry," as he plans to shoot himself under the tank.

Rick has a momentary glimpse of Shane visiting him in the hospital telling him he brought flowers from Lori, then wakes up asking for Shane. [[AbandonedHospitalAwakening He looks around and sees that he is in an empty hospital room with no sound around him. The flowers beside him have long-since wilted, and he can't page anyone to his room.]] Rick painfully claims out of bed and uses an IV stand as a crutch while he walks out of the room.

%% * CouldntFindAPen: [[DrivenToSuicide God forgive us]].

* DevouredByTheHorde: A horse being EatenAlive by hundreds of walkers. Anyway, its death allows Rick to weasel his way out from the horde and hide himself in a tank.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Rick has one about halfway through the episode when he risks attracting the walkers so he can shoot the "bicycle girl" and [[MercyKill put her out of her misery]].

* TokenWhite: Rick when he was with Morgan and Duane.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Morgan is last seen shooting down several walkers approaching the house, before breaking down over his inability to kill the zombified Jenny. His whereabouts are left unknown... [[Recap/TheWalkingDeadS03E12Clear until...]]

* InfantImmortality: Notably averted, ''from its very first scene''. Rick shoots and kills an undead girl when he stops to get gas from an abandoned station. According to the DVD commentary, the showrunners state that this was used as the very first scene as an act of courtesy for the viewer, as the [[EstablishingSeriesMoment shock value]] would chase off anyone too squeamish to handle the series as a whole.

* CouldntFindAPen: [[DrivenToSuicide God forgive us]].

* EatenAlive: Poor horse...

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Morgan warns Rick that though typically a single zombie isn't much of a threat, an entire horde of zombies is quite dangerous. 30 minutes of screentime later, guess what Rick encounters when he goes to Atlanta?

* GhostCity: Well, Atlanta has technically become a Zombie City, but...

* HorsebackHeroism: Rick until the end of the episode.
* InMediasRes: The episode's [[TheTeaser teaser]].

* TheLostLenore: Morgan's wife.

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ad29f0172e6e32e7fdb2188b8d158fdc.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:[[TemptingFate Doesn't look like a good deal to us...]]]]

* ForeShadowing: Morgan warns Rick that though typically a single zombie isn't much of a threat, an entire horde of zombies is quite dangerous. 30 minutes of screentime later, guess what Rick encounters when he goes to Atlanta?

-->'''Rick Grimes awakens from a coma to find the world overrun by the undead, and sets out to find his family in this terrible new world.'''

'''Season 1, Episode 01:'''

[[caption-width-right:300:Doesn't look like a good deal to us…]]

----

Police officer Rick Grimes is driving down a country road. He notices that his car is running low on gas, and stops at a station to refill. As he gets out of his car, it's revealed that many of the vehicles in the vicinity are abandoned wrecks. He fills up a gascan and heads back to his car, but stops and looks under a vehicle only to discover a child's feet. Rick stops and moves around the car, where he asks the girl if he's alright. As she turns around, it's revealed that she is undead, and is missing part of her mouth. She growls and starts walking towards Rick, who is forced to pull out his revolver and shoot her. As she falls to the ground, he stares in shock...

Several months earlier, Rick and his partner, Shane Walsh, are sitting in their patrol car eating lunch. They briefly reminisce about the past and Rick's marriage to his wife Lori. Suddenly, a dispatch comes through informing them that there are three robbers attempting to escape King County, and they are sent with other units to set-up spike strips and apprehend the robbers.

Rick has a momentary glimpse of Shane visiting him in the hospital telling him he brought flowers from Lori, then wakes up asking for Shane. He looks around and sees that he is in an empty hospital room with no sound around him. The flowers beside him have long-since wilted, and he can't page anyone to his room. Rick painfully claims out of bed and uses an IV stand as a crutch while he walks out of the room.

Rick gets to his family's home and goes inside, only to discover that Lori and his son, Carl, are nowhere to be found. He collapses in grief and goes outside to sit in despair, only to be hit by a boy holding a shovel. As he lays on the ground, Rick sees a man walk up and shoot one of the undead in the head, and he tries to speak to them before he goes unconscious.

The next morning, the three men head to the police station. They shower and Rick puts on his old police uniform, and they raid the armory for weapons. Rick takes a bagful of guns and a walkie-talkie. He gives the other to Morgan and asks him to stay in contact while he searches for his family. When Morgan and Duane leave, Rick heads back to the place he found the undead "bicycle girl" and follows a trail into the forest, where he sees her futilely pulling herself along. Rick apologizes for what happened and puts her out of her misery with a shot to the head, while Morgan goes home and tries to shoot his undead wife before breaking down in tears when he can't pull the trigger.

Rick obtains a police car and begins driving towards Atlanta, where he sends a dispatch over the police radio. In a camp outside Atlanta, a group of people (including Lori, Carl, an older man named Dale and a young woman named Amy) struggle to hear the transmission, and Amy says that she hopes the person isn't headed towards Atlanta because it's overrun. Some time later, his car runs out of gas and he stops at a farmhouse, where he finds a tame horse who has been left alone after its owners were DrivenToSuicide. Rick saddles the horse and uses it to ride towards Atlanta.

Rick enters the city and rides through the streets, where he finds numerous cars that are abandoned and walkers that begin to stir after he rides past. He looks up and sees a helicopter in the distance and tries to follow it, only to run into a horde of walkers. Rick attempts to flee the horde, only to get surrounded and knocked off, losing his bag of guns in the process. Rick crawls away as the horde eats the horse. He climbs under an abandoned tank and plans to shoot himself as walkers close in around him, then sees that a hatch on the undercarriage is open and climbs in before he's bit.

Rick shuts the hatch behind him and catches his breath, only for an undead soldier to attempt to attack him. Rick shoots the soldier, which deafens him and forces him to climb out of the top of the tank to regain his hearing. He is forced to shut the hatch again when walkers climb up onto the tank.

As he thinks about what to do, a voice crackles through the radio, asking him if he's cozy...

* DrivenToSuicide: The farmers in the house Rick comes across while looking for gas.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Considering how long Morgan states it has been since his wife was bit and turned, she looks nearly indistinguishable from a normal human being, save for a pair of fake-looking prosthetics and a bite wound.
** Also, Morgan's wife trying to turn the doorknob shows some basic recall of the undead's previous lives, which has been disproved many times later, as they are entirely mindless.

* ForeShadowing: Morgan warns Rick that though typically a single zombie isn't much of a threat, an entire horde of zombies is quite dangerous. [[spoiler:Can you guess what Rick encounters when he goes to Atlanta?]]
** Morgan mentions the reason his wife got bit is because she let her sentimentality get the better of her. [[spoiler: By the end of the episode, he does the same exact thing by not killing her when he has a perfect chance to, and Duane ends up getting bit as a result.]]

* InfantImmortality: Notably averted, from its very first scene. Rick shoots and kills an undead girl when he stops to get gas from an abandoned station.
** [[WordOfGod The DVD Commentary]] states that this was used as the very first scene as an act of courtesy for the viewer, as the [[EstablishingSeriesMoment shock value]] would chase off anyone too squeamish to handle the series as a whole.
* ItCanThink: Morgan's wife seems a fair degree more intelligent than the other Walkers, as she tries to open the house by twisting the doorknob, and even looks in through the peephole.
** Could count as EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, as the Walkers never demonstrate this sort of intelligence again.

* JumpScare: The "bicycle girl" walker waking up and turning around, which causes Rick to fall off the bicycle he took from her.

* MercyKill: Rick delivers one to the "bicycle girl".

* RoomFullOfZombies: Rick encounters one of these in the hospital, conveniently labelled as such to prevent any unsuspecting person from wandering inside.