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Clementine

Voiced by: Melissa Hutchison (English), Alicia Vélez (Spanish, The Final Season)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clem_final_apperancepng_5.png
"I'm still. Not. Bitten! I never was. And you left me out here to die."
Click here for her appearance in Season 1 
Click here for her appearance in Season 2 
Click here for her appearance in Season 3 

"Okay, now don't do anything stupid. Cause I'm not as nice as you, I won't hesitate."

Clementine is a quiet and imaginative eight-year-old girl with two attentive, loving parents. She's incredibly resourceful, choosing to spend time building elaborate fantasies in her tree-house instead of watching cartoons or playing with dolls. She doesn't get scared easily but will clam up if nervous. Reserved and shy, her actions speak louder than her words.

Come Season Two, Clem has taken over the role of protagonist. Now eleven years old, the Zombie Apocalypse has shaped her into a quick and resourceful survivor, albeit one who is not always taken seriously by others due to her age.

Season Three rolls around and Clementine is now a pragmatic crack shot the age of 13 who meets up with Javíer and helps him and his family - she's also the deadliest thing out there when faced with humans, zombies and anything else the world can think to hurl at her.

Clementine returns to being the main protagonist in the Final Season. Now 16 years old, she continues to look after Alvin Jr. while teaching him how to survive this harsh world.

Following that, Clementine made her comic book debut in the Skybound X comic, where — having become dissatisfied with her newly peaceful life — she secretly leaves Ericson's Boarding School to seek a new adventure by herself.


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    A-F 
  • Absurdly Youthful Mother: Discussed in No Going Back, when Randy asks Clem if Alvin Jr. is her child. In one of Season 3's flashback scenes Ava also touches on this, before dismissing the possibility due to Clem only being thirteen.
  • The Ace: One of the most experienced survivors of the apocalypse, Clem, unlike Rick Grimes' group, has survived for 8 years without staying in a certain area for prolonged periods of time and most of those years are by herself. She is well capable of almost all the skills necessary for survival, ranging from driving a car, horse riding and using any kind of weapon. Her skills are why even adults take advices from her and she immediately becomes the leader of Ericson's Boarding School despite recently joining them. Heck, she even manages to outlive Rick Grimes himself.
  • Action Girl: Thanks to Lee teaching her how to fend for herself (along with a few survival tips from Jane), Clementine grows up to be a skilled survivor and fighter by the time Season 2 hits. By New Frontier, she is a walker killing machine, and it's best to stay out of her way.
  • Action Girlfriend: Can become this to either Louis or Violet in The Final Season. In The Walking Dead: Clementine she becomes a Battle Couple with an older girl named Ricca.
  • Action Survivor: In the first season, she manages to escape her infected babysitter and survive for at least a couple days by herself when she is only eight years old.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Lee calls her "sweet pea" and Kenny calls her "darlin'".
  • The Aloner: Is introduced as such in New Frontier, and is quick to distrust people such as Javi and would rather be alone in order to save herself from being hurt and abandoned again. It's explained that it's due to her caretaker in Season 2 dying no matter the player's choice (whether it be Kenny, Jane or Edith). Even if she was alone with AJ, she still ended up having him taken from her by The New Frontier on David's order after she tried to save his life, and is later exiled and left to fend for herself.
  • Ambiguously Brown: Clementine's race is hard to distinguish visually. She has olive skin, wavy brown hair, a narrow nose (at least in seasons 3-4), thin lips, and light-brown, almond-shaped eyes. Her race is never discussed at any point in the game, but it's prompted a lot of debate among fans. The developers have stated that Clem is definitely African-American, though they have also stated that this isn't necessarily all her racial background. Judging by their picture, both her parents are Black, though her mother Diana has light skin. Moreover, the creator of Clementine mentioned during a conference that they originally intended for her to be mixed-race, and insinuated that Diana is not her birth mother, but this is never mentioned in the final game and the details surrounding this concept were kept vague. In addition, Clementine's appearance is based on Derek Sakai's daughter, who is Asian, and, when asked about Clementine's racial background, Clementine's voice actor, Melissa Hutchinson, speculated that Clementine was half Black and half Asian, but clarified that she did know what the definitive answer was.
  • Ambiguous Innocence: In Season 2, some of Clem's comments make it unclear if she hasn't had The Talk or is obfuscating naivety. Regardless, Bonnie tries to act as a Moral Guardian by telling off the others for telling bawdy jokes in Clem's presence.
  • Amazon Chaser: In the Violet romance route, Clementine can tell Violet "she kicked ass" with a huge grin on her face.
  • An Arm and a Leg: In Season 4 Episode 4, Clem's leg is lacerated to the bone by Minerva and then chomped on by a walker. As she succumbs to the infection, she tries to force AJ to make the same choice she had to with Lee — let her turn, or put her out of her misery. AJ instead lops off the infected limb, which proves enough to save her.
  • Anguished Declaration of Love: If Gabe dies in Episode 5 of Season 3, one of the potential ways the conversation could go is Clementine admitting that she thought she would always be alone until she met Gabe and kisses him. Whether she does so is dependent on whether she went with Jane at the end of Season 2, as the other endings produce different results.
  • Animal Motif: In Season 4, she has a minor horse motif. Her biker jacket is horse themed, with a horse skull patch on the back and badge reading "Silver Stallion" on her left sleeve. In the second episode, her nightmare features a black horse. This is driven home in "Take Us Back". In a flashback, Clementine was riding a horse when she was at the McCaroll Ranch which was killed by one of the inhabitants. She also often attacks by kicking and has her leg cut off in an abandoned horse stable. Leg injuries are commonly associated with horses, because they're often a death sentence to them. Clem manages to pull through, but she's still disabled and will need to rely on her new family from now on, at least sometimes.
  • Anti-Hero: Leans this way in Season 2, as a result of everything she's been through. Just how cynical and deliberately antagonistic she is depends on you. By Season 3, she's callous towards Javi when they first meet, only helping him because he promises to give her his van, and expresses a jaded worldview as a result of the losses she's endured.
  • Appearance Angst: At the end of Book Two of The Walking Dead: Clementine, Clementine laments to her new girlfriend Ricca that her scars and missing leg make her look unattractive. Ricca disagrees, saying that Clem's scars are sexy, and proves it by taking Clem's virginity.
  • Badass Adorable: She starts taking levels in it around Episode 3 of the first season, and has grown into one by the beginning of the second season. In fact, it is Clementine that Bill Carver considers his biggest threat. By New Frontier, she's a pre-teen girl who's fully capable to kick grown men and walkers's asses alike.
  • Badass and Child Duo: She is the child to the much older and stronger Lee in Season 1. By the end of season 2 and throughout season 4, she is the badass looking after AJ.
  • Badass Boast:
    • In Season 2, after spending a night in the cold with a dog bite, performing self-surgery, and fending off a walker, Clem confronts the Cabin Survivors with this gem:
      "I am still. NOT. Bitten! I never was! And you left me out here to die!"
    • In one of Season 2 Episode 5's endings, Clementine gives a downright villainous boast to Randy, the father of a starving family:
      Randy: Are you sure you wanna do this, little girl? I mean, what if... what if we're dangerous?
      Clementine: [pulling a gun on him] What if I am?
    • In Season 2 Episode 5, if you choose to drink rum when Bonnie offered you, Kenny will scold you for this. You can respond with: "Was that really a big deal, after all I've been through and I've done?" Kenny will then apologize because not only is he not her father and thus has no authority to tell her what to do, but he's forgotten that in order to survive the Zombie Apocalypse, Clementine can't be an innocent little girl forever.
    • Season 2 Episode 3 can have her give one to Carver who is impressed.
      Clementine: You wanna know what I wish?
      Carver: What’s that, honey?
      Clementine: I wish Kenny had killed you.
    • Season 4 have Clem say a few gems of those:
      Clementine: [to Louis] Well, you better bury me deep. Because if I turn, I'm coming for YOU FIRST!
      Clementine: [while being held at knifepoint by Mitch] The last person who pointed a weapon at me, is dead. So unless you wanna join them, you'll back the fuck off!
  • Bad Liar:
    • Has a hilarious moment when Lee asks her whether or not she licked a salt lick, she replies by saying "I dunno" with her eyes wide open. Many years later, AJ will asks her the same thing and she replies the same way while looking down.
    • Like Lee, some characters can see through her lies and will call her out of it.
  • Battle Couple: In Season 4, she can be part of one with either Louis or Violet.
  • Berserk Button: According to AJ, do not make fun of her cap. Considering it was a gift from her late father, it makes a lot of sense.
  • Beware the Nice Ones:
    • When The Stranger kidnaps her in Season 1 Episode 5, she'll sneak up behind him and attack him just as he says that she's sweet and that she wouldn't hurt a fly. So yeah, Clementine is sweet, but not if you kidnap her.
    • In Season 2, the player can make Clementine this. The most obvious example is how the player makes Clementine interact with Rebecca. During the stealth portion of the game Clementine overhears Rebecca worrying about her unborn child and if it's her husband's. Later when Rebecca is very rude to her, Clementine has the option of asking her whose baby is it if it's not Alvin's. Clementine can either tell Rebecca that she won't tell or warn Rebecca to be nicer to her or else she might tell, all the while with a smug smile on her face.
    • In Season 3, Clementine takes no shit from anyone. None. Piss her off at your own risk, as she is more dangerous than the zombies if pushed to be. And, at the end of the season, she is seen stabbing walkers with what appears to be a screwdriver and she doesn't get a scratch from it.
      • Season 4 has Clementine put a live bomb into a furnace with the intention of making it explode. It works.
  • Big Brother Worship: She and Luke can have a brother-sister relationship in Season 2 if the player appeals to Luke: in that case, Clementine can express admiring him and thinking he's "cool".
  • Big Damn Heroes: Increasingly:
    • In Season 1 Episode 5, if Lee is losing the fight with the stranger, she will shoot him herself.
    • Later in Season 2 Episode 3, she ends up saving her entire group from being captured and/or killed by Carver by either shooting him in the ear or by jumping off the wall and kicking him in the back. Clementine is truly badass.
    • In Season 3 Episode 3, if Javi didn't take Clementine hostage to use her as a bargaining chip in Richmond, she goes off on her own. When Javi, Tripp and Jesus are exiled from Richmond and attacked by walkers Clementine comes to Javi's rescue and even gives him his bat back.
  • Big Sister Instinct:
    • Although she is younger than her by four years, Clementine can be played to be very protective of Sarah. She can even attempt to train her to shoot a gun in the same way she learned how in Season 1.
    • She quickly bonds with baby Alvin Junior, and becomes extremely protective of him, though she can gripe that he's annoying and try to pass him off to the other group members. By season 4 there's nothing she wouldn't do to protect AJ.
  • Bisexual Love Triangle: The Final Season sees her involved in one with Louis and Violet, who both have a crush on her. The player can direct Clem to become romantically involved with either or neither of them.
  • Blackmail: An option in Season 2. Note that in the first episode alone, you can do this to two separate people. Rebecca reacts very negatively to being threatened over Clem publicly revealing the baby might not be Alvin's.
  • Blood Knight:
    • Some of Clem's dialogue choices in Season 2 paint her as being a little too eager to fight the Walkers. Carver picks up on this and claims they're alike — which she can agree with, even urging her to sit back and enjoy his own death. If Clem does so but later tries to stop Kenny from beating Arvo to death after Luke drowns, he'll mockingly ask if she's lost her taste for bloodshed.
    • Clem spends most of Season 3 in a dark place, being temperamental, callous, and more than a little bloodthirsty. In Episode 2, when the New Frontier shows up to Prescott her first instinct to them threatening everyone is "time to start shooting." Given that the New Frontier absolutely screwed her over (and do indeed screw her over again), she does have a point that ending their existence is a very good idea.
    • In Season 4, despite having matured as a result of raising AJ, she can be bluntly aggressive and resort to violence as a primary solution to problems, which Lilly can call her out on. In Season 4 Episode 2 alone, she can antagonize the other teens, defend AJ's murder of Marlon by saying he did nothing wrong, go out of her way to kill as many walkers as she can despite James showing her how to distract them, declare her intent to kill Lilly and Abel for daring to hurt AJ, antagonize Mitch — who dislikes her and is spoiling for a fight, cheerfully claim Violet's knife constellation — specifying someone who's vicious and good at fighting — for herself, and encourage AJ to hunt down Abel and kill him. However, she's not a Sociopathic Hero as even the most-hardened and bloodthirsty versions of her are capable of falling in love with either Louis or Violet, and horrified if AJ remarks that he enjoys killing.
  • Boring, but Practical: In Season 2, Clem prefers to use a handgun against her enemies as she is still too small to go against both walkers and bandits in a straight up fight unless she gets the drop on them. In addition, firing a gun larger than a pistol will have the recoil knock her down. She continues to hold a handgun at all times in season 3, but by Season 4 she starts using a knife — likely due to ammunition becoming scarce.
  • Boyish Short Hair: Her hair used to be above her shoulders for the first two episodes of Season 1. In Episode 3, after Lee's Important Haircut, her hair is much shorter, but still long enough for some small Girlish Pigtails. Episode 5 of Season 3 has Javier cut her hair even shorter than it already was.
  • Burn Baby Burn: Near the start of "All That Remains" you can choose to burn either a drawing of Kenny's family Clem made during Season One or the photo of Lee she carries with her. If you choose to burn Lee's photo, you're interrupted before you can do so, but the significance if this is never explained.
  • Break the Cutie:
    • Naturally. To what extent depends partly on how well you take care of her and certain decisions you make around her. Even if you make it your main priority to avert this trope, she will have a breakdown after Larry is killed by Kenny.
    • It can come to a head near the end of Episode 4. Whatever Lee says to her, she breaks down crying. That's the last time you see her before she's kidnapped.
      • And how can it get even worse? If Lee decided to not save Ben in Crawford, Kenny flat-out tells the others, Clementine included, that Lee killed Ben, which breaks Clem's heart even before Lee chooses to tell her looking for her parents is pointless; however, that bit of breaking the cutie can be mitigated if you tell Clem that Ben asked Lee to let him fall to his death so the others could get away, causing Clem to cheer up at the thought of Ben being a "good person" by putting others before himself..
    • Episode 5 is just a Trauma Conga Line for the poor girl. Not only does she possibly have to kill the man who kidnapped her as he struggles with Lee, she finds her parents as walkers, Lee succumbs to the bite and is either mercy killed by Clementine or asked to be left behind, and she fails to find Christa and Omid anywhere. She wanders across the field, all alone, until she sees two people in the distance...
    • Things go From Bad to Worse at the start of Season 2. Even though she manages to reunite with Omid and Christa, she watches Omid be killed in front of her eyes, loses her hope for a better world and her childlike innocence, and a bunch of scavengers separate her from Christa 16 months later. She ends up lost in the middle of nowhere, an angry dog bites her and when a bunch of survivors find her, they think it is a zombie bite and refuse to give her any help, forcing her to take drastic measures. And that's just the beginning...
    • And again in Season 3 when it's discovered that whether you choose Jane or Kenny at the end of season two, both of them will die, Kenny by sacrificing himself to the walkers as a distraction to get Clem and AJ to safety after a car accident, and Jane by committing suicide after discovering that the reason for her illness is that she's pregnant with Luke's child, which leaves Clementine alone once again to fend for herself and baby AJ.
  • Broken Pedestal: Clementine automatically trusts Lee from the beginning, and you can build that trust through certain actions and by generally being there for her. However, Clementine has a strong moral code, which Lee can offend if he acts over-aggressively or immorally. This trope may occur unless the player acts like the man Clementine expects Lee to be. Tread carefully.
  • Brutal Honesty: Played with, depending on the dialogue options the player chooses: however, some of her answer choices from Season 2 onward are rather crude and straight to the point.
    Clementine: [to Lilly] I don't give a fuck who you are, you evil bitch!
  • Canon Immigrant: In 2021, Clem was officially added to the comic series in a story titled "Clementine Lives" from the Skybound X comic, serving as a pilot for a 2022 self-titled comic featuring her as the protagonist.
  • Captain Crash: She crashes two cars that she drove. The first one was in-between season 2 and 3, provided Clementine went with Kenny; and the second one was in the opening act of Season 4.
  • Character Development: Goes from a relatively normal eight-year-old in Chapter One to a Little Miss Badass who can deal with zombies nearly as well as any adult by Season Two. However, her experiences have considerably darkened her personality by Season Two, especially post-Time Skip. By the time of Season Three, she's become cynical, callous, and more than a little bloodthirsty. Reuniting with AJ tempers this by the start of Season 4 — though by how much is up to the player — and she becomes a more emotionally stable and protective person.
  • Character Tic: By season 4, she's developed a habit of hugging AJ whenever they're given a calm moment or after a tense situation.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Her walkie-talkie.
  • Cheerful Child: Played straight in Season 1 at first but becomes subverted as the season goes on. Averted in Season 2 and completely in season three, but who could blame her?
  • Children Forced to Kill: And not just Walkers. Depending on your choices throughout the game, she can end up taking the life of the Stranger and Lee Everett in Season 1 and Kenny, if you decide to save Jane in Season 2. She reacts as well as you'd expect a kid to.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: In Season 4 Episode 4, she can say "Great, we're totally fucking fucked!".
  • Collector of the Strange: In Season 4, she can collect the skulls of a deer, cat, and boar that she comes across; a toxic mushroom; and a Venus flytrap; and put them on display in her room at Ericson's.
  • Combat Pragmatist:
    • Clem is disadvantaged throughout Seasons 1 and 2, being an average little girl put smack dab in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. She can't reach the head of the adult walkers. Their kneecaps, however, are well within her hammering range. In most other fights, she's not above fighting dirty if she doesn't have many other options, hell, she even makes a screwdriver seem deadly in her hands.
  • Coming Of Age Queer Romance: In season four, she can romance Violet, a girl she meets in the abandoned boarding school that serves as this season's setting. Violet is the first girl Clementine has ever shown romantic feelings for in the series, and she's noticeably shyer when confessing to her than she is if the player chooses to romance Louis, implying that Violet is her Closet Key.
  • Coming of Age Story: Season 2 was about Clementine growing up from a young and naive survivor to a realistic and independent one. In the first half of the season, Clementine's decisions often ended up with violent and deathly results despite how noble and altruistic they were. Clementine learns that empathy is an emotion that must be negated for survival and how to recognise a threat, even if they were once a friend to her. By Season 3, Clementine has become jaded and cautious; and in Season 4 she prioritises protecting Alvin Jr. over everything else.
  • The Conscience: Often, players have reported choosing not to take certain morally-dubious options purely because Clementine was present and reacted with dismay.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Lee in Season 1 is a grown man caught completely off-guard by the apocalypse who's forced to adapt from scratch, whereas Clementine in Season 2 is a little girl who comes of age during it. Lee begins Season 1 as a convicted murderer who's given the chance to start anew and find redemption, whereas Clementine begins Season 2 as someone who had a happy life ripped from her, and who constantly faces the choice of succumbing to corruption. In the final season, Clementine and AJ's relationship become a direct contrast to Lee and Clementine's, with her teaching AJ to survive, like Lee did for her.
  • Cool Big Sis: Towards AJ in The Final Season. She's both his maternal and big sister figure, and practically the only family he's ever known, so AJ looks up to Clementine and seeks her approval.
  • The Corrupter: In Season 4 Episode 3, James can express the concern that Clem has — intentionally or not — been moulding AJ into a bloodthirsty murderer who doesn't think twice about killing others, and can express concern that Clem herself has been walking that path.
  • Cowardice Callout: At the end of Season 4, if Lilly lives, then Clementine has the option to rightly tell Lilly what a Dirty Coward she is for abandoning her faction to save her own skin right at the moment when said faction needs her most.
  • Creepy Monotone: In Season 2, Clementine mostly speaks with a bored, almost sleepy, tone of voice, reflecting her jaded worldview by that point, and it can get even creepier depending on certain choices, the most notable case being in Episode 3 if she chooses to stay and watch Kenny beat Carver to death.
  • Crying After Sex: Clem sheds tears after Ricca takes her virginity at the end of Book 2 of The Walking Dead: Clementine.
  • The Cutie: In Season 1, she is an adorably innocent child who absolutely trusts Lee when she first meets him.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: In Clementine Lives and The Walking Dead: Clementine, Clem's left ring-finger is still intact, suggesting that the "Alone Ending" of season 2 is not canon.
  • Daddy's Girl: Implied to have been this towards her biological father, Ed. He's the one who gave her her iconic baseball cap, and Clementine has always worn it since. She also becomes this towards Lee; even if he's not her real father, he becomes her paternal figure and guardian after the outbreak, and Clementine loves and looks up to Lee a lot.
  • Damsel in Distress: Subverted, She's kidnapped at the end of Episode 4 by the man who was talking to her through the walkie-talkie but she has direct agency in her rescue and she can kill her captor if the player lets her.
  • Damsel out of Distress: She has direct agency in her own rescue, up to and including killing her captor while he is distracted.
  • Deadly Dodging: Twice in Season Two.
    • In "All That Remains", after Winston and her are still dazed from falling to the ground, she moves out of the path of a walker coming for them and lets it eat Winston instead. This may have been accidental, though.
    • In "A House Divided ", she dodges a walker that would've tackled her off the bridge she was trying to cross, leaving it to fall into the waters below.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Becomes really sarcastic as she grows older. Notably, in Season 2 Episode 2, when Luke asks her to climb a ski lift to observe their surroundings, Clementine can retort with the following:
    Clementine: What am I, a monkey?
  • Death Glare: If Lee tells her he doesn't know how to cut hair, she'll complain he'll make her look like a boy, reach up to feel her new hairdo, and then scowl into the horizon. She starts to dish out epic glares in Season 2, including when Reggie pats her on the head. Reggie immediately backs off. She's become a pro of this by New Frontier, and she gives a lot of frightening ones as well in The Final Season.
  • Death Seeker: When asked what would have happened to Clem had she not learned that AJ was alive in Season 3, Kent Mudle stated that — being consumed by anger and having lost her reason for living — she would have wound up picking a fight she couldn't win and getting herself killed.
  • Deceased Parents Are the Best: She had a pretty idyllic upbringing before the apocalypse tore it all away.
  • Declaration of Protection: During her narration on the Final Season prologue, Clementine vows to protect AJ with her life, the same way Lee did for her.
  • Defector from Decadence: Between Seasons 2 and 3, Clementine joined the New Frontier. However, she was eventually exiled for stealing medicine and had AJ separated from her. This experience leads her to hate the New Frontier, David Garcia in particular and she has no problem killing their members.
  • Defiant to the End: In Season 4 Episode 2, when Lilly has Clem dead-to-rights during the final battle, Clem has the option of angrily telling Lilly she'll see her in Hell and doesn't mind waiting.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: In Season 3, she starts to warm up to Javi's family, especially if Javi sides with her and through her interactions with Gabe. By Season 4, Clem has now been defrost but the player can still make her act as an ice queen.
  • Determinator: Clearly she learnt a thing or two from Lee in this regard. Probably the best example of this is when she’s bit by a dog and denied medical attention by the cabin survivors, who lock her in a shed for fear of her turning. What does Clem do? She sneaks out, gets the necessary medical supplies she needs for the wound and stitches herself back up.
    I am still. Not. Bitten.
  • Deuteragonist: Clementine serves this role in Season 1 and 3. In Season 1, she accompanies Lee, who is the protagonist and the story is just as much about her learning to survive the harsh new world as it is about Lee protecting her. In Season 3, Clem serves as the secondary lead to Javi with her own connection to the New Frontier and several flashbacks which show what happened to her between seasons.
  • Disabled Love Interest: A possible protagonist version at first. Losing a finger doesn't stop her from attracting love interests. It even gives them something to bond over if the other happens to lose theirs. Depending on your choices, you can romance Louis or Violet who can either have their tongue cut out or be blinded. No matter your choices, however, Clem will always have her leg amputated in the final episode of season four. She's still with Violet or Louis if you started the romance with either in episode two and they survived, but in the Skybound X comic she leaves them without saying goodbye, having grown dissatisfied with her now-peaceful life.
  • Disney Death: She ultimately gets bit in The Final Season, grows progressively weaker afterwards and finally asks AJ to leave or kill her, just like Lee did with her. AJ raises the ax he has and brings it down on her, before it cuts to black. The game then continues for about 20 minutes (with about two fake-out ending shots) before the reveal that Clementine survived after all as AJ cut off her infected leg.
  • Doom Magnet: You can have her express worries of herself being this during a conversation with Luke in Season 2.
  • Dude Magnet: She seems to be on her way to becoming this as she's grown up. Gabe develops a crush on her in Season 3, and in The Final Season she attracts the attention of both Louis and Violet. In a game of ""Flip", Marry, Kill", Aasim can be left embarrassed if Clementine says she'd "flip" him.
  • Dying Dream: After Clementine is shot in Season 2, she falls unconscious and has a flashback and/or dream sequence with Lee. The game sets it up to be a Dying Dream - but thankfully it is Subverted and she wakes up, injured but alive.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Clem manages to survive through the events of all 4 Seasons, narrowly averts history repeating itself at the cost of her left leg, and gets to live in peace and put her fighting days behind her.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The developers state that the reason she was introduced as soon as possible to show her resourcefulness and ability to be helpful.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Just ask Violet. She and Clementine can become a couple depending on some choices. In The Walking Dead: Clementine she hooks up with a girl named Ricca.
  • Everyone Is Armed: She carries and has been trained to fire a gun for her protection after Chuck tells Lee it's the best thing to do in these times.
  • Evil Counterpart: When Carver calls Clementine into his office in Season 2 Episode 3, he mentions that he sees the same ruthlessness in her that he possesses. Clem can either rebuke him, in which case he maintains she's in denial about her true nature; remain silent; or agree with his assessment.
  • The Exile: In Season 3, she's revealed to be a former member of the New Frontier, having been kicked out for stealing medication out of desperation to save AJ. In Season 4 Episode 2 she's also briefly exiled from Ericson's Boarding School.
  • Eye-Obscuring Hat: After an update, the scene in Season 2 Episode 1 where Clementine tells Rebecca to be nicer to her has the brim of her hat cover her eyes, leaving only her smirk visible.
  • Face Death with Dignity: In Season 4 Episode 2, the option to remain silent when Lilly has Clem dead-to-rights during the final battle will have Clem stare at Lilly before calmly closing her eyes.
  • Fallen Hero: Carver spends most of Season 2 Episode 3 goading Clem and claiming she'll eventually become this. And in the Jane Ending where she turns away the family and threatens them, he's proven right. Season 3 shows her to have become cold and cynical, but not above helping others. In Season 4, she's fiercely protective of AJ but can also be brutally antagonistic towards everyone else. Ultimately however, this is dependent on the player's choice on how much this cruel world has affect Clementine's morality.
  • Fashionable Asymmetry: In Season 3, Javi gives Clementine a new haircut, with a single ponytail pulled to one side rather than the two symmetrical ponytails she sported before. She has the option of criticizing the style, but keeps it throughout Season 4.
  • Fatal Family Photo:
    • When given the chance to look around Clem's house, Lee may find at a photo of Clem and her parents. This may be seen before or after Lee clicks on the answering machine and finds out that her parents succumbed to the infection in Savannah, or may not even be seen at all depending on the player's style of gameplay.
    • An aversion: Clem picks up the part of Lee's family photo that he had ripped with him in it.
  • Fingore: If Clementine went alone with AJ at the end of season 2, a flashback in Season 3 episode 1 reveals that her right ring finger was crushed by a car door while defending AJ from Walkers and she had to amputate half of it.
  • First Kiss: Depending on the player's choice, Clementine's first kiss will either be with Gabe, Louis or Violet.
  • Forced to Watch: Inverted. When Kenny is preparing to kill Carver, Sarita and Luke try to usher her out. Clementine can choose to stay and watch, even asserting her position. When Kenny starts smashing Carver's face in with a crowbar, Clementine starts off wincing and averting her gaze, but quickly settles into a cold glare as Carver's face turns into mush.

    G-L 
  • Girlish Pigtails: Started wearing a pair in her hair after Lee cuts it until Episode 5 of Season 3, where she has Javíer cut her hair even shorter.
  • Good Is Not Soft: Repeatedly losing everyone around her has turned Clementine into a hardened survivor who, despite being riddled with guilt and insecurity, is more than capable of fighting to the bitter end to protect others. This is at its forefront in A New Frontier and the Final Season. In the former she shoots a man from behind and initiates an all-out battle that winds up destroying Preston to protect Javier, kills multiple people without blinking, advocates for poisoning Dr. Lingard to get information about AJ, and is ready to put a bullet in Javier if he lets David in to save him from the herd. In the latter, she can put a knife to a child's throat, doesn't hesitate to bash a friend's skull in, can order Louis and Violet to kill Lilly and Abel, never contemplates surrendering to the Delta (unless they agree to take her alone and leave the others), can encourage AJ's increasing blood-thirst, can torture Abel for information and leave him to turn and plants a bomb on a ship with the express purpose of sinking it with everyone aboard. If Clementine takes the cruel options and is brutal in her treatment of others, this extends to Good Is Not Nice.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Played straight in the first season. Any game over scenes that involve her death cut away to Lee either looking on in horror or getting killed himself. Painfully averted in the second season when Clem becomes the main character. Doubles as a Player Punch when you see the full brutality of some of the second season deaths. Also Take Us Back doesn't show the probably brutal burning of the bite and chopping off her leg.
  • Gosh Darn It to Heck!:
    • If Lee reins in his language around Clementine in the first season, she talks like this in the second.
    • Averted in Season 2 Episode 2. No matter what you do, Clementine will cuss at least once. Given that she's now spent years surrounded by adults who tend to cuss like sailors around her, this shouldn't be that surprising.
    • Back to using substitute swear words in Season 2 Episode 3. (She says "Dang it!" If Troy knocked her out with his rifle.) It's possible the previous unavoidable instance merely "slipped out" on accident due to being surprised by a zombie coming up on her.
    • Averted in Season Three, where Clementine, now more mature and hardened, cusses like a sailor.
    • Season 4 can have her pass this trait on to AJ.
  • Growling Gut: In "Season Two - Episode 1", her stomach growls due to hunger, and she stops at an abandoned campsite to look for food with the help of a dog she's befriended. Unfortunately, he's hungry too and when she starts eating, drama ensues.
  • Guile Hero: Her small and rather weak presence means she has to use her head to bypass most obstacles that aren't an isolated walker. Although it definitely helps that she is a crack shot.
  • Handguns: Clem is mostly seen shooting handguns, likely due to her small stature. The only exception is Javi meeting her carrying a big shotgun in Season 3 Episode 1, and using it to shoot walkers outside Prescott.
  • Handicapped Badass: Played With. If she and AJ ended up being alone at the end of Season 2, Clementine will have to amputate her left ring finger after it gets stuck in a door. It doesn't stop her from shooting and killing more walkers than before.
  • Happy Ending Override: The Final Season of the games ended on a mostly positive note with Clementine finally settling down with AJ and the rest of the surviving kids at Ericson's Boarding School, who have become her Fire-Forged Family of Choice, all while potentially being in a loving relationship with either Louis or Violet. But the official Clementine graphic novel series by Tillie Walden overrides all of this by revealing Clem fell into depression after the events of the game and ultimately decided to abandon AJ without saying goodbye in favor of adventuring north by herself with the intention of never coming back. While AJ does catch Clem trying to sneak out of the school, he fails to convince her to stay or let him tag along, with Clem telling AJ point blank to his face that he can't make her happy regardless of how much they love each other.
  • The Heart: Is this to the group in Season 1. You'd be hard pressed to find any character in the game who wouldn't go to hell and back in order to help her.
  • The Hero: She is the protagonist of Season 2 and Season 4 and the entire video game series overall.
  • Heroes Love Dogs: At one point, she meets a dog named Sam that she takes a liking to. Sam later takes a bite out of her arm over a can of beans, forcing Clem to kill it. By season 4, Clem recalls her previous experience with a dog, but has the option to bond with Rosie, another dog.
  • Ice Queen: In Season 1, Clem is The Heart and probably the warmest and gentle character in the game. By Season 2, the endless trauma she's experienced has taken its toll and she has become much closer to this. Though Clementine will always be more emotionally reserved than she was in Season 1, the extent to which this is true is partially up to you: depending on player choices she can range from simply being quiet and subdued but still the same kind and gentle soul she once was all the way up to being a full-blown Manipulative Bitch. By Season Three, she has fully become this trope to the core. By Season 4, with the player in control of her again, she can be anything from a standoffish Jerkass who only cares about protecting AJ or a cautious but still mostly kind person who is willing to open up to others on her own accord.
  • Iconic Item: Her cap, which was the last thing she got from her parents before the apocalypse began and she's worn it ever since. It also serves as a Berserk Button as she will not take it lightly if someone makes fun of it and she's rarely if ever seen without it. Whenever it does come off, she's quick to put it back on as soon as she can. She loses it for a while in season 4 after the boat battle and AJ saving her by amputating her leg, he will find her hat and retrieve it for Clem.
  • Important Haircut:
    • Gets one from Lee after getting the train up and running. The reasoning is that it'll be harder for walkers, or anyone else, to grab her. She now sports short hair. Although just enough is left for Lee to tie some hairbands in it to give it a bit of a style.
    • She gets another at the end of A New Frontier, when Javier styles it to be side-swept like Mariana's was, making it more of her haircut being important for Javier rather than herself.
  • Improv Fu: She is most definitely an ardent practitioner of this in Season Two. If someone or something is threatening her life she will survive the encounter, whether that involves running, biting, kicking, using anything that's laying around or even letting a nearby Zombie have you for lunch. She'll do anything to get out of there alive.
  • Improvised Weapon: So far she's used:
    • She stabbed Winston with a branch she broke off a nearby log.
    • While struggling with Winston, she kicked him toward a nearby Walker, distracting him while she ran off.
    • This one may either be accidental or Deadly Dodging but after Winston pulled her away from a Walker they both fell on the ground dazed. Another Walker was coming at them during this, so Clementine gets up and runs to the left, leaving Winston in the Walker's path to get eaten.
    • Uses another branch on a Walker tied to a tree to bludgeon it to death.
    • You can hit Sam with the can of beans to get him off your arm.
    • She can hit a Walker with a brick in an unsuccessful attempt to make it let go of her and can later on throw the brick at its head to stun it.
    • She uses a rake as a buffer between her and the Zombie, keeping her distance and eventually shoving it back onto a sharp anchor, which culminates in her...
    • ... smashing its head in with the claw end of a nearby hammer she found earlier.
    • She's still using said hammer come Episode Two (until it falls of a bridge during an encounter with some walkers, at least.) and she's gotten pretty handy with it. Possibly developing tactics like hitting walkers in the back of the knee with it to bring them down to her level and braining them with the claw end. It's hard to pull out, though.
    • She can impale one of the walkers on the bridge up to two times with a metal pole she finds on the bridge and then later use it to bludgeon another walker threatening Luke.
    • She uses a rock to bludgeon a walker in two different flashbacks in Season 3.
    • At the end of Season 3 she is seen stabbing walkers on a bridge with what appears to be a screwdriver. Yes, Clementine has officially started using harmless household repair tools to murder dead zombies.
    • In the first episode of Season Four, she uses her car keys to stab a Walker in the eye in order to escape from its grasp. She of course realizes it is a bad idea as she needed the keys to start her car.
    • In the third episode of Season Four, she puts a makeshift bomb into a furnace. It... does exactly what a bomb in a furnace would do. It goes boom when said furnace is actually turned on.
  • In-Series Nickname: She's often referred to as "Clem" by her friends and allies.
  • Innocence Lost:
    • An entirely optional way of playing Season Two's Episode 3, in which the monstrosities committed by Carver (including, but not limited to, killing Reggie, bludgeoning Kenny in the face repeatedly, and torturing Alvin) can break Clementine. One of the last choices in Episode 3 is whether or not to have Clementine watch Carver be killed by Kenny. If she chooses to watch, then the sequence that follows is effectively Clem losing her innocence, as she starts off flinching and looking away, but ends with a cool, emotionless expression as Kenny smashes in Carver's face with a crowbar. By the time of Season 3, she's a cynical, callous pragmatist used to looking out only for herself, but given how much crap has occurred in her life up to this point, we can't say we blame her.
    • Possibly twice, to The Stranger. The first time she can hit him from behind while you're talking to him, possibly using a weapon or by simply hitting him herself. The second time depends on if you do badly during the ensuing fight. She headshots him from behind to save Lee's life.
    • If she keeps the gun in Season 2 Episode 3, she can shoot Carver from behind instead of jumping on him.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With Lee, who serves as her Parental Substitute. Later develops one of her own with little Alvin Jr.
    • Most of her relationships in seasons 1-3, actually. In season one, the only other kid she interacts with is Duck (maybe Ben if you consider him a kid), and she seems to be on good terms with everyone else in her group, with special mentions going to Lee, Kenny and Omid and Christa. In season two, once again, the only other kid in the group is Sarah, which Clem can but doesn't have to be friendly. She can develop a strong bond with Luke, Jane, and keep being good friends with Kenny. Walter also seems to be impressed by Clem and is kind to her. In season three, again, she can develop a friendship or a crush with Gabe, but she's once again the youngest person in her group. She can be friends with Kate, but develops a friendship with Javier, who she will always regard as a friend. Subverted in season four, where for the first time most of her group is her age or slightly younger.
  • Is That Cute Kid Yours?: People frequently assume that she is Lee's daughter, partially because they're both black. Only Christa can tell they don't look related at all. In one of the epilogues of Season 2, Randy asks Clem if AJ is her son in an awkward attempt to break the ice and make conversation.
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: In Season 4, Clementine and her group have a wounded enemy hostage, as his group of raiders are holding three of her friends captive. She can be rough in her words at the least, but otherwise she shows Abel to Beware the Nice Ones, when can go as far as to let Rosie maul his broken leg as a way to make him talk. AJ definitely remembers what he sees from that experience, as the screen will indicate "AJ witnessed you torturing a man".
  • Kick Chick:
    • A mild example, one of Clementine's go to moves is to block an incoming threat with her foot and kick off, usually sending them into something dangerous.
    • After being taught by Jane, she begins to kick Walkers in the knee in order to stun them before stabbing them in the head.
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: She can choose to advocate and even watch Carver get killed.
  • Kid Hero: So far, Clem is looking to be the one by which all others are measured in video games. She starts her journey at 8 years old, and is 11 during Season 2.
    • Kid Hero All Grown-Up: She's All Grown Up in New Frontier, being a hardened survivor at 13 years old. The Final Season takes place when Clementine is 16. In Season 4 Episode 3, Lee even notes in Clementine's dream how much she's grown and how he's proud of what she became.
  • Kill Him Already!:
    • She can urge Luke to do this. Namely, shooting Carver when he's at the group's mercy. Luke reacts as you'd expect, but Kenny doesn't.
    • Clementine's mentality in the confrontation between her, Javier, Tripp, and Conrad versus the goons from The New Frontier.
    • On the player's choice, she can urge AJ to kill Lilly in Season 4 Episode 3.
  • Kill the Ones You Love:
    • First Lee in the first season, then potentially Kenny in the second. This is becoming one hell of a depressing Running Gag. Season Three, thankfully, averts this.
    • The Final Season reveals that she has been preparing AJ to kill her when the time comes, but he outright rejects her teachings because he is completely emotionally dependent upon her to live.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Can be played as this in the new episodes, along with a healthy dose of The Chessmaster.
  • Lady Swears-a-Lot: From Season 3 onward, Clementine begins to curse frequently.
  • The Lancer:
    • In Season 2 Episode 4 Clementine becomes one to Jane when they are alone and towards the end of the episode she becomes one to both Kenny and Luke.
    • In Season 3 she becomes one to Javi, accompanying him and backing him up in combat.
    • In Season 4, she becomes the Number Two to Violet when she becomes the leader of Ericson's Boarding School.
  • The Leader:
    • In Season 2 Episode 4 Clementine has stepped up to take a more leadership role. All of the supporting characters are dealing with their own problems, conflicts, and characterizations that removes them from being able to be leaders. Jane is a aloof and reserved, Rebecca is pregnant and scared, Bonnie and Mike are unwilling to step up to leadership roles, Luke spends most of his time checking the perimeter or having sex with Jane, and Kenny becomes emotionally compromised from Sarita's death. This leaves Clementine to become the pseudo leader. This is shown by Clementine getting the final word in every decision in Amid the Ruins even if other characters are the ones to come up with ideas and she's the one who has to try and resolve all the individual conflicts and problems of the other characters while also being in the center of dealing with the main conflict of Rebecca's child being born. This is an interesting case because when Clementine's alone with Jane she becomes her The Lancer. and in the end of the episode, she becomes Kenny and Luke's The Lancer.
    • In Season Four, although she serves as Violet's second-in-command at Ericson's, Minnie considers Clementine as the de facto leader of the school since everyone there follows her command. This is especially true if Violet is captured in Episode 2. At the end of the final episode Clementine — who lost her leg and can no longer fight — fully steps up to take on the mantle of leader in the boarding school, giving out orders, assigning tasks, and establishing connections with other communities.
  • Leitmotif: "Alive Inside". Plays generally during Lee and Clementine's bonding moments. Like the circumstances of her life, it is heart-breakingly tragic yet oddly hopeful.
  • Like a Daughter to Me: The likes of Jane, Kenny and Lee see as such. But by season 2, Jane and Kenny's thoughts of her become unhealthy and almost threatening.
  • Little Girls Kick Shins: A weaponized example. Because of her small size, Jane teaches her to do this towards walkers and it ends up being a valuable skill she utilizes throughout the series.
  • Little Miss Badass: Goes with learning how to use a gun in Episode 3 of Season 1. If you bring her along with you at Crawford, she will kill her first walker to save Molly. She can possibly save Lee from The Stranger in Episode 5. Oh, and she's only 8-9 years old by then.
    • Clementine takes this trope up a notch in Season 2, being now 11 years old and used to live in a post-apocalyptic world. Her survival baggage thanks to Lee makes a lot of characters impressed how skilled and determined she is at such a young age. If chosen to, she can possibly watch Kenny beat Carver to death with a crowbar, and stare without budging as he does so.
    • By New Frontier, she's 13 years old, but all her previous losses caused her to harden considerably. She saved many characters more than once, and is even able to tackle David, a grown man, to the ground and point a gun at his head like it's nothing.
  • Little Miss Snarker: She has her moments in Season 1. Season 2, however, has her being a good bit more witty, probably as a result of her experiences.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: In Season 4 Episode 2, Violet tells Clem that she can no longer imagine life without her.
    • Clem is also this to AJ, to the extent that confesses that he would rather die than live without her.
  • Living Lie Detector: As you'll discover if you try lying to her, she has a natural talent to discern when people are being dishonest. This foreshadows a crucial moment near the end of Episode 4, where she will be able to tell if you lie and be heart-broken if you do so. None of the other options lead to a better resolution.

    M-R 
  • Mama Bear: By the time season 4 rolls around, Clementine is fiercely protective of AJ. Clem often puts herself in danger in order to keep AJ outside the line of fire or forbids him to do amoral and dangerous things, such as calling dibs on Abel.
  • Man Bites Man:
    • Well, little girl bites man. She bites Winston while trying to break free from his grip, after he caught up to her and grabbed her. She bites down so hard she draws blood.
    • Gets a Call-Back when Luke does the same thing. Clementine once again bites down hard enough to draw blood.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Seems to be an option in Season Two if you pick the "jerk" choices. So far you have the option of:
    • Blackmailing Alvin into getting you supplies by threatening to tell his wife he was talking with you behind her back.
    • Blackmailing Rebecca with how you heard her wondering who the father of her baby is, implying an affair.
    • Not necessarily a "jerk" option but you have the choice of breaking out the Puppy-Dog Eyes when The Cabin Group is deciding what to do with you.
    • Agreeing to be Sarah's friend can be this, depending on the player's motives.
  • Master Archer: The Final Season has her being the first Walking Dead protagonist to use a bow and arrow, and she gives Lara Croft a run of her money with her archery skills.
  • Menstrual Menace: In Season 3 Episode 4, Clem confides in Javi that she's started bleeding, and asks him why. Javi can choose to awkwardly give her The Talk.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Lee dies at the end of Season 1, leaving Clem to fend for herself until Christa and Omid are found. Discussed in the trailer for Season 4, when she sternly asks AJ what to do if she's bitten. In the final episode of Season 4, she is bitten, and even asks AJ to either kill her or leave her—but ultimately this trope is averted, as AJ amputates her leg instead, removing the walker bite and saving her life.
  • Morality Pet:
    • Seems to be this for Lee, and therefore the player.
    • Clem is this for a lot of the characters. In Episode 4, when the group is voting whether or not to leave Ben, Christa initially elects to leave him, but when Clementine speaks up about not leaving friends behind, Christa then abstains. Also, if your relationship with Kenny has been... mixed, he'll still elect to go with you looking for her out of fondness for her. Ben can be called to go looking for her because she defended him (and brings up her safety when he tries to convince Lee to let him die), and then there's this gem from Larry:
      Larry: I don't give a shit about what happens to you, but if ''anything'' happens to my daughter or that little girl you got with you, heh, you watch your ass.
    • Telltale even created a Twitter hashtag "#ForClementine" just before the release of Episode 5.
    • Taken to new levels in Season Two, with Kenny and Jane. Clementine is the only one who can reliably get through to either of them when they are unstable, and the new group frequently asks her to talk to them when there's trouble. This is deconstructed in "No Going Back", where no matter how hard Clementine tries, Kenny and Jane will both lose it and turn on each other, and Clementine is forced to kill one to save the other.
    • In A New Frontier, she is the one person Gabe is never rude to, even nice towards, which can be explained by the huge crush he has on her.
  • The Musketeer: Tends to hold a handgun and a melee weapon on her at all times. In Season Four, she initially fights walkers with just a knife — having given her revolver to AJ — but after acquiring a bow, she can use either one.
  • My Greatest Failure: Depending on player choices, she can blame herself for Lee's death in Season 2. Season 4 sadly confirms that even seven years later, she still blames herself.
  • Nice Girl: In Season 1, she's about as sweet, considerate, and gentle as can be, always wishing the best for everyone in her group and showing concern for them whenever things go even slightly wrong for them. She can keep this up in Season 2 if the player chooses to. More or less averted in Season 3, but then again, losing as many people as she has would take its toll on anyone. Depending on player choices, she can go back to being her kind, considerate self in Season 4, albeit with a Good Is Not Soft approach.
  • Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: In Season 1 Episode 4, the player can find a drawing Clementine made of Lee digging a grave for the zombie boy found in the attic. Notable because this is the last drawing Clementine makes in the entire series so far.
  • No Full Name Given: We never do learn what her last name is. This is very strange considering the setting, at least someone should have asked her about it or Clementine herself should have told someone. It's doubtful that we'll ever learn what it is. Season one co-creator Jake Rodkin stated that her surname was originally "Crawford", before a community under that name was created in episode four of the first season.
  • No Periods, Period: Averted by the 4th episode of Season 3, where Javi comes across her looking for something to deal with the bleeding and she asks him what's happening to her.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: As shown in the comics and TV series, raising a child during a zombie apocalypse is a rather hard task, let alone a baby. Clementine however, at the age of 11, manages to raise an infant alone and to an extent herself while on the run (regardless of the ending of Season 2) and does a pretty good job.
  • Orphan's Ordeal:
    • While it's established early on for the player (and for Lee) that Clementine's parents are dead, she herself remains completely unaware for most of Season 1 and insists on trying to find them when possible, despite Lee's awkward attempts to address the subject. When she finally finds out the truth in Episode 5 (via seeing them as walkers with her own eyes), she takes it about as well as you'd expect.
    • In Season 3, when Gabe laments how "parents always think that we can't hear them", she makes an offhand comment about not knowing about that, due to her parents' deaths during the events of Season 1.
  • Outdoorsy Gal: She used to spend days playing in her treehouse instead of playing at home or watching cartoons before the apocalypse.
  • Parental Abandonment: Her parents were in Savannah when the outbreak hit, leaving her with a babysitter who was bitten during the first day, meaning that Clementine spent almost three days by herself in her treehouse. Unbeknownst to her, Lee finds messages on the answering machine in her house revealing that Clementine's parents were almost certainly already dead by the time Lee met her and she finally sees their undead corpses herself in Episode 5 after she and Lee escapes the Marsh House. Making it worse, Lee is already bitten himself by this point, forcing Clementine to either put him down or leave him to turn, leaving her completely alone.
  • Parental Hypocrisy: Depending on your choices, Clementine can be guilty of this trope to varying degrees in The Final Season.
    • In the first episode, if Clem told AJ to watch the swears. Regardless of your dialogue choices, she still swears like a sailor, even in AJ's presence.
      AJ: You said shitbird before!
      Clem: Do as I say, not as I do.
    • For a much less lighthearted example from the final episode, if she told AJ to spare Lilly to keep him from becoming a brutal cold-blooded killer, which led to James' death, and performed brutal actions in front of him (such as killing the raiders on the boat or torturing Abel), he will mercilessly call her out on every single one of these instances. Clem can only plead him to stop acting out in her defense, which thankfully prompts him to apologize. If Clem instead tells AJ to kill Lilly, she is horrified by him saying he enjoyed doing so despite having the option to be belligerent to everyone she meets, take every opportunity to encourage AJ to be ruthless, and commit brutal and cruel actions in front of him — which both AJ and James call her out on.
  • Parental Substitute:
    • Lee took on the role of her substitute father after he stumbled into her family's yard during the earliest days of the outbreak, looking for help for his injured leg. He would go on to take care of her during the months spent at the Motor Inn, and taught her how to defend herself and survive during the train journey to Savannah.
    • Clementine herself became this to A.J due to the death of his biological parents. Since she was still basically a child herself, she had a much more difficult time than Lee did with her.
  • Parents as People: After the deaths of A.J.'s parents, Clementine became his guardian and adoptive mother. Since she was only eleven at the time, she had trouble being his guardian and she can admit in "The Final Season" that she was never taught how to be a parent in the first place. Although she loved A.J, she just didn't know how to handle the responsibilities of parenthood.
  • Passive-Aggressive Kombat: She can engage in this with Rebecca in Season 2:
  • Pink Is Feminine: In Season 1, she mentions one of her favorite colors is pink. The flower stickers she puts on her walkie-talkie are pink, and her subtitles are pink in Season 1, 3 and AJ's playable segments in The Final Season.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: As she grows older, Clementine is still quite short compared to most adults but still capable of fighting walkers and hostile humans twice her size.
  • Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Clementine goes from 8 at the beginning of Season One to turning 9 just before the end. After the time skips in Season Two Episode 1, she's now 11. Time has skipped once more in season three, putting her at the age of 13 going on 14. Season 4 is set around three years later, with Clem being roughly 16 years old.
  • Plucky Girl: She starts off as one, as scared of her situation as a child would be but maintaining a mostly optimistic attitude. On top of just coloring pictures, she contributes to the group every now and then, finding the boat in the shed and possibly putting in her two cents on whether they should let Ben stay or not. Overall, she does fairly well for a child in the apocalypse. As things become more and more dire, however, her optimism runs out to the point until she's effectively jaded.
  • Precision F-Strike: If she shoots Kenny at the end of Season 2, Clementine can give one of these to Jane after she reveals that she intentionally goaded him into going berserk.
    Clementine: You're fucking crazy!
  • Promotion to Parent: Despite only being eleven, in several of Season 2 Episode 5's endings she's looking after Alvin Jr. by herself. By season 4 she basically can take up the role of big sister figure and mother by teaching AJ proper social skills, food etiquette, etc.
  • Protectorate: To Lee in Season 1, big time. It extends to a lot of other characters, such as Kenny and the members of the cabin survivors once they warm up to her.
  • Purple Is Powerful: In Season 2, the girl is dressed head to toe in purple. Her shoes, shirt, sleeves (striped white and purple) and the accessories she wears in her hair are all purple. The only things she wears that aren't purple are her pants (grey) and possibly her hat (which seems to be a bluish color but it's too dark to be sure). As for the powerful part: man, have you seen the rest of the page? In "A New Day", if you listen to Clementine and Katjaa talking long enough, Clementine will mention that purple is her favorite color, which makes this also ironic.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
    • In Season 2 Episode 4, Clementine has the option of laying into Kenny after Sarita's death, accusing him of feeling sorry for himself and acting like he's the only one who's lost loved ones to the Walkers, telling him (depending on your choice in Season One) that she had to shoot Lee and to man up and get over it. He reacts about as well as you'd expect a hot-tempered mentally-unstable guy to react.
    • In Season 4 Episode 4 Clem can give a brutal one to Lilly if the raider survived the previous episode. No matter what options you pick Clem will brutally tear into Lilly, calling her out on her cowardice for abandoning her own people, telling her that she deserves to be alone after all the terrible things she's done and calling her pathetic to name a few options. By the time she's done Lilly can't even muster up a response and sadly turns around and leaves. The character options at the end of the episode will even note the Clementine left Lilly feeling "shamed."
  • Retired Badass: At the end of the series, Clementine is no longer able to fight walkers efficiently after losing a leg and now spends her new peaceful life leading her community.
  • Rugged Scar: Depending on what Clementine decides to do at the end of Season Two, she will have a different wound when you meet her in season three:
    • If the player decides for Clementine to go alone with AJ, somewhere between Season 2 and Season 3, Clementine will have lost part of her left ring finger.
    • If the player decides for Clementine to have stayed with Kenny, Clem will have a scar above her right eyebrow possibly from the car accident that indirectly causes Kenny's death.
    • If the player decides for Clementine to have stayed with Jane, Clem will have "AJ" tattooed on her right hand by Jane.
    • If the player decides for Clementine to go with Kenny and stay at Wellington, Clem will have a bullet wound on her right cheek.
    • Regardless of what happens in the above circumstances, however, Clementine will always get a nasty scar on her left arm after getting bitten by a dog in Episode 1 of Season 2. Luke will acknowledge this after the wound's been stitched up, but he notes that scars are better than stumps.

    S-Z 
  • Sassy Black Woman: She gains a tremendous number of snarky responses in Season 2, and she only gets sassier and more hotheaded as she grows older.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In Skybound X, Clementine sneaks away from Ericson's in the middle of the night. When AJ confronts her, she tells him that since Ericson's is part of a coalition of settlements and AJ is finally safe, she's no longer happy there and is going to embark on a new journey without him or her other friends. Clementine Book One later confirms that Clementine left because she felt that everyone in Ericson's saw her as a liability after losing her leg.
  • Security Blanket:
    • Her walkie-talkies, which she used to communicate with her parents from her tree house. One ends up smashed at the end of episode one, with the other accidentally taken by Glenn when he leaves.
    • Turns out it isn't nearly as broken as it seemed. At the end of Episode 3, it's revealed that Clementine appears to have been communicating with an unknown man in Savannah who claims to know where her parents are.
  • See You in Hell: She can possibly say this in defiance to Lilly in The Final Season when she has a rifle barrel pointed at her forehead.
  • Self-Surgery: In Season 2 Episode 1, Clem uses an ordinary sewing needle, fishing wire, and peroxide to clean up and stitch a dog bite.
  • Senseless Phagia: Eats a piece of Mark's leg if Lee fails to stop her.
  • She's All Grown Up: In Season Three, it's pretty clear that the Cheerful Child that players met in the treehouse is very much gone. Clem starts out a hot-tempered, aggressive loner looking out for number one, and eventually confides in Javier that she's started menstruating.
  • She Who Fights Monsters: She can become this over the course of Season 2, to the point that the psychopathic Carver sees her as a Worthy Opponent and claims they're alike.
  • Ship Tease:
    • With Gabe in A New Frontier. This can be seen in her attitude towards him in that she actually acts more like herself near him. She is visibly concerned when he takes Gabe hostage, and accepts a pistol from Gabe. She later calms him down when she tells him to watch her back while she and Javi look for the truck. She later plays cards with him in the truck. This has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the group, with Eleanor, Kate and Javi, though he can claim Implausible Deniability, and more blatantly for the player.
    • In Final Season, Louis blatantly flirts with Clementine, and she has the option of flirting back. Violet more-subtly hints that she's also developing a crush on Clem. This becomes much more blatant in the second episode for both of them, and Clem can outright confess that she's in love with one of them.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: Clem gives a very threatening tone to Lilly if she ever brings up Lee again while having an arrow pointed at her.
    Clementine: Don't. Don't ever say his name.
    Lilly: I knew Lee better than y—.
    Clementine: EVER!
  • Speak Ill of the Dead: She can potentially do this if the player picks certain choices. When she tells Violet how she knows Lilly, she can say that her father, Larry, was a racist asshole and Lilly defended everything he did. She can later tell Lilly that she always hated Larry ever since she first met him or that Lilly is an asshole just like he was.
  • Start of Darkness:
    • In Season 2 Episode 5, if Clementine stays with Jane the ending where she doesn't let the new family into Carver's abandoned settlement can feel like this for her character.
    • Also in Episode 5, if Clementine chooses to let Kenny kill Jane, she's given the option of shooting him in the head right afterwards. Do so, and she'll have murdered someone in cold blood for the first time. Suddenly, the Thou Shall Not Kill days of Season 1 feel very far away indeed.
  • Stealth Expert: In Season 2, she's the one everyone turns to if they need something done involving being sneaky. One of the advantages of still being a kid is that you're smaller, lighter and more agile so you're less likely to get noticed moving around.
  • Stepford Snarker: A possible interpretation of how she uses sarcasm and Brutal Honesty as a coping mechanism for her past traumas.
  • Straight Gay: Or rather, bi. Seasons 4 gives Clementine the option of getting into a romantic relationship with Louis or Violet, with the latter making it possible that Clem is into both genders.
  • Stop, or I Will Shoot!: In Season 3, Episode 3, if Javier moves to let David into the warehouse, Clem fires a warning shot and snaps at him not to let his brother David in, who she thinks killed AJ.
  • Supporting Protagonist: She ultimately serves as this in season two. The first two episodes are about the new group as a whole, with special emphasis on Nick in episode 2. The last half of the season is centered more on Kenny's losing his sanity and his rivalry with both Luke and Jane.
    • Downplayed in New Frontier: Clem is still a playable character, but only in flashbacks. Her story is treated separately from The Garcias', although she's a major aid to them.
    • Downplayed in Season Four while the story is about her, and she still plays a very important role, a lot of the story is about AJ’s development and what he learns from Clementine she’s not even the playable character in the ending
  • Survivor Guilt: The majority of the dialogue choices when talking with Luke at the dinner table will lean in this direction. She feels responsible for Lee's death as she decided to go with the stranger to the Marsh House in Season 1 Episode 4, which led to Lee getting bit by a walker. She may also feel this way with Omid, who was shot by Michelle at the beginning of Season 2, with the situation being caused by Clem leaving her gun out for anyone to take.
  • Talking in Your Dreams:
    • In Season 2 Episode 5, Clementine converses with Lee in a dream set in the RV from Season 1, after she was shot by Arvo.
    • Lee returns in Season 4 Episode 3 in Clementine's dreams, this time on the train from Season 1, and passes on words of wisdom to inspire Clem before her mission against the Delta.
  • The Talk: By the time of A New Frontier, she's going through puberty, and while she's aware that periods exist, due to the other women of the groups she's been part of, she doesn't actually know what it means, leaving an extremely awkward Javier giving her a very bare-bones explanation before telling her to ask Kate for actual information.
  • Thinking Out Loud: As expected of a playable character in a point-and-click adventure game.
    Clementine: Well Clementine, you sure did raise a weird kid. Hm, no kidding, Clementine. Maybe 'cause you're the sort of person who talks to herself when she's alone.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: In Season 2, she says this word for word when she is about to suture her wound after she was bit by a dog.
  • Tomboy: Before the outbreak, she played in her treehouse instead of dolls or watching cartoons, although in Season 2 she grumps that she hated it. She also played soccer, which she also tells Lee that she didn't like.
  • Tomboyish Baseball Cap: Her baseball cap was a gift from her father, and she keeps it throughout all seasons.
  • Tomboyish Ponytail: After Javi cuts her hair, Clementine wears her hair in a single side ponytail.
  • Took a Level in Badass: By the time of Season 3, Clem has gone from an innocent eight-year-old girl to a tough-as-nails thirteen-year-old gunslinger. By season 4 at sixteen or seventeen years old she is able to disarm and beat the crap out of a boy twice her size with little to no effort.
  • Took a Level in Cynic: Since the death of those precious around her, Clementine loses most of her childhood innocence and becomes a colder person and this becomes worse as the series progress.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Entirely optional in Season 2, but also entirely possible if you consistently choose to be as mean and manipulative as the game allows you to be. Justified by the previously sweet and innocent Clem undergoing now around two years of barely surviving and losing everyone she knows and loves. By the time of Season 3, living by herself and losing everyone she loves has hardened Clem into a cynical and callous Ice Queen — though interacting with the Garcia family and learning AJ is still alive can help defrost her. Season 4 also gives the option of being aggressive and rude towards everyone.
    Eleanor: [to Javier] That girl... Clementine... there's something cold behind her eyes.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: Compared to Season 3, having AJ back in Season 4 results in Clementine acting more like her old self. Of course, as noted above, the player can still pick abrasive and/or aggressive dialogue options.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill:
    • Clementine believes in this wholeheartedly. The surest way to make Clem displeased with Lee is to kill someone.
    • Deconstructed in that this is heavily implied to merely be a reflection of Clementine's soon-to-be-lost innocence, as a hardline "no killing" approach in the midst of an apocalypse, during which there's no system of law and order, isn't very practical. Clem may learn this the hard way in the Season 1 finale, where it's possible for her to have to kill the Stranger herself to save Lee's life, much to Lee's dismay. Even if Lee kills the Stranger, it's telling that Clementine expresses no disapproval of his decision, and in fact seems to support it.
    • This can also be heavily played with in Season 2, Episode 3, as Clementine has the option of snapping at Luke to shoot Carver in order to shut him up, and watching Carver get his face carved in with Kenny and actually approving of it, first flinching and closing her eyes but by the end glaring coldly as Kenny basically destroys his face showing she has zero issues with people being killed anymore.
    • The trope is further deviated from when Clementine kills Eli in the first episode of A New Frontier since even though she didn't expect any of the bullets to work and therefore she didn't intend to kill him it still may show that she has an increased carelessness for human life by firing the bullets even if she didn't expect any to work.
    • In the first episode of The Final Season two choices may relate to this trope and how Clementine may keep to the trope or not: Clementine may spare a walker couple and not take their key as they seemed to request in a note in favour of instead getting AJ to crawl through a gap to open a door from the other side and that may have the trope taken to even include walkers by acknowledging their request from before they were walkers and leaning more toward averting the trope, Clementine later has the option to push an adult stranger called Abel toward and out a window to walkers after he requested some of the food they're collecting by holding her and AJ at gunpoint and a reasonable assumption would probably be that Clementine knows that pushing him in that way would risk his life.
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: By Season 2, after suffering an endless succession of traumatic experiences, Clem can be seen sporting one of these at times. It's actually how her older self is introduced after the Time Skip with the camera focusing in on her face.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: In Episode 2 of Season 1, she says how she loves apples if you give her the apple slice.
  • Tragic Keepsake: Over the years, Clementine kept several mementos of the people she had lost:
    • Her walkie-talkie, which she abandons in Episode 5 after all the hell it caused her.
    • Clem picked up the part of Lee's family photo that had him in it. Lee ripped off that part of the photo himself in the first episode. It turns out she also still has the crayon drawing she did of Kenny.
    • Her hat, which was given to her by her father.
    • If Clem decided to stay at Wellington, Kenny will give her his hat. When Wellington was attacked in between Season 2 and 3, Clem can take it with her before escaping.
    • If Gabriel dies in Season 3, he will give her his playing cards.
    • If Violet dies in Season 4, then the button she gave Clem can be considered this.
  • Trauma Conga Line:
    • In Season 1 Episode 5. Her parents are dead, and the one person she's grown dependent on, she has to either abandon or Mercy Kill. No wonder she looks depressed beyond belief during The Stinger.
    • Season 2 might as well be Clementine's Trauma: Part II. The following happens in order: She inadvertently gets Omid murdered, lost Christa during a fallout with bandits, was bitten by a dog, nearly shot by Nick, is forced to stay in a shed in harsh conditions, has to choose between saving Pete or Nick (saving Pete is futile), finds and reconciles with Kenny (who is obviously broken in some ways), is taken hostage by Carver, spends time at his jail-camp, has to watch Reggie be killed, has to watch Kenny be beaten to near death by Carver to protect her, possibly watches Carver literally beaten to a pulp, has to endure yet another zombie hoard, has Carlos killed right in front of her, could possibly chop of Sarita's arm and kill her even if she doesn't, has Kenny completely lose it on her in a completely unfair argument, could possibly leave Sarah to die in the trailer, has to watch as Kenny goes farther down, watches as a friend (Jane) leaves for good, and, just when the arrival of the newborn baby brings hope of peace, she can possibly kill a reanimated Rebecca and be caught in the middle of a shootout, gets shot, watches Luke die even if she tries to save him, and is forced to either kill Kenny or allow him to kill Jane.
    • In Season 3, she reveals she joined the New Frontier in order to better provide for AJ, but when he fell ill, they refused to help her, so she stole medicine in an effort to save him. She was caught and kicked out, told that her efforts were futile, and AJ — who she had hoped would be the one person she cared about who wouldn't die — was taken from her.
  • Unexpected Virgin: At the end of Book Two of The Walking Dead: Clementine, Ricca asks Clementine if she's ever had sex before. Clementine says that she hasn't and isn't even sure she fully understands what sex is, so Ricca offers to show her—the issue ending with Clem shedding Tears of Joy as Ricca takes her virginity.
  • Unkempt Beauty: For a young girl growing up in a zombie apocalypse where showers are rare and where she spends most of her time covered in walker guts to survive, she remains adorable-looking nonetheless.
  • Use Your Head: She wins the struggle over a gun against Minerva in the Season 4 finale by knocking her down with a headbutt.
  • Violently Protective Girlfriend: Clementine is shown to be protective of her love interests, as seen with Gabe, Louis or Violet. She does not hesitate to jump at their aid when they're in any sort of danger. Considering all the losses she lived, it's understandable.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: In "A House Divided" at least, a lot of the dialogue options toward Luke are pretty snarky/insulting but it comes off more as Clementine busting Luke's chops than her actually hating him, giving them this vibe, on her side, at least.
  • Walking the Earth: From Season 1 to Season 4, Clementine has visited at least 5 different states, having traveled from Macon, Georgia to Savannah in Season 1; then to North Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio in Season 2; and finally at Virginia for both Season 3 and 4, coincidentally where Rick's group currently are in the comics.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Not very strong physically, but she's pretty handy with a pistol after Lee teaches her how to shoot. In the first episode of Season 2, at least, she doesn't have a gun, so she has to use the environment to her advantage whenever she's caught in a confrontation to survive.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • Certainly isn't immune to this in Season 2, as Kenny gives her a huge mouthful at the beginning of Episode 4 blaming her for Sarita's death.
    • In Season 4, most of Clementine's choices can get her reprimanded by other characters, especially on how she teaches AJ.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Clementine is cynophobic; she developed a fear of dogs after Sam the dog attacked her in order to get more food from her. In the final season, Clementine was frozen in fear when she first met Rosie after she killed a walker. Clementine can overcome this through her interactions with her.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years:
    • She's incredibly mature and level-headed for someone her age and in her situation. Notice how she responded in Episode 2 of Season 1 after Ben's brought to the Motor Inn. She quickly realizes that some of the adults are hostile towards Ben, and about to go at it and pulls him away, saying that she wants him to look at her drawings, but it's clear to her (and us) that it would be best to keep the shell-shocked teenager from overstaying what little welcome he has. This has actually made her one of the most popular characters in the game.
    • In Season 2, Sarah mistakes her for being close to her own age (Sarah is 15, by the way). Correct her on this and Sarah will say she doesn't seem like she's that much younger. This could either be because Sarah has a disorder of some kind as her father may have been hinting or because after all she's been through Clementine isn't very child-like anymore.
    • In Season 2, Episode 2, Bonnie will tell Clementine that she would have thought she was older, if Clementine tells her she is eleven.
  • Worthy Opponent:
  • You Lose at Zero Trust: Averted in Season 1 and 3. No matter what Lee or Javi did to make Clem angry at them, she will still love the former no matter what and comes to see the latter as a friend and someone she is looking forward to seeing again.
  • Zombie Apocalypse Hero: The apocalypse has forced Clem to become a hardened and resourceful survivor that has to know how to deal with both walkers and people. After Lee died, she had to teach herself how to be a Little Miss Badass, the result is arguably one of the finest examples of this trope.

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