Lee Everett

Prior to the game's events, Lee, a native of Macon, was a history professor at the University of Georgia. One day, on his way to work, he fell ill and came home to find his wife sleeping with a state senator. In a fit of rage, Lee killed him, and was subsequently convicted of murder. The game opens with Lee being driven to prison by a police officer to begin serving his sentence, only for the car to hit a walker and serve off the highway, followed shortly by the officer turning into a walker. Lee takes shelter in a nearby suburban home, where he finds a young girl named Clementine, who has been hiding from the zombies as her parents had left for Savannah some time before the apocalypse. The two go together and find themselves at the farm of Hershel Greene, where they meet a man named Kenny with his wife and son, Katjaa and Duck. The group are thrown out after an accident kills Hershel's son, forming a small group with survivors, including a woman named Lilly and her father Larry, the latter of which knows the truth about Lee's past.

After holing up in a motel for months, the group meets the St. John family, who invite them to dinner at their family dairy, eventually discovering them to be cannibals who plan to kill and eat his group. After escaping the St. Johns, the group finds a station wagon parked in the woods with supplies, which they take whether Lee supports it or not. In the next episode, the group is forced to flee the motel from bandits and head to Savannah using a train, with Clementine seeking her parents and Kenny seeking a boat. As they approach the city, Clementine's walkie-talkie goes off, revealing the voice of a man who knows of Lee's actions and promises Clementine that she will be safe with him. In Savannah, they encounter multiple characters, including a doctor named Vernon. They secure a boat for their journey, and before Vernon departs, he remarks that he believes Lee to be an unfit guardian for Clementine. Lee later finds Clementine gone, and while searching for her, he is bitten. Lee and the other survivors agree to look for Clementine. He is later given the option to amputate his arm to slow the infection; after choosing to keep or amputate it, the group returns to find Vernon has stolen the boat. Kenny is lost as walkers surround him, and Lee eventually finds his way to the stranger, who explains that he was the owner of the station wagon and believes that Lee is too dangerous to leave Clementine with him. After the stranger is killed, they cover their scent with walker guts and walk through a horde of walkers, where they spot Clementine's zombified parents before Lee passes out.

When Lee awakens, he is out of strength and barely able to keep conscious, but finds Clementine has dragged him to safety. With his time short, Lee helps Clementine secure keys and a gun to escape the city. Depending on the player's choice, Lee either tells Clementine to shoot him and prevent his reanimation or leave him to become a walker.^[1] Throughout the five episodes, the player makes choices as Lee that affect his relationship with others and characters' survival; the first episode has him choose who to save between characters Doug and Carley, while the third episode has Lee deciding whether to keep Lilly in the group after she kills someone over her belief that they were helping the bandits steal from them.

Lee appears in various dreams and nightmares by Clementine in future seasons^{[citation needed]} and the Clementine comic sequel.^[2]

Lee first appeared in the 2012 episodic video game The Walking Dead as the playable character. He is voiced by Dave Fennoy, and was written by multiple people, including Gary Whitta in the fourth episode.^[3] Fennoy received an audition in an email, and after completing it, he received a call confirming that he got the role. The audition asked for actors to portray him in a "very real" fashion, which is a part of Lee's design that attracted Fennoy. He called Lee "complicated", due to his criminal history, his concern for keeping Clementine safe, and the fact that he associates with people that he may not have had it not been for the zombie outbreak. He added that him having a child of his own helped him relate to Lee and Clementine's relationship.^[4] Whitta described their relationship as "emotionally authentic".^[3] Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale Games, compared Lee to Rick Grimes, the protagonist of The Walking Dead comics and TV series. He called him both tough and smart, while also caring. He also called him a "reflection of the player's choices".^[5] Telltale designer and writer Harrison G. Pink commented that it was important to make everything Lee would say believable, and that Lee is a "human being" with "real needs and real fears and real desires". While they wanted to allow players to choose what Lee says, all options are things that Lee would realistically say.^[6] Lead writer Sean Vanaman said that they also wanted to contextualize issues about race within the game; they spent time to write the backstory of events that Lee had faced from racism that led to the confrontation with his wife, and worked to make Lee and other characters' dialog reflect on Lee's experiences rather than including simply stereotypical representations of racial conflict.^[7]