Clementine is a character in The Walking Dead video game series, a spin-off of Robert Kirkman's comic series of the same name, and was created by Telltale Games. An original character developed for the games, she serves as the series' main protagonist and one of its playable characters. She is voiced by Melissa Hutchison and was written by several writers, including Gary Whitta.
Clementine is introduced in the first season as an 8-year-old girl left in the care of her babysitter, Sandra, while her parents are out of town at the start of the zombie apocalypse. She is found and cared for by Lee Everett, another survivor, who helps her search for her parents and becomes a father figure to her while teaching her how to survive. Lee is eventually bitten, and after a tearful goodbye, Clementine continues travelling with other groups. Over several years, she becomes the guardian of Alvin Jr. (AJ), a child whose parents died during the apocalypse, and raises him in the same way Lee raised her.
Clementine was considered the emotional centerpiece of The Walking Dead game series, with several journalists expressing investment in her fate in a way that few other video game characters had achieved. Following Telltale’s sudden closure during the release of The Walking Dead: The Final Season, Kirkman acquired the game's assets and brought several Telltale staff members into his company, Skybound Entertainment, to complete the season, stating that he felt it was necessary to provide closure to Clementine’s story. The character later appeared in the 2021 series Skybound X and subsequently starred in the comic book series Clementine by Tillie Walden in 2022.
Concept and creation Clementine first appeared in the 2012 episodic video game The Walking Dead. According to the game's creative lead, Sean Vanaman, Clementine was "literally the first idea" for developing the game, with her emotional climax at the finale of the fifth episode being established before any of the game's other dialogue was written. The development team had considered the inclusion of a child in a dark storyline to be similar to previous story elements from Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic, but still had a difficult time of selling the concept originally. They then set to use Clementine as the "moral compass" for the main player character, establishing her as a "smart, honest, and capable girl" that would reflect on choices made by the player. Telltale had considered other backgrounds for Clementine, such as being from a single-parent family, or being the younger sister of the player character, but found that the pre-established emotional bond between the characters did not fit well, and instead opted to make Lee Everett her father-figure. Clementine is Afro-Asian.
Clementine's design was based on art director Derek Sakai's own daughter. Sakai described her as having "a crazy sense of fashion", selecting beloved clothing items to wear regularly. As such, Clementine was given an iconic baseball hat that serves as her connection to her parents. Sakai provided Vanaman with other advice from his fatherhood, offering that Clementine would appear smarter if she did not say as much, while still pointing out character flaws should one get out of line. Much of the game focuses on changes to Clementine's appearances and personality as she comes to grips with the new reality of the zombie-infested world. At the start of the game, Clementine is wearing a clean white dress, but it becomes dirty and soiled throughout the game, "reflecting her loss of innocence", according to Sakai.
Melissa Hutchison, a voice actress that had previously worked on other Telltale games, was selected to be the voice for Clementine. Prior auditions were held, but Vanaman found that children could not grasp the emotion of the role while adults were not able to get the voice as they intended for the character; at one point, for lack of a suitable actress, Vanaman felt that "we were going to have to take Clementine out of the game". Hutchison was able to relate to the character of Clementine, as her life mirrored that of the character, and easily fell into the role of the character during auditions, securing her as the voice for Clementine.
The bond between Clementine and Lee was considered instrumental to the game by Telltale. Gary Whitta described Lee's and Clementine's relationship as "emotionally authentic". To build this relation, Clementine was introduced as early as possible within the first episode; the scene of Lee confronted with Clementine's zombified babysitter was specifically designed to highlight Clementine's likability, resourcefulness, and vulnerability. The writers carefully had to balance elements in this scene, as if, for example, Clementine appeared to be annoying to the player, the emotional bond would be absent and the player would likely make choices without caring about Clementine's fate. Writer Jake Rodkin stated that the difficulties of writing a child character that the player wouldn't want to abandon led to serious discussion about dropping Clementine late in the development process, a week before voice recording was to start. The game designer and writer Harrison G. Pink commented that the in-game decisions were not meant to be good because there couldn't be an optimal play-through. Clementine made those decisions even more difficult, since her presence forces the player to consider protecting her on another level. "It gets way more blurred when you involve Clementine," Pink said. "You have these decisions that are probably the right decisions for the group--she's watching, but then maybe she needs to understand this, but I might scare her because she'll think I'm a crazy person. There's no wrong choice, if you can justify it and it feels properly motivated to you, it's a valid choice."
With the game's second season, Clementine becomes the playable character, a choice that allowed them to continue the themes of the first season while introducing new characters and situations for the second. Telltale was first challenged to try to make Clementine feel like the character that the player, through making decisions as Lee, had groomed. One method this was resolved by was to create the first scenario of the game to put the player in control of Clementine's actions that have disastrous results (the death of one character and being separated from another) as to make the player felt as if they had made those choices and separating them from familiar characters. Further, they had to consider how to present Clementine as a character that could make substantial changes on the world and characters around her despite being a child.
Telltale had intended for The Walking Dead: The Final Season to be their final game featuring Clementine. As they were in the midst of developing and releasing this season, the studio suffered from a major financial crisis, forcing them to lay off nearly all of their staff and shutter existing projects. On this news, Robert Kirkman and others at Skybound Entertainment considered how they could finish the game, as Kirkman felt it was necessary to complete Clementine's story. Skybound brought in a portion of the former Telltale staff that had been working on The Final Season to complete the remaining episodes. In the one-shot spin-off "Negan Lives" comic published in July 2020, Kirkman ended the comic with a letter to the series fans, closing it with "P.S. Clementine Lives", which was taken as a hint that Kirkman may be involved with a means of re-introducing Clementine to The Walking Dead world. Kirkman again alluded to a possible future work involving Clementine at the 2020 virtual New York Comic Con. An issue of Image Comics' Skybound X, featuring stories from various Skybound properties, including one story around Clementine in The Walking Dead universe, was published in July 2021.
A three-book series, titled Clementine, was released by Skybound starting on June 22, 2022, and concluded on June 25, 2025. The series is drawn and written by Tillie Walden. Clementine makes a cameo appearance in the 2021 remaster of Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space, with Hutchinson reprising her voice role.
Appearances
The Walking Dead: Season One Clementine is introduced when Lee Everett takes shelter in her suburban home in Georgia to find refuge from zombies (referred to in-universe as walkers). She is revealed to be hiding from the walkers alone in a tree house as her parents had left for Savannah some time before the apocalypse. Lee offers to take and protect Clementine, hoping that they will be able to find her parents.
They eventually join a small group of survivors, which include Kenny, his wife Katjaa and his son Kenny "Duck" Jr. Following several weeks struggling to survive, the survivors decide to head to Savannah, believing that if they can find a boat, they can find safety away from the mainland. As a choice to the player, Kenny and Lee are forced to euthanize Duck or leave him to re-animate after he is bitten by a walker, causing Katjaa to kill herself. Lee starts to help Clementine learn survival skills such as how to use a gun and why she needs to keep her hair short. As they near Savannah, Clementine's walkie-talkie goes off, and an unknown man tells her to come to meet him at the hotel downtown, the same hotel her parents would have been at.
The survivors meet other people still alive in Savannah and eventually they find a boat. The group prepares to leave but Clementine and the boat go missing, and Lee in his haste to find her is bitten by a walker. Lee convinces the remaining survivors, including Kenny and friends Omid and Christa, to help locate Clementine. Kenny is lost during a walker attack, while Lee ends up separated from Omid and Christa. Lee goes to the hotel to find Clementine held hostage by an insane man who blames Lee for his family's death. They work together to kill the man and escape. Lee covers Clementine and himself in walker guts to mask their scent and as they walk through a horde they find Clementine's parents, both turned. Lee passes out and Clementine drags him into a nearby shelter. Knowing he is about to turn, Lee gives Clementine some last pieces of advice and tells her to meet Omid and Christa. He then asks her to kill him or leave him (a choice left to the player). Later, Clementine has safely left the city. She then goes back to Omid and Christa, They then leave the city and journey across Georgia.
The Walking Dead: Season Two Season Two starts some months after the end of the first season. Clementine has regrouped with Omid and Christa, but her carelessness at a rest stop causes Omid to be killed by a scavenger. Sixteen months later, she and Christa are separated by another scavenger attack, and Clementine joins another group of survivors living in a cabin. She learns that this group is being tracked by a man named William Carver, who believes that one member of the group, Rebecca, is carrying his child.
The cabin survivors move north, hoping to reach the rumored safe place called Wellington. They find a ski lodge inhabited by another group, where Clementine finds Kenny alive. During a walker attack, the combined groups are saved by the sudden appearance of Carver and his minions, who take the survivors as their prisoners to a well-fortified department store. Seeing Carver's ruthlessness leads three other survivors, Jane, Mike, and Bonnie, to join Clementine and the others in plotting an escape before the store is overrun by a mass of walkers. Clementine aids in their escape, and Kenny kills Carver.