The two most popular shows on television at the moment are pretty gruesome. Both The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are heavy dramas in which characters big and small are constantly killed off. As such, many fans have been wondering which series actually contained the most character deaths, especially since this year will be both of their seventh seasons. Luckily for us, one eagle eyed fan has solved the mystery, and the results are pretty fascinating.
Redditor Nantes Rykaart recently took to the internet with his findings about The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Regarding the two violent dramas, it turns out that The Walking Dead actually has more total deaths, with a staggering 1216 deaths thus far. But it wasn't a total landslide, as Game had 704 deaths. Let's explore how these sums were found, and what they mean for each of the shows.
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The data compiled from both Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead were divided into a few distinct categories: main character deaths, side character deaths, background character deaths, and non-human character deaths. The final category proved to be the ringer for The Walking Dead, as AMC's apocalyptic drama has seen an insane amount of walkers killed throughout the years. Game of Thrones characters are mostly all human, so this category was completely dominated by The Walking Dead.
Game of Thrones, on the other hand, had the background character death category on lock, with 546 deaths, compared to just 161 from The Walking Dead. Once again, this makes perfect sense. Game is constantly killing off background characters, especially in major battle scenes. And since we've seen battles and massacres like The Red Wedding and the Battle of Blackwater, we've seen background actors kills in gruesome and awesome ways. But The Walking Dead takes place during the apocalypse; there just aren't that many humans left in the world to even put a dent in Game's numbers.
The side character and main character deaths are pretty neck and neck for the two shows. Game of Thrones beats The Walking Dead in both categories, but only slightly. So if it weren't for the non-human category, HBO's critical darling would have swept every category.
It should be interesting to see how these numbers change during Game of Thrones final two (short) seasons. Because while The Walking Dead has shown us plenty of zombie deaths from the jump, Game is only just scraping the surface of its undead threat. The White Walkers have the potential to kill everyone, and Dany, Jon, and the citizens of Westeros are going to have to unite to save their world. So whenever the true battle between the dead and living begins, Game of Thrones will most likely pass TWD in all categories.
The Walking Dead is currently airing on AMC, and Game of Thrones is set to return this summer on HBO.
