The Walking Dead creator based the Governor on a real-life Phillip.

If your name is Phillip and you attended Breckenridge Elementary with Robert Kirkman in Lexington, Kentucky, you’re a dead man. In the latest issue of The Walking Dead Deluxe, the creator recalled naming the comic book’s first major villain after his school bully: The Governor, a sadistic, psychopathic rapist who is ultimately eaten alive by zombies. (In the comics, the Governor’s real name is Brian Blake before he takes his brother Philip’s name. David Morrissey’s version on The Walking Dead television show was Philip Blake and used the name Brian as an alias.)

“In elementary school, the school bully of Breckenridge Elementary in Lexington, Kentucky was a boy named Phillip,” Kirkman wrote in this week’s The Walking Dead Deluxe #101. “So that’s usually my shorthand for sh-tty characters. I will never name a good character Phillip. They will always be a villain to some degree.”

“I also have to be careful not to use that name for every bad/sh-tty character across all my books,” the Invincible and Void Rivals writer continued. Kirkman added that Phillip “was just the first instance of a human being I encountered who did mean things for no reason” and it “made an impression.”

“F— that guy,” Kirkman concluded.

Introduced in The Walking Dead #27, the Governor cut off Rick Grimes’ hand in his second appearance, raped Michonne, decapitated Tyreese, executed Hershel, and caused the deaths of Lori and Judith Grimes during an attack on the prison. (Those those are just a few of the atrocities committed by The Walking Dead‘s most twisted villain.) Michonne would eventually get her revenge on the Governor when she mutilated and tortured him to near-death before gouging out his eye with a spoon.

“Boy was it a controversial issue,” Kirkman recounted in The Walking Dead Deluxe #33 when the issue was printed in color for the first time in 2022. “I always strived to be as brutal as I believed this world could get and not shy away from things… for better or for worse, that was the intent of [that] issue.”

Kirkman and author Jay Bonansinga fleshed out Brian/Philip’s backstory in four novels published between 2011 and 2014: The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor, The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury, and The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor Part One and Part Two.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #101, the latest issue in colorized reprint series, is on sale now from Image Comics.