Stranger (Video Game)

"Do I look like a monster to you?"

- Stranger to Lee.

Stranger (Known as Campman in the game files) was an original character heard and seen in The Walking Dead Video Game. He is a psychotic but calm and calculative man, serving as the main and the final antagonist to Lee's group, driven by a lust for blood against them and fixated on taking Clementine to be raised as his surrogate daughter. He was the owner of the station wagon full of supplies and seeks revenge on Lee and his group for taking it from him.

Location Unknown
Little is known about Stranger's life before the outbreak but is possible that he lived in or near Savannah, Georgia. He mentions that he had a wife named Tess and two children named Adam and Elizabeth. He also said he was a little league coach. While none of his characteristics are explicitly stated, it is implied that he is highly resourceful and intelligent as he was able to support his family and himself for months during the zombie apocalypse.

"Episode 2: Starved for Help"
He does not appear in this episode. However, he was the owner of the station wagon that was looted by Lee's group at the end of the episode.

"Episode 3: Long Road Ahead"
While Clementine is resting next to Lee and Kenny inside the driver's cabin of the train, he attempts to contact her. He says that he is excited that she is coming to Savannah. He informs her that he has her parents, Ed and Diana. He also says to go see him, no matter what Lee says. Lee and Kenny wonder who he is, as they pull into Savannah.

"Episode 4: Around Every Corner"
At the start of the episode, Lee holds the walkie-talkie, so Clementine won't contact him. After a church bell goes off, the stranger contacts the group and tells them, in a very threatening tone, to get off the street for their own safety (as he wants the group alive long enough for him to exact his revenge). Lee can ask who he is, but the man doesn't respond. While Lee is at the house, a man spies on him through the gate while he is burying Fivel (a young child who died of starvation inside his house). Lee sees him but fails to get a good look of the man due to the thick fog. The stranger flees as Lee yells at him. The group then wonder if this was the man who was talking to them on the walkie-talkie.

At the end of the episode, he convinces Clementine to meet him outside so that she can go with him to see her parents at the Marsh House. While she agrees to go with, he soon reveals his true nature and holds her captive within the Marsh House and contacts Lee once again to implement the next phase of his plan; luring Lee and his group into disaster. Lee suspects that Vernon was the one who took Clementine, as he had previously stated that she would be better off with his people. However, when Lee and any survivors he might have convinced to go with him arrive at the hideout of Vernon's group, he and the others are nowhere to be seen. The unknown man contacts him via the walkie-talkie. Lee, still assuming that he is Vernon, demands he reveal himself, but the man denies that he is Vernon, and tells Lee to watch his tone. He says Clementine is safe and sound, and that Lee should choose his next words very carefully.

"Episode 5: No Time Left"
Following the ending of the previous episode, a quick dialogue occurs between Lee and the man on the radio. He assures Lee that Clementine is safe and the only thing he wants is Lee to stop hurting other people. Presuming that the kidnapper and Clementine are in The Marsh House, Lee and the group decide to head that way. After arriving at the hotel, Lee notices the abandoned car from Episode 2 parked in the street. Lee discovers the room where Clementine is, but is held at gunpoint by the Stranger, who finally reveals himself.

The Stranger orders Lee to give up his weapons and sit down. He then reveals that he was the owner of the abandoned car that was looted for supplies by Lee's group in Episode 2. If the player refused to steal the supplies from the car, Lee is given the option to explain that he was against the group's decision. However, the Stranger tells Lee that he didn't want to harm Clementine (she was either one of two or the only one to not take anything from the car) and only wanted to kill everyone else, until he heard about all the bad things she was put through and became convinced that he could take better care of her. The Stranger goes on to explain his earlier life in which he took his son to hunt in the forest, but he lost him in the wilderness. He and his wife searched the forest multiple times to look for their lost son, but were unable to find him.

The Stranger and his family decided to go back to their car only just to discover that their supplies were stolen by Lee's group. This caused a chain of events in which his wife took their daughter and left him after days of starvation and anger. The Stranger found their reanimated corpses on the road the following day. The Stranger was able to sintonize his radio with Clementines' while surveying the radio frequencies. He learnt that she was looking for her parents in Savannah and that her group were responsible for stealing the supplies from his car.

After losing his last bits of humanity and sanity, the Stranger became hungry for blood and vengeance, using Clem to get the information he needed to get his revenge on Lee and his group. Over the next several weeks, the man stalked and watched the group carefully, all the while using the information Clementine supplied him with, including their plan to head to Savannah, to carefully plan out his revenge on the group. When the group left the motel in wake of the bandit attack to make their way to Savannah, the Stranger drives to Savannah as well to arrive at the city before the group does to plan his next move.

He then came up with the scheme to abduct Clementine to make Lee feel his own pain and lure him and his group into a death trap, but had to wait for the perfect moment to present itself to make it quick and quiet. To entice her to separate from Lee, he tells Clem that he has her parents with him in Savannah, knowing that they were likely dead, and she should meet up with him once she arrives. Taking control of the Marsh House and establishing it as his main base within the ruined city of Savannah, the Stranger continued to keep tabs over Lee.

He finally took Clementine to lure Lee and his group into disaster in hopes of finally killing them and having Clem as his new daughter. After explaining his exploits for revenge, the Stranger accuses Lee of all the bad things he has done, based on all the choices the player made until this point of the game, all the while trying to convince Lee that he himself is not a bad man, but a broken father who lost everything to live for except for revenge. Regardless of what choice Lee made, the Stranger will always find fault with his actions and guardianship over Clementine.

The Stranger states his intentions to brutally torture and murder Lee and then take Clementine with him to be raised as his own daughter, believing that this would both satisfy his lust for revenge against Lee and provide him with a good substitute for his family. He then begins to taunt Lee with how little he actually knows about Clementine and what a horrible guardian he has been, bragging about his connection to Clem and occasionally talking down to something within a bowling ball bag laying in front of him on the floor, referring to it as, "Tess".

In this moment of distraction, Clementine is able to escape the closet she was locked in and uses an object on a counter to strike the Stranger (if Lee points at the bottle, kettle or the lamp, she will hit him in the head, if Lee points at the knife, she will impale his shoulder). During the distraction, Lee is able to disarm the Stranger and they start brawling through the room. Lee can either choke the Stranger to death or let him live. If Lee lets him live, he will try to choke Lee instead, and will get shot in the head by Clementine, who picked up his gun from the floor. If Lee choked him to death, he is given the option to shoot him in the head to prevent reanimation or just abandon his corpse there. Regardless of the outcome, he dies a broken man that lost everything and allowed his lust for vengeance consume his humanity. It is later revealed that the object inside the bowling ball bag was actually his wife's reanimated head.

Killed by
While fighting with the Stranger, Lee is given the option to choke him to death or let him live. If Lee chokes him to death, he is given a new option to either shoot him to prevent reanimation or not. Even if he is not shot, Lee and Clementine leave the room before he reanimates.
 * Clementine (Determinant)
 * Lee Everett (Determinant)

If Lee decides not to choke him, the Stranger starts to choke Lee to death instead, but he ends up getting shot in the head by Clementine.

Killed Victims
This list shows the victims Stranger has killed:
 * Lee Everett (Caused)
 * Ben Paul (Indirectly Caused, Determinant)
 * Kenny (Indirectly Caused)
 * Numerous counts of zombies.

Tess
The Stranger and Tess were married and loved each other, however, the apocalypse took a toll on their relationship, causing their love for each other to become strained. When their son, Adam, went missing, and Lee Everett's group stumbled upon their station wagon and stole their supplies, Tess took their daughter, Elizabeth, and left her husband. He went looking for them later on and found them dead in the road.

The Stranger then decapitated Tess, and put her head in a bowling bag. He also took it upon himself to get revenge for his fallen family members, and, he succeeded, to an extent.

Adam
Adam is the Stranger's son, and he obviously loved him. However, their relationship is not well explored upon because Adam was lost and presumably killed in the woods.

Elizabeth
Elizabeth was the Stranger's daughter, and he loved her very much. However, their relationship is not well explored upon because she left with her mother, Tess and was killed by walkers the next day.

Stranger then swore revenge on Lee's group for causing the deaths of his wife and daughter, and succeeded, to a certain extent.

Lee Everett
The relationship between the Stranger and Lee Everett is determined by a decision the player makes in Episode 2. If Lee decides to raid the Stranger's station wagon, he will despise Lee and will openly insult him. If you chose not to raid his station wagon, he will be slightly more sympathetic, saying "I didn't want to hurt you, only your group." Either way, Lee will hate him for kidnapping Clementine, and will try to kill him later on in the episode. The Stranger will also criticize your choices throughout the game, including: Giving Irene the gun to kill herself or refusing to, saving Carley or Doug, whether or not he chose to go to the St. John's Dairy Farm, stealing supplies from his station wagon or not, and dropping Ben Paul to his death or not.

After conversing for a while, Stranger tells Lee he will take care of Clementine, and Lee may even consider letting her stay with Stranger, but, after he talks to the decapitated head in the bowling bag, and Clementine sneaks out of the room she's trapped in, Lee will tell Clem to either stab him in the shoulder or hit him in the head, either way, Stranger and Lee will get into a fight, resulting in Lee choking the Stranger to death, or him trying to kill you, and Clementine shooting him in the head.

However, the Stranger's wish to kill Lee indirectly came into fruition due to his actions.

Clementine
The Stranger talked to Clementine on the radio for weeks leading up to his kidnapping of her. In his delusional state, the Stranger actually cared for and loved Clementine, due to her being the only one (other than Lilly and Lee, possibly) to disapprove of raiding his station wagon, and saying he wanted to "save her" from Lee and his group. Clementine did not return the favor, and appeared to dislike him, despite saying he was nice. If Lee fails to kill the Stranger, Clem will choose Lee over the stranger, and kill him.

Kenny
The two never interacted, but, because he was the main one who wanted to raid his station wagon, it is presumed he hated Kenny the most. Stranger succeeded in killing him, albeit indirectly.

Trivia

 * In the beginning of Episode 3: Long Road Ahead, Clementine is seen talking into her walkie-talkie, most likely to him, as Lee and Kenny return from their trip to the drug store.
 * It was his station wagon that Lee's group had found at the end of Episode 2 and had taken supplies. When he found Clementine through the walkie-talkie, he began to plot his revenge.
 * Before the apocalypse he coached little league.
 * The Stranger is the eighth character to have multiple ways to die; the first two being Carley and Doug, the third and fourth being David Parker and Travis, the fifth being Andrew, the sixth being Fivel, and the seventh being Ben.
 * He can either be choked to death by Lee, later shot to prevent reanimation, or shot in the head by Clementine.
 * Despite saying he is "not like you", due to him not harming people like you have. He will attempt to kill you.
 * The death of the Stranger's family is similar to the death of Sgt. Abraham Ford's family. Both the characters partners, former or current, abandons them and were found dead later on the road, killed by zombies.