The Walking Dead: Top 7 fatherly lessons learned from Rick Grimes

3) “…Just in case.” (Season 4, Episode 16, “A”)

In The Walking Dead’s season four finale, “A”, as Rick, Michonne, Carl, and Daryl made their way to Terminus following their decimation of the Claimers, Rick, not so sure that Terminus was as friendly as they were presenting themselves, decided to take a collection of weapons, including his Colt Python, and a red-handled machete (With which Rick would later slay Terminus’s leader, Gareth), place them in a gym bag, and bury them in the woods outside of Terminus’s walls. As Daryl watched his friend, Rick looked back at him and said:

“…Just in case.”

Now, while Rick wasn’t technically teaching this lesson to Carl, I can’t imagine that he didn’t mention it to him, and so, I’m counting it.

The lesson here is a simple one: Always have a backup plan. Wherever you’re going, whatever situation you’re stepping into, you should always have a backup plan in place in the event things go extremely sideways on you, whether you’re in a zombie apocalypse or not.

With so many plans the group had going south on them, and yet, Rick finding some way to try to turn things around, clearly, this was a philosophy that he believed in very strongly.