28 details you may have missed on 'The Walking Dead' series finale

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "The Walking Dead" series finale, "Rest in Peace."

• Showrunner Angela Kang and finale director Greg Nicotero join Insider to break down some moments on the finale, including Rick and Michonne's return.

• Andrea's comic death is referenced. Several moments call back to one of Rick's season five speeches. Chandler Riggs returned in a cameo.

Let's start with an easy one. The finale title, "Rest in Peace," is a nod to the comics and may have a connection to one of Rick's speeches.

"Rest in Peace" is the name of Robert Kirkman's final volume of "The Walking Dead."

The series finale title may also be a clever reference to one of Rick's speeches from season five, episode 10. Rick shares a story about his grandfather with the group. Every day he went to war, he woke up and said, "Rest in peace, now get up and go to war." Eventually, he returned home.

Back then, Rick told the group, "We do what we need to do and then we get to live."

In the series finale, that's what everyone does. They know they don't have to fight alongside Mercer to save the Commonwealth. It's not their home. Still, they decide it's what they want and need to do to give others a better life moving forward, even if it means sacrificing their own lives to make it happen.

In the finale, Aaron says, "We can do more than just save ourselves. We need to."

The main title's musical score sounds different in the finale because it was recorded with a symphonic orchestra.

In July, "TWD" composer Bear McCreary revealed on Twitter he scored the final episode with a massive orchestra in Los Angeles alongside co-composer Sam Ewing, who joined the series in season nine. Three of the people who worked on the original main title score with McCreary over a decade ago were in the room with him working on the finale.

Not only does the score itself sound different because it was performed live, but it's also an expansion of what we normally hear week to week. That's purposeful.

McCreary released a YouTube video in 2011 breaking down the making of the main title score for "TWD." His wish was to always return to the title score and have it slowly evolve and change as the series carried forward.

"As the show goes on you're gonna notice that the main title goes through some subtle changes. It doesn't always begin the same way and it doesn't always end the same way," McCreary said in 2011. "Usually every week when I did a new session with the string orchestra, we would add a new layer. We'd add subtly different parts to the string writing so that you're gonna hear the mix change and evolve as the series went on."

With the finale, McCreary was able to have it evolve one last time.

The walker with the rock at the Commonwealth hospital is a throwback to similar walkers from the first season.

In the finale, Connie, Carol, Magna, and more are trying to block a series of glass doors to prevent a herd of the undead from busting into the Commonwealth hospital.

The entire vibe of the opening scene is supposed to be reminiscent of the show's second episode when Rick, Andrea, Glenn, and more are trapped in a store as walkers try and break through the glass. In both episodes, a walker with a rock bangs against the glass window.

Of the variant walkers, executive producer, and finale director Greg Nicotero told Insider, "We kind of went back to season one and we were looking at the sequence in episode two where they're trapped in the department store and the zombies are smashing on the windows."

Luke makes sure someone takes his harmonica before he dies, reminding us of his love for music.

In his final moments, Luke (Dan Fogler) points to his jacket pocket where he keeps his treasured harmonica. If you were confused why Luke was so insistent on passing that along, it's because we learned in season nine, episode six that he was a music teacher before the world fell.

Keeping music alive was important to Luke. In that episode, Luke said education never ended, "not even in the face of monsters and mayhem."

Afterward, we previously saw him start up a little two-man band with Alden (Callan McAuliffe). Kelly, Magna, Yumiko, and Connie promise their friend they'll carry forth his dying wish.

Daryl received his black eye off-screen when he was hit by a Commonwealth soldier.

We asked Nicotero if he could explain what was going on with Daryl's black eye since it's not super clear in the episode how he gets hurt.

"It was the sequence where he gets hit by the troopers," Nicotero said, suggesting the black eye was something Reedus wanted. "When he's unconscious and Judith sees him and then when he wakes up again, that's where he was hit in the face."

When we spoke with Nicotero, he hadn't watched the completed finale. It seems like part of this scene may have been cut down because Daryl is never seen getting hit in the face in the final episode. We simply watch him fall down.

During finale filming, Norman Reedus suffered a concussion on set. Fans may be curious if the black eye was some sort of workaround for Reedus. Both showrunner Angela Kang and Nicotero told Insider the black eye was all make-up and wasn't a result of any injury.

"We were already shooting with the black eye on the day that he hit his head," Kang said.

Mercer's prison escape is straight out of the comics.

On the show, Mercer's girlfriend, Princess (Paola Lázaro), and his sister, Max (Margot Bingham) break him out.

If you're wondering why the show bothered tossing Mercer in jail for one episode just to break him out quickly, this was a nice nod to the comics where the leader of the Commonwealth militia's also thrown into jail. In issue No. 189, he's broken out by different characters, including a fellow soldier.

Princess makes sure to give Mercer a heads-up about the explosion on the show so he doesn't have a wall coming in on him like in the comics.

Judith tries to tell Daryl the "secret phrase" her mom and dad shared before she passes out.

This one's a little tough to make out. After Judith finally tells Daryl that Michonne went to look for Rick, she starts to say that Michonne told her things she told her dad. She starts to say, "We're the ones who live," but fades out of consciousness after saying the first three words.

Judith has been teasing her parent's secret saying since the penultimate episode.

Finally, at the episode's very end, Rick and Michonne, and the rest of the cast all say the phrase that Judith has been afraid to say aloud. The series closes with Judith finally being able to speak those words aloud to her brother, confidently.

Daryl blocks entry into Judith's hospital room in a similar way that Shane blocked Rick's hospital door in season one.

Daryl probably knows that Rick survived in a coma for weeks on end in a zombie-filled hospital because Shane put a gurney bed in front of the door.

Daryl does the same for Judith briefly when the dead start entering the hospital.

Aaron and Ezekiel have an instinctual urge to help strangers in the Commonwealth, which shouldn't be any surprise given their backgrounds.

Ezekiel and Aaron agree early in the episode that they can do more to help the Commonwealth. That shouldn't be a surprise. The two are naturally inclined to help others.

When we were first introduced to Ezekiel in season seven, he told Carol that if you take from the well, replenish the well. The Commonwealth gave Zeke a second lease on life by ridding him of his cancerous growth. In return, Ezekiel helped set up a secret clinic in the Commonwealth to help those in need.

Before the apocalypse, Aaron helped others abroad as part of a non-government organization. That work inspired him to become a recruiter for Alexandria to give apocalypse survivors a chance at a fresh start.

Daryl calls Judith "little ass-kicker" again.

Daryl first referred to Judith as "little ass-kicker" in season three, episode five when they didn't have a name for her after Lori's death. At the time, he asked everyone at the prison, including Carol, if that was a good name.

Kang had written that episode.

In response, likely confused, Judith calls Daryl a "big ass-kicker," resulting in a laugh from both Daryl and Carol. Judith probably doesn't understand the significance of her nickname at that moment.

April's parents are seen at the front of the estate gate.

April is a member of the Commonwealth who was killed by the dead in season 11, episode 17.

Governor Pamela Milton's now-dead son, Sebastian, was inadvertently responsible for her death. April and other members of the Commonwealth in need of money were blackmailed into doing dirty work for Sebastian.

In the finale, April's parents are begging to be let into the estates to escape the dead who entered the Commonwealth.

Father Gabriel finally does what he was never brave enough to do when the world fell.

When we were first introduced to Father Gabriel, we learned that he selfishly locked his entire congregation out of his church. They were torn apart by the dead outside of his church as he cowardly hid inside.

Watching Governor Pamela Milton hide inside her estate as she watched her people about to meet a similar fate at its gates probably sent him right back to his lowest moment. Gabriel wasn't going to stand by and watch the past repeat itself, even if it meant risking his life. He was going to find a way to open the estate gates one way or another.

Daryl says the show's title, re-enforcing something he told Rick back in season five.

As Father Gabriel's about to be shot, Daryl steps up to say they all deserve better than this.

"You built this place to be like the old world. That was the fucking problem," Daryl tells Pamela. "We have one enemy. We ain't the walking dead."

For years, the title of the show has been interpreted in one of two ways. It could be referencing the actual dead walking among the living. Others have considered the title comments on those who are still living, marching out their days, waiting to possibly become the dead.

In the finale, Daryl takes a stand to say it's always been the former.

That's a stance Daryl has strongly believed for years. The finale moment vastly improves a line of dialogue from years ago on season five, episode 10 where Rick suggests his group can only survive by telling themselves they're "the walking dead." Daryl rejects that idea by simply telling Rick, "We ain't them," getting up, and walking away.

In the finale, Daryl finally verbalizes more clearly what he meant back in season five by saying they're not monsters. They can, and should, be better to those who are still here.

Pamela is nearly given Carol's iconic comic death.

As Pamela (Laila Robins) realizes she's lost everything — her son, her rule over the Commonwealth community — she spots her former right-hand man, Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton), has been turned into one of the dead. Feeling like she's lost anyone who ever loved her, she inches slowly toward Lance and considers letting him bite her neck.

Comic fans will recognize the scene mimics Carol's final comic moments from issues No. 41 and 42. Feeling dejected and alone, Carol walks straight into a walker and allows it to kill her. Former showrunner Scott M. Gimple previously told Insider how he fought to save Carol from a comic death in season three that went to T-Dog.

"When we shot that scene with Josh and Laila, I just kept telling her, when you get closer, I really want to see that moment where you're about to do that," Nicotero told Insider. "I loved shooting that scene. Josh, we had wrapped him a couple weeks ago, and then we brought him back and he just had a ball."

Negan says Pamela's arrest for everything she's done is a fate "worse than death," referencing two previous moments from the series where his life's been spared.

Instead of killing Negan in the season eight finale, Rick famously showed Negan mercy by allowing him to live out the rest of his days in a jail cell. He thought death would be too easy a fate for him. Before his death, Rick's son, Carl, asked his dad to find a way to make things work with Negan. It didn't mean forgiving him, but Carl said killing him didn't solve anything.

From Carl's letter to Rick:

"You have to find peace with Negan. Find a way forward somehow. We don't have to forget what happened, but you can make it so that it won't happen again, that nobody has to live this way, that every life is worth something. Start everything over. Show everyone that they can be safe again without killing."

Maggie later showed similar mercy to Negan in season nine, episode five when she went to his jail cell with the intention to kill him. Seeing that Negan was a shell of his former self, she decided that it wasn't worth it. He wanted death at that point. It was clear living with his guilt was more difficult.

At the time, Maggie refused to kill Negan because he was "already worse than dead." She decides to let him rot in his cell.

In the finale, Pamela is also forced to live out the rest of her days in jail.

Max uses her radio call sign from season 10 to communicate with Eugene.

As the group puts their plan in place to blow up the dead, Max is briefly heard referring to herself as Blue Weevil.

When Eugene (Josh McDermitt) and Max first started their long-distance communication by radio on season 10, they opted to use code names instead of their real names to preserve their identities in case anyone was listening. Max went by Blue Weevil while Eugene was Taterbug, a call sign McDermitt came up with himself.

Princess drops a pin on a record as the group puts their plan in motion to destroy the dead. It's a nice nod to her Commonwealth job, but the track also has a deeper connection to Pamela, the community's disgraced leader.

It was a nice touch seeing Princess drop the needle on the vinyl since her job in the Commonwealth was at a record shop.

"Cult of Personality" starts playing. The Living Colour track, which remarks on the cult status of a leader who is followed without question is a pretty perfect track to symbolize Pamela's rule over the Commonwealth.

If you weren't on board with her pretty totalitarian rule and way of life, you were quietly removed from the Commonwealth and placed in labor camps.

Maggie and Negan's emotional conversations are partially adapted from a powerful comic scene.

In the finale, Negan apologizes to Maggie and asks if she can ever forgive him for killing her husband, Glenn, in front of her years ago. Later, Maggie sits down with Negan and tells him that though she knows he's trying, every time she looks at his face all she sees are the memories of Glenn being bludgeoned to death, yelling out to her, as Negan shamelessly mocked him.

In issue No. 174 of "The Walking Dead," Maggie similarly tells Negan — though in a more cold-hearted manner — that she can't picture Glenn without remembering him in his final moments.

The main difference is that comic Negan was apologizing to Maggie in the hopes that she would eventually put him out of his misery.

The Negan we see on the show is finally sincere in his apology after being put on his knees a few episodes ago and experiencing an ounce of what Maggie and her group went through on the controversial season six finale and season seven premiere.

Kang told Insider they weren't planning on having Maggie forgive Negan, in reference to the scene, and discussed it with actor Lauren Cohan.

"I felt pretty strongly, all along, and the writers were kind of with me, that it's just too big a thing for her to forgive him for right now," Kang said, adding, "I mean that's not to say — Maybe she can at some point."

Kang continued: "The thing that I took from Lauren Cohan's own point of view is that not forgiving him and having to live with that is actually really painful because you want to not have that trauma living with you all the time. It's actually exhausting to hate him. Those aren't her exact words, I'm just kind of paraphrasing the idea. So we worked that idea into the scene because there is a part of her that wants to just move past it, but she can't."

We finally see everyone gathered around a table eating a meal in a throwback to a dream-like sequence in season seven that Negan said would never happen.

After the deaths of Abraham and Glenn, the season seven premiere ended with a "what if"-scenario showing Rick's group happily gathered around a table, laughing and smiling. Glenn was holding his and Maggie's child at the head of the table.

Negan's voice can be heard saying, "Bet you thought you were all gonna grow old together, sittin' around the table at Sunday dinner and the happily ever after. No. Doesn't work like that."

In the series finale, we finally see the survivors gathered around a big table enjoying a meal while Negan goes his separate way.

This is also what Carl hoped his father could achieve one day.

Rosita gets Andrea's comic death, which has subtly been teased for years.

In the finale, Rosita reveals she was bit on the shoulder after fighting off a massive group of the dead to save her daughter, Coco. Late in the episode, one by one, many go to her bedside to say their goodbyes before she dies.

This is very similar to what happens to Andrea who is shockingly killed off late in the comics. While fighting off the dead on horseback, Andrea suffers an inoperable bite to the neck. In issue No. 167, members of the community visit Andrea on her deathbed to pay their respects.

The series hinted a while back that Rosita could possibly receive Andrea's heartbreaking comic death in the future. In season seven, episode eight, Rosita was given a face scar by one of Negan's Saviors, Arat. Early in the comics, Andrea received a much larger facial scar from a man named Thomas Richards at the prison that ran from her earlobe to her lip.

Kang told Insider that Christian Serratos, who has played Rosita since season four, volunteered to be killed off in the finale.

Negan goes off near the episode's end after helping to save the Commonwealth and isn't seen again.

In the comics, Negan never appears in the Commonwealth arc, but it's true to his comic ending where he decides to live out the rest of his days on his own.

Though he has the respect of some of the survivors in both the comics and the show, it's too painful for most of them to co-exist side by side because of the pain Negan put them all through in the past with the brutal murders of Glenn and Abraham before going to war with them all.

On the show, it's suggested he's living out his days with his new wife Annie who's carrying their child.

Negan finally returns Judith's compass after swiping it on season nine.

Judith receives a delivery from Negan near the episode's end. It's a compass with Judith's initials. If you were confused by that moment, in season nine, episode nine, when Negan was escaping Alexandria, he snuck into Michonne's house and Judith's room to swipe one of Rick's old shirts and Judith's compass before hitting the road.

When Judith caught him on his way out, she noticed he stole her compass. Negan asked if she wanted it back and she told him to keep it.

At the time, she told Negan it would help him find his way.

In the finale, when Negan returns it, the compass is accompanied by a letter telling Judith that the compass did just that.

Here's what Negan's full letter to Judith said:

"Judith this has always helped me find my way. I'm returning it to you now in the hope that it can guide you to your dreams. Thank you for letting me use it. Negan"

Eugene receives part of Carl's comic ending.

In the final issue of the comics, the story jumps ahead 25 years. Carl is married to Carol's daughter, Sophia, and the two of them have a daughter named after Carl's step-mom, Andrea.

The show jumps ahead a year with Eugene and Max together. They have a daughter named Rosie, after Eugene's best friend, Rosita.

Khary Payton confirmed to Insider that his son, Eli Nkrumah, made a cameo as Rosie on the finale.

Chandler Riggs, who played Carl, made a minor cameo near the show's end.

We thought Riggs may appear somewhere in the finale. After the series wrapped, a large cast image shared by AMC's official "TWD" Twitter account appeared to show the actor. On April 1, Riggs tweeted that he was in the finale, but most weren't sure if he was simply making an April Fools' joke.

Insider couldn't spot Riggs in the final episode. However, ahead of the finale, AMC made an embargoed photo available to press featuring the actor at the Hilltop.

Finale director Greg Nicotero is a walker one more time on the show near its end.

Nicotero has appeared as many walkers over the years on the show. On the finale, you can spot him as the walker Daryl rides his motorcycle by as he rides off in search of Rick near the episode's end.

Eleanor Matsurra's real-life pregnancy had to be cleverly hidden on the finale.

When you're watching this scene with Magna (Nadia Hilker) and Yumiko (Eleanor Matsurra) near the end of the episode, you can ever-so-slightly tell that Matsuura's with child.

"Eleanor was pregnant and about to have a baby. And Eleanor's like, 'Guys, you gotta be done with me on this date' because it's gonna be weird if all of a sudden there's one day I'm pregnant and the next day I'm not," Nicotero told Insider. "So it really required a lot of juggling with our assistant directors."

Rick and Michonne's coda scene is taking place simultaneously in the present and the past.

Rick and Michonne's scenes may have been a bit confusing upon a first watch. Kang confirmed to Insider we're watching two separate timelines play out.

"It's a past and a present story kind of living simultaneously, but it just shows that their intentions are emotionally the same," Kang told Insider.

Rick is seen at some point between season nine, episode five (when he left "TWD") and season 10, episode 13 (Michonne's final episode). When a Civic Republic Military (more on them here) chopper catches up to Rick, he tosses a bag with a message and phone etched with drawings of Michonne and an aged-up Judith onto a ship bearing the message "believe a little longer." That same phone is the one Michonne finds on her final episode of "TWD."

Michonne, meanwhile, is seen at some point after her final episode on the show searching for Rick.

Of the coda scene, Nicotero told Insider during a separate interview, "The script was always intended to be very impressionistic that you think that Rick and Michonne are maybe sitting across from each other at a fire. And then you realize, boom, that they're not. She's in one place and she's being driven by the desire to find him. Rick's being driven by the desire to get home, and it's that they can't lose hope. And I think that's really ultimately what the story is. The story is that they have to keep hope alive."

You can read more on how Rick and Michonne's coda scene came to life and how it drastically changed the "TWD" finale ending here.

Rick hears a mystery voice from a Civic Republic Military chopper tell him: "Come on Rick. It's like she told you. There's no escape for the living."

We don't know the voice of the mystery helicopter person; however, the "she" they may be referencing could very well be Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), who is one of the prominent leaders of the Civic Republic after the events of spin-off "TWD: World Beyond."

Read the original article on Insider