The episode briefly shows us, by way of flashback, what life was like for Rick and Shane (his partner on the police force) before the entire world went pear-shaped. They were just a couple of deputies patrolling the dusty byways of King County, Georgia. Immediately before encountering a few desperate men and engaging in the shootout which would land Rick in the hospital, they had been sitting in their parked cruiser, munching burgers and fries and talking about Rick's marital problems.
Things had been pretty uneventful for the friends, right up until they weren't. We get the feeling that not much ever went down in King County, although we can't say for certain, because we don't have a real-life counterpart to compare it to. While The Walking Dead is rarely known to make use of fictional locations, there is no actual King County in the state of Georgia — and if you're at all familiar with Darabont, you can probably parse out why he chose to use that name. It's a blatant homage to the Master of Horror himself, Stephen King, with whom Darabont has been closely associated for the bulk of his career.
Darabont's very first produced film was a short which adapted King's short story The Woman in the Room, and he would go on to direct and write the screenplays for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist. Chatting about his affinity for King's work with Deadline in 2019, Darabont said, "The real underlying thing is a secret superpower, but now not-so-secret, is [King] always really makes you care about [his] characters. You really become invested and that's a tremendous skill for a writer to have, and I don't think anybody does it quite as well as Stephen does."
