Thomas was a mostly quite individual whose deadly, decapitation-friendly motivations were soon revealed.
The Walking Dead wasn’t just pulling that serial killer plot line out of the air, of course.
Though he wasn’t a major character, Thomas was one of the first times that Rick’s group encountered an all-too-human threat, although there were many more of those to come, both in the comic and on the TV show.
It sounds very much like the writers were going to give Axel some of the story beats of Thomas Richards, who was also part of the prison crew in the source material.