When 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alan Wake launched in 2010, it was the first-ever horror game for Remedy Entertainment, coming off of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Max Payne. Their new protagonist was a writer of dete🍸ctive thrillers rather than a detective himself, and the ga𝔍me instantly felt inspired by the works of Stephen King. But just how inspired?

Here, we dive into an in-depth examination of Stephen King and how he, as a prolific horror author, influenced the character design of Alan Wake and the setting, themes, and lore of Alan Wake's world. And you might find Alan Wake has much more in common with many of King's books than you initially thought.

Did Stephen King Inspire Alan Wake?

2010's Alan Wake begins with an opening narration using a quote by Stephen King – "Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear," which is now infamously known for being sold to Remedy for only one dollar.

The quote was taken from and it quite fittingly sets up the most pertinent theme of Alan's entire supernatural ordeal with the Dark Place and Cauldron Lake.

That quote alone already helped establish a Stephen King-like story and atmosphere. However, the actual character Alan Wake is also inspired by the literary King of Horror himself, both autobiographically and fictionally.

Stephen King once wrote under a pen name, Richard Bachman, which was used for some of his darkest and most violent material like Rage, The Long Walk, Blaze, and The Running Man (not the good versus evil novels that he's more known for under his real name).

Bachman was a dark persona and undoubtedly influenced Alan Wake's Dark Presence and Scratch. In fact, The Dark Half is a King novel that parallels a lot with King's own personal metafiction and Alan Wake's character.

In an Author's Note before the prologue of the novel, King writes, "I'm indebted to the late Richard Bachman for his help and inspiration. This novel could not have been wr✱i🦄tten without him."

The Dark Half (also adapted into a film by George A. Romero and a video game) is about writer Thaddeus Beaumont, who published a series of novels about Alexis Machine, a deranged serial killer, under the pen name George Stark.

Just as King wanted to kill his Bachman persona by writing this book, Thad kills his more evil author persona, George Stark, only for Stark to manifest from the grave as Thad's evil double. Thus, Alan is both Stephen King and Thad Beaumont, in a way, with Mr. Scra🅰tch being his evil double.

In Alan Wake's American Nightmare, the narrator also refers to Scratch as Alan's "dark half" (a pretty overt reference).

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Also notable in Alan Wake 2, Mr. Door tells Alan that maybe his book Initiation was "wri🌠tte﷽n by your evil double."

Alan's writer's journey, the horrors he goes through, the themes of struggling writers and writer's block, and the references to King's work throughout both Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2 all point to Alan being based on the writer, along with the characters and story.

At one point in the original Alan Wake game, FBI agent Robert Nightingale even calls Alan Wake "Stephen King," one of the many famous author names he uses.

, Sam Lake himself said, "The setup of the game – a bestselling but troubled writer whose dark work of fiction starts to come true, blurring the line of nightmares and reality – is a very Stephen King type of starting point for a story, so King's works were definitely a source of inspiration for us."

You definitely can see lots of different Stephen King creeping into the story of Alan Wake a🦂nd Alan Wake 2.

What Other Stephen King Works Can Be Seen Throughout The Alan Wake Series?

The Outsider

Since it was published eight years after the first game, Stephen King's The Outsider can be seen more in Alan Wake 2's story.

The Dark Presence and Scratch claiming Cynthia Weaver, Deputies Mulligan and Thornton, Agent Robert Nightingale, and Alex Casey is similar to how the extradimensional 'Outsider' El Cuco takes possession and assumes identities (scratching victims).

The story also revolves around detectives working alongside private investigator Holly Gibney, who ღare faced with disbelieving circumstances and needing to adapt to paranatural phenomena and crime.

The Shining

The Shining is a clear influence on both Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2, and many rﷺeferences can be seen across both games.

Most importantly, the character Jack Torrance is suffering from writer's block just like Alan, and his son Danny Torrance's ability "to shine" (telepathy and getting into people's thoughts) is similar to Saga Anderson's Seer ability for profiling (Also, Anderson moonshine activates it).

In Alan Wake, you have a "Here's Johnny" moment of Carl Stucꦍky 🌳using an axe to break through a door, with Alan commenting, "Stucky would be knocking on the door with his axe like Nicholson in The Shining."

Episode 4 of Alan Wake also features a hedge maze for Alan to navigate and battle Taken, similar to the iconic one The Overlook had in Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation.

Alan Wake 2 features even more Shining Easter eggs. The opening credits feature a top-down angle of Saga and Casey's car going through a winding road surrounded by trees like The Shining's credits, and the Oceanview Hotel (even sounding similar to the Overlook) has bathrooms reminiscent of the bathroom where Mrs. Massey emerges from in the film.

Misery

Misery is the story of an author's rescue from a horrible automobile wreck that turns out to be his worst nightmare, as he's held captive and tortured by one of his crazed fans, Annie Wilkes.

While Rose Marigold didn't get to this level and is far from Kathy Bates' performance, she is surely inspired by Wilkes. Her personality and how💝 obsessed she is with Alan, dedicating an entire shrine to him and his novels at the Valhalla Nursing Home, even announcing to Alan that "I am your biggest fan," are quite telling.

Maybe it's a good thing Alan was in the Dark Place, so Rose couldn't get any ideas.

Bag Of Bones

Like The Shining, this is one of Stephen King's most profound ghost stories.

Bag of Bones revolves around a history of drownings in Dark Score Lake, a grieving author named Mike Noonan who lost his wife and can't write due to grief (Alan similarly lost his wife Alice to the Dark Place), and who's helped by his wife's ghost and experiencing nightmares.

Cauldron Lake, Taken emerging from it, Saga's daughter Logan believed to be drowned, and Alice helping Alan along his journey through the spiral in the Dark Place are some of the clearest influences of Bag of Bo💯ไnes.

Christine And Maximum Overdrive

It's easier to see the influences of Christine and Maximum Overdrive in 2010's Alan Wake since a lot of the giant boss enemies Alan fought happened to be in the form of Taken-possessed vehicles like cranes, bulldozers, and a harvester.

While Christine was a novel about a possessed homicidal red Plymouth, 1986's Maximum Overdrive was Stephen King's first horror film he ever wrote and directed, starring Emilio Estevez. The film saw all machines, not just large cars, unleash mayhem on innocent civilians.

From A Buick 8

A less well-known book by Stephen King is perhaps 2002's From a Buick 8, another story about a strange car. Except, this time, it's a 1953 model blue Buick Roadmaster, and the car is seemingly a portal to another dimension.

The car sometimes swallows people and spits out some weird creatures not of this world, kind of like Cauldron Lake spits out Taken along the shoreline, and Alan Wake 2 also introduces the janitor's bucket as a portal to the dimension known as the Dark Place.

Although David Lynch's Twin Peaks was the main inspiration for the Dark Place, From a Buick 8 also echoes these influences.

Lisey's Story

Even just from reading the synopsis of Lisey's Story, you can already figure out the connections to Alan Wake. "Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist... there was a place Scott went that both terrified and healed him, could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live."

That place is known as Boo'ya Moon, a fantasy-like dimension characterized by a large lake that's portrayed as being accessed from the real world through water in the miniseries, which is essentially Ahti's entire significance in Alan Wake's story since he and his water hold the ke🎐y to travel between dimensions.

Lisey's Story also features an intimidating fanatical character called Jim Dooley obsessed with Scott Landon's books, portrayed by Dane DeHaan, who would definitely be part of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the Cult of the Word using Alan's literature for nefarious purposes and committing horrific crimes.

The Apple TV+ miniseries adaptation of Lisey's Story was also entirely written by Stephen King.