History Headscratchers / AlanWake

** Also, the Dark Presence is only seen in female form in the game. Night and Darkness have often been characterized as female in mythology. This is most likely just an extension of that, since this is a very genre savvy story. And since the Dark Presence is feminine, it seems that makes it easier to manipulate men. This generally works, except with Alan who is just very DevotedToYou. Well...that's what this romantic troper wants to believe anyway.

** It's equally possible that Alan Wake created Thomas Zane, that ''Thomas Zane'' created Alan Wake, or that they both existed independently of each other. It's even possible, if unmentioned in the game, that ''both of them'' were created by a third party.[[hottip:*:My money is on the crazy game developer from the lodge.]]

* How the hell is Nightingale able to keep his badge beyond Episode 3? I mean, first he (presumably) barges into the Sheriff's office, screaming at the top of his lungs that Alan is the one responsible for both Alice's disappearance and the other strange occurrences in Bright Falls, ''without any shred of proof to back it up''. That alone should have raised some red flags with the police, but then he nearly guns down two innocent civilians while trying to ''murder'' an unarmed suspect he had no evidence against, as well as lead nearly all of the Bright Falls police to their deaths and subsequent becoming Taken. And yet Breaker doesn't even try to contact the FBI and tell them to fire his ass.

** In American Nightmare Alan explains that in places such as Cauldron Lake reality is worn thin between our world and the world the Dark Place is part of, whatever that might be. Additionally, he says that the Dark Presence is merely one of the many EldritchAbominations that inhabit it.

** Because of the way Cauldron Lake works, if Alan wrote that it happened, then it ''did'' happen, and probably retroactively rewrites history. But if you mean before he went into the lake, then ''technically'' no. However, Zane's existence in Alan's dream at the beginning strongly implies that yes, he was involved in fighting against the Dark Presence back in the [='70s=], since that was before Alan started writing. But thanks to the lake, that could simply be Alan's writing affecting the real world before he actually starts writing which would mean that there never was a "real" Thomas Zane and [[MindScrew oh no I've gone cross-eyed]].

* So is there any proof that anything that Thomas Zane did actually happened before Alan showed up? Isn't it possible that everything Zane did (bringing back Barbara, writing himself out of existence, leaving a shoebox with the clicker) was written into existence by Alan? Same with the Anderson brothers. Alan could have written them both as former victims of the Dark Presence based on the shoebox full of Zane's books (maybe Zane was a real poet and the houses' previous owner was a fan) and meeting the brothers at the diner. Anything that could disprove this?

** Alan put it there for himself.

* How did that signal get up into space?

** If you hang around the overturned squad cars, you hear Nightingale tell Sheriff Breaker that all her deputies have been killed by Alan. And only after that do cop taken show up. So yes, they were all the law enforcement of the town. The helicopter was probably the sheriff's, too. After all, the sheriff escorts you to the fire department helicopter and not the police helicopter. (or was it a forestry department helicopter?)

** According to the ''Alan Wake Files'' in the Limited Edition, Nightingale is actually a rogue agent, and was fired from the FBI. Additionally, he had nightmares where he saw someone who closely resembled Alan and became obsessed with finding him. Don't quote me on this, but I think I read somewhere that Nightingale was following a string of mysterious disappearances; for all we know, he thinks he's hunting a serial killer.

* So where'd all the manpower for chasing Wake come from? Bright Falls probably wouldn't have a chopper and a few dozen men, much less several over the course of the game. The Agent couldn't call them in without blowing his cover. Or is it because Alan wrote it that way?

** Wake explicitly rewrote the events surrounding the end of the game to repair the damage he inflicted. He explicitly states this in the first DLC's intro, where he says he wrote a happy ending to Departure.

* Hordes of Taken appear throughout the game, there have to be hundreds of them. I get that most of them are disappearances that occurred over decades, the Dark Presence taking a few campers or a couple of hikers now and then, very slowly bolstering its forces. But quite a few of them are also taken ''during'' the events of the game, like Rusty and Carl Stucky. When all of the events of the game are over, the town should be pretty much wrecked by the various tornadoes and Taken battles, and a lot of people would suddenly be missing, but no one seems to notice this in the cutscene ending. What happened? Did Wake's victory over the Dark Presence warp reality so that the events technically didn't happen, or something?

*** Note also that the Taken's priority is to get Alan back to the bottom of Cauldron Lake so that he can finish Departure and release the Dark Presence. They can't do that if Alan is in jail or actually ''dead''. They have an interest in keeping the cops off Alan until they can get him alone and capture him.

** If you absolutely ''need'' an in-game reason, the Taken are toying with him. Simply knowing they're out there would make Alan nervous and possibly cause him to make mistakes, making him easier to kill. They're basically having fun tormenting him. Then Alan goes, "Flashbangs? Hell, yes!" and instantly becomes a threat. The Taken attempt to [[LetsGetDangerous Get Dangerous]] and fail.

** You can bitch about the "Alan wrote it that way" explanation all you want, but that doesn't make it any less valid, especially considering ''he did write it that way''.

** You can bitch about the "Alan wrote it that way" explanation all you want, but that doesn't make it any less invalid, especially considering ''he did write it that way''.

* After Alan escapes from the police and is chased by them, he runs for quite a while through the forest, unarmed and helpless, and, sure enough, not a single Taken takes interest in him, even if in the background the Dark Presence is gorging itself on the deputies. Once he finds weapons however, the bastards are right on the spot. Any in-game reasons for that (and if you say "because Alan wrote it that way", I'm going to hit you)?

** Perhaps the other, lesser weird stuff is just the result of other, less talented artists being exploited by the Dark Presence. Without Wake or Zane's ability, they can't create an entire world, but they can create a weird monster or short story.

*** [[Film/TronLegacy ....yeah?]] They state this explicitly in the game. It's kind of fucking hard to miss, considering Alan says, over and over again, that Cauldron Lake brings the works of art created around it to life. I'm not sure how you didn't get this, considering it's kinda-sorta a critical plot point, as that's how come Zane no longer exists except in the Dark Place, how the Dark Presence was trapped in Jagger's form, and how the clicker is the weapon that defeats the Presence.

*** [[TronLegacy ....yeah?]] They state this explicitly in the game. It's kind of fucking hard to miss, considering Alan says, over and over again, that Cauldron Lake brings the works of art created around it to life. I'm not sure how you didn't get this, considering it's kinda-sorta a critical plot point, as that's how come Zane no longer exists except in the Dark Place, how the Dark Presence was trapped in Jagger's form, and how the clicker is the weapon that defeats the Presence.