Episode 4:
The Truth
Tropes featured in this episode of Alan Wake:
- Bedlam House: While the Cauldron Lake Lodge is, on the surface, a resort for struggling artists in need of inspiration and therapy, in reality it is a prison for the occupants, Hartman keeping them all drugged up to use them both to profit off of their creations and use them for his experiments regarding the eldritch nature of Cauldron Lake. It is vague if all of his patient's eccentric behaviors (Emerson's child-like behavior, the random dancing lady singing to herself, Odin and Tor's senility) was always there, exacerbated by the drugs he keeps them on, or if Hartman's experimentation and their constant exposure to Cauldron Lake's power drove them over the deep end. Of course, this was before the Dark Presence shows up and starts possessing everything...
- Crazy Sane: It is implied that Odin and Tor are not as senile as they would have you believe, their eccentricities either a by-product of their interactions with the Dark Presence or a method of fooling Dr. Hartman.Odin: Ohh, he'd love to fish out our secrets, but he has no clue. He's not crazy enough, not crazy like us, sonny. Being crazy's a requirement, sonny. Who else could understand the world when it's like this? It takes crazy to know crazy.
Alan: That's the sanest thing I've heard in a while. - Doomed Protagonist: In one of TV!Alan's Author Tracts, he remarks in most good Horror stories (which he most certainly is in), the protagonist dies at the end, adding to the urgency and difficulty of trying to survive by the end.
- Foreshadowing: When Tor and Odin take out the guards at the lodge, you can hear them singing one of their old songs. Later, you can recognize the lyrics as that same song — "Children of the Elder God" — plays during the concert-stage scene.
- Gaslighting: Hartman tries convincing Alan that everything he has experienced — the sudden disappearance of his wife and the cabin and his encounters with the Taken — are all symptoms of schizophrenia and that he has been his patient for a while, having had a psychotic break after Alice drowned in the lake. Alan sees right through it, recognizing Hartman as a schemer who likes to hear himself talk.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Whatever the Anderson Brothers made their moonshine out of, it seems to have the ability to resurface suppressed memories about the Dark Presence if one gets drunk off of it. It is implied that Walter has been getting drunk off of it for this purpose and Alan remembers what happened between him arriving at the cabin and its disappearance after blacking out drinking it. Considering the Anderson Brothers are aware of the Dark Presence, they could have brewed it specifically for this purpose.
- Looped Lyrics: "The Poet and the Muse" record loops the lyrics "Find the lady of the light" when Alan turns the power back on, this being a clue to Alan to find Cynthia Weaver.
- The Power of Rock: The Anderson Farm is a concert stage rigged with a stage-show and a fake dragon that is miraculously activated by a lightning bolt. It even plays a recording of the Old Gods of Asgard song "Children of the Elder God" as the light-show repels waves of Taken.
- Psychotic Smirk: From, of all people, Alan after trapping Hartman with the rampaging Dark Presence. While, no doubt, Hartman had it coming it's still rather off putting to see, especially in the remaster where it's upgraded from a more subtle, if still noticeably sinister, grin to a straight up evil looking Slasher Smile. It also serves as a bit of foreshadowing to the antagonists Mr. Scratch and the Insane Alan encountered later.
- The Reveal: In Alan's drunken dream, he remembers what happened in the time-gap: Alan tried going after Alice into Cauldron Lake and finds herself in the Dark Place where the Dark Presence — in the form of Barbara Jagger — convinced him to write the events of the game in a gambit to free it from Cauldron Lake, thinking that it would free Alice too. Near the end, Alan uses this power to bring back Thomas Zane in the form of a light-spewing being in a diver's suit. He helps Alan escape with the manuscript before Thomas Zane fades back into the Darkness.
- Rule of Symbolism: The lightning that strikes the Anderson's sound-stage can be read as divine intervention (Thor, the god Tor named himself after, being both the God of Thunder and protector of humanity). With the common interpretation that the Dark Presence represents ignorance and the "dark side" of the creative process, it makes sense that a Heavy Metal show — a collaborative of sound and visual creativity with an inherently anti-authoritarian music genre — would make such an effective weapon against it.
- Self-Deprecation: A meta-example. Dr. Hartman seems to have a low opinion of video games, begrudgingly admitting that it at least allows "some small creative effort," hence why he keeps Emerson around.
- Wham Line:Alan: I wrote it. It's my fault.
Robert Nightingale: That's right, James Joyce. It's your fault, and you're gonna pay for it. - Who Writes This Crap?!: Played for Drama. Walter compares what had just happened to him — his friend suddenly turning evil — to a cliche in poorly written sequels. Considering everything that's been happening may or may not have been written into existence, he might have a point.
