Survival horror is definitely not a genre for all audiences. Although not always explicitly gory, video games that belong to this category are mostly characterized by a set of unique traits, that set them on a level of their own. During the years they too, just like all other genres, have gone through several different stages and developments, but their core remains consistently the same: the depiction of a stressing, chilling atmosphere, most often with hints of metaphysical elements and an overall feeling that simulates that of experiencing a nightmare. The lead characters, usually stranded or trapped, are being chased by terrifying enemies who sometimes are monsters, and other times are humans acting as such. Survival gradually becomes their main concern, while at the same time they are looking for ways to and means to fight those enemies and finally defeat them. Throughout their still vivid history in the gaming industry, survival horror games have been and still are influenced by emblematic thriller, horror and mystery films that, most of the times, gained a cult following with the passing of time. In this article, I will focus on two game series, The Evil Within games and the Resident Evil saga, and how they were influenced by two one-of-a-kind film-makers, Dario Argento and David Lynch.

Dario Argento (left) and David Lynch (right)

Dario Argento is the Italian creator of many unforgettable giallo films. Giallo means yellow in italian and the term is used to describe horror movies of the 70ties and 80ties, where gore was particularly prominent. Argento is a master of horror and his giallo films left an indelible mark in the movies industry. Combining pure, raw gore with lush, extravagant settings or contrasting his twisted plots with idyllic environments, almost always with raucous heavy metal music playing in the background, his films are, interestingly enough, mostly memorable for their unique cinematography, the ingenious ideas when it comes to mystery, and the use of unexpected elements as important plot points. 

Suspiria (1977)

Argento's films are full of symbols, allegories and the multi-leveled use of elements and objects. In his iconic Phenomena (1985), the protagonist is Jennifer, a young girl who sleepwalks and has the unique ability to communicate with insects. Jennifer also comes from a not so usual home: her parents are divorced, and her father is a famous actor who, however, never appears physically in the film. The way that Argento chooses to present her is very interesting: typically, she has the characteristics of a fairy tale heroine, with elements of the stereotypical damsel in distress archetype, but the story follows her as she deals with dangers almost all alone; and the man who at some point runs to her rescue is neither a love interest nor a knight in shining armour but her father's lawyer, who however gets morbidly murdered before being able to offer her assistance. Jennifer has no love interest, anyway, she prefers being alone and the company of an old entomologist, whose pet is a female chimpanzee called Inga.

Jennifer with the professor and Inga, and the various insects in glass cases and photos

Jennifer's ability to communicate with insects is referenced in Alexia's power to control the ant colony in her mansion in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, in Natalia's understanding the messages of the larvae in Resident Evil: Revelations 2 and, in a grotesque version, in Marguerite's bond with her beloved flies in Resident Evil 7. Insects are featured quite often in video games, and in the Resident Evil universe their appearances are always of major importance. Derek Simmons's final mutation in Resident Evil 6 was a giant fly; the huge mosquito-like monsters in Resident Evil 4 were among the saga's most hateful enemies; and who can forget the wasp hive in the lab at the Spencer mansion in the first Resident Evil game. All these of course go back to Franz Kafka's iconic novella Metamorphosis (1915), in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa transforms into a giant insect.

Jennifer (left) and Natalia spotting insects in the forest

Argento develops his story in the form of a fairy tale, adding elements in the way that gradually widen the gap between magic and reality. Jennifer's dream world - or, better, in this case, her nightmare journey - consists of sleepwalking and having disturbing visions associated with murder. Her communicating with flies is her safe haven, and it is actually the insects that lead her to getting to the bottom of the horror-filled mystery of the story. Jennifer is a student in a boarding school where the governess is a woman with a troubled past and a more troubled present. Her dark secret is the existence of a child, result of her being raped by a mentally ill man in the asylum where she previously worked. The child, grotesquely deformed due to a medical syndrome, is hidden in what seems to be an abandoned house and is the one responsible for the murders that Jennifer sees in her sleepwalking sessions. While investigating the house, Jennifer falls in a pool filled with maggots and disintegrating human limbs. A bit later, the sick boy shows up and attacks her. At this point, her sleepwalking nightmares identify abruptly with the reality she is experiencing, and her only way to make it out alive is to summon her loyal friends, her insects, that rush to kill her monstrous pursuer.

 

Jennifer in the pool of terror

Jennifer's fall in the gruesome pool is a symbolic descend to Hell, more accentuated by the fact that said pool is in the basement of the house. This scene is referenced in The Evil Within, during a sequence close to the beginning of the game. Sebastian, the lead character, has just been separated from his partners while investigating a massacre at a mental hospital. Unbeknownst to him, he enters a sick man's mind and all that he experiences are distorted segments of memories and monsterized versions of reality's fragments. In this twisted world, he finds himself chased by a butcher / executioner who walks around yielding a chainsaw. In his struggle to escape him, Sebastian falls in a bloody pool, where human limbs gradually come to the surface. Jennifer and Sebastian have a lot things in common, their innocence and purity of mind being the most obvious and most crucial for the development of their stories. Just like Jennifer sleepwalks unwillingly, Sebastian finds himself wandering inside Ruvik's mind, both unable to escape for as long as these situations last. But while Jennifer's fall in the symbolic Hell happens at the end, marking the start of the catharsis process, Sebastian's fall in a similar Hell takes place at the start, dragging him deeper and deeper in the monster's twisted mind.

Sebastian in the bloody pool

Profondo Rosso (Deep Red, 1975) is another emblematic movie by Dario Argento, which is much gorier than Phenomena, but its main theme is that of mystery and suspense. Horror in Profondo Rosso is created primarily by the feeling of unknown and a disturbing sense of insecurity caused by the constant fear that someone is watching from a well-hidden spot, while the extravagantly violent scenes are used as a frame that essentially holds both the characters in the film and the viewers in the grip of Argento's very unique view of a thriller movie. Set around a series of particularly gruesome killings, the film follows Marcus, a musician who witnesses one of the murders, as he investigates the case to which he gradually seems to be connected in a rather weird way. The movie contains one of the most shocking twists in cinema history, which does not have to do with the identity of the killer, but with how said killer is revealed in a very early and completely unsuspected sequence in the story. 

 

Marcus suspects that he might know the killer

 

Profondo Rosso is definitely not recommended for the average viewer, but to this day it remains an exemplary piece of cinema art, blending masterfully its extremely gory scenes with exploration of mystery at its finest. It is films like this that defined the horror movies that would follow, as well as survival horror games. Resident Evil 3 makes a great tribute to both this exquisite film and its genius creator, by naming a secondary but rather important character Dario Rosso (his name from the director's name, and his surname from the movie's title). He is the civilian whom Jill finds locked in his van at the start of the game, and she tries to persuade him to follow her to safety, but he insists to stay in his hiding place in a panic state. The interesting thing about him is that his fate is unknown, as we do not have another chance to meet him and we can never be sure whether he survived or zombies got to him in the end and ate him alive. In the sequence where he appears, Dario Rosso represents all the panicked civilians who found themselves all of a sudden in a zombie-ridden city, not knowing what caused all this, and with a vague, dark and cut-short future awaiting them.

Dario Rosso is about to hide in his van forever

David Lynch is yet one more film-maker whose influence can be seen in almost all aspects of artistic expression. The creator of the famous Twin Peaks series is also responsible for some of the most impressive and exceptional artschool movies of contemporary cinematography, his trademark being the use of connotations combined with the stream of consciousness way of story narration. Lynch's dreamy landscapes and environments are presented as tangible depictions of artistic inspiration, often deliberately appearing as theatrical sceneries or backstage setups, with the director breaking the fourth wall in the most inventive ways and playing with the deepest layers of his heroes' psyche while at the same time challenging the subconscious of his audience.

Inland Empire (2006)

The iconography in Lynch's films is one of the most complex and cryptic, but somehow the ingenious director manages to unlock your mind, leading you to interpret what you see in more than one ways. A master of interior settings, where rooms symbolize the grey matter or the psyche, his movies are highly intellectual and most of them follow a "circular" route. The most characteristic of this kind of cinematography is his masterwork Blue Velvet (1986), a movie with an affinity of layers, and one of those that challenge you to watch them multiple times, and every time with a new perspective. In the film's iconic opening sequence, young and innocent Jeffrey finds a severed human ear in the middle of a field. After taking the macabre finding to the police, he gets entangled in a twisted web of mystery, terror, lust and betrayal, meeting people that seem to belong to a completely different world than his, a world that scares him but which at the same time he finds too attractive to ignore. Heavily inspired and influenced by Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (tales that are almost always referenced in his movies), Lynch explores multiple themes in Blue Velvet, one of them being the loss of innocence and the emotional coming-of-age of his hero. The cut ear functions as a passage, just like the rabbit hole did in Alice in Wonderland and the mirror in Through the Looking Glass. For both Alice and Jeffrey, going through these passages is a kind of rite, after which they are called to face the complexity of the human nature in literal and symbolic ways. The ear in Jeffrey's case literally drags him into its labyrinth and leads him to another maze, this time of the real or not so real world in which he finds himself. Set in an idyllic countryside bursting with bright colors, Jeffrey's journey is a nightmare which seems to always bring him in the same central point.

Jeffrey holding the severed ear

A photo of a human ear is one of the pictures that Sebastian sees during the introductory sequences of The Evil Within 2, when he enters Stefano Valentini's disturbing gallery that is spread all around his mind palace. The ear is not a random choice there; Stefano's method of intimidating his potential victims starts with him triggering the sound of a musical piece by Tchaikovsky, heard in such a distorted and haunting way that the beautiful music has an overwhelming paralyzing effect. Stefano "catches" people with sound first, subsequently dragging them into his twisted world, similarly how the cut ear in Blue Velvet caught Jeffrey's attention and eventually lured him in places unknown to him until then. And Sebastian, who shifts between realities through a mirror, simulates Alice's rite of passage through the looking glass, which again identifies with Jeffrey's passage through the ear's labyrinth.

The photo of the ear in Stefano's gallery

Lynch's environments in the Twin Peaks world are iconic dreamscapes, specifically the Black Lodge or Red Room which functions as a virtual meeting place between the protagonist Dale Cooper and select key characters from the series and movies. Comprised of an almost empty space with just a few pieces of furniture and strange shapes on the floor, the Red Room is, as its name suggests, a room where the red color dominates: its walls are fully covered with red curtains and the geometrical pattern on the floor is in fact white and red zig-zag lines. The furniture is three black armchairs, a table, two lampstands and a replica of the statue of Aphrodite of Melos. The room, existing in Dale's mind, functions as a meeting place where he has discussions with people that he had known at some point in his life and played a critical role in certain events that he was involved in. 

Dale Cooper with the Dwarf and Laura Palmer in the Red Room

The Red Room, being essentially Dale Cooper's mind palace, is referenced in the interior of the Grand Theater which is Stefano Valentini's mind palace in The Evil Within 2. A huge building with red curtains hanging from the ceiling and covering parts of its walls, sometimes revealing secret doors behind them, it is a labyrinthine network of rooms where the red color dominates, with certain corners being set up in the style of Dale's Red Room. In both the Twin Peaks' Red Room and The Evil Within 2's Grand Theater, the red color dominates, often making contrast with another color that is among Lynch's preferred ones, which is the bright blue. Stefano in The Evil Within 2 can be seen wearing a blue-mauve suit, and wherever he appears, the environment around him is colored with red and blue shades.

The red curtains are dominating Stefano's mind palace

 

From his part, Stefano Valentini, who uses his camera as a murdering tool, alludes to one of the most creepy characters that David Lynch has conceived, which is the Mystery Man from Lost Highway (1997). A difficult, highly intellectual movie, one of the most riddling and complex that Lynch has directed, it features an array of enigmatic figures, his puzzling protagonist included. The Mystery Man is a secondary character who, however, plays a key role in the main hero's story, although both his appearance and his actions remain partly unexplained till the end. He has a camcorder which he uses to record incriminating events from the protagonist's life, aiming at exposing his double nature. It is notable that the Mystery Man, in his turn, has his origins in another iconic character, Mark Lewis from Michael Powel's Peeping Tom (1960), who used his camera to take shots that satisfied his well-concealed sick psyche.

Mark Lewis (left), the Mystery Man (center) and Stefano Valentini (right)

Close to the ending of The Evil Within 2, Sebastian and one of his allies have to cross a path that is consumed by flames so as to reach the hiding place of one of the story's villains. It is one of the most difficult and challenging parts of the whole game, and the first time that you go through it, you are rewarded with an achievement titled "Fire Walk With Me", which pays homage to David Lynch as this phrase is the title of his 1992 movie that is part of the legendary Twin Peaks storyline. This alone signifies how influential Lynch's films and overall artistic approach have been in the game's creation. Lynch, in his turn, has been influenced by Dario Argento's aesthetics when it comes to the use of colors as means to highlight plot points and character traits, and the symbolic nuances that both characters and environments can carry, elements that both directors handle masterfully, which is one important reason why their works are favorite points of reference in so many video games.

See also:

» References to Dario Argento

» References to David Lynch

Yukio Mishima and The Evil Within

Some other time in this blog, I mentioned how the backstories of the characters in video games give us a rich insight concerning the research that the developers went through while shaping them. Sometimes, said backstories involve details that may be offered randomly and thus pass unnoticed, until you get a clue to put them together: then it is like puzzle pieces that are placed in the right spots to form an image, thanks to which the character that they concern is set under a new, revealing light.

In The Assignment, one of the extra episodes of The Evil Within, where we get to play as Juli Kidman, we have the chance to view parts of the main game's story through her eyes. While literally floating in a state between reality and nightmare, Juli comes across some particularly nasty surprises in her way. The most revealing of them is having to fight Joseph Oda, who appears before her as a Haunted, determined to kill her. In her attempt to distract him so as to perform her attacks against him, Juli can resort to several diversions, one of them being turning on a film in a small cinema, which depicts Joseph as a Samurai, yielding a katana.

 

It is interesting that, although we are already aware from the main game that Joseph is the descendant of a historical family of Samurais, this is the first and only time that we see him literally paying homage to his heritage, and it is through an indirect means, in the distorted reality created by Ruvik in STEM. As Ruvik is exploiting the memories of his victims, blending them with his own so as to be able to control them, it becomes clear that the appearance of this specific film comes straight from Joseph's memory stash, serving as a way to confuse him at that point (because he is a Haunted, therefore not himself), while offering Juli the chance to stealthily attack him.

Joseph is described as a considerate and composed man, but it is hinted that he is constantly suppressing himself in order to comply to the norms and stereotypes of society. Coming from a strict upbringing, he feels forced - partly by his environment and partly by his own self - to keep his sensitivities and weaknesses hidden. This is something rather typical of the Samurai upbringing, so it is natural that Joseph, due to his family's historical past, had it too, to some degree at least. The film that we have the chance to see in The Assignment shows that he had been through Samurai training as part of his celebrated family's tradition.

Mostly known for his ritualistic suicide via "seppuku" (or harakiri), Yukio Mishima was nonetheless a multi-talented writer, considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. Both as an artist and a personality, he was obsessed with beauty, eroticism and death, as well as their becoming one. Mishima was a homosexual, but growing up in the extremely strict Japanese society of the 1930ties made it particularly tough for him to accept and express himself as far as his sexuality was concerned. In 1949, he wrote his now considered iconic novel "Confessions of a Mask" which, although not entirely autobiographical, narrates episodes and memories of its protagonist that are greatly connected to the author himself. Written in first person, the novel explores a young man's continuous agony as he struggles with his ever-growing and forbidden sexual desires while evolving in a society and a family environment that are not only particularly strict, but moreover guide their members towards very specific, predesignated paths from which it is quite hard - if not impossible - to divert.

The young narrator starts his confessions going back to his childhood and early teens, during which time he had his first sexual awakenings triggered by random visual experiences. Although not the very first, the strongest, most memorable and critical one was an image of Saint Sebastian that he saw in a book, a painting by Guido Reni which depicted the saint during his torture, tied on a tree with his body pierced with arrows. The hero describes with both precision and subtlety all the emotions that rushed through him while looking at that painting, resulting in a rather intense first experience of culmination which defined his subsequent view of people and the world and made him more than conscious of his sexual identity. However, living in a society that condemned such deviations from the accepted norms, he knew that he would be forced to live his life in disguise, always putting on a mask that would hide his true self from the rest of the world.

Joseph of The Evil Within has grown up in a similar environment - probably not so strict, but still the values and beliefs that characterized old-time Japan should have been ever present in the life of his family and surrounding environment. Apparently he took some important education, then trained to become a detective. We can see from his attitude and approach that he likes to dig into things, examine them deeper and he also has a notable combinatorial mind. He has a small notebook where he writes down everything that he sees or thinks that can be related to a crime case. He got married at a relatively young age and made his own family, but he still seems to be quite vulnerbale socially, despite his smartness and the choice that he made to follow a dangerous line of work. But maybe he chose the specific line of work for this reason: so as to give him inner strength and help him overcome his fears and anxieties.

 

Teaming up with Sebastian was a turning point in both his professional and personal/social life, as Sebastian was quite different as a person, and came from an equally different environment and background. Although he was not too open as a character either, he was much more free sentimentally and spiritually and, unlike Joseph, obviously not hunted by strict rules and norms. The two partners formed a close bond and became good friends, always caring for and helping each other. From a symbolic aspect, Sebastian was for Joseph what Saint Sebastian was for Mishima, a new force in his life which brought forward a mental strength that he always had but kept suppressed and maybe woke up in him some darker and forbidden desires (maybe towards Sebastian as well). Sebastian, aptly named after the saint, was in a similar way tortured - not literally like him, but psychologically broken - but he was also a hot-blooded, passionate man who would always show his feelings and never suppress himself. Although he too was positively affected by Joseph's presence in his life - the calmness and love for order that were due to Joseph's upbringing helped Sebastian have better control - the biggest influence was the one that he had on Joseph, something that the latter obviously came to realize while being trapped in STEM, during which time his subconscious took over and brought him face to face with new revelations about himself.

There are several instances in the game, where we can see a progression of this newfound self-awareness, albeit they all occur in the dream-like sequences that STEM creates. What triggers the initiation of this development is his succumbing to Ruvik's power and becoming a Haunted for the first time. This transition could very well symbolize the awakening of his darker side and all those elements that he kept hidden in the real, "civilized" world. During the sequences when Joseph is a Haunted, he seems to possess an insane power which makes him become extremely violent and lethal. Unlike any other random Haunted, however, he is totally aware of this transformation and seems to be able to control it, as he can go back to normal and vice-versa. In a most revealing scene at the start of Chapter 7, after he and Sebastian found refuge in an abandoned church, he acknowledges that he does like it when he turns, since this transforms him into someone that he cannot be in real life. Although it scares him, it also fascinates him, and this is one more reason why, in the previous chapter, he tried to put an end to his life. Embracing his dark side would mean accepting all that would come along, and this is something that can also be applied to his normal, real life. Just like Mishima, Joseph is in a constant struggle between faithfully following the rules with which he grew up and freeing himself from everything that keeps him enslaved

Elements of Classic and Contemporary Culture in Life Is Strange 2

Apart from its extensive references to JD Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye and its Resident Evil easter eggs, which I covered in two separate articles (here and here), Life is Strange 2 features many more references to both classic and contemporary culture, which are also worth exploring, as all of them are not simply there for the sake of it, but are moreover connected to the game's story and its characters in several ways. Some are more obvious while others require a bit more observation and search.

Finn's name nods to Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's best friend from Mark Twain's famous novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry, best known as Huck, is a young boy who lives in the margins of society; son of a drunkard, abusive father, he found it was better to live in the streets. He is smart and cunning, sometimes gets misguided, but he has a heart of gold. Pretty much like Finn from the game, that is.

Finn with Sean (left) and Huck with Tom from a recent film adaptation of Tom Sawyer

Additionally, Finn's full first name is Finnegan, referencing Finnegan's Wake, the novel written by James Joyce which is considered the most complex work of fiction of British literature and the hardest to interpret. It is written in a bizarre, complex style which consists of puns, made-up words and idioms and its story is like a maze. Something which, to some extent, applies to Finn who may have an extrovert attitude and social charisma, but he is also multi-dimensional, with many secrets and unexplored paths in his character.

This is not the only case where James Joyce comes into play in the game. When Sean and Daniel enter Karen's room at the end of episode 2, they find one of her toys, a bear called Ulysses. Ulysses may be the legendary hero of Homer's Odyssey, but it is also the title of one of Joyce's most famous novels. Both the Odyssey and Ulysses narrate numerous adventures that their main heroes go through, just like Sean and Daniel do during their journey.

By the end of episode 3, Sean is seriously injured and loses his left eye. Later in episode 4, Karen gives him an eye patch to cover it with. Interestingly enough, James Joyce used to wear an identical eye patch over his left eye, since he had many problems with his vision and had undergone several operations for this purpose.

Sean (left) and James Joyce with their eye patches

Sean and his destroyed eye also allude to Carl Grimes from The Walking Dead, who lost his right eye after being shot. From that point and on, Carl is always seen wearing a bandage over his eye, just like Sean during the months after his injury.

Sean (left) and Carl, both with bandaged eyes

This resemblance alone might have been random, but it is not, as it is related to a few more Walking Dead easter eggs.

While Sean and Daniel reside in the abandoned cabin in the woods in episode 2, they (well, most probably Daniel!) carve the message "Keep out, Wolves inside". In the first episode of The Walking Dead, Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma at a hospital and, while wandering around the deserted, bloody halls, he arrives outside the Cafeteria, where someone has written "Don't open, Dead inside" on the padlocked doors. Since Daniel's fascination with zombies is well known, we can easily assume that he wrote the message on the cabin wall, inspired by the one in the series.

Additionally, after Sean escapes from the hospital to find Daniel in episode 4, he comes across two hostile locals in the desert, one of whom is particularly violent and when he realizes that Sean is Mexican, he attempts to humiliate him in any way he can think of. If you choose to obey to him to avoid trouble, in the end he forces Sean to sing a song in Spanish. This scene reminds of one in The Walking Dead, where the bloodthirsty villain Negan forces Carl to sing a song for him in private. Although Negan's motives are different from the evil guy's in the game, the sequence plays out in a similar way.

The scene from Life is Strange 2

The scene from The Walking Dead

When episode 3 starts, we do not know much about Finn yet, but as the story unfolds, we have the chance to learn about him and his habits. While exploring his friend's tent, Sean spots a copy of The Lord of the Flies, the famous novel by William Golding. The book tells the story of a group of students who find themselves stranded on a tropical island after their plane crashes, and are forced to find means to survive in an environment where the wild and the unknown are not the most dangerous enemies. Apart from the book's literary significance, it also relates to the story of the game as the group of drifters led by Finn live a solitary life out on the road and are called to face several dangers every day.

That said, there are also references to Jack Kerouak's novel On The Road, where the main characters are in the course of a road trip that follows a route similar to the one Sean and Daniel take, which also ends in Mexico. The drifters' bohemian lifestyle, smoking weed, traveling through the desert, getting to California, all this alludes to Kerouak's story, which is, to a high degree, autobiographical, although he has altered the names of the real people who correspond to his fictional characters.

Kerouak (top left) and his friends in Mexico City

One of them is Dean Moriarty, whose real life counterpart was Neal Cassady. Cassidy's name is partly a tribute to him, since her own attitude is laid back and carefree like his was. Her most significant reference, however, is to Eva Cassidy, a singer and guitarist who used to play and sing in the streets for a good amount of her life, but died very young. Since the game's Cassidy is a talented singer and guitarist, we can assume that she used to sing from an early age, and probably adopted her nickname to honor the famous but ill-fated musician. Or maybe her friends called her that way because she would always sing and play her guitar.

Cassisy (left) and real-life musician Eva Cassisy

Pennywise took his nickname from the penny he is wearing as a pendant, as a reminder of the dear friend that he lost and is desperately trying to find. If we attempt to analyze his nickname more thoroughly, it hints at his street wisdom, since he tends to express philosophical questions several times during the game. The nick itself, however, nods to It by Stephen King and its main evil character Pennywise. Of course the game's Penny is anything but evil; sharing a name with such a terrifyinh character is pure irony. Maybe he was a fan of King's horror stories, and besides he is the kind of person who tends to believe in conspiracy theories and urban legends.

Having a copy of The Lord of the Flies is not Finn's only exhibition of literary interest. If we take the time to look around the drifters' camp in the forest, we will come upon a tree with the words "Bonjour Tristess" (sic) sprayed on them. We can be sure it is Finn who wrote them, as they are made with the same style and the same colours that he used to spray the target on the tree near the lake, so that Daniel could practice knife-throwing. The words allude to the novel Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, which tells the story of a frivolous teenager who unwillingly causes a family tragedy. Though not directly related to Finn as a theme, the book and his life's story do have the tragic factor in common, only in his case the drama was caused by his father. But it's very likely that Finn didn't care much about the story of the book, and was more attracted to its pessimistic title (Hello sadness) which he liked to use as a quote, albeit he did misspell it on the graffiti. Or maybe he was directly quoting Paul Éluard's poem À peine défigurée, from which the phrase originally comes.

The scissors in the middle of the graffiti are also one more proof this was made by Finn, as he uses actual scissors a bit later in episode 3 to cut Sean's hair.

Kerouak also has written a novel titled Tristessa, which narrates the story of a real-life prostitute from Mexico whom the writer had met, and gave her the name Tristessa in the book. See Mexico is ever present in the game, from the very beginning; and several reminders show up as we proceed.

 

A rather unforgettable sequence in episode 3 is right after Cassidy, Finn and Jacob find out about Daniel's power and they swear to Sean that they will keep it a secret. When all are back at the camp, the sub-section that begins is titled Paradise Lost, and it is when Sean has to decide whether he and Daniel will agree to go to Merrill's house to rob his money. The title of this section is borrowed from John Milton's famous poem which tells the biblical story of the fall of man. In this case however its significance is not religious but rather literal. It foretells how the drifters, and together with them Sean and Daniel, are about to lose their freedom, and subsequently the relatively happy days that they were living in the camp, since the heist is going to happen anyway.

The whole episode 3 is titled Wastelands, taken from TS Eliot's masterpiece The Waste Land, a long poem full of symbols and allegories which is one of the most important works of literature of the 20th century. The whole structure of the poem bears some resemblance to the specific episode from Life is Strange 2, but also to the game overall: it deals with themes such as disorientation, distress and disillusionment, it features several characters who talk about various themes in turn and in the end comes judgement. Additionally, it is split in five parts, like Life is Strange 2 has five episodes, and there is imagery in each of them that can be related to the game's story sequences.

The Catcher In The Rye and Life Is Strange

J.D. Salinger's masterpiece novel The Catcher In The Rye has inspired several themes in Dontnod's brilliant games of the Life Is Strange series and their universe. The book is narrated in first person by Holden Caulfield, a 17-year-old boy who is currently in an institution in California. A few days before, he had been expelled from his prestigious college in Pennsylvania due to bad performance and got back to New York where his home was, intending to spend a few days wandering here and there until his return for the Christmas holidays, as he did not want his parents to find out about the expulsion. He talks about himself, his family, his college, his schoolmates, his friends, in a form of consecutive abrupt confessions, while he several times refers to his three siblings - his older brother, D.B. a careless, successful author with whom he intends to live from now on, his younger sister Phoebe, a smart and intuitive girl, and his little brother, Allie, with whom he obviously had a strong connection and who died sometime ago. During his wanderings, he encounters several people, recalls memories and visits bars and hotels, while regularly going back in his mind to things that cannot leave him in peace. The novel is a unique piece of literature, written in a very distinct style, and is one of those stories that require very careful reading in order to become fully clear.

Max, the lead character from Life Is Strange 1, shares the same surname with Holden - they are both called Caulfield. Another notable reference is of course the boarding high school where Max is studying, nodding to the similar albeit much more elite school that Holden attends. There is also a direct easter egg, paying homage to the book and his hero. At some point, Max spots a red hunting hat, similar to the one that Holden is wearing for most part of his story, hanging from a rack in a corridor, and makes a comment referencing him.

Holden is notorious for his seemingly misanthropic attitude; and you got to love him for calling everyone and everything phony in any given instance. So there you have it, Holden; Max thinks your red hunting hat is phony. I bet that if he knew about this, he would definitely called her phony for calling him phony. There is also another major easter egg, spotted in Max's room in the school - there is a poster on a wall, probably of a movie called The Winger and the Cow. Both the title and the style of the poster resemble the cover of the original edition of The Catcher In the Rye.

But it is not only with tangible stuff that Life Is Strange 1 is conversing with The Catcher In The Rye. Major themes in the game's story, as well as character traits of its heroes, bring Salinger's iconic novel to mind.

In one alternate reality, Chloe, Max's friend, is severely injured in a car accident and later Max pulls her plug, helping her to rest in peace. Assuming that this alternate reality is what actually happened and that what we see in the game as taking place in present time is in fact an alternate reality, we are able to see Max under a different light: arriving back to her hometown, Max is overwhelmed by memories of her friend and her passing away, facts which she obviously, and naturally, cannot get over. Unable to come to terms with reality and move on somehow, she resorts to what possibly every single human being on earth has said or thought of at least once in their lives. She wishes that she could turn back time so as to change Chloe's fate. She probably wished this so many times that one day all of a sudden she made it happen. Because it would be impossible for her to go on with her life having experienced such a tragic loss, in which she also had a share, the only way to deal with it was to manipulate time and change the events. So it's a dream come true for Max, who is able to rewind time, keep whatever she wants from her peculiar flashbacks and then prepare a present and a future of her liking. But can it be that simple? Of course not. Since Max is not living alone on this planet, and since her actions affect not only herself and Chloe but also several other people, things are destined to escalate sooner or later.

In a similar way, Holden is trying to cover up his real anxieties and fears by dressing them up as contempt for people and society and constantly pretending to be something that he is not. He wants to pass as a bad student but in fact he is very smart and educated. He is supposed to be a misanthropist, but he constantly seeks the human presence around him. Holden's story is generally viewed as one of teenage rebellion, but in fact it is something completely different; reading between the lines, this becomes rather obvious to the trained reader, and it is intensified by the knowledge that Salinger was very protective of his hero and did not allow any adaptation of his novel, probably fearing there would be lots of misinterpretations - which indeed was and still is the case with this genuinely unique story.

Holden narrates his story from a bizarre point of view. We do not know from the start where he is or what he is doing, as he starts revealing fragments of his life that sometimes do not seem coherent. But there is a constant in his story: recurring phrases that appear regularly in several variations, but always in the same spirit: People always think something's all true, people never notice anything, people never believe you, people never give your message to anybody. Not only these phrases are spoken like a mantra, but they also sound as though Holden is trying, through them, to say something about himself using hints, because he may be too scared to talk about it directly. His recurring nightmare about trying to catch the children that are running in the rye field and are about to fall off a cliff symbolizes his inability to get over his little brother's death and his secret wish to be able to turn back time and save him somehow - which again brings us back to Max and her super power. It also hints at his desire to protect innocence, since he couldn't do it with his own.

In a most revealing scene, which is full of hints and innuendos that are mistakenly taken literally, Holden visits a professor of his, Mr Antolini, and, having nowhere else to go since it is very late, decides to stay the night in his apartment. Mr Antolini is an intelligent and educated man, but obviously leads a somewhat strange lifestyle: he is married to a much older and rather unattractive woman, with whom he seems to have no real emotional connection. Still the couple throws parties regularly, as if trying to convince society of their marital happiness. The lady offers Holden some coffee and disappears in another room, leaving him alone with her husband. Moments later, Holden begins to feel dizzy, as Mr Antolini starts a bizarre lecture about intellectuality and how Holden should not resist it and embrace it. His words are carefully chosen so as to hint at his real subject matter which, of course, is far from being educational. Still feeling inexplicably dizzy, the young boy falls asleep only to wake up in the middle of the night to see that Mr Antolini is sitting right next to him, admiring his long legs and stroking his hair. Holden leaves the apartment in panic and, once out on the street, he realizes that his vision is blurred and that he cannot walk straight. Obviously that coffee was not that innocent after all. He manages to collect himself somehow by sort of summoning his dead brother in his thoughts. 

Mr Antolini brings to mind the perverted Mr Jefferson from Life Is Strange 1, the charismatic but twisted professor of photography who was obsessed with capturing the loss of innocence with his camera. Mr Antolini looks and sounds like a toned-down version of Mr Jefferson - toned-down only because back in the times when he lived, he could not freely express his secret desires. But just like Mr Antolini attempts to seduce Holden, Mr Jefferson leads Max to his lair and ties her down, planning to turn her into one of his themes and, subsequently, victims. Unlike Max, however, Holden cannot rewind time so as to change reality. Max manages to effectively have Mr Jefferson arrested by using her super power to plan her moves, while Holden ends up in a mental institute, trying to come to terms with himself and all the secrets that he feels forced to keep.

Life Is Strange 2 moves in a different path story-wise, but again focuses on themes that were explored in the first game. This time the lead characters are two young brothers, Sean and Daniel Diaz, who are forced to abandon their normal life after their father is shot dead and the two of them are accused of murder. They embark on a journey from Seattle to Mexico in a race against time, while having to deal with Daniel's telekinesis, a new-found power which can potentially destroy them or save their lives. Brotherhood, trust, friendship and loyalty are among the cornerstones of the story, but the motifs of the loss of innocence, unavoidable change and maturity, both physical and emotional, play a major role in the game.

So it is no surprise that Holden Caulfield is present in this game too, albeit in a more elaborate and complex way. You may not be able to automatically connect Sean with him, as the overall setting of the story, Sean's background and the odyssey he has to go through with his brother look like they have no common ground with Holden's story or his character, but there is a key chapter in the game, the third one which is titled Wastelands, that is, in reality, a story inside the story: an epic tale of struggling with adolescence, adulthood, love and sexuality, centered around a tumultulous but powerful brotherly bond, which marks Sean and Daniel's coming of age in the form of a painful rite of passage. This chapter has a very special atmosphere and development that is pretty similar to Salinger's novel, although again this may not be that obvious on first look or if you play the game in a haste or read the book superficially. The Life Is Strange games are very much alike with Salinger's stories: they have so many layers that each scene, each phrase, each word even, may mean many different things.

Like in Life Is Strange 1, here too there are references to the Catcher In The Rye that are more or less direct. For example, Sean can be seen very early in the game wearing a red beanie and smoking a cigarette, reminding the most common depiction of Salinger's hero, that shows him with his red hunting hat and a cigarette in his mouth.

There is also a mural outside the garage at the basement of Sean's home, made by him, that depicts a kraken. The overall drawing style and colours again look similar to the original cover of The Catcher in the Rye, just like Max's poster did.

In the first pages of Sean's sketchbook, there is a drawing that he made depicting a baseball glove with a ball. This too nods to Holden, who used to carry with him a baseball glove that belonged to his deceased brother, Allie.

 

 

Another easter egg referencing Salinger's novel that may pass unnoticed because it is somehow hidden can be found in the house of Sean and Daniel's grandparents. In there, Sean watches the aquarium and comments that he has not seen any fish yet. He asks Daniel to lift a log that is blocking the bed of the tank and reveal the goldfish that had been hiding behind it.

D. B., Holden's brother, is a writer who became successful with a book that he wrote, titled The Secret Goldfish.

But the references that are contextual and have to do with the essence of the story are the most important. There is a recurring theme that shows up in the second chapter, Rules. In a segment in The Catcher In The Rye, Holden is sitting on the backseat of a taxi that drives through New York on a cold winter day. He keeps wondering what happens in winter to the ducks that swim in the Central Park lagoon in the spring; where do the ducks go when the lake freezes. Of course it is a question that no one can answer, because no one cares about the ducks; but for Holden, it is essential that he knows about them, as they stand for several things in his mind. The cycle that the ducks follow, appearing in spring then somehow disappearing in winter, is like the circle of life and the inevitable changes that come as time passes. As Holden sees the lake frozen with no ducks, he fears that maybe a spring will arrive one year, when they will not appear again. In other words, he has lost his innocence already, and he is afraid to grow up and accept himself for what he is, come to terms with his bad experiences and proceed to adult life and maturity. Another parameter has to do with his grief for the death of Allie, his little brother, which he obviously has never gotten over. There are also the incidents from the past years that never stop haunting him: the murder or forced suicide of a fellow student who was obviously gay, the confession of a close friend who was probably sexually abused by her stepfather; and of course Allie's death.

In Life Is Strange 2, in the second chapter, Rules, Sean and Daniel find shelter in an abandoned house in a forest in Oregon. It is December, the heart of winter, and there is snow everywhere. There are several interesting things in the house, but the most intriguing one is the picture of a duck hanging on the wall above the makeshift bed where the two brothers sleep. Not so coincidentally, there are flying ducks depicted on Daniel's sweater in this section.

Later on, in their grandparents' house, where Sean and Daniel find refuge for a while, in one of the rooms there is a wooden box with a duck painted on it, and on the box sits a red cap.

And there are three sculpted flying ducks decorating the wall near the glass door which leads to the backyard of the house.

Of course the duck images are not randomly placed there. The second one is much more direct, as it is accompanied by the red cap which nods to Holden's hunting hat. But both of them are there as a reference to Salinger's novel and as a symbol in the game, in connection to their original symbolism in the book. And maybe it is also an inside joke that answers Holden's question: the ducks that disappear from Central Park in winter, are kept in Oregon.

Just like Holden, Sean and Daniel are in the process of moving extremely fast from childhood/adolescence to adulthood. Like Holden, they too have lost their innocence, and acceptance of themselves and maturity await for them around the corner. The first duck, the one in the abandoned house, has pale colors, while the second one is bright red; they may very well stand for the "winter" ducks and the "spring" ducks respectively, in Holden's ramblings, while Sean and Daniel get closer to breaking free and moving on. The cabin in the woods and the grandparents' house in Rules, the two places where the ducks can be seen, are like passages, leading to the next major step that Sean and Daniel will eventually make when they hop on a train headed to California. Which brings us to Wastelands, the aforementioned chapter, where essential changes begin to happen, affecting both themselves and those around them.

Like Holden grieves over his brother's death, Sean has a constant fear of losing Daniel: at first, he is afraid that they will get separated, then he is worried all the time about him maybe not being able to control his power, therefore putting himself in danger. This fear inevitably becomes reality in episode 4, Faith, when Sean loses Daniel after a dramatic incident, and subsequently risks everything, including his life, until they are reunited.

This development is foreshadowed in an ominous dream that Sean has at the start of the fourth episode, where he sees himself sitting with Daniel at the top of a cliff, and suddenly Daniel tells him that he is alone and falls off, in a sequence that is one more vivid reference to The Catcher In The Rye, as it is connected to Holden's dream about being in a rye field, trying to catch the little children as they are about to fall off the cliff so as to keep them safe, and hence the innocence that he lost, and his inability to deal with Allie's death.

In this specific context, Sean identifies with Holden, as he himself becomes the "Catcher" who is desperately trying to save little Daniel from falling off the cliff. In the same context, Daniel has his literal identity as Sean's brother, symbolizing the blood link that connects them and that Sean fears of losing, but he also represents the lost innocence for both himself and Sean, identifying with the allegory of the children in Holden's dream.

Miasmata and Lord of The Flies

As an iconic, futuristic novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) can be considered a major example of symbolism and allegory in literature. Set during an undefined war period, the story follows a group of boys who find themselves stranded on a tropical island after their airplane crashes somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Two of the boys, Piggy and Ralph, form an unlikely friendship despite them having absolutely nothing in common, while Ralph seems to be respected by the majority of the other boys, who establish him as some sort of leader. At first, the boys seem to enjoy their freedom, but soon their primitive survival instincts come forward, resulting in unavoidable tragedy just before salvation arrives. In the meantime, they develop a weird obsession about a monster that lives in the deep forest, which in fact represents their own fears and manias.

James Aubrey as Ralph in Peter Brook's adaptation of Lord of the Flies (1963)

Although the story of Miasmata (2012), the beautiful game by IonFX, is quite different from Lord of the Flies, we can identify several themes that are either prominent or implied in the book. Miasmata takes place in a tropical island, where the protagonist arrives in a boat. The island is a haven where several scientists, now deceased, had been working on a cure that could defeat a deadly plague that had infested the so-called civilized world. The protagonist has to search the whole place and find the ingredients (flowers and plants) that, when mixed together, will produce the cure. While at it, he is being stalked by a strange and vicious creature that chases him relentlessly while he is practically unable to defeat it.

The first theme that is common in both stories is the setting: the tropical island which looks like Paradise on Earth. In relation to this, comes the second theme, that of the representatives of the civilized world who are unexpectedly forced to live in primitive conditions, devoid of all the luxuries and benefits of their past lives.

Here the two stories deviate, as in Lord of the Flies this theme becomes highlighted from the moment that it establishes itself in the plot, while in Miasmata its role is secondary, since the protagonist is alone on the island, therefore his survival is easier and he has no one to compete with about a potential leadership.

The most prominent theme that is common in both the book and the game, is that of the "monster", the unidentified threat, the vague hostile force that is there around somewhere and becomes a recurring element that indirectly pushes the plot forward while every time it marks a notable progression in the characters' plunge to insanity.

The "creature" that stalks the protagonist in Miasmata

In Lord of the Flies, the "monster" is finally revealed to be the disfigured corpse of a pilot who got killed in an attempt to jump on the island with his parachute. In Miasmata, it is a strange creature that looks like a combination of a bull and a cat, which may appear several times during the hero's quest and depictions of which can be seen in one of the cabins of the deceased scientists. As the story of the game reaches its conclusion and the protagonist finds the cure and uses it to heal himself from the plague, the monster disappears, implying that it was a figment of his imagination, as well as a figment of the imagination of all the other scientists who had been on the island before him.

In both stories, the unknown enemy gradually becomes some sort of reverse driving force: its existence, mostly in the minds of the characters and less as a tangible threat, intensifies their darker instincts (in Lord of the Flies) and their agonizing uncertainty about what comes next (in Miasmata). This results in inevitable dramatic consequences as the characters get trapped in their own perception of that threat, which blinds them, preventing them from seeing and facing reality.

In Lord of the Flies, the climax of the drama occurs when the boys, under the influence of Jack, Ralph's rival awe who at some point, in a coup-like move, becomes the leader, kill Piggy, just before a ship arrives that will lead them back to civilization. In Miasmata, the protagonist, after healing himself with the cure, manages to swim to the boat that will lead him to salvation, only to commit suicide just there.

In a most moving twist of fate, we realize that the cure will never reach the civilized world, seeing that several injections containing the healing mixture, including the one of the protagonist, are lying on the bottom of the boat; which implies that all the other scientists before our hero managed to arrive to the boat but never left the island. In a parallel allusion, the boys in Lord of the Flies do go back to their home, but after what they had to go through on the island, they will never be the same again. In Miasmata, the shot, which is literal, heals the protagonist but leads him to realize that some secrets need to be preserved at any cost. In Lord of the Flies, the shot is metaphorical: the ominous atmosphere of the island injects itself in the minds of the boys and shows them what monstrosities they are capable of.