"Think back, look forward, listen timelessly. Welcome to Night Vale."
In a live special: The rebellion against StrexCorp begins for real, the old oak doors have reappeared, and it's Election Day.
Tropes present in Old Oak Doors include:
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Parodied. Lauren calls Pteranodons dinosaurs, but Kevin tells her they're not dinosaurs, they're arachnids.
- Audience Participation:
- Cecil describes "a crowd of people shouting 'Take! Down! Strex!'" and whips up the audience into doing so, before stopping them, because the crowd was far away and not involved in the story - which is, of course, true.
- The live audience raised their hand to vote for their preferred mayoral candidate (Hiram McDaniels or The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home), but Cecil reminds everyone that votes are meaningless because the election is decided by interpreting the pulsing from Hidden Gorge.
- Bad Boss: Cecil, according to Intern Maureen. Aside from the staggering fatality rate of his internship program, he also makes his interns do ridiculous tasks that aren't in the job description, like editing his Jaws slash fic.
- Call-Back:
- From the ban on wheat and wheat by-products to StrexPets
- When the recording of the show was released in its 2-part format, the first half ends with Joseph Fink saying in a monotone voice, "End of Part A", followed by the same chime heard in "Numbers".
- Dark Horse Victory: The mayoral election between Hiram McDaniels and the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home is won by Dana Cardinal. Given the way elections are decided in Night Vale, this is less surprising than most examples.
- Hypocritical Humor: Kevin calls Night Vale a dystopia. He's not wrong, but for a Desert Bluffs resident this is the pot calling the kettle black.
- I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: Carlos to Dana:I'm not a hero. I'm a scientist.
- Inventor of the Mundane: Carlos claims to have invented a highly scientific device which "looks a lot like a big umbrella".
- Literal Metaphor: After tallying the votes, Cecil notes that some people voted for both candidates, thus negating themselves. That doesn't just mean they cancelled out their votes, they actually caused themselves to fade from existence entirely.
- Multi-Part Episode: The second in the series, after "The Sandstorm" (Episode 19)
- Suspiciously Specific Denial:At Whole Foods, we don't have any rotting, decaying matter mixed into our products. There are no secret blood rooms in our stores where we keep the secret blood. None of the boxes of cereal contain spiders, and if they did, they would be very friendly, helpful spiders. Why, wouldn't you be lucky to find a spider like that in a box of Whole Foods cereal? Or not just one. Hundreds of them. But anyway, you won't. Whole Foods serves only the freshest food, and we certainly do not keep venomous snakes under the fruit in our produce section. Why would we? That would be dangerous and not good for business. No one has died of a snake bite at Whole Foods. No one you know. Whole Foods: why in the world would we poison our frozen dinners? We definitely do not do that.
- Voice of the Resistance: According to Cecil, the radio station has become this since the last episode.Cecil: "Hello listeners. I speak to you now from the one spot in Night Vale that remains truly ours, the studios of the Night Vale Community Radio Station."
- We Interrupt This Program: Lauren and Kevin interrupt the show's announcer at the beginning of the show.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Lampshaded. Carlos realizes he has no idea how he got to Night Vale, or where it even is.Today's Proverb: 'Wonderwall' is the only '90s song visible from space.
