Trivia / Until Dawn

• Actor Allusion:
  • This isn't the first time (or the second) that Hayden Panettiere's been menaced by a serial killer.
  • Larry Fessenden directed and wrote multiple films (and an episode of Fear Itself) about wendigos. And the horror films whose posters show up in the lodge's private theater? All of them were films he produced.
    • Mr. Fessenden has a long filmography where characters he's played have died in one way or another, including several non-horror films, as you can see in this montage [1], as does his character in the game.
    • And much like the films he's written and directed, Fessenden's exploration of horror and psychology extends into this game with Josh's possible schizophrenia.
  • Frère Jacques seems to follow Rami Malek from television to video games. As do hallucinations of his dead family members.
• Billing Displacement: Peter Stormare is billed second, above all but one of the game's playable protagonists (with top billing given to Hayden Panettiere, the cast's biggest star at the time since the game was released on the heels of Rami Malek's breakthrough). In addition to his character Dr. Hill being an NPC, he stops being important to the story about halfway through the narrative, and then disappearing entirely before the climax.
  • Brett Dalton is also billed fourth, despite his character Mike by far having the second most playtime in the game.
• Bowdlerise: The Japanese release of the game censors all scenes involving dissections and human internal organs simply by cutting the whole screen to black and leaving only audio, a rather heavy-handed method which led to a lot of complaints from the Japanese audience and even some jeering nicknames for the localized version of the game such as Anten Dawn, "anten" being the Japanese word for a theatrical blackout.
• Creator Cameo: Larry Fessenden, one of the writers, plays Flamethrower Guy.
• Dawson Casting: True of every main member of the playable cast except Jordan Fisher (Matt), who was 21 when the game was released (and therefore 18-20ish while working on it, the same age as the characters). Meaghan Martin (Jess) would've been around 21/22 whereas the other lead actresses were all in their mid-twenties; while Brett Dalton, Rami Malek, and Noah Fleiss were all in their 30s. Even with their CGI avatars being de-aged, Mike and Chris in particular still look like guys in their late 20s, not teenagers.
• Homage: This game is built out of homages. See Actor Allusion for aforementioned examples.
  • Friday the 13th: A maniac is out to punish those indirectly responsible for minors' demise. Also, Wendigo-Hannah keeps Beth's head around her lair, similarly to Jason and his mother.
  • My Bloody Valentine: Extensive use of mines, which have their own backstory. The backstory of a group of miners being involved in a mining accident which leads to insanity and cannibalism is also present in this film.
  • Saw: The two "fatal choice[s]" Chris has to make, along with the Psycho's announcements.
  • Silent Hill 2: Mike follows the Stranger into an abandoned sanitarium, where he finds an olive-drab M15 military jacket. Yet another Whole Costume Reference is Emily's sweater underneath her leather jacket.◊
  • Silent Hill: Shattered Memories: The sequences with Dr. Hill are ripped straight from the book of this Wii game, which psychologically profiles the player and uses motion controls at the core of its mechanics. And, it pits the player against naked pale humanoid creatures lurking in a brutal snowscape.
  • Prom Night (1980): A brother takes revenge when a group of kids play a prank which ultimately leads to the death of his sibling (in this case, siblings). Although Josh only wanted to frighten them, not kill them.
  • Evil Dead 2: Mike and Jess' diversion to the cabin in the woods, followed by Jess being attacked and pulled out through a window, is very similar to the opening scenes with Ash and his girlfriend, Linda.
    • Similarly, Mike can amputate part of his body. Although, luckily for him it's just his fingers and not his entire hand.
  • House on Haunted Hill (1959): Josh's father works in Hollywood and has access to tons of props and special effects which Josh uses to terrify and torment his friends, just like Vincent Price's character in the classic film.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: During her bath in Chapter 5, Sam is listening to Johann Sebastian Bach's "Cello Suite No.1" through her earbuds.
• Saved from Development Hell: A Survival Horror game that was first announced in 2012, with heavy use of PlayStation Move controls, a plot inspired by teen horror and slasher flicks, and a planned 2013 release date on the PlayStation 3. Two trailers were released... and that's about all the substantial information that was heard about the game for the next two years, the only news being an announcement from the developers in late 2013 that, yes, they were still working on the game. It wasn't until 2014 when it resurfaced at Gamescom as a PlayStation 4 title, having been heavily overhauled from its original design. Move controls have been dropped, while the campier elements were largely replaced with a Darker and Edgier approach and a Hollywood voice cast. It finally came out on August 25, 2015.
• Uncredited Role: Justin Villiers, Will Byles and Pete Samuels developed the story, but were not credited.
• What Could Have Been: This article and video goes into detail on the game's production history, including a number of early builds that have been unearthed.
  • The game was originally announced for the PlayStation 3, and would've used the Move motion control system that Sony was promoting at the time. The earliest versions focused on first-person exploration and puzzle solving, which eventually changed into cinematic third-person controls with a Choice-and-Consequence System. At least one early build also had pass-and-play multiplayer. It was nearing completion when it was decided to retool it for next-gen consoles.
  • The original version of the game was a fair bit campier; among other things, the main characters were explicitly specified as being teenagers, the opening cinematic implied that they were heading into the mountains to go snowboarding, and early trailers featured a lot of cheesy fanservice. When they moved the game to the PlayStation 4, the developers decided that, if this game was going to be a showpiece for the new hardware, they might as well make a serious horror game.
  • Many of the characters in the final game existed in some form early on, though Mike's name was originally Scott, Emily's was Christina (or Chrissy), Jessica's was Summer, and Josh's was Clayton (and he was also black), and there were also characters named Devin, MJ, Belle, and Emi (who, beyond the name and ethnicity, seemed to have nothing in common with the Emily from the final game). Hannah was originally Clayton's girlfriend as opposed to his sister, with the two of them having broken up that fateful weekend for reasons unknown, while her sister's name was Lex instead of Beth.
  • In early Playstation 3 builds where the cast have received their final names and designs, Josh, Hannah and Beth were seemingly white rather than Ambiguously Brown. This changed when the cast was almost completely replaced for the final version, with only Brett Dalton and Noah Fleiss returning when the production moved to the PlayStation 4.
  • In some of the earlier versions there seemed to be Game Overs, as evidenced when the player is allowed to restart after failing to Press X to Not Die. The "Anyone can live, Anyone Can Die" aspect of the game was also not added until the move to Playstation 4; originally, Jessica would always die, while characters like Sam and Mike would always live.
  • In early PS3 builds, Emily accompanied Mike when returning to the sanatorium, and later joins Sam in the mines near the end of the game. This suggests that Emily was meant to have a bigger role and stronger Plot Armour, similar to Sam and Mike in the final game.
  • Chris was originally going to be a part of the prank in the beginning of the game, as shown in this video where he hides under the bed with Jessica, but was replaced by Emily instead. In this version of the game, it would make Josh's grudge against Chris more justified (as well as Chris' self-inclusion in guilt with Ashley); in contrast to the final product, in which Chris is the only person besides Sam and Beth to not be part of the prank.
• Word of God:
  • The creators of the game admitted during a Q&A session that Emily and Mike were not having an affair, and that their hug really was just a friendly greeting.
  • A podcast interview with Will Byles Jossed the theory that Chris's role in the prank was to get Josh drunk enough that he wouldn't come to Hannah's defence, confirming the competing viewpoint that Chris was simply completely unaware of the plan. The idea being that if every guest at the Washingtons' house was in on the prank it would come across as too mean-spirited, making players wonder why the three siblings invited people who clearly weren't their friends to spend time at their family's party cabin. Having Chris (and presumably Sam) be uninvolved was intended to make it feel more like an idea for a mean joke that got out of hand among a few members of a usually tight friend group during a night of drinking, rather than a long-running conspiracy to bully the party's hosts.

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