50 Fun Facts About Welcome to Night Vale

In Welcome to Night Vale's first episode, which new facility does the City Council forbid every resident from entering?

A dog park opens at the corner of Earl Road and Somerset, yet neither dogs nor people are allowed in, and residents are not even meant to acknowledge that it exists.

What kind of creature is Hiram McDaniels, the blogger and fugitive who runs for office in Welcome to Night Vale?

A five-headed dragon standing eighteen feet tall, Hiram became a fugitive after he was pulled over for speeding and handed the Sheriff's Secret Police an obviously fake driver's license.

Which entity tries to conquer Night Vale by telepathy, then settles down and becomes president of the school board?

The Glow Cloud rained dead armadillos, lizards and crows on the town, then came back to join the school board because it judged Night Vale the ideal place to raise its offspring.

Which public servants in Welcome to Night Vale are feared as deadly, clawed creatures that prey on their visitors?

Librarians in Night Vale are monsters with gnarled yellow teeth, pincers and wings, and during one summer programme they trapped nearly 100 children inside their building.

Which role at Night Vale Community Radio is a running joke for how rarely the people who fill it survive?

Interns at the station die or vanish so often that only a handful, Cecil himself and Dana Cardinal among them, are known to have come through the programme alive.

John Peters, the farmer of Welcome to Night Vale, collects a yearly subsidy for an imaginary crop of what?

Corn that exists only in the imagination earns John Peters an annual subsidy of $500,000, while the peach orchard he owns has never produced a single peach.

Which landforms does Cecil Palmer flatly insist do not exist during the early episodes of Welcome to Night Vale?

Mountains are a matter of local debate, and Dana Cardinal even calls herself a good unbeliever in them, though Cecil eventually takes his denial back.

A Night Vale law makes it a misdemeanor not to eat once a week at which local restaurant?

Big Rico's Pizza is the only pizzeria in town that was not burned to the ground in an unsolved arson case, and the City Council then made a weekly visit mandatory.

Which costly project did the Night Vale Business Association build although the town is landlocked and bone dry?

A harbor and boardwalk went up with only sagebrush and rocks to look at, and when the venture failed the association declared it a hallucination shared by the whole town.

In Welcome to Night Vale, what animal is Khoshekh, the pet found floating motionless in the station's men's bathroom?

A cat fixed about four feet off the ground beside the sink, Khoshekh is kept alive by staff who leave the tap running for water and set food on the counter within reach.

Which Night Vale resident is the brother-in-law Cecil Palmer despised on air for years before coming to respect him?

Steve Carlsberg is the husband of Cecil's sister Abby, and he is one of the few townspeople who sees past the City Council's lies, much to Cecil's annoyance.

Dana Cardinal survives the dangers of working at Night Vale Community Radio and goes on to hold which office?

Mayor Dana Cardinal won the election without ever being a candidate, which is why the two declared candidates refused to accept the result and attempted a coup.

Kevin, the relentlessly cheerful and gore-loving radio host, broadcasts from which rival town of Night Vale?

Desert Bluffs has a baseball team called the Sunbeams and seemed a much nicer place than its neighbour, though it was owned outright by a corporation rather than run by a council.

Which corporation quietly buys Night Vale's businesses, including the radio station, before the town revolts against it?

StrexCorp, in full StrexCorp Synernists Incorporated, held the town for a short period in 2014 before the residents rose up and drove it out.

Which regular segment of Welcome to Night Vale is in fact a song by an independent musician each episode?

The Weather has nothing to do with forecasts: Cecil simply hands over to a track by a different independently published artist every episode.

Which well-read Night Vale girl beheads a monster at twelve and later leads a militia of teenagers?

Tamika Flynn walked out of the building at the head of the other children, carrying the creature's severed head, and on her sixteenth birthday she appointed herself to the City Council.

A miniature underground city of tiny, hostile people is discovered beneath which Night Vale business?

A bowling alley owned by Teddy Williams housed the tiny people in a parallel dimension under Lane 5, an early plot point that resurfaced years later.

Which foodstuff does Night Vale's City Council ban, with all its by-products, after it turns into venomous snakes?

Wheat then transformed again into malevolent spirits, and residents took refuge in a shelter the City Council had built in advance on the strength of a prophecy.

Which Night Vale resident, living out near the car lot, is first to report that angels have visited her house?

Old Woman Josie, voiced by Retta, said the angels helped her change a light bulb, and she chaired the Night Vale Opera for many years.

What do Cecil Palmer and Carlos do in the one hundredth episode of Welcome to Night Vale?

They get married, long after Cecil spent the whole first year of the podcast fawning over the newly arrived scientist on air before the two began dating.

Which actor took over the voice of Carlos the scientist in Welcome to Night Vale after a co-creator played him first?

Dylan Marron replaced co-creator Jeffrey Cranor in the role, and he went on to win an Audio Verse Award for the supporting performance in 2015.

Which actress voices Night Vale's Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home and narrates the novel about her?

Mara Wilson plays a being who lives in every resident's home at once, and the third Night Vale novel is devoted to the character's backstory.

What name is shared by every one of the angels in Welcome to Night Vale?

Erika, spelled with a K, is what every angel is called, and the town did not legally recognise that angels existed at all until 2017.

What is Deb, the visitor who reads sponsors' advertisements on Night Vale Community Radio?

A sentient patch of haze, Deb was created so that Meg Bashwiner, who reads the credits, could take a bigger part in the live shows.

In Welcome to Night Vale, the schoolgirl Megan Wallaby was born as what?

An adult man's hand is all there was of Megan until a body donor missing his left hand arrived as a gift from the town's sister city.

Which real Hollywood actor is a Night Vale celebrity who celebrated his thirtieth birthday every day for years?

Lee Marvin finally turned 31 once time in the town was put back to normal, a change he himself was responsible for in the Year Seven finale.

Which guest star voices Earl Harlan, the scout master and chef who grew up with Cecil in Welcome to Night Vale?

Wil Wheaton plays Earl as a sombre sous chef at the fine dining restaurant Tourniquet, a man who has trouble remembering his own past.

What is the name of Cecil Palmer's niece in Welcome to Night Vale, who captains a wheelchair basketball team?

Janice was born with spina bifida, rides a stealth wheelchair of her own design and went on to set a state record for assists.

Michelle Nguyen, who scorns any music that becomes popular, owns which Night Vale store?

Dark Owl Records hides or destroys any record a customer has actually heard of, and the ghost of Buddy Holly occasionally appears there.

What is the name of the son Cecil Palmer and Carlos adopt and keep secret from Night Vale listeners for two years?

Esteban is named after his uncle and loves strawberries and giraffes; his fathers kept him off the air to hold back some of their personal life.

Who lent narrator Cecil Baldwin a $25 microphone to record the first episodes of Welcome to Night Vale?

Joseph Fink, who created the show with Jeffrey Cranor on a shoestring budget, also handled its sound and won an Audio Verse Award for audio engineering in 2014.

Which hit show did Welcome to Night Vale overtake to reach number one on the iTunes podcast chart in July 2013?

This American Life was knocked off the top spot during a week in which the year-old fiction podcast was downloaded 150,000 times.

On which social platform did a 2013 explosion of fan art and fan fiction send Welcome to Night Vale up the charts?

Tumblr logged more than 20,000 posts about the show in a single week of July 2013, much of the fan work centring on the romance between Cecil and Carlos.

For which cable network was a Welcome to Night Vale television series being developed by writer Gennifer Hutchison?

FX was the planned home, with Sony Pictures Television producing, but the creators said in 2023 that the series was indefinitely postponed after a pilot had been written.

Welcome to Night Vale has been described as the news from Lake Wobegon seen through the eyes of which author?

Stephen King was the comparison, while a Dallas Morning News critic summed the podcast up as NPR meets The Mothman Prophecies.

The co-creator who dreamed up Night Vale pictured a town where all of what were simply true?

Conspiracy theories being real was the starting premise, which is why secret police, hooded figures and shadowy government agencies are ordinary parts of town life.

Which Night Vale Presents podcast is told as radio messages from a truck driver crossing America?

Alice Isn't Dead stars Jasika Nicole, the voice of Dana Cardinal, as Keisha, a trucker searching for her missing wife, and its original run lasted from 2016 to 2018.

Which second Night Vale novel follows scientist Nilanjana Sikdar as she investigates a local congregation?

The 2017 novel It Devours!, with an audiobook read by Cecil Baldwin, arrived two years after the first Night Vale novel became a bestseller.

In the 2015 novel Welcome to Night Vale, what kind of business is run by teenager Jackie Fierro?

A pawn shop is where Jackie is handed a slip of paper she physically cannot put down, which sets her investigating the stranger who gave it to her.

What does credits reader Meg Bashwiner deliver at the very end of each Welcome to Night Vale episode?

A proverb, always a comically skewed one, closes every episode, which is why Bashwiner is credited as the Proverb Lady.

Mysterious lights hover in the sky above which fast-food restaurant in Night Vale?

Arby's is also where Cecil and Carlos first admitted their feelings, sitting on the trunk of a car in the parking lot and watching the lights.

Which unseen bosses of Night Vale Community Radio almost never leave their office and have been seen by no one?

Station Management may commute by portal from another dimension, and staff can only shout at the office door or slip a note under it and wait for a memo back.

On which Night Vale occasion are residents urged to run, hide or fake their own deaths to survive?

Street Cleaning Day is deadly because the Street Cleaners home in on heat and movement, and it gave its name to the fifteenth episode.

Which two-part Welcome to Night Vale episode brings doubles of the townspeople and first introduces rival host Kevin?

The Sandstorm opens a vortex in Kevin's booth that lets him wander into Night Vale, and Dana Cardinal kills her own double during it.

What kind of creature, summoned from Hell by accident, leads the strangers who invade Night Vale in Year Four?

A beagle puppy was summoned by Chad Bowinger, a former member of the station's staff, and the script book covering that year is titled Who's a Good Boy?

What does the Man in the Tan Jacket carry in his deerskin suitcase in Welcome to Night Vale?

Trained flies fill the case because he sells them for a living, and nobody who meets him can remember anything else about him but the jacket and the luggage.

The name Khoshekh, given to the floating pet at Night Vale Community Radio, means what in Hebrew?

Darkness is the meaning of the Hebrew word, and the animal was later revealed to be a cursed art thief named Silas.

Huntokar, the goddess revealed to have created Night Vale, is depicted with the face of which animal?

A deer is the face of Huntokar the Destroyer, who belongs to a group of gods older than reality itself and once spent 10,000 years sitting in a lake.

Who hosted Night Vale Community Radio before Cecil Palmer and was his childhood idol?

Leonard Burton, voiced by James Urbaniak, is long dead, and he has a wife and children he does not remember.

Which musician composed the theme and background music heard in every episode of Welcome to Night Vale?

Disparition has supplied the instrumental score since the 2012 pilot, separately from the guest track that changes with every episode.