Welcome to Night Vale cocreator Joseph Fink says Grim Fandango shaped his storytelling

Joseph Fink is the cocreator and cowriter of Welcome to Night Vale, widely regarded as one of the most influential fiction podcasts ever made. He also created the noir podcast Unlicensed and the series Alice Isn't Dead, which channels some of Night Vale's conspiratorial, cosmic-horror sensibility into a more grounded story about relationships and trauma. A sequel series, Don't Tell Alice, has since taken the story in an even darker direction.

Fink is also a published author, having co-written the three Welcome to Night Vale novels along with the Alice Isn't Dead novel and The Halloween Moon. His latest work, a brief and unsettling novella called The Nudge illustrated by Jessica Hayworth, arrives in stores on September 1st.

What shaped his craft

In an interview with The Verge, Fink said his entire approach to storytelling was largely shaped by Grim Fandango, the 1999 adventure game about a grim reaper navigating a film-noir afterlife. He said lines and imagery from the game have stuck with him permanently, even though many were references to classic films he wasn't yet familiar with at the time.

Fink also shared some personal habits: he sticks to Android phones specifically because of the podcast app Podcast Addict, and he considers Bluesky his primary social media platform. He named the Audible series Unlicensed, a mystery set in Los Angeles's less glamorous neighborhoods, as the creation he's proudest of. The show ran for three seasons before Audible largely shut down its original programming division.

He also mentioned frequenting bookstores and rarely leaving without buying something, while noting he has little interest in other physical media like records or DVDs.