Truth or Dare...or Death

"Truth or Dare...or Death!" is the fourth episode of the first season of The Unexpected Podcast. It aired on February 2nd, 2018. Creators Andrew Soucek and Erik Bergstrom returned to existing source material after a month of new content in "The Strange Music of Derrick Zugg" didn't produce the results they desired.

The original story came from a short film produced by The Unexpected duo in 2002, simply titled "Truth or Death". Like with the "Field of Screams" script, Soucek went with an entirely new idea after the initial setup of four friends getting together for a sleepover and playing the game, Truth or Dare.

The script was written during a live Google Hangouts call between Soucek and Bergstrom, the first time a script for the show was worked on simultaneously. Soucek wrote the action and dialogue, while Bergstrom added additional dialogue and story details.

As the original source material contained four characters, Soucek and Bergstrom planned to cover at least four voices. As the plot developed into a story-in-a-story concept, more characters were added. With Soucek suffering from a debilitating vocal cord issue, they decided to include new vocal talent for the first time, leading to the introduction of Zach Marion, who played the teacher, Mr. Langenschmidt. Marion's performance helped the episode reach new heights in the show's short history, and led to him becoming the first featured cast member to land a starring role on the podcast.

Parts of the Unexpected Universe to return to the episode include the name "Tony", with the Tony family's introduction in a commercial for Tony, Tony & Murplesturn. A character named "Tim" appears again in a dual role as the missing friend and, in the second portion, the narrator of the story. It's also the name of a bomb detonated by Mr. Langenschmidt in the conclusion of the episode. Mustard appears once more, this time as a crucial element in the murder investigation.

The episode is also historical for its introduction of the Dongarud Creek location, where various mysterious and unexplained events have occurred either in, or nearby, across multiple episodes.

Plot
Original Description: ''A group of friends get together for their annual game of Truth or Dare. But this time, one of them has a dare that none of them can go back on.''

Four adult friends (Greg, Mike, Randy and Cal) are spending the night together, invoking a pinkie swear they made with their friend Tim who went missing while in high school. Before long, Mike, the most successful friend in the group, admits to believing Tim to be dead. He blames the annual sleepovers for the dissolution of his marriage and the stress of potentially losing his job, and, against the group's pleading, claims it's his last year of meeting up with them.

Cal and Randy both admit that a lot has changed since high school (becoming a dentist and publisher of erotic Lego fan fiction, respectively) and reluctantly agree to end the tradition, leaving Greg as the only hold-out. To smooth things over, Cal suggests they play Tim's favorite game, Truth or Dare, one final time. After a few innocent rounds, Mike takes his turn and dares the group to murder someone that night. He lays down a defense of his bold dare by recapping the entire reason they began meeting in the first place. In the process, he shows signs of his own personality disorder by speaking in third-person. Disturbed by Mike's dare, and his odd snap with reality, Greg finally agrees to it being their last year of meeting up.

In the middle of the night, Mike wakes to find Cal and Randy missing. He initially believes Greg took him up on his dare, though Greg denies it vociferously. Mike then wakes up later to find Greg missing as well, and, after finding one of the sleeping bags bloodied, decides to investigate. He checks various rooms, including the kitchen and living room, where a tape of Cal's trip to Italy mysteriously begins to play on the television. Bizarrely, Cal alludes to the fact that Mike knows "who killed" him, just before Greg reappears. Believing Greg to be the killer, Mike confronts him. Greg tries to convince Mike he's having another mental lapse, but Mike interrupts him by stabbing him to death. Afterwards, he hears a disassociated voice—his own—telling him to kill himself in one final dare. Just as he's about to do it, Tim returns to do the honors himself, revealing that Mike actually tried to kill him to steal his business idea.

In a twist, it's revealed that the four friends never really existed, and that Tim had been telling the story to his own friends, putting himself in the main role as an avenger. As his friends, Carl and Pete, chastise him for his bad story-telling etiquette, another friend, James, appears with a bomb strapped to his chest. He claims he's built it to avenge himself against his own friends, who were jerks to him in high school, ironically casting himself in Tim's fictional role.

This story is also revealed to be made-up, when, in the final act, a teacher named Mr. Langenschmidt finishes telling it to his class as an anti-bullying lesson. After his students leave, Mr. Langenschmidt delivers a soliloquy that gently hints at how the story may actually have some truth in it, tying people and places in the stories to actual events in his own tragic life. He then detonates a bomb strapped to his chest that he named "Tim" as a way to end his tortured existence.

Commercial
The episode features a commercial for the law offices of "Tony, Tony & Murplesturn", who promise fair representation in personal injury lawsuits. The partners in the firm are Dick Tony, Mick Tony, and Doug Murplesturn. The first two are brothers in the Tony family, who reappear in future episodes.

Production
After the troublesome experience of adapting an H.P. Lovecraft tale for "The Strange Music of Derrick Zugg", co-creators Andrew Soucek and Erik Bergstrom decided to go back to what inspired them in the first place—tales of everyday people living through unexpected scenarios. To achieve this, they drew upon an old plot of four high-schoolers getting together for a game of Truth or Dare, where one friend dares the others to murder someone. To help it appeal to modern, adult audiences, however, they approached the scriptwriting process with the decision to make the four main characters adults who had been meeting once a year as a matter of tradition.

On January 7th, 2018, Soucek and Bergstrom met up in a historical Google Hangouts session to co-write the script. As Soucek filled in the action and dialogue, Bergstrom cleaned up with additional character development. Faced with the important yet daunting task to craft a believable script featuring four adults sleeping at someone's house, Soucek and Bergstrom focused on making the dialogue heartfelt and believable, giving the effect that the four main characters have been friends for many years. The ideas for giving Mike a personality disorder and for making it a story-within-a-story (within yet another story) occurred during the live session.

This is the first episode to feature additional vocal talent besides Soucek and Bergstrom. With Soucek's well-publicized throat issue paining him on a daily basis, they turned to former associates to fill in the large cast that had ballooned during writing. Visual artist Dustin Riccio appeared for the first time as a cast member, voicing the character of Carl. A classmate of Soucek's from film school, Travis Mattick, voiced Pete. Another former college classmate to Soucek, communications guru Jered MicahNinja Weber, voiced James.

Zach Marion also made his first appearance on the show in the role of Mr. Langenschmidt. His tragic and compelling performance was lauded by the media and brought unprecedented levels of success to the show in terms of downloads and repeat listens. This led to Marion entering into contract negotiations with Soucek and Bergstrom to become the first repeat cast member in a blockbuster deal for an undisclosed sum of money.

Memorable Quotes
"I really, really didn’t want to have to invoke this...but we pinkie swore, along with Tim, that we’d get together once a year, catch up, and just play some games like we did in high school." - Greg

''"I guess we won’t know because Tim never got to be a real adult. He never had his wife Brenda leave him for that banking CEO Phillip Clair. He never had to take care of his kids by himself, like I do. Times are tough man. I know you’re happy working at Casey’s and sitting around playing video games and eating Cheetos all night, but some of us have real responsibilities….and a life to get back to." - ''Mike

"Be careful what you wish for Greg. Because tonight, I’m daring you...to kill someone." - Mike

"Just to recap, we started doing this whole thing ten years ago, in our senior year of high school because we were all best friends. We said we’d continue doing it each year at this time for as long as we humanly could. And when Tim went missing? Well, that was just the icing on the cake. We knew we couldn’t go a single year without getting together, playing some games, just taking our minds off things. And tonight, Mike let you all know this is his last year he plans on playing these silly games so he can take care of his kids because his wife left him, and it’s possible he may even lose his wildly successful business, which worries him because his own father jumped in front of a train after losing his job when Mike was only fifteen." - Mike

"Dare or no dare, I’m just not comfortable with killing someone. Especially one of my friends." - Greg

"Ow, I just ran into a desk. Where’s that lamp? There it is." - Mike

"Greg, just be straight with me. Did...did you take me up on your dare and kill one, or both of them, in their sleep? And bury their bodies out by Dongarud Creek next to Tim? ...if he’s there, that is." - Mike

"Mike, have you gone bananas? Those are my best friends. You know what? No. No I didn’t. Is that good enough for you? Now go to bed, get some sleep, and we’ll all look back and laugh about this over pancakes in the morning." - Greg

"Is that...is that more blood on the handle of the fridge? OH JEEZ. It is! I’m afraid to open this door, who knows what could be inside?" - Mike

"Those jars of mustard were unopened, and now you’re going to spread me out. For good!" - Mike

"You just told a story about yourself and how you faked your death for 10 years so you could come back to kill the guy who thought he killed you and buried you near a creek?" - Carl

"Well, frankly, it makes no sense. You just wasted an hour of our lives and I have to get up early and drive my kids to hockey practice. I’m going to be really tired in the morning. Oh, and I really don’t appreciate you clearly basing the Mike character after me." - Pete

"That’s right, while you three were telling dumb stories for the past hour, I was in the bathroom crafting a bomb and strapped it to my chest, because you guys were jerks to me in high school and I’ve been waiting 10 years for this exact moment!" - James

''"The school’s empty and I’m alone again...just like every other night of the week. It’s in these quiet moments where I can’t help but be tortured by the thoughts of how things would have played out differently had I been nicer to my own loved ones. Ten years of marriage down the drain. Maybe Brenda and the kids would have stayed, instead of leaving me with nothing but our dogs, Cal and Randy, and our rundown house near Dongarud Creek. Had I been there for them, and not spent all my nights playing video games and eating Cheetos, maybe they would’ve taken me on that trip to Italy instead of going with Phil Clair, that hotshot with the fancy bank-teller job. And maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have to work weekends at Casey’s to pay alimony and to stave off the ever-increasing loneliness. But this is the life I’m living. Maybe it’s the one I was destined for all along. Some would simply call it fate. Either way, it doesn’t matter. It’s too late for me now. And there’s only one way I can atone for my sins and finally, finally make things right for everyone I’ve hurt in the past...by detonating this homemade bomb I strapped to my chest... a bomb that I’ve named.... Tim."'' - Mr. Langenschmidt