Was the YED a hallucination, or a djinn projecting a false image? Because Sam injected the white stuff into him, not Dean, right?

Also, a big fat YES to the wtfery of the tests and subsequent lack-thereof.

Did I miss a scene between Dean dying on the floor alone, and walking through the house, fine, with Sam?

Sure, I get that being Lucifer's holding cell in hell would cause a little trauma, but c'mon. Dean was down there 40 years. Sam was (if we can trust him) there for...what, a day? A week?

I wish the writers would clarify this. In the meantime, something to consider... you're assuming that all levels of hell are progressing along the same timelines, in the same realities. It's possible that wherever Lucifer would be held would not be in the same area that Alistair and his minions would be running amuck, and perhaps time would move differently in these areas. Also, I've seen people insist that nothing bad could have happened since Sam/Lucifer was in a cage. However while the cage would have kept Sam/Lucifer from getting out, it wouldn't necessarily have kept other things from getting in to him/them.

I'm sure Lucifer, for however long he had, would be fucking up Sam's shit for being the means to his reimprisonment.

I just had a horrible thought that probably Michael and Adam weren't to happy with him either, and might have joined in on the action.

I can still believe Bobby would go along with not telling Dean because Dean got out and has a family.

I don't trust Samuel. Even before the taking of the djinn and "don't tell the boys" I don't trust him. Sam and Samuel are both assuming (or at least both saying) that they were brought back by the same force, but what if they weren't?

I'm pretty sure YED was just a hallucination.

There's also the question of whether any of their tests would work if it were Lucifer possessing Sam rather than a demon. Castiel has proven able to step over Devil's traps without incident, and was unaffected by Ruby's knife. The only thing we've seen able to affect archangels (other than direct attacks from another such) is burning sanctified oil from Jerusalem, and I'm pretty sure that would send Sam on a one-way trip to Freddy Kreuger Land whether or not something else was inside him.

I do think something is definitely going on with Samuel though. I would not expect someone to be all sneaky and sinister after spending a quarter century in Heaven.

And there's the thought that we know Alistair was Dean's chief tormentor while he was there, and Sam was trapped with the guy who created Alistair.

That was kind of a disappointment to me, that Lucifer was shown to be so evil and willing to torture and use horrifying things as his tools throughout Season 5. In "Lucifer Rising" they implied that his fury was righteous from his point of view, and he made a point of not lying to Nick. I wish they'd continued on that track.

I'm with you, Juliebird. I suspect Alistair's antics had nothing on what Lucifer and/or Michael was capable of.

OMG yes. This made no sense at all. We've never seen any of them (Dean, Sam or Bobby) be this careless about verifying the identity of anyone before.

That is one of the things that kind of threw me out of the episode, to be honest. Dean just accepting that was Sam after Sam "tested" himself, okay. Dean has a blind spot when it comes to Sam, and I get that. But Bobby? In my head, there was a scene where Bobby offered Lisa and Ben cold glasses of lemonaide spiked with holy water.

(I did like the line "Don't touch the decor. Assume it's loaded".)

But beyond the peepee contest of who's pain was worse, is the contrast of Dean's post-hell "don't wanna talk" and Sam pushing (and I can't recall how gently or roughly) for honesty, and Sam' post-hell cold shut-down and dismissal.

I can see that if he does remember, that he might not be in the headspace to realize that there is someone who has an inkling of what he went through, but I tend to be more sympathetic to reactions like "I hurt and can't share, and I'm trying to protect myself by being glib" than reactions of "I shall revert to coldness and meanness and anger and make you feel bad about it".

Mostly, I'm intrigued by the differences and the similarities and the hypocrisy of their mutual post-Hell traumas.