Line #76 Headscratchers/SilentHill3


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3	[[folder:Evil monsters or creepy detective? Hmmm...]]
4	* I always feel that the proper response to being confronted with a mutant horror that defies nature is to turn back and run the heck away, which is why every time I play a survival horror game I turn right around as soon as the controller is responsive and see if I can make my character just plain ''leave.'' So, what bugs me about [=SH3=] is that Heather wouldn't leave through the real world bathroom into the real world mall because "that creepy detective is on the other side of the door". Hey Heather, know what else is creepy? ''Giant quadruped monsters that eat humans!''
5	** To be fair, when she was making the comment about the "creepy detective", she hadn't seen any monsters yet. Lemme know next time you decide that a creepy possible rapist isn't dangerous because you might see a monster later.
6	** Heather could have thought he was a rapist, and judging from the first boss she encounters, she's very, very afraid of that sort of thing. Alternatively, I don't understand why she couldn't just climb up on the van in the alleyway (How in the hell did it get there, anyway?) and scoot off.
7	*** Again, she hadn't seen any monsters yet. Climbing all over someone's car instead of just trying to walk out through the mall like a normal person would seem like a ridiculous option to her then.
8	*** Except that she's walking through the back parts of the mall that normal people aren't supposed to be in.
9	*** You can go back into that alley after seeing the monsters. She still says the same thing.
10	*** If I remember right, as soon as you encounter the first Closer, Heather is willing to immediately try the bathroom door without hesitation and the lock's been broken. The person in the bathroom stall also disappears as soon as the first encounter happens. Basically "Silent Hill mode" has been triggered and there's no going back.
11	* SH is messing with her by switching whatever town she's in with a DarkWorld version. So why doesn't she take advantage of the situation, being one of the four only people populating it, by stealing cash from as many registers in the shopping mall as she can get away with? She has enough weapons to try, at least, and momma needs money to buy those NewGamePlus blouses!
12	** You know, I recall Heather at one point actually mentioning wishing that one of the shops with a locked door was open, because there was something in there she wanted. So Heather at least ''thought'' about looting the place. And if we take into account all the item collection, then Heather is already stealing stuff in the game as it is.
13	*** [[spoiler:If you decide to take Shattered Memories as canon, then it also shows that Heather is not above shoplifting.]]
14	*** WordOfGod says that [[spoiler:Shattered Memories is in a different continuity]].
15	* Harry probably laid the "stranger danger" on ''very'' thick while raising Heather, to avoid her getting caught by The Order.
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19	[[folder:Buy a cell phone, Heather!]]
20	* The game was released in 2003, but no definite year is given in-game. But it took place 17 years after SH1, so it's safe to assume that the game's setting is somewhat modern. Why, then, does Heather's dad buy her a stun gun, but no cell phone?
21	** Because cell phones and pagers can be tracked, and Harry knows better than anybody that if anything truly bad happens to her, it'll be because the cult has found her, and if that's the case, she needs to be focused on herself and her situation, not calling him for help. The risk of investing 90's money into an easily lost or damaged homing beacon is just too high, especially since Harry already has experience with the radio and other electronics failing in the presence of the Otherworld. To him, it'd be like giving her a big emergency flare that ''might'' be able to reach him in a real crisis, but can ''definitely'' be used to discover her whereabouts.
22	** Honestly, SH1 may have happened in the seventies and SH3 may well be happening in the eighties for all we know. The SH games avoid modern technology like the plague, so placing each is really difficult if not downright impossible.
23	** If Silent Hill 3 is set in 2003, then Harry may not have wanted to buy anything that could be traced, like a cell phone. Remember, they are on the run from a cult that wants to kill his daughter and bring about the end of the world.
24	*** Silent Hill 3 is officially in 1997, so no cell phones.
25	*** Cell phones existed in 1997... hell, they existed in the '80s! But the games kind of imply that cell phones wouldn't work in Silent Hill anyway. The Movie made sure to point that out as well, except unlike the games, it was blatant and without question.
26	*** I vote for untraceable myself, even still, to tack on more dates for you, officially VideoGame/SilentHillOrgins is set in 1972, VideoGame/SilentHill1 is in 1980, followed closely by VideoGame/SilentHill2 in 1994, then finally by VideoGame/SilentHill3 in 1997. There are a few [[ContinuityNod time line acknowledgments]] made in SH3 about when everything actually happened.
27	*** Some sources say that Silent Hill 3 is set in 2000. Still within the time frame of when not everyone had a cell phone.
28	*** According to Alex Shepherd's diary from Homecoming, Silent Hill Origins is set in 1976, making Silent Hill in 1983 (7 years after Origins), Silent Hill 2 in 1993 (10 years after Silent Hill), and Silent Hill 3 in 2000 (7 years after Silent Hill 2 and 17 years after Silent Hill).
29	*** While cell phones did exist in the 90's, not everyone had them back then. This troper didn't get a cell phone until 2003, so it's not unreasonable to assume that she just didn't have one.
30	*** Harry is a writer, and not a too-famous one at that (after all, he's not exactly looking to draw any attention on himself, even if he is publishing under a pen name). I kind of feel like, even through cell phones WERE around in '97, it's extremely unlikely that they would be able to afford one in a time when cell phones were more viewed as a luxury and not nearly, nearly as prevalent as they are now. This still kind of bothers me, though, because Harry is obviously over-protective (although it is ''justified'' over-protectiveness, don't get me wrong) enough to go so far as to want Heather to call him ''as she's leaving the mall''. This troper doesn't think she had lax parents at all, and that seems pretty ridiculous. For Harry in that state of mind to not ensure that Heather had a cell phone despite the cost does seem pretty weird. I just have to tell myself that it's not something they could afford, since I think the idea of Harry being crazy enough to be worried about being "traced" by a cell phone is a little far-fetched. BUT I do want to add that VideoGame/SilentHill3 doesn't "officially" take place in 1997. There aren't any official dates at all until VideoGame/SilentHillOrigins, which attempted to give dates to the series and then failed miserably. So this could all really be a big moot point anyway.
31	*** It's more likely that Harry just plain couldn't afford a cell phone for Heather at the time. Remember, he's a single dad on the run from a cult who made every effort not to break the illusion for his daughter, and is very likely to have had issues stemming from his experiences in the first game. If he was still writing at that point, he probably wasn't getting paid regularly and had to carefully ration his income in order to be able to support a daughter and remain low-profile without her ever finding out. As to the phone call leaving the mall, that's not that unusual: she has to take a subway home and walk back herself, which would be dangerous even in the best of circumstances, so Harry would want an idea of when to expect her back. This is a guy who literally has gone to Hell and back for his baby girl, he just needs to know what time is appropriate to get the katana and the hunting rifle out of the closet in his room.
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36	[[folder:I'm sure that crazy woman with a knife won't hurt me!]]
37	* What the hell made Vincent think it'd be a terrific idea to turn his back on a clearly insane woman with a dagger?
38	** Sheer cockiness, which is totally in character. I suspect he was so certain that Claudia needed him that she could do nothing against him even in the face of his betrayal.
39	** It doesn't even need to be that; remember that they've known each other since they were children. He might have assumed that there was no way she'd ever hurt the closest thing to a childhood friend she has left, considering how much losing Alessa screwed her up.
40	*** Not that I was looking too closely, but did Claudia even have the knife visible before Vincent turned around?
41	*** Not from what I remember, if I'm recalling correctly, Vincent getting stabbed was a total surprise. The camera deliberately showed Vincent falling over in pain, with Claudia behind him and the knife in her hands.
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44	[[folder:The superpowers are a lie]]
45	* Throughout the course of the game, we kind of see [[spoiler:Alessa's personality reassert itself]] anyway, so why didn't [[spoiler:Alessa do anything to stop Harry's murder?]] There's something disturbing about how [[spoiler:Alessa chose to summon the "memory" of herself to try to kill Heather to stop the god from being born later on]], but chose not to help [[spoiler:Harry in his greatest time of need?]] RuleOfScary and all that, but that shouldn't let Konami slide on consistency and characterization. OR [[spoiler:Alessa suspected, like Harry seemingly did, that it was inevitable that The Order would come back and try to ruin Heather's life]].
46	** She wasn't aware of it. Remember, Alessa is extremely powerful, but ONLY within the bounds of Silent Hill, so she probably isn't directly aware of things that happen outside her area of influence; Heather does have those memories dormant in her psyche, but the actual powers of Alessa remain in the town itself (which is what makes the Possessed ending so meaningful: she 'picks up' the evil power of Alessa while she's in town). Heather regains the memories and subconscious powers of Alessa AFTER she returns to Silent Hill, which she only does after Harry is murdered. That was the point of killing him: Claudia wanted her to go back to Silent Hill and become Alessa again.
47	** Or to put it another way, Alessa and Heather aren't separate people. Heather is Alessa with IdentityAmnesia, and "Memory of Alessa" is a StarfishCharacter created by the conflict between her memories as Alessa and her current personality as Heather. Alessa stepping in to save Harry would really be Heather unconsciously using her powers, and Heather didn't know Harry was in danger.
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50	[[folder:Heather likes her nurses sexy?]]
51	* Why do the nurses still look like the sexy nurses from 2? Shouldn't they look like the ultra deformed ones from 1? According to the wiki, they symbolize her mistrust of hospitals, but then why do they look pretty damn human? The sexy nurse represented James's frustrated libido; does this mean that Heather has repressed lesbian urges? I seriously want to know because they look more humanlike than 2's.
52	** Or it could be UST between Alessa and Lisa. Think about it, Lisa was one of the few people that Alessa saw on a regular basis after she was put in the hospital. There was also a chance that Lisa was still her nurse till she was 14, and hormones start to kick in. It could be SitchSexuality, especially since Lisa was quite good looking. Heather even goes as far as to refer to her as being [[LesYay 'Heavenly']].
53	*** It could be attraction due to Lisa having sympathy for and being kind to Alessa, too.
54	** From ''Lost Memories'', "it may be that the nurses of the hospital transformed into monsters, but the details are unclear". So they might not represent anything from Heather's mind, just people turned into monsters.
55	*** In the first game the nurses (and doctors) are normal people, but have parasites attached to their backs. It's definitely possible these are people transformed into monsters as well.
56	** They might also represent her own sexuality. Gay or straight, lots of teenagers are awkward or even scared of their sexuality, and the game plays a lot on teenage fears.
57	*** This is what I thought of when I saw the nurses, too. Heather seems to have some anxieties about sexuality that go a bit beyond the norm, given the fact that her monsters so often represent genitalia and fears of sexual violation.
58	** In the second game, there's a boss battle where James fights another character's manifestation of their past trauma, indicating people's other worlds can overlap. Later in the game the same creature appears again, a lot smaller and weaker. Even though it was "someone else's" creature, once he encountered it, it seemed to become a permanent fixture for him as well. Heather visits the same hospital James visits... Perhaps ''his'' nurses are left behind, and appear slightly different to be more "normal" for Heather?
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61	[[folder:Who's Valtiel working for again?]]
62	* Valtiel is shown having the Seal of Metatron on his body, with the implication that he's either Metatron or one of Metatron's subordinates. If that's the case, then why is he ''trying to ensure the cult's god's birth?'' Wasn't Metatron stated to be opposed to the town's dark forces in the first game?
63	** Valtiel IS Metatron, really. Metatron wasn't even mentioned in the first game, so whoever told you that is full of crap.
64	*** The Seal of Metatron is what Alessa was using to seal off the town in the first game. That said, it's just "the seal of Metatron", a name for a magical mark. There's no mention of the actual angel named Metatron having any involvement, and the entry on it says it's a neutral power that can be used for both good and evil.
65	*** To directly quote Dahlia in VideoGame/SilentHill1 : "I was shocked to hear that the Seal of Metatron was being used." So yes, it is mentioned. Otherwise, OP, I'm not seeing a problem? Alessa used the Seal of Metatron in order to seal away the nightmare she was accidentally inflicting on the town, which would be in her interests. Heather is Alessa, and Valtiel (supposedly) drags Heather away to revive her when she's killed - how is this a conflict of interest? If the Seal was a symbol Alessa used and it's now on Valtiel, who is helping Heather... I'm not seeing what the issue is. Regardless, like the troper above mentioned, the Seal of Metatron is actually a neutral symbol that gives power regardless of the intentions of the one using it. Although, apparently in 3, it's actually completely meaningless when it comes to stopping God...
66	*** I always assumed that the problem wasn't that magical circle form of the seal Alessa created in 1 was meaningless, but that the trinket Heather got from Leonard was just a guide illustrating how it should appear for those with the power to create the real deal (and Vincent's plan might have ended up working if the thing had triggered a few memories of how to use Alessa's powers in Heather). Completely powerless on its own, but mundane cult members like Vincent and Leonard don't really get how the magic works and figured, hey, that thing has the Seal on it so it must be powerful!
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69	[[folder:Heather really hides that baby bump well!]]
70	* If Heather is "pregnant" with the cult's god, how come she never develops a noticeable baby bump even by the end of the game?
71	** Heather doesn't have a baby bump because she isn't pregnant. It's never stated that the god is "born" in the same way as a human. It's likely that it doesn't even have a physical form until it's "emitted" from the body. It emerges from Heather's mouth, which would imply it was in her stomach, but I'm fairly sure she would have noticed something that large in her stomach before and sought medical attention. It's also possible that the aglaeophotis functions by forcing the god into a physical form before it's ready. In this case, it ended up as a lump of flesh in her stomach which she proceeds to vomit up.
72	** Well, considering she also throws up the fetus later, it's probably reasonable to assume it's not developing in the same manner as a normal baby... I always assumed it was a kind of spiritual entity incubating inside of Heather's own spirit (hence why Claudia needed to "fill her soul with hatred," etc.) and that it only gained a physical form when it was forced out - either by birth or by aglaophotis.
73	*** Yeah, considering I'm fairly certain that your digestive and reproductive systems aren't connected, this is what I buy!
74	** I figured the "pregnancy" was taking place throughout Heather's body, and the aglaophotis was just condensing it into one place in Heather's stomach before it was ready; it adds another layer of nightmare fuel if you imagine that ''that's'' how Heather would have given birth, if the cult's god had been mature. The other possibility is that ''human'' digestive systems don't connect to the reproductive organs, but we don't know how human Heather really is...
75	*** There's no indication that she's not a relatively normal human being, outside of having telekinetic powers. So, it seems pretty unlikely that she was pregnant with the cult's god in the same way that a person would be literally pregnant with a fetus. All of the graphic symbolism related to birth in the game is really just symbolism, and probably doesn't reflect what would have happened if Heather had actually "birthed" the god. From its birth scenes in both the first ''Silent Hill'' and this one, it seems most likely that it's born from the soul (and probably destroys the body) of the person incubating it.
76	*** [[AWizardDidIt Her body was literally conjured from magic]], on the spot, by Alessa, just before her mortality was restored and she died. She could be full of asbestos for all we know. That being said, the fetus that Heather vomits (and that Claudia is able to choke down whole) is small enough that not only do they both do those things relatively comfortably and without sustaining any damage, which means that the creature itself was soft and squishy, it's small enough that she wouldn't have a bump in the first place. The cult is specifically trying to hasten the birth by ramping up the incubation with Heather's suffering, she's not very far along on her own because Harry is a devoted and loving father. It's also consistent with the original Silent Hill, where evil influence on living things ''always'' manifests as a physical corruption (Puppet Nurses, in particular) and aglaophotis is a purgative that works on it. So, yes, in fact, the thing Heather gives birth to really was in her stomach like we see in the game, the same way you can have a tumor the size of a baseball in your abdomen and never know.
77	** For reference, try shooting at Claudia instead of using the aglaophotis. [[spoiler:See how Heather "births" the god...]]
78	** It's possible that, since Heather took the aglaophotis orally, it had an emetic effect on her. It went in one way and took the evil back out the same way. Also, there's the fact that the "god" "completes" its birth after being swallowed by Claudia, which may mean that the "god" doesn't need a womb to be "born". Considering that Claudia was able to give birth to it afterwards and in the way that she did lends credence to the "born from the soul" theory above. At that point, the god was far enough along after being nourished by Heather's hatred towards Claudia (and, to a lesser degree, Vincent, possibly?) that it just needed a soul that believed in it and/or had enough hatred to nourish it (possibly Claudia's hatred towards her father?) to term.
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83	[[folder:Blind to the Truth]]
84	Something I noticed: very few of the monsters in SH3 had eyes. The exceptions are: "The Glutton" and "God".
85	Very few Silent Hill 2 monsters had eyes either. This, and the fog, might've represented James Sunderland's inability to see a simple truth: [[spoiler:he killed Mary.]] this is righted in the end, when the final boss [[spoiler:Mary or Maria]] has eyes.
86	Is Heather the same? Her Silent Hill also has fog, perhaps to represent her clouded memory of her past as Alessa. The two monsters that have eyes are God (after she 'opens her eyes' and realizes who she is,) and the Glutton, who she gets rid of by saying the magic spell "Tu Fui, Ego Eris" (meaning I was you, you will be me), which could be a foreshadowing of her dual identity as both [[spoiler:Heather and Alessa.]]
87	* The Glutton's extremities actually end in mouths, not in eyes. Also, Masahiro Ito had mentioned on Twitter that he would sometimes opt out of designing eyes, given the option[[https://twitter.com/adsk4/status/829218953729863680 ]]...though indeed that ''[=SH2=]'' had no monsters with eyes[[https://twitter.com/adsk4/status/1170265825787269125 ]] (I guess excepting Mary's/Maria's boss form). Perhaps one could make a litmus test of his monsters from ''[=SH1=]'', like the white-eyed Groaner (dog) and its eyeless Otherworld equivalent, the Wormhead. (These in particular, though, may have to do with Alessa's shifting states of wakefulness.) However, some of ''1''[==]'s monsters were Naoko Sato's instead; and aside from presuming which is whose from style alone, I'm guessing that it's not confirmed for all of them. Plus, Ito has made originally merely thematic components mean something in later installments (e.g.: the industrial fans for ''3''[[https://twitter.com/adsk4/status/857666993318641664 ]]).
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90	[[folder:Of course they look like monsters!]]
91	* This is more about the fandom, but why do so many people believe the 'They look like monsters' theory? I mean, Vincent was wrong about several important points, and could have been crazy himself. Also, in each game, you can kill hundreds of monsters. If there was someone killing hundreds of people, they would have nuked the hell out of Silent Hill. How am I suppose to believe that a 17 year old girl is capable of killing HUNDREDS of people, and several dozen dogs?
92	** Because it's a video game, and you watch her do it. It's not a theory, when Vincent says "They look like ''monsters'' to you?", he's a) clearly surprised to hear it and b) his emphasis on the word "monsters" implies that whatever he assumed Heather was seeing in that layer of Silent Hill's fluctuating reality, "monsters" wasn't it. He recovers and backpedals by saying it's just a joke, but the fact that he's a fast-thinking con man calls his dialogue into question, it's just a matter of whether the "monsters" line was genuine, or the "it was just a joke". The reason everybody believes it is because it makes perfect sense that the monsters she sees don't look like monsters to anyone else and Silent Hill is explicitly a normal town on its "uppermost" layer and people can stray into deeper ones if they're called to do so. It's natural to connect those two ideas for the "Heather sees cultists as monsters" theory. You're assuming that the appearances are the only things that change and not the behavior of the afflicted. If they really are human and Heather is seeing them, they're being affected by Silent Hill and the suicidal will of Alessa. For all we know, the monsters Heather encounters really are human, but as soon as Alessa's powers hit them, they're driven to try to kill her because Alessa wants Heather to die before she gives birth. We don't know, and the ambiguity leaves it open to speculation. Choosing to be smug and superior for ''not'' buying into a popular theory just because the monsters in a video game don't run from the player is basically just bad-faith criticism of video games in general.
93	*** The possibility that the "monsters" are something other than what Heather perceives them to be is an interesting possibility that encourages a thoughtful reexamination of everything the player thought was true going into the story. With that said, not buying the "the monsters are innocent people and Heather is an insane mass killer" theory isn't being smug; it's choosing not to give credence to an idea that's ridiculous both in and out of universe just for the sake of dubious and absurdly overrated "shock value".
94	** Leonard is/was definitely a human. The [[NoExportForYou Book of Lost Memories]] says that the Missionary boss is a transformed cultist. The Scraper enemies are basically lesser versions of the Missionary, so they're likely to be humans. I don't think that the other monsters are human; rather, they relate to Alessa's memories and the forthcoming birth of the God, as in the first game.
95	*** The key here, though, is "transformed". Some of the monsters used to be human, but that's a different matter from the theory that all the monsters actually are human and the heroes are running around on psychotic killing sprees.
96	** Wait, wait; you can't believe that a seventeen year old girl could kill hundreds of ordinary humans, but you ''can'' believe that a seventeen year old girl could kill hundreds of ''extremely dangerous monsters''?
97	** Yup. Look at the fifth paragraph down from this one; monster behavior is "keep slowly shambling towards the puny human bashing in your friend's skull with a pipe," while human behavior, broadly speaking, is "panic and run away from the fucking lunatic bashing in your friend's skull with a pipe." It's much easier to believe when you look at it that way.
98	** I might be misremembering, but I thought ''Douglas'' was the first to say, "They look like monsters to you?" Then, Vincent echoed it later. Again, I might be wrong, but if two people did say this and at least one of them isn't insane....
99	*** Vincent's the only one. Douglas said "what ''was'' that monster?" after the mall changes back to normal. If anything, Douglas confirms that at least one other person besides Heather thinks they're monsters. Even Claudia knew what Heather meant and didn't act surprised when Heather referred to them as monsters before that, when they first met.
100	*** This point is probably irrelevant but also bare in mind how the second game showed the Otherworld as different for each person, so therefore shouldn't the creatures be? Douglas only definitely sees one monster, and it may not have been anything Heather sees.
101	*** The "they're actually innocent people" thing sort of reminds me of the "[[Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff Ferris Bueller is a figment of Cameron's imagination]]" theory: people latch onto the mind-blowing aspect of it, but they don't give it any actual, y'know, ''thought''. When you do, you quickly realize that the "monsters" of Silent Hill really will attack and kill you if you let them, none of the other "monsters" panic or flee for their lives when you bludgeon one of their number to death with a steel pipe, and that a bunch of uniformed "monsters" never show up in police cruisers to put a stop to your murderous rampage at any point. They look like monsters, yes, but they also BEHAVE like monsters. It gets a good shock out of Heather, but it holds very little water as a legitimate answer for what the monsters are and what they're doing in the town. All told, "Vincent's just fucking with her" sounds like a much more credible theory.
102	*** Well, except that the "the monsters can't be people" theory presumes that the people are random bystanders who aren't involved with the cult at all, that their behavior is completely in line with what Heather is seeing and experiencing, and that Heather can see every person in the area and not only the ones that threaten or interact with her, and that the layered reality of Silent Hill is itself completely objective. Even the "uniformed monsters in police cruisers" hypothetical assumes that it's a consistent, universal, 1:1 human-to-monster parallel that Heather experiences, and unless you want to get into the meta of having limited monster types, we have no way to know that's true. Claudia even hands Heather an explanation as to why the monsters are willing to die to attack her: they're trying to get the cult's god to understand pain so that it can learn sympathy and save humanity. If they ''are'' people, the monsters aren't just random nobodies, they're insane, Lovecraft-style cultists willing to die for their cause.
103	*** Hence the operative term "innocent." The theory that keeps getting thrown around is that Heather is insane and wandering around murdering random bystanders, a premise that is definitely shocking, but instantly falls apart when even the most basic logic is applied to it.
104	*** Also: ''Leonard Wolfe''. We know for a fact that if he's not literally, biologically human, then he lived a (relatively) normal human life before being changed by the cult.
105	** I personally have always held the idea that the monsters are "angels" within the cult's religion. When Heather asks Claudia about them, she says "They have come to witness the beginning. The rebirth of paradise, despoiled by mankind." This suggests that they are certainly not human. The fact that the Missionary and Scraper enemies still retain mostly humanlike characteristics suggests that they have partially been transformed into the image of these angels. I think, to Vincent, the monsters look like beautiful angels, which fits in with the whole "Silent Hill is different for everyone" theory.
106	*** Thank you. Thank you so much. There are very few things that annoy me about fandoms, but this is one that always riles me up. Everybody always quotes that line, but never quotes the follow-up line: "Don't worry, it's just a joke." This is like people going "Oh man, the Bible had such a wham line in it where it's all like 'There is no God'. And that's like an actual direct quote and totally isn't out of context." (Psalm 14:1, 'case anyone's wondering)
107	*** "Don't worry, it's just a joke," said ''the con artist''. It's a meaningful line because Vincent is utterly unreliable as a source, almost everything he says to Heather is backed by a desire to manipulate her, a lack of reliable information, or a need to subvert the cult's aims for his own gain. None of those things require him to be honest with her, and all of them are helped by undermining her already-fragile grip on reality so that she'll look to him for direction, which completely works. To use your example, that's like quoting verse from a fake version of the Bible written by an atheist Bible salesman.
108	** Slightly different to the above, as Vincent is part of the cult, the monsters may not literally ''look different'' to him, it's that he ''sees them differently'' to Heather. As a cultist, though Vincent sees the same grotesque twisted heaps of flesh and bone that Heather does, his religious indoctrination means he sees them in the context of being divine, glorious beings. Since the cult is strongly hinted as the dominant religion of Silent Hill, he may never before have met someone who doesn't perceive them the same way. It's like a person who's a huge pit bull lover and who grew up in a town where everyone felt the same way meeting a person who fears and loathes pitbulls for the first time. As touched upon in [[http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2014/10/30/Silent-Hill-cult-history.aspx this fan article on the cult's history here]].
109	*** Even if Vincent (whose belief is questionable) didn't see them as divine and glorious, it's possible that Vincent was expecting Heather, the reincarnation of Alessa, to see the angelic in the beings of Silent Hill the way Claudia did. (The following sentences are hypothetical, and expand on the stated hypothesis.) To that end, Vincent was confused by the fact that Heather seemed to be killing them as she encountered them. He thought that Heather might be having a literal God complex, and his rant was an effort to shut that down. Heather's line "You're talking about the monsters?" was very much a WhamLine for him--he hadn't considered that she would see them as something other than the angelic beings Claudia saw, bringing his rant to a screeching halt.
110	*** This makes the most sense by a long chalk. Vincent's "it's just a joke" backpedal is because he wasn't expecting her to freak the fuck out the way she did, and he gives every indication of having enough of a grasp on reality to be aware that 99.9999999% of people would absolutely ''not'' react well to being told they were killing innocent human beings the whole time they thought they were defending themselves from dangerous creatures. That said, it [almost] certainly doesn't mean Heather is a mass murderer of innocent people, but his "They look like monsters to you?" ''does'' strongly imply that Vincent, as a prominent member of the cult, does not see those same entities as being evil or a threat.
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113	[[folder:Monsters Have a Conflict of Interest]]
114	* If Claudia is trying to arrange the birth of the cult's god (and the god itself is presumably what's making the DarkWorld appear), then isn't it disingenuous for the monsters to attack and try to kill Heather? Wouldn't her death be detrimental to bringing about "Paradise?"
115	** With the exception of the Missionary, Claudia's not controlling the monsters. The monsters and otherworld are all Alessa's trauma manifesting anew through Heather (as Harry said in the flashback to the first game, it's "a world of someone's nightmarish delusions come to life"). For the first half of the game, the monsters are just attacking because that's what the monsters of Alessa's nightmares do, and in the second half, the ones that are wreathed in shadows are the same as Memory of Alessa: they want to kill Heather because the part of Heather that's Alessa wants to die. All of this does play into Claudia's plans, though: since the cult's god (or [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve the Alessa-spawned manifestation of their belief in it]], either way) feeds on Heather's anger and negativity, having her slaughter hordes of monsters is making it stronger (which is why the Possessed ending relies in part on killing lots of monsters).
116	[[/folder]]
117
118	[[folder:A missing persons case?]]
119	* Douglas mentions that he had been to Silent Hill just once before on a missing person's case. Is the implication that he was sent to look for James Sunderland? Or did he mean to say that he met Claudia there when he was hired to find Heather?
120	** The missing persons case that Douglas was on didn't have anything to do with Claudia. Claudia hired him later to find Heather. It's possible that James Sunderland was the missing person Douglas was looking for, but that's just a theory by fans. In Silent Hill 4: The Room, it's mentioned that James' father Frank does know that James disappeared in Silent Hill, but there's no concrete proof that it was him Douglas was looking for.
121	** Not to mention, James isn't the only possibility by a long shot. Cybil (seeing as how it's considered canon that she doesn't survive), Eddie, Angela - any of them could equally qualify, and a police officer would probably have a higher priority.
122	** Except for the follow-up line "I never did find ''him''," (emphasis mine) which strongly suggests a male, [[SarcasmMode sure, it could be Cybil or Angela.]] And since ''private'' detectives are typically hired by people of the non-cop persuasion (and kind of pricey), you have to consider: who'd care enough about Eddie to send a PI after him?
123	*** His parents might. However, under the circumstances, it's likely that Eddie would be known as a ''fugitive'' case, not missing persons--he'd killed a dog and shot a bully in the knee, after all. And given the bully is implied by Eddie's words (and stated via WordOfGod) to still be alive, Eddie likely has a witness to at least the latter. Eddie being the missing person is at best an outside chance, which leaves James Sunderland the most likely of the Silent Hill 2 characters to be the subject of the missing persons case.
124	[[/folder]]
125
126	[[folder:Roller coasters are selective?]]
127	* When Heather is in the 'real' version of the amusement park and has to walk down the tracks, why doesn't simply falling off the tracks trigger the cutscene? Heather had turned off the coaster, so she of course had no idea that it would come on again. Yet her jumping off triggers the cutscene, and falling off due to the weird controls kills you. Unless Alessa decided to turn the coaster back on at a specific point so she could jump off at the right spot, this doesn't quite make sense.
128	** Probably another case of Silent Hill playing on people's fears...¸
129	** Actually, the roller coaster did make her jump in the right spot. After jumping off, she landed on the soft (I assume, kinda hard to tell because of the graphics) roof of a souvenir/popcorn wagon instead of the hard metal floor.
130	[[/folder]]
131
132	[[folder:Why am I not shooting her ass again?]]
133	* There are many cutscenes on the game where Heather will just point her gun at Claudia and threaten to kill her, but in the end, she gives up in all of them. The only instance where Heather can shoot Claudia is when controlled by the player near the final battle, which will lead to a DownerEnding where God is born. Now, I understand that God is nurtured by hatred and all that, but Claudia hints several times that killing her wouldn't be enough for it to happen. Such as: Not remembering her "true self", not being at the right place, ''not being at the right time''. So, I don't see any logical reasons for Heather to just wait or try to reason with an obviously insane woman who just murdered her father and shoot her ass up while there's still time. It's not even like she ''needed'' a reason the first time, because she didn't even understand the hatred plot point. Had she done this, she'd be back to her life and would forget about the whole "Silent Hill, God and Paradise" thing.
134	** Maybe because no matter how full of righteous anger you are, the act of killing another human being for the first time is usually an extremely difficult one? Heather's not a seasoned soldier or even a sociopath-- from all appearances she's a normal seventeen-year-old girl. Sure, she may have been given marksmanship lessons from her father, but practicing on a dummy and killing an actual living thing are two vastly different things. Just look at the way she reacts when she fires the first shot at the Mandarin at the beginning of the game-- she ''cries out'' when the gun goes off for the first time, and that was against a ''monster''. I have no problem believing that she would blanch at committing cold-blooded murder, no matter how desperate for vengeance she was or how much Claudia deserved it.
135	*** Also, note her reaction to Vincent's "They looked like ''monsters'' to you?" The thought that she might have killed ''people'' clearly did not sit well with her.
136	** There's also the fact that if you pay attention to some of the hints around the church and their dialogue together, Alessa and Claudia were both very close as kids, to the point of considering each other sisters. While Heather may be royally pissed at Claudia for murdering Harry, there's likely still the part of her inside that still remembers Claudia and can't bring herself to shoot her childhood friend. It only seems to be when Claudia basically blows off Heather's attempts at telling her the "paradise" she wants is just an escapist fantasy and she murders Vincent does she seem to give up on trying to talk "her sister" down.
137	* None of this explains why DOUGLAS on the other hand did not shoot Claudia when he had the chance, nor how his leg was broken (presumably by Claudia).
138	** Only if you equate "we don't see him do it" to "he never tried". Do you think Claudia just happened to walk up to Douglas and be like "hey bro like I know I hired you for a job and everything and you did that job and I have no real reason to think you're not okay to just take your money and go, I'ma fuck your leg up because I want to teach your elbows some compassion real quick"? He pulls a gun on her, explicitly says he's prepared to kill her, and then the scene ends and the next time we see him his leg is broken. Maybe he missed, maybe the gun jammed, maybe something else, but the scene where he threatens Heather with the gun is pretty clearly telling us that he DID try to kill her and failed.
139
140	[[/folder]]
141
142	[[folder:Puzzles with only one true solution.]]
143	Some of the puzzles can technically have multiple solutions. Much like how your weaponry can theoretically be used to destroy locked doors, some obstacles have only one true solution. It was a missed opportunity to allow players to solve challenges with multiple solutions.
144	* In the Otherworld mall, Heather's path is blocked by a Swarm of insects, but in a NewGamePlus, you may pick up a flamethrower beforehand and presumably use that to solve the puzzle.
145	* Heather comes across a painting that must be destroyed, but why not just remove the painting, or use your katana to slice it up (if you have it). Is the painting [[MadeOfIndestructium made of otherworldium]] that only a lit fire may destroy?
146	** Well, yes, because [[SlidingScaleOfGameplayAndStoryIntegration programming something else]] would have taken time and budget away from more important things, and this is a decades-old game at this point. Multiple solutions to puzzles like that were exceptional back in Heather's day ''because'' of the tech limitations at the time. Yeah, it could be done, but it wasn't as simple or easy then as it is now.
147	[[/folder]]

Context Headscratchers / SilentHill3