History Headscratchers / SilentHillShatteredMemories

*** I always interpreted most of the picture events to be unrelated to Cheryl, though it's clear that some are about her such as the school pictures and the mall stabbing. Others like Joel jr and the boys in the power plant don't really connect to her well, if at all so I assumed those were unrelated spirit echos that Harry can encounter because he is himself a spiritual echo of sorts. That said some are more confusing than others like the party pictures, the girl in the pictures does appear to be Cheryl(or at least uses her model) and if it is Cheryl then she can't of died since Cheryl is unquestionably alive so maybe she isn't dead in that one picture but instead od'd and had a near death experience? As for the girl calling her mother, I believe she identified herself as Cathy in her message meaning she can't be Cheryl but may have been at the party or a similar one going by what she says.

*** What? He's dropping his daughter off at school. There's no indication that he's even ''a'' teacher, much less ''that'' teacher. If the only evidence to support it is that [[AppealToIgnorance "we don't specifically know that he's not the teacher,"]] then any male character referenced in the game could fit that bill.

*** The interpretation I had, personally, was that all the echoes in the "normal" town are of various people, but all the ones you get while in the "nightmare" are of Cheryl herself. For the former, they have to be at least partially constructs of Cheryl's mind, since there's no way she would have been able to hear some of those conversations verbatim. Perhaps she heard of the events, either firsthand or secondhand, and came up with the details in her head. Or, if one goes with the interpretation of "Harry is a psychic construct" rather than the interpretation of everything being in Cheryl's head, then he can just pick up psychic echoes as he's going around - but again, the only ones that are of Cheryl are the ones he finds in the "nightmare."
EDIT: Forgot about the ones in the Amusement Park, which are definitely of Cheryl and her family. My revised take is that the pictures/echoes and the messages attached to them start off unconnected to Cheryl (with the very first ghost, obtained by taking a picture of the swing, being completely fake), but are events she's heard about. They then progress to events that involve people she knows (such as at the high school), and then finally become about her and her family (the Amusement Park, maybe the ones in the mall also). The Nightmare messages are consistently about her, however.

** It's another one of those things you can take two ways. Some of the stuff might have happened to Cheryl herself, like the date rape and the shoplifter, and maybe the party in the woods (though depending on how you play it, the party in the woods can lead to the girl drowning, so maybe not). If it's all happening in Cheryl's mind, then even the unrelated stories are imaginary allegories about Cheryl, reflecting her own feelings (the brother who died in the plant reflects her survivor's guilt, the John reflects her distrust of men and so on). That's probably the simplest explanation. Personally, I like to think that Harry's a mental projection who actually came to life one fateful night, like something out of ''TheTwilightZone''. Under that theory, since Harry's a sort of spirit himself, he can sense and interact with other psychic hot spots and restless spirits that are haunting the town. Some of the stuff might be Cheryl's memories, but others could be unrelated crimes and tragedies that have left their own mark on the town.

** Except that Michelle states that Cheryl was above her in school(this is one of the few lines that remains unchanged regardless of how you play the game). Therefore her being on the sex tape doesn't make much sense since it's from several years earlier, though it could be that Cheryl thought Michelle looked like the woman on the tape(whom she never actually met) and that's why Michelle is present in her psyche.

*** ''Actually'', I explored everything and got Wicked and the Weak the first time. I ran through a second time focused only on the essential tasks while also answering the therapy questions as an extrovert, and ''that'' lead to Love Lost. The walkthroughs and other wikis back that up: introverted answers in the therapy sessions have the same effect as being rude to the characters, to the point that even being nice to the characters doesn't override it. According to most sources, exploring is ''bad'' for the ending because the game interprets that as being unfocused and "easily distracted by trivial things.

** Kaufmann does say "you're clearly not getting enough" during the game (though I think he says that no matter what), and you can answer the questions and use the tests to suggest a very shy, introverted character with little sexual experience. Unfortunately, that seems to net "The Wicked and the Weak" ending (unless you follow it up by being a perv in the game, which would probably tilt the scales back towards the CharlieSheen ending... ahem, I mean the "Sleaze and Sirens" ending).

** YourMileageMayVary, but for what it's worth, I answered the survey inexperienced and introverted too, but I was headed for the Love Lost ending from the beginning. I don't know what else it takes into account, but it's definitely possible; I tried to do different things and answer the questions differently for three more runs through the game, but I ended up having to look up a walkthrough to figure out how to get any of the other endings.

*** Well, depending on how you play the game, Harry himself could have been a perhaps physically abusive alcoholic, or a completely uncaring womanizer. That ''might'' have something to do with it.

*** The Joel Jr. ones are the ones that confuse me the most; there's the kid who accidentally hanged himself, the girl who drowned at the party, the kid who took pills in the woods, the boy who was killed in the treatment plant, but what happened to Joel, besides that his father forced him to kill an animal? All of the other instances are things that Cheryl could have at least heard about in high school after Harry was killed, but the Joel Jr. ones are about a kid and his jerkass father-- even if it was just a concoction of Cheryl's mind, why would her mind even create such a horrible monster of a dad? If it wasn't, how would she even know about that incident?

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