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The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh.
Silent Hill is a Konami videogame franchise in the survival horror genre consisting of the following:
And a handful of para-game material such as artbooks, a making of DVD, and a cell-phone game.
The titular setting is an American lakeside resort town with a long history. American Indians called the area the "land of the spirits," and may have considered it cursed. The history of Silent Hill is rife with disappearances, murders, and mysterious activity, mostly owing to the existence of an unnamed demon-worshipping cult.
The Silent Hill games have largely dealt with the repercussions of that cult's actions, including the existence of multiple "layers" of the town itself. The normal town is an average American tourist attraction. On another level, it is long-abandoned and empty, save for the lost and damned who stumble onto its streets. On deeper levels, it is a crumbling ruin, or the full-fledged Otherworld: a burning, rusty hell.
Along with Resident Evil, it is considered one of the defining examples of the Survival Horror genre, and is famous for the high quality of its story and background music.
This series provides examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital (A staple of the series)
- Subverted in Homecoming, where the game starts in an Abandoned Hospital that is also a Continuity Nod, but it's just a dream. Later on, you can find an item or two on the grounds of the familiar Alchemilla Hospital and its labeled on the map, but you don't actually go inside.
- Abusive Parents: A lot of them, but Dahlia Gillespie takes the cake. Poor, poor Alessa...
- Action Survivor: All the protagonists of the games and movie.
- Advancing Wall Of Doom - Pyramid Head in the alternate hospital basement in SH2, and the infamous Advancing Red Light of Doom in the Borley Haunted Mansion in SH3.
- Alien Geometries - Common in the lower levels of the Dark World, like the Historical Society and the alternate Hotel at the end of SH 2.
- All Just A Dream: The "Hospital" ending of Homecoming; the Bad (Dying Dream) ending of the first game also falls under this.
- All There In The Manual: The Book of Lost Memories/Another Crimson Tome.
- Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Is James a Complete Monster who killed his wife because he didn't feel like taking care of her any more, an innocent man tortured by guilt, or a complex tragic character who was the instrument of Mary's assisted suicide?
- In Silent Hill 3, Vincent offers one in game when he reacts with mock terror upon being asked about monsters in Silent Hill: "They look like monsters to you?"
- There's a fan theory that runs that Henry is in fact responsible for the murders throughout the game. See the Wild Mass Guessing page for details.
- Is Travis really the Butcher?
- Did Alex come back from the Army or the nuthouse?
- Depending on how you answer the questionairre, you can give the player character of Shattered Memories a different set of characteristics and motivations every time you play through.
- Alternate Universe (Silent Hill itself exists on multiple levels: the normal, unhaunted town, the snowy, demon-haunted, deserted town, and let's not even talk about the third level.)
- Although it worked like this in the movie, how many levels of reality there are in the game is the subject of much debate.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes - Starting from Silent Hill 3, you can earn alternate outfits for the player character (or Eileen in the case of Silent Hill 4).
- Awesome But Impractical The heavier melee weapons(hammer, great knife, mace, etc) and the hunting rifle, particularly in the second game(can't move with it drawn, too slow to fire and reload, only useful for the last two bosses)
- Ax Crazy - Walter; Travis looks like this whenever he has the fireman's axe equipped.
- Badass Normal: Until Homecoming, the series maintained its more cerebral, literary roots by casting its leads as people from incredibly mundane walks of life. A writer, a store clerk, a carefree teenage girl, a slacker, and even a trucker were the player characters. Of course, they also plowed through hordes of demons as per the regular video game experience, but they had to do so somewhat more slowly than normal. (Call it a balance trade-off. Too awkward and you've made a bad game. Too intuitive and the tension flies out the window.)
- Beware Of Hitchhiking Ghosts
- Bittersweet Ending: Even the good endings are this, because Silent Hill has left all those affected permanently scarred.
- The Blank: The bubble-head nurses. Other examples include Grey Children, Lying Figures/Patients, Valtiel, and Lurkers.
- Bottomless Pits: Usually used as an Insurmountable Waist High Fence, but you can fall to your death down them in harder difficulties in Silent Hill 3.
- Bread Eggs Milk Squick: Done visually - some truly horrendous sights are scattered around Silent Hill (or whatever cheap imitation the developers are using this time) with such subtlety that you can pass right by them if you don't slow down and examine your surroundings.
- Such as the hospital rooms. Why are there spikes in the cell-OH GOD THEY'RE DROPPING. Oh, they stopped. And whats in this roo- JESUS CHRIST A GIANT HEAD SAVE ME LORD
- Breakable Weapons (Origins and The Room)
- Camera Screw - A major source of Fake Difficulty during boss battles, especially the Dual Pyramid Heads in 2.
- Chainsaw Good (Usually a bonus weapon in the series, although its usefulness varies from game to game)
- Closed Circle (Played straight most of the time except in 2 and Homecoming. In 2, the player can pretty much always backtrack to the starting area with James' car, but James himself refuses to leave until he finds out what happened to his wife. In Homecoming, you can backtrack almost anywhere, but occasionally you're trapped in an area until you find the exit)
- The developers stated that they made the path from the parking lot to the town in 2 "so long that you wouldn't want to go back". This troper thinks that after the first couple demented monsters they wouldn't care if their car was halfway across the state.
- Complete Monster (Lots of them, but among the worst is Dahlia Gillespie. Just look at what she did to her own child. Also Doctor Kaufmann. It's mighty satisfying when they get their just desserts.)
- Continuity Nod - The third game makes references back to the first game while 0rigins is a prequel, while the second, fourth and fifth are standalone, but still has Shout Outs to the other titles:
- The Silent Hill 2 "Born From a Wish" extra chapter (which shows Maria's point of view just before she meets James), Harry's name is written on a dumpster as graffiti.
- In Silent Hill 3, Heather will stumble across Harry's notes (in the exact style of the Silent Hill 1 save points) just before the last section of the game.
- The UFO endings of each game typically have some nod to the previous games (see below).
- Homecoming has some interesting nods with its achievements. Beating a Feral is Eddie's Legacy, using health-enhancing Serum for the first time is Kaufmann's Handiwork, and beating the game on hard means The Old Gods haven't left this place.
- Creepy Child: In this game, they're all creepy.
- Creepy Doll - The doll that Walter gives to Henry in Silent Hill 4, the various bloodied dolls scattered about Silent Hill in 1 and 3 and especially Robbie the Rabbit.
- Critical Existence Failure
- Cutscene Incompetence - Henry breaking his arm at the end of the Good ending or getting possessed by Walter in the 21 Sacraments Ending; Harry's offscreen death in the third game and a few of the instant deaths that happen to Heather qualify as well.
- Dark World (The alternate, dark and evil(er) Silent Hill with the air raid sirens and the (tougher) monsters and screaming and blood and the running and the huge gaping holes of fire and rusty steel grating... oi)
- And hot, demon-on-demon rape action.
- And breathing organic walls with heartbeats.
- And... many other things that haunts this troper. *shudder*
- Deadly Lunge (A favourite attack of the Simian-Type monster such as Rompers and mumblers)
- Dead All Along Lisa. She was killed long before Harry met her, and is pretty much the same as the demon nurses that stalk the hospital, except that she does retain some of her humanity, as Alessa remembers her as an odd, yet kindhearted nurse.
- Harry himself is one of these in the worst ending.
- Also, a major part of The Reveal in Silent Hill V: Homecoming, with your little brother, who actually died years ago.
- It is theorized by some that Angela in SH2 may also be already dead and not knowing it. Maybe she died in the hotel fire.
- Inverted with Mary, who was thought to have died three years ago, but in reality died very recently before the game.
- Degraded Boss (The Abstract Daddy, or Doorman of SH2, is first fought as a miniboss and later becomes a common monster. The same thing happens to the Caliban from Origins and the Missionary in SH3, which appears as a normal enemy in the Order's Church)
- Demonic Possession Cybil late in the original game. Room 302 in the fourth game around the halfway point slowly becomes possessed with "hauntings", which will hurt Henry if he stays too close to them.
- Eileen at the end of The Room, making the boss fight harder.
- Heather at the end of SH 3 depending on what actions the player took.
- Demonic Spiders The nurses in the second and third games, especially on Hard difficulty and higher. Limited visibility, clunky camera controls, narrow hallways; they have long attack range(and sometimes carry guns in the third game), attack in groups(so the rest will jump on you when you move in to stomp a downed nurse), and tend to respawn right in your face after you come out of a room. And worse, in SH2, you also have to protect Maria from them, if she falls, it's Game Over.
- The first game has the infamous "gray children"; they appear in groups in the dark corridors of the school, sometimes right in your face when you enter, and gang up on you, one grabbing you while the others slice and dice. Then you tend to get grabbed by another after getting free, and the cycle repeats. Save early, save often. And later in the game, there's the shadow children, which are transparent and harder to see.
- The literal spiders in SH2 can be demonic on Hard difficulty and if you're low on health. Example, the basement corridor in "Born From A Wish". :gets bitten by one spider too many:, cue Critical Existence Failure. "Oops, I should have kept an extra saved game".
- Slurpers. They Deadly Lunge at you and knock you down, then when you are getting back up, they may ram you again. Lather, rinse, repeat, throw controller.
- The Doormen in the hotel. Due to the near-total darkness and very narrow hallways, it's hard to see how far away they are or dodge them, resulting in James being head-raped repeatedly.
- Carrions. No matter how far away they are, they'll always get the first hit in (and dole out a huge amount of pain) thanks to a lightning-fast and incredibly accurate lunge. How does roadkill move so quickly?!
- Scrapers in SH3, especially if you're low on ammo and/or health, in the narrow corridors they tend to block your path, including access to spare ammo.
- Numb Bodies, which would populate some rooms and keep bumping you. Yes, that's their attack. Bumping. GET OUT OF THE WAY!!
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: In the first game, although it's not until the third game that it gets punched out for good. Heather even hangs a dour lampshade over this one in the third game: "it must not have been much of a god if it could be killed by a human being".
- Slightly subverted in that the Gods are usually born prematurely, explaining their relative weakness.
- Difficulty Spike: The hospitals, where the nurses are much tougher than previously encountered enemies, notably in SH 2 and SH 3 on the higher difficulty levels.
- Distress Call (James gets a letter from his dead wife to kick off the second game)
- He also gets calls from her on the radio after he picks it up, and after watching the tape in the hotel.
- In the first game, Harry gets a wall of department store televisions with the same image of his own daughter, asking where he is. She says the same thing on the phone in the alternate school. Likewise, early on in Homecoming, Alex receives a call for help on his radio intended for somebody else.
- Downer Ending - Just about all of the non-"good", non-wacky endings.
- Dull Surprise - The voice actors sometimes don't emote very strongly compared to the horrors their characters are facing, and the animators often choose not to give the cast a wide variety of facial features. Henry from SH4 in particular is considered the worst offender, as he reacts to his situation with nothing more than a mild "What the hell?"
- The instruction manual for SH4 lampshades this quirk of Henry's: "he never shows his emotions," indeed!
- Eldritch Abomination - The things that you have to fight or run from, and possibly the entire town itself.
- Empty Room Psych
- Enemy Detecting Radar - The radio is an audio version, but it's nigh-useless since it doesn't tell you how far away or how dangerous the monsters are.
- Epileptic Trees - Enough to cover the entire globe (and then some).
- Escape From The Crazy Place - The premise of the fourth game, and how the player feels in the others.
- Escort Mission (Protecting Maria in 2, Elle in Homecoming, and Eileen in 4 - particularly since the ending you get depends on how much she got attacked throughout THE WHOLE FREAKING GAME] .)
- Everybodys Dead Dave (Played straight)
- Everything Trying To Kill You - Most obvious in the third game - Heather can fall to her death via ladders and holes, among other things - and in the fourth game, where apartment building walls harm you.
- Certain parts of the third game, especially on Hard, have living walls that drain Heather's health, and then there's the Nightmare Fuel Unleaded Bloody Mirror Room Death Trap(almost, the door unlocks just in time), and the insta-kill red fog during the escape from the amusement park's haunted house. And the hallway that suddenly turns to meat in a New Game Plus.
- It's hard to think of a better instance of this than an entire freaking town.
- Everything's Better With Spinning - Industrial-sized fans are a recurring motif; the last battle against the Big Bad of the fourth game takes place against the backdrop of a giant rotating death machine.
- Evil Albino (Claudia)
- Fan Nickname (Abstract Daddy: The Doorman) (Lying Figure: Patient Demon)
- Also (Red Pyramid: Pyramid Head).
- Well, actually, after the last fight with "red pyramid", you read a card that says Pyramid head stopped moving so I wouldn't say that was a fan nickname, even if it's only mentioned once in the entire game, and nowhere else.
- Fan Disservice: The faceless nurses, if they aren't the trope below.
- Fetish Fuel: (The Nurses, Pyramid Head. Mainly.)
- The lying figures/patients, mannequin leg monsters, and Valtiel too(he does even more risque stuff with the nurses than PH).
- The Abstract Daddy monster, and the room it is fought in(the moving pistons in the walls are a phallic symbol)
- Fetus Terrible Heather/Alessa is pregnant with the cult's God
- Done bizarrely in Homecoming where Amnion is pregnant with the corpse of Alex's dead little brother, Joshua. Whether this is ultimately a positive experience for Alex or very, very bad depends on the ending received.
- Foreshadowing - All part of the Mind Screw, though most of it isn't obvious until subsequent playthroughs:
- "Know what you're shooting, and don't go blasting me by mistake!" Spoken by hot cop Cybil, who gets possessed and will have to be killed if you don't have the red liquid to exorcise her.
- The bits and pieces of what James gets about what happened to Mary before the Player Punch reveal.
- The recurring headaches and flashbacks Heather gets as the third game progresses.
- The numbers carved on the victims chests in the fourth game, before you realize their significance, and the corresponding increase in the bloody hand prints on the wall. Plus, one of the hauntings can be Henry, with 21/21 carved in his neck staring through the eye-hole on the outside of the door.
- Freud Was Right - Hoooo boy... the short version is that plenty of the monsters from the second game are manifestations of James' repressed sex drive, the first from Alessa's fears and memories, and so on.
- Genius Loci (The town itself is essentially alive. Well, you can thank a nearby God powering all that.)
- Getting Crap Past The Radar: A popular theory states that the reason for the sheer void of implicit information in the first game is because the Moral Guardians would never have otherwise allowed the publication of a game whose plotline contained so many satanic elements.
- Giant Mook - The Large Numb Bodies in the third game, may be other examples.
- Goddamned Bats: The Air Screamers in the first game, and the Pendulums in the third. The latter often get in the way while traversing narrow pathways or stairs, take copious amounts of ammo to kill, and make a Nightmare Fuel-ing screeching sound.
- And the Invincible Minor Minion Victims in part 4, which can follow you through walls. The Hummers too, which look like a cross between a literal bat and a mosquito.
- The Grays - The aliens that show up in the UFO Endings.
- Guide Dang It: While most of the puzzles have in-game clues, it's still nigh impossible to get some of the endings without consulting a walkthrough.
- Hand In The Hole (A particular disgusting version is present in the 2, and 4 is essentially this every level.)
- Happily Adopted (Cheryl; Laura in the "Leave" ending of the second game, perhaps.)
- The Heartless (Silent Hill's hideous Inhabitants)
- Hell Is That Noise - The radio especially, but every noise in that game had the potential to be Nightmare Fuel or Paranoia Fuel.
- Hoist By His Own Petard: Silent Hill's #1 favorite method of dishing out a Karmic Death:
- In Silent Hill 1, Dahlia gets fried by the very god she was trying to summon, and Kaufman, if you saved him earlier, gets dragged to hell by Lisa.
- Done rather bizarrely in Silent Hill 2 when the twin Pyramid Heads will commit suicide on their own weapons once James comes to terms with the truth.
- In Silent Hill 3, Vincent insults Claudia at an inopportune moment and earns a knife in the back.
- And in Silent Hill 4, Andrew DeSalvo is locked into a cell of the prison where he'd acted as its sadistic warden, and later brutally murdered by one of its prisoners, Walter Sullivan.
- Hotter And Sexier: In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, depending on some of the choices the player makes, the game may turn Dahlia Gillespie from a creepy old woman, to a young stripper. They Changed It Now It Sucks If You Know What I Mean.
- Human Sacrifice
- Hyperspace Arsenal (Every protagonist in the series is capable of carrying an array of knives, holy swords, stamina drinks and keys with only the clothes on their backs.)
- And since Origins features breakable items, this means that Travis is often stashing quite a number of improbable weapons in his vests.
- Idle Animation (every protagonist has one or two, Henry's will change depending on his equipped weapon)
- In the second game, James will strike a pose reminiscent of Ash in Evil Dead II if you're holding the chainsaw and—according to some—standing over a dead enemy. He'll laugh/yell, too. It's unsettling if you've had to set the controller down to concentrate on something else for a minute.
- I Don't Like The Sound Of That Place - Silent Hill never sounded like it would be a harmless, remote resort town to begin with, so once things start getting freaky you know for sure that it's a place you should run away from really fast.
- Implacable Man (the Red Pyramid, a.k.a. Pyramid Head, until the end. As well as Walter.)
- Inventory Management Puzzle: All games center around using the right Doohicky with the right Doodad at the right moment; the Fourth game exacerbates this by giving Henry a limited inventory slot.
- Infinite Flashlight - Averted in 0rigin.
- The Ishmael - All of the playable characters are at most nominal protagonists, while the real focus of the plot lies elsewhere.
- Insurmountable Waist High Fence - Everywhere you go, you are balked by doors with broken locks, police barricades, and points where you can't proceed unless you have the right Mac Guffin. (You'd think Henry would attempt to use the Pickaxe Of Despair on his locked front door...)
- Journey To The Center Of The Mind - most obvious in Silent Hill 2 (did you really think James is descending about five miles beneath the Silent Hill Historical Society?), but really one of the basic premises of the series. It's hinted that the town itself has the power to manifest people's personal demons (literally). So we're treated to Alessa's mental landscape in the first game, James' in the second, a weird mashup of Alessa's and Claudia's in the third, Walter Sullivan's in the fourth, umm...Alessa's again? in 0rigins, and in Homecoming...well, nevermind.
- Late To The Party
- Lovecraft Country (Or at the very least Stephen King Country)
- Love It Or Hate It (The Movie, as well as Homecoming, to a lesser extent.)
- Malevolent Architecture (In addition to being alive, Silent Hill is quite the sadist entity)
- Marathon Man - All protagonists except for Travis (unless he's wearing the Sprinter outfit) can run full tilt all the time without tiring, though if they stop they will pant for effect.
- Mind Rape
- Mind Screw (The major premise of the series)
- Monster Magnet - The player character when the Infinite Flashlight is on.
- Multiple Endings (some of which are pure comedy)
- Narm (The Movie)
- Though Your Mileage May Vary. Also a lot of dialogue from the games, particularly Harry's performance from the first.
- Dahlia Gillespie gives us the immortal line, "it was foretold by gyromancy". Go ahead. Wikipedia it. I'll wait.
- New Game Plus
- Nightmare Fuel + Nightmare Fuel Unleaded (The entire series embodies this trope, particularly the appropriately named "Nightmare" version of the world.)
- Non Standard Game Over Heather births the god if you try to shoot Claudia near the end of SH3
- Harry meets a gruesome death by tentacle if you fail to use an item before proceeding in the original. Heather, keeping up the family tradition, meets the same crossing a sewer without first dealing with the tentacle residing in the muck during Silent Hill 3.
- In SH2, if Maria is killed before she's supposed to be, including during the chase immediately before her first Plotline Death cutscene, it's Game Over. And sometimes when James is killed during the Hanger boss battle, the creatures lift him into the ceiling.
- Nothing Is Scarier
- Notice This - Starting with the second game, the characters will look at any and all objects they can pick up in the area.
- Ominous Fog
- Paranoia Fuel - What's that lurking in the distance? What's with this radio? Will this thing kill me if I touch it? Should I shoot this monster to death or save my ammunition? Who keeps leaving these Health Drinks in the middle of nowhere?
- Perverse Puppet (The Mannequins from the second game, and Ariel from Origins)
- As well as Scarlet from Homecoming.
- Pipe Shooter - Many outdoor areas, where the player is herded along a linear path from Point A to Point B by locked doors, impassable roadblocks and bottomless pits, as well as the Abandoned Hospital in most games, and the alternate mall, sewers, and amusement park in the third game(made worse by dead-end rooms that don't contain anything important but ammo-consuming Goddamned Bats).
- Player Punch - The Tear Jerker moments in the various series definitely qualify.
- Point And Click Game - The Cell Phone spinoffs
- RecurringRiff/Leitmotif Several of the riffs from the first game's opening theme recur throughout the series.
- Silent Hill 2 does this the most with its own soundtrack, eg Theme Of Laura, White Noiz, Forest (Angela's theme, also heard combined with Promise etc.), Null Moon( sort of Maria's theme, reprised in Fermata In Mystic Air), and Promise (itself based on the series' main theme)
- Dahlia (Claw Finger and Never Again) and Kauffman's themes from the first game. The music played when Lisa dies is a variation on the series theme.
- Reincarnation ( Alessa/Heather/Cheryl)
- Religious Horror (The occult elements as well the cult)
- Scare Chord (in some parts of SH 2, it takes the form of a high-pitched screeching or ringing noise)
- Scenery Gorn
- School Uniforms Are The New Black: Alessa Gillespie never seen in something other than her school uniform.
- Self Inflicted Hell
- Shout Out (Every single street and most of the major buildings are named for horror/SF authors or famous stories.)
- The subway sequence in Silent Hill 3 echoes a scene in Adrian Lyne's film Jacob's Ladder, which is cited by the development crew as a primary inspiration for the series. A street in Shepherd's Glen in Homecoming also bears Lyne's name.
- An apartment in Silent Hill 2 is also called the "Lyne House". There's also the gurney sequence when James warps to the alternate hospital, another Jacob'sLadder reference.
- Heather can use a lightsaber.
- There's a scene in Silent Hill 3 in the Dark Office Building where a lone wheelchair is visible from a great distance, illuminated by a single light. Word of God has confirmed this is a shout out to the memorably creepy "Hello...Gordon" scene from "Session 9".
- In Origins, you can win the "Codebreaker" outfit (SH3 Vincent's vest) by inputting the Konami Code; additionally, the Collector outfit makes Travis look like Gordon Freeman and the Explorer outfit is evocative of Indiana Jones.
- Shrug Of God - The creators are frustratingly coy about which of the endings are canon; a few of the additional releases only available in Japan do shine some light on things, but real answers are as rare as ampoules.
- Sinister Geometry (Pyramid Head)
- Something Completely Different Bonus Endings are a Silent Hill tradition:
- Silent Hill 1 can end with Harry being abducted by aliens (after he asks about his daughter, of course).
- Harry makes a cameo in the UFO ending of Silent Hill 2 (complete with retro blocky graphics) to abduct James after a Catch Phrase exchange.
- Another alternate ending of Silent Hill 2 is a shiba inu dog did it.
- The UFO ending of Silent Hill 3 has Harry (and James) getting angry about Heather being picked on by the cult members and unleashing lasery death on the town with an entire UFO armada.
- Silent Hill Origins has an alien with a dog— a suspiciously familiar shiba inu—offering Travis a ride in his UFO.
Travis: Can I drive?
Alien: You drive stick?
- Silent Hill Homecoming can end with the Alex and his Love Interest being abducted by aliens, while the Token Minority watches with amazement.
- Silent Hill The Arcade can end with the Big Bad flying away in a UFO, and one of the heroes giving chase in a Vic Viper...zoom out to Robbie, playing on an emulator.
- Soup Cans (What the hell is up with the key in a soda can you can buy from a vending machine?)
- In SH3, you have to solve certain puzzles by performing actions that are forbidden or deadly to the person in real life, such as mixing bleach and detergent to exterminate a roomful of bugs, and dropping a hairdryer in the water main to kill a monster.
- There was a jewel of some sort in the walnut, this troper recalls. Figure THAT one out.
- Let's not forget the key found in a (sealed) bag of jelly beans in the first game.
- Screw all that, what about the key you found in the missing half of a body you found in an operating room in Homecoming?!
- Stock Sound Effects The air-raid siren, some of the monster sounds, the sound of the fan in the first game, the demonic moaning sound and other effects heard in the ambient musics in the series, etc.
- The sound the sniffer dogs make when they die is the common "cougar roar" sound, the Insane Cancers use a guttural stock sound when awakening, Air Screamers and Pendulums make red-tailed hawk sounds(I think), Hummers make a "bee buzzing" sound, and the Numb Bodies use some of the zombie moaning sounds from the Resident Evil series.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome - Poor Harry. And according to Frank Sunderland in the fourth game, James never returned from Silent Hill, either, though Word Of God is unclear on whether this means James just didn't ever contact his father or is In Water. Averted with Travis: he's shown dropping Alex off at the beginning of Homecoming. (Thanks a lot for nothing, Travis.)
- Survival Horror
- Silent Hill Homecoming pulled a Resident Evil 4 and, according to some critics, somewhat switched to an Action Horror gameplay style by increasing the emphasis on, and quality of, the combat. They Changed It Now It Sucks, some critics think.
- The upcoming Shattered Memories, on the other hand, abandons combat altogether and forces the player to have to run, hide, and barricade entrances to defend oneself against monsters, heavily emphasizing the "survival" aspect.
- Suspicious Videogame Generosity - Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill Origins (as a Shout Out) both have an absurd number of save points arranged in a pattern as a very unsubtle hint that it might be a good idea to save right now.
- Tarot Motifs (In the story supplement "Book of Lost Memories", pretty much every aspect of the town and the characters are associated with Tarot cards—Heather is The Fool, The Sun is the games' bonus features, Pyramid Head is Judgement, The Eye of Night(created specifically for the third game, as no Eye of Night appears in the tarot) is The God, and so on)
- Tear Jerker: Lisa's revelation that she was Dead All Along, Maria's many deaths, James' revelation that he killed Mary, Angela's immolation, Harry's Stuffed Into The Fridge death in SH3, and Cynthia's death in SH4. All accompanied by sad music pieces.
- They Changed It Now It Sucks: The Room and Homecoming. They're going back to the true survival horror roots with Shattered Memories, though.
- Tomato In The Mirror:
- James, you killed your wife.
- Heather, you're the reincarnation of Cheryl, who in turn is the reincarnation of Alessa.
- Travis, you're a sociopath serial killer. (But only in the Bad Ending.)
- Alex, you were never in the army, the whole game was just a delusion. (But this assumes that Villains Never Lie, and you get the Hospital Ending.)
- Too Awesome To Use - Weapons in general, especially the bigger guns with more limited ammo.
- Uncanny Valley: Purposely invoked in the monster designs, but the characters themselves seem a bit unreal given their Dull Surprise.
- Unpleasable Fanbase - Silent Hill fandom is notoriously vocal - particularly concerning sequels that haven't yet been released. Fans complained about the supposed overemphasis on combat in Homecoming six months before it hit the shelves. Shattered Memories, on the other hand, has no combat at all - and people are already complaining about that. There's also a great deal of grief being voiced over the fact that the protagonist has a touch-screen cell phone to represent the menu commands.
- Urban Legend Of Zelda - A persistent rumor abounded about a supposed "Ambulance Ending" in the first game where Harry rampages through Silent Hill Grand Theft Auto style; also, a common fan art sight gag is to make or draw fake screenshots of the "lost" SH4 UFO Ending. (It doesn't have one.)
- Variable Mix: Most of the games feature dynamic music, which seamlessly changes according to the action, such as the number or proximity of monsters in a room, entering or exiting a room (for some scary examples, when you go back through the clock room in the apartments, and when you jump down the final hole to the labyrinth), activating a switch (eg the Alchemilla Hospital generator), or completing some other objective.
- Violation Of Common Sense - Jump down this possibly bottomless hole? Stick your hand in the toilet? Reach into a dead guy's pocket? Wander around an insane asylum filled with monsters? Sure, why not?
- This happens so many times to James that one Lets Play mocked him for having suicidal tendencies (which may not be that off the mark).
- Considering the real reason why James went to Silent Hill in the first place and the In Water ending, one could say it is not off the mark at all. He himself tells Angela at the beginning, he doesn't care if something is dangerous, he got to get the bottom of this. Literally and figuratively, it seems.
- Silent Hill 3 gently pokes fun at James' gung-ho attitude by having Heather approach a filthy toilet to retrieve an item, but recoil and wonder out loud who would do such a disgusting thing. (Henry similarly has an aversion towards toilets, which is a bit hypocritical given his enthusiasm for holes.)
- Travis is also considered to be Too Dumb To Live for not getting the hell out of town once his motivation for being there vanishes about a third of the way through the game.
- Wake Up Call Boss: The first boss in each of the first three games, all of which have an instant-death attack that will catch inexperienced players off guard.
- Walls Of Text: The reams and reams of information you get from reading stuff picked up in Silent Hill get quite wordy; one Lets Play made fun of the use of blacked out words by pretending to play Mad Libs with the blanks.
- Where The Hell Is Springfield (The actual location of the town of Silent Hill is somewhat fuzzy, though some of the extra material makes special mention of the founding of the state of Maine)
- Womb Level - The boss battles of the first and third games and Nightmare level of the Third game is composed of pulsating flesh; arguably, the entire Fourth game applies as well.
- Yet Another Stupid Death - Not surprising with Everything Trying To Kill You and just about every building has No Osha Compliance.
Some games were meant to be scary
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