- Perhaps more specifically, the town might be channeling Harry. Call this a stretch if you want, but this troper thinks it's both a reference to how Harry doesn't know Heather as her original daughter Cheryl, and a dad joke.
He retracts it when he sees it freaks Heather out. It didn't occur to her that Vincent saw the same creatures in a different light, so the thought crossed her mind that they were actually people. And rather than explain what he meant, Vincent thought it easier to say it was a joke and change the subject.
- I think there might be some truth to that. One idea I've considered that, since he knows the otherworld's coming from Heather/Alessa's powers and subconscious, he's startled that she thinks they're monsters. He'd been assuming that, however bizarre they look, they must make sense to her since she's the one creating them. Vincent has a bad habit of assuming that Heather already knows everything Alessa knew (such as thinking she'd know how to use the Seal of Metatron), and it takes him aback when he finds out she doesn't understand what they are. Then again, he says it in such a slow, dramatic tone that he could really just be messing with her.
- He also makes the assumption that the otherworld coming from Alessa's subconscious would seem benevolent or at least harmless to her, rather than an open threat (which may not have been true even for the original Alessa!). Indeed, he might not himself see these beings as divine or beautiful, but it's entirely likely that he expected Heather to see them that way, similar to how Claudia did. Then when he noticed that Heather was killing these beings, he might have been worried that Heather was giving in to some dark impulses that might further Claudia's plans, and the rant he gave was an attempt to "wake her up". People treat "They look like monsters to you?" as a potential Wham Line, but it may be that the real Wham Line in that scene was Heather's line right before that: "You're talking about the monsters?", with Vincent's reply being his way of giving voice to "Oh, that's what's going on...!" Between Heather's reply, and also her reaction to the possibility that she'd killed actual people (or at least benign beings), Vincent likely realized that she might have killed not out of cruelty or wrath, but out of self-defense or fear for her life, and so ended the rant as quickly as he could, if a bit awkwardly.
- It's the mildly bemused tone when he says "They look like monsters to you?" that sells it. He clearly wasn't expecting Heather to react the way she does (and, really, your head would have to be pretty far up your own ass to assume any random person would be fine with realizing they'd just slaughtered hundreds of innocent people; certainly more so than the easygoing vibe Vincent otherwise puts out) and so he quickly backpedals and claims to be joking, but the fact that he was caught off-guard in the first place suggests that Heather hasn't been butchering hundreds of innocent people on a psychotic murder spree, but she has been killing things that Vincent, as a high-ranking member of the cult, has never perceived as evil or threatening.
- Downpour seems to confirm this — not only do other people than the protagonist see monsters, they occasionally see the same monsters — both Anne and Murphy see the Bogeyman, and Murphy briefly becomes the Bogeyman. So, either Vincent was lying or seeing things differently, or the town is a fan of mental tricks.
- Don't forget the one ending in Homecoming where Alex becomes Pyramidhead.
- Couldn't the shared hallucinations be simply due to similar fears/darkness being held in their hearts?
- Alternatively, he doesn't say that because he sees them as simply fascinating creatures. He asks the question because they are NOT monsters to the Cult. They are the angels of Silent Hill's religion. This is somewhat supported by some of the pictures and descriptions found in the Chapel. "God created beings to lead people in obedience to Her. The red god, Xuchilbara; the yellow god, Lobsel Vith; many gods and angels."
- I mean, there's validity to this even from a Biblical view. Old Testament angels were, frankly, horrifying. Wheels of eyes, multi-headed monstrosities...when they said "Be not afraid" to mortals, it was because the people they visited had all rights to be terrified. It's entirely possible that Vincent and Heather see the same thing, they just code them differently. Heather as monsters, Vincent as embodiments of the divine.
- Vincent and Claudia don't share surnames, and Claudia is an only child. More likely, he just beat her in public, which as implied by some memos in the game is nearly canon. Even not going that far, maybe he abused her while Vincent was visiting some day.
- I honestly don't remember Vincent's surname ever being given, but I might just be stupid...
- I don't remember it being given either, but when Claudia and Vincent are talking after the hospital, Claudia refers to him as "my father," not our father, and I'm pretty sure Vincent either refers to him using his first name, which would be unusual for a child (although not unheard of, granted), and refers to him as "your father."
- My take on it was that Dahlia raised Claudia alongside Alessa, and that, as much of a Card-Carrying Villain as Dahlia was in the first game, she actually did rescue Claudia from her abusive father Leonard, which is why Claudia's so gung-ho about the cult's beliefs as an adult. Since Vincent was being groomed as a church leader too, he was around a lot and saw the fights and abuse that happened whenever Leonard showed up and tried to take Claudia back. He and Claudia probably do have a brother/sister dynamic, just from having grown up together.
- An alternate theory isn't the fact that you're forgiving someone, it's the person you're forgiving... After all, a woman, sobbing her heart out about the "awful things" she did to her "own daughter", which however terrible were for "good intentions"? Heather may as well be saying "I forgive you, mommy."
Heather has already seen a number of dead bodies (one in the subway kind of reminds this troper of Travis, but all you can see is part of the legs and the feet) and she's obviously not back in the real world, because the street is blocked off so that she can't go anywhere but home.
Perhaps Heather's fear that something would happen to her father and Claudia's hatred of him caused the Otherworld to produce a dead copy of him? While Heather's running around Silent Hill bent on revenge, Harry's panicking and calling the police because his little girl hasn't come home yet.
- Interesting. Then whose grave is Heather kneeling over, as shown in the credits?
- Vincent's, most likely. Jerk though he was, you can't help being fond of him, and he did try to help. It would make sense for her to visit his grave at least once. It could also be Claudia's, but that pose makes me think it's Vincent's.
- Well it's like you said, the Missionary did manage to kill you once. You got ten tries to fight him, Harry only got one, and one death is all it takes for Harry.
- But my point about Harry putting up a fight remains the same. Do you really think Harry would just sit there calmly and let it kill him? It's not like it could sneak up on him. And the apartment is cramped, which means it can't dodge around around the way it likes to in the boss fight, which would have made it an even easier target for Harry. (Besides, the only reason it did kill me was because I'd played through the game several times already and knew it wasn't a hard boss. That death was due to stupidity on my part, not the toughness of the Missionary.)
- Hmm. I have two reasons. One, come on, it has been like what, almost two decades. He's old. Two, who knows? They might've just got him when he was sleeping.
- If you take in account Ms. Wolff's obsession with making Heather freak out to speed up God's birth, it's quite possible that she either made the Missionary kill Mr. Mason on the roof and then she just dragged his corpse to his chair for Heather to find, or she just lied and told Heather the Missionary killed him so she could have a toy she could rage on and beat the crap of.
- Pyramid Head's origins are implied in 2, and semi-confirmed in later supplements; the Cult used (their impression of) the image of Valtiel as the basis for the ritual dress of people who acted as punishers/executioners, adding the embellishment of a large, triangular red hood that covered their face completely. James saw a picture of these "punishers" during his initial visit to Silent Hill with Mary, in the Historical Society (when seeing the same picture during the game, he says he remembers it and that it gave him chills). They were known for using nooses (seen in the courtyard of the prison with a plaque with two PH's on it) and spears (seen whenever PH doesn't have his signature knife). As Pyramid Head is James' own guilt and self-hatred made manifest as a physical need to be punished — outright stated — his subconscious connection to the town took and made the already extant image of the executioners even MORE horrible by taking the hood and turning it into a heavy, painful metal helmet, and making him carry around a giant, cumbersome, but gruesomely effective knife because... it's a knife.
Nobody. This is why Cheryl merges with Alessa at the end of the first game, and Heather is haunted by Alessa's Memory in the third.
- This troper seems to remember the birthday card Alessa gave Claudia as reading "I love you as if you were my real sister", so being biologically-related seems unlikely. Someone earlier on this page did make a suggestion that Dahlia practically adopted Claudia, protecting her from her obviously unfit father, which would make a lot of sense.
- This troper interpreted Claudia's death as "The God is ready to be born now, and woe to the mother who bears the God". Indeed, remember that during the same event, if you try to kill Claudia, or wait too long to take the aglaophotis tablet, the God is born anyway and kills Heather. There wasn't anything special about Heather vs. Claudia at that particular moment; it was all down to the fact that the God was about to be born, and it didn't care which mother it was born from. I do admit the rest of what you have to say makes sense, though.
- Harry was able to give Heather the aglaophotis because he didn't use it on Cybil. (Yes, the Book of Lost Memories claims he got more "somehow", but this seems much more consistent.)
- At the end of the game, after Heather kills God, she turns her head around to look behind her, as if she noticed something. What she heard is the sound of a baby crying. This is supposed to imply the reincarnation of God into a new host.
- It may be a long shot, but he sees monsters, too, which apparently, in the Silent Hill-verse, only those guilty of some form of sin or with some deep connection to the town can see. He seems rather tormented himself, telling Heather, "Nobody's gonna cry over my grave anyway." Then there's his confrontation with Claudia, where he admits to having killed before, and finally, of course, his admission of his son's death to Heather. Which could be a reason why he left the police force and started working as a private investigator, as he couldn't cope with the guilt of having ties to what killed his son.
- was James, implying the In Water ending is canon. It's likely that Frank Sunderland hired Douglas as flavor text in that game states that James and Mary "disappeared" in Silent Hill which Frank wouldn't assume unless he actually hired someone to look for him there.
- No canon ending for Silent Hill 2 per Word of God. None. Zero. Nada. Zip. Based on everything the creative director has explained about the plot of 2, James made his second trip to Silent Hill immediately after euthanizing Mary, making it extremely unlikely that he'd quickly nip off to the phone and make sure Pop knew where he was going. Unless we assume Frank is referring to the first time the couple visited the town (all he says is he "hadn't heard from them" since, nothing specifically about disappearing), and dealing with Mary's illness wore James down to the point that he shut out everyone and everything else in his life, then it seems like that line in 4 is just another symptom of that game's obsession with taking every little minor worldbuilding detail from 2 and making it more "important", without regard for whether or not it makes any sense. Because Douglas gives no specifics as to who the missing person was, it's equally possible he was referring to Eddie, or even some other random guy who disappeared in the town; Silent Hill seems like a place where mysterious disappearances aren't exactly rare.