2. Harry tried to become more assertive by doing two women at once.
3. Eventually, the fun stopped and Harry turned to alcohol to deal with the fact that he couldn't do two women at once anymore.
4. Harry & Dahlia got a divorce.
Harry may have even died as a result of DUI while driving away from Dahlia's house immediately after making video #4. Lisa may have also been in the car, and her fate in the game was based on pictures taken of her corpse in Harry's car.
- So, Silent Hill 1 and 3 are him working with Cheryl (note that he writes about a follow-up visit over the end credits), Silent Hill 2 deals with sexually repressed and murderer in denial James (which is why he "hasn't seen his wife lately"), Silent Hill 4 is coaxing out the secluded and eternally shy Henry (or maybe working with Sullivan?), Origins is with Travis (but what would he be seeing a psychiatrist for?), and Homecoming has Alex and his soldiering delusions and serious parental esteem issues.
- Re: Alex: He could even be under treatment for PTSD, and the games progression is the doctor stupidly (or accidentally) but successfully convincing him that he wasn't a soldier. Re: Travis: Maybe he ran for days on end at a time with literally hours of sleep over several days, to the point that he started hallucinating and generating straight-up false memories, and the game is him recounting to Dr. Kaufman why he abandoned his route to wander around an old, empty mining town while overlaying a dream about a semi-successful resort town near his home over his experience?
- The themes of unfaithfulness and needing "something" to make it through the day, not to mention all the talk about secrets.
- Some of the puzzles shown so far, such as having to undo the clothing of mannequins in order to find a key.
- There's also all the sexual imagery in what's been shown so far, like the pinup calendar.
So, This Troper's theory goes something like this: Harry was cheating on his wife and doing it with Alessa, a seemingly ordinary 16-year-old girl and perhaps best friend of Dahlia the stripper. They would roleplay as if Alessa was his daughter named "Cheryl," complete with schoolgirl uniforms and items imported from Japan. This is especially true if Harry states on his form that he enjoys roleplay during sex. One day, though, his wife found out. So, he went crazy and burned down the whole house in a drunken rage, killing both his wife and Alessa.
- Well, you got the incest part right. It's just that you've got the roles switched. It's not Harry that wants his daughter; it's that Cheryl wants her father. Yes. THAT WAY.
- Depending on how you look at it, he's a manifestation of the Harry Mason who died in a car crash.
- But she wasn't even in the car crash.
- Now that the game's actually out, this is kind of true. Provided you're willing to accept the ending in which the entire first game is a delusion created by Harry's dying mind.
- Bear in mind that it's well established that Cheryl and Harry have been living in Silent Hill their whole lives, whereas in Silent Hill 1 (and 3) they both lived far away from the eponymous town.
I always thought it was a sequel to the bad ending of Silent Hill. Shattered Memories showed the elements of Reality as Cheryl remembered them, and Silent Hill was Harry's delusional dying dream which included references to real people that he knew, Wizard of Oz style.
This idea is based around observations from the trailers, namely the fact that she is quite clearly not in the car when it crashes- the passenger seat is empty. Additionally, in the E3 trailer Dahlia seems to expect Harry to know who she is by her first name alone, and sounds mystified by his asking who she is. This is because she was his contact with the Order.
- Not exactly. Dahlia is Harry's former wife.
- While this theory mostly works, it fails to take into account that Michelle is not Cheryl's classmate; she was Prom Queen and sleeping with Harry when Cheryl was seven years old. That story about Michelle and Cheryl going to school together is a complete lie.
The entire game takes place a few years after the events of Silent Hill 3. Heather, unable to handle the stress and anguish of what happened to Harry and the sheer trauma of everything from Silent Hill 1 and 3, is drawn back once again to Silent Hill. She's drawn to the lighthouse overlooking Toluca Lake, and it's there that her lingering reality-warping abilities from carrying the cult's God begins to act again.
Her mind subconsciously creates the image of Doctor Kaufmann, because he's the only doctor she's ever really known, to help her rebuild her shattered mind and create a new set of memories, so that she can let go of her past and live again.
But she knows it's a lie, and in defense, her mind begins to builds constructs around the people from Silent Hill 1.. Memories of what really happened, subtly warped by the influence of the reconstruction. Harry, the hero. Cybil, the cop. Lisa, the tragic nurse. And Dahlia, her mother, obstructive and dangerous while seeming benign (Dahlia is very often the catalyst for an Otherworld shift in Shattered Memories).
Michelle and John may be constructs based on people that were important to her when she was on the run with Harry in Silent Hill 3, or they could actually be a couple of people drawn into Silent Hill's psychic vacuum unrelated to Heather's reconstruction entirely.
The Truth that Harry is searching for is that none of this is real; the very memories Heather is building are a lie. What happens in his search for Cheryl is a direct result of her own conflicting feelings on this Truth; part of her knows that these memories are a lie, and so the constructs help Harry, in their own way, towards finding her; this part of her wants her Daddy to save her from the overwrite. But another part of her is afraid that if Harry finds her, it will all be undone, resulting in the frozen Otherworld and the Rawshocks to obstruct him. Every time he seems to have a legitimate chance to find her, this part of her mind lashes out, and the Otherworld takes root. Very much reminiscent of the Cheryl/Alessa split originally, her powers are simultaneously helping and obstructing the Harry construct.
The sudden death of the Lisa construct with blood streaking down her face could be considered a leak, so to speak; the truth of what really happened in Silent Hill poking into the fabrication.
Harry complains on occasion about his memory being fuzzy. This is the result of the real memory of what happened being inaccessible; he, alone, still carries the memory of everything that really occured, but it's being blocked by Heather's history reboot. His memories have been set back to Silent Hill 1, while everything around him changes. He remembers the car crash. He remembers that Cheryl was in the car with him when it happened. He does not remember Dahlia despite her being his wife in Heather's new history. When prompted by outside stimulus, his mind begins to access the new history, as happened when he was "reminded" about his house in Silent Hill, a house he has never actually owned. But even that only comes in part. In a sense, Harry is actively resisting the overwrite. His ability to do so may explicitly be because of the part of Heather's mind that wants him to save her; she's shielded the Harry construct from the changes, much the way she shielded Lisa Garland in Silent Hill 1.
In the end, Harry does find Heather and the Kaufmann construct in the lighthouse, and what happens there is determined by Heather's psychological profile; what part of her mind is strongest determines which part of her mind prevails in the conflict. In one ending, Harry himself, with a mind unclouded and the Truth laid bare to him, now remembering everything that occured in Silent Hill 1 and 3, makes one final sacrifice for the daughter he loves, sacrificing the very truth of what happened in Silent Hill so that the daughter he was willing to fight through Hell and back for (metaphorically speaking) can move on and live a happy life.
- Another possibility is that Shattered Memories is the result of the cult's god trying to reclaim Heather. In this case, Kaufmann may actually be the original Kaufmann now working for the Nightmare god, as the last time we saw him, he was dragged down into the Nightmare by Lisa while Harry was escaping.
Under this theory, the "good" ending where Cheryl finally accepts that Harry wasn't the big hero of her story and lets go is actually the bad ending; Kaufmann succeeds in getting Cheryl to accept a revised version of her history that writes Harry out of it and Dahlia back in. The Harry construct, looking for his daughter, is Cheryl's subconscious realizing the danger she's in and lashing out, creating a manifestation of the hero figure that saved her so that he can do it again. The Dahlia construct would, then, be created by the god in response to this; you'll notice that Dahlia is often directly responsible for the Otherworld shift. There are no scenes with Construct!Dahlia that do not result in the Otherworld, because she's specifically trying to keep Construct!Harry from rescuing his daughter.
- I have to say that after playing the game once I thought something remarkably similar to this. Additionally the parts of the history reboot where it implied that Harry and Cheryl lived in a house in Silent Hill and she went to school at Midwich could be distorted memories from Alessa's past also. Harry being married to Dahilia could well be Cheryl's attempt at structuring her new reality be combining her two lives by having a complete set of parents in this history. As Heather and Cheryl she only had her father. As Alessa she only had her mother.
- Upside to this theory: if we're to assume Harry is affected, there's a chance Dahlia will be as well. Harry may have his memories rewritten into a dead, worse dad, but Dahlia will have hers rewritten to be a genuinely caring mother, a somewhat problematic one but still cherishing her daughter and not wanting her to die. The Order would face their own leader, somewhat younger, less overly religious and more of a conventional mother, turning against them to save her daughter from the harm she's been causing to her. In fact, this kind of love, made out of Cheryl's delusions, might lead Dahlia to break the illusion and remind Cheryl of the real Harry who was killed by The Missionary. Either way, Cheryl will be in safe hands before hell breaks loose in Silent Hill and she gets burned for umpteenth time.
The psych segments are in first person, not to hide Cheryl's identity, but because Kaufmann is talking directly to the player. Harry isn't Cheryl's idealized memories of her father, but the player's idealized memories of Silent Hill 1. At the end, Kaufmann tells Cheryl that although her father is dead, there are still people who love her. Or in other words, he tells the player that although Team Silent isn't working on the series anymore, there are still games being made and could you give them a chance. Whether Cheryl/the player does is up to them.
- Read the above entry for "IDEALIZED SILENT HILL 1", and dare you to tell me you can't agree.
That explains everything. Also, notice how at the end when he and Cheryl accept his death, he freezes, and it's implied he froze to death. Well, Lisa's death could have been her accepting it.
Joel Junior doesn't get a great deal of attention in the grand scheme of things, but it's implied that his abusive father introduced him to hunting and then equated his remorse for killing an innocent animal with being weak or homosexual (or congratulated him on being a natural born killer) depending on how you play it through. Cheryl and Joel were about the same age and attended the same schools, and since they were probably both outcasts, they gradually became friends..
Later you can find discarded girls' things around a hunting lodge, covered in blood. After her classmates took pictures of Cheryl, she went to the party in the woods, and lured one of the girls out to Joel's cabin. Joel got to prove his manhood by killing and possibly raping a girl, Cheryl got revenge.
- Jossed. The discarded clothing all belong to Cheryl.
- Source?
... Cheryl comes to terms with their role in her life. That's why Dahlia freezes more than once: Cheryl is gradually accepting her mother, but it's difficult and she keeps slipping back, struggling with an image of her as a young, irresponsible teenager (who apparently had a wild youth but didn't suffer for it like Cheryl did) or the woman who "had" her father to herself and drove him away (thus making her a figure of jealousy, and the literal "driver" of the car that took Harry away from her). Every time Cheryl has to confront her misunderstandings, the Dahlia we see in the game freezes over, and she comes back when Cheryl's delusions slip back in. That's why she's 'adult' Dahlia the last time Harry sees her, Cheryl has finally learned to accept her mother for the person she is now.
- Very possibly, since they do not have any memories of being frozen.
He was able to exist thanks to Silent Hill having another one of its bad days. Unfortunately, this also means that Silent Hill can kill people who get near him.
They are simply trying to push him back by a little bit, which is what happens when you get a Game Over (the reason Harry seems to be picking himself up from the ground when the game loads up again). Further supporting this is the fact that the Raw Shocks are meant to be Cheryl trying to keep her father from finding her, and why would Cheryl want her father to be killed like that?
