These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: Silent Hill
Acceptable Religious Targets: The cult of the games worships several dark gods, and uses the trappings of mainstream religions as a cover. Meanwhile, the cult in the movie is straight-up, puritanical Christian (though the script says they're Manichaeists; a hint is how God is mentioned constantly, but Christ never is).
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? Or, perhaps, James is just a normal man who did a horrible thing.
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?"
It doesn't help that if you come back to the place where you killed your first monster in 2, it will be surrounded by police tape. What exactly did you bludgeon to death with a loose board, James?
This tape is actually generic CAUTION tape, not police tape. It's the sort of thing you see cordoning off dangerous parts of construction areas—and James kills his first monster in a construction area.
There's a fan theory that runs that Henry is in fact responsible for the murders throughout the fourth game. See the Wild Mass Guessing page for details.
Depending on how you answer Dr. K's questions and how you play as Harry, you can give the player character of Shattered Memories a different set of characteristics and motivations every time you play through.
The game itself is rife with ACIs. Dahlia becomes Harry's lover and later claims to be his wife, and Kaufmann is Cheryl's therapist. Lisa and Cybil are both largely the same, although their circumstances differ from SH1.
There were a lot of arguments over whether or not Pyramid Head should have been put into Homecoming.
The Real Silent Hill Experience, a fan-made video series, is dedicated to breaking the base entirely in two: people who like only the Silent Hill games they consider worthy, and people who like all the games (whom they consider retards). Knowledgeable fans ridicule the video series, casual fans worship its creators. There's no crossover or middle-ground.
Bittersweet Ending: Even the good endings are this, because Silent Hill has left all those affected by it permanently scarred.
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 deserts. It's interesting to note that Dr. Kaufmann was at least involved in planning Alessa's birth, and may in fact be her father.
Let's not forget about Judge Holloway.
Subverted with Claudia. She was a piece of work, but was abused by her father, lost her best friend, and still considered herself not "Paradise"-worthy.
The nurses in the second and third games, especially on Hard difficulty and higher. They have long attack range and some in the third game carry guns, 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. Worse, in SH2, James also has to protect Maria from them, or else it's Game Over.
The first game has the infamous Grey 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, with one grabbing you while the others slice and dice. Then you tend to get grabbed by another after getting free and the cycle repeats. 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. See, for example, the basement corridor in "Born From A Wish". Get bitten by one spider too many, cue Critical Existence Failure.
Slurpers. They 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.
Rawshocks, which makes sense, given that they are preventing Harry from realizing the truth.
Insane Cancers in the third game. Large mounds of hell that block your paths and force you to fight them. It takes an insane amount of resources to knock them down, and then once you think they're dead and go to kick them, they get right back up and take out a chunk of your health. They're also a lot faster than they look - from a distance, they can suddenly just sprint at you. The fact that these things can take eight shotgun blasts to the face and still come back laughing is far scarier than what they're meant to represent.
Downer Ending: Just about all of the non-"good", non-wacky endings.
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!
Completely averted in Alex's case, who reacts with the appropriate (and usually sweary) exclamations and facial expressions. ("Oh, you gotta be shitting me!")
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.
Numb Bodies in Silent Hill 3, which would populate some rooms and keep bumping you. Yes, that's their attack. Bumping. GET OUT OF THE WAY!!
Hell Is That Noise: The radio especially, but every noise in that game had the potential to be Nightmare Fuel or Paranoia Fuel. The darker ambient soundtracks add to the disjointed atmosphere as well.
Everytime I hear those...sounds in the courtyard of the school in the first game my heart starts pounding.
In Name Only: Besides the setting and some rather ham-handed references, all the comics written by Scott Ciencin have very little in common with the games.
Internet Backlash: Try to find any positive opinions regarding the recasting of 2 and 3's voices for the "HD Collection".
Jerkass Woobie: Attempted with Christabella in the comics. She was killed in a horrific way, but most readers hate her anyway. Sadly, at the end of Dead/Alive, where it's implied that everyone winds up where they belong, she's still an evil demoness in Silent Hill, implying that she is beyond redemption.
Les Yay: Rose and Cybil have their own fanbase because of this. Made even more hilarious by the Bubble headed nurses being a sign of repressed sexuality.
Memetic Molester: Pyramid Head. "Good heavens, look at the time!" It's rape o'clock. And to complete this, monsters run away if they so much as hear the Great Knife scraping across the floor in the dark. Considering James can use the Great Knife, this comes in handy for avoiding confrontation.
Much of the dialogue from the games, particularly Harry's performance from the first. The voice acting and dialogue does noticeably improve as the series goes on, but this trope still pops up from time to time.
Dahlia Gillespie gives us the immortal line, "It was foretold by gyromancy!". Go ahead, Wikipedia "gyromancy".
If you wear the dog suit that you can earn as a reward, the entirety of Origins can be turned into this.
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?
There's a room in the mall in 3, where there's a sign that says you need to turn off the lights because the room becomes very noticeable if you don't. Even while watching a friend play the game, when they go to turn off the lights, it's terrifying because of previous knowledge of Silent Hill games. Nothing actually happens either way, which really makes it Paranoia Fuel.
In Silent Hill 2, while wandering around in the abandoned apartments, you hear a noise coming from the north in a room you visited a few minutes before. When you go back into the previously empty room, a man you haven't seen before is sitting dead in the chair in front of the TV, which has been turned on to static and has blood all over it. And all the corpses that James runs into use the same character model look like him, except for one that looks like Harry Mason.
Strawman Has a Point: In the movie Rose's husband Christopher is supposed to be a jerk for being against going to Silent Hill and putting a hold on their credit cards. The thing is, he's absolutely right about how crazy this is. In the movie it's publicly available knowledge that the town has massive coal fires that make it too dangerous to go to, not to mention the additional danger made by taking a mentally troubled child along.
An often overlooked one is Cybil's death in the film adaptation. It's a little hard to make out given that she's uttering the words in a whispered gasp, but if one listens carefully, her last words are "Mother... be with me...".
The 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 still complained 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.
Pretty much any post-Team Silent entry will get flak from fans for being too "Americanized", despite the fact that a couple of the more recent dev teams originate from Britain (Climax Studios) and the Czech Republic (Vatra Games) respectively. Even Silent Hill 4, the last Team Silent game, was polarizing due to the radical gameplay changes.
Still more baffling is the very accusation that the series has shifted toward "American" horror — as Word Of God states, the the series was intended as an homage to American horror in the first place and draws most of its inspiration from it, hence the town's streets being named after various Western horror writers and directors.
Visual Effects of Awesome: While some of the symbolism really didn't belong, there is very little dispute that the film's visuals are a perfect representation of what a Silent Hill movie should look like.
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Alessa. And as for 3 and 4, to think the tragedy could have been avoided if only Claudia and Walter had gotten more hugs growing up.
