Headscratchers / Splatterhouse

• If you're fighting the Terror Mask as the final boss of the third game... then what is Rick wearing on his face??''
  • It's probably a Battle in the Center of the Mind. Rick is probably able to use part of the Mask's raw power against it, hence why it seems to still wear it.

• Also in the two of the possible bad endings in the game - David dies as Jennifer and Rick lives or Jennifer dies as David and Rick lives - as the Terror Mask lies defeated, it says that as long as there is evil in the world, it will always find its way back, all this because Rick carries the pain of letting one of his dear ones die in the process; but in the good ending - Rick, David and Jennifer lives - the Mask truly dies as an old trinquet, so just because Rick isn't in pain for a huge loss in his family, the Mask can no longer nourish itself with all the evils in the world?
  • Power of Love?
  • Maybe because the Mask acts like a symbiote to such a degree that if its own host destroys it and the host is not suffering from any pain of loss that it will just be Killed Off for Real.
  • Actually, I believe the Mask said that it lives not through evil, but suffering. Unless the English version was a bad translation, what with things like "if you wonder aimlessly"...
  • In regards to that, here's part of the unused Terror Mask is Evil ending dialogue from the remake:
  "No, I need people; I need suffering, heartache and pain - and your suffering is especially sweet."

• An intelligent question for the remake: In the tenth chapter, you discover that West's revived bride was captured by an angry mob and put in a Wicker Man to be burnt. However, how could the mob take her from West's mansion, which was probably filled with lots of monsters that can easily kill a masked Rick, let alone puny humans?
  • I'm pretty sure West didn't start cranking out monsters until after Leonora was killed, given that was his primary motive for doing so.

• From the remake, we have the thing in the basement: WHAT THE HELL. I mean, it's obviously a Cthulhu reference, but there's just so many unanswered questions about it... is it Cthulhu itself? Is it an aspect? Something else? How does West keep it under control? Why doesn't it just smash the glass of its container like nothing? What was West's plan for it? Does West even remember it was down there? I mean, there are no notes about it that you can find, and West doesn't even mention it when you find him later in the level. So many unanswered questions about this guy, I wanna know!
  • The remake in general had an odd obsession with taking a relatively minor reference to Lovecraft (Dr. West) and extrapolating most of the plot from the not-great understanding of the Cthulhu mythos. There wasn't anything terribly Lovecraftian about the original trilogy; it was pretty much just 80's Horror Flick: The Game.
  • Cthulhu was originally a high priest to the Great Old Ones, then, to the Outer Gods. That could just be another of its species that does not have whatever benefits come from that position. Cthulhu is not cosmically powerful as is, and West could probably catch a weaker one.
  • Alternatively, it could be one of the Beast monsters (the big ones who get there guts pulled out via backside in the Splatterkills) that had its face altered with surgery/magic. Aside from the face, the monster looks very similar to those guys, and such a modification is well within West's MO and abilities.