Silent Hill 2/Headscratchers

Silent Hill Pizzas, We Deliver!

 * Where did Eddie get that pizza? In the bowling alley, he sits there with Laura eating pizza, and I'm like... did you order that? Does someone deliver to Silent Hill? Or did you just find it... amid the rust and blood and monsters and gore and hideousness, you just found a perfectly fresh pizza and decided "Awesome.. .magic pizza, probably safe to eat it, and it's probably not haunted or anything." Or maybe you raided someone's fridge and ignored the "Property of P. Head" post-it.
 * I wouldn't believe any note with the name "P. Head" on it.
 * It's hinted at that Eddie and Laura don't actually 'see' Silent Hill the exact same way that James does, as Eddie actually states early on when he thinks James is a little nutters. Laura sees the town as an adult-less world for her to play in and doesn't see the monsters, and Eddie feels it as a sort of isolated prison for something he thought about doing. It seems that Eddie can sometimes cross back into Normal Silent Hill (hence his absence in some spots) and back into Other World Silent Hill at will.
 * Lost Memories says that to Laura, "the town appears to be normal". Make of that what you will.

Let's go play in the toilet!

 * "Hey, this place is pretty creepy and everything is decrepit and stuff. Oh, that's a pretty grody toilet. God knows what in i- HEYYY a wallet! With convenient numbers! Underneath all that icky looking crap!" What the fuck James.
 * In that same vein: "Oh, I just walked into a room with the doorway to the hall behind me. WHOA that pyramid thing is dong something horrible to the sink! Time to jump in the closet and shoot at it!" Idiot Ball much?
 * Well, what did you expect? The Pyramid Head was acting as if it realized something was in the closet and was walking towards it, and James reacted like any normal person would; he panicked and tried to kill it. It's not as if he would have automatically known that Pyramid Head, unlike the other monsters James had encountered up until that point, was impervious to conventional weaponry.
 * Well, perhaps Pyramid Head wouldn't have noticed James if he had TURNED OFF THE FLASHLIGHT!
 * ...Touché.
 * Though given that Pyramid Head is the manifestation of James's guilt, it's very, VERY possible he would've sensed James's presence no matter what.
 * Its been a while since I played the game, but I believe the flashlight stays on in cutscenes if you had it on before it started and is off if you had it off before the scene starts.
 * I think the original point being made is that James should have opened the door and ran like hell, rather than hiding in the closet.
 * Well, do you want to hide and not be seen or be chased after by Pyramid Head?
 * I'd much rather get chased by him. Haven't you noticed? Even with just a spear he's not exactly a track star.
 * I wouldn't bet on that; I have a feeling (and it's sort of implied in the game) that Pyramid Head is the kind of entity who'll always find you, no matter how fast you run.

How dare you kill your rapist father!

 * It's been a while since this troper has touched SH2, but given that the town is "punishing" its visitors for their past misdeeds...then why is Angela being punished for killing her rapist father? Unfortunate Implications much?
 * It might help if you consider that the town isn't INTENTIONALLY punishing anyone. Laura's Silent Hill was, supposedly, an entirely abandoned town for her to play in without adult supervision or interference (with the exception of Eddie and James) -- considering how content she seems with this arrangement, that's more of a reward than a judgmental call. Also, it could be argued that the town only does to its adventurers what they think they deserve. Angela didn't think she deserved being saved or helped ("Don't pity me. I'm not worth it." "Thank you for saving me, but I wish you hadn't"), and the town responded accordingly.
 * I don't really see the town as "punishing" them for their misdeeds, so much as acting as a metaphysical conduit for their guilt. Eddie felt some guilt for what he did, at first, and when you first meet him, he mentions the monsters around the place. Later on, when you meet him (particularly in the prison), he's lost quite a bit of his sanity by that point, and no longer feels guilty about what he did. Notice that at this point, he doesn't seem nearly as freaked out by his surroundings, acting like James was weird for not assuming he'd be fine on his own. When he finally snaps, he seems to actually like the town. Laura isn't guilty of anything, so the town seems perfectly normal to her. James, however, enters Silent Hill still having repressed the guilt of what he did, and the further he goes, the closer he gets to the truth, and the more nightmarish the town gets for him. Angela, while a sympathetic character to us, feels just as guilty about what she did as James does when he realizes what he did, if not more, so the town picks that up and amplifies it. Besides, who said Silent Hill was fair?
 * The town isn't consciously punishing them, it's just reflecting all their darkest issues and insecurities. Angela feels guilty about it, so the otherworld automatically brings that guilt to life in the form of her own personal hell.
 * I agree with the above. This game is all about personal guilt, not necessarily whether the people in question are worthy of blame. Should James be punished for wanting to end the suffering of his wife? It's also vaguely implied that Angela might have killed her mother and brother as well. As for how much they deserved it, well...
 * I'd argue that the town itself isn't punishing anyone, it's just providing a place for people that subconsciously want to punish themselves. The over-reaching theme of the Silent Hill series, Silent Hill 2 especially, is that of guilt. And people sometimes feel guilty for things that others wouldn't blame them for. Silent Hill is rather like some early concepts of Hell, not a place of intentional, deliberate torture or pain, but a nightmarish version of the old "Go to your room and think about what you did." Essentially, Silent Hill takes normal people wracked with guilt, whether that guilt is deserved or not, and turns them into reality warpers so they can create their own private, personal hells.
 * Also, because she killed her dad. Why she did it is irrelevant. Silent Hill punishes murderers, and she is one. Or, to look at all three of them: Eddie is a burgeoning psychopath. James has a mix of selfish and noble reasons. Angela is mostly sympathetic. But Silent Hill punishes murderers. It doesn't care if you did it for good reasons.
 * Silent Hill isn't punishing anybody in this game. It merely allows people to punish themselves, if they feel punishment is what they deserve. Angela certainly feels she does, and is rewarded accordingly, but she never personally mentions killing anybody, and it's clear that the guilt eating her alive has nothing to do with the specific act of killing her father (when she gets the chance to re-enact the killing, she does so without hesitation). She feels guilty about her own flaws, a notion her mother reinforces. Eddie definitely does not feel as though he did anything wrong, and he certainly doesn't feel he's being punished (in fact, it appears as though he's having the time of his life acting out against all the people he perceives to have wronged him in life). This is because Eddie never feels any guilt at all, and what people look at and think is his guilt is actually his fear of being caught and suffering consequences, hence his lying and evasion until he feels safe enough from punishment to flaunt himself. Laura, clearly no punishment going on there. And, James? The punishment he does receive comes mostly in the form of a monster which is very obviously representing himself and his less than savory aspects. Whether or not punishment is finalized is definitely his decision to make. The town itself displays no will of its own at any time. It's also worth noting that Eddie never actually killed anybody. Well, not a person, at least.
 * Not that I disagree with you, but I had a thought: Let's say that Silent Hill is punishing people to the extent they believe they deserve to be punished. By the end, Eddie doesn't believe he's in the wrong or that he should be punished; he's free of guilt. He dies anyway. Why? Because James killed him. But the town seems to have control over where James goes (broken streets, locked doors) so why would it allow James to meet with Eddie at all? Maybe--speculating here--Eddie didn't feel any guilt, so the town couldn't produce monsters for him. But, maybe it thought he still deserved to be punished, and so the town let James find Eddie while Eddie is in his most psychopathic state...
 * I think that's giving the town too much credit as a Genius Loci, and working too hard to justify gameplay elements that are just part of the survival horror genre. There's nothing to say it's really controlling every last footstep anyone takes, or that it's "thinking" anything at all. James, Eddie and Angela each came to Silent Hill for their own reasons, got pulled into the otherworld because they all have deep, dark issues, and the otherworld's reflecting and bringing to life their guilt, anger, all their inner darkness. James and Eddie crossed paths for the same reason that he crossed paths with Laura and Angela: they're all roaming the town, that's all. The only two characters who are meeting James by design, because they've been created by his manifested guilt, are Maria and Pyramid Head.