Silent Hill/Headscratchers


 * Silent Hill 1
 * Silent Hill 2
 * Silent Hill 3
 * Silent Hill 4
 * Silent Hill Origins
 * Silent Hill Homecoming
 * Silent Hill Shattered Memories

Stupid Oblivious Government

 * The entire place is practically a Ghost Town, not to mention Shepard's Glen in Homecoming. How come no one has taken notice? Why does it seem like no one has tried to start an investigation? An entire town going dark for 20 or so years seems like it would net SOME attention, not to mention that everyone who has left has probably been put into an asylum.
 * It hasn't gone dark. The foggy Silent Hill is an otherworld that people are drawn into just like the hellish one. To most people, it's just a regular old resort town. Or at least, that's the most popular WMG for why the government isn't all over it.
 * The above is correct, Silent Hill exists as a normal town. There are many indicators of this, such as there being computers in Brookhaven Hospital in Silent Hill 3 where there were only typewriters before in Silent Hill 2. Homecoming mentions a school bus accident in Shepherd's Glen that involved taking the children to Alchemilla Hospital in Silent Hill. And there's a letter in Doc Fitch's office from a "Dr. Slater", the Chief Resident of the Psychiatric Department in Alchemilla Hospital. As for Shepherd's Glen, there's a memo in the Overlook Penitentiary that explains the situation there:


 * "For any readers looking to enjoy that good old Shepherd's Glen hospitality, you may want to reconsider your options. I recently stayed at the Shepherd's Inn, located conveniently just outside the downtown area. While our previous overnights at this location were memorable, the year since their Sesquicentennial Celebration has not been kind to our neighboring burg. Our accommodations themselves were inhospitable, to put it mildly, and the locals seemed gruff and uninviting. Even the Town Hall, once a friendly way for tourists to learn about the area's culture, stood in exceeding disrepair. On day two--"

People for the Ethical Treatment of Monsters

 * The monster ecology and the protagonists' blatant disregard for the un-lives of the endangered species inhabiting Silent Hill! Throughout the games, these majestic, graceful creatures who (un)live in perfect peace and harmony are brutally smashed, sliced, shot at, and stomped on by the callous "heroes" for simply defending their homes! Did they ever stop to consider the Sewer Dragon habitat in the sewers is quite fragile? Or that the percentage of Giant Larvae who mature to Giant Moths is pitifully low already; their senseless slaying means we'll have to petition Japan to send a Mothra larva just to avoid a habitat collapse? Worst of all, the Zombie Nurse (blue), (sexy), and (burping) subspecies were so thoroughly decimated that even if either of the males of the species, the Pyramid Heads, had survived, their species would still be perilously close to extinction! We can not conclude this condemnation without mentioning the families these criminals have broken in their quest to "have you seen my daughter?", "find my wife", or "Will you stop asking me questions and help me get the F@$& out of here?!". As we all know, the Zombie Nurse mates for life with the Pyramid Head who leads the Pride, which means entire generations of Demon Children will die of neglect, never again to know the love of either parent. Will no one think of the Demon Children?!
 * They look like mortals to you?
 * Japan has been hard at work trying to control the Giant Moth population ever since they became a great threat to their ecosystem after Godzilla stopped suppressing their numbers, and since our GINO sucks, we cannot risk the same thing happening here. And we have special zombie nurse enclosures in places like Raccoon City and Willamette, Colorado to preserve their population.

Invincible locked doors

 * Dear gods, the sheer amount of locked doors boggles my mind. Why, with all the weapons the protagonists have, haven't they tried to break them down? James with Pyramid Head's Knife should easily cleave those flimsy wooden things.
 * My guess? Silent Hill has a hell dimension anchored over it, and breaking open a door would result in a tear in the space/time continuum which would permanently trap you in the Dark World. ... or, it would cause the game to glitch.
 * I always figured it as whatever entity/power behind all the nonsense only having a few, important areas accessible- too much effort to make everything ever available. (Rather like, er, the real life reason.) It also works nicely to contribute to a sense of claustrophobia, which seems to be the desired effect.
 * In the section for SH 4, there's a theory that The Room purposely makes itself unbreakable to keep Henry locked in and force him to go through the hole. Maybe the dark power likewise makes all doors and windows unbreakable except for the important ones that lead to eventual escape. It may be evil and controlling, but Silent Hill is fair... horrifying, traumatizing, and murderous, but fair.
 * In other words, the doors cannot be broken with any degree of force the PCs can deliver.
 * As good an explanation as any is postulated at about 7:12 in this video

Apocalyptic cults bad for tourism?

 * So just what the hell is the current state of the town? I understand that the series has thus far spanned at least twenty or so years, but why is it that people are constantly acting as if there is nothing wrong with the town, despite the fact that dozens and dozens of people have disappeared in the town over the course of 2 decades with a connection to a cult that seems to be hellbent on ripping goddamn Cthulhu out of the ground to destroy humanity? Wouldn't that kind of ruin tourism?.
 * Well, keep in mind, twenty years. Strange things happen in small towns, and the cult owns just about everything. Keeping tourists coming won't be too hard, I mean, those were isolated incidents over two decades. People go missing all the time. As for the original question, the town of Silent Hill itself is supposedly normal, the alternate world is the misty version. What you call the dark world is YMMV, but this troper refers to it as the Nightmare, usually.
 * Actually it is stated from Silent Hill 1 to Silent Hill 3 that the town is normal in every sense of the word. Even the Silent Hill Arcade game mentions that it's a well known lake-side resort. The Other World, Dark World, Gray World, and once mentioned in Silent Hill Play Novel Light World are all in other dimensions (hence the uncrossable giant cliff of doom at the edge of town or the No Where world which is often mixed bits of the Other, Normal, and Dark worlds) which are only linked by either Mirror Gates or the whims of the dark god.
 * You've gotta remember that there's a specific in-game explanation that covers this little concern quite nicely - White Claudia, a seriously addictive drug, is specifically targeted to tourists. It doesn't matter what reputation a town has, I imagine, when you're addicted to a drug you can really only get there.
 * The town exists without monsters and fog (well, less fog) in the real world. It has been inhabited since 1810. According to SILENT HILL KOSHIKI GUIDEBOOK KANZENBAN (Silent Hill Official Guidebook Complete Edition) the population was "below 30,000" at the time of the first Silent Hill game (set in 1983) and its key industry -- tourism -- is in a state of steady decline. The residents were aware of the drug trade and presence of the Order in the real world (various articles and memos corroborate this), though they are not aware of what happens in the Fog World and Otherworld.

That lock sounds broken to me!

 * How do the characters know the difference between a locked door and a door with a broken lock?
 * Maybe the locks are really obviously broken, like it's wonky and there's a big crack in it, but they just didn't bother to animate that.

Nightmares about Silent Hill? Let's go there right now!

 * "Oh honey you're having terrible nightmares about a horrible, evil place? It's ok, I'll kidnap you to take you there against all common sense, your father's wishes and any concern about your well being, I'm sure that will make it all better."
 * Yeah, I like how she just went behind her husband's back like that. So not only are men incapable of loving their children as much as a mother according to the studio, but they don't deserve to be kept in the loop either.
 * Especially since in the movie it is public knowledge that Silent Hill is very dangerous, even at the pseudo-normal levels. Rose clearly researched this place and should know (just as her husband did) that the fires burning are so dangerous that people can't live there. So of course the best way to handle this is to take your mentally ill child and go there without even hiring someone who would have a reasonable chance of knowing how to safely navigate such a place. To make it even more ridiculous there was no reason whatsoever to bring the child with her. There was no reason at all why Rose couldn't leave the kid in the care of specialists and her husband for a few days and travel to the town herself.

Watch as I pull this trigger... d'oh!

 * Cybil was easily pwning the cultists in the hospital without needing to fire her gun. Why oh why did she reveal her own bluff by "shooting" Crystabella? She could have at least convinced them to go away and leave her alone for fear of getting shot to death, and then wait for Rose to come back? They'd have totally thought she'd be dead meat anyway, what with being so close to "The Demon", too.
 * I just assumed she thought the gun was loaded, and that she tried to shoot Christabella to prove a point.
 * Definately not, she explains that she is on her last mag when fighting Pyramid Head, and drops the slide after her last round in the scene before. I think she just gave up and figured she was dead anyways. Good guess, though.

Cybil just really hates parents?

 * Officer Cybil's suspicions when she first sees Rose and Sharon. At that point she has absolutely no reason at all to think that there was anything suspicious about Rose, so what did she do? She decides to go over to the child in the car and to follow them.
 * The movie tries to justify this by using that "boy who was kidnapped and put in a mineshaft (or whatever) 'til Cybil came to save him" sidebar. I think they were hoping the audience would presume that Cybil's cop senses were tingling and she just couldn't resist the urge to investigate.
 * Still silly.
 * So do the local police regularly get complaints from travelers that one of their officers keeps tailing them and speaking to their children?
 * To be fair, Rose was acting suspicious at the gas station.
 * And she DID just kind of kidnap her own daughter in a way....
 * We know that Chris had Rose's credit cards cut off when she left, so it's possible he also reported the Jeep stolen in an effort to have her brought back. Cybil never mentions it, but it would explain why she was checking out the vehicle, copied down the license plate, and then came screaming after Rose with her sirens on after she ran the plate.
 * Cybil's initial suspicions at the gas station were spurred when Rose showed Sharon a drawing that she drew and Sharon became distressed because she didn't remember drawing it. Cybil was just within earshot to hear Sharon becoming agitated ("What is that mommy?", "I don't remember!" etc.) and went to investigate when Rose left, but Sharon said she's not supposed to talk to strangers and rolled her window up. The suspicions increased for the reasons that the other tropers have described above.

Alessa's fireproof?

 * I'm kind of surprised that no one's mentioned this yet. Okay, so the premise is basically that the entire Church of fanatics is already dead and their souls are trapped in Silent Hill: the detective makes a comment about a lot of people never being found, not even bodies, and then says that some people would say they deserved it. Regardless, a huge fire spread throughout the town and killed people. And Alessa was right at the center of it. How in the hell did she survive long enough for the detective to save her? How did he even get to her?
 * Honestly? She probably survived for a time off pure hate. I assumed that Alessa either got lucky and the chains snapped before she was killed, or the demon did it to save her. The police may well have been investigating the cult, or the fire of the drapes set off fire alarms and they found her there. After the botched burning, Alessa was interned at a hospital, bonded with the demon, and then caused a second, stronger fire that must have got all the cultist and the town in general.
 * Given that Dahlia's with the cops when they find Alessa, it's implied that as soon as the horror of what she'd done struck her, she rushed to the police. That the first fire merely drove the cultists out of the hotel, and that a second, stronger fire killed them and ruined the town never occurred to me, and is a possibility.
 * Right, there were two fires. One that maimed Alessa and a later one that ignited the coal mines and left the town uninhabited.

Lecturing crazy cultists is a free action

 * When Rose is shouting at the Church to remind them of their crimes why on Earth are they just standing there? She's the heretic connected to the Demon, so why don't they knock her over the head and burn her like they were planning to?
 * Well, they didn't expect her to come back at all. Some of them did try to smack her, but at that point, she was far too angry/hopped up on adrenaline to care.
 * Um, one person slapped her the moment she started talking, a bunch of people tried to grab her, and one person punched her in the face, along with every clammering to burn her alive. I'm pretty sure none of them were just standing there letting her talk.

Troubled Child + Danger + ??? = Cure!

 * What exactly was Rose's plan for when she and Sharon reached Silent Hill? Did she think that they could just wander around the town and that this would somehow cure her daughter? Was Sharon supposed to have an epiphany from being in a creepy, deserted town? Even ignoring the obvious dangers and lack of any real planning did Rose never consider the possibility that being in such a scary place might make Sharon's condition worse?
 * From what I gather, Rose didn't have any plan at all. She went to Silent Hill out of desperation and frustration, looking for answers. She didn't know it was a "creepy", "scary" place -- which is entirely subjective. All she knew was that there was a coal fire that started thirty years ago that is still burning and that nobody wanted to talk about it, because it was a tragedy and people died (like Thomas Gucci's father).

More issues with Harry... goody

 * This Headscratcher is based on pre-release details about the sequel. Spoilers abound, so turn back if you're uber-sensitive about that kind of thing. According to pre-release info, Heather Mason will be looking for her father in Silent Hill after being on the run for eighteen years. And apparently, her father is Christopher Da Silva, Sean Bean's character. "Okay, cool" I thought to myself, "they're sticking to the game's story this time." This even fits in with the general opinion that Sean Bean would have made a good Harry. The problem? Heather is aided in her quest by by a completely unrelated man. Named. Harry. What. In. The. Utter. Fuck. Oh, and even better? Heather will also be helped by Rose Da Silva, who is still wearing the exact red-stained clothes she wore in the original movie. Meaning that little to no time has passed since the first. The only way this could possibly make since is by involving time travel, or Christopher Da Silva was one of those freaks with a second hidden family.
 * Maybe, hopefully, "Harry" is really just Douglas from Silent Hill 3, renamed Harry in the movie story as a Shout-Out to the first game. From the prerelease info it sounds like he's playing the exact same role as Douglas. As for Rose, my money's on her being a spirit, a projection or something else mysterious and supernatural: the last time we saw her she'd been fully absorbed into the misty world.
 * According to IMDB, Sean Bean is credited as both Christopher Da Silva and Harry Mason. The only source I've seen refer to Harry as a different character is The Other Wiki, and that plot summary isn't even sourced.
 * Perhaps the family went into hiding from the cult and took on the aliases of Harry and Heather Mason?
 * The same cult that was completely trapped in the nightmare world and were slaughtered at the end of the movie? That would be a bit excessive on the part of the family.
 * Not the same cult. The cult in Revelation is more along the lines of the Order (specifically, the Sect of the Holy Woman) in Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3.