Silent Hill/Fridge

The Games

Fridge Brilliance

• I liked Silent Hill 2 from the start, but I did feel mildly squicked by what I saw as an undercurrent of misogyny running through it; the monsters generally taking the form of mutated women (or disembodied bits of them), the Pyramid head rape scenes, a lot of Maria's scenes... Then somewhere towards the end, everything clicked into place. There was indeed a streak of misogyny and issues-with-women running through the game, but the issues were the protagonist's, not the designers'. James was forced to kill creatures resembling young women over and over again because Silent Hill was playing on his darkest memories and fears; Maria behaved like a cliched male fantasy because, essentially, she was one. - Calla
  • At first, I disliked Travis in Origins because I thought he had absolutely no reason to be in Silent Hill in the first place. Then I realized that he was "picked" by Alessa because he too had been nearly killed by his mother. - User:Odile
  • Really, the Silent Hill series takes this trope to dizzying heights. Do you know why it has a reputation for high Replay Value, and why spoilers are (generally) so closely guarded? You will after completing a story and playing it over again. It's a challenge not to recognize some subtle piece of Foreshadowing or grotesque symbolism you didn't catch before. - Javer
• The first Silent Hill: the corpse hooked up to IVs in the school bathroom where you get the shotgun, the corpse hanging off the wall in the corridor to the boat cabin, and the similar corpses practically everywhere throughout the game are the same person. It's Burnt Alessa, watching over you as you progress through the world she has created, and the fact that the bathroom corpse has a clue written next to it and a weapon suggests that she is trying to help you, almost certainly to liberate herself from enslavement as the crippled incubator for Dahlia's God
  • Except that it's not a clue written next to the corpse, it's a completely useless reference to a horror book.
• In Silent Hill 3, shortly after the shopping mall switches over to the "otherworld", Heather comes across a ladies washroom. When Heather goes to leave the room, the door to one of the stalls opens and the player finds the inside of the stall covered in blood. This seems in line with most of the game's other meaningless scares, such as the bleeding mannequin in the office building or the infamous "mirror room". All was well and good with this troper until reading that the game's overall thematic theme was teenage fears. One particular teenage fear being, shall we say, underrepresented in most media.
  • Another level of brilliance just occurred to this troper. The end has the boss that Heather's been carrying around the entire game being birthed. What is the biggest fear of teenagers? Getting pregnant and having a baby.
  • For me, the Mirror Room isn't a meaningless scare. I didn't realize it at first, but the game has a serious theme about identity. Early on, Heather notes she hates mirrors. Later on she finds the Mirror room. And later, a mirror image of herself-- of Alessa,--shows up to kill her. Meaningless? I think not. Mirrors, for Heather, seem to represent inner confusion and self hatred.
• The relationship between Murphy Pendleton and Anne Cunningham have interesting parallels to each other. One of them is a parent who has lost a child, and the other is a child who has lost a father.

Fridge Horror

• While the phone call Easter Eggs in Shattered Memories may be hilarious, it shows that the people are aware of the horrors that go on in Silent Hill. They just can't do a thing about it.

The Movie

• The ending of the Silent Hill movie. As disturbing as it is, as evil as they were, from what we can tell the church was right...
  • Technically it was more of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, since she didn't make a deal with the devil until AFTER they had burned her to a crisp.
  • Or it could be, as one Wild Mass Guessing postulates, that the entire story about being burned alive was one big fat lie, the town's fear of her was entirely justified, and she tormented them for years for no reason whatsoever.
  • Another one from Silent Hill. Alessa is very, very alike to Sharon when it comes to looks. Alessa was raped by a janitor and survived getting burned alive some time later. Sharon is from an orphanage. Connect the dots together and...
    • That's more of a WMG, really. Sharon is Alessa's good side that split off when she made the deal with the "devil" (which caused Alessa's soul to splinter and created Burnt Alessa, Sharon (Good Alessa) and Dark Alessa).