Silent Hill (video game)/Characters

Harry Mason

A writer, widower, and devoted father who bumbles into Silent Hill and proceeds to kick ass and chew bubblegum.

• Badass Unintentional
• Catch Phrase: "Have you seen a little girl?"
• Iconic Item: He's still wearing his brown jacket 17 years later.
• Non-Action Guy: At the beginning anyway.
• Papa Wolf: Harry is ready to go To Hell and Back to save his little girl.
• Decoy Protagonist: Harry may be the main character, but most of the focus of the plot is on Alessa.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: In Silent Hill 3.
• Unwitting Pawn: Dahlia first tells Harry that the mark appearing all over town is the "Mark of Samael" and to "not let it be completed", but later it is revealed to be the Seal of Metratron, which Alessa was using to try to destroy herself and stop the birth of the god, and Dahlia was using Harry to stop her.
• Waistcoat of Style

Cheryl Mason

A little girl, short black hair, about seven years old, she goes missing from Harry's car after he crashes it.

• Conveniently an Orphan: She was adopted by Harry and his wife. This is convenient for the plot, though not really for Cheryl herself.
• Creepy Child
• Door Step Baby
• Happily Adopted
• Living MacGuffin
• Older Than They Look: In a way. Since Cheryl and Alessa have the same soul, a lot of fans intepret that as being the same age. So Cheryl, even though she's technically seven during the game, could have a bunch of different ages.
• Power Floats: Walks easily over gaping chasms and a lake, confounding both Harry and Cybil.
• The President's Daughter
  • Lampshaded a bit during SH3.
• Shiny Midnight Black

Cybil Bennett

A police officer dispatched from the neighboring town of Brahms. She's investigating the strange goings-on in Silent Hill, and like Harry, she's stuck in the town with no way to contact any backup. Late in the game, she gets possessed by a demon, and attacks Harry. You can either save Cybil or kill her, whenever she survives the ending or not is up to the player's interpretation.

• Badass Biker: Roars pasts Harry's jeep in the prologue.
• Cool Shades: In the opening FMV.
• Distress Ball: Despite having actual combat training, she gets overwhelmed quite easily in the sewers.
• Donut Mess with a Cop: Played with, but you have to squint. You meet Cybil in a diner.
• Fair Cop: Nice pants, Cybil.
• Five Rounds Rapid: Her most defining trait. It even got transferred to the film version.
• Hair of Gold
• Implacable Man: On the carousel.
• Shrug of God. The Book of Lost Memories says that Cybil's ultimate fate is left to the player's imaginations. Masahiro Ito, when asked about her fate on Twitter, says he remembers that she's dead. When asked about the statement in the Book of Lost Memories, he said "if you choose "good+" ending among them, she is not dead, maybe."
• The Not Love Interest
• Oh My Gods: "What in the Devil's name...?"
• Painted-On Pants
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Puppet Cybil.
• The Scully: Giant fissures, pterodactyls, flying children? Must be drug-related.

Dahlia Gillespie

This strange old woman who asks Harry to stop the birth of "Samael". She's really Alessa's mother and a major member of The Order, the cult that resides in the town. Her goal was to summon a God that would lead all to "paradise", but to do so she burned her own daughter in the summoning ritual, and keeping Alessa in constant agony and pain to incubate the god inside her.

• Abusive Parents: And how...
• Bad Samaritan
• Big Bad: The primary villain in the original game and in its prequel. Considering that she's had a hand in the events of the other games as well, she's probably the main one for the series.
• Does Not Like Shoes
• Evil Matriarch: Natch. Setting your daughter on fire, then using arcane magic to keep her alive and in infinite agony for seven years? Good luck topping that.
• Evil Old Folks: Dahlia.
• Evil Old Folks: Subverted in that she's actually in her forties! Someone certainly didn't age well.
• Karmic Death: Either gets fried by the very demon she tried to summon or by a vengeful Alessa.
• Large Ham: Not so much in the prequel, but her original voice actor loves to chew up the scenery.
• Manipulative Bitch
• Legitimate Businessmen's Social Club: Green Lion Antiques.
• Uncanny Valley Makeup: Dahlia, as evidenced in the close-up during the blooper reel.
• The Villain Makes the Plot
• Younger Than They Look: Dahlia looks old enough to be her daughter's grandmother. Word of God states her age at 46.
  • Interestingly, she looks much younger in Silent Hill Origins.

Michael Kaufmann

A not terribly pleasant doctor Harry encounters. Was a drug runner, in bed with Dahlia (maybe literally) in regards to the demon birth plan, and most likely killed Lisa. Not a nice guy. Lisa eventually hands him a Karmic Death via dragging him to hell.

• Defector From Decadence: Whatever Dahlia promised him, a few minutes alone in the Fog World is enough to make Kaufmann throw in the towel. It's evident that he never fully trusted her, as he's stashed two vials of Aglaophotis as a countermeasure against Alessa's ascension.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As much of a bastard as he is, he is disgusted by Dahlia's ultimate plan, to the point that he helps Harry defeat her in the good endings.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: He tries to shoot Harry from under three feet away when you meet him. He misses.
• Karmic Death
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate
• Show the Forehead
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness

Lisa Garland

A kindly nurse Harry continuously bumps into as he shifts to and from the Otherworld. Though strangely, always in the same location, as she refuses to leave it. She was also Alessa's caregiver after the girl was burned, and as a result, she is somehow kept alive, where all the other nurses and doctors have been parasitized. Unfortunately, her existence is tied to the hellish [otherside], so when something happens to dismantle that dark, nightmare world...

• Body Horror: When the Flauros causes the Otherworld to lose cohesion, she does too. At first, this is mental, but before long, she is found to bleed from every orifice.
• Dead to Begin With
• Hospital Hottie: Scratch the surface, though...
• Redheads Want the Hero
• Puff of Logic: Disintegrates into blood at the same time as the environment around you loses any sense of cohesion.

Alessa Gillespie

A young woman with mysterious powers who had the great misfortune of being Dahlia Gillespie's daughter; her suffering at her own mother's hand is what kicks off the plot to begin with.

Alessa somehow split into two people -- the Alessa you see wrapped in bandages at the final sequence of the game, and the girl that Harry found and raised as "Cheryl". The God couldn't be born unless both halves of Alessa were reunited, so Dahlia manipulates Harry into doing the dirty work for her. Depending on your ending, Harry either fights and kills the Complete Alessa, or Kaufmann intervenes and draws out the God for Harry to fight. The latter ending shows Alessa dying and giving Harry a baby girl, a reincarnation of herself who will grow up to become Heather in Silent Hill 3.

• And I Must Scream: She's been kept in constant agony for seven years just so her hatred can incubate a god. Thanks, Mom.
• Apocalypse Maiden
• Fate Worse Than Death: Dahlia outright says this about her condition.
• Mommy Issues: Oh so much...