Video Game / Silent Hill 4

Welcome to Hell.

"Don't go out!"

— Walter Sullivan

Henry Townshend lives in Room 302 of the South Ashfield Heights apartment complex. One day, he wakes up to discover that he has become trapped in his own apartment. He can't open any of the windows, his telephone doesn't work, nobody outside of the apartment can hear his cries for help, and multiple chains and locks have sealed off his front door from the inside. A short message written on the door in what appears to be blood warns Henry not to go outside.

Henry spends 5 days trapped inside his apartment, plagued by recurring nightmares every time he sleeps. Just before he gives up all hope of escape, a hole appears in his bathroom wall. Henry decides that crawling inside the hole beats staying in the apartment, so he slips into the wall... and ends up transported to various locations around the town of Silent Hill. These locations, all infected by an evil power that seems to eat away at its surroundings, force Henry to defend himself from various monsters and ghouls that pursue him for unknown reasons. In each location Henry goes to, he always finds one other person trapped in there with him — and that person always dies.

The same power haunting Silent Hill appears to have taken up stalking what few living humans Henry manages to meet in this strange otherworld before killing them in a ritualistic fashion. What purpose do these killings have, and how do they tie into Henry's attempts to escape Room 302?

The true horror of SH4 comes from the eponymous room itself. Room 302 initially serves as Henry's only safe haven — he can heal injuries and store items found during his excursions — but as his journey into madness deepens, his apartment becomes overtaken by the evil power haunting him in Silent Hill. The room eventually degenerates into something sentient and demonic that will actively hurt Henry unless he can exorcise the forces invading his apartment and defend his last bastion of safety and sanity.

A popular rumor about Silent Hill 4: The Room — the fourth game in Konami's Silent Hill franchise, released in 2004, and the first to receive a subtitle — says Konami originally conceived it as a wholly original Survival Horror game, but converted into a Silent Hill game during development. In actuality, Konami intended for it to serve as a spinoff/separate Gaiden Game from Team Silent called Room 302. After Konami nixed this plan, it incorporated elements of that game into SH4, which explains why it has several differences in gameplay to previous Silent Hill games (including an on-screen health bar, limited inventory space, and a number of first-person sections).

SH4 has loose ties to previous Silent Hill games: Names and locations briefly mentioned in memos found during past games are fully realized in this game, and the father of James Sunderland (from Silent Hill 2) works as South Ashfield Heights' superintendent.

After languishing for years in obscurity, a patched version of the game was finally rereleased on GOG.com in 2020.

Not to be confused with The Room (2003)^note although the other game in this franchise to take place in a small residency does have a Lisa tearing the player apart or (rather more reasonably) The Room (Mobile Game) series.

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Silent Hill 4: The Room contains examples of the following tropes:

• 555: The phone numbers that Henry dials for plot advancement.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: The game features a variant. During the final battle, Eileen will make an Unflinching Walk towards the giant death machine in the middle of the room. Letting her die means either the "Eileen's Death" or "The 21 Sacraments" endings.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Walter in most endings, which is to be expected when the game takes care to show his transition from affection-starved orphan to a seeker of heaven and more in a hell of a religion to a homeless killer. Just in case his death doesn't hurt you in the feels by the point of his Last Grasp at Life, his child self dies as well. Narrowly averted in the "21 Sacraments" ending.
• All for Nothing: Even if Walter manages to complete the 21 Sacraments, that won't bring his mother back. All he just did was bring the Order's god into the world to very likely bring about the apocalypse. His reaction in the "21 Sacraments" ending heavily implies he's horrified at what he ended up doing.
• All Just a Dream: This is subverted to hell and back the first few times Henry returns to his room via the holes. Cynthia is tragically convinced that the strange circumstances she's in are of this trope, all the way up to when she dies in Henry's arms.
• All There in the Manual: Each victim of Walter's has a brief story attached, available from Silent Hill 4's web site and Another Crimson Tome.
• And I Must Scream: Joseph. And he does as the game begins. This may also apply to any of Walter's victims if their presence in the game and Silent Hill's nature are given weight.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: A variation in that it's not the Player Character who gets extra costumes; Eileen and Cynthia have unlockable alternate costumes with Jiggle Physics.
• Anyone Can Die: Due to the sacrifices still being made, it's a given you'll meet some characters who might not make it. This includes Cynthia, Jasper, Andrew, and Richard. Depending on the ending, Eileen, Frank and/or Henry himself may die as well.
• Apartment Complex of Horrors: The focus of the supernatural manifestations is apartment 302, where protagonist Henry Townsend lives. During a section of the game, Henry visits an otherworldly version of the apartment building, and scattered notes reveal the chaotic routine of its occupants.
• Artifact Title: This game does not take place in Silent Hill, but rather its neighbouring town of Ashfield. Two areas (the orphanage and the water prison) are technically part of Silent Hill, but they're in the outskirts of the town and not the town proper.
• Artistic License – Biology: A very minor case: the umbilical cord is technically Walter's flesh, not his mother's.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Walter Sullivan was mentioned in Silent Hill 2 in a newspaper clipping. Expanding and rewriting his role has resulted in some continuity problems when you compare him as described in the clipping to the way he's portrayed in this game. There's also the twin victims mentioned in the same clipping.
  • Joseph Schreiber wrote an article about the cult's orphanage in Silent Hill 3.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Richard Braintree doesn't engender a whole lot of sympathy in his brief appearances. He's cordial towards Eileen and genuinely concerned (or at least curious) about Henry's circumstances, so he's not all bad, but his jerkassery in general, especially toward children, works against him.
  • Andrew DeSalvo doesn't display any jerkass behavior towards Henry when they meet, but if you check out the in-game notes and supplementary material, you'll find out that he more than deserves what happens to him: Andrew was a guard at the already-horrific Water Prison who went out of his way to abuse the children there. He forced a young Walter to drink water with leeches in it, and possibly killed Walter's only friend.
  • Though the game is not quick to cast him as such, Jasper Gein can come off as one to the player. Jasper will hustle Henry out of chocolate milk for a Blood-Inscribed Spade; and after having a minor foodgasm over the beverage, he will unappreciatively drop the spade on the Wish House porch, for Henry to then bend over to pick up.
• Awesome, but Impractical: One of the weapons for Eileen is a submachine gun with infinite ammo, and it lets her help you mow down everything that stands in your way. The catch? It damages her every time she uses it, which makes her much more difficult to save if you're going for the Golden Ending. If you're not... then blast away!
• Back from the Dead: All victims of Walter Sullivan, including himself, return as ghosts or monsters. One of the apartment hauntings is even a projection of what Henry's ghost will look like if he gets the "21 Sacraments" Bad Ending.
• Badass Longcoat: Adult Walter.
• Batter Up!: Later in the game, an aluminum bat can be found as a slower, shorter, but more powerful replacement for the pipe. It probably won't see much use, though, as you can get the Rusty Axe shortly afterwards.
• Bizarre Dream Rationalization: When Henry first meets Cynthia, she states her belief that the Otherworld they're currently trapped in is a particularly bad dream. Tragically, she sticks to this belief even as she's dying, and Henry goes along with it.
• Bloody Handprint: You can see a whole bunch of them on the wall opposite to your apartment through the peephole. It starts out at 15 handprints, and more appear as people start dropping dead. There's even a faint hint of one after Eileen is attacked.
• Breakable Weapons:
  • The golf clubs. They're reasonably powerful, but fragile, and they break after a certain number of uses.
  • The wine bottle is technically one as well, though it actually improves after breakage.
• Breather Episode: Zig-zagged with the second visit to downtown South Ashfield. On one hand, you get a break from Walter chasing you around everywhere, but the ghosts appear more frequently and are a lot more aggressive in their pursuit of you and the other enemies appear in greater numbers. Then there's that weird upside down room where Tank Controls fully sets in.
• Came Back Wrong: Walter Came Back Strong as a ghost due to his completion of the first half of his ritual going off perfectly, but the plan in total falls through (provided the player works hard enough for a good ending) due to Little Walter, who presumably was not intended to manifest at all, much less destabilize the Sacraments killings.
• Cast from Hit Points: Of a sort. The series staple Submachine Gun can be unlocked after a Nine Star game, but is equipped by Eileen, and it has unlimited ammo. Using it, however, will progressively damage her.
• Central Theme: Isolation, particularly what it does to the human mind.
  • Henry is locked in his titular room, unable to leave 302 no matter what he tries. He's been isolated there for nearly a week, and he seems emotionally withdrawn and morose for most of the game as a result. It's only when he starts seeing other people in the Otherworld and when he rescues Eileen that he begins to show some emotions again.
  • Walter, the main villain, was repeatedly cut off from society. He was abandoned as a baby, lived in a terrible orphanage, was at one point imprisoned in a concrete water prison in the middle of Toluca Lake, and spent most of his young adult life homeless. His lonliness and need to find belonging ultimately make up his personal motivation- to perform the 21 Sacraments in a misguided attempt to give life to Room 302, the only place in the world he feels like he belongs.
  • Each of the main Otherworlds are all places where one can feel isolated. Empty subways, lonely forests, a desolate prison in the middle of a lake, abandoned inner-city alleyways, and quiet hospitals. Walter's Otherworlds are also based off of the trauma of being abandoned, as each location marks a place where he was betrayed or alienated by society. The subway represents the time some girls taunted him over his appearance, the forests represent his time at Wish House, the water prison mirrors his time spent imprisoned by the cult, the city represents the time he spent homeless, and the hospital represents his decision to entirely disconnect from society and begin the 21 Sacraments.
• Charge Attack: Depending on the weapon, Henry can do the standard build up charge and strike, but he can also build charge over consecutive strikes. This means as he attacks, the charge will continue to build, allowing him to combo into a strong attack. Also, the time it takes to charge is proportional to the weight of the equipped weapon.
• Charge Meter: Interestingly, this game puts a large focus on Henry charging his moves up, to the point that it's the only thing on the HUD aside from his health bar.
• Companion Cube: The apartment itself is this to Walter. Deconstructed? Definitely.
• Creepy Child: Young Walter, since he is a younger version of a highly dangerous serial killer and all.
• Creepy Doll:
  • Turns out, taking dolls from serial killers is a very bad idea.
  • Robbie the Rabbit points an accusing finger at you if you peek into Eileen's room after she's beaten half to death by Walter.
  • There's also the dismembered, wheelchair-bound doll Henry has to fix during his second visit to the woods. After it's rebuilt, it suddenly comes to life and rolls itself away to reveal a staircase it was previously blocking. That said, its sudden dismantlement is highly anticlimactic, and makes its assembly feel infuriatingly redundant in hindsight.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: Walter's messages are scrawled in blood.
• Decoy Protagonist: At the beginning of the game, you are actually playing as Joseph Schreiber, gone mad from the room's influence, wandering through Henry's apartment and wondering where all the new items have come from.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Room 302 of the past.
• Depth Deception: The Water Prison Basement Generator Room does this. On Henry's first time there, it leads to a locked door that's absurdly huge and is too big for Henry to open. The second time, however, the corridor leading to that very same door is now stretched to a certain length so that by the time Henry and Eileen make it to the other side, it's just the right size for them to go through. However, this time around, there are six Twin Victims blocking the way.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: After Eileen and Frank's unsuccessful attempt to open up Henry's apartment door, Frank casually mentions that this situation has happened before — and, more awkwardly, that he keeps a dried-up umbilical cord in his room. Frank quickly tells Eileen to disregard that latter fact afterward. The player shouldn't, though — it's actually a Chekhov's Gun.
• Dolled-Up Installment: The game was initially conceived as a gaiden game, but was made an official part of the series in the midst of development.
• Doomed by Canon: A pseudo-case in James Sunderland. His father, your superintendent, says he went to Silent Hill and never returned. This doesn't necessarily mean he's dead, though. James may have stayed in the town in the Rebirth Ending, and Dena Natali theorized that James may have chosen to cut off all ties to his past in the other endings. Also, as Roahm Mythril pointed out, the person in question had killed his wife, an action there's no going back from, so cutting all ties made a certain amount of sense.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: William Gregory, victim #9, a repairman who worked with watches and clocks, was given an odd watch by a man in a black cloak 6 years before his death. The first night he had it, a dream came to him of things the player sees in the Otherworld where he is presumably trapped like the other ghosts.
• Dream Within a Dream: Played with: Henry can "leave" the apartment through a strange portal in his bathroom to enter the current level, but leaving the level by one of the portals available causes Henry to wake up back in his bed as if the experience was merely a dream. To emphasize how much of a Mind Screw this is, Henry tries taking Eileen with him, but ends up alone back in his apartment. When he returns, Eileen complains that she couldn't see the hole, and that he just suddenly disappeared.
• Dull Surprise:
  • Henry's the master of this trope, facing unimaginable horrors and gruesome murders with utter apathy on his face and in his voice. He needs some more iron in his diet.
  • It gets pretty hilarious at one point towards the end. Henry displays some genuine disgust after breaking down the wall to the secret room in his apartment, covering his nose and gagging uncomfortably at the smell. Once he sees the source of the odor — Walter's crucified, decaying body — he goes right back to being bored.
  • When Henry confronts Walter before the final battle, he slightly furrows his brow. Shit is about to get real!
• Easter Egg: After using the Keys of Liberation, you can go back in the hole, walk aaalllllll the way back to Hospital World (backtracking a good 40% of the game), and find a Silver Bullet under Eileen's hospital bed.
• Eldritch Location: The room. And, as revealed late in the game, everything else outside it, too.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Young Walter talks like this, and his influence upon Eileen causes her to adopt it if Henry lets her get attacked too much.
  "I'm scawed!"
• Empty Fridge, Empty Life: After a mere five days of being trapped in his apartment, all Henry has in his fridge are a carton of chocolate milk and a bottle of wine.
• Escort Mission:
  • Half the game — the second half — is one of these. On one hand, your escortee cannot be killed, and they can fight back if provided with a weapon. On the other hand, your escortee can still be hurt (the amount of damage taken affects the difficulty of the final battle relative to what ending you're hoping to obtain), and providing her with a weapon will often lead to suicidal attacks on things that probably would be best avoided. For what it's worth, she becomes appropriately more defensive if you decide not to arm her, and if you feel desperate enough to sacrifice one of the Holy Candles used to exorcise your room, you can heal her of all damage...for a time.
  • The game toys with this trope when you meet Cynthia, whose escort in the beginning is mercifully cut short when she suddenly has to visit the ladies' room.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: This is Walter's entire motivation for becoming a Serial Killer.
• Even Evil Has Standards: According to the Crimson Tome, even The Order — a cult that has no problems with drug trafficking, murder, torturing and mutilating children, and half a dozen other Moral Event Horizons — considers the 21 Sacraments "heretical".
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: If Eileen's injuries get very grave, her mumblings are subtitled as random symbols.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Eric Walsh was murdered on his birthday, in an apartment decorated for a birthday complete with cake. Since Walter shot him in the face, and his family were neither present nor reported dead or missing later, it can be inferred that Walter set up the birthday cake himself.
• Fanservice: Both Eileen and Cynthia have unlockable skimpy fanservice costumes that can be used on various NG+ playthroughs- Eileen's is a Naughty Nurse Outfit, while Cynthia's is a one-piece with fishnets reminiscent of a Playboy Bunny (albeit without most of the accessories) including a tattoo of Robbie the Rabbit on her exposed butt. These also give both women prominent boob Jiggle Physics.
• Flash Step: As the only ghosts that walk rather than float, Richard and Walter can warp across rooms.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Upon finishing the Subway World for the first time and finding Cynthia terminally wounded, an excerpt from the song Room of Angel starts playing and the lyrics are a major clue that the worlds you're in are from Walter Sullivan's twisted Hero Antagonist perspective, hence why the song is saying "I don't care enough for you to cry."
  • On your first venture into Apartment World, a cursory look at one of the rooms shows you that the other rooms appear larger than Henry's. One of Joseph's notes even mentions him sealing off the storage room. On entering Room 302 of the Past, one of the walls has a pickaxe embedded in it, with a note beside it saying, "Why must I destroy this wall?" Once Henry does break down the corresponding wall in his own room, he finds not only Walter's corpse but also the Keys of Liberation, which finally allow him to leave his room... and find himself back in Apartment World.
• Future Me Scares Me: Little Walter doesn't like the older, more murder-happy Walter, and is quite sensible to.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Played with with Eileen. She will never die, no matter how much punishment she takes. However, as she takes damage, she becomes increasingly bloodied, will start muttering to herself, and move slower and slower. Also, depending on how much damage she has taken over the game, she will walk faster towards her death while possessed during the final battle. If she has taken too much damage, she effectively will become impossible to save, leading to one of the two worst endings..
• The Ghost: Joseph Schreiber. Literally. You finally get to talk to his spirit, embedded upside-down in the ceiling of Room 302 of the Past.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger:
  • The Twin Victim monsters. While you're out of their attack range, they're pointing at you.
  • Robbie the Rabbit. ''Tonight. You.''
  • As one of the room hauntings, a shadow of a young boy will appear in the closet, point at you, and cry.
  • Child Walter will also point out of the window in Richard's Building World room. Eileen and Henry live in that general direction.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Two, both only hinted at as opposed to spelled out:
  • Dahlia Gillespie, the truly evil crone behind the events of Silent Hill 1, told young Walter he could wake his "mother" by completing the 21 Sacraments ritual.
  • Valtiel, an angel figure in the Order's religion, who George Rosten attempted to implant into Walter's mind. It's implied he might have been successful, although it came back to bite him.
• Guns Are Useless: This trope applies to the gameplay. Each full reload of a gun takes up one of ten inventory slots, and even for the basic handgun, rounds are somewhat rare throughout the entire game. One particular ammo type, Silver Bullets, can help subdue ghosts — but they're as rare as ampoules. (There are only two pickups of both throughout the entire game, not counting the Easter Egg.) But even with normal rounds, guns are not entirely useless, as handgun rounds can penetrate enemies.
• High-Voltage Death: Walter kills Richard Braintree by strapping him to an electric chair.
• Hikikomori: Henry kinda counts, but not entirely of his own free will. His neighbors mention that he hardly leaves his room anyway, but since he's been locked in, they haven't seen him at all.
• Hub Level: Room 302 serves as this. In the second half of the game, the apartment turns on you, so the various Worlds are connected via a spiral staircase.
• Hub Under Attack: Room 302 serves as both Henry Townshend's Trauma Inn and prison from which he must escape from. During the first half of the game, returning to the room will restore Henry's health over time; from then on, the room will be plagued by hauntings that not only prevent it from healing Henry (signaled by the ceiling fan crashing down on the floor), but will actually drain his health.
• Human Sacrifice: Walter is trying to complete a ritual called the 21 Sacraments to "purify" his "mother", which consists of killing 21 people based on certain characteristics about them. Including himself, halfway through.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The rusty axe. The damage of a golf club without the whole "breakable" drawback, and the charged attack does superb damage and knockback, while also granting a generous helping of invincibility frames. It may not be the strongest weapon — the taser downs regular enemies instantly and the Pickaxe of Despair is a monster truck on a stick — but it's the fastest in its weight class and it's lying around in the first third of the game for easy pickup. It's also got better range than the taser.
• Inn Security: You will soon learn to dread that apartment.
• Invincible Minor Minion: Ghosts/Victims in The Room. They can damage Henry just by being near him.
• Invulnerable Attack: Henry's full charge attacks give a massive amount of invincibility frames, to the point that any impracticality with charging is gone and spamming them is a safe way to go through the game.
• Ironic Hell: Henry, a shut-in who barely talks, is supernaturally trapped in his apartment and must travel through tiny holes to get to open, outside areas.
• I Want My Mommy!: Walter's last words when Henry defeats him.
• Jump Scare: There are a few. It is Silent Hill, after all. Accordingly, they're not the scariest parts of the game.
  • One includes a Call-Back to the previous game, where a spiked ceiling crashes down on top of the player. Thankfully, unlike the previous installment, it will never reach you.
  • Subverted in certain cases, like when your apartment is haunted. You're given advance warning of a presence with a sound but the fear may come from not being able to see what is making the sound and being apprehensive about investigating what is making the noise. However, no overt jump scare occurs.
• King Mook: Cynthia, Jasper, Andrew, and Richard. Unlike the other ghosts, they possess unique, more powerful attacks and are more resilient. Here's hoping you have at least 4 out of a mere 5 Swords of Obedience!
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Eileen survives Walter's murder attempt, and you eventually get the privilege of taking her with you all the way through your second run-through of all the previous levels.
• Male Gaze: In the cutscenes; only apparent when certain characters are wearing their alternate costumes. See Ms. Fanservice.
• Mighty Glacier: The Pickaxe of Despair is slow, but does a LOT of damage if it connects.
• Mind Screw:
  • Victim 21.
  • Having Eileen in the room with her giant head. Neither of the characters bat an eye or even react to it, which makes it eerier. And the heavy breathing and moaning, not to mention her eyes following Henry, doesn't help, either.
  • Henry can (initially) see and hear the outside world just fine while trapped in his apartment. This can make a player assume he's just been locked in (with perhaps some small supernatural push to keep anyone from hearing his calls for help). The world outside his window grows more desolate as the game progresses; when he finds the key that unlocks the front door, he stumbles out and discovers that his apartment has been in the otherworld the entire time. He is still somehow able to see the normal world from inside the apartment, though.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Cynthia until she dies and becomes a malevolent ghost.
  • Cynthia and Eileen can have alternate costumes that have notable jiggle increases. Several cutscenes' camera angles are arranged specifically to show off the jiggly bits if they are wearing these costumes. Also, if you don't immediately trigger Cynthia's introductory cutscene by walking up to her, she's actually dancing while wearing her extra costume.
• Multiple Endings: The game has four, and this marks the first Silent Hill game to lack a joke ending:
  • "Escape" — Henry kills Walter once and for all, and Eileen survives and decides to move out of South Ashfield. To achieve this ending, Eileen must survive the fight with Walter, and Room 302 must be exorcised of all hauntings (at least 4 out of 5, or 80% of them) beforehand.
  • "Mother" — Eileen survives and decides to stay in South Ashfield. The ending's title implies that Walter might still be a future threat to both her and Henry... and that she isn't completely free of Walter's influence. For this ending, Eileen must survive the fight with Walter, and Room 302 must remain haunted.
  • "Eileen's Death" — Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Despite Henry exorcising Walter once and for all, Eileen succumbs to her injuries. To get this ending, Eileen must die and Room 302 must be fully exorcised.
  • "21 Sacraments" — Young Walter finally enters Room 302 after having killed Henry in brutal fashion. As with "Eileen's Death", Eileen dies from her wounds. Adult Walter's still not smiling, though. To see this ending, Eileen must die and Room 302 must remain haunted.
• New Game Plus: Beating the game with a 10-star rank unlocks One-Weapon Mode. In this mode, the hallway leading to Cynthia on your first entry into Subway World is filled with all the weapons found in the game, and you can take only one with you, after which the rest will disappear. Achieving a 10-star rank here will let you play All Weapons mode: as with One-Weapon mode, all the weapons will be laid out on the Subway World floor, but you can pick them all up (or they will appear where they normally do throughout the game). As a bonus, Room 302 will give you free health drinks and handgun bullets every time you go back!
• Oddball in the Series: A deliberate example on the developers part as they wanted the game to be as different from the first 3 entries as much as possible. As such it’s the only Silent Hill game in which the main character doesn't go to the titular town, the controls and inventory are noticeably different (you can only hold 10 items at a time now), there’s POV sections, features little to no boss battles or puzzles, and it lacks any sort of gag ending.
• Orphanage of Fear: The Wish House Orphanage ran by the Sect of the Holy Mother. Children there were brainwashed into blindly believing the cult's teachings, with physical punishments dished out to those who didn't memorise their prayers perfectly. Walter was raised there, and it's the main reason why he grew up to be so screwed-up.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Those who are killed by Walter in his Otherworlds are doomed to wander them as ghosts. These ghosts are solid beings, but capable of levitation and emerging from walls. Their mere presence causes a harmful aura, which can be nullified by holy objects. They're vulnerable to damage but will always get back up after being knocked out, unless they are pinned by a rare Sword of Obedience.
• Perma-Stubble: Both Henry and Walter are in dire need of a razor.
• Pipe Pain: As par for the series' course, the first decent melee weapon you get is a broken length of pipe. This is also part of Walter's arsenal, along with a gun in his other hand.
• Powerful Pick: The most damaging weapon in the game, but slow as molasses.
• Psychosexual Horror: The plot's spotlight is shared between villain Walter Sullivan and Henry Townsend:
  • Walter was abandoned as a boy in apartment 302, and begins to think it is his mother. There is some nebulous information regarding his early adult life, but he graduates medical school and goes on his killing spree of the "21 Sacraments". Among ten of his first victims were a pair of twins, a boy and a girl — the girl's body horribly mangled. Later, when he continues his killings, his 16th victim (who represents the in-game archetype of 'Temptation') is a Spicy Latina named Cynthia Velázquez, who wears a sexy blouse. When she dies, Cynthia's body is covered with stab wounds all over her. His next on-screen female victim is Eileen Galvin (his 20th sacrifice, filling the archetype of 'Mother'), Henry's neighbour. Again, when Henry finds her in her apartment, she is wearing a purple party dress with a low backline, and badly hurt. The next time adult Walter appears, he is in a hospital room, rummaging through a female body's stomach/womb.
  • As for Henry, he is rather isolated and recluse, living almost a hermit-like life in his room, which is commented on by his neighbours. This situation worsens when Walter's very much alive ghost locks him inside the room. Throughout the game, Henry interacts with the world outside his apartment through the peephole and finds a secret spying hole on a wall of his living room, which allows him to spy on his neighbour Eileen. When he meets Cynthia at the beginning of the game, she comes on to him, but he barely shows any reaction to her proposition. Later, when Henry goes to the hospital to rescue Eileen, he finds a large Eileen's head in one of the hospital rooms, and the player can hear some female moaning in the background.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Walter. His Lack of Empathy is understandable when he believes Utopia Justifies the Means, and sees his victims merely as methods to reunite with "Mom."
• Retcon: A rather strange one. Walter Sullivan, mentioned three times in Silent Hill 2, goes from a double-murderer to a full-blown Serial Killer with an occult motive; and whereas in the second game, his "delusion" of a "Red Devil" was meant to allude to and hint at the existence of Pyramid Head, here, it's a nickname for Jimmy Stone, a priest of the Order's Valtiel sect.
• Ritual Magic: This is the most clean-cut and precise ritual to summon the Order's God that has ever been described in-series. Far apart from the vague, inspecific workings of prior games, which generally just required horrific suffering with imprecise fuels, the rules here are clearly laid out (albeit given in breadcrumbs): kill ten people in ten days, carve out their hearts and sign their bodies with your name and a number. Carve the name and number into yourself and then kill yourself, and you come back as an undead murderer able to trap people in your own Otherworlds to complete ten more murders with specific themes.
• Sanity Slippage: Eileen's dialogue and actions tend to shift quite a bit depending on how "damaged" she is; she'll be more and more "in tune" with Walter Sullivan, and in the worst case, he'll have pretty much overshadowed her own consciousness entirely. This can be (temporarily) mitigated, however, with a Holy Candle.
• Savage Setpiece: Sniffer Dogs, the first mook you encounter, will not be hostile if you don't run, walk too close to them or shoot them. They'll walk around, lie down and idly observe Henry, and suck on dead bodies, but they will not attack. Too bad the game never so much as hints this.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • The first Sword of Obedience, the first and only weapon you'll find capable of putting an end to constant harassment by a ghost. Take it out, and you'll find out it was stuck in poor Eric Walsh for a good reason—he's a very fast and aggressive ghost.
  • You can find Walter on your first visit to the Apartment World. He doesn't attack you, but instead offers you a doll that you are able to take. Doing so leads to a unique haunting in Room 302.
• Shame If Something Happened: Looking through the peephole during the Building World scenario (or immediately afterward, if you don't return to your apartment before that scenario ends), you will see a message scrawled over the bloody handprints — "better check on your neighbor soon!" The next scenario is the one where Walter brutally attacks Eileen.
• Short Screentime for Reality: Henry begins the game trapped in his titular apartment room while the places he can actually explore are in the demonic "Otherworld". The only bits we see of the outside world are glimpses outside Henry's window of South Ashfield (carrying on like normal), small glimpses outside his apartment door, glimpses into the room of his neighbor Eileen in the next apartment, and short scenes set directly outside the building.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Henry wakes up in the Hospital for the first time, the lantern that the player sees looks a bit like the bottom of a flying saucer from the UFO Endings of other Silent Hill games.
  • Much of the Room 302 gameplay involves a trapped man trying to find clues about a murder by watching his neighbors through windows and peepholes. At one point, when describing the apartment building layout that facilitates this, Henry even remarks that "There was a movie like that a long time ago...".
  • Victim 16 has a few visual similarities to Sadako/Samara, especially during her introduction.
  • Jasper's last name might be a shout-out to real-life serial killer Ed Gein. Similarly, Andrew's last name might be a shout-out to one of the Boston Strangler suspects.
  • Walter's character may be influenced by the villain of [1]. Abused serial killers on delusional quests for their mothers are arguably common, but these two even dress alike.
  • Final boss room with a ball with rotating spikes and the way Walter died in the real world are references to film Event Horizon
• Shovel Strike: In Building World, Henry can obtain a Spade that has good reach and does decent damage. It's a good weapon, but is soon outclassed by the Rusty Axe, which can also be found in Building World.
• Sinister Subway: The one in this game includes a maze of half-opened and closed subway cars populated by unkillable ghosts who can phase between cars and damage you just by being near you. Fun times — doubly so when you're on the Escort Mission phase.
• Speech Impediment: Jasper Gein's got a pretty bad stutter. Notably, after he's set on fire, he doesn't stutter. Maybe he was cold.
• Story Branch Favoritism: The "21 Sacraments" ending is much more developed than the other three.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Eileen cannot climb down ladders in an arm cast when you're escorting her during the second half of the game. This means that the player has to find another route for Eileen to take. Eileen even lampshades this:
  Eileen: I can't use a ladder with my arm like this...
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: The game ramps up the health item pickups starting around Hospital World since Henry's apartment stops healing him once he starts escorting Eileen.
• Toilet Horror: The entrance door to the Crapsack World of Silent Hill and the only way Henry Townshend can go out the room he's trapped, is in a big hole/portal made in his bathroom, which become more and more creepy during the game.
• Too Awesome to Use: Richard's Revolver is the Hand Cannon of the game, but ammunition is scarce compared to your semi-auto. Exaggerated with the Silver Bullet rounds, best saved for the boss ghosts so that you can easily impale them with a Sword of Obedience.
• Trapped on the Astral Plane: It becomes very apparent early on that Henry isn't in the real world, due to nobody being able to hear his cries for help and being sealed in his apartment by supernatural forces. Once he starts crawling through a runic hole inside his bathroom and traveling to dream versions of real world places, all bets are off. Returning from these dream worlds causes him to "wake up" back inside his apartment world, but it's like a Dream Within a Dream.
• Trauma Inn: For the first half of the game, returning to Room 302 will restore your health over time. Once the hauntings begin — triggered by finding Eileen in Hospital World and signaled by the ceiling fan in the living area coming crashing down — that's no longer the case.
• The Undead: While it's questionable how much the ghosts reflect the real spirits of Walter's victims (and the Twin Victims almost certainly don't), Walter himself is definitely this. His imortality is somewhere between a Soul Jar and a Heart Drive, with the first half of the 21 Sacraments basically serving to fuel the undeath of the exactor with the murder and heart removals of the first ten victims.
• Undead Child:
  • The two faced owls/dolls/monsters have the faces of two of Walter's child victims.
  • The fact that Walter is dead makes Young Walter this.
• The Unfought: The Greedy Worm.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: That one room in the hospital. Whether alone or with Eileen, Henry has absolutely nothing to say about a freakishly large and familiar-looking head whose eyes follow Henry around, not to mention the incessant moaning. Unlike anyone who's ever played the game and stumbled into that...
• Villains Act, Heroes React: It becomes increasingly clear throughout the game that Walter is the main character and Henry is just an important co-star. The villain is not quite a Villain Protagonist because Henry is the character we actually control, but the plot revolves completely around the villain's plans and goals, and Henry just happened to get involved because he chose the wrong apartment.
• Wham Episode: That cute next-door neighbor you've been watching throughout the first half of the plot is brutally attacked. From then on, your room will no longer automatically heal you, and you can also be affected by hauntings (worse if you accepted Walter's creepy doll.)
• Wild Wilderness: A few levels, notably the graveyard and outside the train station, fit this trope well. They are secluded, you fight monsters, and no one notices. Of course, it's also in another realm of existence, but still.
• Yin-Yang Clash: If you boil it down, the story is about the battle between someone desperate to leave his apartment against someone who will do anything to get in. They just happened to meet at the door.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Henry finally finds the keys to the padlocked front door in the coat pocket's of Walter's corpse — but when he goes through the door, he ends up back in the Otherworld.

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"Guess I'll have to find a new place to live, huh?"

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