Silent Hill 2 Remake faithfully includes a huge amount of material from the 2001 original, from dialogue to notes you can find scattered throughout the game, and also adds a whole lot of interesting additions. Some of those additions seem to suggest that the remake is more than a remake, and is actually something of a sequel to Silent Hill 2. Others appear to expand on the original story and provide additional elements of symbolism and strangeness informing what's happening to protagonist James Sunderland.
While GameSpot's Kurt Indovina already documented a lot of the major changes between the original Silent Hill 2 and Bloober Team's remake, there are a lot of other interesting little Easter eggs and suggestive tidbits scattered throughout the game, too. We've compiled a list of some of the most intriguing, whether they're references to other games and pointed recalls of the original, or elements that appear to deepen the strange experience of visiting Silent Hill.
Be warned, of course, that there are a ton of spoilers for Silent Hill 2 Remake within.
A series of strange notes
There is a lot of supplementary material you can find throughout Silent Hill in the form of notes, whether written between people, left behind as journals, scrawled on newspapers, or explicitly providing information that seems aimed at James himself. It's tough to say exactly what's going on with the notes--some are definitely written by or about people in the town, for instance. But many sound very much like they might be referring to or alluding to James, Angela, and Eddie. Notes that lead you around town as you solve the jukebox puzzle in Neely's Bar, for example, really sound like they refer to James, especially since the record he plays on that jukebox jogs his memory about Mary. Details you can get in the hospital, meanwhile, definitely sound like they could refer specifically to Angela.
It's hard to parse out exactly what's going on with the notes, but it seems intentional that some can apply directly to the three major characters trapped in Silent Hill. Whether that's because the characters really were treated in a hospital, locked in a prison, or venturing around Silent Hill, or because the town is drawing on and extrapolating on both real experiences and things that are in each character's mind, is open to interpretation.
Strange Photos and James the Janitor
Speaking of notes and interpretation, a major new addition to Silent Hill 2 in the remake is the series Strange Photographs you can find all over town. The photos themselves are not very useful, as they're usually blurry, over- or underexposed, and cryptic in both their subject matter and the captions found on them. But if you pair them with some of the notes found around town, they do seem to suggest that they're telling some of the story of James and Mary's life as she got sick and their relationship deteriorated, especially when you put them in order.
It's the Strange Photographs that provide some evidence that notes you find are referring to James and give greater context to elements of the story. For instance, one Polaroid shows some waded-up paper near a small trash can with the caption, "Career's humble beginnings." In Silent Hill and Neely's Bar, you find notes leading you to repair the record for the jukebox puzzle, which talk about a distraught janitor. Taken together, the implication is that the janitor is James. Taken together, the notes and photos make it seem like James and Mary did more than vacation in Silent Hill--they might have lived in the real version of the town. Alternatively, Silent Hill might be changing to better reflect James's memories and experiences.
Mary's Sick Room In Wood Side Apartments
James talks about visiting Silent Hill with Mary, but there are some implications, between various notes, the new series of collectible Strange Photographs, and other little clues, that suggest the couple might have lived in the town--and at the least, we know any recollection coming from James is suspect. One big clue is in the apartment where James has his first real encounter with Pyramid Head as he attacks the mannequin monsters. There's a small side room you can find here that contains a bed and a chair beside it. If you compare that room to the one shown during the Leave ending, in which James and Mary have one last sickbed conversation, you'll see they're nearly identical. This room was Mary's sick room in their home, and it follows that this might be James and Mary's real apartment.
Whether that means James and Mary lived in Silent Hill, or that the place is more an amalgamation of places from James' life manifesting within Silent Hill, is tough to say. There does seem to be more information that suggests James might be mistaken that Silent Hill was a place the couple visited, and instead that they could have lived there. Mostly, it just plays into the underlying conceit that James' recollections of his own life are incredibly untrustworthy, and that piecing together the clues about what has really happened is tough to do.
The Pyramid Head apartment
Adding to the idea that James and Mary lived in Silent Hill (or maybe that this version of Silent Hill is incorporating James's real memories and experiences), much of the labyrinth area located beneath Toluca Lake Prison late in the game is made to look like a ruined, decrepit apartment building--maybe, in fact, Wood Side Apartments (or Blue Creek Apartments).
As you make your way through the labyrinth, you'll repeatedly enter rooms filled with enemies where alarms sound, and you're forced to fight for your life for a few minutes until the alarm stops, at which point, all the enemies attacking you die. These arenas are all expanded versions of the apartment where you first encounter Pyramid Head in the Wood Side Apartments and the Otherworld mirror version in Blue Creek Apartments.
There are other strange parallels to be found linking the labyrinth and the apartment buildings. When you leave through the red door to pass from Wood Side Apartments into Blue Creek Apartments, the room number on the door of the Blue Creek apartment is 208. As you work through the labyrinth to get to Maria behind the wooden bars, you eventually enter her cell from another door--which looks like that of an apartment. And the number on that door: 208.
Apartment 208 also appears in one of the Strange Photographs, which bears the caption "Together Forever." All together, it might imply that Apartment 208 is where James and Mary lived together. Or, for another interpretation, maybe Apartment 208 belonged to the woman James was seeing while his wife was sick, if he truly was unfaithful. Either way, the fact that this is a location where you really encounter Pyramid Head for the first time, and where you repeatedly fight for your life in the most frightening and unreal area in Silent Hill 2, further emphasizes that this was epicenter for James's intense feelings of guilt and grief.
The watcher in the window
A little way into the Blue Creek Apartments, which you enter after seeing Pyramid Head for the first time in Apartment 201 in Wood Side, you reach the room with the clock puzzle and step out onto a series of fire escape catwalks ringing an inner courtyard. Across the way is a conspicuous yellow window with a light over it--the only lit window in the area, and a visual you're directed toward every time you walk out here. As Reddit user Vestan_Pance discovered, if you watch that window, you'll see a figure silhouetted within it. That figure sure looks like Mary.
The figure appears the second time you enter the courtyard as you work through Blue Creek, and they aren't there the first time, indicating that someone is actively in that apartment and seems to be watching James. This isn't the first indication that someone is observing him, though. Back in Wood Side is a note that greatly implies that James being trapped in Silent Hill to pay for his crimes is the work of some outside force, watching him continually make the wrong choices and looping through the experience over and over. I've postulated that the evidence suggests all the endings of Silent Hill 2 remake are valid because James never escapes Silent Hill, but is doomed to repeat his torment over and over. This note and the watcher in the window are directly related to that read on the material. However, it's also very possible that getting the "Leave" ending, in which James seems to accept what he's done and try to move on, may actually be the choice the note-writer doesn't think he's capable of making.
In any event, who is the person watching James? Is it Mary? Maria? James, continually punishing himself using the power of Silent Hill, or his own delusions?
Maria's extra dialogue
After you first find Maria in Rosewater Park, she'll offer to take James to a spot that was special to lovers, where she thinks Mary might be. The path Maria tries to lead you on cuts through a motel called Jack's Inn on Nathan Ave., but you can also take that road all the way west. This street goes all the way to the Silent Hill Historical Society, a location you'll go to later, and passes by Octantis gas station and Pete's Bowl-o-Rama. Those two are optional locations (and Pete's is part of one of the new endings you can unlock in New Game Plus), but heading down the road stopping by while Maria is with James will trigger additional dialogue you can't get otherwise.
On the road, Maria asks James about Mary. It's a moment that adds a little to both their characters as James struggles through the conversation. James does mention that Mary liked to play the piano, which might provide some insight as to why James finds sheet music three different times as he explores Silent Hill.
If you head to Pete's Bowl-o-Rama, James and Mary will have an awkward moment where James suggests that Mary can stay outside, if she wants. This is a reference to the 2001 original; when James and Maria got to the bowling alley, Maria opted to stay outside, and James found Eddie and Laura within. Players speculate that Maria avoids going into the bowling alley on purpose, noting that no characters other than James ever interact with Maria, which plays into the suggestion that Maria is some kind of hallucination.
The scene with Eddie and Laura now takes place in the movie theater in the remake, so there's no reason for Mary to stay outside of the bowling alley. She does still stay outside of the movie theater at James's suggestion.
The pizza in the Bowling Alley
Another callback to the original bowling alley scene is a leftover piece of pizza. In the original scene, James finds Eddie eating pizza and is pretty harsh about it, asking him how he can possibly eat with monsters roaming the town. That scene isn't in the remake, but if you find the pizza in Pete's Bowl-o-Rama, it'll trigger a Memory moment in which James makes a similar comment to himself.
At first, this seems more like just an Easter egg than anything, but it takes on an eerier purpose when you track down the elements needed for the new "Bliss" ending. On a New Game Plus run, if you make your way to the end of Nathan Avenue, you can find a body with a note talking about being unable to escape Silent Hill, and solving that problem by leaving "without leaving." It leaves you with a code and directs you to the place "they once were." There's a safe this code works on back at the bowling alley, solidifying that it's the place where they once were--so "they" obviously means Laura and Eddie. That all plays back into a larger idea that Silent Hill 2 Remake isn't a remake, but another trip through the Silent Hill loop for James as part of his eternal torment.
Maria's original clothes
Another major callback Easter egg to the original game, and an even goofier one, is an unmissable moment in Jack's Inn right after you meet Maria. When you head up into one of the rooms on the second floor in search of the code for the safe in the motel's office, Maria will discover some clothes hanging in the closet. That's Maria's original Christina Aguilera-inspired outfit from the 2001 game, which Maria teases James about for a few seconds. Seeing it next to her updated outfit calls out how weird it was, but everyone acknowledged that Maria dressed kind of strangely when the original was released, too.
The secret of room 106
As stories in the Silent Hill franchise go, Silent Hill 2 is fairly separate from the others. Elements like cults and elder gods mostly don't factor into James's story, which is more self-contained and symbolic than most of the other games. And though Silent Hill 3 doesn't really connect with the story of Silent Hill 2, instead serving as a direct sequel to the first Silent Hill, it overlaps with Silent Hill 2 by visiting a lot of the same locations and broadening the sense of the town as a place.
Silent Hill 2 Remake increases the conversation between it and Silent Hill 3 with another fun Easter Egg reference in Jack's Inn. If you enter Room 106, James will make a comment on the place not feeling right and how he and Maria should leave. Later, you can return to this room to find the wallpaper has peeled away, revealing a big red sigil painting on the wall. This is the room Heather Mason stays in when she arrives in Silent Hill, and the sigil painting, along with a hat hanging from a nearby chair, is a small reference to that game. The Easter egg itself doesn't really advance the story, but it is a fun one.
Nurse's uniform in Heaven's Night
The designs of Silent Hill 2's monsters leave a lot open to interpretation. They're very obviously highly sexualized and female-coded. Some have suggested that these monsters represent the women James fantasized about during Mary's sickness, and in Silent Hill, they're manifestations of his guilt. A clue in the Heaven's Night strip club where Maria takes James could shed a little more light on at least one of the designs.
In Brookhaven Hospital, you encounter the Bubblehead Nurses, a group of scantily clad, homicidal women. They seem to suggest James lusting after the nurses at the hospital while Mary was sick, or possibly even had an affair with one.
In Heaven's Night, however, you can find a nurse costume on one of the booth seats in the middle of the room, providing another interpretation--the Bubblehead Nurses might look like they do because James is mixing a seeming penchant for exotic dancing with his experiences in the hospital. The clothes of the Bubblehead Nurses do seem much closer to Heaven's Night dancers than professionals, and other monsters, like the Lying Figure, also recall pole-dancing attire.
That raises what might be a key question: Are the feelings James struggles with related to many women generally, or are they actually about someone in particular, like Maria--or a real person on whom Maria is actually based?
Lost by Lust
In Heaven's Night, there are several posters hanging on the wall in the raised area beside the bar. When you approach these posters, you'll find you can interact with them, allowing you to examine them closely. What's not clear is why that would be the case, since there doesn't appear to be anything important to glean from these posters.
There might be something hidden on these posters after all, however. If you look closely at the leftmost poster, you can find the word "Lost" scrawled in small letters. The second poster has the word "by" written on it, while the last poster appears to include the word "Lust."
I'm not entirely clear what this is referencing, but it seems likely the words are meant to recall "All's Lost By Lust," a tragic play written in the early 1600s by English playwright William Rowley. It has a lot of similarities with Silent Hill 2, concerning several characters who are undone by lust, a fake letter sent by a wife that's meant to ensnare and destroy her cheating husband, and a series of mistakes and murders.
James' temptations
The symbolism and story of Silent Hill 2 suggests that James is haunted by his feelings of frustration and anger at his wife, Mary, and her sickness, as well as his lust for other women while his wife suffers. The remake suggests that James' struggles in life go beyond just feelings of attraction to women outside his marriage, though. In Heaven's Night, the strip club, Maria offers James a drink, and his face during that scene suggests that he is very tempted to drink it, but eventually chooses not to. It's a moment that seems to suggest James doesn't just have problems with amorous extramarital feelings--or maybe actions.
Maria tries to tempt and manipulate James in a number of ways in this scene, but more than anything else, the drink seems to really pull at him. While one read here is that this is a visualization of him actively struggling against his desire for Maria, the specific way he seems deeply tempted by the drink itself adds a dimension to James's character that might inform why he struggles so badly with certain feelings and desires in the first place.
Eddie's Silent Hill
When you descend into the Toluca Prison, you eventually come across Eddie in a cafeteria near a frozen body. A little later, you find Eddie in a refrigerated slaughterhouse. But long before you find him in the chilly warehouse, if you pay attention, you'll notice you can see his breath as he speaks--as if Eddie is always somewhere cold. He's the only character that has this effect.
Later in the game, you find Angela in a staircase on fire, where she remarks, "For me, it's always like this." That suggests that for Eddie, Silent Hill is always cold; much like encountering Angela amid the flames at the end of her story, it seems like when you finally battle Eddie, you briefly step into his version of the town. It's another little insight into the personal hells each of the characters is facing.
Mary in the car
The revelation near the end of Silent Hill 2, that James murdered Mary, changes everything about what's going on in the story up to that point. If you pair that information with additional stuff like the "Ritual" ending, in which James tries to use eldritch magic to resurrect Mary, you get the suggestion that James has Mary's body with him when he arrives in Silent Hill. Indeed, there's some suggestion that Mary's body is in the back seat of James's car at the beginning of the game. Masahiro Ito, the original game's art director, came out and said on Twitter that Mary's body is in the back seat, as well.
Silent Hill 2 Remake runs with this idea; you can definitely make out a blanket in the back seat of the car that looks like it could be covering a body, although as in the original release, the remake makes it tough to see back there to make things ambiguous. But the game does explicitly play with this idea with one of its new endings, "Stillness." That one is a riff on the original "In Water" ending, in which James drives his car into Toluca Lake, and sees James speak to Mary--who talks back, and even reaches forward from the back seat, although she's never shown fully. Whether James is imagining the interaction or the supernatural aspects of the town are helping to create it isn't clear, but it's an addition that further solidifies the idea that James has had Mary with him all along.
The other Jameses
A fascinating element of the original Silent Hill 2 is the fact that Silent Hill is full of bodies, and if you look closely at them, they all seem to be wearing the same clothes as James. Silent Hill 2 Remake goes further with this whole idea in a way that expands the Silent Hill 2 story and makes suggestions about how the remake relates to the original. The gist, however, is that between the bodies and the notes you often find near them, it seems like the remake is explicitly suggesting that James has been trapped in Silent Hill for a lot longer than we see in the game, and reliving his experiences there.
Maria at the Mansion
After passing through Jack's Inn with Maria, the street you start down has a large house on one side of it--the Baldwin Mansion. If you go through the gate in the wall surrounding it, Maria will stay outside and then comment about some unsettling feelings about the place.
While it's not a discreet part of the remake, this is a reference to Born from a Wish, an additional chapter that was added to Silent Hill 2 in releases after the original and which lets you play as Maria before James arrives in the game. During that story, Maria goes into the mansion and interacts with Ernest Baldwin, but the experience is a weird one, especially when it seems at the end that Ernest was never really there. Maria's dialogue in the remake suggests that Born from a Wish might still be a part of the story, but Maria is either holding back from telling James or, as her manner seems to suggest, is finding it difficult to remember what happened.
The conspicuous death of Maria
Pyramid Head pretty clearly kills Maria in Brookhaven Hospital, but James finds her again, later, in the labyrinth beneath the Silent Hill Historical Society. At this point, Maria is a lot weirder than she has been in the past, and acts like she doesn't remember much, or maybe any, of what James is talking about when he asks about the attack. James then sets about trying to free Maria from the jail cell she seems to be stuck in, although there's a clear apartment-style door on her side of the room.
When you finally make your way around to that other door by navigating the labyrinth, you find Maria dead--again--although with no apparent cause. The room she's found in contains a hospital bed and an IV, and when you find Maria, her face has the kind of lesions that Mary's skin has in a later deathbed scene at the height of her illness. The detail that's most interesting, though, is the pillow lying at the head of the bed on the floor, and the fact that Maria's nose is bloodied. It seems like these details are meant to recall what James did to Mary, smothering her with a pillow. Mary's second death looks to be a torturous reference to Mary's murder, but before James is fully able to understand or cope with it.
Angela in the newspaper
Angela, much in the same way as James, is something of an unreliable source of information about her own story in Silent Hill 2. We pick up pieces of it along the way from her dialogue and notes found in places like the labyrinthine apartment where you fight the Abstract Daddy boss, which represents Angela's dad. In broad strokes, Angela was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused by her father (and, it seems, her brother), and murdered him with the kitchen knife she carries in response.
It seems like Angela's crime occurred some time ago, because one of the notes you read about it appears to be a burned newspaper article that includes some of the details. And if you check any of the blue newspaper boxes around the town, it looks like you be able to glimpse some coverage of the crime in the Maine News, with a shot that looks a lot like Angela in the upper-right corner of the paper. It's speculative to say that's definitely Angela, but it sure seems to be, and that's a fun and fascinating bit of detail to include in the game.
Wood Side Apartments flooded
There are actually two newspaper boxes you can find in town, the second being a yellow one for Silent Hill's local paper, the Toluca Times. On that front page, you can see a fascinating story: "Wood Side Apartments severely flooded." When you visit the apartment building, there's no flooding--but a big part of the building is flooded in the original game. The water recedes after you encounter Pyramid Head in the stairwell in the 2001 release, but that scene is different in the remake. Still, the newspapers suggest the apartment building was flooded, which is another piece of information that seems to place this game further along the timeline of James's endless visit to Silent Hill.
Mary the pianist
On three occasions, you can discover sheet music in Silent Hill, but despite being able to interact with the papers, you can't pick them up or store them among your memos. The purpose of these pieces of music isn't very clear, but the additional dialogue scene between Maria and James in which James mentions Mary played piano makes these seem like poignant inclusions.
The three pieces are Einsame Blumen by Robert Schumann, found in an apartment early on in Wood Side Apartments; Vers la flamme by Alexander Scriabin, which you find after speaking with Angela the second time, andOp. 118 No. 2, Intermezzo in A Major, by Johannes Brahms, which you find in Lakeview Hotel. I'm not much of a music guy, but Vers la flamme—"toward the flames"--seems like a pointed reference to the fiery version of Silent Hill in which Angela always finds herself. What the other two pieces are meant to signify, I'm not sure, but please feel free to enlighten me in the comments.
