Thread by @Chemi_Ro

So I'm not only a fan of Deadly Premonition I also really, really, really ❤️ the Silent Hill series. I thought it might be fun start another big thread on my favorite, the original Silent Hill, point out some of the cool references and stuff about the game.

1) Did you know it's possible to find Cheryl? Well not really...it's just glitch. If you get past the trigger zone where Harry automatically turns around by walking forward and hitting the ¨Select¨ button at the same time you can catch up to Cheryl standing on Bachman Rd.

2) For some reason there's a line change when Harry observes the bloody dog by the garage between the NA and PAL version of the game. In the NA version he says "What then..? What is it?" while in PAL he says "Jesus! What is that?" instead.

3) Another weird difference is in the title menu design between the regions. The NA ver has a cool little background while both the PAL and JPN releases only have a logo, with fog, and a black backgrounds.

4) Have you guys noticed the "COOWIGR DINOR" gibberish on Cheryl's notebook? What's strange is it was spelled normally as "Drawing Block" on the Silent Hill e3 1998 trailer!

5) Speaking of e3 Silent Hill's logo I guess wasn't finalized and Konami had used this one to advertise the game in their booth! It's so cheesy!

6) I should probably start pointing out references! In Cafe 5 to 2 there's a whole bunch! First off the place itself is a reference to Oliver Stone's 1994 movie Natural Born Killers. The little side marque even bears the same breakfast lunch logo as the street sign in the movie.

7) Oh and right outside is a newspaper vending machine with a replica of the "Bill Skins fifth" paper pinned in the FBI office in the beginning of the 1990 Silence of the Lambs movie.

8) The Medieval Madness pinball machine as actually of a real game that was released by Williams in 1997.

9) In the window are several posters for Portishead! This band was clearly a big inspiration for Akira Yamaoka's work on the game's soundtrack [cont]

You can hear the influence just by comparing the opening to "Sour Times" from the band's debut album Dummy to the opening track of the game... it sounds super similar!

10) There is a lot of horror references within the game...I think American Horror author Steven King and his work is probably directly referenced the most! [cont]

First we have Harry's dialog when he looks at the notepad for the first time is a callback to one of the game's influences Stephen King's The Mist. In the end of the original 1980 novella the main character thinks to himself in a very similar vein. [cont]

Next to the notepad is a "Study Dammit" poster which features Steven King himself! While in college he was a columnist for the Maine Campus Newspaper & he & photographer Frank Kadi shot this foldout so students could rip off the pg & use as a “public service announcement.” [cont]

Then there's Bachman Rd which comes from "Richard Bachman" a pen name Stephen King wrote several books under including The Running Man (1982)
and Thinner (1984) [cont]

There's even posters for some of King's books within the game as well including Pet Sematary and even a direct copy of the poster for the film adaptation of Carrie. [cont]

There's also nod to movie adaptation of The Shining with some Redrum graffiti! Though it might be a reference to a Japanese indie rock band that formed w/ the goal of becoming the Japanese ver of Portishead. Given Akira's love of Portishead he might have been a fan?

11) Back when this game was first released PSM dedicated 3 issues to a walkthrough of the game & they referred to Silent Hill being located in Chicago...which seems odd now but I always fig their assumption was due to maybe seeing this "Chicago News" in Midwich [cont]

But that's not actually the only connection! According to an interview with Toyama in the March 1999 issue of the Official Playstation magazine it turns out the team actually did some research while visiting Chicago in areas close to the lake for inspiration! [cont]

& that's not all! This next bit was pointed out to me by Anwyll over on the Silent Hill discord! Did you guys know Old SH is laid out very similarly to Buffalo, IL? It might seem like coincidence but in the Beta ver the police cars used to say Buffalo Police! Makes me wonder! 😄

12) Speaking of PSM I felt so bad that in their wt some of the item locations & solutions were wrong b/c the review copy of the game was not the final ver. Like the pipe is found under the overpass on Midwich in the review copy while you pick it up in the alley in retail. [cont]

Biggest change however has to be the difficulty of the Zodiac Puzzle! it used to be a whole lot harder then counting appendages. The Zodiac signs around the room used to play a much larger role in fig out how to solve the puzzle and the ones used were different as well.[cont]

According to the PSM walkthrough solution on the pillar there was Capricorn, Taurus, and Scorpio instead of Sagittarius, Tarus, and Gemini. You would think you would input each month that corresponded to each zodiac sign right? Nope! [cont]

Inputting the correct month number for Capricorn, Taurus, and Scorpio (1,5,11) would not work. Instead you would of had to use the numbers under the signs in the wall to assign *new months* to the zodiac signs on the pillar.

In the original version of the room Leo had a 10 underneath the image placing the sign in Oct instead of Aug. So essentially to solve the puzzle you would have to know what month each sign occurs and then had to shift each Zodiac sign 2 months later in the year. [cont]

So Capricorn would now be under Mar instead of Jan, Taurus would be in Jul instead of May, and Scorpio would be in Jan instead of Nov making the code to release the stone of time (3,7,1) [cont]

It was quite an involved puzzle I wonder if the team got some negative feedback & were forced to make it easier right before the game's release? None of the interviews I've seen have mentioned why they made this change.

I need to eat so I'm taking a break :) I will add more to the thread later as there's still a whole lot of cool things about the game to share! ❤️

BTW If you are enjoying the thread so far you might like my pet's play of Silent Hill as well. I point out references, discuss the game's development, explain puzzles, & show all endings/items/weapons. 😄 It's very detailed! youtube.com/playlist?list=…

okay I'm back to continue this thread with more SH1 goodies!

13) I'm sure this is already well know but all the streets in Silent Hill are named after literary horror/scifi authors (like Richard Bachman...Steven King's pen name), one book (The Midwich Cuckoos), and one actress (Sigourney Weaver).

14) Speaking of literary references there's several within the first game outside of the street names! We have two shops "Mark Twain" (American writer, know for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn) and "A Moveable Feast" (a memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway) [cont]

We also have some key items named after literary characters like the Eclipse Keys (named after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz characters) and the colored blocks in Alchemilla (named after Alice in Wonderland characters)

15) Did you know that there's an issue of Playboy recreated in Silent Hill that you can see in the Orridge Bridge Control Room? 😆😆😆

16) Orridge Bridge is actually another music reference to Genesis P-Orridge who formed Psychick TV (PTV) with video director Peter Christopherson. This band is also referenced in the name of the drug "PTV" which you can see boxes of in the Nowhere storage room!

17) Another music reference, which I'm sure most of you know, is that the members of Sonic Youth are on the teachers list in Midwich...speaking of which...

18) Midwich itself is a reference to the 1957 John Wyndham novel The Midwich Cuckoos & funnily enough appears to be modeled after Astoria Elementary in the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Kindergarten Cop.

[pics cont]

This wasn't noticed until Silent Hill superfan Giromancy pointed out the similarities back in 2011 over on the Silent Hill forums. Speaking of which, you guys should check out their SH1 site, SH Resort, it has a ton of great info! sites.google.com/site/shresort/

19) Silent Hill had a weird marketing campaign in North America, check out this magazine ad. Padded room doesn't scream Silent Hill to me but...

it went with this commercial for the game 😆😆😆

Also the official Silent Hill site back in the day was a sight to behold. I really love the unhelpful answer to the piano puzzle...I bet it was ploy to get players to call that tip line 😆😆😆 Oh man, I forgot about those. Never used one of those... my mom was like "hell no".

20) Speaking of the piano puzzle I think the reason it frustrated so many is because most of the guides gave unhelpful answers and didn't properly explain the puzzle. Was it really that hard to draw a diagram? I mean the Japanese Silent Hill Navigation guide could 😆

21) But I think the misinformation about the UFO ending in the Prima Official guide was probably even worse... It said you only had to use the stone in two places for the UFO ending. wth that had to be frustrating! At least Gamefaqs was around at the time!

22) Speaking of the UFO ending, According to an COREgaming interview w/ Takayoshi Sato this joke ending came from a suggestion box for ideas on "Why did Silent Hill go into such a mess." Several funny ideas were pitched: Alien conspiracy, b/c the Sun is too Bright, b/c of a dog

23) What else is kind cool about this ending is that two of the stills are direct references to two cards in Topps 1962 Mars Attacks trading card set: #19 Burning Flesh and #20 Crushed to Death

24) Another neat movie reference is the Metropol building which is a reference to the 1985 Italian horror film directed by Lamberto Bava & produced by Dario Argento. The tickets on the wall that match the one the character Cheryl received from a masked man [cont]

And you also can see posters of Rosemary one of the first people within the Metropol to be turned into a demon!

25) On my most recent Voices in the Static podcast about Silent Hill 1 @the_gaming_muse mentioned that Keiichiro Toyama wanted to adapt Steven King's the Mist but couldn't get the rights. You can see its influence w/ the fog and notepad text I mentioned earlier!

Here's the podcast btw if you are interested in listening 😀 shshatteredmemories.com/2019/06/voices…

26) I think one of the most surprising references (besides Kindergarten Cop) has to be this bench advertisement for Gangtsa's Paradise within the game 😆 Oh and yeah that's The Daily Mirror in the background as well! The lady looks like Enya to me for some reason.

27) There are several product placements within the game as well. Some a direct copy others with a word change but similar to the real logo/brand. There's Pepsi, Coca-Cola [cont]

Minner Beer (Miller Beer), Fedy-X Espresso (Fed Ex) [cont]

Jack Daniels, Jim Beam [cont]

Queen Burger (Burger King), Mec Burger (McDonald's) [cont]

8 Convenience (7 Eleven), Hell Gas (Shell Gas) [cont]

Poston Market (Boston Market) which originally was called Boston Market in the Beta ver! [cont]

Jelly Beans (Jelly Belly), Vestal Gigastore (Virgin Megastore) [cont]

Cospa, Hobby America (Hobby Japan) [cont]

and Hector Saxe

28) Did you know the the inlay artwork of Cheryl in the Japanese jewel case is by Trevor Brown a controversial English artist who's work explores issues of paraphilias such as lolicon, ero guro, BDSM, and other fetish themes. He ended up moving to Japan in 1994.

29) Did you know that Takayoshi Sato had to do all the CG work on his own, just to make sure he had credit for his work? It's pretty insane! The poor guy lived at the office using the computers after the office closed to render all the movies! [cont]

The folks at OPM totaled just how long it would have taken to render all the cinematic scenes w/in the game in an interview w/ Sato in '99 & concluded that it must have taken an upward of 2000hrs which by my calculation is a minimum of 83 days! yiiiiiikes That's some dedication!

I will add more to the thread later! I hope you guys are enjoying it so far 😀