Panicky gamers that sprint from save point to save point may be able to beat the original Silent Hill, but they’ll miss out on all the little details the game has to offer.
Besides creepy touches like rusty wheelchairs and bloody basketball backboards, the developers at Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo crammed heaps of literary, movie, and music references, as well as spoofs on commercial brands and general weirdness, throughout the game.
Check out the images below to see how many details you missed. When you’re done, click here for a visual comparison of Silent Hill: Revelation and Silent Hill 3.
Movie locations
Cafe 5to2, where protagonist Harry Mason meets the police officer Cybil Bennett, is named after the café from the film Natural Born Killers.
Later on, Harry finds a store called Cut-Rite Chain Saws, which is named after a similar store from the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Keys for eclipse
To gain access to the western side of Silent Hill, Harry must collect three keys labeled “lion,” “woodman,” and “scarecrow.” This is a reference to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz‘s cowardly lion, tin man, and scarecrow.
Like Harry, Dorothy accidentally travels to another world full of bizarre creatures.
Be cool, stay in school
A wall inside Cafe 5to2 has a poster of a man holding a shotgun with the words “Study, Dammit!” That same poster was published in The Maine Campus student newspaper in 1970 while writer Stephen King was studying at the University of Maine.
Rockin’ teachers
The list of school teachers at Midwich Elementary School, one of the locations in Silent Hill, includes Moore, Ranaldo, and Gordon. These happen to be the names of Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Kim Gordon. Rock on.
Have an old friend for dinner
Newspapers across Silent Hill have the cryptic headline “Bill skins fifth.” This is a reference to the novel/movie The Silence of the Lambs, where serial killer Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb murders five women, skins them, and wears their flesh as suits.