Is Mary's Body in the back of James car?(Spoilers)

[jam6i]

The reason he doesn't immediately drive into the lake is that he has subconsciously put a mental block on past events. To him, Mary simply "died of that damn disease three years ago". Why would ge kill himself without proper motivation? He needed to renember what he had done, and accepted it.

Otherwise, why drive to SH at all? Why not just find the nearest body of water and go in?

Nope. He needed the town, and he needed to remember first, before "moving on".

I highly doubt an ending such as "leave" would be something James could live with, considering the fact that he didn't WANT to live. Any other endIng besides one that ends in his death is purely "what if", in my opinion.

[what]

As I understand it, he did not form the delusion of "three years ago" until after he arrived. The moment we first see him, in front of that mirror, is the tipping point. His entry into the Otherworld and the creation of his Wife Death Mystery Adventure fantasy happen at the same instant.

I mean, otherwise, we're suggesting that he just forgot everything along the way for what reason? If he has committed himself to death (and we know that this was his purpose in going to Silent Hill in the first place, to die in a 'place of memories', which is why it's Silent Hill and not the nearest reservoir), what would have prompted him to construct a mental block halfway there? What would have been the purpose?

He came to town to die. He goes through the hell of the town in order to find a reason to live. In Water is his inability to do this.

Now, maybe in the end, he can't live with himself, even if he leaves. Maybe he ends up killing himself six months later while drunk. Who knows? The ending can lead to anything, which is why I consider it the best one. In Water leads to a very certain conclusion, leaving no room for speculation, which is why it is definitely the most boring.

Though I have my biases regarding the endings, they are all perfectly fitting resolutions to the story. I could justify any of them, even the one I clearly don't like.

[astro]

I always assumed he was just getting caught up in his own delusions and outright refusal to accept the truth, not that he was being motivated to go through Silent Hill out of a wish to live. He didn't drive into the lake originally because he hadn't been forced to take responsibility for his actions and he was trying to avoid reality. He may have originally come to Silent Hill in order to kill himself, but extreme stress and grief led him to construct a fantasy which he's forced to wholly accept because of his journey in Silent Hill, and assuming you get In Water, he doesn't want to continue living after coming to terms with what he did. Also, why would he park his car, bring a map, and go to the bathroom if he didn't begin constructing his fantasy before he arrived at Silent Hill? If you were to argue that it's a phantom map, fair enough, but if his tipping point was the bathroom then he wouldn't know there was a map in the car, and why not just put the map in the bathroom or on a bench or something if it's contradictory that he wouldn't know? And surely he wouldn't know the capabilities of the town before going into it, so where does a will to live come into it?

"I needed someone to punish me for my sins [because I wasn't going to do it myself]."

[devil hunter]

There's also a possibility that the town made him lose his memory.

[schlaufuchsMIKE]

Okay, so whoever the god is, what I'm saying is based on the belief that a demon is masquerading as a god to trick the cultists into incarnating it into a mortal-ish existence. In any case, while they may think the ritual brings back the dead, it actually fills it with whatever demon it may be. That's what I'm suggesting is about to happen with Mary's body in the Rebirth ending.

There's no evidence to suggest this or that the ritual even worked. It also sounds rather Christian.

I guess it's more of an assumption based on every time someone is rebirthing something in this series, it always comes out as a narly demonic looking entity. I won't say that's what is happening here, but I find it more interesting to think that James is about to unwittingly stir up a hornet's nest.

[Purramid_Head]

Okay, so whoever the god is, what I'm saying is based on the belief that a demon is masquerading as a god to trick the cultists into incarnating it into a mortal-ish existence. In any case, while they may think the ritual brings back the dead, it actually fills it with whatever demon it may be. That's what I'm suggesting is about to happen with Mary's body in the Rebirth ending.

There's no evidence to suggest this or that the ritual even worked. It also sounds rather Christian.

I guess it's more of an assumption based on every time someone is rebirthing something in this series, it always comes out as a narly demonic looking entity. I won't say that's what is happening here, but I find it more interesting to think that James is about to unwittingly stir up a hornet's nest.

Well, Maria's game makes mention the ritual is far older than that Christian idea. Just saying.

[schlaufuchsMIKE]

Well, Maria's game makes mention the ritual is far older than that Christian idea. Just saying.

I'm not quite sure what you mean about the Christian idea. In any case, it's been 8 or 9 years since I've played the Maria scenario. I'm waiting for the patch for the HDC before I play it. So, I'm fuzzy on the details :/

[Devoured]

I'm gonna have to go with "what" here. The games endings are supposed to be based on the player's outlook on life, the brochures on how to obtain them make this pretty evident and killing yourself is usually advised against. He was obviously rather unstable already but there's no doubt whatsoever that James consciously drove to Silent Hill to kill himself. He's had the whole drive up to Silent Hill alone with his thoughts and it makes no more than sense that he's having second thoughts and decides to breathe in some of that Toluca mist and freshen up in that nice, clean bathroom before putting the pedal to the metal. That doesn't mean that's not what they decided happened in the end, nobody ever said Silent Hill is supposed to have happy endings. I'm sure most people also assume Heather totally came out OK but for all we know the next SH will state she died clawing at that bathroom window to the alley behind the mall.

There never is a canon ending when the actual game itself is out, it's always later that they decide what ultimately did happen, it's not like the endings to SH1 that don't lead to SH3 were all jokes and everyone already knew how the story would unfold, that would defeat the whole purpose of multiple endings, especially those orchestrated like SH2.

Since 4 is much less related to 2 than 3 is to 1 it makes no more than sense that references to it are also much more vague, since any ending obtained in 2 can basically still lead to the general situation in 4. They didn't just decide to have Frank in there for the heck of it though, and show us a picture of Toluca lake, with the information that Frank's son and daughter-in-law went missing in Silent Hill and created a t-shirt with an obviously very dead James. If we'd gotten shirts of Harry and Heather and Dahlia and Kaufmann and Lisa and Valtiel having a tea-party on the wall it would've been a different matter entirely but the shirt was obviously created with a reason and all things considered together, they strongly imply In Water now being canon.

The police have no reason to assume James killed Mary and then either killed himself or went on the lam, they didn't play SH2. They simply went missing and that's the end of it.
Even if they did have their suspicions about James, no police force in the world would spend years and years of investigating to find one man that may have killed his terminally ill wife and then left without a trace, never to be heard from again. It would've been different if he turned into some psycho serial killer but there's simply no way Frank would've been under continuous surveillance. There simply wouldn't have been any risk in it for James, let alone a visit endangering Frank [???].

Opinions about the nature of the Maria ending are way too diverse to apply real life logic to it [but as far as I'm concerned it's James' equivelant to Angela's decision to give up and just wallow in misery]. Looking at the Leave ending though, it's not like James chopped Mary into bits and fed her to the pigs. The way she died, if James was all sane again and had returned home with her after the events of SH2, no one in the world would've suspected he'd done a thing to her if he said she simply passed away, which was supposed to happen very soon anyway. Only about a day would've passed since her death and on the record she would've died of natural causes and there wouldn't even have been any problem with the law whatsoever, she was ill and she died.



@schlaufuchsMIKE

I think what Xu means is the way the cult does it is like a Christian-bastardized version of the ritual the injuns would originally have performed. It makes little sense that they had books and that kind of stuff laying around.

I've had that theory as well BTW that James might not have been doing what he thought he was doing especially since it's mightly likely to the 21 Sacraments one but I don't think there really is a way to back it up...



@Q This is the pic, couldn't find a pic of the actual shirt just now but it's official :

[captain crowbar]

There's also a possibility that the town made him lose his memory.

I personally agree with this idea. Like the town blocked out entire sections of his mind to:

1. possibly help him cope with everything until he was able to deal with it rationally

2. torment him by making him relive the nightmare/sins of the past

3. use him in some way (Taylor the Impaler's Negative Emotion Theory)

4. entertain itself?

We hit gray areas here, so lots of possibilities open up. Probably one of the first 2 is most accurate if this is the case.

[what]

I always assumed he was just getting caught up in his own delusions and outright refusal to accept the truth, not that he was being motivated to go through Silent Hill out of a wish to live. He didn't drive into the lake originally because he hadn't been forced to take responsibility for his actions and he was trying to avoid reality.

To whom is he responsible, other than himself? And, what is the point of accepting responsibility and accepting reality... and then running away from all of it anyway by committing suicide?

The important thing to remember is that he cannot forget anything he did not already know to start with. I'm suggesting he forgot because doing so serves the purpose of averting his suicide. This makes sense because it serves a purpose. You're suggesting that he forgot so that he could remember it all over again. What purpose could that possibly serve?

He may have originally come to Silent Hill in order to kill himself, but extreme stress and grief led him to construct a fantasy which he's forced to wholly accept because of his journey in Silent Hill, and assuming you get In Water, he doesn't want to continue living after coming to terms with what he did.

Again, why would he bother? If he intends to live, that has a point: he can't go on living until he comes to terms with what he did. If he's going to just die, as he intends to do, all it does is delays the inevitable for a few hours.

I'm not saying that this is an invalid outcome or anything, but that if one argues that this is the most appropriate outcome, his journey is ultimately pointless. He ends up as a dead sack of meat, and understanding is irrelevant to dead sacks of meat.

Also, why would he park his car, bring a map, and go to the bathroom if he didn't begin constructing his fantasy before he arrived at Silent Hill? If you were to argue that it's a phantom map, fair enough, but if his tipping point was the bathroom then he wouldn't know there was a map in the car, and why not just put the map in the bathroom or on a bench or something if it's contradictory that he wouldn't know? And surely he wouldn't know the capabilities of the town before going into it, so where does a will to live come into it?

The map is either a phantom or just a relic of his memory of good times in Silent Hill. If he constructed his fantasy before hand, I would expect that he'd already be carrying the map at the start with the intent to use it.

He doesn't need to know the capabilities of the town. His will to live makes everything happen without his conscious say-so.

I also believe that the sin for which he feels he needs punishment is not the killing of Mary but that he all but abandoned her near the end to suffer and die alone because he could not longer handle the stress of it. People sometimes moralize about the killing part of it in the belief that killing is wrong regardless of the context, but just as many understand perfectly why he did it and do not feel inclined to judge him. However, leaving her alone in the worst time of her life is a terrible thing to do and almost nobody would feel that he was justified in doing that.

Now, I have no doubt he feels some guilt about killing her because it doesn't matter how justifiable it is, killing a person for any reason is a big deal unless you're Eddie. I think the vast bulk of his guilt comes from what happened before this, though. The long hallway scene right at the end of the game illustrates this perfectly: it baits you with a long pause at the end before resuming with Mary's tearful pleas for you to say. This is to see if you'll leave, as he did... and it punishes you if you do by having an effect on the ending you get.

There's also a possibility that the town made him lose his memory.

I hate this idea with every fiber of my being. It's unnecessary, and if James is being manipulated into personal revelation, it's just cheap and tacky.

[captain crowbar]

There's also a possibility that the town made him lose his memory.

I hate this idea with every fiber of my being. It's unnecessary, and if James is being manipulated into personal revelation, it's just cheap and tacky.

Doesn't mean it's wrong.

[what]

I can't possibly imagine why anybody would want to believe it's right.

[captain crowbar]

Why not? Silent Hill can do what it wants.

[devil hunter]

Why not? The town is guiding him in some way.

I was always bothered by the "he blocked out everything" explanation. How does that work? Is it like an instant amnesia or something?

It makes more sense that supernatural stuff is at play there.

[captain crowbar]

I was always bothered by the "he blocked out everything" explanation. How does that work? Is it like an instant amnesia or something?

It makes more sense that supernatural stuff is at play there.

It is possible that the shock afterwards made him sort of shut down mentally and have to be "rebooted" (happens to people in real life cases), but I agree that the town having at least SOME influence on his mental state feels better to me. Otherwise, we're just working with a situation similar to Homecoming, which was silly.

[devil hunter]

Yeah, but it still makes me wonder why he shut down mentally from shock when he came to the town. Why not before?

[captain crowbar]

Yeah, but it still makes me wonder why he shut down mentally from shock when he came to the town. Why not before?

Which is where the "body in the car" aspect gets confusing. If he brought the body there for some reason (maybe to finally bring her back to Silent Hill like he always promised), and the town shrouded his memories to bewilder and confuse him, it would make more sense than:

Kill wife
Forgot you killed wife
Pick up wife's dead body
Put in car
Drive with dead body in car
Get out in Silent Hill, leave dead body in car
Look for dead wife when she was in car the whole time

[devil hunter]

Kill wife
Forgot you killed wife
Pick up wife's dead body
Put in car
Drive with dead body in car
Get out in Silent Hill, leave dead body in car
Look for dead wife when she was in car the whole time

James being a sick fuck who does this for fun certainly is a fun thought XD

[astro]

I'm only going to quote key points because I don't want to shit everything up with massive quote pyramids:

And, what is the point of accepting responsibility and accepting reality... and then running away from all of it anyway by committing suicide?

The important thing to remember is that he cannot forget anything he did not already know to start with. I'm suggesting he forgot because doing so serves the purpose of averting his suicide. This makes sense because it serves a purpose. You're suggesting that he forgot so that he could remember it all over again. What purpose could that possibly serve?

I don't understand why it needs a purpose to make sense, Angela's journey didn't serve a purpose and neither did Eddie's. I don't think the In Water ending signifies that James is running away from anything, he is in Maria according to my interpretation though. It makes perfect sense that James was going to kill himself, broke, Silent Hill manipulated him, then he killed himself after being forced to acknowledge his crime. He has the potential to fulfill other outcomes as we know, or he can demonstrate his deep love for Mary by choosing to not live anymore (note this is exactly what James is saying in the ending).

Again, why would he bother? If he intends to live, that has a point: he can't go on living until he comes to terms with what he did. If he's going to just die, as he intends to do, all it does is delays the inevitable for a few hours.

I'm not saying that this is an invalid outcome or anything, but that if one argues that this is the most appropriate outcome, his journey is ultimately pointless. He ends up as a dead sack of meat, and understanding is irrelevant to dead sacks of meat.

He isn't taking it upon himself to bother, Silent Hill is forcing him. I'm iffy about the 'pointless = inappropriate' equation though. Why exactly can something pointless, from the perspective of James, not be the most appropriate ending to his tale? I found In Water to be the most meaningful ending by far.

The map is either a phantom or just a relic of his memory of good times in Silent Hill. If he constructed his fantasy before hand, I would expect that he'd already be carrying the map at the start with the intent to use it.

It's probably set up the way it is partially for gameplay reasons, since maps aren't part of your inventory and the player doesn't know how to pick shit up yet, and the car is meaningful. But my point was that it has to be real, because he knows about it before he goes into the bathroom, and since going into the bathroom has no point if you're planning to kill yourself once you arrived in town, it's just natural to assume that he constructed his fantasy before the start of the game. Maybe he constructed it when he realized he couldn't continue driving because Silent Hill was blocking his path and during In Water the things that once blocked him are now gone? Who knows, but you can't really make any good speculations based off this stuff considering we have almost nothing to go on.

Another thing that confuses me about your interpretation is if James didn't know the capabilities of Silent Hill, why would he enter the town looking for a reason to keep living? I might be putting words into your mouth, because I edited this in sometime after my replying to your points, but it's just something that occurred to me afterwards. He doesn't know the capabilities of the Otherworld, so his only reason to go into the town was to look for Mary because of his delusions, surely?

[This isn't really to debunk anything you've said, because it's pretty much just a matter of preference, but hopefully you, or someone, might look at the ending in a new light because of a couple of my points].

[NarooN]

@Q This is the pic, couldn't find a pic of the actual shirt just now but it's official :

That shirt means nothing. Just because James is dead? Look at the shirt. He's coming out of the wall like the ghosts in the game do. SH4's otherworld is just Walter's world. James wasn't killed by Walter and really had nothing to do with Walter, so why would he be there? The shirt is just a random fan treat, it doesn't mean anything.

James' dad appearing in SH4 was more of an easter egg in itself than anything else. Toluca Lake is a big part of the resort town, so it being shown also doesn't really mean much. Even if these things *did* allude to In Water, it doesn't mean it's canon just because some devs on that team liked the ending or whatever. Owaku and the rest have stated that there's no canon ending to SH2, so that's that.