Silent Hill Sunday #6: "Silent Hill 2 Goes Straight into the Toilet"

Like many Silent Hill fans, my favorite entry into the everyone's beloved shocker series would have to be Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams - unless it's one of those days where I'm feeling nostalgic, then my love lies with the original PS1 offering. Anyway, I've been silent up until now on the topic of Restless Dreams for a reason: I'm planning a well-constructed, thoughtful essay on one of the finest games of all time.

But today, I want to talk about toilets.

Here's where James starts his crappy adventure.

Just like real life, there are a lot of johns in the world of Silent Hill. A giant, freaky portal to other dimensions resides in poor Henry Townshed's bathroom right next to the crapper in Silent Hill 4: The Room, Heather discovers her fair share of grimy pisspots in a desolate mall of the third SH game, and Alex Shepherd comes across a nasty, bloodstained surprise when he tries to answer the call of nature in Silent Hill Homecoming.

But it's the protagonist of Silent Hill 2 who takes the most crap from the commode: James starts his misadventure in a bathroom, surrounded by porcelain thrones. He also finds Eddie for the first time tossing his guts into the toilet, like so:

Eddie proves that there's many things you can do with a toilet, not just what your parents taught you to do.

All of that is disheartening, but longtime Silent Hill players are cringing right now, thinking about James's most infamous interaction with the thunder throne: About halfway through his first real challenge - the apartment - James finds a a wallet floating in what appears to be Satan's personal potty.

So of course, James does what any reasonable human being would do:

"The Toilet" By SH Hell

He reaches in, grabs the wallet, reads the note inside AND NEVER WASHES HIS HANDS. No wonder a sissy like him is able to navigate though hours of horror, kill two Pyramid Heads, and beat down his satanic, floating SPOILER in the last level: He's got the devil's dookie all over him. Powered by the evil excrement of the Antichrist, even a weakling like James could power through the terrors of the Nightmare Town and still have enough energy left over to resurrect a dead lady, take care of some bratty little girl, or even be abducted by aliens.

So until I write my Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams manifesto, I hope this post has been good *cough, cough* bathroom reading for you. See you next time for Silent Hill Sunday!