Fan solves Silent Hill 2’s greatest mystery, reveals creepy hidden message

Reddit user Dale Robinson has finally cracked Silent Hill 2‘s final mystery, but the discovery didn’t come without the unleashing of yet another harrowing realization for poor James Sunderland.

Few things work better in getting fans hyped than a mystery everyone’s invited to solve. Whereas P.T. challenged everyone to figure out, well, the entirety of P.T., the Silent Hill 2 remake featured a bunch of mysterious pictures that combined to form the game’s greatest mystery.

These polaroid pictures hid a message for players to uncover, but, for one month — an eternity in the Internet age — nobody was able to figure it out. This one doesn’t need to keep you awake at night anymore, however, as Dale Robinson has finally managed to crack the code. Spoilers abound!

Unfortunately, the message uncovered by Dale was probably best left in the dark. It says, “You’ve been here for two decades.”

The “Two decades” likely refers to the time since the release of the original version of Silent Hill 2. Does this make Silent Hill a prison you can never escape from? Or was Dale actually mistaken?

I’m usually very skeptical with supposed solutions to overarching mysteries found by Redditors. Most of the them end up as little more than conspiracy-theory writing practice, but Mateusz Lenart from Bloober team quickly confirmed Dale’s discovery was the real deal.

So, is it but an Easter Egg, or is it pointing at how James is doomed not to die, but to relive his darkest moments forever, albeit with ever-improving graphics? Fans are already speculating, and it’s beautiful to see.

One of the rare complaints I’ve read regarding the fantastic Silent Hill 2 remake, it’s that it doesn’t really add anything new to the original. An overarching mystery such as this proves detractors wrong. It likely would also make Hideo Kojima — the master of this kind of thing — very proud and, perhaps, even feel vindicated after being unceremoniously let go from Konami.

You can now enjoy Silent Hill 2‘s other mysteries on PS5 and PC.