It’s been extremely satisfying to watch the video game industry’s survival horror genre blossom and evolve from a niche curiosity to a dependable juggernaut. Resident Evil helped put the survival horror genre on the map in 1996 and has gone on to spawn countless imitators. However, Konami’s Silent Hill is an equally important franchise that opts for a darker and more psychologically-fueled style of horror storytelling.
Silent Hill is many things – depressing, claustrophobic, surreal – yet it’s not typically a series that’s considered to be especially funny. It has pushed its audience to stare into the abyss for over 25 years, yet the franchise has also spawned an absurd running joke that’s been growing ever since the series’ inception. Silent Hill’s infamous “UFO Ending” first came as a genuine shock, albeit a pivot that perfectly encapsulates Silent Hill’s unique voice and delivered a degree of madness that pushed the franchise into multiverse territory way ahead of the curve.
The video game industry was at a fascinating inflection point at the end of the ’90s that greatly benefited the original game. The concept of games with multiple endings that had to be unlocked under specific conditions had been around for decades, but Silent Hill helped reinvent this design element. Multiple endings have become a benchmark, with the original game featuring five unique conclusions that attempt to pathologize and expand upon various decisions that the player made during Harry Mason’s journey. Curiously, the fifth of these possible conclusions, designated as the “Joke Ending,” opts for a finale where Harry gets abducted by aliens.
The introduction of extraterrestrials to the narrative is a bold, brave decision. As much as this new ending was meant to be an unlockable Easter Egg for fans, it also functioned as a commentary on the passionate, dedicated nature of Silent Hill’s audience. Gaming culture and its role on the internet was quite different at the time. “Let’s Play” videos and intricate walkthrough breakdowns weren’t yet the norm. There was a true element of surprise to unlocking these extra endings, which were occasionally so complicated that they were only discovered by the most hardcore of fans. Resident Evil featured a comparable mechanic to unlock its extra endings and bonuses, but they were never as confounding as Silent Hill’s UFO Ending requirements.
Nobody on Team Silent had any idea that players would respond so positively to the first game’s Joke Ending. The concept was born as a private joke between Masahiro Ito, Keiichiro Toyama, Takayoshi Sato and other Team Silent members, in which they pitched silly explanations for Silent Hill’s paranormal activity and cursed nature. Among the suggestions were an alien conspiracy, the sun being too bright, or the work of a dog (the latter of which would become its own comical conclusion in Silent Hill 2). This idea amused the production team and also seemed more appealing and innovative than the standard “New Game+” bonuses that existed at the time, like a bonus costume or a more powerful weapon (although Silent Hill’s UFO Ending does add the aliens’ Hyper Blaster to Harry’s arsenal).
The UFO angle idea grew out of silliness, but Team Silent soon started to regard it as a tradition that helped cut the games’ tension and reward players with something so deeply unserious after hours upon hours of psychological torture. It’s incredibly funny for Silent Hill to give its audience plenty to chew on regarding cults, purgatory, generational trauma, and death and rebirth, only to then ignore all that in favor of a conspiracy theory-laden solution that goes, “It was aliens! Or a stubborn Shiba Inu!”
The success and evolution of the UFO Endings and how they’ve become one of the fandom’s favorite elements is a testament to why it’s important to take risks, even if they seem ridiculous. It’s this willingness to experiment that’s led to these UFO Endings’ enduring legacy and how they’ve helped Silent Hill connect disparate dots and form its own alternate multiverse.
The Silent Hill franchise is largely standalone in nature. Yes, there are broader connections between games, references to past characters and events, and Silent Hill 3 is explicitly about Harry Mason’s daughter, Heather, searching for her missing father after the first game’s events. Each game otherwise operates in its own space and functions as a new glimpse into another tortured soul’s fractured mental state that’s led them to the titular town.
That being said, theUFO endings playfully bring these distinct worlds together, much to the fans’ delight. Silent Hill 2’s UFO ending, for instance, brings back Harry from the first game, who works together with the aliens to abduct Silent Hill 2’s protagonist, James Sunderland. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the Wii’s remake of Silent Hill, unites Harry, Heather, James, and Mira, the rogue Shiba Inu who is pulling the strings in Silent Hill 2. Shattered Memories’ UFO Ending also indicates that in this version of events, James kills his wife, Mary, by locking her in the basement until she starves again, convinced that she’s an alien.
Bloober Team’s 2024 Silent Hill 2 remake gets especially meta on this front when James from the original Silent Hill 2 confronts the remake’s counterpart and tells this version of James that he’s actually a clone. The aliens abduct Remake James, while the other James replaces him and begins his search for Mary, stuck in a grief loop.
It’s also worth pointing out that Silent Hill 3’s UFO ending is arguably the franchise’s climax with an extremely satisfying crossover celebration. Heather shows up at her father’s apartment, only to learn that he’s there, alive, with James and some aliens. Heather explains to her dad what’s happened, at which point he begins to perform flashy martial arts and declares war on Silent Hill. The ending concludes with Silent Hill being eradicated by aliens, while Harry, Heather, and James celebrate. Not only does this UFO ending unite the central characters of the first three games, but it’s technically the happiest ending in the franchise that finally brings Silent Hill’s evil to a close.
Silent Hill’s creative history with these UFO endings features tonal pivots that erase the gamer’s stress, but they also showcase stylistic deviations. The franchise’s UFO endings all shift from the game’s dominant visual style in order to deliver epilogues that are stylized like comic books, Mars Attacks trading cards, a Silent Age black-and-white movie, anime, and, most recently, a motion-comic manga in Silent Hill f. The use of different visual styles reinforces the idea that each of these is part of its own alternate Silent Hill universe, albeit one that follows an insular non-canon canon, so to speak.
The UFO Ending in Silent Hill: Origins gets more mileage out of Mira the Shiba Inu. However, Silent Hill: Origins’ original UFO Ending seriously supports the whole meta multiverse angle for these endings. The conclusion would have featured the game’s protagonist being abducted by aliens, only for it to then abruptly cut to Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake waking up from a nap while stationed in the tree. This UFO Ending would have suggested that the entirety of Silent Hill: Origins, or perhaps even Silent Hill, as a whole, was merely the dream of a character from another Konami franchise.
The latest Silent Hill games have taken the UFO Ending to unexpected places that make it exciting to consider where this idea will go next. Perhaps Christophe Gans’ Return to Silent Hill will somehow find a way to incorporate this gonzo tradition (for what it’s worth, Silent Hill: Revelations 3D’s director, M. J. Bassett, wanted to honor the UFO Ending in some fashion, even if it was just an extra bonus scene on the physical media release). There’s also the possibility of a new Silent Hill game that is even set within the UFO Ending timeline or has the player controlling an alien who is hunting down James to abduct him.
Anything is possible in a franchise like Silent Hill, even if it’s a tonal and stylistic devolution into surreal silliness. The survival horror series’ recent renaissance means that the next batch of Silent Hill games – whether that’s remakes of old classics that grow increasingly meta or an entirely new game in the style of Silent Hill f – are completely fearless with where they take this beloved tradition. Just keep searching for those Channelling Stones and watching the skies.
