The Family Butcher

[geist378]

So I was walking around after the Hospital and came upon the butcher shop. What got me was it's name. "The Family Butcher" I believe...

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that if you follow the "Silent Hill is a personal reflection of one's guilt/fear/psyche/etc." theory. That this could possibly represent the fact that Travis' family was brutally torn apart by his parents' actions. Butchered, if you will. Or if you follow the "Travis is a serial killer" theory, that it represents his victims and those in their families he left behind.

I noticed this and thought I'd point it out.

[Loveless_Dogg]

I sure do wonder where the hell people got the idea that Travis killed his parents in the game because I sure didn't at all.

[Cold_Ethyl]

He didn't say Travis killed his parents.

[Loveless_Dogg]

He didn't say Travis killed his parents.

I know, but he did mention the "Travis is a serial killer" theory which I remember reading somewhere about someone suggesting that he did..... I was just saying "WTF?!?" about that.

[Video Gamer]

...Or maybe that's just the name of the shop? o_O

[geist378]

lol, yeah. figured the above theories i mentioned are a possibility, though. Especially since it's where you first encounter the Butcher, which...

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could be the representation of Travis' dark side. Especially if he is indeed a serial killer. But this only works if you follow the "Travis has a split personality because of past trauma" theory. A theory I support. I'd like to think he's innocent, but the guesswork is part of why I'm interested in all the psycho mumbo jumbo. By the way, I do not support "Travis killed his parents" theory.

[angelofROOM302]

I'm sorry, I have to say something about Travis first;

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I believe that Travis hasn't done anything bad. He is just a victim of the horrible things that he's had to go through as a child

I do agree with you on the whole 'family' butcher thing though. Except the last sentence.

[Silent_Whispers]

I'm sorry, I have to say something about Travis first;

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I believe that Travis hasn't done anything bad. He is just a victim of the horrible things that he's had to go through as a child

I do agree with you on the whole 'family' butcher thing though. Except the last sentence.

I agree on what youve said on Travis.

And that theory on the butcher is very understandable and it makes alot of sense.



B.

[geist378]

I'm sorry, I have to say something about Travis first;

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I believe that Travis hasn't done anything bad. He is just a victim of the horrible things that he's had to go through as a child

I do agree with you on the whole 'family' butcher thing though. Except the last sentence.

Yeah, I don't really support that theory either, but I present it as possibility because you never know. and neither do I, lol.

[LastGunslinger]

The idea that Travis is a serial killer is strongly implied by the "bad" ending.

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The other implication that ending brings about is that when he (ostensibly) kills people he is visualising them as his parents ("What? I'm not your mommy..." [scream]). In this way, because his psychotic delusions involve him projecting family members on other people, it makes even more sense that he could be called a "Family Butcher."

[SilentMadness]

normaly I would immediately throw that theory away about the name on the shop as just...a name. But there is a sort of theme that keeps popping up in the game about family values. I have never, for once, saw Travis as a serial killer nor do I find the bad ending canon (like the bad ending for silent hill 1; obviously)

[paladin181]

But in that vein, Silent Hill was followed by SH 3, in which they had to pick an ending that was"correct" and run with it. Before SH3 came out, it widely believed that the Bad ending was the true ending.

[Jonipoon]

...Or maybe that's just the name of the shop? o_O

I like that theory.

[Rob Matter]

"The Family Butcher" is just a hilarious name for a butcher shop in the context of Silent Hill.

[JKristine35]

I wouldn't be surprised in the least to discover that the name of the butcher shop has symbolic value.
I also want to point out, for those of you who say Travis could NEVER be a serial killer,

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did any of you expect James to be a killer in SH2 before you were outright told that he was?

[David01]

To be honest no I didn't, however when I was playing sh2 for my grandmother. She actually figured it out before I did, she looked at all the clues being dropped and the gravestone toward the end of sh2.. and she said hey James killed his wife didn't he? ANd that totally spoiled the entire game for me, but oh well.. anyway back on topic.


I figured that Travis was a killer of some sort, just by all the symbals and such in the game. I mean the butcher shop being one of them, and how Travis just stood there with a dazed look in his eye when that nurse was being gutted.. I mean come on.. if that was any other normal person they'd be freaked out and running for their mommy.. I mean seriously.

So yes I believe that the Family Butcher has a big symbalic meaning.

[Jonipoon]

>and she said hey James killed his wife didn't he

Your grandma is pretty awesome.

[Rob Matter]

I will accept the ambiguous possibility that Travis is a serial killer, but unlike in SH2, I find this motif much less continuous and much more an alternate ending add-on (“BTW, he’s a serial killer, LOL!”) Without that ending, the idea is weak and unsubstantiated, and the whole "Butcher is to Travis as Pyramid Head is to James" bit was underdeveloped, anti-climactic, and went absolutely nowhere.

Epic fail on the part of the writers. This is what happens when you try to simultaneously make a prequel to SH1 and remake SH2.

[AuraTwilight]

I totally, absolutely agree with Rob Matter. Travis being a killer is really really weak, and only takes away from the game for me. I figured it makes a lot more sense if he simply fears that he was responsible for tearing up his family, and that he indirectly murdered his parents.

Thus, the Butcher. I also don't consider the Bad Ending canonical, since you can't get it on your first playthrough, but I would theorize that maybe he got stuck in the Otherworld and his bad personality took control of him for the first time, the bondage of his past literally tying him down in the Otherworld as he fantasies about getting free and killing people, even though he never has before.

[Breaka]

The facts are,

> it wears half a helmet, a butchers smock and welds a big meat cleaver
> it appears in the family butcher shop, in the motel room with the photos and in the kitchen
> it kills lots of monsters, twice right in front of you (nurses, twobacks and straightjackets)
> it has been seen at the motel by some guy who compares him to the executioner.

The connection I've made is that the Butcher only kills monsters that are directly connected to the locations specific to Travis' folks. And as a child Travis seems to have been unaware that there was anything wrong with his parents. So the Butcher is perhaps a manifestation of Travis' childhood anger towards the people who he blames for interfering with his family. Or perhaps these monsters represent repressed memories of things Travis had seen as a child.
Specifically the nurses and crazy people of the sanatorium and the hookers at the motel.

And to further support that, I think the name of 'The Family Butcher' shop says it all. Having lived in Silent Hill, Travis may well have seen this sign as things we're going wrong for his family, and as kids do, given the words a new meaning. The childish rhyme about the butcher found in the store sort of suggest a childish mind playing with the idea of a butcher. Perhaps Travis created this character of a "family butcher", for his family. Therefore by butchering these monsters that surround and perhaps interfered with Travis family, the butcher is doing a duty of service to Travis' family. Also by killing these monsters, the butcher is in a way inadvertently protecting Travis. Not just physically. But also protecting Travis by quashing the repressed memories that these monsters represent as if deny that these things really happened. So by killing The Butcher Travis is saying that he no longer needs protection, and can finally face the truth of his fathers suicide.

Judging by some of the notes found in the sanatorium, I suspect that Travis may have entered the alternative mirror world as a child without knowing, and unwittingly unleashed the Butcher entity from his adolescent mind. This entity would have been left floating around in the otherworld, becoming increasingly distorted and mixed up with echos of executioners, until Travis returns to slay it and bury his demons 20 or so years later. Which explains why it was seen by other people prior to the events of SH0.