Walter's Hair (massive unmarked spoilers)

[AuraTwilight]

It means Walter met Eileen when he was in medical school. And yes, he completed the ritual of Holy Assumption prior to his death, I think.

Either way, the only thing that stopped his aging was...you know, becoming a ghost.

[Jonipoon]

>I think he looks much uglier in the real world, so maybe the hair is only one part of his appearance he changed?

It is heavily implied.

[AuraTwilight]

It's not implied at all. Infact, the idea that Walter changed his appearance at all is highly suspect, since we see his corpse and, well, the two look exactly the same if you account for rot.

[carneeval]

This is a very entertaining argument XD
But I'd like to know where you guys got that information of Walters hair originally being black or him going through a 'goth' faze. I've never heard of that before ^^

[Jonipoon]

>the idea that Walter changed his appearance at all is highly suspect
The official guidebook implies it with "The Man in the Coat is just an image of [Walter], an unholy idol he created himself."

An "Idol", from the greek word eidolon for image, is worshipped as someone with mighty powers; for instance a king, God or creator. As stated in the game, Walter rules as a king in the world he's created.

I see nothing that goes against the implication that he changed his appearance. Not even the looks.

[AuraTwilight]

Taking account for rotting and "teh pseudo-hair growth", I don't see the lack of resemblance. If the right died, you'd get the left eventually.

As for The Man in the Coat being an unholy image he created of himself....uh....hello? He brought himself back from the dead, got a stylish coat and a shower, and he schismed off the weak parts of his personality so he was a malicious killing machine. I think that fits the line perfectly without invoking nonsense about supernatural hair bleaching.

[11x20]

I think when they say an "unholy idol" or "image" they mean a spiritual "projection". Perhaps something of a "doll" he uses to convey his will.

If all else fails, just email Konami and ask them if the Walter "ghost" we see is what Walter truly looked like when he was alive. I'm pretty sure it is, and I never saw anything that implied Walter would have changed his appearance in the afterlife because he felt he was "ugly" or some superficiality like that.

I don't mean to be the buzz kill on the "It's Walter's true form!" party, but honestly. Does Walter strike you as someone who really cares how he looks? Even Cynthia said he was "handsome" but dirty. So I think what we see is what really "was".

[AuraTwilight]

Right. Not to mention that he's a goddamn murderer from beyond the grave. Who's going to give a fuck about his hair while he's shooting at them and setting them on fire and shit? Why would WALTER care? Does Mommy 302 have a dress code, or something?

[volpe3fuego]

Silent Hill 4: The Room Official Guide writes "The Man in the Coat is just an image of [Walter], un unholy idol he created himself."

So, really, he didn't cut his hair physically―but psychically. When Walter "freed himself from bounds of the flesh" he simply thought that his "ghost" form would look better in shorter hair. The rotten, human body in the back room is Walter's true form, which makes me to believe that he actually had that long hair when he was alive.

I think I agree with this. Who knows? Maybe Walter changed his appearance b/c he felt that his "mother" would prefer if he got a nicer haircut. Im not trying to make jokes or anything, I'm just saying it's plausible. Maybe he wanted to look a bit nicer when he was reunited with "mom".

Long hair has a lot of symbolism behind it; power, rebellion, and according to psychologists, highly representative of the mind's 'id'.

According to a Freud quote I found on Wikipedia,

"It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learnt from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of this is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We all approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organisation, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle."

[11x20]

Can someone throw out the exact kana/kanji phrase that SH4: The Room Official Guide has? Just anyone who knows Japanese. I'd like to just break down the kanji to see for myself what they mean by "Unholy Idol" and "Image". Because this is all going by the translation made by one person.

I'm sure that "Unholy Idol" or "Image" are likely terms, but take for example the word "Maboroshi". It can mean anything from "Illusionary" to "Phantom" to "Mystical". When you bring those three options into English, it really depends on context as to what connotations you want to give the reader.

Illusionary will give a more dreamy, "unreal" connotation. Like an illusion.

Phantom will give a more "ghostly" feel, and probably bring connotations of the afterlife, or spirits. Spirits aren't exactly an "illusion" which has more connotations to the word trickery than ghostly.

...and then you have Mystical which will simply make you think of some straight up dungeons and dragons stuff. More to do with magic than ghosts or trickery.

In short, I'm just saying that "image" might have actually been a kanji that meant something closer to "projection". Like "astral projection", rather than "idealization" that people seem to be pulling from the term "image".


And then at the end of the day, Team Silent might have just made an error in the whole "hair continues to grow after death" urban legend. I honestly didn't know that the hair ceases to grow and the body shrinks until I came to this topic.

[korbandallas]

Once you think about it though. Why would Walter want to walk around looking like he did when he was hanging on the cross thing? Maybe he change his appearance to look more approachable to the other characters?

[11x20]

Well, like I said before, I don't think he ever cared about his appearance to people, or looking "approachable".

Plus, we know he wasn't disfigured. Cynthia wouldn't have called him "Handsome" if he looked the way he did on the cross. Check out TranslatedMemories.com's "He and the Victims" under Cynthia's section. It details his meeting with her, when he first approached her after waiting so long to get the courage to talk to her and whatnot. If he hadn't looked like a bum, she would have hit it, most likely.

Plus, the Walter we see on the cross is just a preserved 10-year-old corpse. At that point, flesh is rotting off, scars are splitting open, and hair probably loses its curl. It becomes brittle and relaxed, so that could also be why it looks longer. Body might have shrunk a bit as all corpses do, and any "wave" he had in his hair was flattened. But then again, the corpse hair is far longer than any relaxed wave, so I really think it was just an error on Team Silent's part.

Seriously, someone should just ask Konami and put this rumor to rest-- I think the thought of a self-conscious "Gotta look pretty!" Walter is just bunk. Sorry to piss in your cheerios, but... for F's sake, he's an undead, ritual-obsessed serial killer. In fact, his hair is probably only long because he doesn't care to get it cut or keep it kept up. He even has stubble going on, which might be indicative that he wasn't the type to be diligent about shaving every morning either. He was probably one of those slightly hygiene challenged people, to be honest. Not saying he was a pig or anything, but come on now-- he just doesn't seem to have qualms about being a bit dirty.

[Space Ghost]

you know what i think? i think that when you pass away your hair slackens (i.e. if you have wavy or curly hair, once you die, it "loosens" at the scalp). thusly creating the illusion that you hair has gotten longer. we see that walter has moderately wavy hair (yes: i notice the volume of video game antagonists' hair), but his corpse does not. my theory is that once the body died, there wasn't enough oil (ewwwww!) and nutrients and such to sustain the hair on walters head, lending to the "appearance" of longer hair.

in short, i think his hair just got straighter.

either that or i'm just dumb

as for why he has wavy hair in his after life form: its probably just a "residual self image"... like in the matrix. Neo sees himself with hair even though he is bald because thats how he's used to looking at himself.

[Syko]

Guys, about that myth.
We get it, ok?

Hair and Fingernails do not grow after death, but the corpse hat longer hair than the ghost, thats the problem.

His ghost should look like the corpse!
But the corpse's hair is longer than the ghost's!
Catch my drift?

[AuraTwilight]

*headdesk*

The myth comes from the fact that corpses contract, giving the appearance of longer hair. There's no actual growth, the body is just shrinking. If you compare the models, you can see that Walter is a shorter corpse than a ghost.

And ghosts don't look like their corpses, they look like how they were in life before they died.

[Syko]

Well then I guess the producers did a pretty good job, eh?

[AuraTwilight]

What are you talking about?