This is a very simple cutscene that reveals that Maria got her ass up and left while you and James are out fighting nurses, but I'd never seen it before, and I've never seen any other streamer get it. For all you know, you left Maria here to take a nap and then she randomly shows up in the Otherworld several hours from now. But no! She GOT UP and LEFT! And I'm just cracking up in retrospect because you can hear me gasp at the beginning of the scene, and I am so rattled that I wander around saying, "JAMES WHERE ARE WE? I'M REELING! SHE'S GONE!"
(Side note: This means that James knew Maria was wandering around alone and unarmed through a monster-infested hospital, and he's STILL like "oh well anyway I'm glad you're okay I guess" when she finds him again. JAMES.)
I'm pretty sure these bullet holes are forming an M shape—M for Mary/Maria, of course—but I don't know where they are. The only place I'm aware of having bullet holes in the wall is the room in Wood Side Apartments where you find the handgun, and it's covered in them. So I pulled the Commentary 3 video up and scoured the walls; I don't see any arrangement that's specifically that shape.
But—"Her drawings"? Mary's? Done in the time-honored medium of gun?
I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner: who in this game is known to draw? I know that little pointy bit up in the right corner: doesn't it look a lot like the tail of the threatening bird that Laura drew chasing a "Mary" rabbit?
The other lines near the corner don't match up with the bird's feet, but this may be another composite photo, like the TV sitting in what sincerely looks like the Pyramid Head boss fight room. My interpretation at this point is that the Strange Photo is saying, Laura correctly intuited that James felt some kind of violent aggression towards M[ary].
I'm giving this bit a post of its own, because I now think it can refer to all three of the Brookhaven patients. The video above is from the final commentary 8 video, but for this clip, I've also edited in the actual Brookhaven article we see in the South Vale garage. Screenshot and transcript of the clipboard below the cut:
This case bears a disturbing similarity to a situation that took place in the facility a few years back.
The patient was admitted on a court order, but with the consent of his remaining family.
His condition appeared to be improving for the first few weeks.
The administered medications paired with individual sessions with a psychologist and art therapy alleviated his avolition, anhedonia, and social withdrawal.
There was no reason for concern.
They didn't even know anything was wrong until the night guard reported one of his keys was missing.
When they found him,
it was already too late.
When I wrote the "Patient 0050" post, I made a fairly good argument that the case is meant to be "reminiscent" of that patient. But the more I thought about it—I nearly titled this clip "(It's not who you think)," because I think it's "about" all three patients. I think the clipboard story is giving us a framework to imagine what happened to each of the three patients—again, to review what I wrote after I recorded:
Something catastrophic happens that ends up with patient committed.
This may have involved the patient hurting or killing a family member, due to the phrase "remaining family" (much the way Angela killed her own father, for example).
The patient was doing well in various types of therapy (when I say "art therapy seems gentle for [a murderer]," I mean "at a hellhole like Brookhaven, so I might not be right about this," not that it should be harsher).
But then, the staff let down their guard (or perhaps staff layoffs meant there were fewer employees in general).
The patient obtained a key, which could have been a key to an internal room (Patient 0090 will be my example here) or to the main entrance of the hospital to leave. And we know there's a main entrance key, because it's the last item we find in Brookhaven Hospital.
By the time staff located the patient, "it was too late" to prevent... something, most likely the patient's death given how ominous this sounds, but possibly injury to the patient or someone else. I forgot to mention this in the video, but we're going to read in Otherworld Brookhaven that Patient 0050 managed to run electroshock treatment on himself—even the staff can't figure out how—so that's a non-fatal example.
Re: point #4: I bring in the Secret Garage article about Brookhaven, and I've actually edited in a clip from commentary 6. Basically, we're told that staffing shortages may be putting the patients at risk, and the community fears the repeat of an incident that happened "a couple of years ago." I think the clipboard patient is that incident.
There's something else I need to be a little more sensitive about here: I'm still assuming that the patient in the original case, or any case, might have "escaped the hospital," that whole trope, and killed or injured someone else. I think that "too late" implies that something happened, but it could have been that the patient hurt themselves out in town and "the community" was horrified on the patient's behalf. And I think the vagueness of the clipboard case is to allow us to reinterpret the basics of that story however we want for each of our three patients.
Behold my argument that James is actually pretty good at interacting with Laura in the remake (with, uh, a few exceptions), which makes the "Leave" ending more believable. This is juiced up from the actual commentary 7 version by means of clips I've added in, including one scene that we haven't seen (in my videos, at least) yet.
Once again, I'm going to offload a TON of images into a separate document: this post. Most of the artwork in Brookhaven Hospital falls into the category of "way too dour to be in mental patients' rooms," without deeper meaning (that I'm aware of). However, I did find Isle of the Dead and a second hidden Goya, but those are separate discussions. Here's more of the "well, for the record" catalogue:
Jan Mankes' "Woudster road near Oranjewoud." I do think it was chosen because it looks like dried blood splotches (and has a tiny lone figure on the road).
Peder Balke's Nordlys over fire menn i robåt ("Northern Lights over four men in rowing boat"; click for the full-quality image at the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo), which I think is another entry in the "James rows a boat" motif.
Vilhelm Hammershøi's Søndermarken Park in winter (here's the highest quality image I found). When you're walking past it in the game, it simply looks like, "Dead trees, that'll cheer the patients up."
Another Peder Balke Nordlys ("Northern Lights") out in the main area across from the Nurses' Station, on the outer wall of L3. I think you also see another Søndermarken Park in winter out there.
As a bonus, check out this hidden reference to Laura's artwork: the Strange Photo "Her Drawings."
The long answer is complicated by the remake, which had originally planned to make James older:
Lead devs believe the average age of gamers is older nowadays
Fans did not take this well—mostly, I suspect, because they wanted him to look as much like the James they knew as possible. So 2024 James was youthified to something vaguely Not Older before the remake's release, and everybody went about their business. My personal theory is that aging James up was meant to tie into the secret message of the Strange Photos: "YOU'VE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES," specifically the time loop theory interpretation. An interesting artifact of these decisions: the fact that Luke Roberts, the actor playing James in the remake game, is in his 40s, whereas Jeremy Irvine, playing James in the upcoming film adaptation Return to Silent Hill, is in his 30s.
While recording the 7th commentary in the Director's office, I had a fit of brain fog while trying to discuss this painting in a small back room. But I worked hard to edit around that and keep this part in, because I think the back story is incredibly relevant—even if I'm not sure how intentional the use here is.
This is Arnold Böcklin's painting Isle of the Dead. (Looking closely, I think it may be the third version, circa 1883.) Here's the back story of the second version (bolding mine):
In April 1880, while the painting was in progress, Böcklin's Florence studio had been visited by Marie Berna, née Christ (widow of financier Georg von Berna (1836–1865) and soon-to-be wife of the German politician Waldemar, Count of Oriola (1854–1910)). She was struck by the first version of this "dream image" (now in the Kunstmuseum Basel), which sat half completed on the easel, so Böcklin painted a smaller version on wood for her (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City). At Berna's request, he added the coffin and female figure, an allusion to her husband's death from diphtheria years earlier.
I feel like this painting was definitely included for the visuals: the imagery of water and funerary grief; a Madonna-like female figure; a man rowing a boat, much the way James will towards the end of the game; Mary's body actually being in that boat in the "Rebirth" ending. I'll stand by that. What I don't know is whether Bloober Team designers knew about the painting's back story, because to me, it fits in with Mrs. Milley in Wood Side Apartments, the recent widow whose neighbors are worried about her. Once again, it's a gender switch from James to a female mourner, and perhaps a reminder that Mary will never be this widow for him. (If you hear a certain pointedness in my voice when I say, "She'll never be mourning you," you're not imagining that; there's a buried irony here that it's his own fault. But we'll talk about that later.) If the developers didn't know the back story, then it's a really lovely, resonant happenstance.
There's also the fun coincidence that "Marie" is a Mary-esque name, but I think that's way too far down the rabbit hole. On the more superficial end of the interpretation spectrum, all the art hung in Brookhaven Hospital is ridiculously gloomy, so that fits for sure.
While I discuss all of this in the commentaries for videos 7 and 8, I wanted to sort all the scattered documents and hints and implications by subject to get some clarity. James is the only person in Brookhaven Hospital that we know for sure is real (you might or might not count Laura, depending on which theories you believe); the patients and Director may represent himself and/or other people he's encountered in the game. Also, while we're here, let's talk about the nurses:
Patient 0050, symbolizing James
Patient 0090, symbolizing Eddie
Patient 0130, symbolizing Angela
"A Page from a Diary": Mary?
The Director of Brookhaven Hospital
Bubblehead Nurses: The Jacob's Ladder head shake
Bubblehead Nurses: The full discussion
Not to use weasel words, but it's widely believed that the three "hopeless cases" parallel James, Eddie, and Angela in various ways, and so Ian and I are working off that assumption. In the original game, per the fan wiki,
All three of these patients have striking similarities to three of the main characters in the game: Jack Davis is very similar to Angela Orosco, Joshua Lewis is reminiscent to Eddie Dombrowski, and Joseph Barkin shares traits alike to James Sunderland. However, another theory says that all three notes refer solely to James, since all the names begin with the letter "J". Jack represents the part of James who is normally a model person, yet also has suicidal feelings; Joseph displays the part of James who feels guilt and regret for [SPOILER] and the delusions James is immersed in; and Joshua portrays the part of James who feels he needs to be persecuted and also represents his violent self ([SPOILER]).
The three patients in the remake aren't named, removing the "J" theory, and one of the patients is specifically referred to as "she," making the 3:3 parallel stronger. I do still think that all three patients can resonate with James on some level, particularly the use of the word "bliss" with the "Eddie" patient, given that there's a "Bliss" ending, but the remake has put more focus on the patients as three individuals. Ian really spearheaded our efforts to figure this out (I helped!), particularly the idea that the "him" the patients are so afraid of is actually the Director himself.
