While Silent Hill 2‘s Pyramid Head gets the most attention from fans and media, there’s still a strong contingent that won’t let you forget about Robbie the Rabbit from Silent Hill 3. There’s always been something about that mascot of Lakeside Amusement Park that’s always unnerved people, but his origins were pretty simple.
Robbie The Rabbit’s inspiration came from Kanetake Yasunori or KY, a senior chief designer at Konami Digital Entertainment. In an interview with GameSpark (with a translation by Automaton Media), KY talks about his career at Konami, which includes the Silent Hill franchise.
When asked if there was a specific game that he felt particular attachment towards in his career, KY named Silent Hill 3. “We had to create it in a short development period of just one year after the previous game, Silent Hill 2, ended, so I got permission to go and research ruins and create backgrounds that matched the atmosphere of the game.”
During his research, KY had observed someone in a rabbit costume handing out balloons in a kids’ area on top of a train station building in Japan. With the goal of portraying “the abnormal within the normal” in Silent Hill 3, KY took this idea to Takayoshi “Usagi” Tanaka, the art director for Silent Hill 3, who brought the Robbie the Rabbit character to life.
“At the time, I never imagined that Robbie would become such a beloved character and that he would be turned into so many different kinds of merchandise.”
Robbie’s popularity obviously hasn’t been relegated to just the Silent Hill franchise. In addition to his cameos in subsequent Silent Hill entries, Robbie also appears in Metal Gear Online, as well as Behaviour Interactive’s Dead by Daylight as a costume for The Legion.
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