The god


 * This article is about the boss from Silent Hill 3. For the entity worshipped by the Order, see God.

"This is God...?
 * —Heather's reaction to the god"

The god, also simply called God, is the final boss of Silent Hill 3, encountered at the end of the chapel. She is the result of a partly-failed ritual to resurrect the deity of the town's religion.

Silent Hill 3
"Looks like God didn't make it!"

- Heather smiling while trying to crush God under her boot

Heather Mason has the resurrected seed of "God" still in her, even after being reincarnated from Alessa Gillespie and having the Incubus removed from Alessa's body almost two decades ago. At seventeen years old, Heather has experienced puberty, her body is capable of childbirth, and inexplicably appears to have the growing baby deity housed in her gastrointestinal tract as opposed to her uterus as is the case for a normal fetus.

To nourish the growing fetus within Heather with hatred and also as seventeen years of revenge for taking Heather/Alessa away, Order high priestess Claudia Wolf has Harry Mason murdered. Claudia torments Heather throughout the game, letting God feed off of her anger, hatred and despair, believing that a deity who is familiar with such emotions would be kinder and more empathetic than one born of happiness.

The birth of God ensures the death of the host mother, which is one reason why Heather is reluctant to give birth to God. However, Valtiel, God's attendant, monitors Heather throughout the game and revives her if she dies, trying to ensure God's birth.



At the end of the game, when Heather finally confronts Claudia, she swallows a capsule of Aglaophotis from her necklace pendant, which then forces God out of her body. After Heather throws up the writhing fetus, she attempts to crush God under her boot. However, Claudia, in a fit of desperation, shoves Heather aside and devours God herself. Claudia is wracked with pain and a similar reddish "rash" that Heather had encountered engulfs her body and is then pulled into a hole by Valtiel below, where Heather follows.

Once Heather reaches the bottom of the hole, she finds that she is in the same room as God, which has grown to gigantic size in an amazingly short period. Valtiel appears once more to shroud God's head before vanishing. Heather sees Claudia's empty robe on the floor and remarks, "You can't be dead! I was gonna kill you!".

After a fight, Heather finally kills the abomination. She kicks God multiple times in the face to ensure She is dead, then drops to the floor and cries in a catharsis, lamenting her father's death.

Appearance


God appears as a huge, half-skeletal being whose face resembles a cracked porcelain mask with the likeness of Alessa Gillespie: Heather's previous incarnation and Claudia's childhood friend. This is likely because the manifestation of God, as previously established in the first Silent Hill, takes on the appearance of what the host, or ritual performer, perceives God to look like. She possesses Alessa's dark, disheveled hair.

Due to God's unnatural and hasty birth, as well as the hate and anger in Heather's heart, She is twisted and malformed, with Her legs lacking flesh and ending at the knees. Her spine and pelvis are visible.

God seems to possess no intelligence, like a baby which has just been born - lacking consciousness, sentience and self-awareness. God does not speak in human language, like most monsters. God roars like a beast, and Her eyes are always closed, implying that She is blind or asleep.

She resembles both Incubus and Incubator, the incarnations of God seen in the end of the first game.

Character


Though only half-formed, this monstrosity is still quite dangerous, towering over other creatures. She is either standing upright with Her head safely encased in the red "veil" hanging from above, or hunched over, immobile. She attacks Heather with Her long arms in wide, sweeping motions. Hoarding ammunition for this final battle would be very helpful, as She has an obscene amount of health. It is also recommended to equip the bulletproof vest, but consider removing the vest when God summons fire since Heather's slower movements make the fire more difficult to avoid.

Melee weapons can be dangerous to use as God automatically takes a very fast swipe at Heather with every hit, either with Her arms or by headbutting. If the player chooses to use a melee weapon, the katana is recommended.

When Heather retreats out of range of God's melee attacks, She summons lines of flame which follow along the half-circle design in the floor and dart towards Heather when she reaches the proper angle. Generally, Her long-range attacks are much easier to avoid than Her melee ones, so firearms are the preferred method for dealing with the creature. Use the handgun to lure God out from her veil, and kill God using the submachine gun or shotgun.



Another method is to use the maul and attack from the side. Once God is leaning forwards, She can be defeated very quickly if the player is positioned directly in front of Her right arm (left from the player's point of view). There is a blind spot here and Her swipes will simply go over the player's head. If the player takes an ampoule and does overhead attacks with the maul, this will deal an incredible amount of damage to Her in very little time. She can be defeated in less than two minutes this way.

Symbolism


Prior to battling God, Heather jumps down a vertical orifice, which might represent a ruptured vaginal introitus, perhaps one that recently had an episiotomy. This suggests an especially violent birth, while the room in which God rests could be seen as the uterus. This may be a metaphor of Heather entering the womb and defeating God before She has the chance and opportunity to be truly "born" into the world. Earlier in the chapel, a is seen of God's followers with a similar-looking orifice in the floor with the caption: "So God hasn't been lost. We must offer our prayers and not forget our faith. We wait in hope for the day when the path to Paradise will be opened." Directly above the hole leading to God is a  of Paradise.

God is fought deep underground, which could be symbolic that God, or at least the Order's god, is linked closer to mankind, Hell, or Earth than someplace celestial such as the sky, Heaven, or cosmos.

Heather's battle against God could be seen as a representation of her overcoming her dark past as Alessa and the desire to purge the influence of the Order from the world.

It is ambiguous if She is truly a divine being that will bring Paradise or merely another monster manifested by the powers of Silent Hill.

God and the Order


God is a manifestation of the Order's namesake deity, yet does not resemble Her in the paintings. She is a powerful god that is much like the Incubus or Incubator, in which She spawns in a physical form determined by the birth mother's thoughts of how she should look.

God can also be symbolic of what the Order, as a whole, truly is: diabolical instead of divine. God shares some physical characteristics with the Incubus/Samael, who even in the Order's beliefs is a demon. They both have similar tan coloration and also a strange, circular breast shape. God's slight, physical sync with Samael may suggest the truth of what any god of the Order would genuinely be: demonic.

God in relation to Heather


For the majority of the game, God was nourished in Heather's womb and by Heather's hate for Claudia. Heather's hate reflects in God's symbolism as a "god of hate". God's monstrous aspect could be due to Heather's thoughts on how the god of such a twisted cult would look - this, combined with the fact that it was Heather's hate and anger that nurtured Her in her uterus, makes it likely that Heather's perception of the god could influence Her eventual appearance, despite the fact that Heather does not birth Her properly. It is unknown how God would have looked or behaved if Heather had properly given birth to Her instead of Claudia.

God in relation to Claudia


Claudia, ultimately, is the mother of God, rather than Heather.

According to Claudia, God will bring a beautiful utopian Paradise where there is no human evil or sin, such as greed, famine, war, pain, or suffering, and everyone will be happy by simply being there and humanity can live in eternal harmony and bliss. Claudia says God's mission is to kill every single human being on Earth and cleanse humanity of its sins with fire. Claudia believes humanity has become too cruel, sick, corrupted, and twisted, even rife with contaminated material and base desires to the point where it needs to be renewed. Whether or not God is able and willing to do this is left in mystery.

God resembles Alessa. Claudia held Alessa very close to her heart, and she may have imagined that God would resemble Alessa as a result. The Order worships and idolizes Alessa as a saint (there is a in the chapel referring to Alessa as "Saint Alessa"), so Claudia would likely worship and idolize Alessa as well.

It is also speculated that God is a morphed and brutally disfigured form of Claudia combined with the power of the unborn fetus, much like the Incubator. If this is true, Claudia has literally become a vessel of God's power and Heather's beliefs could be just a misunderstanding of the actual situation. This also explains the absence of Claudia's corpse. The monster's legs are deformed and bone-like, which can suggest the pains and agony of the birth process - specifically, birthing God in a vulgar way.

God's fire ability is likely influenced by the belief Claudia and Alessa shared that the world "must be cleansed by fire" prior to Her arrival.

Claudia was forced to believe in the Order's god as a child or else she would be physically assaulted by her father Leonard until she would cry and accept that the Order's god is real, submitting to her father's religion. Claudia's violent and abusive childhood surrounding her beliefs of God likely had a result in God's appearance too.

Veil


As in the paintings of God in the chapel, Her status as a divine being is evidenced by the blood-red veil that hangs above Her, and She is impervious as long as She is draped in it.

In some cultures, it is a custom that when a person dies, a veil is drawn over their eyes - this aspect is mentioned in the "Making of Silent Hill 3", but no specific cultures are mentioned. Thus, the veil could be a reference to the concept of "God is dead".

In the cutscene after Heather jumps down the hole, Valtiel is seen covering God's eyes with the veil, which can be seen as a symbol of God "dying" the first time. Throughout the battle, God constantly hides under Her veil and leaves it, symbolic of God cyclically dying and Her rebirth.

The veil may also be symbolic of the placenta, an organ inside of the womb that is vital for the fetus to receive nutrients from its mother, something that could connect to God evidently being malnourished. When spread out, the placenta is also somewhat transparent, supporting the veil possibility.

The veil also may symbolize how concepts of God and religion may blind and prevent human consciousness from evolving and progressing, hence God's head and forehead (where her mind is) being restrained by a veil. This, when considered along with the fact that Her eyes are always shut, could be interpreted as a metaphor for the concept of "blind faith" (contextually, bearing a negative connotation).

God as the Eye of Night


The Book of Lost Memories refers to God as the "Eye of Night". The Eye of Night is a tarot card in the game; however, it isn't actually a real tarot card. The Eye of Night is also referenced in the Tarot Card Puzzle as being "scary and hateful", evoking a "scary and hateful" deity.

This could possibly symbolize how the Order's god isn't real or how the Order's god isn't supposed to exist, but because of the believers' fervent wish for God to exist, She is created. However, this "creation" is by man-made means, and in the case of both the Incubus and the god in Silent Hill 3, has resulted in a horrific nightmare.

The concept of "humanity creating God" instead of "God creating humanity" is also represented in the Order's mythology, in which a man and a woman apparently existed before God did and created God by offering a snake and a reed.

Trivia

 * Because Claudia devoured the fetus, it would have been impossible for it to reach her reproductive system. When asked how God was born, Masahiro Ito stated the fetus is like the chestburster from Alien.
 * Defeating God with a melee weapon will unlock the unlimited submachine gun on a second playthrough.
 * Defeating God in under eight minutes in the Silent Hill HD Collection awards the trophy/achievement "Blasphemy".
 * Ito has stated that God was the hardest model for him to design. The god's face is a reused asset from the Mary boss in Silent Hill 2 and her arms were reused assets from Valtiel and Pyramid Head. Due to development deadlines, he was forced to complete the monster within two days.
 * The song that plays during the fight is "Last Boss Remix".

Gallery
God (boss) Dio (boss)