Silent Hill designer explains origin of Robbie the Rabbit 

The Silent Hill series has featured many iconic character and creature designs throughout its history – one of which is Robbie the Rabbit. Although perhaps not as menacing as Pyramid Head or the Nurses, the anthropomorphic pink Rabbit, with its bloodied face and blown out pupils, has become one of the franchise’s most recognizable mascots. But how did such a character come to be included in Silent Hill’s world? Its creator K.Y. recently shed light on the topic. 

K.Y. is a senior chief designer at Konami Digital Entertainment who has been involved in the Gradius and Silent Hill series (from Silent Hill 2 onwards). In a recent interview with GameSpark, the creator reveals that he was the one to first pitch Robbie the Rabbit for Silent Hill 3. Tasked with creating Silent Hill 3’s atmospheric backgrounds, K.Y. decided to visit real-life ruins to gather reference material for the game. 

But it turns out that Robbie the Rabbit was also born from a real-life observation – as K.Y. recalls that the idea came to him when he saw a rabbit mascot handing out balloons in a kids’ area on top of a train station building in Japan. K.Y. based Robbie on this sight, with the goal of portraying “the abnormal within the normal” through the character. In other words, K.Y. seems to have utilized the spooky effect of taking a normal, even cute part of daily life and making it look like it’s “not supposed to.”

When asked about the response to Robbie the Rabbit, K.Y. says that he was very positively surprised by how much fans came to adore the mascot, as well as by how the creepy bunny has become a common sight among Silent Hill merchandise.