SPOILERS: gregory's gun.

[spookythings]

this may have been discussed elsewhere, but i haven't seen it here, so i thought i'd have a go.

THE REVOLVER

as we all know, there are two guns in the game. one you get in exchange for four perfumes, and is located in the prince and princess's quarters. the other one wen-dih gives you on the front porch as she apologizes for getting everyone killed.

are they the same gun? maybe? jennifer had her rose brooch all along, even though wendy doesn't give it to her until the gingerbread chapter. even though she threw it away in a fit of rage following brown's execution. so its possible that with the fragmented storytelling, the revolver and gregory's gun are one and the same, although we don't officially get gregory's gun until the final chapter. if wendy had it all along, she would have probably hidden it. which brings me to the next part of my theory...

GREGORY'S GUN

supposedly wendy hands it to jennifer in the final chapter, just before stray dog gets her. that seems a little unlikely. i know that the final boss battle is broken up into two parts, one where you have to incompassitate him and the other where you have to dodge his blows until he stops and begs. i also know that wendy entered gregory's house to release jennifer, apparently sneaking in when gregory went outside. but how did she know where gregory's gun was, let alone that he was in posession of one? jennifer could have told her, but we saw the letters and no mention of a gun. i suppose that jennifer could have told wendy when wendy unlocked the door, and wendy offered to retrieve it? at any rate, i'm not buying that wendy just happened to know that 1) gregory had a gun, or 2) gregory would be using that gun on himself. do kids that young even have any real concept of suicide?

STRAY DOG

i'm assuming that gregory killed all the orphans with his bare hands. he did think he was a dog, after all, and when jennifer fights him, he crawls on all fours and swings at her with his fist. i doubt that the first part of that battle actually happened, because no matter how deranged a man is, he probably won't be able to survive 10 minutes of being chopped up with an axe. maybe wendy did lock them in together and jennifer had to evade or even kill him, i'm not sure, but then she wouldn't be able to hear wendy's confession.

no matter. my point is, i don't think that wendy gave jennifer the gun. i think jennifer had it all along, and that she killed gregory when he came after her. she probably didn't want to remember that event as 'hey, you want to hear a funny story? this one time when i was nine years old, i killed a man!' so she decided he killed himself instead.

CONCLUSION

it just makes more sense to me than gregory killing all the others, killing wendy, then chasing jennifer around crying I'M SORRY! I'LL KILL YOU! I'M SORRY! YOU'RE NEXT! I'M SORRY! GET OVER HERE AND DIE! until finally she hands him his gun (in which case she would be a *CENSORED*, because no intelligent person, not even a nine year old, would look upon a man who had just murdered an entire orphanage of children and think to themselves 'this guy could really use a loaded gun!') and he kills himself. it just doesn't add up.

in my humble opinion.

[empressjess]

You know, I don't even know if I buy that he killed Wen-dih. I mean, Gregors is dog-like and so responds to vocal commands...so I'm sure if the psychopathic wonder ordered him to stop, he would've.

And yeah, I really have to think that Jenny is the one who capped Gregors, and Wendy probably didn't apologize at all; it's just easier for Jennifer to think that she did, since we don't like facing the fact that people we once cared about deeply are really heinous, remorseless dog killers.

As for the gun itself, I feel like Wendy did a bit of snooping about the house and probably found it. I don't know that she would've connected it with suicide, but by the time you're ten you usually realize that guns are dangerous weapons. Also, I don't know how it was in the 30's, but now it's pretty rare to own a gun in England, so she maybe thought that taking the gun away would keep him out of trouble? The revolver then was hidden someplace that only Jenny and Wen-dih knew about (since they were still BFF at the time) and when Stray Dog showed up later, Jennifer decided to use it to threaten him.

Maybe?

[cellerikun]

i also know that wendy entered gregory's house to release jennifer, apparently sneaking in when gregory went outside. but how did she know where gregory's gun was, let alone that he was in posession of one? jennifer could have told her, but we saw the letters and no mention of a gun.

Except, we do see mention of the gun in the letters: Wendy writes that she knows "where he keeps that awful thing of his", not to mention her drawing of the pistol in the gingerbread house, or Wendy going directly to it in the chapter where she rescues Jennifer from the locked basement, or Gregory sitting with the gun to his head and mumbling to himself. Saying that Wendy would have no way of knowing about the gun completely disregards the entirety of Wendy's involvement with Gregory, and, to a certain extent, her reasons for "rescuing" Jennifer, who states in her letters that she wasn't in any real danger.

As for Jennifer finding a revolver, that's about as significant to the plot as any other secret weapon in any survival horror game ever, I think (who really psychoanalyzes the golden pipe from Silent Hill 3?), if especially appropriate. It should be noted, however, that Gregory's gun is considerably nicer than Jennifer's revolver, and has engravings on the handle; they really couldn't be the same gun, or Jennifer would remember them being the same.

And my take on the whole Stray Dog killing himself thing is that Jennifer knew that Gregory had problems, but the only time we (and by proxy, Jennifer, because they're her memories) ever see him with a gun to his head is when he's being calm, and saying a homebrew nursery rhyme to himself. Jennifer, at 9 years old, may have thought that by giving him the gun, he would calm down, and the violence would stop. Even if she didn't know he would kill himself, she may have known that the gun was what made him be still, and so giving him his gun (in the manner that one gives an upset child a toy or a pacifier) was the right solution.

Because the game is about Jennifer recovering her memories, it would be self-defeating of the writers to have her come away with false memories after going through the entire process.

[xoleander]

While I didn't get so deep in the game as to get all the perfumes, robots, et al. for the special weapons, you make a good point.

As to your query about whether or not children have a real concept of suicide, Wendy may be much more hardened than we imagined. After having Brown killed and training Gregory to attack the others at the orphanage, she is, at the very least, capable of manipulating people to a scary degree. However, I don't think she meant for any of the children to be killed. My theory is that once she saw what Stray Dog had done, she stepped in to save Jennifer since Wendy had done so wrong by her before.

And she may have seen Gregory through the window of his study toying with his gun. While she may not know whether or not he was going to shoot himself, the fact that he was found in the old basement bedroom with the gun was rather chilling. Perhaps he had been in Jennifer's presence with the weapon and she feared that he would threaten or even kill her with it. Not one hundred percent on that, but throwing it out there.

As to why Jennifer ended up handing the gun to Gregory? I'm still trying to unravel that myself.

EDIT
Cellerikun sheds a lot of light on the scenario. Kudos.

[spookythings]

the only problem i have with her snooping is i would think she'd want to get in, get jennifer, and get the eff out of dodge. of course she was a kid and kids are curious, so maybe she did give herself a tour.

wen-dih, at least according to jennifer's memories (i know... i know.) seemed overcome with remorse and when gregors reached out and picked her up, she sort of just went limp in his hands. so maybe she just let herself go. although that contradicts my earlier suggestion that children don't know much about suicide.

another idea is that wendy, having removed the wig, no longer resembled joshua, whereas jennifer was close enough without a hair piece to pass for him to the point that gregors decided to kidnap her. at the time of the massacre, he may have been under the impression that he was a dog, but crawling on all fours doth not a pitbull make. i think he'd be more likely to respond to visual stimulation, and suddenly he'd be faced with a little girl with short brown hair, and a little girl with chin-length blonde hair, so he'd probably go for wendy. then, as he pauses just long enough to wonder why his son, his only son, is wearing a dress, jennifer tops him.

also, thanks cellerikun, i completely forgot about the mention in the letters and i never got a close enough look at the two guns to see they were different.

[empressjess]

Ooh, I like cellerikun's point; I never would've looked at it that way.

As for Wen-dih, if she's giving up out of remorse because Stray Dog killed everybody (though if she's together enough to beat the crap out of Brown etc. I can't imagine what she thought would happen...maybe he'd just scare everybody back into listening to her?) then I suppose she wouldn't even be giving him commands. And Jennifer does naturally look more like Joshua than Wendy, though the clothing might give Gregors pause had he not been a raving lunatic by that point. Oh people, so reliant on visual stimulation, even though our senses are probably the worst of all animals.

[bucketknight]

Okay, I know I'm gonna rehash some stuff that other people have said, but since I got in late, I'm not about to put in 6 or 7 quotes to dump my 2 cents in.

First off, the ultimate weapon, the revolver. I agree that it does not have to follow the plot. It's just an ultimate weapon. Heck, for all we know there might have been one in the orphanage left by the previous owner or Hoffman might have even had one. Guns are rare nowadays in England after that guy shot up the preschool, and I'm sure during the rebuilding they became rare, but I would imagine any farmer or rural home owner in the 1930's in America or Europe would have a gun if they could afford one. So I don't really think it matters at all in terms of the plot.

As for Gregors killing Wendy, I believe it happened. Since I'm sure Wendy died, and I doubt Jen would kill her. That scene when Stray Dog pulled Wendy back in the orphanage looked really ominous, and Wendy looked pretty resigned to her fate. I believe Gregors did pull her in and maul her; Jen's memory is a bit sanitized here. I think Jen might have 'fought' him in the lobby and maybe he ran into a wall or Jen closed the door on him and he was stuck for a bit. And even though Wendy did some cruel stuff, I believe she can tell what she did was very bad, and realized she needed to set things right. So I can see her giving the gun to Jen, enlisting her help. Remember, Wendy's just a little girl. She's not going to get the resolve to do it herself after seeing all she caused.

And I can also see Jen giving Gregors the gun. When Gregors begs for forgiveness, he might have also asked for Jen to put an end to this, or might have asked for the gun, knowing Jen was aware of what he did with the gun in his living room. When Gregors starts acting human and begs for help, Jen gives him the gun as per his request. That is not all that odd. You must remember that Jen is very distraught at the moment. Everyone in the orphanage is dead, Wendy told her to end Gregor's life, and Gregors is asking for the same after killing everyone. Jen, who has always listened to Gregors before and is currently undergoing immense emotional duress, does what Gregors asks. It's not that odd, because she sees Gregors, not Stray Dog, in front of her. Gregors is the only remaining bit of her past that has yet to be violently taken from her. So it comes as no surprise she is willing to listen; she's not in the state of mind to think of consequences here.

[empressjess]

That just makes it all the more tragic that she watches him kill himself in front of her.

[bucketknight]

Well, that and coupled with everything else would explain why Jen has repressed these memories and allowed them to morph into her weird crazy world.

[jackdyce]

Wendy took the gun when she and Jennifer left the "Gingerbread House." The gun you find in the Aristocrat Lounge (or Prince and Princess chambers... can't really remember the exact title of the secret room) is the gun that Wendy took that day.

The gun Gregory uses, called "Gregory's Gun" is a different gun. The inventory screen confirms this. It wouldn't exactly have been difficult for Gregory to comprehend that he couldn't find his original gun and went out and bought a new one. More than enough time passed to make that believable.

[PrinceJoshua]

I can see that. I was kinda confused on the two different guns. Now it makes sense.