22 years on, the designer behind Silent Hill 3's "cute but scary" Robbie the Rabbit mascot is still obsessed with the "tiny but grotesque" – and so am I

You arrive at the abandoned Lakeside Amusement Park, with a switchblade stretching out from your hand and no memory of how it got there. Surrounding you are limp, pink rabbits with blood smeared like lipstick over their carrot-eating grins.

Thank God you're playing Silent Hill 3, and protagonist Heather Mason is simply having a bad dream. Those rabbits weren't as nauseating as the decomposing monsters waiting in the rollercoaster line, but the now infamous Robbie the Rabbit mascots encapsulate what makes Silent Hill 3 an unparalleled survival horror experience even 22 years after its release date: it's "cute but scary," as Robbie's designer Takayoshi "Usagi" Tanaka tells me in an interview translated by Junko Okada.

To Usagi Tanaka – usagi うさぎ means "rabbit" in Japanese – "cute but scary" seems like a code by which one may live honestly. He made a habit out of always carrying a finger-sized Robbie with him, and, at the moment, the artist makes soft vinyl zombie bunny figurines he says are inspired by Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero. "In the future, I want to design more characters that are a little scary but still cute and turn them into soft vinyl figures," Tanaka continues.

Dawn of the rabbit

Tanaka stumbled into his role as the bunny whisperer by accident. He joined the Silent Hill 3 team halfway in its production as a background designer, and didn't design and model Robbie until the game was nearly done.

"I remember we needed to create a 'mascot-style rabbit' lying down in [Lakeside Amusement Park]," Tanaka says. "However, as the production was at its climax and everyone was busy, no one had time to create it. Since I always had a strong desire to create a character, I volunteered to do so."

"I volunteered because I wanted to do it," Tanaka continues, "but I struggled with the design and the pressure was intense, too. Many people supported me back then, and I'm still grateful to them. Even now, the experience of creating Robbie continues to benefit me."

Tanaka and the red-eyed, bowtie-wearing creep Robbie soon became inseparable.

"I was able to have Robbie included in almost every [Konami] title I worked on," Tanaka says, like as a hidden outfit in the PS2 ARPG The Sword of Etheria, a mask in Metal Gear Online for PS3, and as a supportive audience member in Dance Masters for Xbox 360 Kinect.

"Even now, I'm still supervising the prototype and package art for the [Japanese figurine retailer] Grecco's Robbie statue," Tanaka continues. Though, "in addition to Robbie the Rabbit, Lakeside Amusement Park has three other mascot characters" – such as Dawn the Duck and Huey the Horse, both of which undeniably have unfocused eyes that seem to suggest some homicidal impulse. "I daydream about getting the chance to design them someday."

"I like characters based on small animals," Tanaka explains. "They are easy to give contrasts such as [...] 'tiny but grotesque.' I especially like squirrels." But rabbits are good because of "the movement of twitching its nose."

"Don't you think blondes have more fun?"

In many mythologies, rabbits represent luck or rebirth. Silent Hill 3 is practically a torture device for protagonist Heather, who experiences tragedy in the game about uncovering her true self almost as often as she blinks, but I think Robbie the Rabbit is a replenishing symbol in her nightmares, too (spoilers ahead!).

Heather's old soul has been abused for so long, she doesn't even know when it started; over the course of Silent Hill 3, as Heather's buried memories resurface at the sight of old classrooms, hospital beds, and her dead father's cold corpse, she begins to understand herself as something like a self-contained ecosystem.

24 years ago, she was Alessa Gillespie, the violently beaten daughter of a cultist who thought Alessa might give birth to Silent Hill's hateful god. Instead, Alessa's spirit split apart from the pain, reincarnating as Cheryl Mason, who is later reborn, renamed, and raised as Heather.

"I'm not Alessa anymore," Heather contemplates, "but Alessa is still me. I'm not really trying to deny it or anything… I just… don't want to remember."

Heather lives in a seemingly limitless state of rabbit-like rebirth. God is still in her stomach. She's her own mother and child in a literal way that would make Meredith Brooks jealous, so she's the ultimate princess to me and lots of other female gamers, who think of Heather – unlike many male heroes, who lead with brawn – as the pinnacle of a furiously rich inner-life. Misery never fully breaks her, it's only ever absorbed or worn with pride. I aspire to that level of emotional strength, but it's sad that each fresh chance at existence for Heather is cherry-stained with blood… or observed by that unblinking weirdo Robbie the Rabbit.

"I think mascot characters in amusement parks tend to look kind of creepy and unsettling when they are in costumes," Tanaka says. "It's probably a shared impression across any country. And when you place them in Silent Hill’s world, especially in the bloody and rusty amusement park in Otherworld, that impression is even more pronounced."

But since everything else in Silent Hill 3 seems to want to either rip apart your flesh or sacrifice it, the unmoving Robbie mascots also feel like unofficial safe zones. He is a bunny wearing overalls, at the end of the day. Though his mouth is smeared with mystery gore, it's easy to feel like you can trust him – maybe he was munching on strawberries!

On my first Silent Hill 3 playthrough, I was almost surprised by how comfortable I felt around Robbie (I say "almost," because I'm a firm believer in spooky sweetness, and I plan to one day build a taxidermy collection as varied as my shelves full of dolls).

Equally unexpectedly, through her suffering – even when she eventually enters the real, rusted Lakeside Amusement Park to be surrounded by slumped Robbie suits and literally battle herself, the Memory of Alessa doppelgänger – Heather continues to cope with coquettish charm.

"Don't you think blondes have more fun?" she says in the last line of Silent Hill 3's standard ending. As the player, having finished witnessing tremendous amounts of cosmic horror, part of you wants to scream um, no!

Still, it's Heather's ability to maintain her humor, bleach-dyed hair, and revulsion for the unjust world around her – in other words, her talent for being a teenage girl – that make Silent Hill 3 unlike any other survival horror game. Instead of making Silent Hill 3 feel like unrelenting, somewhat laborious torment – like a more self-serious title – Heather's attitude categorizes Silent Hill as startlingly familiar. It's a place where you inexplicably want to take your shoes off. As a New Yorker, I react similarly to the New York City setting in Rosemary's Baby; like Heather, like Rosemary, I'd be laugh-crying if my apartment suddenly descended into hell, too.

It's a creepy cute situation. It's like a beloved childhood teddy bear missing one of his button eyes. Or a birthday party clown whose smile is too wide, or a Venus fly trap sucking on a mealworm. Creepy cuteness is recognizable and rotten, both inviting and fanged – and without Heather and Robbie the Rabbit acting as proof of that magnetic power in Silent Hill 3, I wouldn't let it consume me.

Famed Silent Hill artist Masahiro Ito, creator of Pyramid Head, says scrapped concepts of freaky creatures "still exist in my mind" and "their children may be" used in future titles.