Resident Evil/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Games

  • Cash Cow Franchise: Resident Evil is one of Capcom's most popular and successful franchises.
  • Doing It for the Art: One scene in the remake has a closeup of Wesker's boot, which shows that the top buckles are not laced up. In the same game, the character select shows that for Chris' police ID, a coin is stuck in the clear plastic where the photo is. He'll also fire a shotgun from the hip, but when fighting bosses decides it's time to stop monkeying around and shoot properly from the shoulder instead.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • "The Resident of Evil Creek", taken from a hilariously out-of-touch judge's opinion on the First Amendment rights of video games.
    • Some fans have dubbed Alfred's "Alexia" persona as "Alfrexia".
  • Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • The Other Darrin:
    • Chris Redfield: "Charlie" (FMV scenes)/Scott McCulloch (Resident Evil); Michael Filipowich (Code: Veronica X); Joe Whyte (REmake) Roger Craig Smith (Resident Evil 5, The Darkside Chronicles, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, The Mercenaries 3D, Revelations).
    • Jill Valentine: "Inezh" (FMV scenes)/Una Kavanagh (Resident Evil); Catherine Disher (Nemesis); Heidi Anderson (Resident Evil remake); Patricia Ja Lee (Resident Evil 5, The Umbrella Chronicles, The Mercenaries 3D); Kari Wahlgren (Marvel vs. Capcom 3); Michelle Ruff (Revelations).
    • Barry Burton: Barry Gjerde (Resident Evil); Ed Smaron (Resident Evil remake); Jamieson Price (Resident Evil 5, The Mercenaries 3D).
    • Rebecca Chambers: "Linda" (FMV scenes)/Lynn Harris (Resident Evil); Hope Levy (Resident Evil remake); Riva Di Paolo (Resident Evil Zero); Stephanie Sheh (The Umbrella Chronicles, Resident Evil 5, The Mercenaries 3D).
    • Albert Wesker: "Eric" (FMV scenes)/Sergio Jones (Resident Evil); Richard Waugh (Code: Veronica X, Resident Evil 4, Wesker's Report); Peter Jessop (REmake), D. C. Douglas (The Umbrella Chronicles, Resident Evil 5, The Darkside Chronicles, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, The Mercenaries 3D).
    • Leon S. Kennedy: Paul Haddad (Resident Evil 2); Paul Mercier (Resident Evil 4, The Darkside Chronicles, Degeneration); Dave Wittenberg (Operation Raccoon City).
    • William Birkin: Diego Matamoros (Resident Evil 2); T.J. Rotolo (The Umbrella Chronicles, The Darkside Chronicles, Operation Raccoon City).
    • Sherry Birkin: Lisa Yamanaka (Resident Evil 2); Laura Bailey (The Darkside Chronicles); Eden Riegel (Operation Raccoon City).
    • Carlos Oliveira: Vincent Corazza (Resident Evil 3); Kim Strauss (The Umbrella Chronicles); Gideon Emery (Operation Raccoon City).
    • Nicholai Zinoviev: Roger Honeywell (Resident Evil 3), Rick D. Wasserman (Operation Raccoon City).
    • Steve Burnside: Bill Houston (Resident Evil 3); Sam Riegel (The Darkside Chronicles).
    • Alfred Ashford: Peter Oldring (Code: Veronica); Richard Cansino (The Darkside Chronicles).
    • Alicia Ashford: Leila Johnson (Code: Veronica); Karen Strassman (The Darkside Chronicles).
    • Subverted with the voice actors for Claire Redfield and Ada Wong, as they have been voiced by their same actors (Alyson Court and Sally Cahill respectively) for the entire series.
      • Mostly subverted in Ada's case. She was darrin'd by an uncredited voice actress in The Umbrella Chronicles, but returned to the role in The Darkside Chronicles... only to be darrin'd again in Operation Raccoon City by Courtney Taylor.
      • Jim Ward (Krauser) also holds the distinction of reprising his role, although this can be chalked up to Krauser originating in an era where most of the VAs were consistent and Krauser's limited number of appearances throughout the series (Resident Evil 4, The Darkside Chronicles, The Mercernaries 3D). The same can be said of Salli Saffioti (Ingrid Hunnigan in Resident Evil 4 and Degeneration).
  • Playing Against Type: A surprising number of characters throughout the series (particularly in Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4) are voiced by actors who previously only appeared in children's entertainment.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • The original versions of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4, known as Resident Evil 1.5 and Resident Evil 3.5 respectively. Both versions were scrapped due to the developers being unsatisfied with the direction they were taking. One of the scrapped Resident Evil 4 ideas had Leon going through a castle fighting living dolls. Which was deemed too "supernatural" for a series based on science. The two versions of Resident Evil 4 before that got retooled into Devil May Cry (the "Stylish" build) and Haunting Ground (the "Castle" build), respectively. At one point, according to an interview with the actor who played Leon, Leon was actually supposed to be killed as a result of the virus mutating inside of him, but this tested poorly even among Capcom executives and the idea was scrapped (Paul Mercier was kept, much to his delight, however).
    • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was originally going to be a a side story set in Raccoon City, involving civilians trying to escape. A game titled Resident Evil 3 was in development at the same time by Hideki Kamiya's team, and involved HUNK on a cruise ship (following from Resident Evil 2's story). The escape story then got an upgrade to a main game and Jill was added as the main character, while Kamiya's Resident Evil 3 got scrapped, and he and his team moved onto what would become the first version of Resident Evil 4. This meant that the number 3 was now free for Jill's game, and the game was titled Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, just in time before being released as Resident Evil 1.9 instead.
    • In 2001, Capcom announced that the Resident Evil franchise was going to be exclusive for the Nintendo GameCube. In addition to straight ports of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and Code Veronica X, a total of two new games (one of which was the Resident Evil remake) were released (and remained) exclusive to Nintendo's consoles; Resident Evil 4 was also anounced as a GameCube exclusive before Capcom decided that due to poor sales of Resident Evil Zero and the Resident Evil remake, they would release the game on the PlayStation 2 as well.
    • And then Resident Evil 5 wasn't even released on a Nintendo console...
    • The title may have changed, but Code Veronica is still the direct sequel to Resident Evil 2.

Movies

  • Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Money, Dear Boy: Milla Jovovich flat out admits that this is why they made a 4th live-action movie. True for the fifth as well (to a degree).
  • Shout-Out: The Red and White Queens, the main character named Alice, the fact that the entrance to the hive was behind a mirror (known less commonly as a looking glass). Do the math.
    • A character is named K-Mart, because she was found in a K-Mart.
    • When she encounters Alice Jill demands, "Who the fuck are you?" The Steppers released a rather infamous remix called Who the Fuck is Alice? in 1995.
  • Shown Their Work: Sienna Guillory, the actress who played Jill, actually watched footage of RE3 and mimicked many of Jill's movements in order to get her character right.
  • Throw It In: The first movie was not supposed to have the little nudity it did, according to the DVD commentary. Apparently, Milla Jovovich had a Wardrobe Malfunction twice in the same movie. It was left in.
  • What Could Have Been: George A. Romero wrote a screenplay for and was to direct the first film. It was thrown out entirely when he was kicked off the project. Capcom thought that, while Romero's script was close, it wasn't a full adaptation of the game, and they believed fans would complain about the changes while newcomers would dislike the premise. But confusion sets in when they approved Paul W. S. Anderson's script even though it's a much, much farther cry from Resident Evil.[1] Admittedly, there were a few head-scratch-inducing changes in the Romero script (Chris, for example, was turned into a Native American civilian who lived in the mansion and was dating Jill), but all in all, it felt like Resident Evil.It just seems funny that Capcom denied the script for a Resident Evil movie by George A. Romero considering the series is more or less a homage to Romero's work.
    • The fourth film would originally have had a different story, including Leon Kennedy from the video games. Jensen Ackles was in talks to play him.
    • The White Queen from the third film would originally have appeared in the first (one of the older scripts for the Alice version, not the Jill and Chris).
    • LJ was originally supposed to be played by Snoop Dogg rather than Mike Epps.
    • Had Sienna Guillory not been preoccupied with the Eragon movie, Jill would have fulfilled Claire's role in Extinction. Her dropping out of the third movie caused an entire subplot to be removed, in which Jill is hostile and untrustful towards Alice, due to Alice apparently killing Angie between films while under Umbrella's control. This subplot would have culminated with Jill being infected by a zombified Carlos, and sacrificing herself if the tanker the way Carlos does in the finished script.
  1. In as few words as possible, Romero's script was a rough adaptation of the first game and included all of the main characters, while Anderson's was a completely original story that featured all new characters, and whose only connection to the games was Umbrella, the T-virus and zombies.