History Headscratchers / REsidentEvil4

* The only ones that could have warned Leon about the effect of the Plaga in his body were Luis and Ada, both of which were already busy enough recovering the Queen Plaga sample. What if Saddler had simply waited until Luis exposed himself to try and steal it to dispose of him (which actually happened) and let an infected Leon escort an infected Ashley back to USA? When Leon got to Ashley, he still knew little enough to dismiss his symptoms as stress and bad dreams, and things like the Plagas and El Gigante as T-Virus mutated wildlife, and Luis was still far from retrieving the Plaga-suppressing drug. If he had just let them go, they would have been thousands of miles away from the only people who knew how to stop the Plaga. And Saddler blew up his whole plan just to get some ransom money.

* How does the Queen Plaga reproduce? It is the source for the eggs that Los Illuminados inject in their victims and it can even spawn adults. Does that thing secretly have two genders or does she [[Squick get it on with any of the dominant strain-carriers, including Salazar?]]

*** Assignment Ada is not actually a canon part of the story, it's simply an alternate scenario minigame. It isn't supposed to connect with Separate Ways or anything else.

**** The worst part is that it would have been FridgeBrilliance instead if Saddler had just not told them about injecting the two of them with the parasite and just sent his Order after them. This way, if they kill Leon and/or recapture Ashley, fine, they continue with their plan where they left off, if Leon succeeds in escaping with Ashley, then Saddler succeeds in his plan anyway (as for the Queen parasite she needs, he could have one of his agents covertly inject her with one later) and it looks like a geniunely successful rescue. However, by telling them about the Las Plagas he put in them blows the second part out of the water since if they did escape they'd have them removed afterwards and thus destroying what would otherwise be a pretty cunning XanatosGambit, though Luis or Ada probably would have told them about the fact that they were infected and still ruined it anyway, at least Saddler wouldn't have looked like an idiot that way.

**** The worst part is that it would have been FridgeBrilliance instead if Saddler had just not told them about injecting the two of them with the parasite and just sent his Order after them. This way, if they kill Leon and/or recapture Ashley, fine, they continue with their plan where they left off, if Leon succeeds in escaping with Ashley, then Saddler succeeds in his plan anyway (as for the Queen parasite she needs, he could have one of his agents covertly inject her with one later) and it looks like a geniunely successful rescue. However, by telling them about the Las Plagas he put in them blows the second part out of the water since if they did escape they'd have them removed afterwards and thus destroying what would otherwise be a pretty cunning XanatosGambit.

**** The worst part is that it would have been FridgeBrilliance instead if Saddler had just not told them about injecting the two of them with the parasite and just sent his Order after them. This way, if they kill Leon and/or recapture Ashley, fine, they continue with their plan where they left off, if Leon succeeds in escaping with Ashley, then Saddler succeeds in his plan anyway (as for the Queen parasite she needs, he could have one of his agents covertly inject her with one later) and it looks like a geniunely successful rescue. However, by telling them about the Las Plagas he blows the second part out of the water, destroying what would otherwise be a pretty cunning XanatosGambit.

*** But when Ada met Krauser in Separate Ways, she stated that she'd ''already'' reported him dead. So when Ada was on the 'copter and told Wesker that Krauser was dead, Wesker should have replied she'd already told him that. Or something. Seems a bit of a mess.

***** You guys do know that OP is talking about the midget and not the cultleader? Salazar merged with the Queen Plaga with his remaining bodyguard. OP was wondering what Salazar would do in the event that he succesfully killed Leon. He'd be stuck there as a giant plant, probably being bored out of his mind for the rest of his excistence because he can't go anywhere. But since he is ten different shades of crazy, I highly doubt that Salazar would've even thought about that. He was so desperate about killing Leon that he was pretty much willing to do anything within his power to do so.

* Why didn't Saddler just let Leon take Ashley back to America and not tell him about the parasite inside them? Wouldn't it have been more surprising to them when she morphs into a mindless Ganados and turns all of America into ganados.
** That was the plan. Unfortunately, Saddler is an [[SmugSnake egotistical douche]] who didn't think Leon would figure out([[IdiotHero in his clumsy, lumbering way]]) how to extract the parasite. He assumed they would both be his puppets in no time. Ironic, really. [[TakeThat He bitched about Hollywood clichés]], yet he succumbed to [[BondVillainStupidity one of the most obvious tropes in the world.]]

* How excatly was Saddler's plan supposed to work, if I remember, the Plagas is spread through microbes in the air or injecting into the body, turning Ashley into a ganado would have not done anything. She would have killed people but not reanimated anybody.

*** The plan was to inject her with the Plaga, hold her for ransom, then give her back once the ransom was paid. The Plaga probably would have hatched around the same time the ransom was paid, allowing Saddler to control her and plant a Plaga on her, which she would then inject her father with because the man will undoubtedly hug his daughter when he sees her. Once he has control of the President, the rest of the American government will soon follow, then the United States, then the world. Ashley was needed, not because she was some badass fighter, quite the contrary. She was required because she was weak(and thus unable to defend herself from Saddler's Ganados)and because she could get close to those who were actually in power. That was it. As far as Saddler was concerned, that was her sole purpose. The ransom was likely to throw off suspicion(why would terrorists just give the hostage back without a struggle?) as well as for funding when it came to weapons and the like.

*** No one has mentioned his thick Cockney accent? What is this Brit doing in the middle of nowhere, Spain, with an arsenal large enough to fuel a war throughout Europe. Better yet, why doesn't the Ganados just buy weapons off of the Merchant?

** What ''is'' with the Merchant? He's ''definitely'' infected -- he has weird, blotchy, discolored marks around his eyes, oddly luminescent eyes, and his fingers are the same deathly-pale shade you see some of the Ganados take. The real question is why does he sell you things instead of trying to kill you like all the others?

** It's stated in one of the files, that if the infectee has a higher drive in life or something like that, then the plaga facillitates that. Like if they wanted to be a researcher more than anything, it would make them take ForScience UpToEleven Presumably the merchant's drive was get some more cash, stranger.

*** I disagree. When you are playing as Ada, Leon clearly has a range of weapons on him. When you first see him in the village, he has a handgun of some sort. When you run into him in the castle, he is using a TMP. Finally he is using a shotgun against Saddler while you run for the rocket launcher. Or maybe Leon is just that crazy prepared.

*** And bear in mind, there is almost zero acknowledge of his existence by the characters in the game. Compare Leon meeting, say, Luis vs. when he first meets the Merchant. In the former, there's all this sort of "who the hell are you?" and "what the hell are you doing here?" stuff going on, yet in the latter, the Merchant just pops up and beckons you to follow him, and Leon just walks up to him when the game goes to the menu screen. Not to mention the odd locations you'll find him (e.g. standing around at the bottom of Salazar's pit, standing around outside of Salazar's boss chamber, etc.), the fact that you can kill him but you ''can't'' steal his weapons, the fact that he runs the shooting galleries which ''definitely'' are not canon, and all the other "wtf"-questions he inspires.
* When Mendez confronts you in the Shed Of Death outside the village gates, he grabs you by the throat and starts to choke the life out of you. Then he throws you aside, securely locks the doors, turns around and reaches for you. If you don't successfully execute the ActionCommand, he grabs you, chokes you for a few moments and then effortlessly snaps your neck. So why didn't he just do that when he first grabbed you?

*** That actually makes a bit of sense if you look at the scene really closely. Mendez, while choking Leon for the first time, tilts his head slightly(I think I also might've heard a "hmm..." from him), as if sizing him up and considering whether or not to risk letting him go. He probably figured he could catch him again if he needed to and decided to close the shed just in case Leon somehow manages to escape or if Ada(who shot him before in a similar encounter)decides to save his ass again.
*** That....actually makes a huge amount of sense. The look on his face is seems like he's thinking "Huh. Wait a minute. Last time I was in this situation, I got shot by that spy woman and this guy got away. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again."
*** To add a bit more: the last time Leon was being chocked, his eyes turned red, indicating he had a Plaga inside him reacting to the situation. Considering that the Plaga occasionally emerges when the host dies (or is about to), the mentality of the host can be preserved and the quality of its plaga is unknown to us (it was overseen by Sadler himself, after all). Mendez would not want a superpowered Leon-Plaga getting away.

** Personal Opinion: Sexism at work. As Ada is female, the Ganados, in their regressed state and level (or lack) of intelligence may have viewed her as physically weaker, and as such, restraints were unnecessary. If you noticed, Mendez wasn't WITH them when they started doing the sacrifice, meaning that, if they did restrain her, they untied her. Is it still extremely stupid? Yes, but I'm just trying to explain something that happened because the plot said so.

** Ganados may be smarter than Zombies, but unless you are high ranked among Los Illuminados, your brain functions will be diminished due to the low class parasite overtaking your nervous system.

** I didn't expect the rocket to kill him.....too bad it didn't work so well on anyone else

** My view is, Salazar didn't know HOW Leon defeated the Verdugo. All he knows is that the first one evidently wasn't as invincible as he had thought. If he had know it was due to a conveniently placed item, he probably would have just sent the second one.
*** There isn't much point questioning the villains of he series, RE4 and Code Veronica in particular. They're about the level of Saturday morning cartoon bad guys. "Your small time, Saddler!"
*** Well, its actually fun to try and make sense from all the ensuing madness.
* What ''is'' Las Plagas, anyway? ''Resident Evil 5'' might answer this one, but having just played the earlier games and [=RE4=], it's been bugging me for years. The T-virus and other viruses in the series are, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin viruses]], but they talk about Las Plagas as a "parasite", that has "spores", and they call the tentacled, spidery things Plagas like they're macroscopic animals. So, um, what are they? Some kind of crustacean, or annelid, parasitic worms, a mollusk gone horribly wrong or what? This troper's best [[WildMassGuessing wild mass guess]] is that it's some kind of fungus, since some real-life fungi can infect insects with tentacle-like filaments, control their behavior, erupt from the host body and cast long-lived spores. Which sort of answers the question, but it still bugs me that nobody in Resident Evil ever even vaguely says what Las Plagas is.

** I figured they were a sort of parasite. There are numerous creatures that can affect an organisms behavior these were just very unusual/advanced.

* In VideoGame/ResidentEvil4 you're brought to the village at the start of the game by two police officers... Both of whom are presumably killed rather quickly after doing so. However, there doesn't seem to be any indication of an investigation regarding the disappearance of two police officers at all during the course of the game. Granted those two didn't seem to be the greatest examples of law enforcement, but still...

*** Let's not forget that the town of Pueblo and the surrounding area is a very good distance from any other area where there are likely regular police. Even if the police had been informed of the incident the second after it happened it would still take hours to dispatch another group of officers to the location, by which time Leon would be long gone. Even if the police could have arrived in a timetable where they could have reasonably interacted with Leon and Ashley the ganados in the area would've just killed them upon arrival.

** Getting about thirty percent of your bodymass - and most of it consisting of your lungs, heart, and stomach - torn out is kind of beyond the ability of a first aid spray to fix.

*** The games have never shown that the first aid spray can completely restore health under any circumstances. The most it has shown is that the spray can completely cure people who are currently in "danger" according to their status scree. Notice that they can still walk and fight in this condition, which makes them considerably healthier than poor Luis following his disembowelment.

*** You know, if we're going down that route, it's not actually that difficult for a woman to pee into a urinal even without any complex techniques or apparatus. It's extremely unlikely the Ganado's use toilets any more considering how they leave rotten food and corpses just scattered around - bit of a hypocritical situation there.

** Not to mention that he ordered Mendez to capture both Luis and Leon alive (the letter in Mendez's house states this). Great move, letting Leon get chummy with one of the two people who could tell him about the Plaga.Also, if Leon and Ashley had managed to escape the village instead of getting trapped in the castle, Luis wouldn't have had the chance to give Leon the Plaga-suppressant drug, and he would have fallen prey to it in few hours.
*** Which would be a good thing right? The plagas clearly have something of a hive mind going on. The President's Daughter and the Hero of the Hour under your control when you're trying to overthrow the US government (or infect them with plagas) is a brilliant strategic move. Maybe he wanted to make it look difficult but he really did botch his own plan to get Ashley in place all on his own.

* It's constantly emphasized that Saddler needs Ashley alive for his plan. So why are there a bunch of times when the bad guys try to kill her? (e.g. Salazar's spiked ceiling, the drilling machine, the soldiers in the bulldozer sequence)

* One thing that has always bugged me was when Leon had just killed the creature in the lake. The rope had been originally tied to the boat and yet the rope somehow ends up wrapped around his foot just in time for the cutscene. If the rope was always loose, it should have pulled him out of the boat long before he can kill the creature so what gives?
** More to the point, how exactly is it that a tiny boat and one man's leg are able to support the weight of this sinking creature? I may not have majored in physics, but I know that bouyancy is all to do with the mass/weight of an object being less than the volume of water it's displacing- I would say that Del Lago's weight pulling down for even have a second would have either powdered his leg like dry leaves or pulled that boat down quicker than leon could say "glbllblblbllblglbllb"
* The only ones that could have warned Leon about the effect of the Plaga in his body were Luis and Ada, both of which were already busy enough recovering the Queen Plaga sample.What if Saddler had simply waited until Luis exposed himself to try and steal it to dispose of him (which actually happened) and let an infected Leon escort an infected Ashley back to USA? When Leon got to Ashley, he still knew little enough to dismiss his symptoms as stress and bad dreams, and things like the Plagas and El Gigante as T-Virus mutated wildlife, and Luis was still far from retrieving the Plaga-suppressing drug.If he had just let them go, they would have been thousands of miles away from the only people who knew how to stop the Plaga. And Saddler blew up his whole plan just to get some ransom money.

** Playing separate Ways reveals that Ada finished Krauser off herself after he ran from Leon

** Playing separate Ways reveals that Ada finished Krauser off herself after he ran from Leon

* In the closing cutscene for ''Assignment Ada'', Ada tells Wesker that Krauser's dead. He didn't die in my game, just threw a flash grenade and vanished, just like he did with Leon. No death scene. So why did Ada report Krauser dead to Wesker?

*** It's hot, but not as much as the a red cheongsam under ideal conditions.

* At the start of the Tower in Ch. 4-4, Salazar states, "''The sacred rite that's about to begin will endow the girl with magnificent power.''" Upon meeting him again at the top of the tower Salazar says, "''Aaah, you just missed her. The ritual is over.''" The only thing different about Ashley on the Island is that the first cutscene will show her in the popstar costume, if she's wearing it in game. (At least, in the [=PS2=] version of the game.) The ability for her to control other Ganados makes the most sense, and could have been awesome in combat. Too bad they ignore this wonderful opportunity.

** RuleOfFunny.

** More to the point, how exactly is it that a tiny boat and one man's leg are able to support the weight of this sinking creature? I may not have majored in physics, but I know that bouyancy is all to do with the mass/weight of an object being less than the volume of water it's displacing- I would say that Del Lago's weight pulling down for even have a second would have either powdered his leg like dry leaves or pulled that boat down quicker than leon could say "glbllblblbllblglbllb"

* ResidentEvil4 was my first RE game. Lots of fun. But, um, what's the deal with the Merchant? How does he get there? How does he survive in Ganado-infested Spain? There aren't safer, more efficient uses of his talents?

* [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse ...What happened to the Plaga sample Ada retrieved?]] (Sorry if this ended up being brought up in ResidentEvil5. Haven't played it.)

* In ResidentEvil4 you're brought to the village at the start of the game by two police officers... Both of whom are presumably killed rather quickly after doing so. However, there doesn't seem to be any indication of an investigation regarding the disappearance of two police officers at all during the course of the game. Granted those two didn't seem to be the greatest examples of law enforcement, but still...

* In ResidentEvil4, Leon passes out after getting past Del Lago. When he awakens, he finds an anonymous note telling him that, among other things, the author couldn't help Leon with his parasites. At this point, Leon has exactly two allies who could have left the note: Luis and Ada. Luis had pills that could suppress Las Plagas, which contradicts the the message. Separate Ways shows that Ada was K.O.'d after shooting Mendez and didn't wake up until the cabin battle. So, who left the note?

* Early on in ResidentEvil4, you can surprise a Ganado in the bathroom. In the main game it's a man, but in Separate Ways it's a woman. Why does this Just Bug Me? The only facility is a urinal.

* One thing that has always bugged me was when Leon had just killed the creature in the lake. The rope had been originally tied to the boat and yet the rope somehow ends up wrapped around his foot just in time for the cutscene. If the rope was always loose, it should have pulled him out of the boat long before he can kill the creature so what gives?

* Not a Headscratcher in the plot hole sense so much as an "I wonder" sort of way, but what exactly do Ganados do when they're not under Master-Plagas-orders to kill everyone in sight? As far as I'm aware, there's nothing that makes them inherently violent, and among other things, potentially getting their hosts killed is probably counterproductive to their survival. And what's it like from the human's perspective? They still maintain their human intelligence (albeit probably at a loss of a couple dozen IQ points) and we've even seen a cutscene with two Ganados having a conversation and joking around (Separate Ways). Is it some kind of mind-meld where the Plagas and human now share the ''same'' consciousness?