History Headscratchers / ResidentEvil

'''Note:''' ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil0'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil1'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil2'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvilGunSurvivor'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil4'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil5'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvilMercenaries3D'', and ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil6'' all have their own pages. Consider putting Headscratchers there first, if your question is only about something in one of those games before putting it here.

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[[folder: The series]]

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[[folder: The Paul W.S. Anderson movies]]
* Why on Earth did Umbrella reopen the Hive? When they knew full well it underwent lock-down to quarantine the spreading virus away from the rest of the world? [[TooDumbToLive Why would they deliberately circumvent their own fail-safe]]?
** Well they still don't know precisely what went on down there. The entire team that was sent down there to find out are dead. I don't think they knew exactly why it was suddenly locked down in the first place and they sent the team down to find out.
** Matt is being put in the Nemesis program, which suggests that they still want to continue the research and development of viral weaponry. So to continue that research, they need to find out exactly what happened in the Hive and why so they can establish what not to do next time.
* In ''Extinction'', at the end of the movie, we are shown that [[spoiler:Alice survives, thanks to her clone waking up.]] After promptly telling off the Umbrellaheads, we are shown that [[spoiler:there are ''loads'' of Alice clones in there.]] But, if Dr. Issacs really WAS making modifications [[spoiler:to the clones]] to try to make a cure for the T-virus, why would he have an extraordinary amount of [[spoiler:Alice clones]] on hand? You can't make modifications to them without exposing them to the T-virus, in which case, since the clones are imperfect, given that the entire movie is about Umbrella [[spoiler:trying to catch the original Alice]], will probably just make more zombies? FridgeLogic indeed.
** You're forgetting a crucial element of the movies: The only "logic" being used is "[[GodModeSue How can we make Alice seem more awesome]], [[BlackHoleSue even at the cost of all the rest of the plot?]]"
** Dr. Isaacs wasn't trying to create a cure for the T-Virus, that was just his lie to the Umbrella heads. He was trying to make himself a loyal army which he could use to beat the crap out of the zombies and take over the world. He wasn't infecting the Alice clones with the T-Virus, he was sending them into Battle simulations to try and re-create the perfect soldier. In fact, they seemed to be immune, as many of them were gnawed on by zombies and thrown into the outdoor pit without resurrecting. The fast zombies that he used to kill the survivor convoy was his backup plan.
* The first film
** If the T-virus was released in a single lab, why did the Red Queen seal up the entire complex and kill everyone in it, instead of closing off that ''one'' area?
*** The T-virus got into the ventilation system. It's likely even the Red Queen couldn't predict how far it would spread and considered quarantining the entire Hive as the safer option.
** If concentrated T-Virus is so transmissible that a biosafety suit is needed to work with it, why doesn't the laboratory have a separate air circulation system?
*** The answer to both of the above is that '''It's Umbrella.''' Apparently someone in the company's management refuses to believe in OH&S and makes sure no inspectors come to point out these flaws. In the entire game series, every Outbreak involving Umbrella's facilities are complete accidents that could have been very easily avoided; the movie series takes a little bit of that into account.
** The "It's [[StupidEvil Umbrella]]" handwave doesn't quite work here because the virus in the games wasn't airborne, while in the movie it is. Just for the sake of saving money on training replacement personnel, you'd think they'd have some sort of quarantine procedure for shit like that.
*** To be fair the AI logic wasn't great either, it is shown at the crux point of the movie that they were ACTIVELY making a cure for inital infection stage T-virus, and it works, if the RQ had any sense of actual logic, it would of locked down the place yes, but then informed the staff that an outbreak may have occoured and to go get shot up with the cure, or at least inform the head supervisors of the hive to round everyone up for the cure. it goes against logic to do "lets kill everyone infected as they will turn anyway and possibly get out if anyone does exactly what happened in the movies.
** There is a possibility that Umbrella didn't know the T-virus could transfer to aerial infection at that point in time - the experiments are still being done on it. But any lab that requires safety suits would also have its own separate air system - so perhaps the whole corporation was run by stupid rich billionaires who wanted to develop this technology but didn't follow the proper safety protocol.
** Rain says she has a single cartridge left in the chamber of her pistol and an extra mag. So why not drop the empty mag now and not worry about fumbling a reload later?
** After most of the team was killed in the Red Queen's LaserHallway, why didn't Alice and Spence pick up their weapons and ammunition?
*** The laser hallway cuts through steel like butter (note the leader's knife). Most of the equipment was probably destroyed when it did the final grid sequence.
*** At the point in time when they make their way back, they don't know about the zombies. So in an underground bunker that appears to be deserted - they see no need in picking up the weapons. On a more human level, they possibly didn't like the idea of raiding corpses for weapons they don't think they'll need. When they return to the Queen's chamber, all the bodies have vanished along with their weapons (unless the weapons were there and they did take them without saying anything).
* Why does Nemesis still have orders to eliminate S.T.A.R.S. members in the film? If the events of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' never happened in the movies (and it's never even hinted that they did), then none of them has any knowledge to suppress about Umbrella's chicanery.
** That one at least has a point to it; it's a test. I don't remember the line but Mr. Evil Scientist said that the S.T.A.R.S. are the best of the best and they want to see if Nemesis can take them.
*** Except that Nemesis had just been equipped with a minigun so powerful that ''anyone'' could have taken the S.T.A.R.S. guys down with it. Really, the "test" was far more a test of the minigun than the giant dude lugging it around.
** And it actually is hinted that the first game happened. Jill knows about the zombies. Despite the fact that ANYONE in the real world would see "they didn't go down after two shots to the chest; SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD" in the universe of the films, this is something one only realizes after having dealt with them firsthand.
* Why go to all the trouble of recreating the Hive's facade ''and'' dressing the Alice clones exactly like her for that "training exercise"? [[NoFourthWall Did Umbrella know the audience was watching and just wanted to screw with them?]]
* Where the hell did the world's water all go? It didn't evaporate and the Earth hasn't got enough room under the crust to swallow it all up. Better yet, ''how the monkey fuck did a '''virus''' make that happen?!''
** Considering the very same movie that shows this ends with a heavy downpour in Japan, and that lack of water is never an issue in the following sequels, best just to ignore that line; the audience doesn't owe this particular plot device any more thought than the writers evidently gave to it.
* How did they fit [[spoiler:over 2,000 survivors in that ship?]]
* [[spoiler:Why did they give a whole bunch of people P-30 injectors? It's too inefficient in [[=RE5=]] to be used on more than just Jill.]]
** [[spoiler:And also, why are all of the injectors really visible? The most glaring one in particular is Jill's, since she's apparently going into combat with it in plain sight on the exposed part of her chest.]]
* For the first movie, why the hell did they build their vast testing facilities ''underneath'' Raccoon City? What was the point? If they wanted to keep it relatively close to Raccoon City (for unknown reasons), wouldn't it have been far safer and more economical to build twenty or thirty miles away? Were they actively trying to set everything up so that if a virus got out, it would be in the best possible position to wipe out the country? The only way they could have actually been more idiotic is if they had decided to put testing facilities in D.C and New York.
** ''The only way they could have actually been more idiotic is if they had decided to put testing facilities in D.C and New York.'' The 4th movie shows they had an even larger facility under Tokyo. So the answer to any question that starts "Could Umbrella be so stupid as to..." is "Yes. Yes they were." I mean, they set up the Hive to have these super awesome viral containment facilities and then forced their way through the defenses TWICE.
** What the above troper calls "stupid", I call "deliberate". They planned to spread the T-virus all over the world. It was just some unlucky spanner in the works that the virus got sprung prematurely under Raccoon City, to the point where certain individuals (*cough*Alice*cough*) could withstand and defeat them.
*** Based on what we hear from the movies, they never had any intention of spreading it across the planet.
*** [[spoiler: Well, now thanks to the last film, we know that is indeed what they planned to do.]]
** Not that I'm defending the first movie, but an underground facility actually makes a lot of sense for a project like that. An underground lab has very few ways in or out, and ''all of them'' are completely under Umbrella's control. An above-ground facility would have windows, back doors, etc. Lots more opportunities for someone to sneak in or out, or for a virus to get loose and contaminate the surrounding area. And remember, the ONLY REASON the T-Virus got out in the movie was due to deliberate sabotage. If it hadn't been for that, their security measures would have worked perfectly. So really, Umbrella's real mistake (in the movie continuity at least) was not doing better background checks.
*** Not OP here, but you're not quite getting the point. The issue isn't with the fact that the facility was underground, it's that it's been built straight underneath a ''densely populated city''. The facility, manufacturing a deadly virus that turns people into zombies, was built underneath a city with a population in the millions. Why not build it a few miles away in the dense, sparsely populated woods and mountain ranges situated around said city?
*** Because the company came first, and the city came later. Umbrella didn't move into Raccoon City so much as Raccoon City sprung up around Umbrella. It was a company town.
*** Needless to say, the same can't be said for the various Hives under city capitals, but I think by that point the series was starting to lose its way anyways.
** Having the Hive under Raccoon City also makes surveillance easier for Umbrella. The employees will presumably be living in the city because it's closer to where they work, which means the majority of employees they need to keep tabs on are in the one place. Additionally, the mansion seems to be a little outside the city, or at least far away enough from the centre of it - so there's not that big a chance of random passersby happening across the entrance.
* In Afterlife, the plane Alice is flying is so low on fuel she barely even makes it to the roof of the prison. All the other characters see the engine sputtering and the plane barely maintaining altitude. Yet the second she lands, they are all demanding that she fly them away, and when the producer steals the plane, it somehow flies away with no problem. What?
** Sounds like a PlotHole to me.
*** For starters, they were assuming she was from Arcadia when they saw her on the roof, so they naturally assumed she could get them there somehow. As for why it flies perfectly later, she probably had spare fuel with her if she was expecting to fly a lot, and the plane almost crashed anyway (and did crash on the boat latter). The problem wasn't with the plane flying, it was that landing on the rooftop was kinda impractical.
*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaIhQFDdcJM Here's the scene itself]]. The plane is clearly low on gas, you can hear the engine sputtering and a flashing red light of doom which could only be the fuel light in context. Even if you assume that the drums are full of gasoline (Why would they be? And why would they be up there?), and assume it was of a type to run that engine (AscendedFanon), the landing should have wrecked the plane. She smashed through a concrete wall, the prop blades should have smashed themselves to bits.
*** Well she could of had spare fuel in the storage compartments, it would be very stupid to go flying around the world without the foresight to keep extra fuel around (especially since she was in a makeshift airfield just before then, with all those planes' fuel just going to waste). So that covers the fuel aspect. For the rest of it.....duct tape? And we even see the plane doesn't survive its second flight, crashing on Arcadia. So to answer the original troper's argument; the survivors thought she was from Arcadia when she arrived and assumed she could arrange transport somehow, and the plane only just barely made it to Arcadia anyway.
*** Also, since when did people who are '''''desperate to avoid a gruesome, horrifying death''''' care much for logic? Especially when hope, no matter how irrational, presents itself? It's like a drowning person grabbing someone trying to pull them out of the water, causing the would-be lifeguard ''and'' the original victim to drown.
*** So if they did brought those invisible fuel tanks (seeing how they are never shown carrying any fuel)then why the hell did they wait until the plane nearly crashes(due to lack of fuel) before they decide refill it? are they idiots? That fuel would be useless if their plane crashes, that and they'll most likely die. Also it's stupid to think a person can fix a damage plane engine with duct tape.
*** We never see Alice or Claire eat in the plane, that doesn't mean that they didn't have any food (and considering the distance between Alaska and California there is no way they didn't have at least something to eat), so the same goes for spare fuel (which you would keep in the cockpit with you rather than outside where it could get knocked off. And the plane's engine was never damaged (as it was a half wall that came up to the survivors waist, which would have been just below where the blades would reach down to). If we're talking about how the blades should have been broken, technically they should have been broken when it started chopping up zombies but we have a whole trope about how that's an acceptable break from reality. It should also be pointed out that the distance by plane between the prison and Arcadia is only a few minutes and it still crashed, which is illustrating that all Alice pulled off was a quick fix that would have only suceeded in getting someone away from the prison and to the ship.
* Why are the zombie dogs in the first movie skinned?
** The effects of the T-virus has different effects on different organisms. When the dogs became zombies, they ripped off their skins when they escaped their kennels.
** And yet there are no ripped shreds of skin on that kennel Alice saw torn open from inside.
** I thought they ripped their skins in the process of forcing themselves through the metal grates...
* That truck that collides with the car carrying Angela in ''Apocalypse''. Why did it just keep going like nothing happened? Was the driver intoxicated? If that were the case, wouldn't he have at least slowed down or swerved out of control after ramming into the car? Was he infected [[DeadFootLeadFoot or killed, and his foot was stuck on the gas pedal]]? The virus would have only just hit the city, so how could it have happened? Or was he just some random asshole who did it [[ForTheEvulz just for the hell of it]]?
** It's a RE2 reference, in the game the main characters initially got split up by a infected truck driver plowing his truck into their means of transport.
* In the first movie, who the hell put all the infected in the containment chambers? Everyone in the facility was killed and only the Red Queen was left. Seeing as she's only a computer and there seems to be no automated system that could feasibly collect and store said bodies, what happened?
** The creatures sealed up in the containment chambers weren't a result of the outbreak, they were a result of Umbrella's researchers testing out the T-virus to see what it could do. Why do you think the Red Queen knew that eating somebody would upgrade the Licker's hunting abilities?
** The Red Queen says the one keeping them contained as well. When her power is cut, the Lickers get released from the containment chambers.
* In the third movie, Wesker says to Dr Issacs that he expects a report within a week despite it being obvious that that's not nearly enough time, now later on in the movie Issacs finds Alice, Wesker basically says screw you, despite tests using less viable blood actually working in a fashion, in other words with pure Alice blood the cure would probably work, so whats up with Weskers attitude to someone who is clearly a mad, but competent scientist, with a possible supercure?
** The final movie, somewhat, clears it up, [[spoiler: they already HAD a cure, but unlike Clone!Isaacs, the real Isaacs had a cure that would wipe out the T-Viral creatures, not "domesticate" them, which isn't what Umbrella High Command wanted, until Clone!Isaacs overstepped, they probably would have let him continue tinkering.]]
* In The Final Chapter, [[TheChessmaster Dr. Isaacs]] reveals that he initiated the Hive outbreak, and the reason Alice had no memories was because she first “awoke” in the shower after the outbreak. I understand all that. But, re-watching the first movie, a few things popped up: Alice was Lisa and Matt’s contact on the inside; One and his team were sent in to capture the Red Queen, plus already knew Alice as a co-employee and security of the Hive mansion. How does all that fit in to all this?
** It has been shown that clones can be programmable, I theorize that Spence was also a clone, as well as Alice, Alicia programmed Alice to try and take umbrella down, hence contacting Lisa and Matt, but Dr. Isaacs created Spence as a kind of "Start apocalypse incase of emergency" if Alice started trying to take down Umbrella, Spence would attempt to steal samples and cause an outbreak, kickstarting Dr. Issacs "Noah's Ark" plan, One and his team were sent in to shutdown the Red Queen due to the fact that as she states She values human life over anything, which she did, by locking down the Hive, but the issue was that one of Umbrellas "arks" was under the Hive, they needed the Zombies released, to start up the apocalypse, and to give them free access to the Hive, basically if my theory holds weight, Dr. Isaacs and Alicia were both trying to Outgambit each other with their clones, with Isaacs coming somewhat on top until the final movie, due to Spence doing exactly what he was designed to do and Alice being unable to really stop it.
* In the first movie the first zombie they ever see is a lab tech, but in the beginning we see that exact same person in the elevator, how did she get out of there and all the way to Licker storage, if everything was locked down?
** Five hours pass between the lockdown and the team opening things up. If those elevator doors remain open then perhaps she crawled out that way and ended up near enough the Dining Hall - only to be fully released when the Red Queen's power was shut down and the doors unlocked.
* In the first film, when the T-Virus was unleashed in the Hive, why didn't the Red Queen simply alert the facility about the outbreak, put all the employees in quarantine, and ensure the distribution the anti-virus to all those infected, instead of just killing everybody altogether? And why didn't she alert Umbrella about the outbreak during that time, or even tell the Sanitation team and others what had happened when they first entered the Hive up until they reached her chamber?
** Perhaps the Queen wasn't programmed for that. Umbrella may have programmed her just to run the facility, with lockdown as a worse cast scenario. The team aren't informed about what's happened because it involves information that they don't have the rank or security clearance to know about (and she only tells them once it's obvious their lives are in danger and they need to know what they're fighting). And isn't Kaplan's mission to go in and get her circuit board/hard drive, which presumably ''would'' have the information regarding why the Hive was locked down?
** Doesn't the Red Queen start explaining to the team what shutting her down would result in? Then when Kaplan refuses to listen to her, she warns that they'll die down here, and he still doesn't listen. Then she's shut down and thus can't say anymore. If she'd said, 'the corpses down here are all renanimated and are going to eat you', he wouldn't believe her. Alice actually seems to guess this when she opts to restart the Queen and find out more.
** The Red Queen is also very clear that there is no hope of her potentially letting the T-virus escape the Hive. She won't let them leave without killing Rain, and she says that the Anti-Virus is unpredictable. Indeed, Rain was injected with it and still became a zombie. Since it hasn't been mass marketed yet, it's clearly still a prototype (notably it's the second film that makes it a reliable cure) and you don't want to give an untested prototype cure to several hundred people. So the Queen's solution was the callous one - no one infected can leave the facility because that's the only way to stop the virus from spreading.
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** Oh!... [[CompletelyMissingThePoint What's Wesker's Report]]? In any case, I guess that any and all interesting stories involving that were swallowed up by the WhatHappenedToTheMouse abyss. I've been wondering about this for a while, to no avail. Wesker certainly doesn't mention her in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'', unless I missed something. It would not be out of character for someone as cold as him to not really regard Sherry even as his stepdaughter, so there's that, I guess...

** I believe it was confirmed (recently, to fit in with RE6) that what Wesker meant was that he had spies in the government keeping surveillance on Sherry. So yes, it has been "retconned," essentially.

* Where the hell did the world's water all go? It didn't evaporate and the Earth hasn't got enough room under the crust to swallow it all up. Better yet, ''how in the blue fuck did a freaking '''virus''' make that happen?!''

* Where the hell did the world's water all go? It didn't evaporate and the Earth hasn't got enough room under the crust to swallow it all up. Better yet, '''how does a freaking virus make that happen??'''

** It's a RE2 reference, in the game the main characters initally got split up by a infected truck driver plowing his truck into their means of transport.

* In the third movie, Wesker says to Dr Issacs that he expects a report within a week despite it being obvious that that's not nearly enough time, now later on in the movie Issacs finds Alice, Wesker basically says screw you, despite tests using less viable blood actually working in a fashion, in other words with pure alice blood the cure would probably work, so whats up with Weskers attitude to someone who is clearly a mad, but competant scientist, with a possible supercure?

** It has been shown that clones can be programmable, I theorise that Spence was also a clone, as well as Alice, Alicia programmed Alice to try and take umbrella down, hence contacting Lisa and Matt, but Dr. Isaacs created Spence as a kind of "Start apocalypse incase of emergency" if Alice started trying to take down Umbrella, Spence would attempt to steal samples and cause an outbreak, kickstarting Dr. Issacs "Noah's Ark" plan, One and his team were sent in to shutdown the Red Queen due to the fact that as she states She values human life over anything, which she did, by locking down the Hive, but the issue was that one of Umbrellas "arks" was under the Hive, they needed the Zombies released, to start up the apocalypse, and to give them free access to the Hive, basically if my theory holds weight, Dr. Isaacs and Alicia were both trying to Outgambit each other with their clones, with Isaacs coming somewhat on top until the final movie, due to Spence doing exactly what he was designed to do and Alice being unable to really stop it.

* In the first film, why did Spence throw a T-virus canister as he walked away?

* In the first film, why did Spence throw a T-Virus canister as he walked away?