Line #157 Headscratchers/ResidentEvil


1	'''Note:''' ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil0'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil1'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil2'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvilGunSurvivor'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil4'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvil5'', ''Headscratchers/ResidentEvilTheDarksideChronicles'', ''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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3	'''Note 2:''' [[http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/resident_evil_plot.txt Thomas Wilde's]] and [[http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/gbcolor/file/resident_evil_gaiden_plot.txt Efrem Orizzonte's]] plot analyses are probably the most detailed and well-researched documents summarizing the Resident Evil series, answering frequently asked questions, and pointing out valuable information. [[http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/resident_evil_plot_a.txt Marleone's]] summary, while not as high quality, also contains transcripts for most of the files in the series. Please give them a look before asking a question.
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5	* How did the US government know that Umbrella was responsible for Raccoon City becoming infested with zombies and various other monsters, to the point they had to nuke it off the face of the Earth? I thought it was established that any evidence of exactly what caused the zombie outbreak in Raccoon City went up in flames ''with'' Raccoon City.
6	** Explained in Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii: Albert Wesker, who had long since turned against Umbrella, had infiltrated a russian Umbrella base while Chris and Jill were doing the same to deal with the bio-weapon threat. While Chris and Jill were taking care of T.A.L.O.S, Wesker dealt with Sergei, won, stole all of Umbrella's files from its main computer, erased said computer, then testified anonymously against Umbrella.
7	* Why do the zombies now all have glowing-white eyes? I gather its artistic license, but why that odd choice? Who made that decision to tone down the scare-factor in a ''horror'' game?
8	** Because the creators have free reign to do as they please with their monsters. Kinda like vampires: they don't really exist, so you can create them to however you want them to look like.
9	** It's sort of explained as the eyes getting cataracts with decay, like zombies in alot of fictional works they don't attack each other because they smell the living, and hear them, because they are actually blind, or near enough to it. the glowing part is mainly due to graphical limits.
10	** Plus, I don't know about you, but seeing nothing except a zombie's glowing eyes in the dark is enough to make ''me'' brown my trousers.
11	* This is Resident Evil in general, but in several instantaneous mutations, where exactly does the extra mass come from? Look at the G-type embryos, for example. Or the G-type in Degeneration.
12	** We are talking about a universe, which has several very specific breaks from reality marked as canon. Additional mass and quick mutations are okay in the RE universe. You might not like it, but that's how it works here.
13	** In the case of G-type creatures like William Birkin (RE 2) or Curtis Miller (Degeneration), the G-Virus is explicitly designed to aid in cellular regeneration. The extra mass probably comes from the fact that each mutation comes after being badly damaged -- it's simply growing an ungodly number of cells back to compensate?
14	*** But that wouldn't create mass. The G-Types should still have the same amount of mass within them as when they began the transformation. So, logically, they would have to be spread out (which may lead to the hunger for flesh...) But still, they have been shown as very heavy. Especially with the muscle tissue to punch holes through the roof of a train car and ripping an elevator out of its shaft and tossing it across the room.
15	*** It makes even less sense than that, considering that when one of those monsters is badly injured, it'll probably have LESS living mass due to traumatic injury. The only conclusion we can come to is that the various monsters in Resident Evil violate the laws pertaining to conservation of mass.
16	*** Uroboros gives sort of an explanation. The virus uses flesh as food to grow. That's why Excella's version is getting bigger and bigger after eating the corpses...
17	*** The most blatant instance of gaining mass is Irving's transformation. He starts off human, falls into the water, and comes out the size of a large boat.
18	*** I assumed he merged with a pack...nest...pod...''group'' of swimming crocodiles or something.
19	*** While an excellent idea, you gotta admit mate, it'd take a ''lot'' of crocodiles to have beefed up Irving the way it did. I like to think there just happened to be a wayward Blue Whale chilling out below that Irving noticed, ate, and digested in the 7 seconds between him entering and coming out of the lake. Like Kirby's nightmarish cousin, or something.
20	*** I thought of it more as the thing was already there, set up as another BOW trap like with the first Uroboros versus Alpha Team. The "Irving" part was just that fleshy sack the big giant fish spit out, while the rest was just a pre-built BOW. Similar justifications were pretty much explicit in the case of Ramon Salazar from ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4''.
21	*** Also, how would he immediately know how to use all of these things? The giant tentacles, and three part jaw, the feelers... Do Las Plagas give you InstantExpert juice?
22	*** Considering how clumsy all of those attacks were, he probably ''didn't''.
23	** This is a game that prides itself on its FridgeLogic and Camp, and we are sitting here wondering why it doesn't obey the law of conservation of mass? Hell, what about Neptune and Plant-42? How did those get so big? And where the hell was Saddler hiding his mutation? This seems like as good of a place for an MST3KMantra as any place.
24	*** Saddler's mutation is pretty plausible considering conservation of mass. Ada nearly emptied an entire TMP clip into his backside and it bounced off him like his skin was super-thick or something, so the guy probably ''did'' weigh a couple tons. Same to same with Mendez, only less advanced.
25	*** Neptune and Plant 42 ate things. They were a shark and giant meat eating plant. And Saddler apparently has some funky plaga going on there, so I can't really say.
26	** Going back to the original question, in regards to the T and G virus mutations, it's important to note that cellular ''growth'' DOES create mass. You yourself are an example. When you're born, you're only about 6-9 pounds, but a full grown man averages around 200 lbs. If cellular growth didn't create mass, then the law of C.O.M. would dictate you would have been a 200 pound fetus, and your mother wouldn't have been able to walk. The mutations could be a result of just obscenely fast cell growth, and the line in RE2 about "regeneration" might simply have been a poor choice of words. HAVING SAID THAT, however, it would take an ''ungodly'' amount of energy to fuel that growth, so why Birkin doesn't immediately go nappies after his mutations is still up in the air.
27	*** Cellular growth does not create mass. It converts biomass that you consume into the biomass of your tissues. You grow over your life because you take in food, and that process is very slow and inefficient when you consider the amount of mass you consume to the amount of mass you gain. This is why people who have poor diets during development have smaller statures. And yes, according to the laws of physics, you can convert energy into mass -- but it is extremely inefficient, from our perspective. To put it into context, the energy released from a nuclear weapon comes from about a total of about a cubic inch of uranium being converted into energy. There's no way that any biological creature the size of a person would have those magnitudes of energy just hanging around their system, especially since in biological systems that energy is stored chemically in the form of ATP and fat tissue.
28	*** Precisely, what if the "virus" streamlines energy to mass efficiency? according to the games it prevents decay while mutating the host, it converts human/animal/vegetable cells into new, mutated cells and the new organisms EAT right away but leave no discernible waste. Handwave it as in-universe, this is what the "virus" does and leave it at that.
29	** The games are somewhat sliding when it comes to messing with conservation of mass. The first RE had the big BOWs as specifically created weapons. They were presumably mutated from already fairly large stock, and then reliably fed so they could grow to their current sizes. The zombies and dogs were pretty consistent on mass. In RE2, G-Birkin seems to get pretty swoll in a short period of time after injection. I’d handwave that as due to the purple serum the virus was contained in. It could be a highly compressed polymer that could be converted to a larger equivalent of biomass, probably using tech similar to the First Aid Spray. The crocodile probably ate anything/anybody that went down, or some...solid bio waste. The only standout examples were Steve suddenly hulking out after being infected, Excella’s Ouroboros growing to the size of the tanker after eating a few dozen zombies, and everything with the C virus in 6. The Javo grow some pretty crazy mutations easily, and the one guy who goes from human sized, to train sized, to Zilla sized
30	* Wesker has something that allows him to become super-fast, super-strong, and functionally immortal with ''at most'' a few months of incubation, and whose only distinguishing feature can be concealed by sunglasses. Why, then, is he so eager to get his hands on the Veronica virus, which required ''15 years'' of incubation to have a favorable effect?
31	** Because the Wesker virus kills the ridiculous majority of humans it is injected into. If Wesker managed to get together 50,000 mooks and controlled their minds somehow, and then then used that virus on them, it is statistically very likely that every single one would die. His godlike strength and speed have always been his ace in the hole, too -- no way would he spread that around even if he could. The Veronica virus he could at least sell.
32	** Six years ago, I had a case of IKnewIt while discussing the issue with a fellow player. I accurately predicted that Wesker's super virus wasn't perfect and required some special stuff just to keep it up and running. It is a major plot point of the final chapter of [=RE5=], and Wesker's one and only weakness. That probably also what made this virus useless for a SuperSoldier program like the one Irving was working on. Imagine that Wesker's body needs something that probably costs more than 200000 bucks per shot and need one shot per 24 hours just to keep running correctly.
33	** Because Wesker is looking for viral components to further human evolution through brutal, destructive mutation. T-Veronica fits that like a glove. His Evil Plan has no need for super soldier serums or viruses.
34	*** Since when, though? From Veronica and 4, it seemed like he wanted the viruses so he could restart Umbrella with himself as the executive, since Umbrella would then have a monopoly. Hell, Krauser said as much. He wanted to rule, why the hell would he want to make everyone superpowered? The whole evolution thing showed up in the last 20 minutes of the game, like they only had a weekend to finish the script!
35	*** Krauser is A) insane, B) speculating, and C) not Wesker. And Wesker having access to viruses would give him money, which is very important for someone planning to do what he did.
36	** Also, I got the impression Wesker is smart enough to not ''want'' to spread around his super soldier virus. It gives him a critical edge, and the last thing he needs is someone from the BSAA getting their hands on it and either synthesizing a countermeasure or boosting up all their agents to match him.
37	*** That being said, he does develop the P30 serum to temporarily enhance Jill and control her mind, though he himself mentions in the library files that it is unreliable and requires constant injection, which makes it difficult to use on a wide scale.
38	** Wesker wanted ''all'' of the viruses, not just T-Veronica. It existed, so he wanted it. In that particular case, though, he was working for a pharmaceutical company who wanted it for profit, while he wanted it ForScience. It may or may not have mattered to his long-term goals, but in the short term he could hardly know that or take that chance, and it would always have been useful to have at least a sample.
39	** The one problem I have is that Wesker was ''outmatched'' by Alexia's first form when they fought in the Antarctic Mansion. For all of his speed, strength, and regeneration, he came completely unstuck when faced with someone of Tyrant level strength and whom also owns a powerful ranged attack (Fire Blood). If he couldn't fight her effectively, then ''just imagine'' how screwed he would be against a few thousand of the flying version that are all but immune to conventional weaponry. Unless he was always planning to just destroy it or combine it with something else (which would be Plagas and/or Uroboros a few years later), it would seem that creating an army of T-Veronica enhanced soldiers would have been suicidal.
40	*** Wesker was outmatched, but the virus still required 15 years of hibernation before perfect control was met, which meant that for all it's power, that kind of timeframe is too long to wait upon. Think of it like this: A company makes one exceptional product over 15 years, while other companies make many great products over the span of 15 years while learning and creating more stronger products during the frame. 15 years of work and research still brought down by gunfire is still a waste of time and research, as Wesker noted: "Alexia's research really amounted to nothing."
41	* Why don't the protagonists turn into zombies? They were bitten, clawed, stabbed, etc. I know Jill is a bit of an exception because she received a vaccine, which makes another question, why didn't they mass produce this vaccine in the early days of the virus when it was first discovered?
42	** Technically you can finish the game (Remake, 0, 1, 2, 3, Veronica) without being bitten, clawed, or stabbed. No damage run is hard, but very possible (And that is actually canon, the only wound Leon got in RE2 was a bullet wound to the shoulder). Outbreak #1 and #2 feature people living within the city, drinking water containing the virus (Thanks to Birkin's rampage in the sewers and rats spreading this crap around), so they are infected from the start. G-virus and Las Plagas are spread only by injecting the embryo/egg/mature parasite and are not spread via bodily fluids/biting/clawing, which explains Ada not turning when she was injured by Birkin (Plus, those #4 and #5 games are set AFTER the third game, so the vaccinations are probably an obligatory action for people directly involved with counter-bioterrorism).
43	** Vaccine used for Jill did not exist when Carlos arrived at the hospital. The doctor's diary states that the building was overcrowded with infected, he himself was bitten and turning, he always carried a gun with him to commit suicide and the diary entry ends with "Now I'm starting to feel the same hunger the patients had", so the cure was never completed. The rumours about it spread around, though, that's why Nikholai was tasked with destroying the hospital in the first place. Carlos was lucky to find all the components, solve the puzzle in the lab, and get the only sample of the cure.
44	** [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality It's not fun playing a zombie.]]
45	** [[VideoGame/MetalSlug Well Actually....]]
46	*** Says who? I think a game where you shamble around looking for people to devour would be pretty cool.
47	*** Setting aside beauty and the beholder and all that, the RE universe is who says. Most of the time as a RE "zombie" you are stuck as part of a hive mind collective, the rest of the time you are a mindless instincts-driven killing shell of a human being. There isn't much gameplay beyond "press b to moan" or "press a to not notice player stomping around behind you with echo-y foot steps" and such in the RE universe. For an possible explanation look below: The herbs around the place retard the zombie process?
48	** WRT to the T-Virus cure, it was locked up in a safe in an Umbrella hospital, and no one believed the S.T.A.R.S. team when they reported the zombies and the T-Virus until Raccoon started suffering an acute case of zombieitis. Even if they ''had'' a cure for the T-Virus, they wouldn't have had time to manufacture it, especially seeing how they lacked important things like a dedicated facility for manufacturing it in the first place.
49	** If ''Outbreak'' is canon, there's an out-and-out T-Virus cure that one of the Raccoon University professors developed. But rather than mention that, in typical PoorCommunicationKills fashion, he just leaves a vague note for George to find and then sequesters himself in his office until he is murdered. As for why the protagonists don't get infected, some speculate that the herbs do it. Considering you find the herbs as potted plants, the rest of the city seems ignorant of their medical use.
50	*** It's probably the herbs. Everything in Raccoon, including every animal in the zoo and the plants mutated. (You might argue plant 43 was made in a lab, but the plants in the hospital, not so much.) Birds, bugs, dogs, sharks, frogs, alligators, and people mutated, but the herbs were completely unchanged. If I wanted a cure, I'd look at the herbs!
51	** Not everybody infected with the T-Virus turns into a zombie. Perhaps Wesker deliberately screened the STARS applicants for that resistance. It would add a bit of credibility for Rebecca, and explain why Kevin wasn't allowed in (as we can see, he can be Zombified) and... well, maybe he messed up a bit on Forest's background. Oh, and Carlos, Leon, and Billy are lucky, while Ada was also screened by Wesker, Bruce/Fong Ling/Ark Thompson were screened by the governments, and Claire is Chris's sister.
52	*** That doesn't fit, a lot of the STARS that died became zombies, such as Forest or Brad. Unless you mean they are immune while living and only turn on dying?
53	*** Yep, that's what I meant.
54	*** That'd make sense. Whatever natural immunity they have to the virus would vanish once they die and their immune systems stop working anyway.
55	** It's possible the T-virus is not nearly as aggressive as we've been led to believe and a person with a strong enough immune system can fight it off (which would explain why the protagonists inevitably manage to run into uninfected humans even long after the city has been overrun with zombies). Alternatively, the T-virus might not be as easily transmitted as we've been led to believe. Maybe it ''doesn't'' take a single bite or a single scratch. Maybe you need a significant dose of the T-virus before you turn.
56	** In my opinion, the virus immunity has nothing to do with herbs. They are found absolutely everywhere right across the world, meaning they are probably cheap and easy to grow - if they helped at all, there would be far more survivors in Raccoon City. It makes far more sense if the immunity was caused by first aid sprays which are incredibly rare and therefore bloody expensive. There is also canon evidence that the medical branch of Umbrella developed the sprays; if that is true, then what does Umbrella produce that heals injuries? ''The viruses!'' Every can of first aid spray contains a minuscule amount of virus that grants healing with an unintentional side effect of gradually building up virus immunity. Enough for minor bites and scrapes, but not enough for a Nemesis tentacle through the chest.
57	** I had been under the impression that in game canon, the characters are never bitten/clawed/ect/ect. The only exceptions were Jill Valentine and the Outbreak characters, who all required some manner of cure. After all, the characters are only bitten or clawed or whatever if the player screws up. It is possible to get a no-damage run, if you're good enough. (I have never managed to do that, but knows people who have. I envy them greatly.)
58	** On the subject of the Cure, they did eventually develop a viable vaccine, which was important to the plot in the CG movie. I haven't played [=RE3=], but even if they had the formula (which they probably did in the form of the Mercenary's memory, which isn't exactly the best for a vaccine formula), it would still take several months to years to synthesis a viable, mass producible vaccine they can give to everyone.
59	** According to the novelizations (which probably aren't canon,) Rebecca says that the T-Virus is highly communicable (airborne, waterborne, bug/ratborne, etc.) but can only last an hour or so in a dead/zombified host. In all the games, you're showing up a day or two after the outbreak, so there are no 'fresh' zombies to communicate it to you. Still doesn't explain, say, the cop in RE2.
60	*** Good old Marvin was unconscious long before Jill arrived, and that was officially twelve hours before Leon and Claire. In fact, he was actually still pretty mobile in RE3, given how he disappears after you return from the STARS office. Depending on how good his immune system was, he could have easily been sauntering around the RPD with that wound for a good twenty four hours or more. The even ''bigger'' question is why Brian Irons didn't hunt him down, considering he killed every other cop he came across.
61	*** The answer to that is either one of two things: He's busy on the hunt for the Mayor's daughter, or he himself was taking precaution against the monsters overturning his precinct. Given how nutterly butterly nuts Irons is, I'd place my money on the former.
62	* Is it just me, or are humans the only animals that become considerably slower upon T-Virus infection? The movements of pretty much every other kind of zombie in the series (dogs, crows, assorted bugs, etc.) are the same as their natural counterparts (sometimes making for them to be [[GoddamnBats frickin' impossible to hit reliably and the more pain-in-the-ass enemies]]), while infected humans pick up a standard-issue ZombieGait.
63	** It's a cross-species virus, it can't work on every critter the same way, plus that would be boring. In the case of humans, T-virus turns all the "unnecessary" body functions off, which technically kills the human. Unfortunately, that happens before the virus generates enough electricity to make the brain working again. So we get stupid zombies with severe cases of necrosis who can't even walk properly. After that, it needs to get enough energy to transform further, so that's why zombies, well, hunger. The last stage of the mutation is a blind licker, but we don't see that many of them, because not every zombie eats enough and survives long enough, which is pretty hard since they don't know about self-preservation.
64	*** Or, if you are (un)lucky enough to be amongst 10 of 1,000,000, you will be transformed into a Tyrant.
65	** Actually, it makes sense. It takes significantly more co-ordination to walk with bipedal motion than quadrapedal. Since the zombies have diminished brain power, they lack this required extra co-ordination. There's also the fact that we have several areas in our brain that are not found in other species - the ones that make us intelligent. If the virus causes damage in these areas, the swelling or physical alterations may cause pressure or other damage to the ones required for proper co-ordination. Hence ZombieGait.
66	** Resident Evil Remake -> Crimson Heads -> "You Have Died"
67	*** The Lickers can be fast, also. Tyrants use humans as their base organism too, I think, but they are engineered way beyond just hitting them with a virus, so that probably doesn't count. Still, Nemesis is one hell of a fast mutated person.
68	*** Also, it's canon at this point that Crimson Heads and Lickers are of the same mutation, so there's a damn reason why both are retardedly quick to kill you.
69	* Why is it that every Resident Evil game has giant bugs/arachnids? Yes, you can argue that the T-virus hit the bugs, therefore they are massive, but that doesn't explain Resident Evil 4 and 5 with its creepy crawlies. What's the point?
70	** RuleOfScary, that's why. There's shouldn't be spiders bigger than Jill's ass in Lost in Nightmares, but there you go. Ditto the giant bird eaters in the Chronicles games, or why an Australian funnelweb would be a boss. They're scary, that's why. The only reason why vampires and demons aren't included is because Capcom haven't worked out a viable way to yet.
71	** The reason is a lot of people are afraid of Bugs and Arachnids. Easier to tap into an existing fear than try to create a new one and fail.
72	** It's explained in game, both times, and in both cases the giant bugs were basically accidents, the results of experiments with Plagas gone wrong.
73	** Spiders start out how small? Gotta eat to get that mass. A lot of bugs will eat their own kind given the chance.
74	*** The Insects and Arachnids we see are the "winners" of the whole "eat your' own kind" contest, that is why there is probably so few.
75	** Also it's explained that species lower on the evolutionary ladder don't mutate as much, Infected Insects and Arachnids only gain mass.
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77	* I don't know if this has been brought up, but why is Ada in 2 and 4 wearing a dress when fighting zombies and Plagas? Seems a little odd, you know, barring RuleOfSexy.
78	** Well, in the first case at least, she, like everyone else, was sorta caught off guard by the whole zombie apocalypse thing. Plus, her dress then was a shorter thing, that seemed maneuverable enough. In 4, though? Yeah, RuleOfSexy there, coupled with IconicOutfit.
79	*** The files from Separate Ways indicate that Ada brought Leon in so he could do all the work for her. I wouldn't be surprised if she chose that outfit just to manipulate him.
80	*** And according to the looks on his face, it worked quite well.
81	* Why does no-one believe STARS' story about the mansion incident? Yes, the company that makes your cough medicine secretly creating biological weapons would be odd, but how does that cover up the fact that over half of the members were killed (two of whom were the captains), the sole survivor of Bravo team was the rookie on her first day, and that the Spencer mansion just exploded in the middle of the forest. In the novels, it was covered up as negligence and drug use, but these were trained professionals with years of experience; surely someone would find this suspicious.
82	** Because Umbrella more or less owns the town. It controls the police chief, for a start, and anyone else it could bribe into silence. And anyone who can't be bribed, well, you see what they do to their own employees. You think they'd hesitate to visit some "accident" on whoever wanted to spill the beans?
83	*** And another point that needs to be made is that if anyone who was victimized by Umbrella tried going to the Senate in order to get the government to revoke Umbrella's business license, that wouldn't work either. It is revealed in a file in Resident Evil 5 that there was a huge conspiracy within the U.S government where countless senators were being bought out by Umbrella, and to top it off, the U.S military had even been having a few secret and illegal business dealings with the corporation where they worked together to create experimental military weaponry and even sold weaponry to each other. Regardless, these victims did bring the case to the Supreme Court, but Umbrella's influence allowed them to buy off as many people as they could and hire top notch lawyers to use against the cases they couldn't buy off; even the President couldn't do much, for nuking Raccoon City destroyed a lot of his credibility among the American people for not being able to resolve the biological threat in a better way. It was because of these setbacks that allowed Umbrella to keep their corporation afloat for 5 more years after the events of Raccoon City. Ultimately, it took Albert Wesker hacking one of their databases from an Umbrella facility in 2003 that had every single bit of information that made Umbrella what it was, biological samples, tactical training for their weapons both conventional and biological, and lists of key members in the Umbrella hierarchy, which he brought to the Supreme Court and even personally testified against the Umbrella corporation, that finally brought the case against Umbrella to a close. Immediately afterward, the U.S government revoked Umbrella's business license and imprisoned those responsible on the list that Wesker provided, all except for Spencer, the President of the Umbrella corporation, who went into hiding after the corporation collapsed.
84	*** Wesker testified before the ''Supreme Court''!? I '''must''' read this story or see this cutscene.
85	*** It isn't actually a cutscene, but it is confirmed within Albert Wesker's Resident Evil 5 file and on the Resident Evil Wiki. Very bold of Wesker to do something like that, testify against a corporation for illegal biological experiments when he was doing the exact same thing, and that is why Wesker painted himself as a personal friend of Spencer, the President of Umbrella, who wanted to put an end to the criminals who had corrupted the good name of Umbrella. The U.S government gladly accepted Wesker's evidence because they would take anything that would give them an opportunity to put Umbrella down. Wesker then through these same legal proceedings was given all of Umbrella's assets, and that combined with the samples he hacked from Umbrella's files allowed him to start Umbrella anew. It was only later when the BSSA looked into Wesker's workings and his personal attacks on Chris and Jill in 2006 that he was exposed, but this didn't stop him since he had business partners like Tricell to hide his illegal experiments, which are stopped in Resident Evil 5 by Chris as all who played the game know by now.
86	*** The thing about Wesker testifying at the Supreme Court is that it's an appellate court; it reads briefs and hears oral arguments from attorneys, but not testimony, which is something a trial court would do (The Court only has original jurisdiction over cases involving ambassadors, consuls, other public ministers, and when states are a party). Still, I guess it's a bit nitpicky to be bugged by a zombie game's misrepresentation of Court procedure.
87	*** Why the heck was anyone testifying before the Supreme Court at all? The Supreme Court doesn't (directly) decide issues of guilt. It handles matters like questions of how constitutional[[note]]that means whether or not something is permitted or not by the U.S Constitution for non-U.S tropers[[/note]] something is or state disputes over land. If they had said that it was a Congressional inquiry, it would have made much more sense.
88	*** No doubt it was the final appeal from Umbrella against the suspension of business decree that was passed against them (that Leon mentioned at the start of 4). Umbrella appealed it to the Supreme Court, who decided that in the case of a biohazard wiping out an entire city and killing more people than any other single incident in US history within the span of a week, they should get involved.
89	* What always bothered me about the villains in this series is that they just leave diary after diary around for the protagonists to find. Sure, it is understandable for there to be records of how the viral experiments worked and progressed, documentation is part of the scientific process and the experiments would go nowhere without them, but that doesn't explain why they feel the need to write down on a computer terminal or piece of paper the exact role they personally had in the viral conspiracy. What kind of lunatic incriminates himself like that, and at that leaves the evidence in unguarded and easily searchable locations? It is a wonder the U.S government didn't find them out sooner with all the crap loads of records about their crimes they leave lying around.
90	** Just because they keep documents doesn't mean those documents are always easy to find. The US government (and undoubtedly every other 1st-world government) has entire warehouses full of classified documents that only a few people in the world have ever laid eyes upon. The situation with Umbrella is no different. They just weren't expecting to get hit with a zombie apocalypse that would leave them unable to guard their sensitive records from wandering STARS members.
91	** Yeah, but half of them are diaries and they just leave them lying open on a desk. Anyway, what about the bad guys in RE4? They just leave their master plans lying around in houses with no doors.
92	** The vast majority of documents you find in the RE games aren't from the villains at all. They're from bystanders, survivors, and other people caught up in it. Also, the reason they're "lying around" is because apparently when monsters and zombies are overrunning the city and trying to eat you, it turns out that locking up your journal suddenly isn't the highest priority on your to do list.\
93	Also, define an "unguarded and easily searchable location"? Are you, by chance, referring to the hidden underground laboratory that you needed to track down a bunch of [[SolveTheSoupCans Soup Cans]] in order to get to, which has surveillance equipment? The only reason these things are "unguarded" is because the guards were ''eaten''.
94	* Why is it said that Wesker adopted Sherry Birkin when it doesn't seem to be mentioned in canon, or at least none of the games that I've played in the series?
95	** It's in Wesker's Report.
96	** What's Wesker's Report? Any and all interesting stories involving that were swallowed up by the WhatHappenedToTheMouse abyss. Wesker certainly doesn't mention her in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5''. It would not be out of character for someone as cold as him to not really regard Sherry even as his stepdaughter.
97	** It was released with some copies of Code: Veronica. [[http://projectumbrella.net/articles/Weskers-Report Here's a transcription.]] It sums up the series to that point. It's hard to tell whether or not it's canon. (For instance, wouldn't it have been easier for Ada to get to Sherry by hanging around Claire instead of Leon if that was her mission?)
98	*** Sherry is going to be in Resident Evil 6 according to the trailer - she appears to be connected to either the BSAA or Leon's government paymasters in some form or another. The question we should all ask ourselves is ''if'' Wesker adopted her, why is she on the side of our heroes? My personal opinion is that Wesker's Report was either never canon or has been retconned.
99	** What Wesker meant was that he had spies in the government keeping surveillance on Sherry. So yes, it has been "retconned," essentially.
100	* Is Wesker really an EvilBrit? He doesn't seem British; he doesn't use British slang like "bollocks" or anything like that.
101	** ...using slang isn't a prerequisite, y'know.
102	** He's not. You can still hear traces of a British accent in some of the more refined upstate New York and New England accents. It could be that Wesker came from an old-money family in the American northeast.
103	** Depending on the voice actor, he has varying degrees of "British-ness" in his accent. In REmake and the original, he just had a straight American accent, while in Code Veronica, he had a pretty strong British accent. DC Douglas (his voice actor in RE5) was told to try to mesh the two together, which resulted in the strange not-quite-British voice he had in 5.
104	** It seems clear that Wesker was putting on the American accent to fool his STARS teams that he was a stand-up, all-American good guy leader. He didn't use it in Zero because he never interacted with any STARS in that game, and after his HeelFaceTurn in REmake/original, he had no reason to keep up TheMasquerade any longer, so returned to his natural accent. Which being an EvilBrit accent, helped underline his villainy, of course.
105	** Given his background as one of the Wesker children, he probably is not meant to have any accent in particular. I believe he is American, but raised abroad in secret Umbrella facilities.
106	* Not saying that I would have wanted Umbrella to stay intact, but wouldn't their disbanding have had severe effects on the U.S economy and politics? A multi-billion dollar corporation doesn't exactly go under without side-effects. Millions of employees would have suddenly gone unemployeed, a massive and costly investigation would have taken place by the government looking into Umbrella's actions, no doubt Wall Street profits would drop noticeably, and political pressure would come onto the U.S Government from both the citizens and other countries to put much more massive regulations on the dealings of big business, and Military discussion would take place over the biological samples the U.S Government retrieved from Umbrella's dealings. Why don't they ever really deal with such fallout?
107	** Everything but the unemployment situation was (very) briefly touched on in the games. As for the people out of work, we can assume that competing pharmaceutical companies quickly stepped in to fill the vacuum left by Umbrella's collapse and scooped up its former workers when they expanded.
108	** As far as I'm aware, Umbrella wasn't disbanded -- it was chopped up and its parts sold off to the highest bidder. Even if that isn't true, Umbrella products can still be seen everywhere: F-Aid sprays are produced and sold, the Mine Thrower has been made commercial... clearly there is some company somewhere still churning out Umbrella's inventions.
109	*** This is touched on in ''Resident Evil 7''- 'Blue Umbrella' is apparently made up of former Umbrella employees who worked in the 'legit' side of the organisation and were horrified to find out what their bosses were really up to, so they bought up the company's military assets and reformed as an anti-BOW mecenary unit to try and redeem the Umbrella name (and make amends for their unwitting contribution to global terror).
110	** A similar question to the above; would major terrorism events like 9/11 still have happened in the RE universe? The Raccoon city outbreak would have killed more people than any other single act of terrorism, and with the possibility of terrorists using Umbrella bio-weapons, there could have very well been a similar reaction in RE's 1998 to what we saw after 9/11.
111	*** They probably would have, and given the formation of the BSAA prior to RE 5, probably ''did''. The plot of RE 4 is a good example. That said, relatively underfunded groups like Al-Qaeda probably wouldn't try anything, since they would probably assume the US would drop zombie-bombs on them. After all, if you see an enemy can produce flesh eating zombies, is your reaction going to be "Oh, let's piss them off!" or "HOLY FUCK, THEY CAN ''DO'' THAT?!"
112	*** Can't say I agree with the above answer much. The real life Al-Qaeda targeted the US despite the latter being equipped with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, the most advanced conventional weaponry on Earth, and a hundred thousand odd strong military force... I can't imagine nut jobs like Bin Laden (or whoever else is is in charge) backing off through the threat of the T-Virus or the odd Tyrant dropped into their camp when already faced with such comically huge odds. In fact, while we're on the subject of zombies and Tyrants, in-game the most effective weapons to use against them are rapid fire weapons and rocket launchers - and the Taliban just so happen to be packed to the rafters with AK-47's and RPG-7's.
113	*** In fact, newer games and ''Degeneration'' suggest that terrorists saw the virus' effects and said "HOLY FUCK, THEY CAN ''DO'' THAT?! ...'''''I''''' WANNA DO THAT!!"
114	* Plus, well, Bin Laden was counting on the U.S. not being ''able'' to retaliate against him, on account of not being able to figure out where the fk to find him. It worked for about 6 years.
115	*** Original troper who started this conversation stream here, what I meant by "would 9/11 have happened" is not "would Bin Ladin have tried it in the face of [=BOWs=]" it's "would the US have implemented the same security measures they did in the real world after 9/11 back in 1998?" It's more of a what-if question which is never going to get touched by the series itself.
116	*** There doesn't appear to be a good answer to that. The only good security measure against the [=BOWs=] would be some kind of travel quarantine for a few days longer than whatever the average (or longest if you're smart) incubation period is for a [=BOWs=] development. Checking people for guns wouldn't help. They probably implemented entirely different protocols if at all and the games never touch on this largely because only RE6 at all touches on civilian life after the original games which all take place over a few weeks.
117	* Why does Morpheus D Duvall have breasts? I realize (like all members/former members of Umbrella) that he's off his nut, but even Alfred Ashford didn't go to those extremes and he was not only dressing up, impersonating, and talking to himself in the third person as his sister Alexia, but was arguably even sexually in love with her. Perhaps he ''could be'' a transsexual (given the feminine appearance of his Tyrant form), but that is never alluded to, and he is constantly referred to as a he. The only borderline explanation we get in-game is his narcissistic nature; being completely obsessed with beauty and youth -- which, let's be honest, is the perfect definition of an explanation [[VoodooShark not actually explaining anything at all]].
118	** IIRC, there's a file in ''Umbrella Chronicles'' where Wesker theorizes that Tyrants and other monsters somewhat reflect the psyche of the person pre-infection. Sergei self-mutilated himself, hence his tyrant form had spikes jutting out from under the skin. Marcus's first form was younger. Morpheus's tyrant form could be a reflection of his obsession with beauty. It's still an asspull, but that's as close an explanation as you'll get. Alternatively, someone designing Dead Aim misunderstood what exactly "TG-virus" meant.
119	*** According to LetsPlay/TheDarkId, Dead Aim was designed by Cavia... the same Cavia that would later go on to produce VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}. So, we can chalk it up to the ''developers'' being insane.
120	* Why didn't Umbrella stick to medical drug production instead of the insanely-expensive and wildly illegal virus research? For one thing, it would be more profitable, and for another thing, you wouldn't have to deal with... what happened in the series (although I know that the obvious answer was Spencer's control or something, but surely someone else at the company actually cared about ''making'' money instead of wasting it). And for another thing, why did Umbrella like to have all those secret labs and such? How could that possibly generate profit?
121	** Their legit pharmaceutical operation was making plenty of money, but Spencer was personally interested in virus research as a means to fully realize his God complex and didn't care what it cost. We can only assume he branched off into the bio-weapons venture as a way to placate Umbrella's board of directors and shareholders, who would certainly want to see his research generating a profit.
122	** Spencer was independently wealthy and funded the formation of Umbrella himself. Without investors to answer to, he could do whatever he wanted with the profits pouring in from the legit fronts, and what he wanted was crazy bioresearch that would turn him into a god.
123	** Funded the ''formation'' of Umbrella, yes, but the opening of ''Resident Evil 4'' explicitly states that Umbrella was a publicly-traded company; a corporation that large couldn't continue to generate profits for decades without investors putting money into it, and wealthy as Spencer was, he didn't have infinite resources to bankroll it all himself.
124	** None of the three founders of the company was interested purely in profit, and neither were many of Umbrella's employees. But Umbrella did many, many secret deals with the US government, so they actually ''were'' generating profit by selling stuff to them (though keeping a lot more than they let on). Plus they had other, more conventional divisions. But primarily, Umbrella was built by {{Mad Scientist}}s, for {{Mad Scientist}}s to play God on a whole new level. So in summary: The virus research probably didn't turn in much profit, but everything else they produced (like medicines and conventional weapons) more than made up for it.
125	* How come Rebecca Chambers has disappeared from the series? Seeing as she is a biochemist, wouldn't she be the go to girl for dealing with the zombie outbreaks? Her last canon appearance was in VideoGame/ResidentEvil2 where there's a hidden photo of her in Wesker's desk. From there, nothing.
126	** Most likely? She's working in a lab for the BSAA coming up with countermeasures for all the viral weapons the agency encountered. If the "girl genius" trait she's given in the novels is canon, it would make sense to get her off the field and into a lab where she can do the most good.
127	*** Like it or not the books are Expanded Universe and thus not canon; as such the only measure of Rebecca we have is from Zero and the ReMake where there is absolutely no substantial evidence she has any remarkable scientific ability beyond being able to mix herbs in that kit she carried around. If she is working for the BSAA it would be nothing more than reprising her old STARS role as a field medic. She may in fact be dead and its not unreasonable in the slightest to believe that she was killed in Raccoon city given the evidence that she wasn't granted an epilogue in 3 but every other character (including Hunk!) had a whole paragraph dedicated to them. Doesn't necessarily have to be Nemesis or a zombie that killed her though; she may have survived for days but was unaware the town was about to be hit by a nuclear bomb.
128	** She's set to appear in the third CGI film, which will be canon and set some time before RE6, although we don't know what her role will be yet. She's also in Biohazard: The Stage (a theatre play which is only on in Japan), where she's become a teacher, although that's probably not canon.
129	* There are a lot of viruses in the games: T-virus, G-virus, T-Veronica virus, etc. All of them cause mutations and bring the dead back to life. Why bother making new viruses if they do the same things? Are some more infectious than the other ones? What is the difference between all of them?
130	** The T-virus creates zombies and other random mutations in some hosts. It can also be used to make B.O.W.s through genetic engineering. The G-virus and T-Veronica virus do not create undead, they each cause a specific course of mutation in the host. The characteristics of mutation are different for each virus, and each was created for a different purpose.
131	* Maybe this was mentioned somewhere and I never found it, but is there a reason that Racoon City isn't set in Pennsylvania? I mean the early games were basically a giant shout-out to Romero's "Dead" movies, so was there some copyright issue that Capcom wanted to avoid? Or did they just think that a small Midwestern town would be a location most players could easily identify?
132	** A case of misaligned customs. Small streets like that might be common in Japan; but it doesn't match with American architecture and city design. Why it's not set in Pennsylvania? Who cares.
133	*** Although the layout at least for RE3 was indeed based on Japan's architecture, 2 had some large streets (at least enough to be considered so by Japanese standards and average by American standards). In fact I think I saw some concept stuff a while ago showing unused parts of RE2's draft of the city and in addition even 1.5 had a large parking lot and drafts of roads that look American. However I think a big part of the small streets like in RE2 (and even 3) was technological limitations of the time especially for the aging PSX console. Playing the PC version of the game for years on an old Windows 98 I bought at the time of release, in the larger streets the game lagged frequently in this parts. Granted there were more zombies in these parts but even when it was reduced to one or two there were still slowdowns albeit not as bad. I mean even RE3 occasionally had larger roads and on my old Win98 there was lagging in those parts too. In addition smaller alleys make it far more intense (can't tell you how much I screamed when you had to fight stronger creatures later and was scrambling to escape them with difficulty often dying alot because of how little space the roads had). A lot of horror movies set in America intentionally create sets similar to RE3 or even look out for real life urban locations that resemble's RE3 streets for this precise reason. And of course there are American cities IRL with lots of small roads in its certain sections as seen in parts of San Francisco and other California cities so its actually TruthInTelivision. Its just we're so used to seeing the large open parts that you typically find in NYC because of movies and TV. But there are American cities that resemble RE2 and 3 and besides Tokyo's current layout was built with the assistance of Americans anyway during [=MacArthur=]'s rule of Japan as Westerners were trying to modernize the country.
134	** Because Raccoon City is batshit insane. No town modeled on a real place could match its bizarre architecture, questionable logistics, comically corrupt officials and strange emblem-based block-pushing security systems.
135	** Because while the games have lots of shout outs and reference to Romero, its still its own original work. Just because a creator like Tolkien is a heavy influence doesn't mean shout outs are going to be exactly word for word (since even adaptations can't even get the original author's intention spot on anyway). IN addition RE in general is heavily influenced by horror cinema not just Romero (The Birds anyone?) and Romero isn't the only one responsible for influencing the Zombie genre. He's just the biggest name and most important pioneer of the genre but there are plenty of other works taking place outside of Pennsylvania too such as the Return of the Living Dead series.
136	* Where are the bathrooms in the mansion in the first game? How would this look on paper? "10 bedroom mansion set on 10 acres of trackless forest. No bathroom, and all the locks use a different key. $200 or best offer!"
137	** There's one toilet in the hallway on the east wing. And rest assured, nobody was going to buy or know the mansion was for sale; because the mansion is already owned by Umbrella because the Mansion was a front. As for the one toilet thing? George Trevor was an asshole.
138	** There are bathrooms in other parts of the real estate, just not in the main mansion. The old shacks leading to the shark had several and while the labs don't have a toilet from what I remembered, several rooms definitely had a sink and mirror. Not to mention its not necessarily far fledged- many old mansions from the 19th century never had bathrooms until recently and even than the architecture only allows for one bathroom (because it was built with such a primitive infrastructure that the original architects never expected toilets to exist as a mainstream thing). IN addition occasionally some modern large houses with several floors only have a single bathroom down stairs due to some weird tastes eccentrics has or basic fuckups in design. Its a case of RealityIsUnRealistic.
139	** The only catch is that the [=REmake=] has the mansion being built in the 1960's by George Trevor, long after indoor plumbing had become the norm. In that case, we probably can chalk it up to Spencer having SkewedPriorities as to how he wanted the design to go ("With this area, I thought we could best utilize the space to add a second water closet upstairs, so that--" "''No no no; it has to be another death trap!''" "But sir, wouldn't your guests have to--" "''DEATH TRAP!''"). The guardhouse was apparently a later addition, after Umbrella looked over the property and decided their researchers might need a few more places to sleep and go potty.
140	* What exactly ''is'' the source of the Umbrella logo? First the games say it's based on the Spencer family emblem, and you see it around the Spencer mansion in "Lost in Nightmares" in ''Resident Evil 5'', including old catacombs under it. ''Then'' in ''Resident Evil Village'' suddenly a similar emblem shows up in old ruins and in the castle in not-Romania where Oswell Spencer visited in his youth and the game indicates he picked up the image from there to use in Umbrella's logo.

Context Headscratchers / ResidentEvil