Fridge / Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Look... in... the... FRIDGE.

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Why is Eveline's Hive Mind a peaceful place where the Bakers can interact with you and not be homicidal maniacs?
  • Because it's the family she actually wants, as a small girl. Yes, she's insane and homicidal, but that's only because of her advanced age (she is literally less than THREE years old by the time of the game, more when she wrecks the ship and infects the Bakers). Her conscious mind wants control, but her subconscious mind just wants a family that behaves like every family she's heard of or seen, probably on "television" (given the time period, stream services are more likely). Yeah, she's still going about it all wrong and is a total bitch, but it's sobering to realize that deep down, she still just really wants the same thing any child her age would want.
• Why would Zoe simply just staple back Ethan’s hand rather than just pour a First Aid Med like Ethan did with his severed leg? She didn’t have any.
• Lucas pondering on whether there're any children in the house sounds like funny cloudcuckoolander behavior, but it actually makes sense when you learn the truth about Eveline. He's wondering if he should count her chronological or biological age.
• Lucas' words to Eveline when he and Ethan meet over the TV. At first, they can be interpreted as him just talking about his regenerative powers, but you can also see it as how Capcom is telling its audience that they won't be going back to what made the last two Resident Evil games so unlikable.
• "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" is not only an awesome song, it's foreshadowing the plot of the game and the Big Bad herself! The first stanza refers to how the Big Bad was genetically engineered as a Tyke Bomb, whilst the second refers to how she uses her control over Mia to lure Ethan to the Bakers' estate for her own games.
• Jack suddenly stopping his first assault on Ethan after cutting off his leg, at least long enough for Ethan to escape into the crawlspace under the house, doesn't seem to make any sense at first. But various factors over the game explain it: reading about the symptoms of secondary mutamycete infection makes it pretty obvious that Ethan is infected. And the Bakers' primary directive under the crazed Eveline is to gather new "family members". When Ethan managed to actually reattach his own leg with just a dose of healing chemical, it must have convinced Jack that Ethan was successfully infected after all, making him hesitate just long enough for Ethan to seize the opening and escape!
• The entire game's healing-system is this if one recalls the effects of the Mold. Pouring a liquid herbal solution on the open wounds alone is not what heals the injuries, but it triggers the Mold to start feeding on it and regenerate new tissues as result. The player is literally holding off the infection by feeding the mold in them with extra nutrients instead for their own bodies. For the first time in the Resident Evil series, the healing-system is completely justified.
  • The same even goes for the health-upgrade system as well. Usually, steroids do not work that fast, especially not after just one shot... but combine them with the rapid-growing mold? Instant effects due to the rapid cellular growth involved with it. Considering that Ethan can find these steroid shots scattered across the Bakers' property, this also explains where their super-strength originated from as well.
  • On difficulties beneath Madhouse, it also neatly explains why Ethan can endure all the punishment he sustains. A chainsaw would completely and utterly destroy all the nerve and bone connections in his left wrist, effectively making it impossible to connect the hand back, much less a new one - -so like how the Bakers regenerate from what should be fatal injuries, Ethan's infection essentially reconnected the stump and the Mold recreated everything he needed for the limb to keep itself together, which he can do with his other limbs too (though those are often cleaner and thus don't need a similar emergency solution beyond First Aid Meds). He lacks the extensive infection the Bakers got over an extended period of time that made them supremely endurant, but he's pretty much the only justified case besides Jake and Sherry for a protagonist to be able to endure the sheer punishment. Mia falls under this as well as the prologue points out.
  • The Guard-mechanic becomes this as well, since even if raising your arms up in front of your face is a good move, there shouldn't be any chance for them to endure everything that Ethan can block through the night without breaking like sticks after one hit, especially from the Bakers who're strong enough to shatter walls and masonry like paper through brute force alone. But considering that he's infected with the Mold, the very same thing that makes the Bakers as sturdy as they are, with only gunshots straight to their heads effective enough to make them so much as flinch, Ethan being a Implacable Man in progress not only explains his durability but also why he's not flinching while blocking, he's also the only one who's subconsciously covering for the one flaw in his defense that the rest of the "Family" have, his head.
  • And his in-game bad stamina is justified as well with the Mold's involvement. Since even if it can patch up his wounds and build up his base strength through the steroid shots, it can't help him build up his stamina, as that is a result of repeated practice over a long time. Time he just doesn't have. Also, none of the infected show any sign of running, the Bakers are either marching or crawling at most, and even the Molded have to stop after a short run from chasing Ethan with their fastest members, the crawlers, having sacrificed durability and mass in favor of a faster baseline speed due to being lighter. The Mold might not allow the body to build up stamina in the first place, being a fungus. Ethan being easily winded despite his increased strength and durability makes perfect sense in this regard.
• In the Beginning Hour demo, when Clancy encounters the Molded in the basement, one single hit was enough to infect him and cause his death before he got out of the Old House. While this didn't canonically happen according to the final game, it foreshadows that most people would be turned into Molded by the infection extremely easily, which is a huge deal considering Ethan and Mia effectively ward off the physical problems it causes.
  • And then pictures at the end show that some candidates exposed to the mold die after less than 20 minutes. And the list at the beginning also has two kinds of people: turned and dead. Some people survive the mold and slowly transform. Others can't take it and simply die after a while.
  • The DLC "Daughters" elaborates on this. Marguerite comes into contact with Eveline and quickly succumbs. Jack comes into contact with Marguerite and quickly succumbs. While it isn't clear how fast it happens, the entire Baker family becomes infected in less than an hour.
• How is it that Ethan, despite obvious signs of being infected by the Mold, could still remain sane and independent? Two reasons.
  • 1. Eveline fully intended for Ethan to become part of her "Family" as the "Father", meaning that she granted him the same privileges as Mia and the Bakers within the Hive Mind, keeping their identities and individuality intact for the sake of "playing house".
  • 2. Ethan had been infected the very same night, making his Mold infestation nowhere near as extensive as the one within the Bakers or Mia, who had been infected for years before Ethan came along. This also shows in how their healing factors manifests, as Ethan must trigger his through feeding the Mold with any herbal solution he can find, the Bakers and Mia's on the other hand runs on automatic. In other words, with this narrow time-frame, Eveline's influence was minimal at best, but growing as evident near the end of the night.
  • In short, the only reason he made it through, was for the sole reason that he was Mia's husband, earning him the favor of the Mold's Hive Queen and her Hive Mind in the process.
  • 3. Perhaps in her advanced age and declining health, Eveline is no longer able to so quickly overtake a person's will. She's a Dark Lord on Life Support. If Ethan had arrived much earlier, he would have been mentally overpowered just as easily as the Bakers.
• Shortly into the game and after completing the prologue, Ethan is given a Codex watch that tracks his biometrics as an easy gauge for player health. But where did it come from? Mia, who used it and its functions when she was on the ship before ending up at the Bakers'. Zoe then gave it to Ethan post-capture to help him, even though she lacked the ability to access its call feature and such. Notably, Mia never gets a Codex in the endgame outside of the flashback because it was stuck on Ethan at the time; it even specifically reacts upon approaching what Ethan will need to kill Eveline, likely preprogrammed to react as such from Mia's work.
  • Although he shows up as "UNKNOWN" on the Codex, Redfield also accesses it remotely from his chopper to instruct Ethan briefly, meaning either it's common tech among paramilitary groups now or Mia's employers have tight connections with them beyond B.O.Ws.
• The Bakers' house is filled with several puzzles, a fact Ethan Lampshades at one point ("Who builds this shit?"). So where did all those puzzles come from? Well, when you get to Lucas's room, you find a bunch of trophies he won in inventing contests. Also consider his "Happy Birthday" room, and it doesn't seem like much of a stretch that Lucas set up all the puzzles on the off chance that someone tried to escape the house.
  • That said, there is an invoice for the shadow lock puzzles from "Trevor and Chamberlain constructions" in 1991. George Trevor was the man who designed the Spencer estate from the original Resident Evil. While George himself died many decades before, it's probable that his business continued through his partner and continued making elaborate locks for creepy mansions and continue Trevor's legacy.
• Where did the handmade grenade launcher came from? Well, who else in the "Family" has a military background, possess knowledge about military armaments, and the skill of crafting grenade ammo for such a weapon?... Mia. Looks like Lucas isn't the only Gadgeteer Genius in the Baker estate.
  • You find the schematics for the grenade launcher in Lucas's testing area, though, implying he built it. He's apparently been an incredibly talented engineer since childhood, so him making it is not completely out of the realm of possibility.
  • There is also a photo of Jack as a Marine. He's old enough that he could have seen service in Desert Storm, or even Vietnam.
    • The back of the picture frame has 1980 as the date Jack earned his EGA, so Vietnam is right out. In the absence of any info as to what his MOS was in the service, all evidence offered in the game itself (the plans, his engineering know-how, and [most crucially] the autonomy to use it for building weapons) points to Lucas as the one who invented it, along with the burner. As for fan speculation, he could have put them together for his own use as insurance, in case Eveline ever figured out that he wasn't under her control anymore and sicced the rest of the "family" on him. Note that the grenade launcher is particularly effective against Jack and Marguerite, the burner is great for killing her insects, and both are generally pretty good at killing mold; now, aside from the unlikelihood of Jack or Mia knowing how to craft these weapons to begin with, why would Eveline ever allow them to cobble together things capable of putting a severe hurting on her?
• The guns found on the wrecked tanker are a Makarov PM and a PP-19 Bizon. Fitting, considering the horrible state of the vessel, that only Russian guns, the most legendarily tough firearms around, can survive any disaster short of a nuke dropping on them and still remain in working order. Proof? Here's a Makarov PM taking torture test after torture test and still shooting strong. It also suggests that the organization behind Eveline's creation or the security element Mia may possibly work for is Russian in origin. ^note Unfortunately, the PP-19 is not exported out of Russia, so no such counterpart video for it exists.
• Ethan's dinner with the Bakers. While it was to "welcome" him into the family, it becomes apparent after finishing the game that it was specifically so Eveline could finally meet him in-person (albeit in her undisguised older form), as she wanted him to be her new father and would have wanted to get to know him. Notice that Eveline is even seated next to Ethan at the table for the dinner. This is also why she is shown watching Ethan and following his every movement as he breaks free and begins moving around the room to escape. Mia (Ethan's wife and Eveline's beloved "mommy") was likely excluded from the family dinner because, depending on the timeline, she might have needed more rest to recover from her would-be fatal wounds from her fight with Ethan or she may have already escaped again, in which case the family may also have been trying to use Ethan as bait to bring Mia back for him.
  • Another case of Fridge Brilliance appears in this scene as well. At first, Lucas throwing his food at Ethan can come off as a childish jerkassery, but it turns out that Lucas is Not Brainwashed, and the food is contaminated by the mold. Eveline is right next to him, so throwing his food at Ethan was the only way Lucas could weasel his way out of dinner. Sure, it cost him, but he got away from the table without having to take a single bite of it.
  • Another more humorous fridge moment appears right after this. Why did Jack cut his son's arm off? All violent actions in those infected by the Mold do are made from the demands made by Eveline, and her control over Lucas was non-existent, so Jack performed a very literal and dark interpretation of "Cut it out!" on her behalf.
  • Also, it seems as though Mia did try to escape again, if her pleading and apologizing for what she did to Ethan at the start of the "Mia" VHS is any indication.
• Eveline is a Living Weapon who needs regular doses of medication to stop her from rapidly aging and presumably dying. Sounds like a pretty serious limitation for a weapon, right? Well, not if you're the one selling it. The company that developed Eveline either engineered this limitation intentionally or has no desire to fix it because charging their customers indefinitely for more medication to stabilize their bioweapons would vastly increase their profits.
  • The rapid aging also works as a failsafe in case she goes rogue. Three years turned Eveline from a little girl into a crippled invalid dependent on her minions.
  • Also, it's more efficient if you can manufacture your super-expensive experimental weapon in just a couple of years rather than a full ten.
• Why can't you attack grandma? Because she's Eveline, and she subconsciously commands you to not harm her.
  • "Grandma"/Eveline can still be shot at from a far enough distance but, of course, nothing happens to her.
    • Which might make sense if the vast majority of the time "Grandma"/Eveline is not actually there. You can find her sitting there in her wheelchair all over the mansion, though with her advanced age it's highly unlikely she could move herself around. In fact, you can even find Grandma in a crawlspace where it's nearly impossible she could actually be. Eveline is screwing with Ethan's perceptions throughout the entire game, and it's entirely possible that only during the final confrontation that's she's genuinely where she appears to be.
• Why is Eveline so... sociopathic, in her interactions with everyone? Well, besides whatever explicit biological programming she was subjected so that she could act as a living weapon, she may look eight or eighty, but she's actually three years old. Even under the best of circumstances, children around that age are often demanding, self-centered, and still working out social boundaries and the differences between reality and their own imaginations. Between the aforementioned weapons programming, being raised by scientists who either didn't think of her of a person at all and/or rightfully were scared of her, and being trapped in a body undergoing accelerated physiological development(and who's creators likely didn't think or care if such accelerated development would apply properly to her neurological tissue as well, or cause cognitive problems), Eveline it's safe to say did not have "the best of circumstances".
• Why is Marguerite so attached to her lantern? Many flying insects are attracted to light.
• So why was the serum barely effective? The answer is quite easy. You collect a D-series head and a D-series arm. Eveline is the much more effective E-series. Of course, it does help a bit, but not all that much.
• The Shotgun Trap actually comes pretty close to making sense this time. Jack Baker, being a former member of the Marines, would know about storing his guns safely. As a gun owner, he would also know that guns are prime targets for thieves. So as a trap for potential thieves, he stores his shotgun, unloaded, in a prominently displayed room that automatically traps you if you try to grab it.
• If you look at Lucas' engineering contest trophies, you can tell that he's something of a child prodigy, but note that he's never won first place, instead only achieving second or third place. This plays into his tendencies not to fully think his contraptions or plans through, such as in the main game when he doesn't change the combination to the Birthday room lock and in "21", when he inadvertently gives Clancy the trump card he needs to win, even after Lucas rigged everything in his own favor.
  • Look again at where he hid the remote for the attic; yep, it's a first-place trophy. It seems like Lucas has just enough crazy to overlook certain derp moments with his planning, as also seen by him leaving the "Happy Birthday" VHS in a place where he sent you to retrieve a keycard.
  • Lucas' flaws in this way is consistent with a lot of sociopathic serial killers throughout history; no matter how cunning they seem or how well they evade capture, the ways they're ultimately caught tend to be so mundane and their attempts to escape so laughably bad you have to wonder if they were nearly as smart as they seemed (the answer is usually no, despite giving police a runaround serial killers tend to be below average intellect). In other words, Lucas is a genius inventor and trap master... but when it comes to things that he can't take his time with overplanning, he's kind of an idiot.
• At the end of the game, it's explained that late-stage infectees react... badly to being administered the serum and that it should regularly be used to exterminate test subjects before they get out of control rather than as a method of curing them. The major symptom of a serum-inflicted death is ceaseless vomiting before death. Now consider how Alan died. Additional notes at the end of the game suggests that both guardians of an E-series BOW must carry the serum on them at all times, and Alan sent Mia to collect hers from their luggage. He also dies right next to the black box case that produces the serum from the cells. He either committed suicide via serum, or tried to cure himself but was far too infected for it to work; but either way he was actually holding on to his vial of Eveline's cells and still sent Mia all the way across the ship to get the second serum rather than hand over his. Jerk.
• Ethan seemingly received a video from Mia which tells him to stay away, which results in him coming to her anyway. Only later do we discover that Ethan never saw that video. Instead, he got a pleasant e-mail which is in your inventory the entire time — telling him to come.
• Late in the game, we see a hallucination in the kitchen of a doll standing on top of a chair overlooking a family.◊ This seems like random symbolism, but it actually makes perfect sense. One chair is knocked over, representing Zoe's. There's an artificial fake chair next to all the wooden ones, representing Eveline (or Lucas, since he isn't under her control). Eveline is standing over all the chairs, though, being an abnormally sized doll who is ruling the family. It displays all of her sick twisted mindset in one small image.
• He's not law enforcement or military, but it's very likely Ethan does have prior experience with firearms. His accuracy is quite good when he takes aimed shots, he knows enough about their internals to repair guns himself, and, more tellingly, he keeps his finger off the trigger while passively carrying handguns, a gun safety habit that — thanks to Hollywood's influence — is seldom-to-never seen in those with zero training. Plus, despite what many appear to believe, firearms training isn't some kind of top-secret, forbidden art that only cops and soldiers can learn (Jerry Miculek, held to be the greatest shooter in the world, has neither a law enforcement nor a military background), and Ethan appears to hail from the gun-friendly neighboring state of Texas, where more than a handful of civilians are familiar with the subject.
• Why can't Molded creatures open doors to follow you? Simply put, they're too stupid to figure out how. To elaborate, the Molded are corpses infested with the mold or golems wholly constructed of the stuff; either way, they're id-driven monsters that don't have a functional human brain for Eveline to manipulate with her Hive Mind, so they lack the intelligence and reasoning ability to work out any directives more complicated than "kill".
• Lucas killed Clancy because, as a new big brother, he might lose his place. Since he is no longer infected and only plays dumb, he might get worried that Eveline would kill him once she has a suitable replacement.
• Why is Jack so angry about being demoted to Grandfather and wants to kill Ethan for it? He's not, and he doesn't; Jack has no say in it, any more than an action figure gets to choose why a kid is making it fight other toys. The conflict basically amounts to Eveline playing with her dollies, and if Jack or Marguerite did happen to kill Ethan, she'd just have them go pick out a new daddy and start the whole thing over.
• Jack's one-eyed appearance as the Swamp Man makes sense if you look closely at which eye is damaged; it's his right eye, the one Ethan jabbed the fungicide cure into at the end of his boss fight in the core game. Basically, it's a form of Scars Are Forever.
• Jack's infestation of centipedes as the Swamp Man is most likely an attempt to remember his dead wife, made warped and terrifying through his monstrous mutation.
• With the "End of Zoe" DLC, it finally becomes apparent what Jack and Zoe appearing in the Hive Mind sequence while Marguerite being missing really meant: the former two were still alive, even if Jack's body was just a right mess after Ethan was done with it, while the latter was Killed Off for Real.
• Jack's return as a still-insane monster in End of Zoe seems to imply that E-Series' effects on the physical body and brain of a victim still remain even after the B.O.W.'s death. It's possible that Lucas kept on being homicidal even after he was freed from Eveline's control because her infection had already corrupted him irretrievably, with or without her being able to directly influence him.
  • Related to that, it appears that both he and Jack died for good after Eveline was killed because their more extensive regenerative ability was tied into her powers, and they couldn't revive again after having their brain destroyed without her Hive Mind around to keep a "backup" of their consciousness.
• Considering Lucas’s name along with his multiple faces, hellish glow, and wing-like arms when he transforms at the end of Not a Hero, it’s possible that his One-Winged Angel form might, in fact, be intended to be angel-themed in the same vein as Marguerite being a spider - transforming upgrades him to Lucifer.
• Lucas's demeanor and tone are a bit more restrained and openly snide and aggressive in Not a Hero than they are in the main game... which he ragequits in a full-on tantrum out of his role in after failing twice in a row to blow up Ethan not two hours before Not a Hero actually starts. By the time it does, he's still in a sour mood.
• In End of Zoe, Joe's interactions with the Swamp Man after realizing who he really is cast some elements of Jack's character in a new light. Joe boisterously shouts that Jack was "always weak" and recounts times he kicked his ass while they play-fought as kids during their last fight while getting a pathetic and flustered "shut up!" in response. Jack, who went on to join the marines at the young age of eighteen and become a bit of a strict and heavy-handed parent, later magnified and blown up by his infection, despite being mostly good-natured. One wonders if the guy developed a little bit of a complex after growing up with a Big Brother Bully.
• When you think about it, each of the Baker family members you go up against (Jack, Margurite, and Lucas) each represent various types of horror. It goes as follows:
  • Jack Baker represents slasher horror, as he is an Implacable Man who continues to chase after you whenever he sees you, wields massive, destructive weapons, and though constantly getting his body destroyed keeps coming back with a vengeance.
  • Margurite represents body horror, with her body grotesquely elongated in a strange facsimile of a bugs, which she also controls to attack and kill you.
  • Lucas represents psychological horror, with his various puzzles giving him a chance to mess with his victims while he stays away and laughs in the comfort of a monitor room.
• Why does the deputy not notice Jack, who seems to appear from nowhere? Simple, according to words from Lucas - "Goddamn it, I bet it's the cop again." - he's been hanging around the estate and breathing in the mold through the air, as that's how Ethan is infected too. The deputy can't see Jack coming... because the mold - and Eveline - have infected him and don't want him to see Jack.
• If the Beginning Hour is canon to the main game, and the series overall, it carries some interesting foreshadowing. The Baker Incident Report, a DLC feature included in the sequel, states that the Dulvey Sheriff's Department colluded with the BSAA to cover up Eveline's escape, and thus the entire events of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (because the BSAA had failed previously to take her down, and so this would make them responsible for the civilian deaths by her hand). Now, what happens in the good ending of Beginning Hour? The protagonist successfully escapes the Guest House, but his attempt to tell the police about his ordeal is discredited due to them finding LSD on his person. Considering the cover up, it's very likely that they planted the drugs on him to make him look unreliable and not be made to seriously investigate his claims.

Fridge Horror

• Where are the dead bodies of the reality show trio we saw in the Found Footage segment? The Midnight version of the demo reveals that they have been strung up in the basement, as there are three dead bodies hanging from the ceiling covered in bags.
  • In the Bakers dinner trailer, Pete is shown to be slumped over at the table instead.
    • As it happens, Clancy is immolated and pinned to a door, Andre is left to rot in the waters of the (later flooded) basement, and Pete is, presumably, the remains in the fridge...
• In the Good Ending, Ethan rescues Mia and takes her back. Except... by this point, Mia has stabbed him repeatedly and cut his hand off with a chainsaw. Even if it did get reattached afterwards, and she was Brainwashed and Crazy at the time... how is he supposed to live with her whilst remembering that? To say nothing of the fact she was involved with the company that created Eveline and knew all about Eveline's inhuman status. How is the relationship supposed to survive with that kind of baggage hanging over it?
  • Likely from the fact Ethan could understand that she had little to no choice in the matter and that she did try to take care of Eveline. Remember, Mia only said she wasn't her mother after Eveline started playing mind games and forcing her to try and kill her husband.
• If you read the second half of Lucas' journals in his old room, it's implied that the bully he locked up in the attic ended up being left there so long he starved to death.
• Ethan was never given a serum at the end of the night, and as Lucas demonstrated, being given a serum does not purge all symptoms of the Mold out of your system. Doesn't that mean that Ethan is a walking biohazard now?
  • On the other hand, he was saved by an apparently redeemed, or at least smarter, Umbrella Corporation. It's not likely they don't have the medical know-how to figure out the serum themselves if one teenage girl in the bayou could with an instruction manual.
  • However, Zoe had already access to everything she needed, all she basically had to do was combine them into the serum. These components have been used up at the time Umbrella Corp rolls in and without any samples, they would be forced to make a cure from scratch, while flailing blindly in the process. The odds of Ethan being cured of his Mold are downheartedly low...
  • Considering he had to learn what they are and carry them around personally, Ethan probably remembers the D-Series ingredient factors, and Umbrella could take the rest from there. Even if he's not cured of the Mold, however, with no Eveline around to make things worse and circumstances looking favorable rather than bleak, he's got a good chance of becoming an Empowered Badass Normal like Sherry did.
  • Of course, it's also possible that, if this is a new continuity, Umbrella will unleash their new nightmare by mistake while trying to develop a cure for the infection. Because what's more terrifying than an evil organization causing so much damage? A benevolent one trying to do the right thing but making it worse.
    • Actually, it is the same continuity as the previous games set in the original continuity, because there are subtle continuity nods such as a cameo of a survivor from the Outbreak games in the form of a newspaper article written years after Raccoon City, Chris Redfield showing up, etc. That being said, that's still horrifying because knowing Umbrella's failures before that lead to alot of deaths, adding more to the body count will just mean that even the benevolent employees will suffer punishment for accidentally unleashing a metaphorical hell on Earth.
• With the stuff mentioned in Fridge Brilliance above about healing in mind, if Ethan dies horribly, how are we not sure that the Mold that's growing within his body doesn't eventually turn him into one of the Molded as well? He can already reattach limbs like stickers with some medical treatment, and while he's not as far in the infection as the Bakers are, the Mold is clearly already infiltrating his entire body's system. If the mental faculties keeping his body in check were to fail, there's essentially nothing in the Mold's — or Eveline's — way to a full take over besides, at best, a full-body death altogether.
  • And for an undiluted Squick thought, he better not have a passionate night with the cured Mia after this (if she's still alive depending on your choice anyway).
    • Both Ethan and Mia are infected by the end of the game again. Mia got re-infected in the boat, as we briefly see her go crazy again. It's possible, however, that if Eveline is the mold, then her death means that neither of them are infected at all. By that point, Ethan has probably regenerated all the damage done to him.
• The scene where Jack Baker shows off his Healing Factor by shoving Ethan's gun into his mouth and blowing his head open, only for it to regrow by his second boss fight, is commonly interpreted as Jack being a Smug Super revealing in his ability to not die. However, when it's revealed that the entire Baker clan (Jack included) was Brainwashed and Crazy by Eveline's infectioon, this could mean Jack was either trying to kill himself, or showing Ethan that his inability to die was a curse instead of a blessing.
  • A paper towards the end explains further that infected people in the second stage have a high tendency to harm themselves or others. He shoots his own head away and before that doesn't even hesitate to cut off his own son's arm or slice Ethan's mouth open when he doesn't eat his "dinner".
• As noticed when fighting him, Jack's pants not following the fate of his shirt brings some seriously disturbing implications on the table. We know the Bakers aren't the cleanest sort and usually, pants are towels for all kinds of body fluids and dirt such as sweat, dead skin flakes, and the like. The horror comes in when one asks oneself, "How often does Jack Baker change his pants?" and for that matter, "How much of his pants are actually pants?", considering that they share his healing factor and that they actually stood up and tried to walk away after Jack's upper half had been blown completely apart by Ethan, one starts wondering...
  • ...Or maybe his pants are just flame-resistant?
  • In all fairness, they are splotched with some pretty dark stains...Mold perhaps?
    • He DOES live in a bayou. Who knows what disgusting stuff lives under that water — it could be ANYTHING.
  • To make this even grosser, pants are not only less likely to get torn off or become deteriorated than shirts or shoes (most shoes are easy to kick off, and shirts can be taken off or shredded), they also tend to get caked with filth purely by virtue of being closer to the ground, which is even likelier to happen in a house near a swamp. Pants also have a lot more creases and tight corners near the inner thighs and crotch area that's brimming with potential bacteria, especially when a body decomposes (which certainly seems to be happening to the Bakers on some level). It's quite possible that being brainwashed for as long as the Bakers have been there has prevented them from changing their clothes at all, meaning that the Bakers are wearing the same dirty, grimy, mold-caked, bacteria-ridden, rotting skin-filled clothes that Eveline brainwashed them in when they first met, possibly for years. It's entirely possible that Jack's pants essentially have a mold civilization of their own given the situation.
• The Mold is this incarnate, as it is still a mold-based organism, and mold have the unfortunate property of being incredibly hard to kill once it settles in. It only needs water to thrive and grow, and if denied that, it dries up into spores which can be carried over for a long time until it finds more water to feed and grow as mold once more. Now, The Mold and Eveline was released in the wetlands of Louisiana^note in a state where it rains periodically all year long and is the home for the Mississippi River Delta which is home for hundreds of animals, birds, and other wildlife unique for the area and with access to over 2.7 million acres of coastal wetlands, among other aspects... and has been nesting for three whole years until the start of the night's events. Now, how much of Louisiana's ecosystem has become infested by the Mold already? Also, there is no cure for it. Let that sink in. The dead bird at the beginning and the dead fish in the later part of the game? Just the beginning.
  • And come the DLC "End of Zoe", not only are there mold-infected alligators, but the Mold has turned the environment into bulbous, humongous, mounds of pulsating fungi which covers the scenery like some Alien Kudzu. This is just a taste of what the marshlands looks like at this point.
• Marguerite's food is already nightmare-worthy, but when Ethan later on finds a note from a "guest" who had actually eaten it and realized how his condition had gotten worse from doing so, it hits you. The food alone isn't just capable of killing you, it accelerates the growth of the Mold inside those who eat it as well.
• The fear of becoming a monster has always been a prominent theme throughout the franchise, but this game takes it one step further with the reveal that the Big Bad enslaves its victims via a Hive Mind, and not even death can free you from it. Just imagine what happens whenever you die during a playthrough; in those futures, Ethan (who is heavily implied to be in the early stages of infection) and the Bakers are damned to be the slaves of a sadistic, traumatized monster forever, even should their bodies be completely destroyed. You're not just trying to survive the night, you're fighting for your soul.
  • Adding to that, killing the Hive Queen is no guarantee that the Mold's Hive Mind would share her fate either. What is stopping it from promoting Ethan, the sole remaining, uncured, member of the Hive Mind, to the Mold's "Hive King" once Eveline is gone?
    • That's a good thing. If Ethan becomes Hive King, he is not absolutely crazy like Eveline is. He's sane enough to know that it's wrong, so he'd release everyone from the control.
    • Sadly, that's not how a Hive Mind works...The Mold's Hive Mind is basically a super-organism on its own, akin of a central nervous system in a living being. Once something is part of it, it never vanishes, as everyone ever assimilated into it would be evenly spread all across its existence. The idea of "freeing" a mind from it would be the same as trying to shut off the nerves in a lobe through sheer willpower. It can't happen. So everyone caught within the Mold are forever stuck in it unless every single piece of it ceases to exist. Meaning that the Bakers and all of Eveline's victims are basically trapped in Ethan's head with no option of freeing them from it. Even if he's saner than Eveline, there's absolutely nothing he can do to ease the Mold's victims' suffering. Nothing.
    • Not entirely true. Sure, he can't release them from the hive mind... but he doesn't want them punished, so he could just make them hallucinate and imagine that they're living a normal life and they're happy again.
  • Alternatively, if Ethan became the new leader of the Hive Mind, he could force the others to scour the entire lands and destroy every inch of mold. This isn't a much happier fate, since it would undoubtedly take forever and still be a horrific experience for all of the victims involved.
• The Mold's infection speed has become terrifying with the release of the "Daughters" DLC, which shows how the Bakers reach mid-stage infection in less than five minutes after being introduced to it, accelerating rapidly to a complete takeover before ten minutes even passed, making it one of the most potent biological weapons witnessed in the series to date in terms of contamination spread. And this was released into Louisiana's waters.
  • End of Zoe confirms that the entire region is a disaster area. It's beyond a Superfund site; the government would have to invent Hyperfund sites.
• When you find out that Eveline is the first successful E-Series bio-weapon the company who made her manufactured, and since they are still at large, there's nothing stopping them from making more of her to sell for the highest-bidder later on...or worse, further perfecting her and release an "F-Series" on the market with the "flaws" in the "E-Series" removed from the finished product.
• Lucas’s interactions with his female victims is pretty creepy. A deleted line from him even has him call Mia “darling”. Notes in the game show that he was the one who locked her in a cell, and it seems that he has been the one messing with her the most. There’s no telling what Mia (And even more disturbingly possibly Zoe) have had to endure at his hands for the past 3 years.
• Towards the beginning of the game you find a newspaper stating at least 20 people have gone missing in the Baker house. How many of these people were likely concerned friends, family, neighbors etc. who went to check on them and ended up being murdered, turned, or worse?

Fridge Logic

• How did Ethan not die from blood loss when he got his arm cut off at the beginning of the game from a chainsaw?
  • Same reason why just spraying yourself after getting stabbed and/or shot in the previous games heals you.
  • Ethan only lost his hand for a few minutes, just long enough for him to fight off the Brainwashed and Crazy Mia. It's then surgically reattached (read: stapled back on) by the Baker Family.
  • It might be possible that he got infected with the mold the moment he stepped inside the house and took his first breath there. It would also explain the in-game healing mechanic quite well if this is the case, considering that he's basically pouring a nutritious solution straight into his wounds. Now, what does it take to trigger the growth of mold again?
• At the good ending of the game, shouldn't Mia be going to jail for the rest of her life for being a bio-terrorist agent complicit in human testing and recklessly causing the deaths of dozens of innocent people by illegally smuggling a BOW? Why does Ethan believe he and Mia still have any chance at a fresh start with all her crimes?
  • Eveline is responsible for all the deaths. And while Mia is complicit in illegally smuggling Eveline and knew about the human testing, she was also forcibly held against her will illegally for a number of years by a BOW and given extremely selective amnesia by said BOW. Kinda hard to convict her of any wrongdoing after that from both Naysayers and from Sympathizers. She got her second chance by saving the life of the one man who meant the world to her.
  • This is not even considering the fact that Umbrella might cover up her role in Eveline's creation.
• Beating Lucas's Death Trap becomes this if Ethan doesn't watch the "Happy Birthday" VHS beforehand. If Ethan finds and watches the tape before going into the trap, he has already learned all the pass-codes in the trap as well as what pitfalls to avoid from poor Clancy's efforts, and can solve it without dying. Another attempt from the enraged Lucas to kill him only gives Ethan the means to escape, driving Lucas off. Pretty cut-and-dry. However, if Ethan doesn't find and watch the tape, he is not allowed to bypass the fatal parts of the trap even if the player knows the secrets.^note Entering the correct code without Clancy or Ethan dying first gets you a "I should find out the password first" type error message, forcing you to follow all the steps to allow you to solve the puzzle that will spell doom for your player character. He is required to first follow all the steps to solve the trap the same way Clancy did and die, just like Clancy did. The game then resets to the beginning of the puzzle, which for some reason now allows Ethan to successfully take shortcuts to solve the Death Trap and escape as he's supposed to the same as if he'd watched the VHS. How on earth does this work In-Universe? Some have suggested that Ethan regenerates from his fatal injuries and Lucas has reset the trap to force him to do it again, but there is nothing in the game to suggest this like, say, Lucas taunting him over loudspeaker when Ethan comes to that thanks to Eveline's gift, Ethan gets to die over and over and over again. There's also no indication that Ethan revives after dying in previous or subsequent Game Overs. And why would Lucas be surprised that Ethan remembered the passcodes and solved the Death Trap without setting up his own demise if he's forcing him to redo exactly the same puzzle with exactly the same solutions? Even if the answer is something like Eveline or someone else in the Hive Mind guiding Ethan without overplaying their hand, it wouldn't explain the game first forcing Ethan to die and how that would figure into the story.
  • Simple, Clancy had become a part of the Mold's Hive Mind and if Ethan doesn't watch the tape, Clancy helps him out by having him relive the Death Trap through his last memories, imposed with Ethan's form through them due to Ethan actually not knowing what Clancy looks like, essentially giving Ethan a Déjà Vu moment upon dying the first time and then give Ethan a chance to solve it himself properly for real. Essentially allowing the Sewer Gator's cameraman to give Lucas the middle-finger in the most satisfying way possible with the Mold as medium.
  • In a meta sense, this is more likely just an Anti-Frustration Feature so players wouldn't get hopelessly stuck in this section.
• Assuming Lucas wasn't just writing a story in his journal as boys his age are wont to do (see Alternate Character Interpretation), then how come no one noticed he's locked a child his age in the attic to die? His parents would almost certainly hear the screaming and they'd also investigate the smell or find the body. The fact there isn't a body up there, not even a molded, is noticeable too. If the Bakers did find a corpse, then their innocence goes into question too but it seems Jack Baker is genuinely of the mind his son is a good boy.
  • No clue regarding when this happened, could have been long ago, and besides, the Bakers seems to be the "family first" type of personalities, meaning that they could have covered it up in order to save their son, thinking of it as an accident, (especially if Lucas told them that he and Oliver were "playing hide-and-seek" and that Oliver had gone home once Lucas "failed to find him" when it happened.)
• Despite bioweapons like they one they're encountering having been publicly known to exist for over a decade now, and there being government organizations who could deal with the situation much better than two under-equipped civilians, neither Ethan nor his allies ever attempt to contact the authorities using either the working phones all around the house that serve as a gameplay mechanic, the radio of a dead deputy, or the cellphone Ethan takes out of his pocket at the end. Even if the landlines couldn't call out for some reason and Ethan's cell had no signal, Zoe had ample opportunity to escape and get help for her infected family before the games began, and Ethan is out of the house and could simply run until he found a road or town about a third into the game.
  • They can’t just waltz off the property because they’re infected by Eveline’s Mold. That’s why they have to cure themselves with the serum first, otherwise Eveline could just calcify them the moment they try to leave the Baker estate. It’s not stated how long someone has to be infected by the Mold before Eveline is able to calcify them, but considering that the Bakers are immediately infected when Eveline shows up in Daughters, it’s not unthinkable that none of them could leave without Eveline permitting them to from the moment they were infected. Combine that with the possibility that all cell signals are blocked due to Lucas working for the Connections and that the landlines can’t dial out, and Ethan, Mia, and Zoe are effectively trapped there.