Trivia / Resident Evil Village

---

• Acting for Two:
  • Elena Lupu and Roxana, another survivor who managed to reach Luiza's manor, are voiced by Nicole Tompkins and Jeanette Maus, respectively, who also covered the roles of Daniela and Cassandra Dimitrescu.
  • Angie is voiced by Paula Rhodes, as is Eveline in her short cameo. Additionally, in the Japanese dub of the game, both Donna Beneviento and Angie are voiced by Miyuki Sato.
  • Maggie Robertson voiced Lady Dimitrescu, one of Donna Beneviento's dolls and a female villager.
• Acting in the Dark: Aaron LaPlante has commented to BuzzFeed on several of the details in his specific recording process:
  • He was recommended a blind audition by Sara Coates, who couldn't disclose anything before Aaron was cast, and it was a while into production before he even learned it was a Resident Evil game.
  • He didn't record mocap with the other actors — both because of the character's huge proportions and because the Duke shared no scenes with anyone besides Ethan — leaving the game's plot even more of a mystery to him; LaPlante would read each line individually, wait for feedback from the Japanese devs on call, and then move on. His speech about the four Lords and their estates was the closest he ever got to understanding the setting.
  • He was instructed to give multiple readings of each line, starting "friendly" and gradually becoming more sinister-sounding, to obscure the Duke's true nature. The different takes were then used to make the Duke seem either inappropriately chummy, or coy and secretive, about the given situation; this created a character that would leave players uncertain as to whether or not he was trustworthy.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • Chris Redfield is back to looking like a tank on legs, after Resident Evil 7: Biohazard depicted him like this◊, a change so extreme that most fans thought it was someone pretending to be Chris.
  • The Gold Edition release included the option to play in third person view as per popular request from fans who either dislike first person or simply prefer seeing their character during gameplay.
• Development Gag: According to Nicole Tompkins, Ethan mentioning "military training" at the beginning is a reference to an in-joke where the cast would ask how Ethan is a Ridiculously Average Guy but can do all kinds of badass feats, and the only answer they would get is "he had military training."
• Meme Acknowledgment:
  • After Lady Dimitrescu became an instant fanservice icon shortly after her reveal, Capcom's reaction was to thank fans on their official Twitter account for their interest in her and start releasing factoids about her height and shoe size.
  • After Capcom released their concept art for Lady Dimitrescu, they had a small guide with swatches of color for the various parts of her outfit… including her underwear, which is normally hidden under her floor length dress.
  • During the fight with Heisenberg, he angrily refers to Chris as "that boulder-punching asshole", calling back to one of Chris Redfield's more infamous moments among the fandom.
• The Other Darrin: Chris is voiced by Carlos Olivera's voice actor Jeff Schine after previously voiced by David Vaughn in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, who Darrin'd Roger Craig Smith in Resident Evil 6 (who also reprised his role as him in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite).^note Following the one-time return of Kevin Dorman in Resident Evil: Vendetta, this marks the 4th overall voice actor for Chris within the past decade.
• Production Posse: Several voice actors from previous Resident Evil games that utilized the RE Engine return for this game.
  • From Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Todd Soley and Katie O'Hagan reprise their roles as Ethan and Mia Winters, while Paula Rhodes reprises her role as Eveline and also plays Angie and the child bus passenger in the epilogue. Jesse Pimentel, who played Lucas, plays Lord Moreau and Iulian. Sara Coates, who played Marguerite, plays Luiza and the Mother in the epilogue. Dove Meir, who played an Umbrella Lieutenant, plays Anton and one of the soldiers during Ethan's transport.
  • From Resident Evil 3 (Remake), Nicole Tompkins (Jill Valentine) plays Daniela Dimitrescu and Elena, Jeff Schine (Carlos Oliviera) plays Chris Redfield and Neil Newbon (Nicholai Ginovaef) plays Lord Heisenberg.
• Prop Recycling: The young girl briefly seen in the Distant Finale reuses Sherry Birkin's character-model from Resident Evil 2 (Remake), with a change of hair-color and wearing glasses. While the woman next to her uses a cleaned-up version of Bela's model from this game.
  • Late in Shadow of Rose, when Rose looks around the Winters' house, she can find a plush die that Ethan bought for her as a baby. A few of the same plush dice can be found in the orphanage in Resident Evil 2 (Remake).
• Recycled Script: The game takes a few cues from Resident Evil 4: Set in a European village, the goal being to rescue someone that was kidnapped to it, the first encounter having the hero woefully outmatched and only saved because the enemy forces are called away, the monarch of the village being evil, having to make your way through a castle and the cause of the monsters being a dormant organism the villain found and infected the villagers with.
• Refitted for Sequel: The game has massive similarities to Resident Evil 4's cancelled Castle and Hookman iterations. To wit; both are a shift towards Gothic Horror from the more traditional sci-fi horror tropes, the plot involves the protagonist getting infected by a dangerous Bioweapon and dying as a result (In the case of Castle, Leon was supposed to bite it, and for Village Ethan dies in the end), has aspects of psychological horror, has an overt (seeming) layer of supernatural horror, a twisted set of killer dolls, and both have revelations about the true origins of Umbrella.
  • A DLC example, Donna's fight was originally gonna be against a hallucination of a giant Angie. While you don't fight them, Shadows of Rose does have you evading giant Mia dolls.
• Significant Double Casting: Paula Rhodes pulling double duty as Angie and Eveline becomes important in Shadows of Rose, as it is part of The Reveal that the childish and creepy female voice taunting you through House is that of none other than Eveline- though it is very reminiscent of Angie.
• Star-Making Role: Maggie Robertson became an overnight sensation due to voicing Lady Dimitrescu.
• Troubled Production: According to Capcom, the game had been partially delayed in development due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Concept Art shows Ada Wong would have been in the game wearing a Plague Doctor disguise to investigate the village and was planned to rescue Ethan at the “trial” scene where Heisenberg brings him before the other lords and Mother Miranda. She was dropped because it could conflict with several scenarios in the story.
  • The game itself changed bit during its last year of development. This can be seen in early trailers, as a lot of the cutscenes are not in the released game. Indeed, the character of Elena was supposed to be much more prominent and even had her own playable section (which can be briefly seen in the trailer where she's holding a lantern) but this was cut from the game.
  • Moreau's reservoir was going to be much more fleshed out and larger, featuring its own unique enemies.
  • One of Moreau's original concepts was that his lover would be permanently fused to his back as one of his mutations, constantly screaming in agony.
  • House Beneviento was initially going to be a doctor's house, with Beneviento herself being the village doctor. Angie did not exist in this concept. Her past was also going to be "incredibly dark" and her parents would have thrown themselves off the waterfall outside of the house. Because Beneviento was originally a doctor, the Mia doll that Ethan has to disassemble would have been a corpse that resembled Mia.
  • Donna Beneviento was going to have a more traditional boss fight structure involving Ethan hallucinating getting shrunken down into a dollhouse and fighting a giant version of Angie.
  • The Baby creature encountered in the Beneviento house was actually going to be fought instead of having the player flee from it.
  • The Duke was originally planned as being a possible fifth lord before being turned into the merchant he is now.
  • The Dimitrescu daughters originally would have mummified if they didn't have a regular supply of blood, playing the vampire tropes straight. They also would have had wings split open from their head during their fights. The mooks that are fought around the castle would have also been more "Daughters" before they settled on the main three.
  • Concept art for the castle rooftop area shows quite a different scenario from what appeared in the final game: Ethan is shown wielding a sword, preparing to face off against a hooded scythe-wielding enemy.
  • The team considered moving forward with Chris Redfield’s much-maligned Resident Evil 7 design before reverting back to how he looked in the previous games.
  • Chris’ explosive visit to the Winters home which kickstarts the events of the game went through a number of different iterations, including one where he shows up in casual clothes under the pretense of a friendly visit, before calling in his Hound-Wolf team for backup.
  • Mia was originally conceived as being confined to a wheelchair as a result of the trauma she experienced in the previous game.
  • Ethan was originally going to be chased across the sinister-looking rope bridge which connects the Beneviento manor to the rest of the village by a huge horde of enemies.
  • The boss fight against Heisenberg was quite different early on. The player would use a howitzer to knock over electrical pylons, crushing Heisenberg beneath them.
  • The propeller headed enemy Sturm that pursues Ethan throughout Heisenberg's factory was originally intended to be Heisenberg's real father whom he more than likely experimented upon.
    • Additionally, even earlier drafts took an even more different approach. Originally, Heisenberg himself was going to be one in a pair of twins. Heisenberg's mother was going to have been experimented upon by her family. And Heisenberg's father originally had the role of being the leader of the village, as well as originally having had taken the same form Heisenberg takes in his boss fight.
• Word of Gay: Maggie Robertson has said that Lady Dimitrescu is "sapphic in some way" (though there is plenty of evidence in-game already).
• Word of God: Art Director Tomonori Takano states Lady Dimitrescu's official height to be 9’6 with a shoe size of 17.3 inches.

---