Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you. During a recent get-together with some friends, I made an offhanded joke about the Resident Evil game series. This prompted a person who had never played to ask what they were about outside of shooting zombies. And while I opened my mouth to explain, nothing came out because I soon realized: I couldn’t even begin explaining them without a blackboard.
So, in today’s lesson, we’ll be diving into the most essential questions of the franchise; this means we’re going to be drawing on the canon of only the games (not the movies), and ignoring Resident Evil 4 and everything from 6 onward specifically. The focus here is what I call the Wesker Era of Resident Evil, games where Umbrella and Wesker is the throughline plot-wise. So, without further ado, let’s jump into the birth of the Umbrella Corporation, and the origins of Albert Wesker.
Major spoilers ahead for Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and Resident Evil 5.
WHAT IS THE UMBRELLA CORPORATION?
The story begins how it always does: with a British person ruining things.
Oswell E. Spencer was a wealthy British aristocrat who, over the course of his life, became obsessed with creating a utopia. His philosophy slanted towards authoritarianism and eugenics, believing he could uplift the human race as its sole ruler. Spencer soon honed in on his mission: he would use selective mutation and gene tampering to make humanity “perfect”.
On a later expedition to Africa, Spencer found a miracle lifeform to help achieve his goals. This was the Progenitor virus, an ancient virus that could create monsters out of animals and people when it was ingested, but more importantly, it could turn certain humans into superhumans.
Despite recognizing Progenitor’s incredible potential, he also knew the research to actually refine and apply this power would take decades, an inordinate amount of money, and many more talented personnel than himself. So, he formed a company called Umbrella Pharmaceuticals to undergo this task. Under the leadership of Spencer, it later became the infamous Umbrella Corporation.
WHAT ARE THE B.O.W.s IN RESIDENT EVIL?
Umbrella would soon find a new stream of revenue through the virus; they would use Progenitor and its successors to create Bio Organic Weapons (B.O.W.s), which could be sold to governments and terrorist groups for funds to complete the utopia project.
Setting up shop in the Arklay Mountains of the Midwest, Umbrella founded the expansive Arklay Laboratory beneath a custom-built palatial estate known as the Spencer Mansion. They also created an Umbrella training facility for employees and began to fund and urbanize a nearby small town known as Raccoon City, which was called a city despite being a small town.
For some reason.
As the decades went on, both Umbrella’s operation and Raccoon City grew hand in hand. One of Umbrella’s co-founders alongside Spencer, James Marcus, eventually made a breakthrough at the Arklay Lab to create the most well-known virus in the series: the T-Virus.
WHAT IS THE T-VIRUS?
Like the Progenitor virus, the T-Virus’ highly mutagenic properties interacted with the DNA of living beings in a variety of different ways. Animals often grew massive and incredibly aggressive, resulting in B.O.W.s like their many giant spiders, which were uncontrollable, and the shark B.O.W. Neptune.
The most common result of T-Virus infection in humans, however, was the development of a sickness called Cannibal Disease. It caused sudden necrosis, rotting victims and their brains away rapidly and turning them into little more than shambling, groaning flesh eaters. This is the most common result and your typical zombie infection for the first few games, but even this isn’t the end, as many zombies can and do mutate again into creatures like the Crimson Heads or the iconic Lickers.
As they refined the T-Virus further, they began to use it in specific genetic engineering, combining its effects with cloning, cybernetics, and animal DNA splicing (typical mad science stuff, you get it). With each strain becoming more potent than the last, Umbrella managed to create its first truly intelligent B.O.W.s: the Tyrants, hulking mutants that could listen to commands and hunt down specific targets rather than just going gorilla mode on anything in their path. Later versions of the Tyrant included Mr. X, and the iconic Nemesis, who could actually use weapons instead of just beating you to death.
In the background however, Spencers’ ambitions distracted him and led to the creation of the series’ two most iconic villains: William Birkin, and Albert Wesker.
WHO IS ALBERT WESKER?
Remember all that eugenics stuff I mentioned earlier? Well, one of Umbrella’s earliest attempts at making Spencer’s perfect superhumans was Project W, named after its lead, Dr. Wesker (first name unknown). He took orphaned and kidnapped children with the right genetic markers to be turned into Spencer’s ubermensch, and exposed them to a prototype virus derived from Progenitor. Not only did each of the children take the doctor’s last name as a “sign of respect” which is already crazy, but Dr. Wesker put genetically programmed daddy issues into the children that made them seek Spencer’s approval.
I don’t even know how that’s possible, but that is literally so insane I couldn’t help but mention it.
Albert Wesker, the main antagonist of the Resident Evil series and the villain we know and love, was one of these child test subjects. He and his adoptive sister, Alex, were the sole survivors of Project W, and as a result Wesker became one of if not the most valuable asset in Umbrella’s arsenal. Spencer even sent him to kill T-Virus creator James Marcus after he decided he wanted to become the only one in charge of Umbrella. Wesker was later placed in Raccoon City Police Department as a mole for the S.T.A.R.S. program, the Special Tactics and Rescue Service. His primary purpose here was to cover up any loose ends that might implicate Umbrella in bioterrorism, but it eventually became an escape route for him when he began to pull away from the company.
WHO IS WILLIAM BIRKIN?
Wesker’s formal education at the hands of Umbrella was alongside another young prodigy, William Birkin. While Birkin didn’t possess any of Wesker’s enhanced physique, he would go on to discover and experiment on the G-Virus, another child virus of Progenitor. Unlike T-Virus, G-Virus didn’t destroy the flesh; rather, it transformed cells into virus factories, with a side effect being a rapid rate of regeneration. While this meant it could hypothetically heal all wounds and bring people back from the dead, it mainly caused the victim to transform and grow, usually into a giant amalgam of eyeballs, flesh, and bone spikes.
Wesker and Birkin would become instrumental in the Mansion Incident and the Raccoon City Outbreak that would cause the downfall of the Umbrella Corporation.
OKAY, STOP. THIS IS TOO MANY VIRUSES TO KEEP TRACK OF.
Trust me, this is all important. All you need to know is:
- Oswell Spencer found the Progenitor Virus.
- James Marcus used the Progenitor virus to make the T-Virus (which makes zombies, giant animals, and Tyrants).
- William Birkin used the Progenitor virus to make the G-Virus (the one that makes tumor-looking G-Mutants).
Simple right?
WHAT WAS THE MANSION INCIDENT?
So, back to the Arklay Mountains where all this is happening. Birkin, frustrated with Umbrella’s restrictions on his G-Virus research and dwindling funds, decides to jump ship and flee with his experiments, planning to sell them to the U.S. Government. Wesker decides to jump ship and sell the Tyrant project data to Umbrella’s unnamed rival company. Great minds think alike!
Oh, and a shapeshifting leech came back disguised as the dead James Marcus.
…WAIT, WHAT?
Yeah, so when Wesker killed Marcus and dumped his body in the Arklay Mountains, a T-Virus-infected leech Marcus was working on coincidentally ate Marcus’ brain. Because a victim’s mind affects the mutations caused by the T-Virus, the leech mutated into a supersmart shapeshifting copy of Marcus that thought it was the original James Marcus reborn.
Dubbed Queen Leech, it decided it was going to get revenge on Umbrella, and released T-Virus throughout the Umbrella training facility and lab with its colony of super-leeches, zombifying most of the staff present. This eventually spread out into the surrounding wilderness and the Spencer Mansion itself, letting loose zombies into the boondocks of the Arklay mountains.
This is when the entire plot of Resident Evil 0 happens. S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team is sent to investigate the zombie attacks in the Arklay Mountains, but has their helicopter intentionally sabotaged by mole Albert Wesker.
He did this because
1. He is incredibly messy, and
2. He decided to put combatants against the B.O.W.s in the Spencer Mansion and Arklay Lab to sell the combat data he got from it to Umbrella’s competitor and his soon-to-be employer.
Queen Leech is killed by recurring series protagonist Rebecca Chambers, and Billy Coen, a character who was used once and promptly forgotten (still salty about that).
Moving on to the events of Resident Evil, Wesker then lured in S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team, a group of operatives consisting of Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, and Wesker himself (among others). Rebecca reunites with Alpha Team, Jill Valentine almost becomes a Jill sandwich, and most importantly, Wesker releases a Tyrant to kill Alpha Team. He lets the monster impale him to fake his death and allow him to escape Umbrella surveillance.
The surviving members of Alpha Team kill Wesker’s Tyrant and blow up the mansion, and Wesker is presumed dead by all parties.
WHAT CAUSED THE RACCOON CITY OUTBREAK?
You would think because Queen Leech’s attack and the Mansion Incident were so close to Raccoon City physically, that was the primary cause. And it did exacerbate the problem, but really, the outbreak had another major point of infection: William Birkin.
So, two months after all that stuff happens with Wesker, Queen Leech, and Alpha Team, Birkin tries to escape with his G-Virus samples through Raccoon City. But because of Umbrella’s top-notch intelligence team, they already know about all the existing G-Virus samples Birkin hid, including the one he hid inside of the prized pendant of his young daughter Sherry Birkin. So of course, they send…
A billion-dollar Tyrant B.O.W. after the little girl, and…
Some normal humans with guns go after Birkin, of course, which makes total sense.
A recently revived Wesker tried to rescue Birkin and the virus samples before Umbrella got to him, and he even got his iconic black outfit to do it in (boots the lab down), but he didn’t make it in time. Umbrella Security engaged Birkin and mortally wounded him, but he managed to inject himself with G-Virus and became a nigh-indestructible monster as a result. And so, the main antagonist of Resident Evil 2 is born.
He also did one more thing by accident. When he began to rabidly break and drink G-Virus samples after his transformation, he also broke and scattered T-Virus samples all over the place. These samples were ingested by nearby rats, who then spread the virus to the civilian population at a rapid rate. With this goof, the zombie apocalypse begins to take hold in Raccoon City, and the plot of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis happens as Umbrella tries to kill anybody who knows the secrets of their company.
Seeing how dire the contagion is, the U.S. Government decides to wipe the city, Birkin, and most of the Umbrella personnel off the map with a missile, one of the few plot points that the movies actually managed to get right. Unlike the movies however, Umbrella dissolved as a company a short while after due to the massive losses incurred by the destruction of Raccoon City.
HOW DOES WESKER DIE IN THE RESIDENT EVIL GAMES?
Wesker soon became a mercenary who was well known for retrieving B.O.W. agents. A Resident Evil: The Mercenary, if you will!
That was funny if you played the games.
Anyways, Wesker was of course not satisfied because of those genetically programmed daddy issues he was given by Project W. He eventually hunted down Oswell Spencer to figure out what his employer’s goals were (as shown in Resident Evil 5). Discovering Spencer’s dream of forcing humanity to transcend through Progenitor, Wesker killed the elderly Spencer, deciding only he could be trusted to carry out the plan to fix humanity.
And he could only do that with…
ONE!
MORE!
VIRUS!
Wesker used Progenitor to create the Uroboros virus, a final “perfect” virus that when launched into the upper atmosphere, would have distributed across the Earth and turned all the people on it with genetics similar to Wesker into superhumans…and like, the other six billion people into evil worm creatures.
Of course, this plan failed miserably because everyone’s favorite boulder-punching S.T.A.R.S. agent, Chris Redfield, intercepted Wesker on behalf of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. After a prolonged battle, Redfield and his partner Sheva (baddie of the century) shot him into a volcano with a rocket launcher, a tradition of the franchise. Wesker, Uroboros, and Spencer’s dream of a utopia all died here.
It’s sad to think of all the looks he served, all the catty beefs he had, all the swagger he squandered. And in the end, he just fell into a volcano. If I had to mourn him, I could only turn to the iconic words of Chris Redfield: Wesker, you’re pitiful.
***
Of course, this wasn’t the end of the Resident Evil series, but to dive into the other games would require a whole article of its own. Hopefully, this can serve as a decent guide in making roughly the first half of the franchise a little easier to understand.
And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson! See you in the next class ,and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between!