One would think that the biggest threat of a franchise based in part on George A. Romero’s zombie films (in particular Dawn of the Dead) would be the undead flesh-eaters themselves, but in the case of Resident Evil, there are worse things to be terrified of in the dark. Starting back with the release of the original in 1996, there have always been zombies in the franchise, but the biggest threat is the escalation of biological warfare, and the grotesque mutations left behind in the wake of continued experiments by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation.
There have been multiple different branched-off strains of the original “T-Virus” that led to the Raccoon City outbreak, and as a result there are multiple different mutated “bio-organic weapons” (or BOWs) in the Resident Evil franchise, and some of them have even made their way to the big screen. The infected zombie dogs that have shown up in multiple games throughout the series also appear in multiple of Paul W.S. Anderson’s live-action films. Lisa Trevor, the T-Virus’s tragic first victim, appears in the remake of the original Resident Evil and also in Johannes Roberts’ Welcome to Raccoon City. And now Zach Cregger, with his brand new reboot of the live-action Resident Evil film franchise, has introduced his own spin on one of the myriad of mutated creatures in the franchise.
