As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- If you're one of those players that like to explore all the little details of the glorious mansion in the R Emake, you'll find that several photographs and pictures have been removed from their frames; one in praticular was removed after the glass was smashed. You wonder why this is the case and then once you realize who the traitor is, it makes perfect sense; Albert Wesker may have been in several of those photographs and just to keep his cover for as long as he could, removed them all. Magnificent Bastard indeed.
- Barry brings a .44 Magnum revolver rather than the Samurai Edge other S.T.A.R.S members carry. Why bring such a powerful handgun when your teammates carry 9mm pistols? Wesker is blackmailing him and thus Barry knows about the creatures in the mansion. He wanted more powerful protection from them.
- Barry was being blackmailed by Wesker, but only when the team went into the Mansion, not beforehand. It is unlikely a Big Good like Barry would've gone along with it had he had the time to think about his options. That, and he also turned on Wesker the first chance he got to help you. He just brought his trusty .44 Magnum because he's a gun enthusiast and particularly loves revolvers.
- You know how a rocket launcher ended up in Alpha team’s helicopter? Barry took it out of the weapons locker at RPD and smuggled it onto there and told Brad not to tell anyone (including Wesker) that it was there. He had a Gut Feeling before Alpha team headed out that something was seriously wrong, which is why he grabbed the rocket launcher. Given this, it makes sense why Barry brought his big gun instead of his Samurai Edge.
- The original Resident Evil. Forrest of the BRAVO team has been pecked to death by crows. If you're playing as Jill he has a grenade launcher lying next to his corpse. This makes perfect sense (and not just because the crows in this game are vicious, overpowered bastards): have you ever tried to hit a crow with a grenade launcher? Assuming Forrest even bothered to try shooting them, he would have just missed time and time again. Of course, if you're playing as Chris he has a clip of handgun ammo next to him instead, but let's just ignore that little incongruity...
- On reflection, it's actually just as interesting from Chris's perspective as it was from Jill's. Forrest has a clip full of handgun ammo - but no handgun. He was trying to attack these fast, agile enemies with his fists or his weak knife. Even if he managed to hit each crow repeatedly, it wouldn't have done him any good...
- It's possible - likely, even - that Wesker, who is one step ahead of his team until the finale, removed the grenade launcher in Chris' scenario.
- The game's infamous translation is actually a case of brilliance when you realize that it contributes to the whole B movie feel of the early games.
- At first Barry's famously cheesy line of "It's a weapon! It's very powerful, especially against living things!" in reference to the acid grenades just seems like another case of bad translation. Until one stops and realizes that acid rounds are highly effective against enemies like hunters and Yawn, both of which are living things compared to the zombies that dominate the game early on.
- Why is Enrico ready to aim his weapon at Chris but not Jill? He may only know the gender of The Mole.
- This may have also been Enrico’s own personal bias. In the original Resident Evil instructions booklet, the blurb about Enrico said that he felt threatened by both Chris and Barry and thought one of them would replace him as #2 to Wesker. Though it’s a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness (as it has since been revealed that Enrico and Barry were friends) Enrico suspecting Chris of being the traitor with almost no evidence makes more sense if Enrico already didn’t like Chris.
- Why does the mansion have so many typewriters? A quick glance at the dates for some of the files are dated from the 1960s, a time where typewriters were most likely quite common when the mansion was built. Even in 1998 (which is when the game takes place), typewriters were still in use, though they weren't as common thanks to PCs quickly becoming popular. Since the next two games also take place in the same year, it is also not unusual to see typewriters in places like the R.P.D station or the newspaper headquarters.
- Barry's special brand of humor is so Narmy and off-mark that it's become legendary in the series. However, in-universe, there might be an explanation for Barry's awkward interactions with Jill: Barry is being forced by Wesker into helping him destroy evidence, as Wesker is threatening harm on Barry's family. Barry's attempt at humor might be an awkward effort to hide his inner crisis from his teammates, but he fails at being convincing. If you think about it, Barry's awkwardness is a huge hint that something's wrong with him.
- Why did Rebecca Chambers perform so poorly in this game compared to Resident Evil 0? Sleep deprivation as sleeping in a monster infested place on one's own is basically signing one's death warrant, and, depending on how much water she packed and whether or not she packed a meal, possible malnutrition.
- It seems kind of strange at first glance that the game has only two difficulty levels; Easy or Hard. But it makes more sense when one understands that the character you choose to play as also determines difficulty (Jill as Easy, Chris as Hard). Thus, your difficult level is really determined by the combination; Jill on Easy is Very Easy, Chris on Hard is Very Hard, and Jill on Hard or Chris on Easy is Normal.
- Regardless of the scenario, Richard was always doomed, he was bitten by Yawn in both Jill and Chris's routes, they make a big fuss about Yawns venom, but, it was a T-infected creature, by killing him by either being fully eaten by Yawn, or Neptune, it prevents the dilemma of having to Mercy Kill him when the T-virus reanimates him.
- It has been revealed that one of Jospeh Frost’s pastimes was following gossip that floated around Raccoon City. In the original game, Joseph is sent off by himself during the search while everyone else is paired together. There’s an implication that Wesker did this on purpose just to get Joseph out of the way. Though it appears that Joseph didn’t know the truth about Wesker, Wesker had no real way of knowing what Joseph did know. So unlike the rest of S.T.A.R.S — who were meant to be used as test subjects for the BOWs — Wesker’s intent with Joseph may have been to get rid of him so that any secrets he knew would die with him.
- The remake negates this somewhat as Jill is paired with Joseph during the search, however Jill only had her handgun and she freezes up with her gun runs out of bullets. The end result though is the same.
- Also doubles as Paranoia Fuel - in the birdcage corridor is a dead body. When you return after collecting the first key items in the mansion, the body is gone and a murder of crows watch you overhead. It's likely the body reanimated and became yet another zombie for you to deal with.
- Incidentally, that room is almost a straight shot down the hall from the basement kitchen, where you get ambushed by the zombie with the POV camera. This troper always assumed that zombie was the reanimated version of the body in the birdcage room.
- The Death Masks are missing eyes, mouths, noses or all of the above. Simple commitment to a theme, or was the Crimson Head Elder particularly brutal towards its original victims' faces?
- In the R Emake, there are two ways to prevent a zombie from becoming a Crimson Head: burning the corpse with the very limited supplies you get, or decapitation. No character ever considers the possibility of decapitating zombies while they are down - only when they are walking towards them. Why?
- It's difficult to decapitate a corpse without a tool to do so; one might be reluctant to waste ammunition on an apparently dead enemy. And people in such a situation would not be thinking straight.
- There's also the case that that would take a LOT of time to decapitate EVERY zombie you put down. Remember that Kenneth was still (somewhat) alive when you walk in on the zombie munching on his throat. In-universe, the characters are likely in a hurry, eager to find a way to escape and to make sure they meet up with any survivors. Taking any extra time that they don't know if they even have the luxury of could potentially cause the death of someone else.
- Technically, stomping on the zombies head is reasonably quick and effective, as it is the way to deal with a crawling zombie biting on their ankles... Then again, the skull is harder to destroy in one stroke than it looks like, so maybe the characters are only capable of doing it swiftly in a fight or flight situation?
