Fridge / Resident Evil 2

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

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Fridge Brilliance

• If something radically altered your DNA, the first place the changes would show up would be at the site of a wound, where cells are dividing rapidly and new tissue is being produced. What's the first part of William Birkin to mutate dramatically? His right arm, which was riddled with bullets during the laboratory break-in. In addition, Birkin only changes forms after you fight him; he gets more alien every time he heals.
• It seems a bit odd that, when trying to start up the train in the B Scenarios, the game requires you to pick up two Joint Plugs and then immediately use them one room later, with nothing in between. Even more odd is that you only have to use one of the plugs on the generator - it automatically places the second one in with the first - when every other part of the game has you use items individually. Odd until you realize that what the game is doing is forcing you to have two inventory slots open, so that you can pick up the two-slot rocket launcher Ada throws to you during the Mr. X/Tyrant fight that starts immediately afterwards.
• As pointed out in a fan FAQ, the reason why HUNK's team attacked Birkin's lab in the first place was revenge for Wesker and Birkin stealing credit on the Nemesis project from the French branch of Umbrella by producing a viable sample in Lisa Trevor. With Wesker gone, Birkin was vulnerable and he had a shiny new virus that was ripe for the taking. This is proven by HUNK's CO being the R&D chief of the French branch, as well as certain details from the Wesker Report.
• Leon's upgraded Custom Shotgun has significantly more recoil than the unupgraded Shotgun, enough to push him back and almost knock him down with evert shot. This is despite it being a semi-auto model, which uses part of the recoil energy to cycle the action and results in less felt recoil for the user. The reason is that Leon finds the parts to upgrade his shotgun only after he has been shot in the shoulder by Annette. He's physically weaker from his injuries and blood loss, firing a heavy recoiling weapon doesn't help with the pain and he can't fire it from the shoulder for stability. This is supported by the Extreme Battle Mode minigame, where Chris can use the same weapon with much more normal recoil and can fire it faster as a result.

Fridge Horror

• Chief Irons has a pack of acid grenade rounds in his Torture Cellar. At first glance, it may seem like they're there just for gameplay reasons. But think about what that room was used for, as well as the other chemicals such as chloroform and god knows what else. It's possible that Irons was secretly stealing acid rounds from the armory and using the sulfuric acid to torture people or break down their bodies Breaking Bad-style to hide the evidence. How did he manage to get the acid out of the grenades without blowing himself up? In the remake of the first game, Barry refers to acid rounds as a "can of fizz" so maybe there's a way to easily open them up.
  • The rounds are probably just there for the sake of gameplay. Powerful corrosives like sulfuric and hydrochloric acid were never very hard to obtain in large quantities from chemical suppliers, even back in 1998. Not to say Irons wouldn't be using such chemicals (in fact, he does have some on hand in the remake, and very satisfyingly catches a jarful of it to the face, courtesy of Sherry), but that it'd be far easier and cheaper to just buy the stuff in bulk from a catalog than sneak away small amounts of it by misappropriating expensive ordnance, which might raise some questions from further down and up the chain that Irons would rather not need to address.
• Speaking of the Chief, what happened to the mayor's daughter's corpse? Obviously, he took it with him when he retreated to his torture cellar, but it's not there either when you enter it.
  • The most logical answer is that he didn't feel like preventing her from turning into a zombie, and proceeded to wander from the torture chamber either into the police station or the sewer.
  • It's implied that he murdered her himself, meaning she may not have ever been infected. The novelization goes with him hiding her corpse in a cabinet down there until he can get the time to, eugh... "Stuff & mount" her, which makes as much sense as any other explanation, awful as it is.
• William Birkin injected himself with the G-Virus, knowing full well that the virus could drive him to hunt down his own daughter and inject her with mutated embryos. Father of the year, people!
  • It gets worse. Birkin was seen Fighting from the Inside multiple times, and passes up a chance to infect Sherry when he has her cornered and helpless. Before he loses his head, literally, as G2, he saves Sherry from a Tyrant. It's heavily implied William was trying to save her from the horror he unleashed on Raccoon City. This also means that he didn't want to hurt her but was unable to stop his monster form from attacking her anymore, or worse, Birkin's mind is still trapped inside G.
    • Not only that, it's implied the G2 mutation was done specifically in reaction to his attempts not to hurt Sherry; It learned that its host fights against it when it tries to find the next host, and thus it bypasses his input by sprouting a second head, presumably with better control over the body's nervous system.