Trivia / Resident Evil: Retribution

• Deleted Scene:
  • Michelle Rodriguez actually played a third Rain clone who was turned into a zombie. The scene in which she finds and attacks Alice and company was shot, but director Anderson discarded it and shot the fight against the Axe Men in its place.
  • Additional scenes with Becky and her parents (in which the Alice clone would have nightmares of the Extinction clones due to a dormant psychic link) were shot but not included in the theatrical cut. Some of them were kept in the novelization and restored in the extended cut, though.
  • They also filmed some flashbacks explaining how Luther ended up in Wesker's resistance: he witnessed from away the battle at the Arcadia, was picked up by Leon in a helicopter some weeks later to be questioned about Alice's whereabouts, and finally joined his group in order to rescue her. However, they were removed from the final cut.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Aryana Engineer, Becky's actress, is partially deaf in real life as well. Interestingly, it wasn't initially a trait of the character: Anderson and Jovovich invited her to audition after watching her work in Orphan, and she impressed them so much that they cast her and made Becky deaf.
• Fake American:
  • Han Chinese Li Bingbing plays Ada Wong, an American character of Chinese and Japanese descent, though her voice is provided by Canadian Sally Cahill, her voice actress in most of the games.
  • Canadians Aryana Engineer and Kevin Durand play Americans Becky and Barry Burton, respectively.
• Looping Lines: While Li Bingbing portrayed Ada in the film, her lines were re-dubbed by Sally Cahill.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: According to Li Bingbing, the then 11-year-old Aryana Engineer was actually delightful to work with.
• Role Reprise:
  • Michelle Rodriguez and Colin Salmon reprise their roles as Rain Ocampo and James "One" Shade, respectively, after last portraying them in 2002's Resident Evil.
  • Oded Fehr returns as Carlos Olivera from 2007's Resident Evil: Extinction.
  • Sally Cahill, who voiced Ada Wong in 2, 4 and The Darkside Chronicles, reprises the role again.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Paul W.S. Anderson wanted to shoot this film and the next back to back, making it essentially a two-part finale, and to have both Redfield siblings taking important roles. This was all scrapped: the film ended up being produced alone and none of the siblings appeared in it (although Claire would return in the next and final installment).
  • Just like in the previous film, Jensen Ackles was considered for Leon to no avail. However, he was not the only anecdote regarding the role this time: Matthew Mercer, Leon's voice actor from the games since 6 and the voice used for the audition's reference audio, tried out for the role and didn't get it. He still finds the situation hilarious to this day.
  • The team considered redubbing Johann Urb's voice as Leon due to his Finnish accent.
  • Leon was originally going to be an original character named Magnus, hence why most of his characterization was so contradictory to the source material.
  • While Wesker and Ada breaking away from Umbrella was a stated idea, the scriptwriters were unable to decide who would take the former's place as the Big Bad. They entertained the possibility of not revealing the villain and instead saving his appearance for the final film, but at the last moment they decided to make him the Red Queen. The first idea was used in the official novelization.
  • Chad Kaplan and the female medic from the very first film were going to return as clones in Jill's team, but this was discarded because their actors were unavailable. The writers opted to replace them with Carlos and One, as Oded Fehr was already in production playing Todd and Colin Salmon was luckily available to return.
  • Originally, the film would reveal that the entire elite team from the first film were clones with fake memories. This was erased from the script, but it is still a real possibility given the revelations of this and the next film.
  • The New York test zone initially featured a fight against an infected Rain clone, but Anderson changed his mind at the last minute and replaced it with a fight against Axe Men undead.
• Word of God: Umbrella's footsoldiers are all clones of One and Rain.

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