Trivia / The Evil Within

The video game

• Actor Allusion: Ruvik's connections to Freddy Kreuger are far too obvious to ignore, alluding to the fact that his voice actor portrayed him in the 2010 remake. He is in control as a sadistic Ax-Crazy Dream Weaver of a Mental World, has a past as a Serial Killer, and his burn damage from a large fire. His motives and actions in the game only drive the comparisons further. His plan is to use Leslie's body to escape into the real world, a scheme that Freddy himself tried in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge. He also attempts to garner sympathy from Sebastian by showing him his past, just like how Freddy tried to manipulate his daughter in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.
• Creator-Driven Successor: The game is filled with references to Mikami's old franchise. Even the name itself is a fairly clear reference to its spiritual predecessors (if something is "within" it can be said to reside, after all).
  • You need to burn enemy corpses so they stay dead. Also, you sneak up behind a zombie-like creature eating a corpse....and the he turns his head around and gawks at the protagonist. And for the final boss, you get a rocket launcher.
  • The mansion you explore later in the game isn't quite a carbon copy of the Spencer Estate, but it might as well have been built by George Trevor as well.
  • The game also includes several nods to Resident Evil 4:
    • You have to survive an assault on a house.
    • Another area involves a small, rustic village filled with psychotic zombie villagers, including one with a chainsaw.
    • One segment features a maze of ruins where you use the faces out of old carvings as keys.
    • Sebastian starts with a fairly cool Badass Longcoat, only to lose it fairly quickly.
    • The way you encounter Jimenez's brother is very much reminiscent of the first enemy you encounter in RE4.
• No Port For You: Or rather update as in March 2021, the game received an update with added new gameplay options such as an FOV slider, First-Person mode, icons for the lantern and sneaking, the ability to change the amount of camera bobbing and the options to enable both a longer default stamina and infinite ammo. However all of this content is currently exclusive to the PC version available on the Microsoft Store/Gamepass PC with it currently unknown if it will come to the Steam/GOG and console releases of the game.
• Recycled Script: The biggest thing people are noticing about the game is that it seems to be a more supernatural take on Resident Evil. Specifically, it seems to be a take on a concept for Resident Evil 4 where Leon was to fight hallucinations in addition to zombies, and the complications of being infected with an unnamed virus would have given him psychological issues that affected gameplay.
• What Could Have Been: The game changed radically over the course of development:
  • It was originally planned to be more science fiction before Mikami became director.
  • According to Word of God, the game was originally supposed to take place in Spain. This explains why many characters have Spanish names like Castellanos, Victoriano, Jimenez and Gutierez.
  • Tatiana was going to be a merchant who sold upgrades to you directly.
  • Juli and Joseph were originally supposed to be prisoners who joined Sebastian rather than fellow detectives.
  • There was originally a lantern-themed Haunted that was eventually scrapped.
  • According to the artbook, Sebastian and Juli were originally going to be Spanish and French respectively. It also states in concept artwork that Joseph has a wife and child, but it's unclear whether this made it into the final product (he wears gloves so a ring isn't visible, and one of the notes in-game has Sebastian wondering if Joseph has a crush on Juli).
  • According to Ikumi Nakamura's twitter (she did character designs) Joseph was supposed to die halfway through; Nakamura didn't take kindly to this, and told the director she would never forgive him if Joseph died.
  • A DLC with Joseph as the player character was planned, but never realized.

The film

• Died During Production: Andrew Getty died two years before the film was released.
• Troubled Production: Filming began in 2002, but a combination of complicated VFX (all created and executed by the writer and director), the poor health of Matthew McGrory (who ultimately only wound up as an uncredited cameo), funding issues, lawsuits, casting issues (only Michael Berryman and Frederick Koehler are from the original cast), and ultimately Andrew Getty's death (the film was finished by Producer Michael Luceri), the film didn't come out until 2017.