Resident Evil: All Video Game References, Zombies, Easter Eggs

A seemingly normal dog chases Bryan when he looks for refuge in an abandoned barn after encountering his first zombie. He climbs up to the rafters for safety then foolishly chucks the ladder down at the dog, forcing him to painfully jump down to the ground to escape. But the dog keeps pursuing Bryan and rams its head through the barn wall in an attempt to bite him. When the dog gets stuck, its head opens up to reveal horrifying tendrils that snap at Bryan. In the video games, zombie dogs are one of the most classic and earliest enemies players encounter.

Bryan encounters a monster that spews acidic vomit at him while he’s stuck in the hospital elevator, and it’s inspired by a classic video game zombie. “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard” featured a Fat Molded that used used projectile vomit as a weapon, and many other horror games use a similarly nasty enemy type.

The Revenant is a horrifying creature in “Resident Evil Revelations 2” that’s stitched together from various bodies and parts. Sound familiar? It’s basically the same monster that chases Bryan and pulls in more living and undead bodies with its tendrils to grow larger. Bryan himself turns into a version of the monstrosity at the end of the movie.

While it’s not named in the movie, the T-Virus is the Umbrella Corporation’s infamous experiment gone wrong. The virus spread wide and turned everyone into undead zombies with a hunger for flesh. Many of the monsters sport long tendrils that players must shoot to fully defeat them, much like in the movie.

Raccoon City is one of the most notorious locations in the “Resident Evil” universe and the home of the shady Umbrella Corporation, which also appears in the film. Like the new movie, Umbrella has a laboratory in Raccoon City, where the zombie virus inevitably breaks out and spreads from.

The Umbrella Corporation is a pharmaceutical company that secretly performed experiments with bio-organic weapons in the “Resident Evil” universe that lead to the spread of the zombie apocalypse. In the movie, Paul Walter Hauser and Zach Cherry play bumbling Umbrealla scientists trying to stop the outbreak.

Locked doors are a classic video game trope. They block your access to the next level, a powerful upgrade or merely prevent you from wandering too far off from your goal. Sometimes they require a key, a code or you can blast it apart with a gun and force your way through. The “Resident Evil” games have used all of these mechanics, but Bryan encounters some particularly sturdy locks in the movie.

Weapons (no, not Cregger’s “Weapons”) obviously play a large role in killing zombies and protecting yourself in the apocalypse. Most “Resident Evil” games start out the same way as Bryan’s journey: You start out unarmed and narrowly escape the first enemy, then you find more powerful upgrades to bolster your firearm cache. Bryan picks up a handgun, shotgun and assault rifle, three classic guns from the video games.

A useful tool in life and video games, “Resident Evil” flashlights illuminate dark areas but can also alert zombies to your location. Bryan uses one to make his way through the snowy wilderness, a dank sewer and Raccoon City — luckily, he doesn’t run out of batteries, like in the video games.

Every gamer knows the feeling of being low on ammunition as a horde of zombies creep closer. The “Resident Evil” games give you just enough bullets to scrape by, but you’ll need to search every drawer, cupboard and locked safe to find more. When Bryan finds the shotgun, he frantically explores the farmhouse for ammo as an undead woman pursues him.

The “Resident Evil” series has plenty of horrifying, lumbering villains who slowly chase you throughout a level, and the movie has a similar, stitched-together monster that relentlessly trails Bryan. Nemesis, Mr. X, Lady Dimitrescu andJack Baker are some of the video games’ scariest stalkers who follow your every foostep.

The “Resident Evil” games started out as a third-person shooter, meaning the camera was fixed behind the player’s shoulder and followed them. Later games transitioned into first-person, which put you directly into the character’s shoes and let you see through their eyes. Cregger recreates several shots like this, where you see down the barrel of Bryan’s gun like a first-person game.