For a Series of Games About Viruses and Medical Experiments, Resident Evil Is Pretty Light on Actual Scientific Information
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A series of essays on the science behind Resident Evil By Hieronymus, The Doctor, and T-A.L.O.S. For Project Umbrella www.projectumbrella.net The authors claim full ownership and rights to this document. This document may be displayed at www.projectumbrella.net; this document may be reproduced elsewhere only with explicit permission from the authors. Project Umbrella is an unofficial fan site, and is in no way affiliated with Capcom or Resident Evil. We’re claiming “fair use” for all the images. We’re not making any money off of this. Please don’t sue us. Contents The G-Virus ................................................................................................................................ 3 Massive growth ....................................................................................................................... 3 Healing factor.......................................................................................................................... 5 Limb asymmetry ..................................................................................................................... 7 Reproduction ........................................................................................................................... 9 Extra body parts .................................................................................................................... 11 Stage V .................................................................................................................................. 15 The “Devil” vaccine .............................................................................................................. 17 G subtypes ................................................................................................................................. 18 The T+G Virus ...................................................................................................................... 18 The blobs ............................................................................................................................... 22 Lisa Trevor ............................................................................................................................ 25 Nemesis ..................................................................................................................................... 26 The NE-α parasite ................................................................................................................. 26 Anatomy of a monster ........................................................................................................... 28 Nemesis subtypes ...................................................................................................................... 32 The NE-β parasite ................................................................................................................. 32 Nyx ........................................................................................................................................ 33 The T-Veronica Virus ............................................................................................................... 34 Ants and Plants ..................................................................................................................... 34 Blood ..................................................................................................................................... 37 Nosferatu and Steve .............................................................................................................. 39 Other T-Veronica organisms..................................................................................................... 41 Tentacles and the “Alexia-Pod” ............................................................................................ 41 The Veronica Plant and the V-Complex ............................................................................... 43 The Jabberwock S3 ............................................................................................................... 44 References ................................................................................................................................. 45 “Science isn’t about ‘why’ – it’s about ‘why not.’” —Cave Johnson For a series of games about viruses and medical experiments, Resident Evil is pretty light on actual scientific information. It’s a good thing, too, because whenever Capcom tries to get technical, it becomes obvious they wouldn’t know real SCIENCE if it bit out their throats. We know Resident Evil is just fiction, and that the biological horrors of Umbrella and Tricell exist only to provide a story and a conflict for the protagonists to overcome. It’s equally obvious that a lot of what we see in the games is flat-out impossible. But as men of SCIENCE, we feel it is our duty and our privilege to dig through the evidence— the files, the dialogue, the gameplay itself— to determine how these viruses and monsters would work if they could work at all. This third installment will examine the G- Virus, the NE-α parasite and Nemesis T- Something like…I don’t know…basic scientific Type, the T-Veronica Virus, and the products literacy. Source: Code: Veronica and variants thereof. We’ve relied on speculation more than we would like, but we always tried to fit out theories to the evidence, utilizing real scientific data as much as possible. Handy scientific definitions have been provided at the bottom of each page, and literature citations are available at the end. It should be noted that this Report does assume a certain familiarity with the games, but most of the files and assorted game-related information can be accessed through Project Umbrella. The G-Virus G is one of our favorite viruses. It predates all of the Veronica silliness; infection doesn’t produce burning blood or green skin or weird gill slit things – just meat and eyes and teeth. It’s what all viruses should aspire to be (if they don’t already make people bleed from every orifice). William Birkin was right when he called it “sheer perfection.” One of the things that makes G perfect is its capacity to make a huge, nigh-indestructible monster with a single injection – as we discussed in the previous Report, comparable B.O.W.s like Tyrants take a lot of work to make. The logical place to begin, then, is to discuss just how G makes people into unstoppable meat- berzerkers. Massive growth Generally speaking, we believe that a lot of the massive growth we see in G-Types (that is, individuals successfully transformed by the virus) can be explained as a result of the same molecular processes that make a Tyrant huge. In the last Report, we discussed how the T-Virus, as a probable retrovirus, could be used to force expression of foreign genes in host cells. The G-Virus may carry transgenes which up-regulate certain thyroid hormones and hypothalamic trophic hormones, stimulating tissue growth on a general level. Additionally, the virus may encode genes related specifically to muscle growth, such as the growth factor PEPCK- C, the regulator FHL-1, and the transcription factor NFATc1, and the TGF-β protein follistatini,ii,iii. Some of these, especially PEPCK-C, would have to have their expression restricted to muscle tissue by coupling them to tissue-specific promoter sequences, lest the G-Type Entirely the wrong kind of massive. become massive in entirely the wrong way. The G-Virus could also promote muscle growth by expressing small interfering RNA (siRNA) – tiny chunks of nucleic acid which can shut down other genes. By expressing (siRNA) that blocks expression of myostatin, G could remove a powerful constraint on muscle size. The body also makes its own siRNA, including one called MiR-206. MiR-206 can switch off a gene called Pax3, which blocks muscle cells from differentiating to their functional, adult forms.iv The G- Virus could encode this siRNA as well, allowing it to be expressed at a greater intensity, and allowing muscle stem cells to mature properly (or at least quickly). In order to keep all of that muscle supplied with blood, one might express a gene like ERRγ, a nuclear receptor which promotes blood vessel formation in type I muscle tissue. Otherwise, this muscle could easily outgrow the ability of puny surrounding blood vessels to supply it.v But all of that muscle won’t make a G-infected person bigger by itself; the skeleton also needs to grow. As we discussed last time in the section on the Tyrant, individual bones can grow thicker, but making the skeleton grow larger is not easy in adults. The bones of children possess what are called epiphyseal plates – cartilaginous regions near the ends of the long bones where cells can divide, making the bones longer. These cartilaginous sections slowly convert to bone as the child grows, making the bones stronger but losing the capacity to grow longer. For Tyrants, we solved the problem by suggesting that Umbrella may have used a special strain of non-replicating virus to convert a small amount of hematopoietic, blood-making cells in bone marrow into chondroblasts and osteoblasts – the cell types that build cartilage and bone, respectivelyvi. Since bone marrow occurs mainly in the cancellous bone near the ends of the long bones, it’s in more or less the right place to make a new epiphyseal plate. Osteoclasts, cells which break down bone, would be necessary to weaken the existing bone enough that the growth of cartilage could make the bone longer. Unfortunately, since