The lore for the Resident Evil series is a dark and winding path that covers many games and 24 years of video games. But while fans of the series may be able to spout their favorite lore or all the playable Resident Evil characters by heart, there are no others that have dug into the history of RE like TheBatMan.
On Reddit, there is a small but active community of Resident Evil fans devoted to discussing lore, debating major and minor points in the stories, and collecting and compiling everything to do with Capcom's horror series. And the leader and co-founder of the group is a person by the name of TheBatMan. His devotion to the RE goes well beyond what even most super fans can claim.
TheBatMan has spent a massive ten years on compiling a complete history of the Resident Evil games in a timeline that spans centuries. This enormous 2700-page document delves deep into Capcom's Resident Evil series, also known as Biohazard in Japan. It begins before the dawn of humanity, covering the ancient, pre-historic beginnings of Plagas, pushes through in-depth character biographies like Albert Wesker's past, and ends with the lore and story behind Resident Evil 7.
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, TheBatMan stated that the motivation for the project was about an "obvious passion for the storyline," and also proving those who think the RE story to be "one dimensional and lacking any real substance" wrong. This amazingly detailed, massive document focuses entirely on the games, leaving out the lore from the movie, manga, and other sources to focus entirely on Capcom's games; that's proof enough that the story is huge and incredibly detailed. This detailed timeline has been used to help answer several mysteries that still surround the Resident Evil series.
The newest iteration of the timeline is currently being hosted on TheBatMan's Resident Evil Podcast site where TheBatMan also hosts an RE podcast. The timeline is broken down by decades, allowing fans to read about the series in chronological order. The breakdown of information is incredible, specific, and minutely detailed. The section on Las Plagas, for example, details how the Resident Evil parasite/virus reproduces, covers its lifecycle, compiles all known information on how it can take over its host, and is about 5,000 words long.
Most of the lore compiled in this timeline by TheBatMan comes from the games themselves, collectors' guidebooks, and official source books. Some information even came from other fans. For instance, one collector shared the pages of Blue Umbrella lore that came along with the Albert-02 shotgun replica. There were also a lot of fellow Reddit users from the Resident Evil lore group that also helped out with fan translations and compiling other information and screenshots. The timeline also features detailed plot summaries of the games as well, diving into every Resident Evil jump scare in depth.
TheBatMan says that his favorite year in the timeline is 1998.
"It is the period most fans are familiar with and contains the most famous incidents across the series such as the mansion incident and the Raccoon City disaster. There is now so much extra material connected to these events that we almost have a day by day diary account of the entire year - thus making the whole thing feel that little bit more real."
The timeline does not include the new and updated lore from the remakes, like the Resident Evil 2 remake and the less popular RE3 remake. However, TheBatMan does hope to add them in the future.
Source: EuroGamer, ResidentEvilPodcast