Hidden Secrets/Clues in the Resident Evil 5 Trailer

July 11th, 2007

resident evil 5 capcom

Earlier today Microsoft showed off a mountain of video of new games for the Xbox 360 at their E3 press conference. Arguably the most important trailer of the lot was the Resident Evil 5 one. It is such an important trailer as it provides a number of key clues to how the new game will work. Unfortunately it will probably be months before Capcom actually inform us of these tidbits. So I have gone through the trailer with a fine comb in order to hunt the down some juicy details. Here’s what I found:

Of course you will need to have seen the trailer first to understand what I am on about.

Standard Resolution

Higher Resolution

Chris has a Headset

chris redfield headset resident evil

While taking screen dumps of the quick burst of snippets I got this grab of Chris(not confirmed, but it makes sense) wearing a headset and there’s also a number of parts where you can notice his long knife or possibly sword. Also notice the STARS badge on his shoulder

Strange Man

During the clip you will notice the transformation of one of the villagers. He appears after the words resident evil flash on the screen. He is bound to a wall and enduring some sort of pain. His neck is forced back by a mysterious someone or something. There is a close up on one of his eyes which is frantically looking around.

resident evil 5 zombies torture

resident evil 5 torture zombies

The next scene of him also contains Chris Redfield. He is looking down away from the light. There is a sequence afterwards where he is looking up at the mysterious shadow. His skin looks noticeably worse this time and you can notice his eyes beginning to turn red. Just before this sequence we see him in the crowd shaking his fist in the air.

resident evil 5 zombie claws

In the final blast of snippets we first see a very quick blink of the man’s arms and face becoming even more deformed. There is also a repeated scene of his neutral eyes midway through the snippet.

resident evil 5 zombie sickle

Shadowy Man

resident evil 5

In the sequences where the Strange Man begins to mutate we notice a strange shadowy figure who is likely to be causing the strange transformation. Notice the disproportion in the arms When he’s is holding the Strange Man down we can notice his greenish hairy arm. This is a similar tone to the Strange Man’s final skin tone.

Megaphone Man/Announer

Notice the two men conversing at the beginning of the trailer The man on the left in the green shirt appears to be the same person whom is talking to the crowd with the megaphone.

resident evil 5 zombie

Although it is hard to tell if he is also the Strange Man. The announcer is on stage while the Strange Man is in the crowd, so it isn’t possible. But they bear such a similarity that it is worth mentioning, just incase:

His shirt is the same, being an open button neck shirt but the pattern is different. The Strange Man has a chequered/stripped pattern yet the announcer’s shirt has no pattern. This could be due to a patterned skin dis figuration that can be seen through the shirt. Also the Strange Man had an claw like bald spot on his shaven head and in the shot of the announcer we cannot tell if he has the bald spot. He is also wearing sunglasses.

resident evil 5 zombie announcer

There is also a creature standing behind the Megaphone Man. I say creature as the face is very deformed and I cannot distinguish any normal facial features. This character is also holding something that looks like a giant fly swat made out of wire and mesh. He or a similar character appears in the following scene.

resident evil 5 boss

Red Eyes

The trailer seems to encompass a general theme related to eyes. As I already mentioned we notice that the Strange Man’s eyes begin to turn red, this could be part of a plague to hit the village(like RE4). The close up shot of his eyes strengthen this argument. Also Chris (once again) covers his eyes from the bright sunlight(he did this in the original trailer), this could be a slight clue to fit in with the theme.

The most interesting point though is that the announcer is wearing sunglasses. If the announcer is in actual fact the Strange Man with the virus then he is probably wearing the sun glasses in order to hide his mutation from the crowd. Also in the scene with Chris he is facing away from the light.

There also seem to be other hints of the colour red, in the resident evil flash and also in the 5 logo. I believe that the volcanic red is related to the eyes changing colour. The outflow of red is meant to represent the disease spreading through the veins.

Crowd Scene

The villagers in the crowd scene seem to be on some sort of revolt being lead by the announcer. The villagers are carrying sickles and jumping around. So some sort of fuss is going on. We get to see a shot of the stage where the announcer is standing, this reveals a silhouette of someone being hung upside down. If you look to the left you notice more people lined up. This is obviously what all the fuss is about. Once again we see the announcer and his minion in this shot.

resident evil 5 zombie crowd hanging

We also get a glimpse of the villagers kicking Chris around and later on in the snippets we seem them trying to attack him with their sickles. Although Chris must survive this as afterwards he is standing infront of the stage. Here’s a few shots to show the layout of this area.

You probably also would have noticed the slightly inhuman look to the villagers as well. Perhaps they have already taken in some form of the disease

Similarities with Resident Evil 4

based around a small village that looks somewhat nonhuman
Chris has a knife slung around his back, similar to Leon
the flow of the trailer goes from tranquillity to distress as does RE4’s story
there appears to be some sort of plague
animals locate the village

resident evil 5

What does this all mean

This could mean a lot of things. I have a personal hypothesis that I’d like to share, basically I have attempted to piece together all of the previous points:

It seems like Chris Redfield(we can tell by the badge, look, its so obvious) is on a mission in this new environment(Middle East or Africa) in order to find out more about this virus. We know that he is probably working for STARs. There appears to be some sort of virus in this town, this mutates the body and gives you red eyes. The people in the town discover this and decide to hang all of the victims. This is led on buy the green shirted male. I’m absolutely stomped on the minion creature with him, no idea.

I reckon that this new virus is a cross between the Plagus and T-virus as the baddies in the original trailer moved faster than zombies. Perhaps this concoction was created by Umbrella/Wesker and tested on this village. Just like Leon Chris somehow is given the virus and has to avoid looking at the sunlight etc etc.

Well that’s my take on it. I hope that you gained something out of these ideas. If you liked the article then why not digg it I don’t use digg very much but these tidbits are pretty useful, so help me spread the word.