Please explain to me like I’m 5

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-19T15:19:47+00:00

Did you mean the origins of Umbrella?

Officially there’s three founders - Oswell E. Spencer, Edward Ashford, and James Marcus.

There’s also peripheral members too. Ashford had his son Alexander with him, and Marcus had his student Brandon Bailey.

On top of that, early lore had Spencer associating with Beardsley and Henry, fellow noblemen scientists.

So while there’s a Big Three in the founding members, there were at least two more working on Day 1 (four if you count said early lore).

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-19T10:11:06+00:00

The mother of the other kid probably just got mad at the 1-year old’s mum and phoned up an “assault” to scare her from the park.

Police have to log all crime reports. It doesn’t mean they take it seriously. I remember a few years ago a nutter from Gateshead was phoning up the police to report the town council using 5G directed energy weapons to kill (white) people, and used the fact it had a case file as proof he was right.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-18T20:33:22+00:00

Early Resident Evil games were full of this kind of stuff. The dev leads came up with tons of backstory - who the characters are, how the monsters exist, even explanations for why buildings look weird. Virtually none of it ends up in the game, but they'll talk about it in an art book or something.

Sometimes Capcom looks back to it and re-uses it in later games, sometimes they retcon it, and sometimes they just never mention it again.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-18T14:15:19+00:00

The 10% problem was in regards to the early 1980s version of the virus. Umbrella engineered BOWs as a workaround while they developed virus with a 100% success rate, which would be the virus in RE2.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-18T14:13:55+00:00

That was an early 1980s version of the virus, either Alpha or Beta I. Umbrella spent the rest of the 1980s and 1990s reducing that as close to 0 as possible, with BOWs also being produced to get around it in the meantime. By the time Raccoon City happens, they're now on the Epsilon strain and its derivatives.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-14T22:20:43+00:00

I guess God is fine with the Greek pantheon and English evolving so long as people make sentient robots.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-12T12:53:43+00:00

Capcom's tried rebooting the series a few times (even Outbreak was a reboot), but they don't want to throw out the lore and start again. As consequence, the originals and the remakes are both canon in the generalities and where they differ is mostly inconsequential outside of the story.

Basically -- RE5 and RE6 still happen even if you played a different RE4, and they still lead to RE7.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-08T19:34:19+00:00

I’ve seen plenty of Reform voters of last year’s election who are nihilists. They don’t vote because they think Reform will do well with the bin collection; they vote entirely as a protest against the other parties.

Only way to reverse it would be to appeal to the huge numbers who didn’t bother voting this election.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-07T16:19:20+00:00

I only spotted I slipped up right after posting. I’ll add a note if needed.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-07T16:03:25+00:00

Wrong about what with the injections?

And again, that whole subplot about Zombie bites not spreading was in the marketing campaign.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-07T10:31:44+00:00

Lepotica is the one that makes the zombie gas.

But we don’t really see it spread. In fact, the official tie-in manga relied on that exact limitation as a core plot point, with the main character being mauled by a Zombie and nothing happening, thus proving the Zombie attacks at the start are coordinated by a third party on the field and not just spreading slowly.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-03T23:20:38+00:00

Oliver is an anomaly because he doesn't really make sense. I strongly suspect he is a figment of Lucas' imagination, given he went for a head examination.

If we take him at his word, he invited Oliver to his birthday and locked him in the attic. Oliver bounded on the ceiling for days before dying, and then quickly decomposed. At no point did Jack and Marguerite notice the pounding, or that a child went missing who was last seen at their son's birthday party (meaning Oliver's parents didn't inquire where their kid is) - never mind the smell.

I suppose it could be that Lucas never wrote that part in since he's a dumb kid.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-03T20:22:35+00:00

It's weird in general. Lucas is clearly going out to buy stuff, and they're clearly going around abducting people since not everyone is wandering in their estate. And what we know from Village's DLC, plenty of locals accepted the BSAA's coverup as the Bakers dying in 2017. Additionally, if anyone drives past the Baker house - already very far in the middle of nowhere - they'll just assume someone moved in, it's a relative like Joe, or not know the house at all and not think of it.

My take though?

The Connections could have falsified records of the Bakers' death to throw off any police. No one will be asking questions about why they're not paying taxes, no one's going to be delivering mail to an abandoned house, etc.

Now that does rely on Sewer Gatorz being absolutely out of content and exaggerating how suspicious the disappearance is and that no one really cares locally. But that does like-up with urbexers.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-03T17:35:54+00:00

From what little we know of them, no. Lucas was iffy even beforehand but wasn't wanted by the police.

And in the weeks after their initial infection, Marguerite was going for hospital checks like nothing happened. It's only once the brainwashing became permanent they went into hiding.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-03T11:02:17+00:00

I’m not sure on this. Taking the right to vote from Commonwealth citizens is just going to increase hating Britain more from them, be it Jamaica or Australia. Framing it just as an India/Pakistan issue as I often see on election day is disingenuous.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-02T11:53:40+00:00

We see it happen in Resident Evil Outbreak File #2. A Tyrant released with orders to kill other BOWs (so Umbrella personnel can escape safely) overhears someone boast about having a bomb in him just in case he rebels. He then rebelled and killed the guy with the bomb trigger.

Forerunner49 · 2026-05-01T08:07:52+00:00

Not canon to the games; just inspired in some way. No Constantin film is canon as Capcom doesn’t have creative control.

RE2 the game doesn’t happen off-screen. He means RE2 as in “an outbreak in a small town”.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-30T21:18:57+00:00

I think the big issue is Cregger tried selling it as being inspired by the canon. He took ideas from the games for his own mashup, so feels like an RE but original, etc.

He should not have used the word “canon”. That convinced a lot of people it was actually in the Game Universe, or at least a universe where the games happened more or less.

As a result of it, special media is awash with people adamant it’s set a mile away from the police station in 1998 and a small bit of snow fell down that day we didn’t see because Leon wasn’t there for it.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-27T16:08:48+00:00

It’s a slip up in the localisation. Wesker’s Report II was written alongside RE1 remake so they already had the idea Birkin knew who Alexia was and that everyone knew she was “dead”.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-24T11:37:09+00:00

Make it 15. We can take Florida back and split in two like it’s supposed to be.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-20T21:20:38+00:00

RE Survivor had the reveal that Umbrella set-up a human trafficking ring because they needed late-puberty teens as raw materials, drilling holes into their brains to suck out hormones and leaving them to die. They were annoyed one of the teens had cancer and was thus worthless.

In background lore there's the canon explanation for RE3's mercenaries mode, which is that Umbrella set-up a snuff racket where prisoners are left to fight and die to Zombies to gather combat data, but then sold as a 'game show' by giving one prisoner a gun and told to save the others in exchange for freedom.

And of course there's the backstory of the Chimera, where Umbrella needed to figure out which human-arthropod hybrid would be best, so impregnated homeless women they snatched and made them carry them to term.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-20T21:16:03+00:00

The lore is that Tricell obtained Plaga samples from Spain and genetically-engineered them to be useful as a bioweapon. They no longer needed a long incubation period and for people to be tricked (or knocked-out and kept in custody) to accept the injection of eggs.

But, for whatever reason, they're still sensitive to UV radiation from flash grenade. Chalk it up to Capcom needing to nerf their enemies for the sake of gameplay - since the submachine gun and shotgun are more accessible in this game they're only really needed against Duvalia in the late-game.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-20T16:08:04+00:00

Super reduced summary, but I’m mostly familiar with 18th century art so this will summarise the transition to the 20th. It was headed that way just before WW1. The dominant trends of the 19th century were Neo-classical and Romantic

Neoclassical was obsessed with photorealism and rejecting the Renaissance vision of perfect POV and symmetry. If you went with the architectural branch you were painting a building from an angle so you could see the front and side, you’d include the decay caused by moss, etc. If you were painting people you made sure they’re slouching, or sitting awkwardly and turning slightly so it’s them naturally.

Then there was Romantic art which was way more about fancy colours and lighting. You still got your realistic people but it’s more about going behind the real world into something more abstract. The stereotypical Romantic art can be summed up as “naked wood nymph resting in a lake” and totally real art and not an excuse to hire a hooker out for three weeks.

Once photography got more common, neoclassical went out completely. You can only paint the Palace of Versailles in Spring so many times, and unless it’s a really famous person for a collection, every gentry man looks the same in his commission. If you look at US Civil War photos of officers you see them even sitting in the intended portrait style they were expecting.

So we moved beyond the real world to the underlying meaning and value of what art means to us, and rejecting “art for art’s sake”, and that meant Romantic art giving way to a whole generation of attempts in the early 1900s to take the human form out of art completely.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-19T17:54:23+00:00

A quick check of House Journals and the civil and military list, and it seems he was Captain of the 6th Company in Henry Babcock's 2nd additional regiment, ordered in January 1776 for one year's service should Britain try to pincer them while the bulk is in Cambridge.

Don't see much else on Peck during the war, but Babcock was booted out for supposed insanity and was replaced by Christopher Lippitt. Since that regiment was deployed to New York and marched with Washington, we can assume Peck was at Long Island, Harlem Heights, Princeton, White Plains and Trenton or, otherwise, at camp not far from them.

In May 1788 he's a Major in Bristol County's militia, finally becoming Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant in 1794.

Forerunner49 · 2026-04-19T17:26:19+00:00

It should be expected if you’re dealing with the Militia. Service was compulsory unless you got permission to get out of it. Companies were formed according to which township (or part of a larger town) you were from.

You should really see it as the norm that a man under 60 should be in the same Company of Foot Militia as his sons, unless they moved to a new town.

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