The Game Plan 02.29.08: The Greatest Video Game Villains...Ever (Part 2)

Posted by James McGee on 02.29.2008

My exploration of scum and villainy continues with a look at the Umbrella Corporation

Our ideas about what constitutes a villain are always evolving. Using video games as an example (that is what this column is about, after all), players used to be content with dispatching nameless goons and by-the-numbers monsters. Nowadays, there's always something more complex and sinister at the heart of a game's bad guys. He may have held up well, but you wouldn't see many villains like Bowser created today. It's a case of art imitating life, because evil has certainly become more difficult to recognize and combat in the modern world. The villains in the real world are much less colorful, but much more pervasive and insurmountable, which makes them all the more frightening.

The Umbrella Corporation—which acts as the primary villain of the Resident Evil series—encapsulates many fears of the modern world. It stirs up age-old mistrust of science, it feeds the global hunger for destruction, and its power has proven so pervasive that it is virtually untouchable for its crimes. Umbrella represents the ultimate modern villiain—Big Business. I'm James McGee, and here's The Game Plan.


Albert Wesker is a great villain in his own right, but he doesn't hold a candle to Umbrella as a whole.

The Umbrella Corporation began as a pharmaceutical company. Considering the number of prescription drug commercials we have to sit through during our favorite TV shows, that may be enough to qualify it as a great villain in the eyes of many. But, to be fair, these drug-peddlers have the best interests of mankind at heart, at least on some rudimentary level. They cure diseases and ease suffering, which you have to admit are noble endeavors. And so what if they make some money doing it? I've said before in this column that I don't quite understand why everyone has a grudge against companies wanting to make money for the services they provide.

The trouble comes when a company becomes so obsessed with profit that it forgets the "greater good" it originally served. There is, perhaps, nothing more damnable than taking an ability that could be used for great good and employing it towards an evil goal. That's the root of the Umbrella Corporation's evil. There is a much bigger market to be made in the service of death than in the betterment of life. Umbrella quickly came to this realization and redirected the majority of their resources towards the research and development of biological weapons. Again, on the surface, this seems like a worthy goal. In theory, advanced weapons lead to better protection of a country and its citizens. But, as always, the thirst for wealth and power blinded the men behind Umbrella, and they conducted their experiments without regard for human life. The famous T-Virus outbreak that kicked off the first few games in the Resident Evil series wasn't so much a horrible accident as a sick, premeditated science-fair project. The citizens of Raccoon City were used as guinea pigs to test the effects of the virus and the killing efficiency of the various mutations that resulted from exposure. The events of the games feed into genuine fears most any small town harbors if it happens to be downwind of some shady government facility—"Wonder what goes on at that there laboratory on the hill?" Umbrella proves the urban legend right—those danged scientists are up to no good, and the innocents will pay the price.


The Tyrant—one of Umbrella's many gruesome science projects.

And the innocents are the only ones paying the price thanks to Umbrella's political connections. An entire town gets turned into zombies, the government is forced to drop a nuke to contain the outbreak, and Umbrella still manages to keep its doors open? Sounds to me like they have friends in high places. Even though the company supposedly met its end during the recent Umbrella Chronicles spin-off, I'd be just as shocked as anyone if gamers have truly seen the last of them. If there is anything more wicked than using power for evil means, it is utilizing that same power to deflect blame. We've all seen the guilty go unpunished because the forces of justice are either too scared or too corrupt to stand up to the bad guys. Despite the modern world's general cynicism (or perhaps because of it), most of us have a deep-seeded loathing of injustice. By continually wriggling out of trouble despite blatant wrong-doing (they turned people into zombies, for heaven's sake!), Umbrella plays into those innate emotions.

The protagonists of the Resident Evil series are always variations on the "regular joe" archetype, which helps make Umbrella the perfect villain for the series. At most, the heroes have police or military training (Chris, Billy, Leon), but many are simply civilians (Claire, the characters of Outbreak) caught in the unraveling horror unleashed by the corporation. It's the classic scenario of the wealthy having no regard for the common man. When the "little guys" start fighting back, it's something everyone can rally behind. Other survival-horror games like to pit average people against unspeakable monsters. But with Resident Evil, there is a tangible (and potentially defeatable) puppet-master holding the strings to all those ghoulish creatures. No matter how powerful Umbrella is, there is always the glimmer of hope that, one day, the men behind the monsters can be brought down. That, just as much as the truism that shooting zombies is fun, accounts for Resident Evil's continued success. People want to believe that enemies can be defeated, and no one wants to see a villain brought down quite as much a Big Business.

Umbrella represents the archetypal evil corporation. Maybe the initial goals were innocent, perhaps even noble, but the company has been corrupted beyond all hope of doing good in the world. Its owners have become obsessed with their own personal gain. It has become a cog in the great, global machinery of death and destruction. And it has enough political clout to cover up all of its wrong-doings and silence those voices that would see it held accountable for the damage it causes. In short, Umbrella is the quintessential 21st century villain, whether it be in video games or the real world.