References to the Terminator Movies in the Resident Evil games! Maybe you’ve seen a few, and maybe you’ve never noticed any, but there are a lot of themes, characters and events that take place in the Resident Evil series that make me think that the good people at Capcom must have been big fans of The Terminator and Terminator 2 Judgement Day.
There are arguably a lot of different movies that have influenced Resident Evil, as after all, the original plan for the game was to be a game inspired by Capcom’s earlier game Sweet Home, which was itself based directly on a movie.
The influence of Sweet Home gave Resident Evil it’s spooky mansion setting, but beyond Sweet Home, you can look primarily to the likes of zombie movies like The Night of the Living Dead, or the likes of The Fly, or The Thing or B movie creature features like Tarantula or Jaws. I’m going to save discussion for some of these for another day, as although there are tons of potential movie influences on the Resident Evil series overall, the one that has caught my attention most over the years is that there are tons of similarities between the Resident Evil games and The Terminator films.
The first Terminator film came out in 1984, and the second in 1991, and whilst the first movie was science fiction blended with horror, the second one went decidedly more towards action and edged away from horror. The Resident Evil games have followed a similar path where the first one was horror focussed and the second one became more about the action.
In today’s discussion, I’ll be looking at all the nods and references, influences and homages that I can find in the Resident Evil games to the Terminator films. Maybe some of them are coincidences, but there are so many, that I think it’s worth grabbing and uni and a mixed herb and that we go check it out. Some of these references are big and some are small moments, so this is going to be a wild ride.
So, without further ado, we’re about to enter the world of survival horror and say hasta la vista Nemesis!
Punching the Glasses
To start things off, let’s look at a few of the smaller references, before we get onto the meaty ones.
In Terminator 2 Judgement Day we get a scene where the T800 has his glasses punched off his face by woman security guard at mental asylum prison thing that Sarah Conner is being held at. The Terminator then turns back to look at her with a slow head turn. In Resident Evil Code Veronica, Chris Redfield punches Albert Wesker in the face and knocks his glasses off. In much the same way as Arnold Schwarzenegger did, Wesker then does the slow head turn. This is a double reference in fact as we see Wesker has red eyes which is something long associated with the Terminator.
Red Eyes
When we see Wesker in this scene his eyes are a bit more alien looking than Terminator looking, but earlier in the game when he has his sun glasses on, we distinctly see his eyes glow red which is the same as they show the T800 in marketing and then of course we do see that the Terminator’s eye is a red glowing dot.
Metal Pipe Recovery
Chris Redfield attacks Wesker with a metal pipe. This of course is like when Kyle Reese attacked the T800 with metal pipe at the end of The Terminator. In both instances the villain then immediately gets the upper hand.
Melting Pot
In Terminator 2 Judgement Day, the T1000 is finally defeated by being shot repeatedly until he falls into a vat of molten steel. In Resident Evil 2, one of the two main antagonists is Mr X, who is seemingly defeated in the same way and falling into a vat of molten metal.
Albert Wesker then dies in Resident Evil 5 by falling in molten lava in a volcano. Before he dies, he is shown to be struggling and thrashing about in much the same way as the T-1000 is shown the struggle in Terminator 2 whilst in the molten metal.
Resident Evil Chracters Look Like Terminator Characters
The general look of Albert Wesker is somewhat similar to the T-1000 with a similar slim build and bad guy haircut and police uniform. Wesker was of course based on the live action actor who played him in Resident Evil 1, but I can believe he was cast to give a similar vibe.
Looking at Leon S Kennedy from Resident Evil 2 he kinda looks like a grown up John Connor from Terminator 2. Edward Furlong who played John in Terminator 2, may not resemble Leon much now he is an adult, but I’d say the resemblance was still there by the time he was in his early twenties as Leon was in Resident Evil 2.
And maybe this one is a stretch, but the live action actor that plays Chris in Resident Evil 1 does kinda look like Michael Biehn who plays Reece in the Terminator.
Now, let’s look at the some of the bigger references and the most obvious comparison between the franchises and that is between the Terminators and the Tyrants.
Continued on the next page!
