Most villain organizations in fiction exist to be beaten. You expose the bad guy for the world to see, kick their ass, and the credits roll over a celebration. Things return to normal or you adapt to a new normal that promises to be better than how it was before.
The Resident Evil universe didn’t get that kind of ending. In fact, the end of Umbrella Corporation made the world more dangerous. Umbrella represents an evil that never truly disappears no matter how many times it’s defeated. That level of omnipresence sets them apart from your typical evil corporation in gaming.
The Company That Wore a Mask
Umbrella was co-founded by Ozwell E. Spencer, Edward Ashford, and James Marcus in the late 1960s. Spencer believed that engineered viral agents could be used to trigger forced human evolution. He wanted to cull the weak and create a superior race with himself at the top. This eugenicist, almost god-complex philosophy drove much of Umbrella’s work.
On the surface, Umbrella was a large pharmaceutical company. Their red and white logo appeared on medicines, cosmetics, the kind of everyday items you’d pass in a drugstore without a second glance.
Behind that cover, Umbrella was secretly conducting illegal experiments to create biological weapons.
In a way, Umbrella never really tried to hide their sinister nature. Their iconic motto, “Obedience Breeds Discipline, Discipline Breeds Unity, Unity Breeds Power, Power is Life,” tells you everything you need to know.
One Laboratory, One Leak, and a City Damned
James Marcus, one of Umbrella’s original co-founders, fused the Progenitor Virus with leech DNA and created the T-Virus. Spencer had him assassinated to steal the research.
Marcus was eventually resurrected by his own leech creations and triggered the initial outbreak at Umbrella’s Arklay Mountains facility out of revenge. This one act set off a chain of events that Umbrella could never fully control again. Spencer’s ruthlessness toward his own colleagues planted the first seed of his organization’s destruction.
STARS Alpha Team were sent into the outbreak not to investigate it, but as unwitting test subjects for Umbrella’s Tyrant bioweapons. The survivors, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, and Rebecca Chambers would spend the rest of their lives trying to burn Umbrella to the ground.
Then came Raccoon City. A researcher named William Birkin had developed the G-Virus, something even more dangerous than the T-Virus. When Umbrella sent operatives to steal his work, Birkin was shot. Feeling betrayed, he injected himself with the G-Virus to block Umbrella from stealing it. His mutation into a horrific monster caused him to attack the operatives, spilling T-Virus samples into the sewer system. Rats carried it through the city’s population.
Almost immediately, Raccoon City fell into chaos. Within days, nearly 100,000 people were dead and the United States government firebombed the entire city.
Umbrella’s Downfall Made Everything Worse
Following the Raccoon City disaster, Umbrella faced multiple lawsuits, government investigations, and public outrage. Chris and Jill gathered evidence and worked with the U.S. government to take the corporation down. Their efforts paid off with Umbrella officially going bankrupt and dissolved in 2004. The international organization BSAA (Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance) was created after Umbrella’s downfall, with members including Chris and Jill.
The cruel irony is that Umbrella’s downfall actually made everything worse.
By Resident Evil 4, its influence is everywhere. Osmund Saddler and the Los Illuminados have access to a parasite called Las Plagas. It exists independently of Umbrella’s research but was pursued by former Umbrella operative Ada Wong on behalf of a rival organization.
In Resident Evil 5, Chris Redfield and his BSAA partner Sheva Alomar tracked Spencer down to his private estate to apprehend him. However, before he could be arrested, Spencer is murdered by Albert Wesker.
In his final moments, Spencer revealed to Wesker his original plan was to have the Progenitor Virus wipe out most of humanity. Wesker and others like him that Spencer secretly raised and experimented on would mark the start of a new, evolved human race.
Disgusted with being used as a pawn, Wesker teamed up with Ricardo Irving to use Umbrella’s research into bioweapons like the Uroboros Virus to execute Spencer’s plan. In Resident Evil 6, scientist Carla Radames founded Neo-Umbrella, continuing bioterrorism on a massive global scale.
The corporation is the original sin for the entire franchise. Even after they’re long gone, the viruses, scientists, weapons, and ideologies they cultivated continue to drive the story forward. They turned bioweapons into a global industry, and the world of Resident Evil has never recovered from it.
