ABSTRACT
The Resident Evil video game franchise helped popularize and shape the zombie as a monstrous figure in popular culture. From the original Japanese title, Biohazard, this series has been instrumental in medicalizing the zombie, linking it to fictional pathogens such as the T-virus, Las Plagas and mutamycete fungus. These different infections keep the player focused on the immediate threat of the zombie, forcing her to ignore the larger medical threat and danger of virulence. The terminology of zombies moves from inorganic contamination to aggressive infection, showing an escalation of the pathogens’ invasiveness across Resident Evil, Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard; more sophisticated pathogens, which draw inspiration from more complex real-world organisms, demonstrate greater transformative powers over those infected. The properties of the virus, multicellular parasite, and fungus parallel the monstrous threats faced within each game. The zombie figures go from being virally-animated bodies, to humans inhabited by wormlike or insectile parasites, to prehensile fungus, humanoid in form but motile and appearing to use humans only as scaffolding. This increasing complexity of pathogenic threat parallels changes in ludics that result in more immersive games, from detached Resident Evil’s third-person framing to the first-person and virtual reality-compatible gameplay in Resident Evil 7. These elements enliven a series in which players are more directly threatened by medicalized monstrosities, but are powerless to face the larger systemic threat that creates the zombie threat.
