Resident Evil 7 made the series scarier than ever, in more ways than just improved scares. Resident Evil turned very serious out of the blue, bereft of funny tonal imbalances that once served as breathers. Good, but also sad, because it was once a provider of comedy gold.
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Anyone lucky enough to experience the first game in the series certainly remembers its scariest moments, sure, but also its incredibly dumb writing delivered by equally awkward voice acting. Barry rescues Jill after she nearly gets crushed to death in one of the first game’s most claustrophobic moments, only to throw all the tension out of the window by mentioning a “Jill Sandwich?” Fantastic.
That became one of the most famous examples of unintentional comedy in gaming, a moment referenced by many other games in the series and even other media. A true “Oh hi Mark” moment from The Room long before it was a thing.
That was enough to keep fans laughing for over a decade, but just when you thought the joke had gotten stale, we learned of another dimension to it that made it funnier than ever. It turns out the voice lines were delivered in such a weird manner because the freelance actors didn’t know they were reading for a horror game, and the voice directors didn’t know much English, so they had the voice actors say the lines and used the takes they believed sounded the coolest for Japanese ears.
The best feature in Resident Evil Director’s Cut was the laughs
But the funniest thing about the original Resident Evil can only be found in the Resident Evil Director’s Cut edition. This early attempt at milking a franchise by promising a few improvements really did a few things better, such as adding new game modes for newcomers and veteran players, as well as customized gameplay modes. Still, it also boasted an awesome new soundtrack, which was anything but. Please feast your ears on what’s arguably the worst song ever put into a serious video game.
That song, too, only becomes funnier the deeper we dive into it. That’s the result of Capcom hiring a supposedly legendary deaf Japanese composer named Mamoru Samuragochi. Now, before anyone unaware of history thinks “well, that’s what you get when you hire a deaf guy to make music,” it turns out that Samuragochi actually isn’t deaf in real life. Pretty fun plot twist, right? Well, that was before fans found out that he likely wasn’t even the one composing the songs in the first place.
Even Resident Evil’s revival kept things pretty funny
Resident Evil 4 surprised everyone by showing Leon fully evolved from a rookie cop to a spec-ops badass, complete with a repertoire of badass zingers that everyone’s dads would absolutely love. Asking if the entire village’s population had gone to bingo after the biggest slaughter in the history of the series gets interrupted remains one of the most weirdly iconic moments in the series. Same with Salazar’s threat of using his “right hand” to dispose of Leon, which is met with the most deadpan delivery of “Does your right hand come off?”
And there’s even more gold underneath the surface. Though this part absolutely wasn’t intended by the devs, Resident Evil 4 features not-too-rare glitches that remain some of the best examples of perfect comedy only achievable in video games, like Ashley somehow gaining access to Leon’s moveset and becoming a pro-Wrestler.
19 years later, it remains equally fun to witness. And, equally good, is Leon ditching Ashley and his whole mission at the last minute because he has become a human jet ski no longer bothered by human matters.
Then Resident Evil 5 tricked players into believing it would be a much more serious Resident Evil experience, only for it to end with the most cartoony depiction of a man trying to move a boulder in all of fiction.
In an anime-physics way, I understand why Chris could think that punching a boulder would somehow energize him to the point of getting strong enough to move the boulder, but the funniest part is that the punches aren’t a mere power-up; they’re the endgame, and Chris ends up finally moving the boulder not by pushing, but by Shoryukening it out of his way. Now that’s how you end your game.
