Short answers, pulled from the story.
Resident Evil was created by Shinji Mikami and Tokuro Fujiwara for Capcom. Development began in 1993 when Fujiwara tasked Mikami with building a game using elements from Fujiwara's 1989 Famicom game Sweet Home. The game was released for PlayStation in 1996.
As of May 2026, the Resident Evil franchise has sold over 201 million copies worldwide, making it Capcom's best-selling franchise and one of the highest-grossing horror franchises of all time.
The game is titled Biohazard in Japan, but a DOS game and a New York hardcore punk band named Biohazard made securing that name in the United States very difficult. Capcom held an internal naming contest among employees, and Resident Evil was the winning entry.
The six live-action Resident Evil films produced between 2002 and 2016, all written and produced by Paul W. S. Anderson, grossed more than one billion dollars worldwide. The full franchise total including home video sales exceeds $1.2 billion. The series is notable as the only video game film adaptations to increase revenue with each successive entry.
Resident Evil is credited with sparking the zombie revival of the 2000s and shifting the genre from supernatural to scientific explanations for the undead. George A. Romero stated in 2013 that Resident Evil and House of the Dead popularized his zombie concept more than anything else. Filmmakers including Alex Garland and Edgar Wright cited Resident Evil as a direct influence on 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead respectively.
Resident Evil 4, released in 2005, popularized the over-the-shoulder third-person camera view that became standard across action-adventure games. It replaced the series' fixed camera angles and tank controls with a tracking camera and more dynamic shooting mechanics. The game was initially released exclusively for GameCube before expanding to Windows, PlayStation 2, and Wii.