Chris Redfield

• 1. Introduction

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  Chris Redfield, the hero of Capcom's Resident Evil series, stands inside an active volcano and punches a giant boulder until it drops into the lava. That moment from Resident Evil 5 in 2009 turned into one of the most repeated jokes in gaming. Yet Chris began in 1996 as a member of a police special-tactics unit, trapped in a mansion full of the undead. How did he travel from a quiet mansion to a volcano? Why does he look different in nearly every game he appears in? And why do critics still argue over whether he is a great hero or a dull one?

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• 2. Mansion Origins

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  Chris debuted in Capcom's 1996 survival horror game Resident Evil, one of two playable heroes alongside his partner Jill Valentine. Director Shinji Mikami and designer Isao Ohishi created him. Designer Hideki Kamiya called him a "blunt, tough-guy type" and admitted that he was a fan of that archetype. Chris is of white American descent. He served in the United States Air Force before joining S.T.A.R.S., the Special Tactics and Rescue Service of the Raccoon Police Department.

  Choosing Chris instead of Jill changes how the game plays, even though the two storylines run in similar paths. Chris carries fewer items in his inventory. In exchange, he runs faster and can take more damage.

  The story is set in July 1998, in a mansion on the outskirts of Raccoon City. Chris and his team go inside to search for lost colleagues. With fellow S.T.A.R.S. member Rebecca Chambers, he learns that the house is a front for a biological warfare laboratory run by the Umbrella Corporation. The undead in its halls are the scientists who created the T-virus mutagen. Chris's commander, Albert Wesker, is exposed as a double agent working for Umbrella.

  Five people survive the incident. Chris and Jill are among them, and the ordeal makes them close friends and passionate opponents of bioterrorism. Their partnership would carry on well beyond the mansion.

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• 3. A Sequel Without Him

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  Resident Evil 2, released in 1998, left Chris out entirely. The production team brought in two new protagonists, Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, to preserve the horror of the original game. Mikami believed that Chris and Jill were too experienced to be frightened by the events of the sequel. Claire, it turns out, is Chris's younger sister.

  In 2000, Resident Evil - Code: Veronica brought Chris back as the protagonist of the game's second half. It is set three months after Resident Evil 2. Chris sets out to rescue Claire from Umbrella's research facilities on Rockfort Island, a fictional island in the South Pacific Ocean.

  He then discovers that Claire is actually in Antarctica. There he has a brief confrontation with Wesker, who has survived the first game and now has enhanced strength, speed, and agility. Chris goes on to defeat the antagonist Alexia Ashford. He escapes with Claire just before the Antarctic facility destroys itself, and the siblings vow to end the Umbrella Corporation. That vow would take them into 2003.

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• 4. Hunting Umbrella

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  The year 2003 is the setting of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, in which Chris and Jill join a private organization determined to expose Umbrella's biological warfare. Their mission ends with the destruction of Umbrella's only remaining research facility. After the corporation falls, the pair become founding members of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, or BSAA, run under the United Nations.

  Revelations, set two years later, sends Jill and her new partner Parker Luciani to rescue Chris, who is supposedly being held hostage on a ghost ship in the Mediterranean. Jill and Chris end up uncovering a political conspiracy. It involves an earlier mutagenic outbreak and a botched investigation by a rival agency.

  In 2009, the BSAA dispatches Chris to Kijuju, a fictional African town where terrorists are turning residents into zombies. Resident Evil 5 gives him a new partner, Sheva Alomar. He is also searching for Jill, who has vanished and been declared dead. He learns that Wesker took her hostage and used her as a test subject for his biological experiments. Chris and Sheva free her and destroy Wesker, who planned to spread the Uroboros virus across the world.

  In Resident Evil 6, released in 2012, Chris leads a squad of BSAA soldiers to investigate a bioterrorism attack in Edonia, a fictional country in Eastern Europe. Carla Radames, posing as Ada Wong, ambushes them. Only Chris and Piers Nivans survive. In China they meet Jake Muller, the illegitimate son of Wesker, whose antibodies could stop a new C-virus outbreak. Together they face Haos, a powerful bioweapon. Piers is gravely injured and injects himself with the C-virus for superhuman strength. He saves Chris and gives his own life so that Haos is destroyed.

  After all of that, the designers faced a question of how Chris should look.

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• 5. A Face That Keeps Changing

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  For Resident Evil 5, modeler Yosuke Yamagata said the team made a new design that kept each hero's signature color, green for Chris and blue for Jill. Chris's face drew mostly on the 2002 remake of the original game, with extra details added to give a realistic structure. The designers chose to show how much Chris had aged since the first game. His added muscle was meant to suggest years of intense training to fight Wesker bare-handed.

  Producer Jun Takeuchi said fans wanted a game starring both Leon S. Kennedy and Chris at once, because both were so popular. He thought it would be "pretty dramatic" if the two never met before the series ended. They finally met in Resident Evil 6. There Chris looks slightly disheveled, a result of his alcoholism and post-traumatic amnesia. Character designer Tsutomu Kawade said the team knew his powerful arms were his most distinctive feature, so the design emphasized them, with clothing in blue-tinted green.

  Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in 2017 changed course. Takeuchi said Chris had been proposed as the main character, and that he would have to be written as a hero after his last appearance. Looking back, Takeuchi realized that making a Resident Evil game is not the same as creating a hero like Chris. Producer Masachika Kawata said the lead would be "totally new" rather than a "macho superhero" like Chris in Resident Evil 5.

  Director Kōshi Nakanishi felt that Chris's look from Resident Evil 6 did not suit the engine or aesthetic of Resident Evil 7. He feared players would sense an "incongruity" if Chris looked the same as before. The producers wanted a more "photorealistic depiction" and an entirely new design. Commentators and players said the result left him unrecognizable. For Resident Evil 7 and Village, his features were based on the New Zealand model Geordie Dandy.

  Under that new face, Chris made a return that no fan saw coming.

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• 6. The Man in the Trailers

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  The final scene of Resident Evil 7 shows a man calling himself "Redfield" arriving to rescue Ethan Winters. The credits name him as Chris Redfield, but his helicopter carries the Umbrella Corporation logo. Viewers questioned who he really was until Capcom confirmed that it was Chris, with a noticeably different appearance.

  Chris also stars in the downloadable campaign Not a Hero. He and his team try to capture the antagonist Lucas Baker. Chris fails to save his squad, but he confronts Lucas and kills him.

  The trailers for Resident Evil Village in 2021 made Chris look nefarious. They showed him killing Ethan's wife Mia and kidnapping Ethan's daughter Rosemary, which surprised longtime fans. Director Morimasa Sato said the mystery was a chance to show the character's progression to fans who already knew him. Chris received another redesign, with a new outfit that includes a coat.

  The game itself tells a different story. Chris and his Hound Wolf squad discover that the antagonist Mother Miranda can shape-shift and had posed as Mia. They shoot her to protect Ethan and Rosemary, but the attempt fails. After explaining his mission to Ethan, Chris rescues the real Mia. He learns of Miranda's link to the late Oswell E. Spencer, the founder of the Umbrella Corporation, and helps plant a bomb to destroy the infested village.

  During extraction, a dying Ethan hands the rescued Rosemary to Chris and sacrifices himself so the village is destroyed. Mia and Rosemary are saved. Chris and his team then head to the BSAA's European headquarters to demand answers about why the BSAA uses bio-organic weapons as frontline soldiers.

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• 7. Beyond the Games

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  In 1998, George A. Romero wrote a Resident Evil film script that was rejected. In it, Chris is a Native American civilian and one of the few survivors. Director Paul W. S. Anderson's live-action series later brought him in for Resident Evil: Afterlife in 2010, where he is found trapped in a maximum security cell in Los Angeles.

  Wentworth Miller, who played him there, asked the filmmakers for a montage of notable video-game scenes about Chris's experiences and background, to help him understand the character. Chris is missing from the final film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, released in 2016, and apparently dies offscreen. Actress Milla Jovovich said he was left out because there were too many other Resident Evil characters. In the 2021 reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Chris is played by Robbie Amell.

  The animated adult films, unlike the live-action ones, continue the story of the games. In Resident Evil: Vendetta in 2017, Chris asks Rebecca and Leon for help stopping a psychopath from spreading "The Trigger Virus" through New York City. He returns in Resident Evil: Death Island in 2023 as a BSAA agent investigating a zombie outbreak in San Francisco caused by a new strain of virus.

  The games have used many performers. Charlie Kraslavsky played Chris in the live-action cinematics of the original Resident Evil, while Scott McCulloch voiced him. Roger Craig Smith voiced him in Resident Evil 5 and 6, and Reuben Langdon performed his motion capture. David Vaughn and Jeff Schine voiced him in Resident Evil 7 and Village, with Geordie Dandy handling motion capture. In Japanese, Subaru Kimura voiced Chris in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.

  Chris has traveled well outside his home series. He appears in three Marvel vs. Capcom games and in the crossover tactical role-playing game Project X Zone 2 in 2015. He is playable in Teppen and State of Survival, both from 2019. He is an alternate skin in Dead by Daylight, The Division 2, and the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, where he dresses Frank West. He makes cameos in Fortnite Battle Royale, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Dying Light 2. A robot dressed as Chris appears in Astro's Playroom and Astro Bot.

  S. D. Perry's novel Resident Evil: City of the Dead, from 1999, gives him a main role. Merchandise includes outfits, perfumes, gun replicas, watches, and figurines. The audience for all of this is divided about him, as the critics make clear.

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• 8. Hero or Henchman

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  Polygon's Cass Marshall pointed out that Chris's body keeps swinging from lean to muscular and back again. GameSpy compared his Resident Evil 5 design to "a cross between Colin Farrell and Hugh Jackman". Other critics have suggested that he used steroids. Several Kotaku writers named him one of the worst Resident Evil heroes and called him "bland" and "boring". Kotaku's Ian Walker said Chris went from a global bio-terrorism agent in Resident Evil 7 to someone's henchman in a British crime comedy by Guy Ritchie in Village.

  Digital media scholars Matthew Wysocki and Steffi Shook read the end of the original game differently. In their view, Chris is an ambiguously good or evil figure who serves as a soldier "just following orders". They called him a "lone hero of hegemonic masculinity", although they argued his masculinity gives way in the presence of strong women.

  Other voices have been warmer. IGN, Inverse, and a Famitsu reader survey all named him among the popular Resident Evil characters. Fans celebrated his bond with Jill for resting on loyalty rather than romance. PC Gamer's Andy Kelly noted earlier complaints that Chris was "one-dimensional" and then praised him in Village as "finally a person" who had been "given some depth".

  Since his muscular look arrived in Resident Evil 5, critics have often discussed his sex appeal, and some call him one of the sexiest video game characters. Critic Veerender Singh Jubbal told Kotaku that Chris in Resident Evil 5 helped him better understand his own bisexuality. He described Chris as a muscle-bound hunk he found attractive.

  The boulder scene stays the most famous. It was recognized as one of the most memorable in the series largely for its ridiculousness, and it inspired memes about Chris's strength. PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon wrote that it gave us "truly one of the greatest moments in the history of video games", and called it "perfect" as a quick time event.

  In Resident Evil Village, the antagonist Karl Heisenberg mocks Chris during his boss fight with a crude nickname built on the boulder punching. In Pragmata in 2026, billboards pointed to an unclaimed website, aweskerproduction.com. It filled with Resident Evil memes, including Chris mid-punch, after a Russian player took over the address.

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