Leon S. Kennedy

• 1. Introduction

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  Leon S. Kennedy is late for his first day of work, and the reason is a fight with his girlfriend. That detail comes from the manual of Resident Evil 2, the 1998 survival horror game from the Japanese company Capcom. Leon is a rookie police officer, and by the time he arrives in Raccoon City, a zombie outbreak has already taken hold. He is one of two playable heroes in that game. He has since become a protagonist across the Resident Evil series, which is called Biohazard in Japan. He has also appeared in novelizations, films, an animated miniseries, and other companies' games. Who decided he should be a rookie at all? What happened to him once the first night was over? And why do critics keep calling him one of the most iconic characters in video games?

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• 2. A Rewritten Rookie

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  The first version of Leon was not a rookie. In the early prototype of Resident Evil 2, often called Resident Evil 1.5, he was a veteran Raccoon City police officer. Capcom then hired the writer Noboru Sugimura to rework the story. Sugimura believed the existing character lacked depth and coherence, so he reconceived Leon as a young, newly recruited officer.

  Hideki Kamiya, the game's creative director, said his own taste ran toward blunt, tough-guy heroes. Yet he built Leon as "someone with weaknesses". That choice set Leon apart from Chris Redfield, the hero of the first game, and moved the series away from its earlier approach. Kamiya also said the late arrival on the first day was inspired by his own experience during development.

  The character's full name is Leon Scott Kennedy, and he is an American of Italian descent. Kamiya has said the name comes from the 1994 film Léon: The Professional. The artists Isao Ohishi and Ryoji Shimogama designed the look that players finally saw on screen. The person who shared that look on the first night was a second hero, Claire Redfield.

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• 3. The Night Raccoon City Fell

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  Resident Evil 2 is set in 1998, in the fictional American city of Raccoon City. The pharmaceutical company Umbrella Corporation is responsible for the outbreak. Leon meets Claire Redfield soon after he arrives, and the two run for the Raccoon City Police Department building. Zombies overrun them, and they are separated.

  Inside the building, Leon meets Ada Wong, who says she is an FBI agent hunting for a sample of the G-virus mutagen. Together they find an underground laboratory. There they meet the Umbrella scientist Annette Birkin, who reveals that Ada is really a mercenary. Ada tries to claim the G-virus, but Birkin shoots her in the struggle, and Ada appears to fall to her death.

  The facility is then set to self-destruct. Leon escapes, only to face the T-103 Tyrant. In the middle of the fight, Ada, who survived the fall, throws him a rocket launcher and destroys the monster. Leon rejoins Claire, who has secured a train leading to the surface. With Birkin's young daughter Sherry Birkin, they escape before a nuclear strike wipes out Raccoon City as part of a U.S. government cover-up. Leon would not see Ada again until a mission in Spain.

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• 4. Agent Abroad

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  Resident Evil 4, released in 2005 and set in 2004, finds Leon changed from a rookie into a special agent. His assignment is to rescue Ashley Graham, the daughter of the U.S. president, who has been abducted in Spain. The kidnappers are a mysterious cult called Los Illuminados, which controls the local villagers with parasites known as "Las Plagas". Leon runs into Ada, whom he has not seen since Raccoon City. He also meets Jack Krauser, a former special-operations partner he believed was dead. At the climax, Leon kills the cult leader Osmund Saddler but has to hand Ada a sample of the parasite. She flies off in a helicopter, and Leon and Ashley escape on a jet ski.

  In Resident Evil 6, from 2012, Leon shares the spotlight with Chris Redfield, Jake Muller and Ada. The story is set in 2013. The U.S. president is about to publicly announce what happened in Raccoon City when a bioweapon turns him into a zombie. Leon is forced to kill him, and he is accused of planning both the attack and the death. Ada reveals that the real culprit is the National Security Advisor Derek C. Simmons, creator of the "C-virus". Leon teams up with the Secret Service agent Helena Harper, and with Ada's help they chase Simmons to China and defeat him.

  He grows suspicious of Victor Gideon, a researcher with ties to Umbrella, and follows him to the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center. There Leon meets Grace, who has just woken in another part of the clinic after being kidnapped. Together they enter ARK, an Umbrella research facility beneath Raccoon City, and find a chamber of "Elpis" samples. Elpis is an antiviral against all viral bioweapons, created by Oswell Spencer. Grace chooses to release it and uses it to cure Leon, before he kills Gideon. The Hound Wolf Squad of the United Nations' Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance then rescues them, and a soldier hands Leon a message from the squad's captain, Chris.

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• 5. Ada and Leon

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  Ada Wong keeps returning to Leon's story, and in the 1998 original their bond is an ambiguous romance. Each of them repeatedly saves the other's life. When Capcom remade Resident Evil 2 in 2019, the creative team decided to spend more time on their conversations. They felt the relationship in the original game moved too quickly.

  Executive producer Jun Takeuchi suggested that the pair's kiss should come earlier in the story. His reasoning was that an earlier kiss would make Ada seem more manipulative of Leon.

  Critics have enjoyed the pairing in Resident Evil 4. Matt Kim of VG247 praised the relationship, saying its "spy vs. spy thing" produces entertaining cutscenes.

  The academic Andrei Nae takes a more critical view in his book Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games. He calls Leon's persona hypermasculine and compares him to Ethan Thomas from Condemned: Criminal Origins. Both men, Nae writes, are empowered to win in direct combat and to reassert themselves as White, middle-class males. In his reading, that hypermasculinity is incomplete, because neither can fully contain gender and class otherness. He sees this in Leon's failure to bring Ada under patriarchal control.

  Leon's relationship with Ada stayed much the same through the years, but his appearance did not. The large shoulder pads on his 1998 model are the clearest sign of that.

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• 6. Revisions and Redesigns

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  Those shoulder pads were first used to visually emphasize Leon's low-polygon model. In the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2, they were removed so that he would fit the more photorealistic setting.

  For Resident Evil 4, the writer Yasuhisa Kawamura revised the story several times to improve its atmosphere. He told Brenna Hillier of VG247 that the original concept had Leon sneaking into the castle of Oswell E. Spencer, the founder of Umbrella Corp. Leon would find a girl in the castle's laboratory, and the trio, with a bioweapon dog, would explore the castle together. The idea was judged too costly and was scrapped.

  Hideki Kamiya was surprised by how popular Leon had become. He enjoyed watching him grow into a "really cool looking guy" for Resident Evil 4 and said he "fell in love all over again". A documentary about the game's characters says the aim was for Leon to "look tougher, but also cool". Designer Masaki Yamanaka credited the change to the experience he had gained since Resident Evil 2. Leon kept his coolness, Yamanaka said, but he did not want him "too buffed out".

  For the 2023 remake of Resident Evil 4, producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi said the team made changes that felt natural to players. They kept the horror of the original along with Leon's sarcastic charm. They also wanted to show more of the game's human relationships.

  Between those two games came Resident Evil 5, released in 2009. Producer Takeuchi said fans wanted both Leon and Chris as protagonists because of their popularity. He thought it would be "pretty dramatic" if the two never met during the series. They finally meet in Resident Evil 6. Its producer, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, included Leon because "he was central to the story of the game". Leon's blue, Chinese outfit in that game was meant to look stylish and to contrast with Chris's military equipment.

  Since the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2, Leon's face has been based on that of the Romanian model Eduard Badaluta. The same model was used in the 2023 remake of Resident Evil 4 and in Requiem.

  In Requiem, director Koshi Nakanishi's team designed Leon as a stylish, good-looking mature man. The developers considered making him the only protagonist, but they dropped the idea. They realized that "making a horror game based around him would be difficult", given how many monsters he had already faced. Nakanishi argued that fans would object to a Leon who was constantly afraid of his surroundings.

  The solution was a second hero. Players alternate between Leon and the FBI agent Grace Ashcroft. Her chapters supply slow-paced, horror-focused sections, while Leon's supply faster-paced action. Nakanishi said Leon's sequences could give players a sense of release after Grace's chapters. The team also wanted his gameplay to show how his experience with horrific creatures has shaped his body and mind.

  The game ends with a glimpse of Leon's wedding band. Nakanishi said it was meant to show that Leon has a "place to go home to", where players could imagine him spending peaceful moments.

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• 7. Beyond the Games

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  Paul Haddad voiced Leon in his first appearance, in Resident Evil 2. Paul Mercier took over for Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil: Degeneration and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. Christian Lanz voiced him in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Matthew Mercer then played him in Resident Evil 6, Damnation, Revelations 2, Vendetta and Death Island.

  Nick Apostolides performed both voice and motion capture in the 2019 Resident Evil 2, the 2023 Resident Evil 4, Requiem, and the animated film Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. Jason Faunt did the motion capture in Resident Evil 6. In Japanese, Toshiyuki Morikawa has voiced Leon in Infinite Darkness, Damnation, Resident Evil 6, Project X Zone 2, and the two remakes.

  The live-action Resident Evil films gave Leon to two actors. Johann Urb played him in Resident Evil: Retribution, where he leads the Resistance and joins Alice against Umbrella. Director Paul W. S. Anderson said he felt a lot of pressure to find a convincing action hero with a similar hairstyle. Leon is missing from the final film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, released in 2016, having apparently died off-screen. Avan Jogia took the role in the 2021 reboot, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.

  The animated films have given him a larger part. In Resident Evil: Degeneration, from 2008, he is reunited with Claire. He returns in Damnation. Vendetta, released in 2017, pairs Chris, Leon and Rebecca Chambers. In the Netflix series Infinite Darkness, from 2021, Leon is ordered to investigate an incident in the White House and kills zombies there. Death Island followed in 2023.

  Resident Evil Gaiden, from 2001, is one of the non-canonical games where he is playable. He is sent to investigate a cruise ship rumored to host Umbrella's latest experiments. He disappears, and Barry Burton is sent to rescue him. Leon is also playable in Project X Zone 2, Dead by Daylight, Teppen, Puzzles & Survival and State of Survival. He appears as an alternate skin in Fortnite Battle Royale, Monster Hunter: World, PUBG Mobile, Rainbow Six Siege and others. He has cameos in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Dying Light 2 and Astro Bot, where a robot is dressed as him.

  The character's reach extends well past screens. There are comic books, novelizations, and Bandai's Resident Evil Deck Building Card Game. Steamforged Games made Resident Evil 2: The Board Game. Universal Studios Japan and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando built Resident Evil attractions. Leon's likeness appears on figurines, statues, dioramas, gun replicas, watches, and perfumes. In 2026, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema marked the release of Requiem with a menu that included a dish called "Bingo! Fried Chicken".

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• 8. Why Players Remember Him

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  The dish name comes from a line in Resident Evil 4. When church bells ring, the villagers stop attacking, and Leon heads toward the church, asking "Where's everyone going? Bingo?" Another line that stuck with players is "I knew you'd be fine if you landed on your butt."

  Guinness World Records and several video game journalists have named Leon among the most iconic video game characters. Rachel Weber of GamesRadar+ called him one of the greatest, praising his resilience and his handling of crises across the series. Magazines have called him the most likable character in Resident Evil. IGN editors compared him to John McClane, as "an ordinary guy who becomes extraordinary under adverse circumstances". They also listed him among the most capable and composed characters in the series.

  Critics singled out his growth in Resident Evil 4. Nintendo Power described the change as a journey from a "glorified meter maid with a bad haircut" to a tough guy. Harri Chan of Polygon admired Leon's "schlocky action-movie energy".

  Since the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2, praise has also gone to his sex appeal. Cass Marshall of Polygon said the remake "revives the sexy side of its star". Ana Diaz, also of Polygon, reported that in the 2023 Resident Evil 4, fans shared "thirsty" TikTok videos of Leon. Thousands of players deliberately had him hurt in the game to hear his groans of pain, which they interpreted sexually. Ashley Bardhan of Kotaku saw something similar with Leon in Dead by Daylight.

  Jennifer Culp of Polygon wrote that his appeal is less about his hair than his "Boy Scout determination to see the mission safely concluded". Kotaku's Kenneth Shepard praised how his animations and humor capture his "sensual aura and swagger". Nintendo acknowledged the trend when promoting Requiem on Nintendo Switch 2.

  Capcom does not appear to be finished with him. The company intends to keep using Leon in the future, even when he reaches the age of 70.

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