Something has been bothering me about the newest installment of the Resident Evil franchise. Something stinks. Where’s the poop? It‘s all over Chris Redfield. It’s not arguable about the importance of Chris in the Resident Evil franchise.

He was 24 when the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team was called into the mansion in Resident Evil, the first in the series. After seeing the betrayal of Wesker, the fall of Umbrella, creating B.S.A.A. with Jill Valentine, finally killing Wesker, the Rise of Tricell, and the Rise AND Fall of Neo Umbrella, this guy has a lot of miles under his belt.

He has gone through character changes (hello, buff Chris) but this last one sticks in my craw. Between his appearance in RE6 and RE7, the changes are over the top in what spans less than a game year.So, why did Capcom choose to change his character model SO drastically and what is Chris Redfield doing with Umbrella?

Here is what we know about Resident Evil 7. All of this info is important, so bear with me.

Chris Redfield works for Umbrella.

What this means is unclear. Since Biohazard takes place one year after the events in China in 2013, there’s a chance Umbrella could be a revamped Neo Umbrella.

Umbrella must have created Eveline.

Mia worked as Eveline’s “babysitter.” She had the wrist tracker, which Ethan now wears and which Chris called Ethan on during the final boss battle and used it to track him down. Unless they hacked another company’s technology, these belong to Umbrella.

There is a REALLY good chance that Lucas worked for Umbrella as well.

He was an engineering genius and managed the mine laboratory near the plantation. It would seem he possibly deflected and tried selling off Eveline’s B.O.W. technology to a rival company.

It’s not much. There’s a lot more to speculate on than what we know for sure. Here’s what COULD be happening

Ethan works or HAS worked for Umbrella.

We know Mia must work for Umbrella, but it would seem there is more to Ethan than meets the eye as well. He is obviously not combat trained but he walks into an unknown situation back up free after a mysterious email from his wife, missing for 4 years. I don’t know about you, but I would have at least contacted the local authorities, FBI, National Guard, something. He also has knowledge on how to mix chemicals. How does he know that mixing chems and gunpowder will make handgun ammo? Or that strong chem and solid fuel will make flame rounds? There is also something in RE5 that is mysterious. In a file called Spencer’s Diary, there is a deceased scientist with the name Ethan W. with level 9 clearance. That’s a really high position. Ethan W….Ethan Winters? Coincidence?

Ethan and Chris seem to know each other.

I talked about this in my article regarding the end of RE7.. There is a familiarity between them that doesn’t say, “Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, they cut my hand off so save me, maybe?” Maybe they haven’t met personally, but they seem to be familiar in knowing who the other is. If Ethan’s name has been on Chris’s radar before from RE5, could he have looked into past scientists? Maybe Ethan faked his death.

Chris could be on a revenge trip.

It seems far-fetched but entirely possible. Remember between RE4 and RE5 when he thought that Wesker had killed Jill Valentine by throwing her off a cliff? It messed him up the entire game until he found her, a parasitic host. The entire B.S.A.A. team was called to Shanghai for the events of RE6 and a lot of people died. Who knows what went down outside of the storyline. It doesn’t hurt that the tweet from the official Twitter account asked, “who or what is he chasing?”

The new Umbrella could be the remains of Neo Umbrella created by Carla Radames.

Neo Umbrella was purely a terrorist organization at heart, but could Chris Redfield have scraped up the remains of the B.S.A.A. and Neo Umbrella and mashed them into a weird, genetically mutated baby?

Honestly, all of this is pure speculation. There’s a greater chance we’re over-thinking everything and Capcom decided to make our buff badass Chris into a considerably smaller, spindlier Chris. The thing is, this character model doesn’t look in his late forties, what Redfield would be in this game.

This game makes mention that the events of Racoon City happened 19 years in the past at the time of Eveline’s transfer, which was 4 years prior to the events of the game. That’s 23 years of missions, aging, and apparently discovering the fountain of youth.

I have fallen down quite the rabbit hole of trying to connect possible dots for this game. Had they done a prequel or separated the story completely, we wouldn’t bat an eye. But you put one of our favorites at the very end as a teaser, and the conspiracy theorists jump out of the woodwork.

I hope, for my sake, “Not a Hero” holds answers for our man Chris Redfield has always been the hero. Something must have happened, but what remains a mystery buried deep in the swamps of the Baker plantation for now.

(Featured image courtesy of pic2fly.com)