sisslethecat
I’ve been into Resident Evil for as long as I can remember.
It started as just a love for zombies in general, but thanks to a few friends of mine I was introduced to the world of survival horror when the series made it’s debut on GameCube (I was a little too young when the series started out on PSX). Then I was introduced to the lovely world of Resident Evil fan parodies. From live action to animation, there were lots, and surprisingly high-quality. YouTube was barely a thing when I saw some of these for the first time, so you’ll have to excuse the video quality of some of them. But for those of you who were into the RE scene back in 2005 or so, these should bring back some epic nostalgia. If you’re new, these videos are still surprisingly funny, even after so much time.
The very first parody I ever saw was The Bently Bros interpretation of Resident Evil 4. Despite the fact that the Bros pretty clearly don’t have any money, experience, and are clearly kids, the video (which is fourty minutes long) is amazingly funny. From sight-gags to genuinly clever observations of RE4, I’ve loved this video since I was in middle school. It takes a few minutes to get going, but once it breaks out of simply recreating the opening to RE4, it becomes genuinly funny with some great timing and hilarious gender swapping on Ashley and Ada. The Bently Brothers also made a parody of Resident Evil, and while it’s not quite as good there’s still plenty to love. There’s also a hystarical gag reel for the RE4 video that is well worth taking another 20 minutes to sit through.
Now if you ever surfed New Grounds or Albino Blacksheep as a teen, there’s no way that you didn’t spend hours of your time either playing or watching flash games and movies. They were basically ubiquotous with the internet for ages, and an amazing amount of quality content was made in this little engine. From great games like The Mystery of Time and Space to fun action/horror series like Xombie, there was plenty to find and love. But the first thing that comes to my mind, is the wonderful Resident Evil flash videos from Legendary Frog (formerly Legendary Lilipad). To this day, I can’t play Code: Veronica X without immediatly thinking of their hilarious and pitch-perfect representation of the game’s whiney, high-pitched psychopath Alfred Ashford.
Of course, the crown jewel of Resident Evil parodies was, and always will be, Shadowleggy. From direct parodies of the games and films to a wonderful series called Resident Evil Musicals, where she would match adorable artwork to popular songs, and retranslate the words ala Weird Al, everything she did was hilarious and wonderful. The artwork is so charming and her interpretation of each of the RE universe’s characters sticks with me, like her cuddly view of Rebecca and Billy to her impenatrably thick version of Leon, it’s a joy to sit down and watch again while I write this.
Sadly, most of the creators for these things have faded away now, the Bently Brothers haven’t produced a new video since 2013, and Legendary Frog is basically an entirely different site, serving as mostly an archive of the old videos and a hub to see the few projects he’s worked on since, mostly original comics. Amazingly, Shadowleggy still works every now and again, with the Resident Evil Musicals series now up to 46 individual shows, new videos on her thoughts regarding Resident Evils 5 and 6, an RPG Maker video game, and has had patreon page set up! The animation is new and considerably more polished now, and she’s even pretty active on Reddit, you can find her popping up on the Resident Evil subreddit with her thoughts and comments.
Why’d I take you down this memory lane? With this being the year of RE‘s big two-oh anniversary and new announcements coming soon, why not take some time to remember the awesome and hilarious road that got us here. I love Resident Evil, and I love the Resident Evil community for all of the funny, awesome stuff we’ve gotten over the years from them.
What are some of your favorite RE fan creations? Funny or not, there’s plenty out there worth seeing. Comment below, I’d love to see them. We have an amazing and exciting year ahead of us as RE fans, and I can’t wait to see what else the series has to bring.
Check out more of these amazing people’s works at their homepages and youtube pages:
