Zach Cregger's 'Resident Evil' Game Connection & Easter Eggs, Explained
Since it debuted in 1996, Resident Evil has remained one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. With 183 million games sold, it has become the face of survival horror, and Capcom has been on a roll with the series since Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The series used to lean into campiness and cheese, but in the past decade, the games have become more terrifying, with gnarly monsters, plenty of gore, and stalkers like Mr. X and that godforsaken baby in Resident Evil Village living rent-free in gamers’ heads.
Capcom wanted this success to translate to film. While there was Paul W.S. Anderson’s hexology of films in the early 2000s, Capcom seems to want the Resident Evil adaptations to become a serious horror franchise, not a shlocky action series. So Capcom and Zach Cregger, fresh off his rapturously successful film Weapons (2025), have come together to reboot the series in a film simply titled Resident Evil (2026).
With the first Resident Evil trailer here, fans were left scratching their heads at what they even saw, with some diehard RE fans already writing it off as another nonsensical entry, like Netflix’s misguided TV adaptation, also titled Resident Evil (2022). So, what’s going on in this trailer, and do fans actually have something to worry about?
The ‘Resident Evil’ Trailer Is Short On Plot Details
The problem that longtime RE fans have with the new film’s trailer is that if you knew nothing about the series, then it would look like a general horror film, not a Resident Evil movie. In a way, they have a point.
The trailer focuses on Austin Abrams’ character, Bryan, approaching a house in the middle of a snowy field. He claims he’s having car trouble as the trailer cuts to all of the strange things happening in the area. A corpse gets pulled into the shadows, a multi-limbed monster begins to crawl out of the house, and he runs away from… something. The trailer isn’t just limited to the snowy field, as Bryan also runs through a city with bodies jumping from the roofs and a morbidly obese man who looks like Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 just kind of sitting menacingly in a sewer. You know, as one does.
Fans were left scratching their heads at all of this. Most of the YouTube comments for the official trailer said that Bryan feels like an NPC from one of the games that would be killed and leave a note that series mainstays like Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield would find. There are no direct references to the Umbrella Corporation, any strain of viruses, or even the very idea that zombies are around—something that has been core to the series’ identity since its inception. In short, it feels less like Resident Evil and more like Cregger’s Barbarian (2022).
How 2026’s ‘Resident Evil’ Movie Connects To The Games
The trailer may have rubbed some fans the wrong way, but in numerous interviews following the trailer’s release, Cregger has gone into great detail about how the games have inspired his take on the series.
First and foremost was establishing the game’s setting. Cregger has gone on the record saying that the film takes place during the events of Resident Evil 2, and the city we see toward the end of the trailer is Raccoon City. Some fans may cry foul at that, mostly because of the snowy environment and how the game takes place on September 29th, but that’s what Cregger intended. He didn’t want just to do a straight adaptation of the games, since he believes that would be redundant. He wanted his own take on it, and if that means focusing on a new character in a new version of Raccoon City, then so be it.
As for the creatures that Bryan will run into, Cregger revealed that he decided to take inspiration from Resident Evil 6 for monster designs. While the fandom generally hates that game, Cregger says that he wanted to reference it because of the number of creatures and monsters that appeared in it. In interviews, Cregger bemoaned how the franchise always stuck with zombie or zombie-like enemies, which only occasionally show off horribly mutated monstrosities like G-Birkin or the Regeneradors.
There are still zombies here (or at least what appears to be zombies in a single shot), but the mutants will be the main focus. Cregger wants to pace the film like Resident Evil 4, with Bryan moving across multiple different locations instead of staying in just one. So, there’ll be plenty of creature variety to go around.
Easter Eggs Spotted In The ‘Resident Evil’ Trailer
The trailer may not show off a lot of iconic Resident Evil elements, but Cregger certainly seems to know his way around the series and its tropes. In fact, he’s even thrown in an Easter egg for eagle-eyed fans, though it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment.
In the shot where Bryan is on the phone calling someone, in the top left of the screen, fans can spot a Green Herb sitting on a shelf, which is a healing item in the games. Cregger said he recreated the planter pot exactly, and he plans to throw in several Easter eggs and references to Resident Evil 4. What exactly those Easter eggs are, we don’t know, but maybe there are other ones in the trailer that we don’t know for certain.
Again, that obese man could be Tyrant, or something else entirely, but it’s a distinct possibility. There are plenty of questions still left about Cregger’s take on the series, but he’s more than earned trust, and it’ll make watching the film on September 18, 2026, all the more interesting.
