10 Best Resident Evil Game Easter Eggs in Zach Cregger’s Movie, Ranked

The new Resident Evil movie has no shortage of monsters, blood, and unfortunate things happening to Bryan. What really makes it fun for game fans, though, is how often Zach Cregger sneaks the games into the background or builds their familiar rules into Bryan’s journey without stopping to explain the reference.

Cregger has been open about wanting the film to feel like a Resident Evil game while telling its own story, and that approach pays off in small details. Some are props you can spot in seconds, while others are ideas you may only recognize if you have spent years playing the series. Here are 10 of the best easter eggs and references that we noticed during our watch.

10 First Aid Spray

You can see a first aid spray sitting on top of a wooden box in the barn shortly before Bryan makes the rather insane decision to grab the rope with the hook attached to it. You could easily miss the can while watching the scene, but anyone familiar with the games will know exactly what they are looking at.

First Aid Spray has been one of the series’ most familiar healing items for decades. Cregger has also spoken about wanting healing resources to be part of the movie (via Rolling Stone), so having one turn up in the first half itself feels completely at home among the other survival horror details.

9 Green Herb

The farmhouse also gives us one of the most recognizable items in the entire series. A Green Herb is tucked into the environment, and if you have played Resident Evil for long enough, spotting that little green plant takes almost no effort.

Cregger has previously confirmed in an interview with GamesRadar+ that this particular reference goes back to Resident Evil 4, a game he has gushed about and called his favorite in the series many a time. The movie recreates the herb and its bucket, down to the visual details the director wanted to preserve, which does make the brief shot much more rewarding once you know the specific game reference behind it.

8 The Typewriter

At one point during his search for shotgun ammo, Bryan opens the door to a small room containing a typewriter, with folders, cabinets, and other pieces of office equipment filling the space around it. There is something wonderfully familiar about finding one in the middle of all this chaos.

Of course, typewriters have been tied to saving one’s progress throughout the Resident Evil games, and Cregger has specifically mentioned save items when discussing the movie’s game influences. Bryan might not have been quite as safe inside it as we usually are in the games, though, so it’s probably a good thing he just moves on to the next door.

7 Weapon Progression Done Right

Bryan’s arsenal develops in a way that feels very familiar to anyone who has played through a Resident Evil campaign. He begins with a handgun (that he “loots” off of the poor police officer), finds a shotgun, then discovers that having a shotgun is not particularly useful when there are no shells available. Later, an MP5-style weapon enters the picture.

In fact, Cregger has directly talked about building that progression into the movie, moving Bryan from a pistol to a shotgun and eventually to a more powerful automatic weapon (via PlayStation). It gives the story a nice sense of progression because each weapon arrives as something Bryan has managed to find while trying to stay alive.

6 Heavy Field Buckshot

Talking about weapons and ammo, the shotgun gets its own little game-inspired detail in the form of Heavy Field Buckshot. Bryan finds a box of it while searching for shells (that he would spend the rest of the scenes dropping literally everywhere), complete with the specific ammunition branding you would expect to see in a Resident Evil inventory screen.

It is a small touch, but it fits very well into what is happening around it. Bryan has already found a shotgun and then has to hunt down the ammunition that makes it useful, so the box is not just there for decoration. It is another little piece of the familiar scavenging loop that Cregger builds into the movie.

5 Tentacled Abominations Everywhere

The movie has a real fondness for tentacles, and it gets progressively harder to ignore as Bryan encounters more of the creatures lurking around him. The first infected dog we see is bad enough, but things get considerably more grotesque once the larger mutations start appearing.

Tentacles have been a recurring part of Resident Evil‘s creature design for years, particularly as ordinary humans and animals mutate into things that barely resemble what they started as. Cregger does not need to recreate one specific enemy for the connection to work, though; the movie understands the series’ particular brand of biological disgust.

4 Raccoon City

Raccoon City gives the movie its strongest connection to the games, especially with the story unfolding around the same outbreak associated with Resident Evil 2. Bryan is thrown into a city already collapsing under the infection, moving through the same kind of streets and ruined spaces that longtime fans will recognize.

There is something fun about watching a completely new character stumble through this familiar setting. You know the history of the place, you know how badly things are going, and you can spot the fingerprints of the games, all while crossing your fingers that Leon S. Kennedy himself shows up for at least a short cameo.

3 So. Many. Locked. Doors.

Bryan has a remarkably difficult time getting anywhere without encountering a locked door, gate, or some other obstacle standing between him and wherever he wants to go next. Eventually, you start expecting every new doorway to have some annoying problem attached to it.

That is a very familiar rhythm from the games. You search one room, find something useful, remember a door you could not open earlier, and eventually backtrack with the item you needed. The movie folds that routine into Bryan’s journey in quite a natural manner.

2 Ammo Management

Anyone who has played the games knows the particular frustration of finding a shotgun, picking it up, and then realizing you have nothing to feed it. Bryan gets exactly that experience in the movie, searching the farmhouse for shells after finding the shotgun mounted on the wall.

That same scarcity follows him through the rest of the movie. Cregger has talked about wanting the resource management from the games to carry over, and Bryan is constantly forced to weigh every shot against whatever might be waiting around the next corner. It is the Resident Evil ammo economy playing out, just without an inventory screen.

1 The Oh-So-White Umbrella Corporation Lab

The Umbrella lab at the end of the movie is a familiar Resident Evil sight in its own way. After everything Bryan has crawled through to reach Raccoon City General, he finally arrives at a spotless white facility with clean walls and bright lighting, filled with scientists, equipment, and the cure they have been trying to complete. You could even say it almost looks reassuring for a few seconds.

For a moment, it even looks like Bryan has finally made it to the part of the game where the nightmare is supposed to wind down. Then his infection catches up with him. Bryan transforms before the scientists can save him, tearing through the lab and leaving the finished cure to fall from the building.

A Resident Evil game would usually give you a chance to celebrate reaching the lab. Bryan, unfortunately, gets the other ending.

Which game reference did you spot first while watching the movie? Did you catch any others that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!