Tricell: the Company Behind Wesker's Uroboros Plan in Resident Evil 5

Tricell is the pharmaceutical and industrial conglomerate behind the bioweapons of Resident Evil 5. Its African division, run by Excella Gionne, worked hand in hand with Albert Wesker to build the Uroboros virus, while another part of the same company was helping to pay for the BSAA that was hunting him. (Resident Evil 5)

Where Tricell came from#

Tricell's history goes back to the Age of Exploration and a trading company owned by a wealthy European merchant, Thomas Travis. Travis Trading got rich on trade with the East, and that business became Tricell's shipping division. (Resident Evil 5)

The company's future was decided in the 1800s by Henry Travis, the youngest of seven siblings, who was inspired by David Livingstone and spent 34 years on five expeditions across Africa. He came home with a 72-volume survey of the continent's animals, plants, minerals and peoples. Scientists dismissed it as fantasy, and Henry died in despair two years after his return. Resident Evil 5's file on the company says the rumour that his books were fiction is now believed to have been spread on purpose by his eldest brother, who ran the firm and wanted the information for Travis Trading alone. (Resident Evil 5)

The volumes on geology led the company to mines, oil and gas across Africa, the start of its natural resources division. From the mid-20th century it also collected African plants, animals and insects, and medicines made from them became the pharmaceutical division. With all three in place by the 1960s, the firm renamed itself Tricell after its three cells. (Resident Evil 5)

The same books caught the eye of Oswell E. Spencer, Umbrella's founder. Henry's notes on the rituals of the Ndipaya tribe pointed him towards the flower that led to the discovery of the Progenitor virus. Umbrella and Tricell were built on the same explorer's work. (Resident Evil 5)

Excella Gionne and Wesker#

Excella Gionne came from the Gionnes, a well-known European import and export family, and her grandmother was a Travis. She studied genetic engineering at university at a young age and joined Tricell's pharmaceutical division at eighteen, but as an offshoot of the founding family she was given only one research team, which she took as an insult. (Resident Evil 5)

That was when Wesker approached her. He gave her everything he had on the t-Virus and other research. With it, Excella pushed Tricell's bioweapons work forward fast, and Umbrella's bankruptcy left the market wide open. Her influence grew until she was steering the pharmaceutical division. Then she took the job she wanted, chief executive of Tricell Africa, through flattery and intimidation. The game's file says Wesker had suggested the move, and that he played on her feelings for him to get the African division working for his own plan. (Resident Evil 5)

Her first act as CEO was to restore the abandoned Umbrella research facility in the caves of West Africa, where the Progenitor virus had first been studied. To fund the work she hired Ricardo Irving to sell bioweapons. (Resident Evil 5)

Bioweapons on the side#

Tricell's divisions ran on their own money, almost like separate companies under one parent. Irving was officially the overseer of an oil refinery owned by the African division's resource development arm, not an employee of the pharmaceutical division that sponsored the BSAA. That kept his deals hidden. Selling bioweapons raised money for research, and every demonstration for a buyer doubled as a field test. (Resident Evil 5)

Out of that operation came the new Las Plagas that turned the people of Kijuju into Majini, the bigger, mass-produced Licker β, and above all Uroboros, a Progenitor-based virus Wesker meant to spread around the planet. Tricell's lab tested it on thousands of kidnapped people. (Resident Evil 5)

Kijuju, 2009#

When the BSAA heard about Irving's latest sale, it assumed he was a smuggler acting alone. Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar followed his trail through the town, the marshes and an oil field, and as he died he pointed them to Excella and the caves. There they found Umbrella's old lab running under Tricell's name and a pod with Jill Valentine's name on it. (Resident Evil 5)

Excella thought she would be queen of Wesker's new world. On his ship, once the missiles were ready, he injected her with Uroboros and told her she had served her purpose. She became a vast mass of tentacles, and Chris and Sheva destroyed it before going after Wesker. The Resident Evil 5 story page covers the rest of that night. (Resident Evil 5)

Degeneration, Revelations 2 and the end of Tricell#

Tricell's first appearance actually came a year before Resident Evil 5, in the closing minutes of the CG film Degeneration. After Frederic Downing's arrest, a newspaper reports that Tricell has offered to buy the now bankrupt WilPharma. The final scenes go further, showing Senator Ron Davis dead and the company clearing up after the G-virus disaster. The film doesn't spell it out, but the message is that Tricell was already in the business of covering things up. More on the film is in the CG films guide. (Resident Evil: Degeneration)

After Kijuju, Tricell's role was out in the open. In the opening scene of Revelations 2, set in 2011, a TerraSave colleague asks Claire Redfield about news of a new virus, and she brushes it off: "Come on, you know Tricell is history." (Resident Evil: Revelations 2)

Its work outlived it anyway. A memo on Sein Island, written by Alex Wesker's aide Stuart, recalls Albert's partnership with Tricell, and Alex turned what she called Albert's final legacy, Uroboros, loose on the island. The same virus is what she offered Neil Fisher, the TerraSave traitor who sold out Claire and Moira Burton. (Resident Evil: Revelations 2)