Umbrella Corporation: The Company Behind Resident Evil's Outbreaks

The Umbrella Corporation is the pharmaceutical giant at the root of almost every outbreak in Resident Evil. In public it made medicines and cosmetics and ran much of Raccoon City. In secret it built the T-virus, the G-virus and a catalogue of bioweapons, all to fund one man's plan to breed a race of superhumans. (Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles)

How Umbrella was founded#

Umbrella began with a virus. In 1966 Oswell E. Spencer and Dr. James Marcus travelled to West Africa looking for a flower the Ndipaya people believed gave power to those who ate it. Under the ground they found it, the Stairway of the Sun, and inside it the Progenitor virus. Brandon Bailey's journals in Resident Evil 5 record the expedition and the virus being isolated in December 1966. (Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil 0)

Spencer, Marcus and Dr. Edward Ashford were the three founders. Spencer wanted more money than three aristocrats could raise, so he set up Umbrella as a drug company. Its public slogan was about protecting people's health. Behind that, the plan Spencer laid out in Wesker's Report II was simple: develop Progenitor strains as weapons, sell them to the US military, and spend the money on research. (Wesker's Report II; Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles)

The money was never the point. Resident Evil 5's files, and Spencer's last conversation with Wesker, reveal the real goal: a new race of virus-enhanced humans who would rule, with Spencer as their god. The children raised for this, the Wesker Project, gave Albert Wesker his name. Village later adds that Spencer had learned from Mother Miranda and that the idea for Umbrella came from a symbol in her cave. (Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil Village)

The founding trio didn't last. Ashford died in 1968, soon after the company was founded. Marcus created the first true T-virus in 1978, but Spencer took his research by having William Birkin and Wesker steal it, then had Marcus shot in 1988. Marcus came back, sort of, as the leech-controlling creature in Resident Evil 0. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica; Resident Evil 0; Resident Evil 5)

Divisions, labs and private armies#

By the 1980s Umbrella was too large to run from one office. Umbrella USA ran the American labs, including the Arklay facility under the Spencer Mansion and later NEST, the vast underground lab beneath Raccoon City where Birkin worked on the G-virus. Umbrella Europe ran its own projects, among them the parasite work that produced Nemesis. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The Ashfords ran their own corner: a family estate in Europe, a lab in Antarctica and a prison and training camp on Rockfort Island. That is the setting of Code: Veronica, where Alexia Ashford's T-Veronica virus surfaces. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

Umbrella also kept soldiers. The Umbrella Security Service handled covert jobs, including the raid on Birkin's lab led by HUNK. The Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service, or U.B.C.S., was a mercenary force sent into Raccoon City in Resident Evil 3. Umbrella also bankrolled the police unit S.T.A.R.S., whose captain was Wesker. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil)

Its weapons programme came out of all this. Hunters, Tyrants and zombie dogs were built in its labs and tested on its own staff, kidnapped locals and, in Lisa Trevor's case, a girl abducted with her mother in 1967 and kept in the mansion grounds for decades. (Resident Evil; Wesker's Report II)

The Raccoon City disaster#

Umbrella's fall started in 1998. That May, an outbreak at the Arklay lab let the T-virus and its creatures loose in the mountains. Resident Evil 0 blames Marcus's revenge; the leeches he controlled released the virus. Hikers started turning up eaten, and S.T.A.R.S. were sent in. Wesker's orders, found in the original game, told him to lure his own team into the mansion as test subjects for the Tyrant. (Resident Evil 0; Resident Evil)

The second blow came from Birkin. Umbrella learned he planned to sell the G-virus to the US military and sent HUNK's team to take it in September. They shot Birkin, he injected himself with G and slaughtered them, and the dropped samples spread the T-virus through the sewers. Rats carried it into the city. By late September, Raccoon City was overrun. The Resident Evil 2 story and Resident Evil 3 story cover what happened on the ground, where Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield and Jill Valentine were trying to survive. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

Even then Umbrella treated it as a test. Resident Evil 3 shows Umbrella sending Nemesis to hunt the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members and the U.B.C.S. to gather combat data as much as to rescue anyone. On 1 October 1998 the US government destroyed the city with a missile. Resident Evil 6 reveals the plan came from Derek Simmons, a US official. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil 6)

Collapse#

Raccoon City finished Umbrella. The US government suspended Umbrella USA's business, and rivals had already stolen what they wanted: Wesker took his research to a competitor, and Ada Wong's employers wanted G. Sheena Island, Rockfort Island and the Antarctic base all fell in the months that followed. (Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles; Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

The end came in 2003. The Umbrella Chronicles finale has Chris and Jill destroy Umbrella's last stronghold, a lab in the Caucasus run by Sergei Vladimir, while Wesker downloads the company's whole research archive. Back in America, Umbrella had spent years fighting the lawsuit over Raccoon City. Wesker handed the court evidence, Umbrella lost, and the company went bankrupt. Spencer went into hiding. (Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles; Resident Evil 5)

What came after Umbrella#

Umbrella's death spread its work around the world. Wesker found Spencer in 2006 and killed him, then used Umbrella's data with the drug company Tricell to build Uroboros. Bioweapons appeared on the black market, which is why Chris and Jill helped start the BSAA. (Resident Evil 5)

In Resident Evil 6, a terror group calling itself Neo-Umbrella used the name to spread fear, though it had nothing to do with the old company. In Resident Evil 7, Chris arrives at the Baker house in a helicopter marked with a blue Umbrella logo. It's a reformed company built from the old one's remains, now selling anti-bioweapon gear and working with the BSAA. (Resident Evil 6; Resident Evil 7: Biohazard)

Requiem takes the story back to the ruins of Raccoon City, where Spencer left one last secret behind. (Resident Evil Requiem)