Uroboros: Albert Wesker's Virus in Resident Evil 5

Uroboros is the virus Albert Wesker created to remake humanity in Resident Evil 5. Built from the ancient Progenitor virus, it was meant to be released over the entire planet, killing everyone except the rare few with genes that could take it. In almost everyone else, it bursts out of the body as a writhing mass of black tentacles. (Resident Evil 5)

Where Uroboros came from#

Uroboros started with a conversation. In 2006, in a scene Resident Evil 5 shows in flashback, Wesker reaches Oswell E. Spencer at his estate. Spencer tells him the real reason Umbrella existed: to create a new race of superior humans, with Wesker himself one of the children bred for it. Wesker kills him and decides to finish the job his own way. Lost in Nightmares plays out the night from Chris and Jill's side. (Resident Evil 5; Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares)

Wesker took Umbrella's research to Tricell, a drug company whose African branch was run by his ally Excella Gionne. They set up a lab in the caves of West Africa, on top of Umbrella's old site in the garden where Progenitor was first found. (Resident Evil 5)

How Wesker made it work#

The first versions were too deadly. Resident Evil 5's files say the early Uroboros strains killed everyone they infected, which was no use for Wesker's plan. He needed something the human body could tolerate. (Resident Evil 5)

The answer was Jill Valentine. Jill went over a cliff with Wesker in 2006 and was presumed dead, but he kept her. A dormant strain of the T-virus she caught in Raccoon City woke up while she was in a coma, and her body fought it off and made unusually pure antibodies. Wesker believed those antibodies would let him make a strain people could survive, and he kept her alive to study them. (Resident Evil 5)

Tricell tested it on thousands of people over the next two years, and by early 2009 the project was in its final stages. (Resident Evil 5)

What Uroboros does to the body#

Uroboros has two outcomes. Infection causes fever, sweating and confusion almost at once. Then one of two things happens. In someone with the right genes, the virus settles in and changes them slowly, the way Progenitor once made Ndipaya kings. In everyone else, the body is torn apart from the inside. (Resident Evil 5)

What comes out of a rejected host is a living mass of black tubes with a glowing orange weak spot. It grabs and absorbs anything organic around it and keeps growing. The bigger it eats, the bigger it gets. (Resident Evil 5)

What Uroboros creates#

The full monster guide has more of Resident Evil 5's creatures. These are the Uroboros ones.

• Uroboros test subject: a black mass that wipes out the BSAA's Alpha Team in a Kijuju warehouse. (Resident Evil 5)
• Uroboros Mkono: the mass Chris and Sheva face in the lab, a failed test subject that has grown huge. (Resident Evil 5)
• Uroboros Aheri: what Excella becomes after Wesker injects her on the ship. It swells to the size of a building. (Resident Evil 5)
• Wesker's final form: Wesker injects himself, survives because he was already a mutant, and fights Chris and Sheva in a volcano. (Resident Evil 5)
• Revenants: stitched-together corpses Alex Wesker brought to life with Uroboros. (Resident Evil: Revelations 2)

The Kijuju outbreak, 2009#

In March 2009 the BSAA sent Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar into the Kijuju region of Africa after reports of bioweapon dealing. They followed the trail from the Plaga-infected Majini to Tricell's caves, then to the ship where the missiles were waiting. (Resident Evil 5)

They freed Jill from Wesker's control, and Wesker turned on Excella and infected her. On the ship, then in the volcano below a crashed bomber, Chris and Sheva fought Wesker and killed him with two rockets. The missiles never fired. The Resident Evil 5 story page has the full sequence. (Resident Evil 5)

Uroboros in Revelations 2#

Uroboros outlived Albert. Revelations 2, set in 2011, reveals that Alex Wesker, another surviving child of the Wesker Project, got hold of a sample. On Sein Island she used it on the bodies of people who failed her own experiments, creating the Revenants. (Resident Evil: Revelations 2)

She also used it as punishment. Neil Fisher, a TerraSave leader working with her, was injected with Uroboros and mutated into a monster that attacked Claire Redfield and Moira Burton until Moira shot him dead. Alex later infects herself with Uroboros to go after Natalia Korda, and in the game's best ending she's destroyed in a final fight with Barry Burton, Natalia and Moira. The Revelations 2 story page covers it. (Resident Evil: Revelations 2)