Why Did Leon Kennedy Go to Raccoon City?

Leon S. Kennedy went to Raccoon City because it was his new job. He'd just graduated from the police academy and been taken on by the Raccoon City Police Department, and a Capcom profile says he asked for that posting because of the strange murders the city was investigating. By the time he drove in on 29 September 1998, those murders had become a full outbreak. (Resident Evil 2 (1998); Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles)

He asked to be posted there#

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles carries a short file on Leon. It says that after graduating from the police academy he asked to be assigned to the Raccoon City police, who were in the middle of investigating bizarre murders in the area. (Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles)

Those murders were the run of killings in the Arklay Mountains outside the city that summer, the case that sent S.T.A.R.S. into the woods and, eventually, into the Spencer Mansion. To a keen rookie it looked like the most interesting police work going. What it really was, of course, was Umbrella's t-Virus leaking out of its labs. (Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles; Resident Evil 2 (1998))

The same file sums him up as short on experience but with a natural instinct for survival and a strong sense of justice. (Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles)

His start date, and the call#

The 2019 remake pins down the paperwork. Leon's orientation letter, dated 18 September 1998 and signed by Chief Brian Irons, congratulates him on his especially high marks in training and tells him to report to the station on Friday 25 September at 8am. (Resident Evil 2 (2019))

He didn't make it that day. Talking to Lieutenant Marvin Branagh inside the station, Leon explains: "I was supposed to start last week and I got a call to stay away. I wish I'd come here sooner." He drove in anyway, and stopped for fuel at a gas station outside town, where he found a zombie eating a deputy. (Resident Evil 2 (2019))

The remake never says who made the call. Interpretation: given that Irons was hiding Umbrella's role and had already buried the S.T.A.R.S. reports, a call keeping a rookie away fits his habits, but the game leaves the caller unnamed. (Resident Evil 2 (2019))

The original's version#

The 1998 game simply opens with Leon driving into a dead city at night. It never says why he's arriving so late. (Resident Evil 2 (1998))

A Japanese strategy guide published that year filled the gap with a much less heroic story, in an interview with director Hideki Kamiya. Leon had broken up with his girlfriend, stopped at a motel on the way, got drunk and overslept. That explains the timing, but it's a guidebook detail, not something either game shows, and the remake's phone call has effectively replaced it. (Biohazard 2 Official Guide Book; Resident Evil 2 (2019))

What he found when he got there#

In both versions he meets Claire, who has come looking for her brother Chris, as the dead close in. In the remake Leon tells her the police station should have some answers. The two take a patrol car, a crash splits them up, and Leon reaches the station alone to find most of the force dead. "This is not how I imagined my first day" is how he puts it in the remake. (Resident Evil 2 (1998); Resident Evil 2 (2019))

He never really got to be a police officer. He escaped the next morning with Claire and Sherry Birkin, and within days the government had recruited him, a story told on how Leon became a government agent. Years later, in a Resident Evil 6 file, he admits he thought about ending it that night, and says he didn't give up because "Sherry needed me." (Resident Evil 2 (1998); Resident Evil 6)

Read more#

The whole night is on the Resident Evil 2 story page, and Raccoon City covers the city from Umbrella's rise to the missile. For what came next, see what happened to Leon after Resident Evil 2. (Resident Evil 2 (1998); Resident Evil 2 (2019))