100 Things You Never Knew About Resident Evil
76. Resident Evil's Most Iconic Zombie Was Unplanned
The first fright that a player gets in Resident Evil is discovering your teammate Kenneth being chowed down on by a member of the living dead. The "turn-around zombie" as it's most commonly known is an iconic RE moment, which has been replicated multiple times.
However the exact design of this particular enemy wasn't in the original documents and came about by happenstance.
In an interview with Crimson-Head.com, enemy texture designer Ryoji Shimogama revealed that some of RE1's cutscenes had been outsourced, including the one called "Zombie 3". When he received it, Shimogama-san was shocked to find that the artists hadn't followed the design doc and, being that cutscenes were harder to change than character models, the team were forced to create this particular zombie.
"Reluctantly, we created ‘Lightbulb Zombie’, which then appeared in the game from the Capcom side. Zombie 3 was called Light Bulb Zombie by the texture team, because the head resembles a light bulb."
The zombie also got the additional internal nicknames "Mr Parook" (after a certain type of Japanese fluorescent lighting tube) and "Taz" (short for Turn-Around Zombie).