100 Things You Never Knew About Resident Evil

Developers will do all manner of different things for research and inspiration, and it's commonplace for Capcom to send it's teams out around the world to see locations for themselves, take reference photos and get a feel for the atmosphere. This has famously happened with RE7, RE5 and, in the case of RE4, the staff spent 11 days in Spain and the UK photographing various Gothic structures.

However, it seems that the team also got several ideas from art books... and entire assets too. In 2021, a legal proceeding was brought to Capcom that alleged that the company had used the work of artist Judy A. Juracek without explicit permission. One such example was the cracked glass effect in the game's logo. This was settled out of court sometime in 2022.

But it isn't just visual art, Resident Evil 4 also uses pre-existing audio. The famous save theme "Serenity" samples David Torn's "To Burble and Pine", which thankfully won't get the company into any legal battles since it's royalty free. What it does mean is that RE4 has something in common with Devil May Cry, Silent Hill Origins, 1997 sci-fi move The Cube and nu metal band Korn's song "10 or a 2-Way" as these all sample the track.