100 Things You Never Knew About Resident Evil
36. The Identity Of The Tyrants
Long have people speculated about the identity of the Tyrants in Resident Evil, with dozens of wild theories in particular about Nemesis (no, it's not Billy Coen). This is despite the fact that the back story isn't left to interpretation. The problem, as is often the case with Resi, is that it's tucked away in various pieces of supplemental material.
The issue for Birkin and the Umbrella research team was that the t-Virus was far too powerful and unpredictable, and the success rate of Tyrant transformation was said to be one in one hundred million. However, Umbrella came across a perfect match in Russian super-soldier Sergei Vladimir. Best of all, the Soviet Union had already cloned Vladimir for warfare. Umbrella bought Sergei's clones and used them to perfect a strain of t-Virus that was more likely to produce positive results.
But in terms of actually creating a Tyrant? Like the UBCS, Umbrella bought death row inmates who could disappear off the face of the Earth without questions. Four criminals were infected with T: two died immediately, but two survived.
One of these men took poorly to the transformation and was disposed of, and this becomes the janky T-001 Proto-Tyrant you fight in Resident Evil Zero. The T-002, however, bonded with the virus and became the so-called perfect organism. Using data from this experiment, Umbrella immediately began mass production of the creature.
So all other Tyrants made by Umbrella, from Mr X to Nemesis, all started life as this one death row prisoner.
His name?
Billy Coen.
Not really. Nobody knows that part, and we probably never will.