100 Things You Never Knew About Resident Evil
19. Resident Evil Originally Had Ghosts
Unsurprisingly, the original Resident Evil's development went through many changes as the design team tried their hand at pushing horror in gaming forwards. Most people know that RE1 had two cut characters, one of which was at least partially a cyborg, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
In an archived interview with REHorror, Shinji Mikami mentioned that the game's earliest drafts had ghosts in them rather than zombies but he started to muse on the fact that it was too generic. He thought other horror games were likely to use ghosts and he wanted to stand apart. Furthermore he recounted his experience watching the film The Exorcist and the lack of relief he had from being able to fight back. Mikami-san wanted to give players an enemy they would understand, be able to escape from or fight, and then the game would continue until the next encounter.
Zombies were the perfect fit and, at that point in pop culture, nobody was using them. It was Resident Evil that reignited the flame of the shuffling undead.