Ah, Resident Evil. Why exactly do people come to Capcom’s long-running horror-fest? To be mortally terrified? Yup. For a thrilling, adrenaline-pumping gaming experience? Sure thing. For an intricate and affecting narrative that’s riddled with nuance and is totally plausible? Maybe not.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Resident Evil makes absolutely no sense. This was more forgivable in the low-poly PlayStation days of live-action cut scenes and Jill sandwiches, but in an age of VR headsets and 4K gaming, you’d expect things to get a tad more plausible. For better or for worse: this hasn’t been the case. Whether it’s Leon Kennedy jumping Die Hard-style through multiple glass windows and getting up unscathed, or limbs being severed and magically reattached by staples in the series’ latest iteration, RE has had enough head-scratching moments to render the average gamer bold.

Of course, being a little ridiculous comes part and parcel with RE, and although we love to pore over and point fun at some of the series’ more incredible moments, it just wouldn’t be the same game if it was all played straight-faced. Cataloging everything that doesn’t add up is beyond the scope of any single article, so for that reason, we’ve created a list of the top 15 moments Resident Evil made no sense and no one seemed to notice. One last thing: it should go without saying that THERE WILL BE SPOILERS — Enjoy!

15 Chris Redfield Beating Up Rocks – Resident Evil 5

Chris Redfield Punches Boulder

So you escape unscathed from your airplane crashing into the top of a seemingly active volcano? Fair enough. Your main villain – who already seems to have been given superpowers – absorbs a virus that turns him into a tentacled monster? That’s fine. You then escape the aforementioned tentacled monster by punching boulders until they drop into the lava. Um okay…

It’s true that Resident Evil 5 has the most beefed up version of Chris Redfield yet, but even with bulging, tree trunk-biceps, the sight of him throwing a few sneaky jabs into a towering boulder just makes no sense. Neither does the crunch that accompanies each punch, which sounds like the rock breaking (rather than Chris’s fingers). Forget the guns – Chris should be fighting Wesker with his bare fists.

14 Rebecca Chambers Abandoning The Mission To Learn To Play The Piano - Resident Evil

Chris And Rebecca Play The Piano

You’re in a terrifying mansion populated with flesh-eating zombies, rabid dogs, killer spiders, and mutated zombie sharks. So what better time to crack those knuckles and practice a little piano?

Things would be easier to swallow if a little more context was given. Perhaps a note saying “Hey! Play Moonlight Sonata perfectly and a hidden path will appear!” But no, nothing as pragmatic. Your character finds the musical score, and Rebecca chooses to drop everything to play it just for the craic.

The real kicker is that you can’t simply stay in the same room as Rebecca and wait for her to learn the melody. You physically have to leave the room, putting yourself in mortal danger, before coming back later to listen to the full score which then opens a hidden door. Just how Rebecca became a member of STARS, we’ll never know…

Resident Evil 4 Shooting Gallery

There are a fair few questionable moments in Resident Evil 4. A dog you only met briefly helping you out in a battle against a giant ogre for example, or one too many snakes suspiciously placed inside crates. But a shooting gallery mini-game located inside an ancient Spanish castle? Really?

Admittedly, it’s a refreshing change of pace. The castle is pretty spooky, what with all those Los Illuminados stumbling around, thirsting for your blood. It must be pretty stressful for Leon, so who can blame him for wanting to kickback and earn a few bottle caps. We’re not quite sure how the Merchant managed to sneak all the cardboard cutouts and gallery machinery into the castle in the first place, but hey, who are we to complain?

12 Activating The Train Brakes – Resident Evil Zero

Resident Evil Zero Zombies On A Train

We’re no expert on trains, but we’d expect activating the emergency brakes on a locomotive to be pretty simple. As in, “quick, there’s something on the track, quickly press the emergency brake button to avoid a crash” simple. Not so in the Resident Evil Zero universe.

The countdown is ticking. The only thing that stands between you and disaster is the train’s brakes… which there are two of. Located at opposite ends of the train. Both of which require a key card to activate. To add insult to injury, each brake is protected with a contrived number puzzle which you need to solve before you can stop the train. As a way of exploiting the game’s partner-swap mechanic it works. As a realistic representation of locomotive emergency stoppage procedures, it fails miserably.

11 Wesker’s Superhero Powers – Resident Evil 5

Wesker Takes Off His Glasses

As a Horror game, there are certain concessions we’ll allow Resident Evil to make. A character gaining superhuman strength we can accept. Characters coming back from the dead not just as Zombies, but as perfectly functioning human beings, we can tolerate. Turning into Neo from The Matrix though is one red pill too far.

In particular, we’re thinking of the penultimate fight between Wesker and Chris/Sheva inside the airplane. The cut-scene is decently choreographed and entertaining enough, but Wesker dancing and weaving between bullets fired from both characters is just a bit too out there to be taken seriously. Unlike its predecessor, Resident Evil 5 is played straight-faced for the most part without any of the ironically bad one-liners. Giving Wesker superhero powers just feels silly, even by RE standards.

10 Asking Rebecca If She Can Use A Gun – Resident Evil

Rebecca Chambers With A Gun

If we are going to pick apart the original Resident Evil’s dialogue, we could be here for a few days. So instead of going for the obvious, we want to raise a point which many will have missed: why does Chris ask Rebecca if she is able to use a gun?

Ignoring the fact that technically Rebecca has blasted her way through an entire game in the form of Resident Evil Zero, which chronologically is set just before the original Resident Evil, Chris knows that Rebecca is a member of STARS, and so would have gone through the same weapons training that he has. It seems a little unlikely (and very patronizing) to ask if she is able to use a gun.

9 Steve And Claire’s Relationship - Resident Evil Code: Veronica X

Claire and Steve Goodbye
Via: AdaAlberto04.YouTube

You know the story. Boy likes girl. Girl is disinterested in boy. Boy mutates into giant axe-swinging turtle monster. Boy tries, but fails, to murder girl. Girl falls for boy just as he returns to his human form and dies. It’s Shakespeare pretty much.

Okay, it’s a little more complex than that. Steve is the one who confesses his love for Claire, and Claire technically never says if she feels the same – although it is evident she feels deeply for Steve. But the whole situation is so ridiculous and makes so little sense that the gamer’s heart is never put through the emotional wringer the way that Capcom evidently expected it to.

8 The Giant Salazar Statue – Resident Evil 4

Giant Salazar Statue
Via: FrankzTerz.YouTube.com

Welcome to the “why is that in the ancient Spanish castle” installment number two. This time featuring: the giant, automated statue of Salazar.

We get that Salazar has something of a Napoleon complex, but building a huge statue of himself inside his own castle is quite the drastic step. Even more confusing is installing a cumbersome lift system which involves pulling levers and standing in the statue’s perilous hands to reach upper floors, which is hardly as efficient as say, a flight of stairs.

If there is one piece of advice we’d give Salazar though, it’s that if you’re going to build a giant statue of yourself which will chase intruders through the castle, you need to build bridges that can support its weight. After literally 15 seconds of running, the statue is falling into the depths of the castle. Such a waste.

7 Ethan’s Choice To Save Mia Or Zoe

Mia and Zoe
Via: residentevil7news.com

In front of you are two girls. On the left, your beloved wife, Mia. The women you have endured severed limbs and stabbed eyeballs to rescue. On the right, Zoe. A random girl you met in the mansion who you have no way of fully trusting. They have both been infected, and you have only one vaccine. Who do you save? Hm…

Look, we all appreciate a good moral choice in our games nowadays, but you have to weight both sides. If you had to choose between yourself and Mia, that would be interesting. But it just makes no sense why a reasonable person would choose to save Zoe, after you’ve gone through all that effort to get your wife back.

6 The Island Grabber Machine – Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil 4 Grabber
Via: deadcentral.com

It’s not just the castle that suffers from nonsensical rooms and objects. Delve deep into the military complex on Resident Evil 4, and you’ll find controls to a crane. That’s fair enough, until you realize the crane basically is a giant grabber machine, complete with cowering enemies which act as grabber prizes. Pick them up, drop them down the hole, and you can go and collect a reward. Why is the grabber there? Who knows. Is it fun? Yes, it is. Does its presence make any sense at all? Absolutely none.

5 Rocket Launcher Beats Lava – Resident Evil 5

Wesker Final Form
Via: Geekp0rn.com

In order to beat Tyrant at the end of the original Resident Evil, you needed to wait until backup dropped the rocket launcher. Up until then the only weapons you had were piddly little pistols, shotguns, and flashbangs, so the fact that you needed something meatier to take care of the final brute made sense. Not so in Resident Evil 5.

After a tense fight that included the aforementioned rock punching, the volcano becomes unstable, and Wesker falls into the Lava – you know, that stuff hot enough to melt both the rocks you’re walking on and The T-1000. This being RE5 however, a simple lick of blistering, face-meltingly hot lava isn’t going to do the trick, and it’s not until Chris and Sheva bust out the old rocket launchers that Wesker is finally done for. Total overkill.

4 Claire Hurting Her Leg Stops Her From Shooting A Zombie - Resident Evil Code: Veronica X

Claire Redfield
Via: Cosplay.com

Claire and Steve fall from a balcony. Steve gets right up, but Claire is unable to move due to her leg being trapped beneath some rubble. All of a sudden, a zombie appears, and starts shuffling slowly towards Claire. As always, Steve is pretty much useless, and does nothing but stare as the creature movescloser and closer to his partner. But that surely doesn’t stop Claire taking care of the brute, right?

Well, not exactly. It seems having her leg stuck has temporarily disabled her shooting arm, as she makes no attempt to reach for her gun, and instead shrieks at Steve to help her. Steve obliges in due course, but not without raising the question why on earth couldn’t she have shot it herself?

3 Rebecca Surviving A Head Shot – Resident Evil Remake

Wesker Confronts Chris
via unknown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6qGEuR-Fcs

Go and watch the moment Wesker shoots Rebecca. Slow down the video the moment he shoots, where the camera is pulled tight behind Rebecca – you can quite clearly see Wesker shoots her point blank in the face.

Rather than her face being turned into a Rebecca sandwich, Rebecca weathers the head shot extraordinarily well, even getting up once Tyrant is taken care of ready for the exciting escape sequence. Completely ignoring the linear trajectory of a bullet unloaded straight into Rebecca’s skulls, Chris exclaims “Good job you’re wearing your bullet proof vest”. We're assuming the vest is invisible, and is on her face.

2 Ethan’s Hand And Leg Are Severed Then Instantly Reattached – Resident Evil 7

Ethan's Hand Is Severed
Via: primagames.com

We feel Resident Evil 7’s Ethan should be working in a hospital, what with his miraculous ability to have his limbs severed, before being reattached and functioning perfectly.

The first instance of this is towards the beginning of the game, where his wife Mia cuts of his hand with a chainsaw (young love, huh?) Soon after Zoe appears, going on to reattach the hand by literally stapling it back on. The hand then seems to function perfectly, completely bypassing the need to regrow bone, tissue, and arteries. Sometime later, something similar happens when Jack severs your leg with a shovel, which you then reattach using a first aid bottle.

Yes, perhaps this can be explained away by Ethan being infected, which explains his regenerative abilities, but as this is never confirmed, we’ll have to confine these scenes to the realm of pure whimsy.

1 Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 6
via http://www.relyonhorror.com

There’s no need to pick individual moments from Resident Evil 6, as the whole game is pretty much distilled nonsense burned onto a disk. Somewhere among the glut of below-average action sequences, frustrating QTEs, and painfully contrived dialogue, players began to ask themselves just why does Simmons seem to have about a billion different animal forms? Why am I fighting a giant zombie dinosaur? How come instead of shooting zombies, I’m firing missiles from a Harrier Jet? The answer to all of these is that you just need to go with it, and thank God RE7 is a much better game.