Resident Evil Players Solve 28-Year Mystery With Bizarre Answer

Resident Evil players have finally solved a long-standing mystery that has spanned nearly the entire duration of the franchise.

The Resident Evil games have a load of unsolved mysteries which fans have banged their heads against walls trying to unravel for years.

What are the Connections? What is Ada Wong’s true purpose? And just who lit all those candles in the Spencer Mansion?

But one mystery that seemingly never gets addressed is the topic of Jill Valentine’s boyfriend, who appears in an extremely pixelated photo on her desk in Resident Evil 2’s S.T.A.R.S. office.

Thankfully, one fan has finally worked out who the mystery man is, and it seems to be none other than famous Twin Peaks and Fallout actor Kyle MacLachlan.

As posted by Resident Evil fan Morio on X (via PC Gamer), the image of Jill’s boyfriend has been discovered to be an old promotional photo of MacLachlan, distorted and pixelated enough that you’d have never recognised him.

Why Is Kyle MacLachlan In Resident Evil 2?

As PC Gamer confirms, the image of MacLachlan appears to be taken from an issue of Japan's Roadshow magazine from the early 1990s.

Twin Peaks was a popular show in Japan, and the magazine covered the show and its stars quite extensively, so there’s no doubt Capcom included this here as a little nod towards the show.

For additional context, Jill’s boyfriend is never mentioned or seen in the series aside from this photograph. It’s not even fully confirmed if the photo is of her boyfriend, as that’s just speculation by the player character who inspects Jill’s desk.

And in the Resident Evil 2 remake from 2019, the photo is replaced by the image of a dog, so who’s to say what that’s really about.

Still though, given that Kyle MacLachlan in the 1990s was known for his sharp fashion sense, good looks, and strong personality, we can definitely see why Jill may have fallen for him.

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At least this finally puts to rest the nearly 30-year question of who was Jill’s boyfriend circa 1998. Now we’re hoping that Resident Evil 10 can see the two lovebirds reunited, perhaps with a cameo by the real MacLachlan?

As Morio also shared in a later post, the S.T.A.R.S. office in the original Resident Evil 2 also includes a few other images like this. For example, Barry Burton’s daughter is actually a photo of Winona Ryder from The Age of Innocence.

The office also includes pixelated photos of Ariana Richards, Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, and—bizarrely—a promotional shot of Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Mary Steenburgen from Back to the Future Part III.

So altogether, there are a lot of weird connections between Resident Evil 2 and the various actors who appeared in American films throughout the 1990s. Though I'll bet with the photos being as pixelated as they are, Capcom never believed that eagle-eyed fans would ever actually end up discovering the photos' true origins.