Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’s Easter eggs are everywhere

Resident Evil is a great example of how to adapt a game. For a decade, Paul W.S. Anderson found inspiration from the spirit of Capcom’s franchise to explore nearly every genre imaginable, following Alice, a character of his own creation. With November’s Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon CityJohannes Roberts, Writer-Director (47 meters down The Strangers, Prey at Night() adapts these games faithfully, breaking away from continuity and following the exploits by Chris and Claire Redfield as well Jill Valentine and Leon Kennedy of the RPD.

But Roberts’ approach goes beyond cosplay and familiar story beats. Roberts went to great lengths to recreate Raccoon City exactly as the films. There’s peppering a video game movie with Easter eggs, and then there’s splicing iconographic DNA to make the referential aspects almost fall away. Roberts hopes for the former. Raccoon city is open to you, which not only grabs beats from creator Shinji Mikami’s many Resident Evil games, but goes so far as to replicate, like, the keys from the game’s puzzles that general horror moviegoers would never notice. It’s hardcore.

In Polygon’s exclusive video feature for the movie (above), Roberts and the cast describe just a few of the ways they brought the games to life — and just how deep the cuts run to create an immersive experience for people in the know.

Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City stars Kaya Scodelario (Pirates of the Caribbean Tell No TalesAs Claire Redfield and Hannah John-KamenAnt-Man & the Wasp) as Jill Valentine, Robbie Amell (Upload) as Chris Redfield, Tom Hopper (The Umbrella AcademyAlbert Wesker, AvanjogiaZombieland: Double Tap) as Leon S. Kennedy, and Neal McDonough (Yellowstone() As William Birkin.

On Nov. 24, the movie will premiere in theatres exclusively.