The original 1998 release of Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 has held a secret that has been bugging fans for over 28 years now: who is the “boyfriend” pictured in the photo on Jill Valentine’s desk, and why did Capcom replace the photo with a picture of a dog in the Resident Evil 2 remake? Well, we now have our answer to both questions: it’s Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan.
If it’s been a while since you’ve played the original release of Resident Evil 2, you likely have some questions. In the original 1998 version of the game, if Claire or Leon inspects Jill’s desk in the police station, both of them will say the same line of dialogue: “It’s a picture of a young man. There’s a good chance it’s her boyfriend…”
The mystery of what the photo was modeled on has been bugging fans for almost three decades, and things only became more confusing when Capcom replaced the photo with a picture of a Golden Retriever in its remake. There’s even a whole page dedicated to the mystery on the Resident Evil Wiki, simply titled “Jill’s Friend.”
Alright, that’s it then. The guy from Jill’s desk is Kyle MacLachlan. Years of searching finally over.@MV_archeologist pic.twitter.com/FiCJVGs6yF
— Morio (@OneiRoidandRoid) June 22, 2026
By digging through an unspecified number of Japanese magazines, user Morio on X was able to figure out, after “years of searching,” that the picture is of…Kyle MacLachlan. By overlaying the pixelated image present in the game with this promo picture of MacLachlan, you get a pretty clear match.
That’s not all, though, as Morio also found a whole bunch of matches for several of the pictures dotted around the Raccoon City police station. There’s a photo of the three main cast members from Back to the Future 3, a picture of Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster from Maverick, and a picture of Winona Ryder from The Age of Innocence. Naturally, all of these pictures were replaced in the Resident Evil 2 remake.