The namesake of Resident Evil’s Leon S. Kennedy has been revealed, and, as many fans suspected, he’s named after director Luc Besson’s 1994 French action film Leon: The Professional.
Resident Evil 2 director Kideki Kamiya recently took to X and casually confirmed the long-held fan theory in response to a fan pointing out the apparent references to the film in Resident Evil. He said Leon’s name came about after talking with Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, who shot down several name ideas before Kamiya offered up another suggestion.
“Well, why don’t we just take it from that movie I watched the other day,” Kamiya said (via Google Translate), that movie being Leon: The Professional, starring Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, and a young Natalie Portman. Kamiya said Mikami said “Yeah, that works,” and the rest is history.
The connections are more than a little obvious. Aside from Leon sharing a name with Leon: The Professional’s hitman main character, the Resident Evil games have long also featured a “Professional” difficulty setting. There’s also the Matilda handgun introduced in Resident Evil 4, thought to be a reference to Portman’s character Mathilda, in the film. Kamiya, however, said the Matilda reference was not his doing, and is something someone else from Capcom came up with after his departure from the company.
While fans had long suspected the connections between the film and one of Resident Evil’s main protagonists, it’s still nice to see it confirmed plainly. Kamiya went on to state he was surprised he’d never confirmed the reference before, as it wasn’t something he was intentionally trying to hide.
After Resident Evil 2, Kamiya went on to direct a number of major Capcom games like Devil May Cry and Okami before leaving to co-found his own studio, PlatinumGames. He left Platinum in 2023 to form another studio, Clovers.
As for Leon, the character has become one of the main faces of Resident Evil after his starring role in Resident Evil 4 and subsequent remakes. He most recently starred as one of the main protagonists in Resident Evil Requiem, where he returned to Raccoon City for the first time since the events of Resident Evil 2. It seems fans can’t get enough of Leon, as Capcom announced Resident Evil Requiem to be the fastest-selling Resident Evil game of all time, having sold over 7 million copies.
In a full circle moment, Leon has even appeared in multiple Resident Evil films, though often as a side character and not the main protaganist. The latest Resident Evil film, from Barbarian and Weapons director Zach Cregger, is slated to release September 18 and is said to take place during the Raccoon City Incident, albeit with an all-new story and cast of characters set within the game’s universe.