Leon’s Death Island Tactical Vest/Gear
Alright, so in the R&D phase of my rewatch of DI in preparation for customizing a Death Island Leon figure, I received a request to do a little deep dive into his vest and gear from @desired-misery
*Just a little note: I am not ex-military or even current military. I am no expert but I have a generalized understanding of military gear and have done a fair amount of research for fics and other interests.
(there really aren’t great stock images out there of his vest so I’m just going to proceed with the screen grab I got during my rewatch)
So upon first inspection, it looks like Leon has a pretty standard MOLLE (Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment) tactical vest. The MOLLE component is really the webbed sections that allow you to slip small gear to hold flush against the vest or to equip with holster components or pouches to carry additional bulkier gear. It’s pretty standard in military and even some civilian use.
Moving from left to right (top to bottom):
Leon’s got a carabiner attached to the webbing in the MOLLE (carabiners have multiple purposes so not sure what it was used in this situation. At first I thought maybe it was used for rappelling onto the island but seems odd for it to be on his vest and it’s kind of small so I’m just going to leave that one to mystery for now).
Pistol holster (pretty self explanatory). Don’t have the greatest of images of the gun Leon gives to Jill so I couldn’t really place what type or model it is but it looks to be relatively small to fit on his vest.
He's got a radio with a wired push-to-talk adapter affixed to his left shoulder strap.
Now moving down to the next section below:
It looks like he’s got a pair of bent bandage shears. These could be used for first aid (as I suspect could be in the pouch on the back of his vest or for cutting the flex/disposable cuffs, or simply as another weapon. We love a multi-tool.
Directly below is two pairs of disposable cuffs or Tri-Fold restraints. They’re like the fancier version of zip ties (with less weak points).
To the right of that, are yellow chemlights. (Realistically, these things really should stay in their plastic wrapper as even unbroken, they emit enough light to give away your location and there really isn’t any SOP when it comes to the colors. Some use specific colors for different missions or objectives.) Yellow and Orange are typically the most commonly used but they can come in a whole myriad of colors including red, blue, green and purple. They are typically used for marking locations, drop points, exit points, etc. This is in contrast to the chemlights on Chris’ tac vest in Village (which were red, though I suspect Capcom should have made them purple or black (IR infrared variety) as his whole team was wearing nightvision headgear).
And now for the bottom row:
Leon’s got a small flashlight in a MOLLE pouch.
Three single mags (for his Sentinel Nine), also in their own MOLLE mag holsters.
And finally what looks to be either flash grenades (flashbangs) or smoke grenades. Some of those that have a colored line on them could indicate a smoke grenade, though that would seem a little odd for this particular mission so I’m going to assume they are flash grenades.
He also has a pretty sizable pouch attached to the back of his MOLLE vest which I had suspected above may contain a first aid kit or other smaller supplies.
So that’s it for his vest and gear! If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them but this was fun to breakdown. Thank fuck Leon finally was able to wear some protective equipment in the field. The whole ‘going into certain hell with a handgun and prayer’ was honestly concerning lol. 😂