Leon Kennedy’s wiki page is filled with lies and bullshit
And whoever is running the wiki is so afraid of being told that they’re wrong that editing on it is currently disabled -- so I figured I’d just compile a list of errors on my own.
This isn’t fully comprehensive, because my eyes started to glaze over at a certain point, but. It is color coordinated and fully explained.
If you need to reference Leon’s wiki for any reason, please make sure that you have this post up also as well, so that you’re not pulling bad information. Most of the wiki is fine, but there are some things in here, man. People really do just be going on the internet and telling lies.
Notice how there's no citation for this. The source that's actually being pulled from is an offhanded comment the RE2 concept artist made in an art book that Capcom released called Capcom Design Works. It was only ever released in Japan.
Concept artists don't have access to the script and aren't involved with the actual creation of the character. Concept artists are given a general description of what a character should look like and what their general demeanor is. The devs told this artist specifically to make Leon look tanned, so the artist wondered if maybe Leon's heritage was from somewhere in southern Europe — maybe Italy?
It is important to know that Leon's character was conceived and had art drawn of him back when Resident Evil 2 had a completely different story. A different version of RE2 reached 80% completion before being scrapped and completely redone from the ground up. The story changed dramatically. Claire Redfield wasn't even in this original version of RE2; it was a different character entirely named Elza Walker. (source one, source two)
Ergo, even if the intention was to give Leon an Italian background originally, that story no longer exists and has nothing to do with the version of Resident Evil 2 that actually released.
This isn't a big deal, but "offered" is a really funny way of saying "threatened into."
Leon also was never in USSTRATCOM. That's a bullshit lie based on an old build of RE4 that never got released and was, in fact, turned into the game Haunting Ground instead.
None of this is ever stated in the games. This is pulled from a promotional marketing interview from 1997 — so, before RE2 was even finished or released. There's a decent chance that this interview was done right after 1.5 got thrown out and 2's final story wasn't even fully realized yet.
Capcom has actually given Leon several different backgrounds throughout the years, and none of them have ever made it into the games.
The official Resident Evil 2 novelization has Leon fresh out of college and moving to Raccoon City from New York.
Welcome to Raccoon City wrote that Leon's dad was a cop, and that's how he got into the force, too.
But there's no indication of any of them being true for Leon as he exists in the games. There's no reason to think of the crime background as any more or less canon than the other two, except maybe that someone just likes it better?
In fact, part of that crime backstory is outwardly and explicitly contradicted in Resident Evil 2 itself:
So take that for what you will.
The wiki cites "Official GuideBook" as the source for this. No book with that title exists.
What they're actually referring to is The Resident Evil Archives, which is a book that is filled to bursting with factually incorrect information about the games. Here's the full excerpt of the passage containing that backstory:
Is this really what we're taking as canon fact now? Claire and Sherry being Leon's "single focus" in RE2, with absolutely no mention of Ada at all? Leon being mad about Claire "making her own decisions"?
Here's something else fun from the RE Archives:
I don't see anything on this wiki page about how Leon willingly gave Sherry up to the US Army, nor anything about him reaching out to the federal government himself in order to willingly join their ranks. It's very interesting how only the "drunk at a motel" part made it in.
Citation needed???? The citation is the Resident Evil 2 Remake. This is something that's actually stated in a game — and the wiki is treating it as fanfiction, listing it as secondary to whatever bullshit the RE Archives book is spouting.
This is also the single only glimpse we have ever gotten into anything Leon was doing prior to the intro of RE2. The games do not go any further back in time to explain anything further about where he's from or what his life was like.
This is straight-up not true. It's just an out-and-out lie.
So, Leon and Benford only started working together ten years prior to Benford's death in June of 2013 — making the genesis of that partnership land in 2003. 2002 at the earliest. Neither of those years are 1998, which is the year that Leon was coerced into government custody.
It also makes no sense as to why Leon would like, trust, and respect Benford so much if he was the man responsible for threatening Sherry and ruining his life. It also makes no sense for Benford to be a child-threatening piece of garbage and then also be described as having integrity and being a man of his word.
The only thing that RE6 actually says about who Benford was prior to becoming President was that he was "in the military." 2002 makes sense for Leon and Benford to have met, then, since 2002 was the year of Operation Javier. Leon's status in the government isn't exactly clear during the events of Operation Javier — Leon isn't sent in as a federal LEO; he's sent in with military special forces.
The likeliest explanation is that Adam Benford was the lead commanding officer overseeing Operation Javier — who, upon suspecting he might be dealing with B.O.W.'s, went "Hey, get me the Raccoon City guy. I want him going on this one."
And the rest, as they say, is history.
This is all purely conjecture on my part and cannot be proven or disproven either way — but it, at the very least, makes more sense than just assuming that this one particular file in RE6 got the year of the Raccoon City incident wrong. It also makes more sense than assuming that Leon has some sort of weird Stockholm Syndrome concerning Adam Benford, when he (Leon) is so angry and cynical and jaded in literally every single title after RE4 about his career and about being shackled to the government.
Adam Benford being the guy behind Leon's kidnapping is so beyond the pale and absurd, and the only real basis for it is an advertisement for an airsoft gun, and I'm not joking. I don't know how anyone tries to argue that that ad is more canon than what's both stated and shown in the actual series, but here we are.
This is something that is only true in Resident Evil 4 Remake. Originally, Operation Javier was the first time that Leon and Krauser ever met, per Darkside Chronicles. It is very weird that this detail exists in the wiki, but then the wiki goes on to only describe the DSC version of Operation Javier, with no mention given to the complete overhaul that that story got in RE4make. You wouldn't be able to even asspull a "Krauser only started training Leon after Operation Javier" explanation, either, because in OG RE4, Leon is under the impression that Krauser actually died almost immediately after returning home.
There's no citation for this, but the source is the box art for the Wii version of RE4. However, no other version of RE4 ever makes mention of what school Ashley was going to. The only hint we have ever gotten in a game as to where Ashley was going to school is actually in RE4make, because the sorority stickers on her phone correspond with a sorority out of New York.
There's no citation for this, because the source is RE: Umbrella Corps, which has no provable basis in canon.
This isn't true. Here's the citation that the wiki uses:
There's no year given there, and there's no indication that this happened at some sort of TerraSave reunion. In fact, them meeting in 2010 makes no sense, because this file establishes that there were no open lines of communication between the US government and the BSAA prior to this moment — so how the fuck would Chris have gotten his hands on Leon's report outlining the events of RE4 back in 2009?
Considering the fact that Lost in Nightmares took place in 2006, and that explicitly involved remnants of Umbrella via Oswell Spencer, chances are that that's probably closer to the time that this meeting between Leon and Chris actually happened.
Or, if you wanted to be cheeky about it, you could say that this happened in 2008 so that Hunnigan's "hadn't seen each other in ten years" thing is actually at least a little bit true — since Leon and Chris actually first spoke back in either late 1998 or early 1999, per Code Veronica and Darkside Chronicles.
But there's really no canonical indication of it either way. You can't even use Benford as a benchmark, because Hunnigan could've been reporting to him as POTUS or as a military officer. There's really no way to know.
So, that’s that. I hope we all learned something today. For future reference, don’t look outside of the actual games or movies for information about the series, because it is constantly being contradicted by either other supplementary material or actual game canon. This is the formula you should be following:
numbered game entries are the most canon. numbered game entries will always have the final say. period.
spinoff games starring the recurring cast* (Revelations, Code Veronica, etc) are the second highest tier canon.
CGI movies starring the main cast are the third highest tier canon.
spinoff games not starring the main cast (Outbreak, Dead Aim, etc) are the fourth highest tier canon.
anything else should be ignored.
*spinoff games that have a story, that is. things like The Mercenaries 3D and RE:Verse clearly don’t count and are there for fun gameplay purposes only.
In an instance where things on the same tier contradict each other, the most recent installment wins out.
So, Sherry’s age in RE2 is 10 because RE6 said so – even though OG RE2’s manual had her age listed as 12. Her age of 10 years was then also reaffirmed in RE2make. So, she was 10.
And Gaiden’s not canon, despite it starring Leon and Barry, because RE4, RE6, and Revelations 2 do not acknowledge it as such.
It is very easy to follow this canon if you follow that recipe.
Please don’t let bad faith actors lead you astray, and stop leaning so hard on the wiki until it fixes its problems.
My inbox is always open for questions.