Las Plagas [Resident Evil 4 & 5]

Deep in rural Spain, a cult named Los Illuminados was controlling villagers and turning them into monsters. The source of their power was a parasite that they called Las Plagas. Where did it come from, and what was so special about it that a cult dedicated their lives to it? Today, we take a dive into Resident Evil 4 and 5's lore so that we can understand Las Plagas and how it was used in a plot to overthrow the United States government, and the world.

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Transcript

Hey there, welcome to the Lore’d to Death podcast. My name’s Brett, and today I want to take a trip back into the Resident Evil series. It was a little late, but I finally got my hands on the Resident Evil 4 remake, which got me thinking about Las Plagas, the parasitic arthropods which I would say are the main antagonists of the game.

I figured I would wait to cover Las Plagas until I played the remake, but it turns out that they didn’t change a whole lot from the original in terms of story. There are a couple of areas here and there that they changed for the sake of getting rid of dead space to help with pacing, and most of the characters are introduced in a different way, but I think that of the Resident Evil remakes that they have made, this one is the most faithful to the original. Resident Evil 1 and 2 were pretty good, but because of how dated the originals are they had to overhaul the entire game to the point where they’re basically unrecognisable. And then there’s the third one, which was a travesty. I think they learned from their mistakes with the third, and kept the fourth very close to the original. Personally, I’m really glad that they did such a good job because Resident Evil 4 will probably always be my favourite of the series. We’re going to be focusing mostly on Resident Evil 4, but we will touch on bits from Resident Evil 5, so if they ever remake that one I hope they don’t change too much. Although, given its reception and reputation for relying on racist tropes to portray African peoples and tribes, I wonder if they’ll stay away from that one. Personally, I would love to see it remade. It was a little problematic, but overall it was a good game in my opinion… minus the boulder smashing… even for Resident Evil, that was a bit too cheesy.

Anyways, let’s get back on track. Today, we’re talking about Las Plagas, which means “the plagues” in Spanish. Unlike the original zombies of the Resident Evil series, those infected with Las Plagas aren’t aimless, braindead zombies. Las Plagas was a living creature that took hold of the nervous system of the infected so they could take control of their body when they needed to, but since the brain wasn’t destroyed in the process, the host was still their own person. The infected were otherwise able to live out their normal lives unless the Plaga was activated. The parasite formed social clusters with others who were infected as a defence mechanism, which meant that they would get overly aggressive when they encountered someone who wasn’t also infected.

I mentioned this before, but Las Plagas are a genus of parasitic arthropods. An arthropod is defined as any phylum of invertebrate animals having a segmented body, jointed limbs, and a shell of chitin that is shed periodically. This would include insects, arachnids, and crustaceans to name a few. In the Resident evil 4 remake, they look very close to a facehugger from Alien, which was probably an intentional design note. Just like the facehuggers, Las Plagas reproduced asexually by laying eggs inside their hosts which would eventually mature and be expelled from their body, and the cycle would repeat itself from there.

It’s also worth noting that, as we see in the game, humans aren’t the only thing that Las Plagas can control. We see that it takes over dogs as well as Del Lago (meaning “the lake” in Spanish), which was the massive monster we see in the lake. It started out as a salamander, believe it or not, and was the result of the Los Illuminados cult’s experiments with the Plaga. When it grew to the point where they could not control it, they dumped it into the lake and fed it corpses to satiate its hunger.

That brings us right around to Los Illuminados, creators of the demon salamander. But who were they, and why were they feeding the Plaga to salamanders? Los Illuminados translates to “the enlightened ones” and as you can probably guess were a religious cult led by Prophet Adam Saddler and his kin. They get their roots from Roman Catholicism, but incorporate things like sacrificial ceremonies into the mix. Native to the Valdelobos, Los Illuminados worshipped the Plaga and believed it to be a creature given to humanity by God, and being host to the parasite was seen as a tradition for initiation into the cult.

Being a cult, they were subject to state-led inquisitions, which made sure that their numbers were small enough that they would not be a problem to the greater population. The one who led these inquisitions was named Gregario Salazar, whose goal was to restore Catholicism to the region. Gregario Salazar was successful in destroying the cult and had their prophet, along with everyone in their family, exiled, forced to live on a nearby island in the region. When this happened is subject for debate, but I think that for continuity’s sake, it makes sense that this happened in the mid 18th century in 1741 during the time of prophet Hester Saddler. The Salazar family committed themselves to sealing away Las Plagas. They built a massive castle overtop of the caves where Las Plagas were said to have come from, and his descendants would take up the duty of keeping Las Plagas under control while hunting down any who would try to revive Los Illuminados.

This was until the 1990s when Los Illuminados saw a revival under the leadership of Prophet Osmund Saddler, who modernised the cult by attempting to use technology to help expand their reach. At this time, the one set to inherit the Salazar family castle  was Ramon, son of Diego and Catalina Salazar. Ramon was born with an illness that was expected to take his life before he reached adulthood. His mother invited Osmund Saddler, who was posing as a healer, into their home to treat her son. It was here that Ramon was infected with Las Plagas, unbeknownst to his mother.

Because Osmund Saddler saved his life, Ramon Salazar grew to idolise him. Los Illuminados was able to take advantage of this troubled child and use him to revive the cult. Ramon would see Osmund as his father and prophet, and so believed that locking Las Plagas away under the castle was a sin that he would atone for by hiring nearby villagers to excavate the ancient ruins that were sealed off by his forefathers. It was there that Las Plagas was believed to have been long dead, as their mummified carcasses littered the caves. However, the villagers would inhale airborne spores from the corpses, which latched into their bodies and eventually birthed the Plaga once more.

Saddler was able to get a research team together, called TRICELL, to experiment on these organisms and created a large number of Plaga eggs, which he distributed amongst Los Illuminados and the inhabitants of nearby villages. The eggs could either be injected with a syringe, or they could be put into food or drinking water to be ingested. So most of the Ganados that we fight in the game likely didn’t even realise they were being infected or that they were under the influence of someone else.

Now, how he obtained funding for the creation of these labs and the staff to do the research, I have no idea. I’ve searched far and wide, and nothing definitive came up. It’s entirely possible that Albert Wesker started to funnel money into Los Illuminados when he heard about Las Plagas. I’m not sure if I buy that theory, but it would roughly line up with the timeline and it would make sense since he had Major Jack Jrauser infiltrate Los Illuminados in order to gain Saddler’s trust, but I’ll circle around to that in a minute. It’s also possible, and more probable, that he used Ramon Salazar’s family fortune.

From their research came a new subspecies which could dominate the parasites’ social collective and force them to act according to the dominant Plaga’s will. This dominant Plaga was given to Osmund Saddler, Jack Krauser, Ramon Salazar, and the village chief Father Bitores Mendez. On top of being able to use this to control others infected with the Plaga, it also gave them immense power and the ability to dramatically mutate their body to give them super strength and agility. As seen in the game, these mutations seemed to be triggered by a fight or flight response but the host ultimately decided when they would transform. While each transformation was drastically different, they all had one thing in common– they all had a similar look to the Plaga parasite, usually boasting many elongated limbs that had arachnid-like qualities.

But because the dominant Plaga was able to control the masses, they had to be very particular with who they decided to give it to. Obviously, Saddler gave it to himself because he was the prophet of Los Illuminados. Salazar was given it because he was wrapped around Saddler’s finger, and Mendez because he was largely responsible for converting the villagers since he was the village chief and pastor. Krauser was given the Plaga because he was instrumental for global dominance with the capture of the U.S. President’s daughter, Ashley Graham. After all, it’s not enough fun to take over a village or even a country. It’s gotta be worldwide, baby!

And that was the master plan- abduct the President’s daughter, inject her with Las Plagas, and have her give it to her father, effectively taking control of the U.S. and in turn, the rest of the world. If you listened to the episode about Umbrella, you’ll remember that Umbrella’s golden boy, Albert Wesker, had left Umbrella at this point and was working with what was known as the “rival company”. He found out about Las Plagas when one of the scientists in Saddler’s research facility, Dr. Luis Serra, leaked information about Las Plagas after finding out its nefarious purpose. This leak was intercepted by Wesker, and he sent out Major Jack Krauser to intercept the President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, while she was on her way home from the University of Massachusetts. Then he took her to Spain, handed her over to Saddler, and gained his trust. While the U.S. government kept the kidnapping a secret, they received an anonymous tip about Ashley’s whereabouts. That’s where Leon Kennedy came in and where the game begins.

I’m not going to go over the events of the game, because it’s necessarily important to understanding Las Plagas. A minute ago I mentioned that there was the dominant Plaga which was able to control the lesser Plagas, so I want to explore that a little more. There are four different types of Plaga.

Plaga Type 1 are called the Ganados, which is Spanish for cattle. These are the most common type of enemy in Resident Evil 4– the villagers. These were the Plaga in its original form, unmodified by TRICELL. They are a weaker form of plaga and cannot regenerate limbs or stop death from organ failure but they are still stronger than the average person, able to take a bullet to the head without dying. They’re mostly still human and are able to continue their day-to-day functions, although it’s not known whether they are brain dead or if they maintain cognitive function aside from when they are being given direct orders from the dominant plaga. When they take enough damage, they can mutate if the plaga was fully grown within the host into one of three forms depending on how far along it is.

With Type A, also known as Guadana or “scythe” in Spanish, the host’s head pops off and the parasite comes out of it. The Guadana takes the form of a massive, writhing tentacle with a blade on one end that lashes out at enemies.

Type B, also known as Mandibula or “jaw” in Spanish, has a larger tentacle-like appendage with a gaping mouth at the end of it, which is kind of reminiscent of a Predator’s mouth, or the Elites from Halo. This form of Plaga is almost fully grown, but can’t quite separate from its host yet because its limbs aren’t fully formed yet.

Type C, also known as Arana or “spider” in Spanish, is the fully grown adult plaga in its host. They come out of the heads of the host and can separate from the host temporarily while searching for another host to control. I don’t know how long they can survive without a host, and I assume that since they immediately find someone to latch on to when they separate that they cannot survive for long.

Under this same umbrella are the Colmillos, or “fangs” in Spanish, which are Plaga that have infected an animal. In the games, this is what the mutated dogs are referred to as. Then there are also the Armadura, which is “armour” in Spanish, which is a mass of tentacles that take over a suit of armour. All of these plagas, when exposed, are very sensitive to light and can be killed with a concentrated beam of light, including sunlight, or a flashbang.

Type 2 Plagas are the ones that were engineered by TRICELL to be used as a bioweapon. This type was designed to be less vulnerable, and more or less got rid of their weakness to sunlight, but couldn’t get rid of their vulnerability to flashbangs. They did this by combining Las Plagas with leech DNA. Type 2 was supposed to mature much faster than the original plaga, which took somewhere around 4 days to mature and be under the influence of the dominant plaga. However, it seems that infecting people with this type wasn’t as simple as injecting an egg or hiding it in food because of how fast it matured. The mature plaga had to be forcibly shoved into the host’s mouth, as we see in Resident Evil 5. But while it was a bit harder to infect someone, it was almost immediate which offset that drawback.

These came in 4 different forms:

Type A is the Hatchling. As the name suggests, they weren’t fully grown and couldn’t survive without the host and couldn’t totally control the host’s body. The host was, like the Ganados, capable of operating as they would have before they were infected. The hatchling parasite would emerge from the host’s mouth and hop into someone else’s to infect others.

Type B is the Cephalo, which means “head” in Greek, and it was the Type 2 equivalent of the Guadana, or Scythe, plaga.

Type C is known as the Kipepeo, which comes from the Swahili word for “butterfly”, which was capable of flight. They can separate themselves from the host and survive on their own. They has a barbed tail that they would attack with while airborne.

Type D is the Bui Kichwa which is more or less the same as the spider plaga. It can dislodge from the host and attack on its own or latch on to other people to infect them.

So the Type 2 is physically very similar to the Type 1, with the exception of the flying version. These ones are predominantly featured in Resident Evil 5, as mentioned before.

The Type 3 plaga was the same as the Type 2, but with further engineering to get rid of the weaknesses of the Type 2. They created Type 3 by splicing the dominant plaga with the Type 2, which meant that they were still able to be controlled but they had greater strength and could mutate similarly to those who had the dominant plaga. However, when they tested this plaga on some villagers in Africa, they found that there were some serious drawbacks to using Type 3.

The Type 3 plaga caused their hosts to develop necrosis, which caused their flesh to be eaten away making them look more like a traditional zombie than the other versions. While they were stronger, their decaying flesh and lowered intelligence was considered a downgrade from the Type 2, but had its uses in militias where they needed some extra muscle. Because they were made from mixing the dominant plaga, they were inherently more difficult to control, but it wasn’t impossible. Over time, when the necrosis set in and started to eat their brain and they lost cognitive function, control was no longer an issue because they couldn’t function or think for themselves without the plaga.

Also because of the dominant strain, they were able to mutate into a stronger form than the other plaga, much like the dominant plaga. They called this Duvalia, which was named after a South African star-shaped flower which was named after French botanist and physician, Henri Auguste, Duval. The mutation exploded out from their torso, and was large enough to swallow a human in one bite. So they had their uses, but TRICELL wasn’t satisfied with the downsides which caused them to experiment more.

This is where we get Type 4, which was made in a similar fashion to Type 3 made from splicing the original plaga with the dominant plaga, and possibly using some elements of the T-Virus.This plaga was physically very different looking than the other forms, which were more spider-like in appearance. The Type 4 still had a mouth and tail with tentacles, but looked more like a leech than an arthropod, but had almost scaly skin rather than a chitin exoskeleton.

These are very similar to the Ganados, but were much stronger. They were also clumsier and moved more like the progenitors than the Type 1 Ganados. These were used in the Eastern Slav civil war, but the lab where they were being held was destroyed in a rebel attack, so not much is known about their full capabilities in relation to the other types, and it is unknown whether they survived the attack or not.

I know that was a lot, so to sum up Type 1 and 2 were used in Spain and Africa respectively. They were entirely subservient to the dominant plaga, and had similar forms that came out of their heads in the form of scythes and mouths in a mass of tentacles and flesh depending on how mature the plaga is within the host.

Type 3 and 4 were made from the dominant and subservient plaga and mixed them with the T-Virus in an attempt to strengthen them. While there were some upsides, the downsides meant that they weren’t necessarily any more or less useful than the Type 1 and 2.

There were also several experiments done on humans with the plaga tha resulted in a number of different mutations. One resulted in a person growing to an unusually large size and was known as El Gigante, or “the giant” in Spanish. It’s not said how it was done, or why they grew to the size that they did. It’s possible that some people who are maybe more aggressive have that accentuated by the plaga, and maybe it causes an increase in testosterone which leads to growth hormones going out of whack and causes them to gigantify. Or maybe it’s just a fluke and the excess hormones are the cause of the growth, not the other way around. While it might seem a bit odd at first glance that there can be a 20 foot tall giant, but it’s not as out of place when you look at the transformations of others that are infected, especially those infected with the dominant plaga. The plaga, when it bursts out of their body, is usually much larger than what would normally fit inside their bodies. So maybe with el gigante, that same mass is being created around the muscles but it’s somehow being kept under the skin. That’s just a theory, though.

There was a similar creature born of the Type 2 virus, called Ndesu. I couldn’t find any etymology for the name, since it seems like a totally made up word. Since these guys are found in Resident Evil 5, I tried finding a similar word in Swahili since that’s the language that they speak. The closest would be “ndevu” which means “beard” or “bearded”, which makes a small amount of sense since the in-game model does sport a pretty large beard. But it just seems odd that they would name something after their facial hair, especially considering that they are called Ndesu not Ndevu. The only other one I can think of is that “desu” in Japanese means “to be” and is used to affix a person to a thing. But that makes even less sense. Either way, Ndesu was a giant, but because it was made with the Type 2 plaga it was even more resilient than its predecessor. It could resist heavy weaponry, and could only be killed if you destroyed all 5 parasites inside of it.

Another creation was the Garrador which roughly translates to “clawer” which isn’t a real word. They aren’t particularly large, but they are much more aggressive than your typical Ganados. For this reason, not many of them were ever created, and the ones that were initially made were typically locked up in a crypt or somewhere where they would be out of the way enough that no one would get slashed by the three-bladed gauntlets that it wears. Because they are so aggressive, they ended up being restrained and have their eyes sewn shut so that they can’t see anything. If they can’t see their prey, then they won’t go ballistic. However, this only led to a heightened sense of hearing. Take away one sense, and the others get sharper.

Then there were more experiments that led to human/parasite hybrids. The first that they made were the Novistador which means “the unseen” or “unseen creature”. At first glance, I don’t think that anyone would have expected that they were once human. The Novistador looks like a giant insect with large claws on their front two legs. One version had wings, which meant they could fly and hover. And the other version had a wicked camouflage that allowed them to blend into their surroundings for a sneak attack, hence their name. These creatures were inherently weaker than most plaga types, but they made up for it by having a very rapid reproduction cycle.

Another one was called the Verdugo, which can mean either “tyrant” or “executioner” which is pretty apt given that they were the bodyguard of Ramon Salazar. However, there were only ever two made so I guess you could say that they were Salazar’s right and left hand men. The Verdugo were more humanoid than the Novistador, standing on two legs, but they still had a bit of an insect quality to them. They also had large talons on all four of their appendages, as well as a tail with a blade at its end which they could use with great dexterity. On top of all that, they had a nigh-indestructible black carapace. Tails, claws, black carapace that could withstand bullets… this sounds a lot like the xenomorph from Alien. Once again, another reference to those movies. Unlike most others infected with the plaga, they seemed to have a great level of intelligence and were able to use ambush tactics, block off exits, and be a general nuisance to deal with. Leon only managed to kill it by freezing it with liquid nitrogen which made its exoskeleton brittle enough that it would take damage from ballistics.

The other human experiment was the Regenerador, or the “regenerators”. They get their name from the fact that even if you cut off all of their limbs, they will regrow them in a matter of seconds. No amount of damage to the body was enough to stop them, because no matter what they would regenerate any lost flesh. The only way to kill them, similar to the Ndesu, was to use a biometric heat signature scope on a rifle that could penetrate through the body and kill the three parasites that lived in their bodies. From a looks standpoint, these regenerators looks the most human out of the hybrids. I’m not sure what they mixed them with to create them, but it almost seems like they were a failed experiment while they were trying to create the Verdugo, stuck in a sort of halfway point between human and monster. There’s also a version that is able to produce spikes from all over its body as a self defence mechanism like a disgusting human/porcupine hybrid. Judging by the pale blue/grey shade of their skin and they clumsy drunk movements, I think it’s safe to say that the regenerators were failed experiments that killed the host, but the parasite is still living inside and basically using them as a meat puppet.

Last but not least, we have Del Lago, which we mentioned earlier was a salamander that was given the plaga and grew to a massive size, much like the giants. Because of its weight, its limbs could no longer support it and it was forced to be in the lake, because it could still swim around.

There’s also the Popokarimu, which was a bat that was given a parasite. The name means “royal bat” in Swahili.  It also grew to be unnaturally large, and was exceedingly good at fighting. In addition to being a natural flyer, it was also able to crawl around on the ground using it’s wings and legs just like a bat. 

So to sum it up, there’s a lot of different versions of creatures across the games that show the various stages that the research team was at during each new iteration. And it gave us more to shoot at, which I’ll never complain about.

There were Las Plagas that were fossilised in amber, which means that these parasites have been around for 40,000 or more years. It’s possible that they are linked to the progenitor virus, or T-Virus, from Africa since there are so many similarities between the two, but I’m not sure that there was ever a concrete link between the two other than some ancient slabs with drawings on them that insinuate that the Plagas came from elsewhere. But I think that’s more speculation than fact as far as I can tell. Las Plagas was considerably dangerous, and if Leon hadn’t been the one sent to rescue Ashley, I’m confident that Saddler’s plan to take over the world would have succeeded.

And with that, I think this episode is about wrapped up. So now we come around to the great question– what do you think?

Do you think that Saddler really thought that Las Plagas were gods, or do you think that his mind was just corroded to the point where his thoughts were the Plagas’ thoughts?

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Remember that if a man with tentacles coming out of his sleeves asks you to join his cult, you should ask yourself why you decided to go to church in a small village in Spain and you should get the hell out of dodge.

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I’ll lore you to death next time. See ya.