It’s official: Leon S. Kennedy was named after Léon: The Professional

Resident Evil is one of those series in which many theories exist that fans have speculated about for years, but which were never confirmed. Thus, there is much talk in the internet Resident Evil communities about who the life partner of our American agent is – although we haven't received an answer to that yet, only a confirmation that we will find out in the future, a few days ago we received confirmation that Leon was actually named after the character from the 1994 film.

Resident Evil 2 game director Hideki Kamiya revealed this information via Twitter, where he looked back at the entire character naming process where, after a series of rejected ideas, series creator Shinji Mikami, in response to the question: "Why don't we simply name the character after a movie I watched recently?" replied with: "Yes, that works."

These theories have circulated the internet for a long period, and besides the obvious connections beyond the character of Leon played by Jean Reno, the Professional difficulty option appears in Resident Evil games, representing the hardest option. Even that is not the end, because the handgun Matilda, well-known to all fans, has been linked to the character of Mathilda from the movie, played by Natalie Portman.

Hideki Kamiya further added that he did not create other references not related to the name, and that they were added by other people after his departure. He worked on acclaimed classics such as Okami and Viewtiful Joe, before leaving Capcom and co-founding PlatinumGames, which led to games such as Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. After leaving PlatinumGames in 2023, he founded a new studio, Clovers, which is currently helping Capcom with the development of the game Okami 2.