4 Memos from the Most Bafflingly Evil Movie Corporation
The Umbrella Corporation is the most stupidly evil corporation in history.
Umbrella charts are stupidly overcomplicated, like all Umbrella products.
They've destroyed the entire world and are actively hunting any survivors. But underneath the T-virus laboratories, zombie cages and kennels full of skinless dogs (AUUUUGH), they hold the worst brain-destroying evil of all: PowerPoint business meetings.
The T-virus is just a weaponized slideshow.
Welcome, shareholders. Some of you have been demanding to know where our record profits have been going, mockingly suggesting that we've been pouring billions of dollars into a gigantic hole in the ground. We've been pouring in far more than that! We can now reveal the next stage of Umbrella expansion: a secret underground city filled with viral weaponry, artificial intelligence and experiments in human mutation. We're calling it "The Hive," replacing our working title, "The Pit of Incredibly Bad Ideas."
We also liked "Insanely Genocidal Things R Us," but Legal tells us that copyright lawyers are much scarier than biological weaponry.
We're building this under Raccoon City so that our new products can get straight into the civilian market. Which is good, as Accounting says that every single person on the planet will have to use our products before the place turns a profit. Marketing said that we'd have to make something viral, then said oh God, that's not what they meant, then there was a lot of screaming. But now they work for free!
Umbrella's dedicated advertising team!
We're confident that they'll change the way people see Umbrella.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
The Hive was a fantastic success! We not only released a killer product, but somehow reduced payroll, insurance and all other "living" expenses to zero. And our employees are still relentlessly spreading it 24/7. We're proud to make the Hive our flagship facility, and will be rolling out the same changes to all other locations worldwide!
Better get moving, staff, they're real go-getters in Raccoon City!
Unfortunately, it seems that sending people into the quarantined lab let it infect the rest of the city. We're now sending people into the quarantined city. Also, Human Resources tells me that the position of "Pattern Recognition Officer" still hasn't been filled.
Hindsight is 20/20 and, for Umbrella, usually full of explosions.
Shortly afterward, market research identified a brand-new demographic in Raccoon City -- a huge shambling horde attracted to bright lights, loud noises and utterly ridiculous plot twists -- so we set up a wrestling event between Project Alice and the Nemesis.
Eh, still better than Daniel Bryan.
It turns out that setting someone against their own previous love interest doesn't work. As a soulless evil corporation, we really need to source personnel who understand these "feelings" that keep screwing up our plans. Either that or exterminate everyone on Earth so that they can't get in our way anymore. An executive committee is co-presently solutionizing which action plan to implement going forward. Because if anyone understands human emotion, it's people who talk like that.
Also, our corporate art budget is getting kind of ridiculous.
Project Alice killed Nemesis, killed our executives and was then killed in a helicopter crash. We brought her back with even more superpowers, as "resurrecting things that want to kill us" is our entire corporate strategy.
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Another great quarter for Umbrella Corporation! Every federal, environmental, criminal and journalistic investigation into our business practices has ended. Along with everything else that isn't Umbrella. Congratulations, remaining employees, we are now No. 1 in the Fortune 500!
Or as it's now known, the Fortune 1.
It's also been a standout year for Marketing: Every single human on the planet is now either using our product or thinking about those who are! We'd especially like to thank Stevie in Corporate Strategy, who predicted that the absolute collapse of human society and murder of the entire planet would be required before anyone beat Apple. Nice work, Stevie, your employee record will be posthumously updated!
An even more distinctive look than white earbuds.
Unfortunately, our success is offset by a serious problem. The worst case our corporation has always feared. The nightmare scenario for any biological weapons company: piracy. Users have been "sharing" our product, especially with close friends and family, robbing us of vital sales.
Look at those greedy intellectual property thieves.
We recovered plans for how to combat this threat in a hostile takeover of the RIAA buildings. (It turns out that conversion to mindless hungering avatars of greed hadn't changed their business practices.) Legal tells us there are no longer any problems with just shooting people who share our stuff. Interestingly, this is the exact plan the RIAA had been working toward.
Human Resources has been complaining that the perfected human cloning technology should be under their review, since that is literally their department name, and in fact the first time in history that it was a literal description instead of a soulless dehumanization of living beings. (They also appreciate how working for a company with a Biological Weaponry Department means that they're not the most hated part of the corporation.) Unfortunately, the cloner is still being fully utilized by the Pointless Murder Division.
Wesker kills the entire world and then finds a way to be even douchier.
Human Resources also notes that CEO Wesker has been repeatedly blocking their simplified new performance review procedure.
We must also sadly regret the passing of Dr. Sam Isaacs, who spent the last year killing multiple Alices and researching the antivirus, and was killed by multiple Alices and the antivirus. Please remember Umbrella Corporation safety regulations!
We've found the reason for our recent lack in market growth. The new action plan was:
Unfortunately, printer toner is somehow even more expensive after the apocalypse ("Never rains but it pours, that's why we need Umbrella!"), and it ran out halfway through printing these instructions for our staff:
Fortunately, this corporate misstep has exterminated almost everyone (left) on the planet, so there won't be anyone to post sarcastic Twitter messages about it. Research & Development also wants to know why we're still experimenting on human subjects now that we have about 7 billion data points proving that, yes, the virus kills people. In fact, they're wondering who's conducting these tests at all, because it's not them. Does security actually check who's in charge of the labs, or are they just obeying any psychopath who shows up in a lab coat? We're only asking because that would help the payroll situation, and also explain pretty much everything we've done for the last decade.
"Glad to have you on the team, Dr. N. Dead!"
Also, Accounting (which is just Bob -- there aren't many of us left) is worried about the rate at which CEO Wesker is detonating property. We understand that it's sometimes necessary to liquidize assets, but he's making a corporate smoothie. In the last quarter, he's detonated an underground Tokyo city and half an air force, and he tried to blow up our floating research base. It's also getting expensive to install new washrooms when he keeps blowing them up instead of flushing.
But after downsizing the executive board and the entire planet, he was free to develop the most sophisticated toilet in history.
We're looking forward to a spectacular quarter with a daring corporate strategy. For the last 10 years, we've lost every single thing we sent against Alice, so we're sending every single thing against Alice. (Incidentally, we never did fill that "Pattern Recognition" position.) Especially the helicopters, which have so far killed, injured or blown up every single person to get in, including ex-CEO Albert Wesker and Alice.
The collective noun for Umbrella aircraft is "a mass suicide."
We've got a good feeling about this one.
Luke discovers The Game of the Worst Movie Ever Made, and risks his very soul in the Magic: The Gathering Experiment. He also has a website, tumbles and responds to every single tweet.
For more Umbrella insanity, check out Umbrella: The Most Wasteful Movie Corporation Ever and 6 Evil Corporations in Movies (With Terrible Business Plans).
