Capcom’s acclaimed Resident Evil 2 remake is packed full of Easter eggs, usually of the self-referential kind intended as throwbacks to previous games in the series. From nods to infamous spelling errors in the original to a play on the endearing Jill Sandwich meme, almost every incredibly detailed corner of Raccoon City’s Police Department building hides some manner of visual or environmental secret just begging to be uncovered.
By now, of course, most, if not all of these undisclosed references have been discovered by eagle-eyed Resi fans, so you can imagine Reddit user sigmas21’s surprise when they not only stumbled upon a secret somehow left undiscovered for all this time but one that’s seemingly a tribute to a completely unrelated series. A hat worn by Arthur Morgan, the internally conflicted outlaw at the heart of Red Dead Redemption 2‘s story, appears to have somehow made its way into Leon’s workplace, as depicted below.
There’s certainly no mistaking the near-identical nature of this hat and the default head protector that Morgan wears in the opening hours of Red Dead 2, then, but how likely really is it, that Capcom meant for the hat’s presence to be a direct reference to the Old West epic? Honestly, we’re not convinced either way, though it is worth noting that Resident Evil 2 dropped just a few short months after Rockstar’s sequel, so it’s certainly possible that the former took inspiration from one of 2018’s biggest video game releases. Sadly, this is likely one of those open-ended questions that’ll never receive a definitive answer.
In related news, Resident Evil Village, a direct sequel to 2017’s seventh mainline installment, is due to release next year for next-gen consoles and PC. For a summary of everything we know so far, see here.