Ever since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been coming up with theories on how the whole thing started. While some are based in science and facts, others are downright ridiculous. One of the wilder conspiracies compares the novel coronavirus with the t-Virus from the Resident Evil series.

Resident Evil puts players in the middle of Raccoon City where a virus is turning people into the living dead. A company called the Umbrella Corporation created the virus in a biotech lab in hopes of creating a biological weapon. The virus eventually leaks out, rapidly infecting anyone it comes in contact with, turning the infected into bloodthirsty zombies. While COVID-19 doesn’t turn people into mindless homicidal zombies, on the surface, there are some similarities, so it isn't hard to see how some people have fallen into this rabbit hole.

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Some COVID-19 reports stated that the virus may have been produced in a biotech lab in Wuhan, China, the place where cases of the illness first emerged late last year. According to these theories, the virus somehow found its way outside the lab, quickly contaminating Wuhan’s citizens, and the Chinese government tried to cover up its mistakes by casting the blame onto anything other than itself.

There are photos circulating across the Internet that seem to support these accusations, including a photo of a biological research lab supposedly located in Wuhan that gained traction on social media. Then, there are images of the lab's supposed logo, which bears a striking resemblance to that of the Umbrella Corporation. The only difference between the two appears to be the color. This only added fuel to the fire, leading more people online to compare the Chinese lab and the fictional corporation.

Then, there were those who claimed that corona is an anagram for Raccoon, as in Raccoon City, ignoring that fact that there's a second "C" in the name of the fictional city. And while the spelling "racoon" is sometimes used in reference to the animal, the Resident Evil franchise spells it with two "C"s.

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Of course, these conspiracy theories are false. According to the World Health Organization, all of the evidence point to COVID-19 originating from animals, not a biotech lab. While it still isn't clear how the virus made the jump to humans, scientists say that it mostly likely originated from bats. The photo comparing the Umbrella Corporation’s logo with the Chinese laboratory has also been debunked. While there is a biological research laboratory with a similar logo to Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corp, it's located in Shanghai, a city that is 500 miles east of Wuhan. In the picture, you can even see that the laboratory’s name is Shang Hai Ruilan Bao Hu San Biotech Limited.

While the conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 and its similarities to Resident Evil have been proven false, a handful of people still believe they are too eerily similar to be completely unrelated. This is the nature of conspiracy theories, and it's important to take them with a grain of salt. It's crucial to have solid evidence before stating something as a fact or sharing a theory like this, especially when the theory pertains to a global crisis that impacts people's health and safety. While conspiracies are fun to investigate, they can take you down bizarre paths, and it's important to stay vigilant.

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