Character Information

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NAME: Leon Scott Kennedy
SERIES: Resident Evil/Biohazard [Game Continuity]
CANON POINT: post-RE6
AGE: 36
GENDER: Male



PERSONALITY:
Leon Kennedy has seen far more than most others his age and the results of his experience show in his demeanor. After his first day as a policeman at Raccoon City devolving into nothing short of a nightmare, the previously congenial and overall positive rookie has transformed into a serious government agent. He still retains an innate desire to help others and protect those in need, but his view on survival and consequences have developed dramatically due to the dangers he faced and the lives lost in the T-virus outbreak. Unlike his attitude during his first day as a rookie, Leon's current attitude is more honed and, some might say, jaded by his experiences. He shows far less emotion in the face of danger, and even when expressing more positive feelings. His quiet, dry outward nature can make him seem distant to strangers, and he tends to be cautious when it comes to people with power. If someone rubs him the wrong way, Leon is a long-time practitioner of sarcasm, making him appear rougher to those that don't know him. He also concentrates very hard on preventing more tragedies by taking out terrorists before others can be sacrificed, making him more given to action than talk. Aside from sarcastic remarks and the occasional joke, he mostly reserves his real emotions for those he trusts deeply, and those people are relatively few in number. After killing many fellow officers turned into zombies during the Raccoon City incident and repeated betrayal by comrades, Leon is reluctant to confide in others and keeps his feelings guarded to protect his main priority of preserving life. While he does have friends and is generally easy enough to get along with, he's the type to bottle up his feelings. During Resident Evil 4, Leon confesses internally that he still remembers the Raccoon tragedy as if it just happened, but outwardly treats the local cops he's with casually and doesn't indicate any personal doubt. In Resident Evil 6, he confides to the President, his close friend, that he's harbored some suicidal thoughts at times, which shows that he has to be very comfortable with someone before he'll allow himself to open up.

When it comes to confidantes, Leon is quick to defend—and even befriend—but slow to trust. He believes in the virtue of working with others and helping those around him, but rarely goes into depth about his own feelings or personal life. He easily befriends Luis Sera in Resident Evil 4, and works with Angela Miller and Greg Glenn, two special forces operatives, without too much complaint in Degeneration. However, he never shows any excessive warmth to any of them, and in the case of Greg, gets frustrated when the man repeatedly jeopardizes their lives by not taking the threats seriously—enough to strike him in order to get things done. However, he defends them all without hesitation, and is extremely distraught when he loses Luis, despite having only met him hours earlier. In a crisis, he's quick to respond to pleas for help. He readily agrees to help a stranger find his missing daughter after a sudden outbreak, despite still being in danger himself. He even goes so far as to tell him partner at the time, Helena, that they will make the time when she points out that they have their own mission to complete. Leon also moves to rescue some trapped survivors even after telling Helena that they are already doomed and it is too late to save them. He's a defender above all, sometimes recklessly, even though his experiences have taught him the cold practicality of killing to survive. This echoes back to the Raccoon City disaster itself, which was Leon's first experience with an outbreak. He arrives to find his new assignment is overrun with the walking dead, but instead of thinking only of himself, Leon does his best to protect the other survivors, befriending Claire Redfield and Sherry Birkin as they try to escape the city together. This attitude is what defines Leon as a person—he will always do what he can to help those in distress.

It should be noted that Leon keeps some distance from others as far as personal relationships go, and has been intentionally single since the Raccoon City incident. Despite showing interest in Ada Wong and flirting with Ingrid Hannigan, he does not pursue any close relationships seriously, and focuses most of his time running from one mission to the next. Raccoon City left a deep impact on him, and he repeatedly references it during various missions, unable to let go of the trauma of his past. Despite being a competent agent, Leon does suffer from some survivor's guilt.

But, with all this in mind, Leon is a steadfast and dependable government operative willing to work with his team. He acts reserved, but he actually cares very deeply for people. He trusts his comrades to hold their own and depends on them—particularly those who have experienced the same trials he has. He also still has some of the boyish idealism he had as a rookie cop on his first day. He wants to believe in the best of other people, and his actions are based on that belief. This tends to turn out to be a weakness, as he finds himself surprised by betrayal (such as in the case of his partner, Jack Krauser) or caught by the pivotal decision of how to react with a rival (as repeatedly occurs when dealing with Ada Wong, whom he cares for despite being unsure of her allegiance). When it comes to fellow Raccoon City survivors, Leon shows an extra level of respect. Part of his conflict with Ada is their shared history in the Raccoon outbreak. Having both helped her and been helped by her during that disaster, Leon can't bring himself to see Ada Wong as an enemy. Even though she's revealed as a spy working for a questionable hidden employer, Leon lets her escape both at the end of Resident Evil 4's mission and the end of Resident Evil 6. He knows that she might be working for people that want to continue bio-weapons development, but he wants to trust her judgment. He insists on asking her for answers instead of just attacking her, and in Resident Evil 6 actually steps in to defend someone he thinks is her from fellow survivor Chris Redfield, despite having suspicions himself. However, he ultimately has solid judgment, and the safety of innocents always comes before his own heart. He responds to honest natures despite harsh circumstances, befriending the Eastern Slavic rebels after they captured him and becoming attached to strangers he finds likeable. Leon puts people first, and although he can be wary and jaded, he's also a caring individual with a strong drive to help those around him.


BACKGROUND:
September 29, 1998: Raccoon City Outbreak. Leon was a rookie cop, fresh out of the academy and given his first assignment at a small, Midwestern town called Raccoon City. However, having recently broken up with his girlfriend, Leon gets drunk at a party and sleeps off the effects at a motel, arriving to the city a day later than he was scheduled to, and not actually reaching the town until dark. When he finally gets to town, he finds a blockade that appears to be abandoned. Crossing the boundary soon reveals why: as he gets into town, he runs across several reanimated corpses, zombies, which attack him. Leon realizes that the town is literally overrun by the walking dead, and as he fights his way out of danger he runs across a fellow survivor, Claire Redfield, who tells him she is looking for her brother, Chris. The two make their way through the town to the Raccoon City Police Department, hoping for safety and perhaps answers regarding the chaos.

Inside the police station was no better, unfortunately. Leon discovered that the Chief of Police, Brian Irons, had been working to cover up dangerous testing done at the nearby facility owned by the company Umbrella Pharmaceutical, Inc. The tests done by the Umbrella Corporation led to an outbreak of a dangerous mutagenic virus known as the Tyrant virus, or t-virus, which has been the cause of the zombies in the city. Irons, bribed by Umbrella, was covering up their research. When the outbreak occurred, the paranoid man turned on his own police force, scattering their resources and hunting down officers like prey. As a result, nearly everyone in the city has been killed or infected by the t-virus. The situation only got worse as Leon learned that the t-virus was not only infecting victims, but was originally used to create the Tyrant it shared a name with. This creature was created by Umbrella as an experimental Bio-Organic Weapon, or B.O.W., intended for use as an ultimate weapon.

Now searching for a way out of the doomed city, Leon came across another survivor, Ada Wong. Ada also claimed to be looking for someone, and Leon teamed up with her in order to get them both to safety. While the survivors all attempted to escape the zombies and B.O.W.s in the city, Leon and Ada ran across Annette Birkin, an Umbrella researcher. She fired at Ada, and Leon took the bullet intended for her. During the exchange, Annette revealed the truth: Ada was actually a spy sent to retrieve a sample of Umbrella's latest research, the G-virus, or Gene-virus, an even more advanced mutagenic virus intended to create B.O.W.s. Leon was reluctant to believe this at first, but as they continued to look for a way out, Ada was injured while saving Leon's life when they were attacked by a Tyrant. She confessed that what Annette Birkin said was true and passes out. Leon, believing Ada to be dead, left her and continued to look for a way out of Raccoon City with Claire and Sherry Birkin, the daughter of Annette Birkin, who they managed to find hiding from the zombies. As the remaining survivors finally found a way out—a secret railway running under the city—a self-destruct sequence was activated. They managed to use the train and escape just in the nick of time, with the help of Ada Wong who had not actually died from her injuries. She provided them with a rocket launcher to defeat the mutated Tyrant and they left the city with only seconds to spare.

Outside of the city, Claire left to continue her search for Chris, leaving Leon with the young Sherry Birkin. The two were found by the U.S. government, who took custody of Sherry and recruited Leon into becoming a government agent who could help take down the bio-terror threat.

December 1998. While working for the government, Leon received a distress email from Claire Redfield, saying that she was at the prison island of Rockfort and needed help facing another biohazard incident. Leon managed to track down Chris Redfield using his connections and give Claire's coordinates to him.

2002: Operation Javier. Trained as a special agent, Leon was sent on a mission to South America with another seasoned operative, Jack Krauser, to investigate a the drug lord, Javier Hidalgo, reported to have been in contact with Umbrella. Suspecting another case of bio-research, the government sent in the operatives to look into it. What they found was another t-virus outbreak, and learned that Javier was doing experiments using Umbrella's research. While infiltrating the research facility, they met Javier's daughter, Manuela, whom they learned was infected with an advanced strain of a virus known as the Veronica virus, another mutagenic virus which also allows the host to retain their intellectual capacity. With Manuela's help, Leon and Krauser defeated Javier and put an end to his research. Afterward, Manuela was taken into custody by the U.S. government. Krauser was discharged from service after this mission due to an injury he received from it, and later that year Leon received word that his former partner had died in a helicopter accident.

2004: Los Illuminados Mission. The government assigned Leon to Secret Service detail, but the President's daughter, Ashley Graham, was kidnapped during this time, making his first assignment in this position a rescue mission. Leon was sent to the remote reaches of Spain to save her from a cult calling themselves Los Illuminados, or “The Enlightened”. True to his track record, it turned out that the cult was using yet another bio-organic weapon to achieve their goals. This time, Leon had to face townsfolk and mercenaries infected by a parasitic and mind-controlling orgasm called Las Plagas. Similar to a hive-mind, those infected by Plagas parasites were compelled to obey the will of the Control Plaga, or human host infected with a more advanced parasite that let them retain their intelligence and, as the name suggests, control other infected hosts.

Leon fights his way toward the cult's headquarters and Osmund Saddler, the leader of the cult and Control Plaga host in command. On the way there, he met Luis Sera, who was eventually revealed to be a researcher that turned against Saddler once he realized what his work was being used for. Unfortunately, Saddler killed Luis and Leon then lost contact with his government assistance, forcing him to fight alone to rescue Ashley. He was confronted by an embittered but quite living Jack Krauser, who had faked his death and turned traitor after being forcibly relieved of his duties. Leon defeated Krauser and then, finally, Saddler, rescuing Ashley in the end, even though she probably found every booby trap in the entire place. During this mission, Leon was able to obtain a Plaga sample from Luis, but another familiar “dead” face, Ada Wong, reappeared. Although she assisted Leon, she also stole the sample from him at gunpoint, retreating once again on her own agenda. Leon managed to complete his mission, but with a lukewarm victory.

2005: Harvardville Incident. A year after dealing with the Los Illuminados cult, Leon was given charge of the Special Response Team (S.R.T.) in Harvardville. When another t-virus outbreak was released in Harvardville Airport, Leon was sent for his experience. Working with S.R.T. members Angela Miller and Greg Glenn, Leon went in to rescue survivors. He met up with Claire Redfield, who was coincidentally one of those trapped in the airport at the time of the outbreak. They managed to escape, losing Greg in the process, and found that Angela's brother,Curtis, had been infected by the G-virus. Leon managed to stop Curtis and contain the outbreak, in the process discovering that the local pharmaceutical company, WilPharma Corporation, was conducting B.O.W. research just like Umbrella had been, and the former-Umbrella researcher, Frederic Downing, was the cause of the airport outbreak. He intended to use stolen samples previously taken from the Raccoon City labs for black market sale, covering everything up by disguising it as an act of bio-terrorism, but Leon and the others were able to stop him.

2011: Eastern Slav Republic.
Pulled from a vacation, Leon was sent to a small country called the Eastern Slav Republic to investigate rumors of bio-weapon experiments. The ESR was a land suffering civil unrest, and almost immediately after his arrival, Hannigan informed him that all Americans were being evacuated from the country due to violence breaking out. Leon, unsatisfied until he could confirm the reports, disregarded the order to abort his mission and continued covert investigations alone. He met the CIA contact he planned to rendezvous with, finding that the man was badly injured. Soon after, a Licker attacked them both, killing the contact and confirming the use of bio-weapons in the ESR. Seeking more answers, Leon was caught in a trap and knocked unconscious in an explosion. He awoke to find himself captured by a group of Eastern Slavic freedom fighters, who saw Leon as a sign that the American government was sending in soldiers to assist the current regime. They tried to question him, but Leon only gave the group sarcastic responses, wanting answers of his own. During their heated exchange, the civilian harboring the rebels suddenly began to turn, revealing that the government had set a trap of their own in order to attack the rebels in their base. Under sudden threat, Leon ended up fighting Eastern Slavic soldiers alongside the rebel group in order to escape. While fleeing the soldiers with one of the rebels, Leon found out that the group's leader did plan on using Plaga in order to fight the government. Appalled by this, he determined to get rid of the threat before the rebels unleashed a wide-scale infection for the take of their revolution. He found the facility where the Plaga were being produced, discovering that the building was attempting to mass produce bio-weapons. To compound the problem, it turned out that the Eastern Slavic government itself was overseeing the production and merely using the rebels as a scapegoat for their own activities. Leon attacked the BOWs at the facility and chaos ensued. As he started to be outmatched, an American fighter jet intervened, revealing that the government was actually monitoring Leon's activity the entire time, waiting for confirmation of the reports so they could move in with military force. The BOW threat was neutralized and Leon concluded is mission on a bittersweet note, in the wake of unfortunate destruction and secrets revealed on all sides.

2013: Tall Oaks, U.S.A. and Lanshiang, China.
Leon was attending President Adam Benford, his friend, at a seminar at Ivy University when another bio-terrorist attack occurred. Benford was planning on revealing the truth about the outbreak in Raccoon City, finally exposing Umbrella's experiments and the conspiracy that had been denied since the tragedy. Unfortunately, Benford was infected in the outbreak at the university and Leon was forced to kill him. Leon and a Secret Service member, Helena Harper, worked together to escape the city where the infection was quickly spreading. Helena confessed that she might know the source of the attack, saying the outbreak was her fault. Leon demanded answers and went with Helena to uncover the truth. Helena took him to the basement of a local church, where they found a secret laboratory where BOW experiments were being conducted. Helena revealed that she had taken part in the outbreak while being coerced by the National Security Advisor, Derek Simmons. Simmons had been participating in BOW experiments for years and, wanting to maintain his secret, seen Benford's morality as a threat. He staged the outbreak, using Helena as his patsy, in order to assassinate the President. He then blamed Helena and Leon for the attack, using them as his scapegoats. Now aware of the true threat, Leon had Hannigan fake their deaths. The two operatives then went undercover to pursue Simmons and put an end to his experiments.

In Liangshiang, China, Leon and Helena set out to track down Simmons. They were met by yet another disaster with Bio-weapons wreaking havoc throughout the city. It turned out that Simmons was the head of an organization known at The Family, who had been using powerful positions for centuries in order to gain and maintain global influence. They had been conducting experiments such as those uncovered in Tall Oaks in secret as part of their efforts to develop unstoppable weapons for their own use. While pursuing Simmons, Leon and Helena encountered Ada Wong, who aided them in surviving the BOW threats. Leon found a disk left behind by her, containing evidence that Simmons was behind the Tall Oaks attacks and confirming Leon's innocence. After finding and finally stopping Simmons himself, the two operatives were able to reveal the truth about the bio-terrorist attacks--although Ada, as usual, disappeared again before Leon could catch up to her.


OTHER NOTES: He stays pretty healthy and doesn't smoke. But has gum. :D

He's also apparently taken up drinking heavily.