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Umbrella Corporation

The Umbrella Corporation was a megacorporation which operated ruthlessly as a major international player in a number of markets including pharmaceuticals, medical hardware, defense, and computers, along with more clandestine operations utilizing genetic engineering and biological weaponry. The company also had a more public face, producing cosmetics and the like. Umbrella's large array of subsidiaries was typical for large-scale corporations, though it was purposely built to cover up illegal activities.

A subsidiary of Umbrella operated as a private militia. This division of the corporation maintained a highly-trained security force capable of rescue, reconnaissance, and para-military operations.

They used a variety of vehicles, including HUMVEEs. Complementing this security force was an air wing, which maintained a fleet of AV-8B Harrier jump jets, UH-60 Blackhawks, C-130 Hercules water-landing capable cargo planes, CH-53 Sea Stallion cargo helicopters for transporting prisoners and Hughes H-6 "Little Bird" attack helicopters. The corporation utilized these resources in order to secure and protect its assets, as well as its high profile employees.

Soon after the opening of its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, Umbrella began developing biological weaponry for militaries across the world as part of a worldwide conspiracy to accumulate deadly viruses directly prohibited by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Umbrella Pharmaceuticals was able to cover this by researching vaccines for the same viruses. Umbrella's other industries, such as the tourism firm, the Paraguas Line Company, earned revenue from transporting passengers across the Atlantic as a front for the transporting viral weapon samples from West Africa, while Umbrella Industries was responsible for the development of anti-B.O.W. weaponry.

Umbrella's true goal was not, in fact, a capitalistic urge for monopolisation of a lucrative industry, but eugenics. This fact was only known to corporate executives, who shared the belief that their principle objective was the funding of the Wesker Project, which was to birth a new race of virally-enhanced and well-educated superhumans who would advance human civilisation for generations to come with Umbrella's founders ruling through them as gods. This project was not realised, with the loss of all but two candidates by 1998 and their later deaths.

The Umbrella Corporation was founded by Lord Oswell E. Spencer, a man descended from the British Royal Family, in the 1960s. Two other people were prominently involved in the conception of Umbrella: James Marcus and Edward Ashford, although it is apparent that Spencer was the driving force behind the formation of the company as Marcus and Ashford were far more interested in the potential uses of the newly-discovered Progenitor Virus. When Ashford died in 1968, Spencer was able to largely sideline Marcus at the Raccoon City facilities while he maintained control over the company for the next thirty years. Spencer would eventually grow distrustful of Marcus, worried that his research would allow the scientist to eventually supplant him as Umbrella's CEO. Lord Spencer arranged for the assassination of Dr. Marcus, a task that was duly carried out by two of Marcus' most brilliant and ambitious assistants, William Birkin and Albert Wesker. Birkin would subsequently take over all of Marcus' research, including the studies on the Progenitor Virus and his achievement in the creation of T.

Ten years later, Marcus was completely restored by the Queen Leech. Marcus would exact his revenge on Spencer and Umbrella by releasing the T-Virus into the Arklay Research Facility's water supply, turning the facility personnel into zombies and leaving the laboratory and mansion in complete chaos, allowing for the team's extremely dangerous research specimens to escape into the surrounding area. Birkin and Wesker used this as a diversion for their own plans to leave Umbrella, taking their research with them. Wesker, having formed Raccoon City's elite S.T.A.R.S. unit two years previously, would develop a plan to lure the team to the Spencer Mansion to obtain battle data from the conflict that would surely follow. Spencer Mansion had been constructed above the actual laboratory to conceal it from negative interests such as the government and local populace, and was now crawling with infected researchers and experiments wandering its halls. Although the Tyrant was deployed, resulting in unforeseen side-effects for Wesker, both the laboratory and the rampaging Tyrant were destroyed by S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team before making its escape back to Raccoon City with a single Bravo Team survivor.
Wesker was forced to go into hiding for a number of months, using his operative Ada Wong to carry out his objectives, including the recovery of Birkin's ultimate creation, the G-Virus. Several months after the Arklay incident, William Birkin finally perfected the viral strain that he'd been toiling to achieve since obtaining Marcus' research so many years earlier, the G-Virus. Birkin planned to use the virus to force the Umbrella Corporation into allowing him onto their executive board, but then changed his plans when he found that selling it directly to the U.S. Government would prove far more profitable. Umbrella deployed its elite U.S.S. team (a para-military black-operations unit created for Umbrella's most clandestine purposes) in a desperate bid to stop Birkin from handing over his ultimate creation. Although Birkin was mortally wounded in the ensuing conflict, and the G-Virus was successfully recovered by Umbrella, he was able to inject the G-Virus into his own body and devastate most of the team before it could make its escape. This event would be indirectly responsible for unleashing the T-Virus on Raccoon City. While the Arklay incident had been relatively isolated and concealed from the public, and Umbrella's control over key government and law enforcement personnel had ensured that any record of what had occurred could be safely swept into obscurity, they were now faced with an entire city infected with the T-Virus and a trail leading directly back to the Umbrella Corporation. This would prove exceedingly difficult, even for Umbrella, to make simply disappear.
Fall of the empire

Umbrella's fortunes failed to improve in the time shortly after the Raccoon City incident. But with a barrage of mysterious witness disappearances and Umbrella-planted witnesses, all blame for the incident was carefully shifted to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government was forced to take extreme measures to ensure the spread of the T-Virus was stopped for good. Mission Code XX was approved for immediate deployment, and Raccoon City was annihilated via an air-to-surface surgical missile strike.

After escaping to the city limits with UBSC member Juan Rodriguez and her fellow Umbrella researcher Linda Washington, Yoko Suzuki's amnesia finally lifted. All of the evil deeds she had witnessed and helped Umbrella keep secret came flooding back. With her newly regained memories, Yoko decided it was time that the world knew the truth, and that doing so would start her down a better path. Linda and Yoko were brought forward as key witnesses to Umbrella's atrocities in the Supreme Court, and all was made known.