Baker family
The Baker family consists of fictional characters featured in Capcom's Resident Evil video game series. First appearing in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, its main family members are a nuclear family consisting of married couple Jack and Marguerite and their two adult children, Lucas and Zoe. Inspired by characters from seminal films in horror cinema such as The Shining, The Evil Dead, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the Bakers reside within their bayou estate in the fictional parish of Dulvey, Louisiana in the United States. Within the game's narrative, they are under the influence of Eveline, a biologically engineered being who "adopted" herself into the Baker family, granting the family superhuman powers at the expense of twisting most of them into insane and murderous individuals prior to the events of Resident Evil 7, with the exception of Zoe who retains a benevolent personality. The 2017 Resident Evil 7: End of Zoe DLC features Joe Baker, a member from the extended family who is unaffected by Eveline, as its protagonist.
The Baker family has had a mostly positive reception from video game publications. Most commentators praised members of the Baker family as effective antagonists in Resident Evil 7, as well as the tragic backstory behind the descent of its members into villainous roles.
Concept and creation
Producer Jun Takeuchi made the decision to delay script writing during the development of Resident Evil: Biohazard to give the art design team more freedom to explore character designs, which resulted in the Baker family undergoing a variety of design changes. Numerous concept art sketches of the Bakers were produced in search for an image of the "terrifying family". The Bakers originally had a pet dog named Diane which would appear at the dinner table cutscene, but was ultimately cut from the game. Game director Kōshi Nakanishi noted that Takeuchi wanted to bring horror back to the forefront for Resident Evil 7, with The Evil Dead as its motif for a "compact but deep" experience; Takeuchi cited its intimate atmosphere set in a singular location, as well as its small cast of characters as inspirations for the game.According to writer Morimasa Sato, Jack's namesake, as well as some of his mannerisms and personality, were inspired by actor Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Tasked with explaining the character and giving him a role in the game, Sato developed Jack as a stalking antagonist with regenerative abilities, which enables him to repeatedly return and attack the player. A decision was made late in the game's development to create a duality with Jack as both a person and a creature; Takeuchi and Nakanishi ordered a rewrite of the dinner cutscene as they perceived the depicted behavior of Jack and his wife Marguerite to be overly normal.
The developers designed each Baker antagonist around a horror subgenre theme: Jack is an archetypal slasher film killer; Marguerite conveys body horror through her mutated body and power over insects; and Lucas, who does not kill his victims outright but physically or psychologically tortures them through dangerous and potentially fatal puzzles, represents psychological horror as depicted in the Saw film franchise.
The Baker family
The Bakers are introduced in Resident Evil 7 as a close-knit family of grimy and grotesque individuals, with their personalities characterized as crude amalgamations of various backcountry stereotypes, ranging from a "hillbilly father and verbally abusive mother to a comatose grandmother and a son who is as deranged as The Joker". With the exception of Lucas and slight dysfunction in the family, the Bakers were previously compassionate towards one another and strangers in need before Eveline's infection turned most of them into violently sadistic psychopaths with a taste for human flesh.Within the game, the Bakers were thought to have vanished from the local community in Dulvey, Louisiana and their estate falls into a derelict state of disrepair. This eventually leading to rumors of paranormal activity which prompted an investigation of the estate from media journalist Peter Walken and his crewmates Clancy Jarvis and Andre Stickland, where they fall victim to the Bakers. The family is noted for their enthusiasm for American football, with bobblehead figurines of football players littering the estate's premises. Their in-game roles bear some similarities to Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 as they have a tendency to make recurring and oft-times unexpected appearances to confront Ethan Winters, the main protagonist, throughout its narrative. As a result of the presence of a biologically engineered mold infecting their bodies, the villainous members of the Baker family gradually mutate into monstrous creatures when they are severely damaged.
Post-launch story-based DLC for Resident Evil 7 further explore the backstories and exploits of individual members of the Baker family. The "Bedroom scenario" in the Banned Footage Vol. 1 DLC follows Clancy's attempts to escape from the bedroom he is confined in and evade Marguerite. The "21" scenario from Banned Footage Vol. 2 sees Clancy being forced to play a sadistic card game orchestrated by Lucas, while Daughters explores the Bakers' past prior to their encounter with Eveline and her caretaker Mia Winters which leads to the events of the base game. Lucas serves as the main antagonist of Not A Hero, while Jack's brother Joe Baker appears in End of Zoe to rescue his niece Zoe Baker, the only member of the nuclear family mentally unaffected by Eveline.
Jack Baker
Jack Baker is one of the primary antagonists of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Jack is a middle-aged man who is the head of the Baker family, the husband of Marguerite, and the father of Lucas and Zoe. After Ethan manages to "kill" Mia, Jack knocks him out, and brings him to a macabre dinner with the rest of the Baker family. He serves as a recurring threat throughout the game, as he relentlessly pursues Ethan using a variety of weapons and is able to survive grievous bodily harm, even after being set ablaze when a car bursts into flames inside a garage after brutally murdering a policeman who had come across Ethan. To prove to Ethan he is no longer a normal human being, he also takes his gun and seemingly dies after blowing his own head off, only to rise again and continue pursuing Ethan. Later on, Ethan has a chainsaw duel with Jack, which culminates with Jack's upper torso being obliterated, only for Jack to yet again return, albeit as a large grotesque creature with eyes on his legs, whom Ethan defeats by injecting Jack with a serum meant to neutralize Eveline's powers and influence in others, which calcifies him in the process. Jack later appears to Ethan in a dream like sequence as a seemingly normal man, with Ethan acknowledging his victimhood by Eveline along with the rest of the Bakers.Jack returns as a major enemy in End of Zoe which is a downloadable content chapter that takes place after the main game. His poisoned cells mutating out of control, Jack reconstituted as a decayed but near invincible creature nicknamed the "Swamp Man" acting on his own accord following Eveline's death. He stalks after Zoe and abducts her from his estranged brother Joe Baker who tries to cure her, with Joe eventually killing Jack for good and completely obliterating his upper body.
Jack appears as a playable character in the 2021 multiplayer game Resident Evil RE: Verse, which is a companion game to Resident Evil Village.
Marguerite Baker
Marguerite Baker is the wife of Jack and the mother of Lucas and Zoe. Whilst her husband and son's powers are limited to regeneration and super-strength, Marguerite possesses the ability to control insects, to the point that multiple of them start to reside within her body. She was first shown in various footage that was unveiled during 2016, including a clip featuring the scene where her family have the main protagonist Ethan Winters seated at the dinner table. Marguerite was more prominently featured in the Lantern demo, following Mia, Ethan's wife. Like her other family members, she spouts a lot of profanity. Marguerite is depicted as preoccupied with preparing meals for her family and guests, although the food she serves under the influence of Eveline has an unappetizing appearance and of questionable hygiene or origin.During the story, she is seen pursuing Mia as she attempts to record information for Ethan's benefit. When Ethan first encounters her, she summons swarms of oversized insects to attack Ethan. Ethan would face Marguerite one more time at a nearby greenhouse, where she mutates and develops elongated, spindly limbs, a mutated insect hive within her lower torso, and behavior akin to an insect queen. Despite this, Ethan is ultimately able to kill her, and she ends up calcifying and dying.