21 The Historical Conception of Biohazard in Biohazard/ Resident Evil Robert Mejia State University of New York, Brockport Ryuta Komaki University of Illin o is at Urbana-Champaign T he investment of a particular disease w ith the cultural anxieties and desires of a given population has an effect upon the actual manifestation of the disease in terms of how the dissemination of the "outbreak narrative" promotes or m itigates the stigmatization of "groups, populations, locales, . behaviors, and lifestyles, and ... change economies;' thereby influencing "survival rates and contagion routes:" This is particularly evident in the historical response to AIDS, in which the homophobic discourse that has surrounded the transmission of the disease has not only configured the affliction as punishment for homosexual lifestyles but has also obscured the effect it has had on other populations.' It seem s pertinent, then, that we look to popular histories of disease and contagion if we are to understand how certain populations are marked as w orthy of life and others to be expendable. It is for this reason that we believe the Biohazard IJapanl/Resident Evil (United States) franchise to be an artifact particularly worthy of historical analysis.' This franchise warrants our attention for a variety of reasons: (1) the franchise emerged In the mld-1990s, at the same tim e that the outbreak