In the process, he also damaged an attache case full of T-virus samples, shattering them and contaminating the sewers with the toxin. As his mental state rapidly degraded, Birkin hunted down the Umbrella agents who had tried to take G away from him, murdering each of them. Birkin was gunned down in his laboratory and as his dying act injected the G-virus into his own body, turning himself into a constantly-mutating abomination. William Birkin, who was planning on betraying the company and selling his creation to the US military. The situation deteriorated rapidly, however, when Umbrella sent in agents to retrieve samples of the G-virus from Dr. Viral run-off left over from the Mansion Incident was seeping into the city's water treatment plant, leading to a number of isolated infections occurring in the city. Unfortunately, Umbrella could not keep the truth from coming out indefinitely. Though Marcus was finally killed and the Umbrella Research Centre and Laboratory were destroyed by the S.T.A.R.S., Umbrella had to take steps to ensure that the public would never become aware of their illegal activities and went about blackmailing and bribing most of Raccoon's city officials in order to disgrace the S.T.A.R.S. Now able to mentally control swarms of infected leeches, he scattered the T-virus inside Umbrella's Arklay Research Centre and Arklay Laboratory facilities, actions which would later lead to the virus spreading into Raccoon City, dooming the town to destruction. The corporation's co-founder James Marcus, having apparently been restored to life through his Queen Leech, had initiated a plan to exact vengeance against Umbrella. Birkin would later go on to discover the G-virus through continuous experimentation on Lisa Trevor, Umbrella's longest-surviving human test subject.ġ998 proved to be a disastrous year for Umbrella. In 1988, Marcus was assassinated on Spencer's order and his research on the T-virus was passed on to William Birkin. With the discovery of this new viral strain, Umbrella's genetic research advanced by leaps and bounds. By 1978, the company's co-founder James Marcus had discovered the T-virus after introducing the Progenitor virus to leeches. This was all a cover, of course, and Umbrella's true work revolved around the research and development of biological weaponry. Over the years, Umbrella quickly expanded across the world, establishing itself as the world's leading pharmaceutical enterprise. Spencer, driven by his misanthropic worldview, became curious how the virus might be used to enhance the human race for the better and built up Umbrella as his means of exploring the possibility of remaking society in his image. During its early years, the company was almost solely dedicated to research on the Progenitor and its potential applications.
Spencer and his associates James Marcus and Edward Ashford following their discovery of the Progenitor virus in Africa. Umbrella was founded in 1968 by Lord Oswell E.