James Marcus

Dr. James Marcus was, alongside Lord Ozwell E. Spencer and Edward Ashford, one of the three discoverers of the Progenitor Virus. Unlike his profit-hungry colleagues, Spencer in particular, Marcus cared only for his research with Progenitor. He was an introvert, detesting the company of most other people, developing an unhealthy emotional attachment to leeches which he used for his work.

When Spencer asked him to become the director of Umbrella's training facility in the Arklay Mountains, Marcus agreed only so that he could have privacy there, in which to conduct his experiments. He mostly neglected his duties, pawning them off on his assistant, although at the urging of Spencer, Marcus tutored Albert Wesker and William Birkin. He had his assistant play them against one another to develop a rivalry between the two, apparently under the mindset that students functioned best when in competition.

It was during his time as the facility director that Marcus succeeded in combining the Progenitor Virus with the DNA of a leech, creating what he dubbed the Tyrant Virus. He initially held off on announcing the virus' existence, but after discovering evidence that someone had tried to break into his private lab, he decided to announce the T-Virus' creation at his next meeting with Spencer and the board of directors. Spencer, seeing the T-Virus only as a potential cash cow, persuaded Wesker and Birkin to betray their mentor. The two young researchers murdered Marcus and stole all of his data on the T-Virus, which they then gave to Spencer.