What if Ashley in Resident Evil 4 was a mouse?no longer curious

You read that right. People on Twitter and elsewhere are turning Resident Evil 4 remake Ashley into a mouse. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I know I absolutely can’t stop thinking about it.

It started with an innocent message on Slack from Tom Orry asking if Ashley being portrayed as a mouse was “a thing”, leading me to scouring illustration after illustration of Ashley the mouse. The deeper I went, the more confused I found myself.

What did I miss? Is there some big mouse-and-cheese joke in the Resident Evil 4 remake that I missed? I know Bitores Mendez is “big cheese,” but what does Ashley – as a mouse – have to do with that?

Well, nothing. Trends start with Twitter users, morahe asked simply, “What if you started Resident Evil 4 Remake and Ashley was just a little mouse? What would you do?”

The question is followed by a drawing of Ashley, drawn as a mouse, craving cheese, and a merchant appears, selling cheese. From there, the floodgates open and the cheese puns keep coming. We even got to see a mouse-sized Ashley wielding a grenade launcher, which was pretty darn cool, to be honest.

I’d really like to figure out why Ashley is portrayed as the mouse of all animals, or if it’s just an endless rendition of, “Would you still love me if I were a worm?” kind of from a while back. Alas, I did find some answers in the mess on ResetEra by user Fat4all.

Remember how Ashley got ears in 2005’s Resident Evil 4? Big ears, that one. These are often topics of conversation that end up being a unique part of Ashley as a character. In Resident Evil 4 Remake, Ashley gets a new haircut; one covering her ears.

Many fans actually feel bad about it. Ashley’s big ears are really cute. Alas, Capcom took them away. Upon discovery, a bunch of memes popped up around Ashley’s ears, which is what encouraged Mora to draw Ashley as a mouse.

“I saw a joke drawing depicting Ashley with big ears and that made me think,” Mora shared in a follow-up tweet to their illustration.

Needless to say, Mora’s playful drawings started a real trend, and there are now tons of illustrations – and even some animations – of Ashley Graham as a lovable mouse.

Admittedly, the Resident Evil community is committed to the cause, and “what if Ashley from RE4 was just a little mouse?” will haunt me for the next few days. Either way, I have to honestly commend these artists for doing what they do best, which is having fun while sharing some really good, fun art.

That’s not all. Someone also painted Ada Wong as a bat. In the words of Twitter user Spiral God King, “It’s just turning into Resident Evil, but now everyone is an Animal Crossing character except Leon.”