The Dead Shall Rise (Dead Rising 4 Theory)

Written by DicloniusGames

​The “Dead Rising” series started out with humble beginnings and got better along the way. Starting in 2006, Capcom set the way to create an open-world zombie game and they succeeded and with every sequel, they would improve upon their foundation.
 
Dead Rising 4, while improving upon things, also took the series in an entirely new direction but back to a familiar setting. In Dead Rising 4, you played returning protagonist Frank West, the hero of the first outbreak in Willamette. The one major thing gamers lashed out at Capcom for, outside of a lot of other things, is the lack of an ending. You’re given this cliffhanger ending of sorts where as Frank, Vick and Brad escape the city, Frank lets go of the helicopter he’s trying to hold onto and we’re supposed to assume he sacrificed himself for the greater good of the story he spent the entire game gathering.
 
In comes the DLC “Frank Rising” where for only $10 when it was released on XBOX One (not including the Frank’s Big Package edition released on PS4 because the DLC came with that edition), you could get the true ending of the game. In any other major Dead Rising game, if you met certain requirements, you got said ending and went into “overtime mode” and got to play the true ending of said DR game. “Frank Rising” is that “S” ending per se and at the time, gamers hated it because they felt they shouldn’t have had to pay for the true ending of Dead Rising 4.
 
While I’m in agreeance with the majority, I think “Frank Rising” and the original game are somehow connected outside of just having Frank West as the main character and the location being Willamette. I think the DLC and the “S” ending of the original Dead Rising are connected and I hope to explain how. To start explaining this theory, we’ve got to go back to the ending of Dead Rising. At the end of 72-Hour Mode of Dead Rising, Frank is seemingly bitten by a zombie as Isabela Keyes saves him. Frank is then sent on a fetch quest that spans an in-game day where you’re sent to gather items to create an antidote to zombification. Isabela tells you the effects of it will wear off and that zombification will indeed happen but the time it takes for it to happen differs upon a person’s physiological state. Could it be that 15 years later, the effects of zombification kick in just as Frank returns to the site of the original outbreak? Well let’s look at some more possible evidence that possibly links the two together.
 
At the end of the game, you finally take down the “King of Zombies” Lance Corporal Calder and sacrifice himself to the zombie horde to ensure the story gets out and at 52 years old, 15-16 years is more than enough time for the zombification process to kick in and take over as he’s reportedly 36 in the first game. If the effects of the vaccine he and Isabela created did wear off after the first game, why did it take so long for zombification to kick in and why in all places did it happen in Willamette? It could just be a hyper coincidence or could it be Frank sacrificing himself to the zombie horde to save his friends was the kick start needed along with said horde feasting on him like Christmas dinner enough to turn Frank thus postulating this theory with the events of the DLC and the events of overtime mode of the first game?
           
I don’t know if we’ll ever truly know whether or not this is true but in my opinion, it’s at least a high possibility that these two events are deeply connected to one another and that Frank West was somehow destined to become a zombie himself given the events of the first game. That’s just my opinion and surely open to criticism.