Nick Apostolides says Capcom recorded but removed a Leon Kennedy spider-fight quip from Resident Evil Requiem, revealing how tightly Leon’s tone is managed.
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A recorded joke that never survived the cut
Leon Kennedy voice actor Nick Apostolides says Capcom removed what would have been his favorite line from Resident Evil Requiem, a small deleted gag that has turned into a revealing temperature check on how tightly the studio manages Leon’s tone.
According to My Nintendo News, citing GamesRadar+, Apostolides said the unused line was recorded for a spider fight in Resident Evil Requiem. In the version quoted by My Nintendo News, the actor recalled wanting Leon to say, “You know, you’ve been a real itsy-bitsy pain in my ass.” Apostolides reportedly described it as the line that “would have been my favorite” if Capcom had used it.
VGTimes also reported on the same deleted line and said Apostolides described it as fully recorded before Capcom cut it from the final version. That is the concrete news: a Resident Evil voice actor says a Leon one-liner existed in the booth, but not in the shipped game. Capcom has not provided a statement in the supplied source material explaining why the line was removed.
The exact wording is already part of the story
The most useful detail here is also the messiest one: the line is not quoted consistently across the supplied reports. My Nintendo News, drawing from GamesRadar+, gives the more elaborate spider pun: “You know, you’ve been a real itsy-bitsy pain in my ass.” VGTimes reports a shorter version: “You know, you were a giant pain in the ass.”
VGTimes also identifies the encounter as a fight with the Titan Spinner, described there as a massive spider, while My Nintendo News refers more generally to “the spider.” Both accounts agree on the larger point that Apostolides says the line was recorded, that it was intended for a spider fight, and that Capcom did not use it.
That discrepancy matters because this is a story about tone. The “itsy-bitsy” version is a clearer joke, leaning into nursery-rhyme wordplay and Leon’s history of dry monster banter. The “giant pain” version is blunter, closer to a conventional combat bark. Without the full interview transcript in the provided material, the safest reading is that the reports are aligned on the deletion but not perfectly aligned on the exact quote.
Leon’s voice has always carried pressure and release
Leon Kennedy sits in a strange pocket of Resident Evil’s identity: he is often surrounded by rot, parasite horror, body mutations, and resource anxiety, yet his best-known persona can survive a bad joke at the edge of a boss arena. That balance is fragile. A line that lands in one Resident Evil game can feel like pressure relief. A line that lands in the wrong moment can puncture the dread Capcom spent hours building.
Public character listings such as Wikipedia identify Leon as a Capcom-created Resident Evil character who first appeared as one of the two player characters in Resident Evil 2 in 1998, arriving in Raccoon City as a young newly recruited officer during the outbreak. The same listing credits Nick Apostolides as Leon’s English voice in the Resident Evil 2 remake, Resident Evil 4 remake, Infinite Darkness, and Requiem, and also lists him for motion capture on several Leon appearances.
That continuity is important. Apostolides is not a detached observer making a random joke after the fact. The supplied sources frame him as the performer currently associated with Leon across major modern appearances. When a Resident Evil voice actor says a line was recorded and cut, it gives players a glimpse of the editing stage where performance, localization, combat pacing, and franchise memory all get filtered before a line reaches the player.
Capcom’s edit points to a carefully managed Leon
There is no sourced explanation here from Capcom, so any reason for the cut remains interpretation. Still, the decision itself fits a pattern players can recognize in modern Resident Evil: Capcom often lets Leon be wry, but it also has to keep the room cold enough for survival horror to work. The spider fight, based on the reports, was likely a moment of combat stress. A joke there has to compete with enemy animation, audio cues, weapon pressure, and the player’s own panic over ammunition and healing resources.
From a horror design perspective, quips are never neutral. A line can give the player confidence, signaling that Leon has control of the situation. It can also undercut the threat if the monster suddenly feels like a setup for a punchline. In a series where enemy design often depends on disgust, pursuit, and uncertainty, one extra joke can change the temperature of the encounter.
That does not make the cut line bad. Apostolides clearly liked it, and the “itsy-bitsy” wording reported by My Nintendo News sounds built for the kind of grimy absurdity Resident Evil can sometimes carry. The revealing part is that Capcom apparently chose restraint. For Capcom Leon Kennedy, especially in a modern entry, the question is not whether Leon can joke. It is when the joke sharpens the scene and when it lets too much air out of the room.
Fans treated the missing line like lost loot
The reaction reported by the sources suggests the absence became part of the entertainment. GamesRadar+ framed the deletion around fans feeling Capcom had “robbed” them, and VGTimes reported that many fans on X used that language in the comments after the reveal. VGTimes also said some fans suggested modding the line back into the game.
That response is easy to understand. Leon’s one-liners have become part of how players measure his personality. A cut Resident Evil line is not the same as a missing weapon, boss, or mode, but with Leon it can feel unusually visible because the character’s charm often lives in brief, timed vocal reactions. A monster appears, the fight tightens, and Leon says the thing the player might be thinking if they had more nerve and better hair.
There is also a practical limit to the fan reaction. The supplied sources do not say Capcom plans to restore the line through a patch, update, or bonus mode. Fan interest and mod suggestions are reported community responses, not evidence of official plans. If players are hoping to hear the line in the standard version of Resident Evil Requiem, the reports indicate they should not expect it there.
What players can take from the deleted line
The confirmed story is narrow but interesting: Nick Apostolides says he recorded a spider-fight quip for Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil Requiem, he expected it to be a favorite, and Capcom removed it from the final game. The surrounding reports disagree on the exact wording, and Capcom’s reasoning is not included in the available source material.
For players, this is less a buying decision than a behind-the-scenes note about authorship. The line’s removal does not tell us anything sourced about Resident Evil Requiem’s price, current platforms, performance, system requirements, upgrade paths, or future content. None of those practical details appear in the provided sources. It does, however, show how even a single combat bark can become part of the franchise conversation when the character is Leon.
That is the small tension at the center of the report. Apostolides appears to have delivered a line fans now wish they could hear. Capcom apparently decided the final cut was stronger without it. Somewhere between those two facts is the craft of modern Resident Evil: keeping Leon recognizable, letting him breathe, then closing the door before the joke becomes louder than the monster.