Leon S. Kennedy

Leon Scott Kennedy is a character in Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan), a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Leon was introduced alongside Claire Redfield as one of the two player characters in the video game Resident Evil 2 (1998). The character was initially conceived as a veteran police officer for the prototype of the game but Noboru Sugimura redesigned him as a young rookie. During the events of Resident Evil 2, Leon arrives late for his first day at work in the doomed Raccoon City, and is confronted by a zombie outbreak.

Leon is the protagonist of several Resident Evil games, novelizations, and films, and has appeared in other game franchises, including Project X Zone and Dead by Daylight. He also appears in the computer-generated imagery (CGI)-animated films and in the animated miniseries. In later games, such as Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 4 (2023), his features are based on those of the Romanian model Eduard Badaluta. Several actors have portrayed Leon; Paul Haddad, Paul Mercier, Matthew Mercer, Nick Apostolides, and Toshiyuki Morikawa have provided his voice for video games and animations, while Johann Urb and Avan Jogia have played him in the live-action Resident Evil films.

Video-game publications have described Leon as one of the most-popular and most-iconic video-game characters. Several critics lauded both his personality in Resident Evil 4 (2005) and his redesign in the remakes for further enhancing the character's sex appeal.