Resident Evil, known as Biohazard (バイオハザード Baiohazādo) in Japan, is a survival horror video game based media franchise created by Shinji Mikami and Tokuro Fujiwara and owned by the video game company Capcom. The franchise focuses around a series of survival horror video games, but has since branched out into comic books, novels, and novelizations, sound dramas, live-action films, animated sequels to the games, and a variety of associated merchandise, such as action figures. The series' overarching plot focuses on multiple characters, and their roles in recurring outbreaks of zombies and other monsters, initially due to the release of the T-virus, but still more biological weapons over time, created mainly by the fictional Umbrella Corporation and various other organizations in later games.