A skincare clinic in Ho Chi Minh City has attracted media attention by adopting the symbol of the Umbrella Corporation, a fictional pharmaceutical company in the popular Resident Evil videogame franchise.

When skincare is one’s specialization, associating themselves with an evil corporation that is behind the development of a zombie-creating virus may not be the wisest publicity move.

Intentional or not, Medcare Skin Center, based in District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, was in the spotlight on Monday when its logo came under media scrutiny for its striking resemblance to that of the Umbrella Corporation.

The Umbrella Corporation is a fictional international pharmaceutical company appearing in the universe of Japanese survival-horror video game franchise Resident Evil.

Among the corporation’s clandestine operations is its secret research into zombie creation through the development of a mutagenic ‘T-virus’ that could dramatically alter living and recently-dead organisms.

The corporation’s logo was copied pixel-by-pixel by Medcare Skin Center, which used the sinister brand identity in promotional photos uploaded on its official website.

Local gaming and designing communities were the first to make the revelation, jokingly questioning whether the Umbrella Corporation might have indeed taken on a new identity in Vietnam to continue with their evil experiments.

Global entertainment news outlets such as Kotaku, Geek Culture and Mashable were quick to pick up on the news, underlining the hilarity of the whole ordeal.

An Instagram post by Geek Culture about the Medcare Skin Center

Meanwhile, the newly opened clinic, apparently oblivious to the absurdity of their logo choice, only made a late acknowledgment of the ‘coincidence’ in a Facebook post on Monday.

“Medcare Clinic would like to inform our partners, customers of the company that we are also very surprised about this coincidence,” the skin clinic wrote in its official statement. “The logo design of the Medcare partner unit is made outside of our main expertise. Therefore, we have received feedback from the media and are investigating, internal processing [sic] to have the official information sent to you as soon as possible.”

On Tuesday morning, the skin center published another post, this time offering their sincere apology in light of the ‘urgent situation’.

“We are very sorry the situation has occurred and is working internally to find the best solution quickly,” it wrote in the Facebook statement. “Our team is highly specialized in taking care of skin conditions for our clients and logo design is completely out of our specialty and was consulted and completed for us by a hired third-party.

We understand the urgency of the situation; and is [sic] working to quickly to [sic] provide appropriate answer [sic] to our clients, partners, community and to the movie and game producers and copyright holders of the artwork. We hope for your understanding that the situation is not an intentional infringement of copyright by Medcare Skin Centre.”

As of Tuesday, the clinic has removed all photos containing the Umbrella Corporation logo from its Facebook page, though they can still be found on its official website.

Photos of the Medcare Skin Center in Ho Chi Minh City where the Umbrella Corporation’s logo and color scheme are observable:

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