According to a 1998 The Playstation magazine interview with the game's director Hideki Kamiya & writer Noboru Sugimura, they were asked about the chief of police character Brian Irons. Kamiya stated that he was originally going to be a normal police chief. His chubby exterior was still the same, but he would be seen properly wearing his uniform, talked like a normal officer, etc.

Sugimura credited himself as the one who made his deviant personality. Once they changed the police station building from a modern-day one to an old art museum, someone on the development team commented that it would be strange if there were medals just lying around in that place. Then Sugimura said "Well, we'll just have to make the police chief a weirdo then!", and Irons was what he came up with. He then created the character's hidden room, the idea that Chief Irons had been given bribes from Umbrella, and gave him "an insane grin on his face". Those who first saw the idea did not think it was very realistic, but Sugimura replied that "reality depends on persuasion and belief, so as long everything was consistent, it would appear real".

Kamiya stated that he was initially against turning Irons into a weirdo and protested it, but as the game's development progressed, the staff grew to like the idea and began coming up with "ridiculous details" to complement the personality shift. One example he cited are the hallway's torches leading to Irons' hidden room. The person who made it told him, "The Chief uses those to light a fire when he has his rituals!".

After confirming that Brian Irons' name appeared as a signature on the player select screen ID card in the first Resident Evil game, Kamiya revealed that wanted to use an "-ian" sound for both the first name and surname when coming up with the name, and decided that "Brian Irons" worked perfectly. He didn't think it would be anything more than just a lighthearted signature.

Sugimura commented that he didn't know that, and that when Resident Evil 2's development started the police chief was actually named Gordon until someone pointed out he was already given the name Brian Irons and stuck with it to connect it to the first game.