Ok, so I dunno how I did it but I managed to completely make the first Barry "Chris's blood" cutscene completely skip. I ran to the right side of the table as soon as I could take control, then was messing with my controls for a second and then when I ran to the camera angle change, Barry was just hanging out next to the door on the right. Completely bypassing the cutscene. Once I did first zombie cutscene and exited then he did the regular "let me take care of this" cutscene. Has anyone else seen this?

You mean the skip that is used in Major Glitches for PSX emu? IDK for PC.

If you pause at a certain time, you can get Barry to freeze in place and never make it to the blood pool. We do the same thing in PC as well. It's tricky to get the timing right, but yea, as Symm said, this is part of the major glitches run (though iirc, not strictly necessary to pull off). Check out some of those runs!

The idea behind serum skip (Jill), rope skip (Jill), radio skip (Chris) are exactly the same: pausing at just the right time.

This is a known glitch called Barry Skip. If you open the menu or the options menu on a particular frame, Barry will stand in place and not walk to the proper position to trigger the cutscene. Since RE1's cutscenes are based on characters being at certain coordinates, the scene can not play. You said he was positioned near the door on the right. This is another frame where the glitch can occur but is not the frame we usually use. I accidentally stumbled upon this later frame for the glitch about 4 years ago and still have a recording of it to this day. Usually, he will be standing next to the clock. Like deagle said, it is used for glitched runs. It used to not be necessary for optimal times for glitched but I've recently changed the glitched route for PC to where the skip is necessary for optimal times on PC. The theory is, opening the menu or options menu on these 2 frames stops Barry from spawning and stops him in place. You would normally be able to beat Barry to the blood but he is clearly respawned ahead to ensure he gets there first. We believe he is respawned at 2 different point off screen and if these respawns are interrupted by a menu, it breaks the respawning process.

Also up for testing whether this is even worth it, due to Richard being on a timer.

The new route has us doing Richard glitch, then going down stairs and coming back up the stairs near chemical pick up. I used to wait almost 30 seconds after doing gas room to re-enter Richard so this is a better use of that time, then you can go straight to crow room from the hall after Yawn. It's already been roughly tested and clearly saves time but still not sure if Barry skip is necessary to save that time with this route.