These are loaded when you access the cards at the card viewer in the Morgue.

Note that these images are not actually a 512x512 image, but rather 4 256x256 images stitched together.

The game wouldn't load any higher resolution textures without patching the game in some way as there's only so much space allocated for them, and increasing the resolution would break it for sure.

Dolphin texture replacement is most likely the only method you're going to be able to do.

I don't think so - the Red Ring at the end of the game is a reference to Red Ring Rico, to show you her fate after you spend the entire game chasing her through Ragol. I'd argue V2 was never planned originally, it just came out due to the popularity later on.

Got myself a really nice Madam's Umbrella for my FOmarl: 40% native!

But the real find today is that I managed to get myself a Cell of MAG 502 while I was playing randomly, my HUcast mag is not high enough yet but gonna slap that bad boy onto it as soon as I can.