Headscratchers / Dead Rising 2

As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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• Why do the survivors act like it's your business to rescue them from certain death? "Oh, lookee here. A heavily armed man slaughtering his way through the crowd of zombies about to kill me. Maybe I should requisition $25,000 from him before I decide to be rescued."
  • Greed and desperation is a common theme in the Dead Rising Universe. The survivors that demand money before being rescued are probably either greedy and want money for the sake of money or desperate to buy something as a coping mechanism when they get out of the zombie-infested area.
  • Which answer would suit you best? Either the game developers wanted to throw in a challenge to the player who was undoubtedly getting a little too comfy on the big boosts provided by rescuing survivors; or the survivors losing their minds over the course of the game and one murder away from becoming psychopaths, consumed by their own sadness and inability to let go of consumerism or whatever? Honestly, at the end stretch of the game, some are slightly reasonable (it's not hard to feed a fat-ass something from the diner), but some like the poker players are really fucking annoying.
  • At least with DR2 I could see people doing stuff like that because they don't trust you. Just about everybody thinks Chuck is responsible for the zombie outbreak to begin with, and thus they suspect that you're a nutjob that really just wants to take them off to your murder room, but if you bend over backwards to get them to go with you then they figure you're probably sincere about wanting to help them. With OTR and Frank, you got me there.
• If Zombrex overdoses are deadly, why does the ~60 lb., adolescent Katey take the same dosage as a full-grown, 200 lb. man?
  • Perhaps the dosages are different, but the medicine itself is one-time only anyway? As in, if exposed to light it deteriorates or something. Or perhaps since Frank already took that experimental medicine from the first game, he only needs small dosages.
  • Zombie infection in the Dead Rising series means you're infected with one of the larvae. Zombrex prevents that larvae from developing, and presumably it's the same size and requires the same dosage regardless of the age and size of the person hosting it.
• There's a weird continuity error in Case West. Isabella gets knocked out in a cutscene before you fight Singh. At 02:45 A guard picks up Isabella and hoists her over his shoulder. Her legs/butt are facing forward and her arms/head are behind. At 9:39, after the boss battle, she's still over his shoulder, but her upper body is in front, as if she inverted. Then at 10:31 Then she re-inverts when the guy turns around and carries her off. Why would that be?
  • He keeps turning her around to check the T&A.
    • I would.
• How do you use tape to make a bat with nails in it, a Molotov, or a propane tank with nails in it?
  • The Duct tape is used for a grip on the bat and to secure the nails on the tank. As for the Molotov...
    • Ripping up the Newspaper?
  • Complete speculation and YMMV, but perhaps:
    • Driving the nails through the bat would make it splinter in a few hits, but a more durable sleeve of layered duct tape with nails punched through to slip over the end of the bat would be almost as effective and much more durable.
    • The newspaper isn't a wick but a taped on torch, as the whiskey bottle's neck is too slim and the newspaper would degrade rapidly if soaked anyway, but you still mechanically get a Molotov that works by the incendiary landing in the broken bottle of fuel.
    • The nails of the IED are taped to the outside of the propane tank, similar to the nail bat but presumably with less tape so that any part of the explosion is enough to tear them away.
• Ending S in Dead rising 2 just bugs me. How the hell does TK free himself from the handcuffs and kidnap Stacey and Katey without any other survivor noticing it? Did he just teleport them to the arena?
  • Presumably Sullivan removed the restraints/handcuffs in preparation for his escape from the bunker (as he was increasingly unsettled by Chucks findings) - either because they were both contractors for the company behind the outbreak, or to cause a distraction for Chuck as he attempted to escape. As for the survivors (lacking a leader, as Chuck was absent) - if you were told that you had five minutes to reach the helicopter or be left behind to be firebombed, would doing a headcount be a top priority before hauling ass to the heli? I don't think so.
  • That's probably about right, since it's likely what happened when the bunker is breached a few hours before.
  • still doesn't make sense because even after Sullivan leaves he is still there and only leaves after you come back.
    • TK isn't secured very well. His cuffs are fastened to rungs on a hospital bed. Presumably those could be removed with enough effort if he didn't have people watching him. Doesn't explain how he got them off later, though.
• How come one small bite on her forearm causes the main hero's daughter to need anti zombie injections yet the sheer amount of times you're bitten in the neck and crotch don't do anything?
  • Gameplay and story segregation. It was in the first one too if you got ending B.
  • It's also been said that certain people are immune to the virus, or at least able to resist. But that could be considered an Ass Pull. However, I do think it's silly to always worry over this kind of thing in every game where a character survives otherwise fatal damage unless the plot suddenly demands it's attention.
    • There's a justified Hand Wave in a Dead rising alternate reality site called "Tape it or die". One of the (fictional) founders, a pharmacist, explains that a bite has be deep enough to infect someone. I'm guessing the zombies are just gumming Chuck to death.
    • All that blood when Chuck gets bit is them gumming him to death?
    • Perhaps it's the zombie's own blood coming out of it's throat? Besides, who says Chuck won't need zombrex after all this? Remember, Frank needs zombrex, but it still took to the end of the first game for him to even notice he was infected. That was three days, too.
    • Chuck can take half a clip from a heavy machine gun and get back up. The zombies are lucky their teeth didn't shatter on his mantastic collarbone. (The fact that Chuck looks a lot like Commander Badass is not a coincidence, people.)
    • Pretty sure it's because the canon is that Chuck is a badass who never let any of the zombies bite him.

• It seems funny that so many of the psychopaths and survivors seem to know about Chuck Greene, even though some of them probably didn't have access to (or care to listen to) any news sources, since they were stranded or barricaded in somewhere.
  • A lot of them might be motocross racing fans, but more importantly, Chuck was one of the star competitors on the local taping of "Terror Is Reality." The show is clearly big business, if the large audience and Leon Bell's giant trailer are any indication.
  • Why wouldn't they care to listen to the news in that situation? If you were barricaded in during a disaster, I can think of little I'd want to do more than to listen for rescue efforts.
  • Chuck isn't on the news, he's a hit on the show Terror Is Reality; which has become an alleged hit. It'd be hard not to notice a celebrity(even though Chuck is one in the loosest of terms). While true waiting for rescue efforts would be high priority; you gotta have something else to do or watch to pass the time; as extreme boredom would set in after a while.
    • You're forgetting the fact Chuck has been framed for the Fortune City Outbreak in the first place.

• In Dead Rising 2 why on earth do you need to wait until the right times until giving Katey zombrex? It seems perfectly fine to tell Forsythe to administer it at the right times, or Chuck could at least trust her to take it on time. It just seems odd that Chuck would be like "Gee, I have five doses of Zombrex on me, but it's not safe to just drop it off at the saferoom now, so I'll just carry it with me while fighting thousands of murderous eating machines and crazed survivors!" If the player wants to find three doses and just hide in the saferoom until the military arrives, so be it. Make it an ending.
  • While your first complaint about not being able to just give the zombrex to Stacey is legit, your second complaint about the ending is not. There is actually an ending for that. It's called ending C.
  • Ending C isn't really an ending so much as a fade-to-black screen stating "The military are bastards; The End."
  • After getting ending C on my first playthrough, it really made me put the game down for a while. Even ending F was engaging, but C felt like Capcom just ran out of time and slapped in a clip on ending.
  • It didn't really bother me. It seems abrupt out of context, but when the rest of the cases are completed, it would seem that ending C was sudden due to Chuck's lack of knowledge on just how tied up in conspiracy everything was. Although I do think it would have been more appropriate if it just ended in Chuck getting hauled off to Gitmo or something, rather than everyone getting massacred in a "military failure".
  • Saving Katey has been Chuck's sole motivation for years by this point. While it would have been possibly been prudent for him to stash some Zombrex in the shelter in the event he can't make it back, I can't blame him for insisting on giving the shot himself. He just met Stacey, after all. Ordinarily, he probably wouldn't have left Katey with her at all considering he's being framed by someone and doesn't know who to trust, but it's the least of the bad options on his plate.
  • Zombrex is like any other "twice a day" or "once a day" medication. You have to take it at a specific time (as I'm no medical professional, I can't exactly explain why). As for asking somebody else to do it; Chuck's seen what some survivors will do and may be afraid of them overpowering Forsythe for the magical medicine (especially since one of the survivors requires a dosage himself). It really boils down to the question: "If you hold the medicine needed by many to save your daughter's life, would you trust anybody else in the situation with the medicine to give it to her?" Honestly, I'd quicker trust a crackhead with my car before any of those nutters with my daughter's zombrex.
    • Is trusting them with your daughter's zombrex really all that different than trusting them with her general safety? One way or another Chuck is trusting his child with traumatized strangers, and if they were intent on hurting her there would be easier ways to do it than mismanaging her medicine. At the very least Chuck should entrust someone with zombrex in the eventuality that he is killed.
    • Yes. Yes it is. Most of them don't have a reason to hurt Katey. Until you introduce Zombrex and other survivors who need it into the equation that it becomes much grayer. What's to stop one of them killing her for the Zombrex?
    • Chuck wouldn't be entrusting the Zombrex to infected survivors. He'd be entrusting it to Stacey or Raymond, people he's already entrusting with the life of his daughter and who he demands trust from in light of the false accusations made against him. And if the infected survivors wanted to target them, then why them more than Chuck? Yes, Chuck would put up a better fight than Stacey, but then what? They're trapped in a bunker with blood on their hands and a fresh 24-hour countdown until they need the next dosage that isn't coming. The real reason Chuck doesn't get someone else to administer the Zombrex is because the game uses it as an excuse to get Chuck in the bunker and move the plot forward.

• Hello, this is a question about one of the final bosses and his motivations. Once Sullivan explains Phenotran's plan to you at the end of the game, so many of their previous actions become contradictory and confusing. If Sullivan's goal was to kill all the survivors in the shelter, why did he let any inside in the first place? All he had to do was head there beforehand and seal the doors. The remainder would have eventually been killed by the zombies or in the firebombing. If Phenotran's sole motive was money, why were they upset that TK was trying to rob the vaults? Why wouldn't they help him? The firebombing would cover your tracks regardless. If the green gas encourages the growth of the queens they need, why not use it on the TIR zombies and just harvest them? If Chuck and Stacey were their fall guys, why didn't Sullivan just shoot them during the many opportunities he had? It's not like anyone would have questioned his motives considering that Chuck was now considered worse than Osama bin Laden.
  • 1. He had to allow survivors in because he needed the military to know that there were survivors to attempt a rescue. 2. Sullivan was trying to downplay his involvement, just in case somebody did manage to get in, those survivors would probably kill him because he was a bastard in not letting him in. 3. Just because Fortune City is firebombed, it doesn't mean that there won't be any debris. We aren't talking about a nuclear option here. There would be signs that SOMEBODY with a good portion of hardware managed to rob all of the casino's vaults. And Phenotrans wasn't so upset that TK was trying to steal the money, so much as he would have raised a lot of eyebrows, especially considering the original plan was for TK and his crew to make a "miraculous escape" from the outbreak. 4. TIR does NOT have a large supply of zombies. I believe that Tape It Or Die states that they have to get the zombies from outside sources, which wouldn't be enough. Contrast to infecting Fortune City, where there was approximately 77,000 people in town for the show. You do the math. 5. Sullivan didn't shoot Chuck because he still needed to keep up his appearance of the Bunker Guard, so he allowed Chuck to go out and get more survivors.
    • 1. As long as he's in the bunker, there's a survivor. Also, the bunker doesn't seem to have any means of contact with the outside world, so the military would have to physically come in to the city to check it out. Even if it does have a long range radio, Sullivan can claim there are survivors inside when there aren't. Allowing survivors in just increases the chance that they'll bring the infection in with them or that they'll figure out what's actually going on. Which is what happens. 2. How would they have gotten in? All he had to do at the beginning was re-open the outer doors while all the humans were waiting in the little airlock thing. They would have been trapped and quickly slaughtered. 3. There were packs of looters mere hours after the outbreak and Phenotrans already had two fall guys, Chuck and CURE. Blame it on them. 4. That makes sense. 5. But he didn't shoot Chuck after he had blown his cover by murdering Rebecca either. He just ran away.
    • Because Sullivan was not a black and white villain, and part of him really believed he was working for the greater good, as shown by his rationalizations when confronted on the Yucatan roof. If people can be saved without it throwing a wrench into any of his plans, he seems affable enough to let it happen; he wasn't a Machiavellian mastermind with cunning and cruelty, he was a man with a sense of duty that probably figured TK had the bases covered enough that Chuck was the only civilian that would have to be sacrificed once the bulk of the zombies were created for harvest.
    • The Queen harvest was only half of Phenotrans' plan though: The other half was to lure the Army into a bloodbath, forcing them to firebomb Fortune City, in order to create a panic that would drive up Phenotrans' profits. The civilians in the shelter were never intended to survive. In a way, Sullivan is even more callous in that he stays in the shelter the entire time, hanging around with people he intends to abandon to die in the fire.
    • It's really not a bad plan overall. Sullivan is in place during "Terror is Reality" with TK on the payroll. We can comfortably assume that Sullivan's the one who stole Chuck's racing suit and planted the bomb from the security tape, since they're about the same size in the final boss fight. In the confusion after the zombies escape, Sullivan trades up for a Fortune City security uniform, assassinates the security personnel who survived the initial outbreak, and gets to the bunker. He can't turn the handful of survivors away because it'd break his cover (or worse, jeopardize his own safety when they break into the bunker with a truck or something), so he settles in to wait out the four days until rescue. Snag #1 is Rebecca still being in Fortune City; snag #2 is Chuck making it to the bunker alive; snag #3 is Chuck having enough balls to leave the bunker; and snag #4 is TK bringing in a bunch of outside help to rob the casinos. Even then, all Sullivan has to do is wait out the clock, and doing anything other than helping Chuck in the least helpful way possible would also jeopardize his cover. He sits back and plays the role of the slightly cowardly, by-the-book security guard to the hilt, right up until it starts to look like Chuck and Rebecca will actually get close to what's going on. At that point, Sullivan quietly switches into damage control mode; he ensures he spends a lot of time alone with TK, then opens the bunker's doors and frees TK during the confusion. That backfires again when TK gets bit, but even then, Sullivan just has to wait it out. His plan at that point is either to hitch a ride out with the survivors and quietly disappear or to call for a personal evac when the military rescue fails, but Chuck surviving his run into the Phenotrans bunker forces Sullivan to show his hand.
    • This also carries with it a subtle bit of fridge brilliance; I had always gotten the impression that Sullivan really was a reservist who was retired ex-military gone merc for Phenotrans, but the way he kept saying "standard operating procedure" always struck me as a little awkward, which was accentuated when Stacey called him on it and threw the over-used words back at him... unless you consider that he replaced the guard in the bunker and is simply working off of the military's known script. He's not really confident in understanding the methods in place as an outsider to the military organization as much as simply knowing what they are, so he keeps throwing the words out as reinforcement of something he can't justify beyond "this is what they do".

• Okay, the "security footage" that supposedly proves Chuck was behind it is a low-quality video of someone in his full-coverage game suit, including helmet, seen only from behind. It could be three penguins standing on each other's shoulders for all we can tell. Yet everyone seems to take it as proof positive. Yes, she did mention a reliable source claimed it was him... but seriously, a video like that, and seemingly no-one even considered it could be someone else in the video?
  • Are you suggesting the The Penguins of Madagascar are behind this nefarity?
    • Kowalski being involved would certainly explain why there are already combined items scattered throughout the casinos.
  • The fact it's low quality makes matters worse. I mean, if Rebecca said it was Leon Bell there'd be no difference, because you can't really tell out the color.
    • Actually, on a black and white security camera, the color yellow probably would show up as a lighter shade than, say, green or blue, which further suggests that it's Chuck. It still doesn't conclusively prove anything, but it is possible to sort of guess what the color is.
  • The frame has multiple steps. Chuck's a friendless drifter, his young daughter has an extremely expensive habit, he's a public figure, he's been to a CURE meeting, he's right there at the show, and he's trapped in Fortune City with no way to defend himself against the media allegations. It's not just that the guy planting the charge is wearing his TiR uniform; it's that plus everything else about Chuck that makes it sound plausible enough for the media to run with. Rebecca's also got a wide and obvious sensationalist streak that's made obvious within seconds of her introduction, so she immediately runs with a juicy anonymous tip.
• "Thanks for saving me from certain death at the hands of Zombies, Mr. Green. I own the town pawnshop. I can sell you things. You need to get some Zombrex? Sure, that'll be an exorbitant amount. Folks gotta make a living, after all, even though I'm gonna be picked up by the military in a few hours and my stock of it will be confiscated for government treatment. You're rebuilding a broken bike? Well, since you saved me, I'll tell you where you can find some parts...if you'll pay me for the hints!" Fuck you Dick. Fuck you.
  • ...Given what other looters do as well as what other psychopaths and survivors do; this is where you get angry at?
• It always bothered me: what caused the Still Creek outbreak in Case Zero?
  • When you confront Sullivan on the roof, he admits Phenotrans caused the Las Vegas outbreak. Still Creek was overrun by infectees escaping Vegas and presumably turning when stopped at the checkpoint.
    • Actually, The Official Comic reveals that Phenotrans was directly responsible for that one too, as Singh and his Mooks passed through the town on the way to Vegas, and unleashed a swarm of Queens (the super-wasps transmitting the zombie virus) on the town as well.
• Why does TK knock you out to strip you of weapons before his boss fight, and then leave power drills and lead pipes scattered around the arena?
  • He's too lazy to clean all that stuff up.
  • If you're leveled enough Chuck can beat him with just his fists anyway. Though it's not easy.
• So according to Case West, ending A is canon? But that doesn't explain where Katey and Stacey are... one would think that'd be a higher priority then following around some reporter guy.
  • Well for one that "reporter guy" is Frank West, who is important enough to have a plot based on him. As for Katey and Stacey, presumably they're with the rest of the survivors being detained by the military or some sort.
• Who exactly said "What's this? We have a treatment for a 100% lethal, very infectious, and very mobile disease? Let's sell it for as much as we can!" Granted, the U.S. health care system is screwed up, but it's not that screwed up- there's no way that a universally lethal disease would be treated that way- nearly everything possible would be done to eradicate it, and that includes helping the victims for the rest of their lives if need be so that they don't resort to desperate measures or hide and become another vector. Even AIDS has a hell of a lot of options available to get the more expensive treatments, the better to retard its spread and reduce the infectiousness of the victims. Some pharmaceutical company going "oh goody, profits!" is not going to trump decades of practice and procedures and all the other steps specifically geared towards not letting diseases spread.
  • Well, the outbreaks themselves aren't that big, so presumably the military takes out the zombies quickly. Also they do put out a "cure" of sorts in the form of Zombrex. If the outbreaks were larger and more often then the cure might be used more, but since they're smaller they can get more profit from the Zombrex.
    • (Different troper) Not that big? They took out Las Vegas, NV (which has well over a million people, plus thousands of tourists), as well as Fortune City (72000+ people), to the point where both cities had to be firebombed. That's a pretty big outbreak.
    • ~1,072,000 out of a continental population of 300,000,000. Tragic, but still small.
    • More importantly, 99.99% of people who get bitten are going to get mauled and turn in seconds. The only people who are even eligible to take Zombrex is miniscule, and many will be front line responders such as the military (they are most likely to get nicked but still get away, turning slowly, giving time to make the medicine). The army has a near-infinite budget, and so any civilian amounts of this fixed supply medicine is bidding against a multi-trillion dollar budget. That turns into a Tickle-Me-Elmo really quickly even if no one is deliberately pumping up the price, which we know they are.
• Okay. Phenotrans has set it up pretty good. They sell Zombrex at outrageous prices to people who can´t do much else then pay. I understand that. But then, why in the mother of hell would they unveil a Zombrex that lasts twice as long? (Remember, in Case Zero Zombrex only worked twelve hours. That doesn't make any sense! And if you argue "It´s to keep up their credibility" I counter argue that they don't need credibility. I mean, what are people gonna do? Stop using it?
  • They have to balance profitability against the loss of customers and, of course, the threat of apocalypse. Making the dosage more easily to take keeps your customers alive and coming back for more. If they turn, they may infect more people but they may also kill off thousands more or overrun cities. Also, we don't know how they price the 12/24 hour doses, because we only ever buy it from profiteers in the middle of an outbreak. If they double the effectiveness but also double the cost, then they maintain the same revenue while halving their shipping costs^note  Okay not exactly, but you get my meaning.. Also, Sullivan tells you that powerful people are infected and using Zombrex, so they may have been under behind the scenes pressure too.
  • I kind of get it now. But the point about "Balancing profitability against the loss of customers and threat of an apocalypse" doesn't. More outbreaks means more people get scared into buying more Zombrex "Just in case" which in turn negates the loss of customers. And remember, more outbreaks = more people infected = $$$! And an apocalypse is ridiculous. The military in this game is so ruthless that the zombies wouldn't stand a chance. But that about double the cost and powerful people makes sense.
    • That was the entire point of the Fortune City outbreak, get more queens and drive up sales. Besides, they'd run out of country real fast if they cause an outbreak every other weekend. No country, no citizens, no customers, no profit.
    • Also Zombrex isn't a pill that people can take and deal with their disease it is a shot that apparently burns like hell. You tell somebody that they will have to take a shot every twelve hours and will have to pay through the nose for every dose there will be patients who will tell you exactly where you can shove your "cure" and leave their family with their life savings. However you tell those people that you only need to take the shot once every day suddenly the cure isn't such a curse and you get more patients who are willing to give you their life savings.
• Is it just me, or does the military's response in the second game seem rather...lackluster? In the first game, they send easily a couple dozen soldiers to clear out a backwater mall that will have maybe a couple of thousand zombies in it. In the second game, they send... what, three Humvees full? Can't be more than a dozen or so soldiers, to clear out a known tourist hot spot easily populated by upwards of...what, 77,000? (I don't recall if 77,000 was the population of Fortune City itself or just the number of tourists in the area for TIR). Either way, they send far fewer soldiers to clear out an area much more densely populated. Additionally, upon losing contact with the first rescue team, why would the military commanders not assume the worst and respond in full force (i.e., Humvees with .50 machine guns, APCs, possibly attack choppers or light tanks as well)? Based on the wrecked vehicles on the Strip, after zombies wiped out the first rescue team, the military sent in another force of basically the same size. I just don't get the logic behind those tactical decisions. (and yes, I'm aware the response teams had Humvees, but neither the initial team nor the second team seemed to have any with .50 cals.)
  • They were planning to firebomb the place if they lost contact with the response team. But yeah, a dozen soldiers would run out of bullets long before they even set up a fallback point.
  • Not quite. The plan (according to Sullivan) is that if the first rescue attempt failed, another would be sent in 24 hours later. And indeed, paying attention to the news reports indicates another rescue attempt was made and failed as well. Then if that one failed as well, the city would be firebombed with the survivors left to die in the blast. My point is, after losing contact with that first rescue team, the military doesn't seem to react accordingly; the second team doesn't seem to be equipped any better than the first one.
    • Just double checked, and your right. If I had to guess an in-story reason, the military only wants to send in small, trained strike teams to keep casualties to a minimum. Meta reason? Capcom will never win an award in writing.
  • Keep in mind that the soldiers were dealing with zombies, as in, slow, shambling, dumb creatures. They weren't heavily armed or armored or anything, most of them were infected civilians, and even those that were officers are just as weak as the rest. Some heavily armed soldiers could be able to deal with hordes easily. Of course, they didn't expect the gas zombies.
    • I realize that. I can accept that they'd only send soldiers for the first rescue attempt (although I still say that they should have sent more, given that 77,000 zombies in an area that small could easily overwhelm the small strike team they initially sent). I can even accept the explanation that the military wants to use small strike teams to keep casualties to a minimum (though I maintain that those Humvees should have had .50 cals on them given the huge number of zombies they would be facing). What I can't accept is that, after losing the first team, the military would simply send in another strike team of roughly the same size and armaments. I would expect, given that the zombies had, to quote Stacey, "wipe[d] out an entire military column," that the military would send in a force much better equipped than the last one (which was clearly insufficient considering they all died). Or at the very least, they should have sent a few scout helicopters to check the area to determine what might have taken out the first response team and plan accordingly. That's what Just Bugs Me about this.
    • The US Government is dumber than a box of bricks in the Dead Rising-verse
    • (Original troper here) I noticed. :) It actually has occurred to me that maybe the general in charge of the rescue operation was in league with Phenotrans and deliberately sent the rescue team in to get killed so the city would be firebombed. There's no in-game evidence to support it, though, and overall it sounds a bit too fanwankish for my taste.
    • Maybe, just maybe, there were thousands of other soldiers working all over fortune city. However, we're in a mall/arena/casino area. I'm doubting this makes up a majority of the area.
    • A mall/arena/casino area that would have been packed to the gills with people, even more so than usual due to TIR being in town. Even if that's not the majority of the area (and according to the Dead Rising wiki, it is indeed the majority of the area), that area is still likely going to contain the highest density of zombies. Even taking your point into consideration, it still makes no sense that the military would send the dozen soldiers and no recon or heavy equipment after the first team is wiped out.
  • For the first team, it could be that they were sending in a small group with the sole intent of clearing a path to the safehouse and holding off zombies while protecting/escorting the survivors out of town, and then sending in a clean-up crew afterwards with heavier gear and the knowledge that any survivors are already long gone and likely won't need to exercise caution that they might shoot anyone still alive. As for the lack of recon and/or heavier response, how well could an aerial surveillance have worked when the entire area is flooded with the gas? Would they have had the means to get clear looks at the new Gas zombies through the haze from the air? Even at ground level too, you'd still have a hell of a time seeing anything at a safe distance. Sure, they could have seen the cloud of gas hanging over the city and thought it weird, but without seeing what was going on inside it, they couldn't have really been prepared too well for it. Likely the first failed excursion was chalked up to being due to the weird 'fog' and misfortune and sent in a back up team with gas masks or some kind of goggles or something equally useless against the rampaging hordes.
    • 1. The explanation for the first team doesn't really hold up, considering that Sgt. Boykin says, upon first arriving, "First we mop up, then we grab the survivors!" Implying, therefore, that they're there to clear the area before getting the survivors, presumably so they don't have to worry about survivors getting bitten (why they can't just send choppers when the safehouse clearly has a helipad is something that I'll leave largely unconsidered). 2. As for your point about the gas, I'll grant you that not much could be seen from the air (the low visibility actually didn't occur to me); however, it would seem that the gas, which aerial surveillance *would* pick up, would be even more reason to send APCs or other heavy equipment (soldiers not being able to see = bigger chance that Rescue Team 2 becomes tasty morsels). Even for the first team, APCs would help clear the huge crowds of zombies from the outdoor areas as well as for escorting survivors out later.
  • Are we even sure the guys we see are the whole team? I always assumed they were a group of, lets say, 50 that spread out to cover more ground, and the others just were never shown on camera.
  • In Ending D Chuck wakes up in an APC so they definitely had them deployed. If you run around The Strip in Overtime you also see a lot more crashed/abandoned Humvees up and down the length of it. So yeah, the military definitely sent in more than just the three.
• Why does the Phenotrans facility in Case West have very few researchers? There's only a dozen of them, and you don't even see any dead or zombified ones, yet you see several zombified security guards.
  • Because Phenotrans doesn´t really need researchers. They are very happy with zombrex the way it is now. However, if someone where to infiltrate the facility and reveal what was going on, things would go to hell very fast. Therefor, they have more security and less scientists.
  • While I understand that, I'm more bothered by the lack of corpses and/or zombies that were once researchers. It's not like the entirety of the facility science team made it out unscathed.
    • They were just lazy and didn't want to make to much new models. Notice there are also no undead zombie handlers. And those guys are the first ones who would get infected during an outbreak.
    • From what I remember, the zombie handlers were pretty good at fending off zombies, not to mention it being part of their job. It'd make sense if their suits were stab-proof (and also bite-proof), meaning that they wouldn't be infected if they were attacked,Phenotrans would want to protect their employees, otherwise there'd be no point in hiring them. And as I previously said, they seemed to handle the zombies just fine, they only take damage when Chuck and Frank deal it, and if Chuck/Frank did kill the handler, the handler couldn't turn since that's not how the infection works. They don't return from the dead.
• Overtime Mode is non-canon, so there's no continuity error there, It's just a what-if ending. But even if Ending A is the canon ending, there is still a continuity error. In Ending A, Chuck is bitten by zombie TK, yet in Case West, he is not bitten.
  • Retcon. Remember the elevator was also filled with zombies but at the start of Case West there is no trace of them.
  • I don't know what you're talking about, but there is nothing to assume that Ending S & Overtime are noncanon to Case West.
    • The first cutscene in Case West features zombie TK, and Overtime mode and zombie TK cannot co-exist, as for Overtime mode to take place you must give TK the Zombrex, kill him, then walk away with Stacey and Katey...
    • Simple answer; Zombrex stops working on death. The virus kicks in, reanimates TK, who heads to the elevator. As for why Katie and Stacey aren't in the elevator with you, maybe he sent them up first while he dealt with zombies, then took the second one. It requires a bit of WMD, but it's not implausable.
• At the opening to Case West, why does Chuck say he needs to find something to clear his name? Doesn't he already have the laptop proving Phenotrans's involvement, which he got back after defeating Sullivan? Regardless of whether this follows Ending A or S, he should still have it, either on his person or on the chopper with Stacey and Katey.
  • While that is true, Chuck hasn't proved that he's personally did not release those Zombies. Oh sure, Phenotrans would be the ones behind it, and he'd have evidence, but he's got nothing that clears him from being the guy in the suit who blew the gates and started the Fortune City Outbreak. Phenotrans would most likely conjure up some evidence to make Chuck as their agent in Fortune City. For example, they were providing him with Zombrex for free for his daughter, in exchange he works for them. Then fabricate some story to have Chuck "act on his own" to release the Zombies and have Phenotrans as the businessmen making the best of a bad situation.
• Is Chuck a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of David Beckham, perhaps a bit older? The resemblance especially uncanny when he has a Mohawk... and the guy's also an athlete with kids.
  • This is Fridge Logic?
• In the final boss fight against Sullivan, who's AC-130 was that? It was either the Phenotrans or the US Governments, but it doesn't make sense in either case. If it was the governments, why was it helping Sullivan? And why does Sullivan say "Mission complete, preparing for evac" as a random combat line when you're not on the platform? And if it is the Phenotrans gunship, then where did a private medicine company get a gunship, and how come the U.S. Airforce didn't mind even though they're firebombing in like twelve hours?
  • Sullivan implies that Phenotrans is supplying some high-level government officials with Zombrex to keep them from turning. Given that, a re-tasked AC-130 doesn't seem like a huge request. OTOH, Phenotrans might actually have an AC-130, in case they needed to bomb one of their own facilities. And the complete and utter failure of the US Military to maintain a no fly zone is a Capcom-wide Running Gag (just like the valve handles). Consider how easily Frank's pilot gets in and out of Willamette and just how many helos easily fly into or out of "quarantined" Raccoon City.
• Why didn't the government simply send in a Chinook to pick up the survivors at the shelter after the gas zombies attack? Would it really have taken that much effort? It just doesn't make sense that a news company has to come in to solve the problem while the government does absolutely nothing. I mean, you could've fit it into the story just fine without intruding on gameplay. Just say that Sullivan radioed to the government that there were no more survivors, and by defeating him and calling the government again on his cell phone, you prove him wrong, and they send a chopper. Seriously, I know the Dead Rising games are big on depicting the U.S. as evil / stupid, but this is just crossing the line.
  • The military thought that there were no survivors, so they called off any rescue missions. This isn't so much stupidity as lack of information/misinformation. Also for the news station, Rebecca had just tried to call her station before being shot, so the number might have been saved into the phone. And if not maybe getting in contact with a news network is easier then the military. Plus consider that Chuck was assumed to have started the outbreak, who would you want to deal with first? Military likely to kill/imprison you, or the media where you can give your side of the story.
    • I can see why Chuck would call the news company, but if the government was bothering with a rescue operation at all, why didn't they just send a helicopter to the safehouse before anyone tried to contact them? Weren't bunkers like that put into malls for EXACTLY this type of situation after Williamette? There's absolutely no reason they wouldn't check and then say they did. Worst case scenario, no ones there and you wasted a few bucks worth of gas.
    • Military might have more protocols in place then just get in get out. They could also do a scan of the area to see if there are any survivors who weren't in the safe room but still alive (like the Tape it or Die crew) and they try to find them first, Then get the ones who are safe in the bunker. Granted your point about not sending a helicopter while this happens stands.
• Tammy Blaine, the mermaid survivor. She's never made much sense to me. You find her on the second/third day of the outbreak sitting in the giant clamshell in the mermaid outfit. First of all, if she can't walk anywhere because of the tail, how did she get to the clam? Secondly, why did she choose to go commando? Surely she wouldn't actually be going in the water so she could've just worn underwear. And if she put the tail on when she got to the clam as a way of explaining how she got there, she'd either be wearing underwear as otherwise she'd be going bottomless, or her underwear is somewhere nearby where she could put it on instead of having to be carried. And how the hell did she not see all the zombies/hear about the zombies before going to work on a clam surrounded by zombies? She might be one of my favourite survivors, but it still doesn't mean it makes sense...
  • She's an idiot. Plain and simple.
  • Or she had a Yucatan hotel room. She heard that a tiger was loose and stayed in her room till the third morning. She didn't know that their was zombies and thought that it was a zombie costume day or something and went to her post.. I don't know what happened to the costume.
• In Off The Record, Stacey turns out to be the Big Bad. Really makes you think and wonder when players for whatever reason play the original Dead Rising 2.
• Two questions: do we know that Case West is canon and not another What-If scenario like Off the Record, and if it is, is there anyway at all to fit it with the S ending?
  • From a practical standpoint, Case West advances the series meta-plot significantly, so it's unlikely they would ignore it outright. Also, the practical difference between ending S and ending A in terms of effect on the overarcing plot is minimum, given that Stacey and Katey get away anyway and Frank saves Chuck from zombie TK.
  • Alternatively, the opening of Case West could follow up from Ending S if you assume that Chuck took Stacey and Katey to be airlifted again, and TK (who, being a super-tough mofo, managed to barely survive being thrown to his death and ended up being turned into a zombie) came back for revenge at the last moment.
• Seriously, I'm the only one who think that the whole Off the Record is a huge cluster fuck? I mean, first they decide to give all the credit of an already seen story to Frank which (at least by my point of view) is far less heroic and sympathetic than Chuck. Then they turn Chuck into a loony loser psychopath, the cold old bastard Big Bad into a semi-heroic guy and one of the most morally straight character into the super evil bitch villainess that for some reason whip out a giant robot. No, seriously, did Capcom hired Trolls in their rank or something?
  • ...Dude, calm the hell down. This is purely a "What If" scenario, IE noncanon. And since its a What If?, of course some plot and character details will be different. And finally, given how Awesome the series has been since the beginning, a giant robot was pretty much inevitable.
• So, if Stacey is a sadistically evil Phenotrans agent in Off the Record, then why is it that she seems to be genuinely putting in an honest effort to help Frank find and save survivors? It's indicated she helped Frank because she wanted Frank to track down and eliminate TK because TK's scheme wasn't part of her master plan. If she was really secretly a cold-hearted evil bitch planning to betray everyone, why wouldn't she simply not report the various survivors hijinks to Frank so he wouldn't be distracted from hunting down TK?
  • Maybe she hoped that Frank would be killed by the zombies or the Psychos while trying to save the survivors?
  • She was probably trying to earn his trust, seeing as how he was ready to attack her after watching the news report and finding out that a C.U.R.E. member was behind the outbreak.
• Some people theorize that the fight with Check Greene in Off the Record was all in Frank's head. If that were true though, how did Stacey see Chuck on the monitors and report him to Frank?
  • He imagined the call.
• Pretty minor, but the Playboy magazine has been bugging me for a while. You only find 1 copy in the entire game... under a table at the indoor waterslide SUBMERGED IN THE WATER. Out of all the places they could have stuck this they choose to put it in probably the last place anyone would think to look for a magazine! (And just how does Chuck read it anyway? Is Playboy making their porn mags out of plastic now? Or just using waterproof paper?) If they had put a few of these in the adult shop or in the lockers and bathrooms it would have been pretty funny and made sense. But instead they just dump one in the waterslide, I mean, was some guy reading it before the zombies came and just happened to drop it before going down the slide and running for his life? It just doesn't make much since to me, especially since there are about a dozen Playboy posters plastered all over the mall... You'd think there would be more of their magazines than the gambling ones since they bothered to go to all that advertising trouble...
• After you defeat the twins, the one that's still alive at that moment says, "You'll all pay!" What did she mean by that? Do all Phenotrans employees have that much disdain for the general populace?
  • I write off the "you'll all pay!" as psychopathic babble. However, in regards to the question; I don't think they were even workers for Phenotrans. They may have been in on the loop, but they really weren't getting any real benefits aside from being next to Kanye Wesker and being catty to all Ti R contestants.
  • Quick note here: the line isn't actually "you'll all pay!" It's "we promise you that - all of us!" referring to multiple people on the twins' end, rather than Chuck's, and specifically talking about how Chuck will never get out of the city alive. It's never confirmed either way if the twins were on Phenotrans' payroll as well, but the line would check out if they were (or at least if they were just in the loop like the above troper said). If they weren't specifically talking about Phenotrans, it would most likely just be a vague threat meant to intimidate Chuck, but the former option seems a bit more likely.
• Supposedly TIR has been put on once a year since the Willamette incident which took place 5 years prior to Dead Rising 2. So in that case, why on earth is the one happening in the game TIR XVII(17)?
  • Well, as an example, the UFC has multiple events per year. The DR comic, Road to Fortune, reveals that Frank's agent got the idea for Terror is Reality after having a heated conversation with him on the phone about how Frank's TV show was getting replaced by "real" reality TV, which he then passed on to TK, but that was two years after Dead Rising 1. So overall, it's a very silly Plot Hole oversight, but logically, in three years, TiR must have had at least six specials per year.
    • Look at wrestling, they have specials every month, Wrestle-mania, Hell in a Cell, Money in the Bank, TLC, if it's a match concept it usually as a special dedicated to it, Ti R probably follows the same steps.
• How did Rebecca even get kidnapped by the Twins (assuming she had a firearm on her)? And how do the Twins know how to fight?
  • Same way Chuck, the chef, the tiger handler, the magicians, the mascot, and the hippie do: grabbing random weapons and slashing them.
• Why does Phenotrans cause zombie outbreaks in order to get Queens? I mean, the wasps would grow just as well in cows or something like that wouldn't they? After all, that's what they were originally for. All they would have to do is get a bunch of cows or pigs or mice or whatever would work, cage them in heavily secured base somewhere, infect them all, then throw food to them every once in a while, throw in a means of catching the queens when they mature in (how do they even collect the things anyway?) and boom! Queens galore, and without a single human death. It's actually rather simple, it would probably be cheaper, prevent a runaway outbreak from possibly cause a full blown continent/planetwide zombie apocalypse, and would avoid a potential public relations nightmare all at the same time.
  • Chuck's estimation that Phenotrans wants to 'drive their stock prices up' must be true. The outbreak both creates more infected-but-alive people who will have to use Zombrex, and create a demand spike for Zombrex as even people who aren't infected buy it in preparation for another possible outbreak. As for avoiding PR disasters, it's apparently government procedure to firebomb infected zones if attempts to recover the area/rescue civilians through conventional force aren't successful. Phenotrans had a large team of mercenaries in Fortune City to ensure they were not successful, including their mole in the bunker.
• This kinda bugs me. Chuck sees that the package Carl Schliff has a package of Zombrex, and realizes that he is willing to hand it over in return for anyone's signature. But, I don't know, maybe try using a name that ISN'T believed to be a terrorist. You think, by this point, Chuck would realize that he's not exactly "loved" around here...
  • Could be that Chuck doesn't see why he should bother, considering he's fairly famous prior to the events of the game as a former Motocross champion as well as a contestant on TIR and people would probably recognize his face anyway. Of course, this explanation doesn't work perfectly for Carl, since he didn't recognize Chuck until after he signed his name, but that could be chalked up to Chuck not thinking of that in the moment or just signing his real name out of reflex.
• This isn't that big of a question, but it bugs me. Okay, so, at the beginning, after Chuck (or Frank) goes up the elevator, and it breaks and zombies are attacking and stuff, there's that blonde guy crying about how he got bit by somebody, he kneels over, stands back up, and suddenly his skin is all zombie-ish and bloodied and torn up. Why? I mean, unless he was bitten in the face, which I doubt, it makes no sense that his skin would change like that. Does the zombie virus also make your skin become similar to that of a zombie who's been dead for quite a long time? Sorry for the stupid question though, I just got off a Walking Dead marathon, and on that show, recently infected people don't necessarily get all rotted within seconds of turning.
  • Terror Is Reality being a show about zombies, so it's possible that he was wearing makeup. Kind of like how people paint their faces for wrestling matches, wear stuff like iconic sports team icons (viking helmets etc). Then he REALLY zombified and he already looked the part. He also looks a lot like Chuck Green which I think supports this idea further. That's my interpretation anyway.
• Why exactly does it take the military three whole days to respond to an outbreak in one city?
  • Probably some form of quarantine procedure, it takes time to set up things, like medical stations rallying/extraction points and the like, probably an "acceptable losses" sort of deal, they figure after 3 days most survivors will be inside a bunker, shortening the need to search for survivors so they can get on with dealing with the actual problem of zombies, also Fortune city is much, much larger than we see, the game takes place is the entertainment district of the City, the bit we see in game is waaay too small to be considered a city, so another theory is that the district is in the far end of the city and the three days are sweep and clear of each section with the entertainment district being the furthest section of the city from the rallying point.
• Why is it Rebecca is such a moron? for context, she goes alone to the yucatan to meet her source, who happens to be the freaking Bailey Twins known close associates of TK, who, at the point in the story is supposed to be the mastermind of the whole outbreak, Anyone with half a brain cell would know they would most likely be in cahoots with TK therefor meeting them alone and asking Chuck to turn up later would probably have gotten her killed if it wasn't for Chuck turning up at the right time.
• Rebecca's line "people aren't buying Zombrex like they used to" bugs me, people are buying Zombrex like they used to, because if they don't take it they end up turning into freaking zombies!, if Phenotrans were so worried about people not buying it enough, why in the hell did they release a 24 hour version? I'm pretty sure even then, every pharmacy in the world (or at least america) legally has to have some Zombrex in it's stock, in the third game that line would have made more sense seeing as infected people get chipped by government law, but saying it while they were still doing the $300 a dose treatment just sounds stupid even if she is slightly wrong and the outbreaks were only to gather more queens to keep producing it.
  • In this kind of scenario, it's natural for sales to drop significantly over time. Every missed dose permanently loses them a customer. Every unrelated casualty of an infected person permanently loses them a customer. As things settle down the uninfected won't be buying doses just in case. And due to the nature of the illness it won't spread on its own and give them replacement customers. Sales will drop significantly over time.
• Why is Evan trying to go up to the truck for a cryo-bomb? If I'm not mistaken he has one more in his belt.
  • Well, he is insane. He might've missed it. Or it could be empty and he put it back when he went for a new one instead of just throwing it away or something.