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Resident Evil
Resident Evil (known in Japan as Biohazard) is a Survival Horror and science fiction video game series. It has since branched off to become a media franchise consisting of comic books, novelizations, four films, and a variety of collectibles (including action figures, strategy guides and publications.) Developed by Capcom and created by Shinji Mikami, the series has sold 34.5 million games as of February 29, 2008.

The premise of the original Resident Evil was that the Umbrella Corporation was conducting sinister experiments in a mansion outside of the "Midwestern" town of Raccoon City, and a team of SWAT-like police called the Special Tactics and Rescue Squad, or STARS, is called in to deal with it. Further games expanded on this premise, and it has since become one of the most successful action-horror games series of all time. The movie franchise, starring Milla Jovovich, is also moderately successful and has spawned three movies with a fourth one in development.

Most recently, the Resident Evil franchise released a CGI movie called Resident Evil: Degeneration. Unlike the live-action films, this is set in the video game canon, taking place one year after RE4. The fifth installment of the game's main series was released March 12, 2009.

Games in this series include:

The live-action film series includes the following films:
  • Resident Evil
  • Resident Evil: Apocalypse
  • Resident Evil: Extinction
  • Resident Evil: Afterlife

Also spawned an Affectionate Parody (sorta) planned to span the core games of the series in an over-arching story called Two Weeks Notice. Each game is a mega-chapter split into regular chapters. Notable for Adaptation Expansion and lampooning Soup Cans.

The new Character Sheet is here. Feel welcome to help.

This series provides examples of:

  • Abnormal Ammo: Gas, acid and freeze rounds for grenade launchers
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Novistador-infested waterway beneath Salazar's castle in RE4 and the cavernous sewers in RE2 of which some corridors were larger than the ones in the police station.
  • Acceptable Targets: The evil megacorporation doing research into biological weaponry, and with contacts in the government, Umbrella. In Degeneration, the team has to rescue an overweight, white, balding, jerk senator with questionable connections to big business. And he's innocent. Well, maybe not of the insider trading, but of the "releasing the T-virus" bit. He's still a Jerkass Asshole Victim though.
  • A God Am I: Alexia in Code: Veronica, Saddler in RE4, and Wesker in RE5.
  • Amnesia tropes that apply to Alice and Spence Parks in the first movie as a side effect of being gassed unconscious.
  • Apocalyptic Log: A way of saving the games, and way too many logs left by the various researchers and doomed citizens in the games.
  • Action Commands: Becoming quite popular after RE4 and Umbrella Chronicles..
  • Action Girl: All the playable female characters, not including Ashley and Sherry.
  • After The End: The third live-action movie. The T-Virus has contaminated nearly all life on Earth, and turned most of the planet into a dry desert somehow.
  • Air Vent Escape: Sherry does this a few times, notably to stop the train at RE2's finale; Ada does it once with Leon's help.
  • All Just A Dream: The ending of Resident Evil: Survivor 2 reveals that the events of the game were part of a long dream Claire was having during the events of Code: Veronica
  • Always Chaotic Evil: The Umbrella Corporation's executives and researchers are interested in mayhem rather than profit. Zero Punctuation said it best: "the Umbrella Corporation is "controlled by a handful of people who, in any sane world, would have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act before they could even finish presenting their proposal to murder 90% of their research staff."
    • The characters are Genre Savvy enough to point this out... Chris makes a couple of comments about them being madmen and terrorists, and Jill's assessment is right up there with Zero Punctuation.
      "They're wacko. One hundred percent grade A jacked up bat shit."
  • Always Night: For all the early games, which last through the night and end at dawn. Finally averted in 4 and 5, which both start in the day time. The sun going down is a signal that things are about to get worse.
    • The first half and very end of 3 (and the end of 1, for that matter) take place during daytime. The former is difficult to discern, on account of everything being on fire, though.
  • America Saves The Day: Lampshaded twice:
    • In RE4, Saddler laughs at Leon Kennedy over this trope, right before Leon kicks his ass anyway.
    • Lampshaded in Resident Evil 5: it's pointed out that Chris would be getting a hostile welcome no matter where he went in the country, due to attitudes towards the supposed "gung-ho" nature of American forces.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Alternate outfits are used as rewards in every main series game.
    • Resident Evil 3 gives Jill her STARS uniform from the original game, as well as Regina's outfit from Dino Crisis.
  • Anyone Can Die
  • Apocalyptic Log: "4 — Itchy. Tasty."
  • Artificial Stupidity: The AI ally (be it Sheva or Chris) is often accused of this in Resident Evil 5, but it's Your Mileage May Vary territory - many players find that they're no worse than a good-but-not-great human player.
  • A Team Firing: Greg in Degen. In a mild variation, he has a fairly high hit rate. It's just that he's shooting, y'know, zombies. He even holds the barrel shroud in an overhand grip to reduce climb. It should be noted, though, that he keeps doing this even after Leon tells him to aim for the head. Twice.
  • Attack Of The Fifty Foot Whatever: Some animals are zombified by the T-Virus, but others just get really big. Examples include spiders, centipedes, scorpions, sharks and crocodiles.
  • Awesome But Impractical: Quite a few weapons.
    • The Minigun one can unlock for Chris in Resident Evil 5 is very inaccurate. The ammo reserve also blocks part of the camera view. On the other hand, each bullet fired packs a huge punch for an automatic weapon.
    • The longbow of said game ALSO doesn't have a laser pointer. Also, while the longbow is a one shot kill and fast to reload, it's hard to aim past 5 steps, and will fall victim to gravity very, VERY quickly. Unless you'll spend a lot of time with it to make it somewhat effective.
      • Tribal Sheva is actually considered a mid to top tier character in the mercenaries due to the one-hit kill nature of her main weapon.
    • The Rocket Launcher in Resident Evil: Outbreak required your target to be either shock still or at a slow pace. You had one shot.
    • The portable railgun in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Sounds cool, right? Wrong. The US Army had to set up a room for this, and lost many people luring Tyrants in front of the railgun to destroy. It takes minutes for it to charge, and a while to fire. And by portable, we mean "would need a forklift to transport".
    • The Colt SAA in Resident Evil 2 weakness isn't in its power (each shot is as powerful as any other handgun), but in the fact that it can only hold six bullets and takes quite a bit more time to reload than a clip-loaded handgun. However, those six bullets fire much faster than any other weapon short of the submachine gun, meaning that it's excellent against single to dual enemies. Anything more than that, though, and you're screwed.
  • Ax Crazy: Ed/The Axeman from Outbreak.
  • Back From The Dead: Wesker and plenty of monsters have this quality, along with Jill Valentine in RE5.
  • Back For The Dead: Brad Vickers in RE3.
  • Badass Abnormal: Wesker in RE5 is shown in a flashback to have taken a few lessons from The Matrix school of fighting where he can dodge bullets and neither Chris Redfield nor Jill Valentine are able to land a single hit on him he is so fast. It seems to be an implied result of him injecting himself with a heavily modified T-virus cooked up for him by William Birkin under Spencer's orders.
  • Badass Longcoat: Wesker and Mr. X. Leon gets one as an alternate costume for completing RE4.
  • Badass Normal: Multiple
    • RPD officier and later Secret Agent, Leon.
    • Claire Redfield. Every other main protagonist in the game has had at least some form of professional training in either the military or police force. Claire's vocation before becoming a zombie-slaying master of espionage? College student.
    • The Outbreak survivors. Not as extreme, but they were all badass enough to survive Racoon City, especially Raymond, the blonde cop. He was an NPC, true, but when he dies yelling for you to, "Burn these bastards!" it's pretty badass.
    • Carlos and Mikhail from Nemesis were pretty badass, but Nicholai takes the cake. How many times should he have died, but didn't.
      • Easily the craziest of all the times he should have died is if he shows up in the gas station, which explodes and levels an entire city block, when he's staning right next to the center of the explosion. This tropers only explanation is it blew him through a plot hole.
  • Badass Spaniard: Luis Sera from RE4, as the cabin siege sequence can attest. "Did you send out those invitations!? I told you no more than FEEEFTY PEOPLE!"
  • Bare Your Midriff: A few bonus outfits
  • Battle Couple: With the fact that almost every partnership in the game is male-female, there are cases where it isn't hard to stretch it into this.
  • Better Living Through Evil: Excella's backstory if you read the file on her from Resident Evil 5.
  • Beware The Superman: The later installments of the series tend to boil down to Badass Normals with Charles Atlas Superpowers vs. parasite-empowered superhumans.
  • Beyond The Impossible: The bonus game in Resident Evil 4 has a Ganado with a double-bladed flaming chainsaw. Resident Evil 5 tries to one-up this with a majini in The Mercenaries that wields a FLAMING EXECUTIONER'S AXE.
    • Gameplay-wise, the Executioner fails to live up to Super-Salvador's reputation, however; not only is his attack not a one-hit kill, he also lacks Super-Salvador's ability to attack while moving. Very quickly.
  • Big Damn Gunship: Helicopter Mike in RE4.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Barry Burton gets one in 3, when he shows up at the end with no warning to airlift you to safety before Racoon is bombed. Alice gets one in Extinction, when she shows up and uses her psychic powers to kill off the Goddamned Crows attacking the convoy. Josh's team save Chris and Sheva from Majinis in an extremly awesome manner.
  • Big No: RE4 had its share of these. "MIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE!" "LUUUIIIIIIIS!!" A lively source of Narm.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Resident Evil 4 and 5.
  • Big Bad: At first the Umbrella Corporation, but Wesker seems to have emerged over the last several games as the series' main antagonist and puppet master.
  • Badass: Most of the cast.
  • Black And Nerdy: Jim Chapman, who's a fan of crossword puzzles.
  • Black Dude Dies First - Notably averted in RE5, where Josh is actually the only BSAA soldier aside from the main characters to survive. Played straight in RE1 when the first S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team member Jill or Chris finds dead in the mansion turns out to be Kenneth, the only black man on the S.T.A.R.S. force.
  • Bland Name Product: Resident Evil 2 is loaded with these, one of which (the "Cool Soda" vending machines) got replaced in later versions for being a bit too close to infringing on Coca-Cola's likeness.
  • Blind Idiot Translation: The first game featured an awful lot of English typos, grammatical errors and just plain goofy phrases slip through the QA net (including, not least of all, "Welcome back to the world of survival horror."). It did get better in subsequent games as the sequels got better budgets.
  • Blondes Are Evil / Blond Guys Are Evil: Pretty much every blonde character except Ashley is a villain.
  • Body Horror: And how!
  • Bold Inflation:
    • "What IS this?"
    • "Wooah! This hall is dangerous".
    • "It's a weapon. It's really powerful, especially against living things."
    • "Just... take - a - look - at - this! It's Forest. Oh my COD."
  • Boss In Mook Clothing: Hunters and Lickers in the first few games, chainsaw wielders in 4 and 5. RE5 has the Licker Betas. Super long reach, essentially one hit kills, very fast draining of health.
  • Brainwashed And Crazy: Jill Valentine in Resident Evil 5, who ends up as Wesker's Dragon for most of the game.
  • Brother Sister Incest: Implied between Alfred and Alexia.
  • But Not Too Black: Sheva Alomar.
  • Canon Discontinuity: The Game Boy Color RPG Resident Evil Gaiden, which had Barry Burton as the main character, was made by a completely different developer and is entirely ignored by the rest of the series (despite being written by the director of Resident Evil Code: Veronica).
  • Canon Immigrant: The Red Queen, a computer system from the movies, appears in The Umbrella Chronicles, though there it is portrayed as a super computer as opposed to the movies' hologram.
    • Well it is a super computer in both incarnations. The game's has the good taste of leaving it just being a computer rather than a character and as a result, dropping the hologram idea.
  • Capcom Sequel Stagnation: Somewhat averted by Resident Evil 4.
  • Captain Obvious: Barry Burton, Ingrid Hunnigan.
  • Caramelldansen Vid
  • Casanova: Leon in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Degeneration. He'd like to think so, anyway. Luis Sera, also from 4, fancies himself one of these as well.
  • Cash Cow Franchise
  • Chained By Fashion: Billy Coen, from RE0, spends the game with a broken pair of handcuffs hanging from his wrist. He did just escape from imprisonment.
  • Chainsaw Good: Fan-favourite Dr. Salvador and the Bella Sisters from RE4.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Back in the day, Chris Redfield just wasn't as good as Jill Valentine. Oh, he had higher stamina, sure, but he couldn't carry as much, and he didn't get access to the grenade launcher like Jill did. He fared a little better in Code: Veronica, on account of getting some cooler toys to play with and a possible ten inventory slots, but still got the crap knocked out of him by Wesker in the end. As of Resident Evil 5, he can knock enemies through closed doors with a right hook and is fully capable of killing a man by punching him in the ass.
  • Chaste Hero: Leon refuses to have some fun with Ashley.
  • The Chew Toy: To quote President Evil's RE plot analysis FAQ, "someone on the development team hated Brad's guts."
  • Chinese Girl: Ada Wong, Fong Ling.
  • Clipped Wing Angel: This happens a lot in the series. Birkin from Resi 2 Nemesis in RE3, Tyrant Morpheus in Dead Aim, Alexia in Code: Veronica, Saddler in RE4, and Wesker in RE5 all transform into giant monsters that are noticeably slower, dumber, and less effective than their superhuman normal forms.
  • Cloning Blues: Wesker, in a manner of speaking. Also Alice in the third film.
  • Clown Car Grave: The cemetery in the movie Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and several graves in the games Resident Evil 2 and 3.
  • Combat Tentacles: Loads of bosses, but Villager and Soldier Ganados take the cake; their Plagas often manifests itself as a tentacled brain with a huge scythe tentacle.
  • Complete Monster: Most of the villains. For a more specific example, take a look at the murderous rapist police chief from Resident Evil 2. Better yet, don't.
  • Continuity Nod: At one point in Degeneration, Claire uses an umbrella as a weapon. Though she never opens it, it's clearly patterned after the Umbrella logo. She even lampshades it. Also, she is reunited with Leon after he rescues her in the exact same manner that he did in Resident Evil 2.
  • Continuity Snarl: Capcom's attempts to set at least four different games during the Fall of Raccoon City leads to a lot of continuity errors about the shared locations. Specifically the Racoon Police Department, which players visit in 2, 3, and File #2 with critical differences each time.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: The entire executive board for the Umbrella Corporation, particularly Ozwell Spencer. Albert Wesker later qualifies.
  • Convection Schmonvection: Most. Guilty. Ever. The final battle in Resident Evil 5 takes place on a lava flow. Not on the lip of a volcano or a catwalk several dozen feet above lava or even on top of a levitation barge skimming a dozen feet above lava. On the actual lava flow.
  • Cracking Up: Both Jill Valentine and Wesker do this at the beginning of the first part of your fight with them, assuming of course that you don't shoot at them first.
  • Crowning Music Of Awesome: Wesker and Hunk's Mercenaries theme in 4, and "Sad but True", the theme for the boss fight with Jill in 5.
  • Cutscene Power To The Max: Resident Evil 5 does this. In cutscenes, Chris's starter handgun is amazing. He guns down the second boss with it and in Chapter 3-3 he pulls off a headshot on a gunner while on a moving motorboat.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: Wesker will beat the crap out of you in the cutscenes, but you can actually knock him on his ass and beat the hell out of him when you fight him.
  • Damn You Muscle Memory: 4 and 5 change the buttons each time you do a Quick Time Event to keep you from memorizing the buttons.
    • In RE 5, this is part of the dynamic difficulty system. The button combinations become more complicated when the difficulty rise.
  • Dark Action Girl: Ada Wong, and Jill Valentine during most of RE5.
  • Dark And Troubled Past: Yoko Suzuki was employed as a researcher for Umbrella and even experimented on in the development of Tyrants.
  • Darkest Africa: Resident Evil 5, but only in the middle levels.
  • Darwinist: After 15 years of Card Carrying Villainy, they finally throw this in as Wesker's angle with Uroboros in Resident Evil 5.
  • Dating Catwoman: Ada Wong and Leon.
  • Dead Ex Machina: Ada Wong at the end of Resident Evil 2.
  • Deadly Guest: Happens four times in the first movie. Once in the laser trap scene, once with the "dining room" attack scene, and twice with the Hunter.
  • Death Faked For You: At the end of 0.
  • Demonic Spiders: Not the literal spiders so much. Hunters (they have two types of Deadly Lunge attacks, one of which is instantly fatal, and they attack in pairs or more), Crimson Heads (better burn those zombie corpses), Lickers (the advanced ones in the second scenario can track you even when you're not moving, and Deadly Lunge at you from offscreen), Drain Deimos/Brain Suckers (RE3), poisonous moths (in Code: Veronica), and of course, Regenerators/Iron Maidens in Resident Evil 4, which need rifles with thermal-scopes and a fair distance to kill them. Reapers in RE5 can induce panic when you see them, especially in numbers greater than one, as well.
    • The problem with the reapers ? They have only two attacks. One, a simple, weak, claw slash, is almost never seen. The other is a one hit kill that will never fail and is inescapable if you face them. That's right. You need to turn your back from the beast so it can't one-hit kill you, and the moment you turn back to shoot... They also have an armor cavering their entire body impervious to any weapon but the Rocket Launcher. Their weaks points are small, only appearing for about half a second on the higher difficulty, and icing on the cake, they expel a gas that screw up your aim...
      • Said gas being expelled whenever you shoot one someplace that isn't a weak point. Reaper fights can spiral out of control very quickly.
  • Demoted To Extra: Most every canon character who appears in the movies.
  • Discontinuity: Many of the spinoff games like the Gun Survivor games are completely disregarded by fans. RE0 suggests that at least the first Survivor is canonical, however.
  • Digital Distribution: The mobile phone games, such as Resident Evil: Confidential Report. For the main series, Resident Evil 5 is available on Steam.
  • Downloadable Content: RE5 supports this with "Versus" mode and some other extras.
  • Distress Call: Poses quite a few problems for you in Outbreak.
  • Dodongo Dislikes Smoke: One of the most massive bosses in 5 can be defeated more quickly by chucking grenades into its open mouth.
  • Do Not Run With A Gun: More like Do Not Walk With A Gun. The only game in the series which lets you move and shoot simultaneously is Outbreak File #2 and Dead Aim, and then and you move so slowly that it's barely worth the effort.
  • Does This Remind You Of Anything: The main healing item in all the games is "green herbs." Which, when mixed together, are resting as a fine powder on a sheet of rolling paper.
    • This is a pretty common way of preparing traditional herbal medicine in Japan and China, and most herbs are green.
  • Dropped A Bridge On Him: Helicopter pilots have notoriusly low life expectancies in this series. The longest one has lived is two chapters.
  • Easter Egg: Examine Wesker's desk an obscene number of times in RE2 to find a reel of film containing a picture of Rebecca in a basketball outfit.
  • Elemental Rock Paper Scissors: Sort of. The different types of grenades are more effective against some creatures than others. A Licker in the second game, for instance, can take two point-blank regular grenades to the face and keep coming for you, but one Acid round will do them in. And fire tends to be particularly effective against plants. The fifth game even features Fire, Liquid Nitrogen, and Electrical grenades.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Hunk, the Badass, gas-mask wearing U.B.C.S. operative known as Mr. Death.
  • Epileptic Trees: Many are kicked around the fan community, largely because of the confusing, contradictory continuity of most of the games taking place in the same week and because many of the files are written by crazies.
    • One that deserves mention: In Resident Evil: Outbreak, Monica is attacked and kidnapped by a monster, but the player sees the attack from the monster's POV. Many fans still insist that this must be Resident Evil 2 Big Bad William Birkin rather than the Giant Moth which is shown traveling through vents, kidnaps players during the level, and appears in the next room over.
  • Escort Mission — A major plot point in Resident Evil 4. Fortunately, it's pretty endurable, all things considered. Ashley is mostly pretty smart, and there's usually a good place to stow her away in just about every map. This troper can recall only a few areas where she's a load: the El Gigante canyon, which is optional, the Hall of Water in the Castle, which is That One Room, the sniping section in the castle, which is short and the enemies are artificially weakened to help it out, and the Bulldozer section, specifically when you have to leave her alone.
  • Everybodys Dead Dave - The first game.
  • Evil Brit - The Ashford twins.
  • Evil Costume Switch - In Resident Evil 5, Jill Valentine gets blonde hair and a black leather catsuit after Wesker converts her into his Brainwashed And Crazy Super Soldier Dragon.
  • Evil Foreigner - Resident Evil 4 had American-hating, Dracula-accented cult leader Osmund Saddler as the Big Bad. And Umbrella is European, apparently.
  • Evil Is Sexy - Excella, Excella, Excella.... Oh, and Wesker. And Alexia.
  • Evil Laugh: About half of Alexia's dialogue, sometimes turning on a camera that she cannot possibly know Wesker is looking at, laughing, and turning it off again. Wesker occasionally gets a good chuckle in too. Alfred does it, too, but it's annoying and flaming gay.
  • Evilutionary Biologist: Plenty to go around.
  • Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong: William Birkin, Monica.
  • Face Heel Turn: Krauser used to be Leon's partner before joining Wesker.
    • Subverted in the second movie. Everyone who's played Resident Evil 3 expects one from Nikolai, but he never turns against the heroes.
      • Though they are left with the hanging, nagging thought that maybe he could've if they hadn't gone and Dropped A Bridge On Him first. Ayy.
  • Faux Action Girl: Angela from Degeneration.
  • Fast Roping: The soldiers in the first movie engage in this trope when they enter the mansion. Why they went on the roof first is never explained, but it's probably Rule Of Cool.
  • Fingerless Gloves: Pick a playable character, any character. Chances are they have fingerless gloves.
  • Flash Step: Wesker does this a lot in Resident Evil 5.
  • Foe Yay: Chris and Wesker, who have become so obsessed with each other by the time of RE5 that Wesker hardly even acknowledges the other player character's existence unless she's shooting him.
  • Foreign Cuss Word: Spanish peasants like calling you any number of foul things in Resident Evil 4.
  • Full Frontal Assault: Lickers, Regenerators, and Iron Maidens are stark naked. And mean.
  • Gaiden Game: Resident Evil: Gaiden. It's right in the title.
  • Game Breaker: STARS Wesker in Resident Evil 5 is just one example. On the other hand, Midnight Wesker is das professionnal character, meaning he has all that is needed for overinflated combos and scores, but you need to be good...
  • Game Breaking Injury: Resident Evil 2 was the first game to begin having the heroes' body language reflect their overall health. If they took too much damage then they would start limping and not move as fast as they normally do. If you were low in health and had to run away from a group of zombies or a huge boss then you were in for a rough night.
    • At 1/4 health in Resident Evil 5, you go into the "Dying" status and have to have your partner resuscitate you, while at 1/2 health, you're limping and holding in your guts.
  • Game Mod: In RE2 and RE3, Game Sharks could be used to swap around playable character models. Try running through the whole game as Tofu or completing 4th Survivor or Extreme Battle modes as Sherry.
  • Gatling Good: A few of the games let you get your mitts on a huge gatling gun. Resident Evil 4 gives us the Chicago Typewriter, a superpowered tommy gun. With infinite ammo.
  • Genre Savvy: Leon and Claire in Degeneration. They've been in this kind of game/movie before and they know it.
  • Ghost Ship: The Starlight from Gaiden, the Spencer Rain from Dead Aim.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere:
    • The Black Tiger Spider in RE1 and Code: Veronica. And several of the mini bosses in RE4, including the lake monster and It - admittedly, it can be theorized that they're Plaga infected creatures and subservient to Saddler as well.
    • And don't forget almost all the bosses from 0; where was that Giant Scorpion hiding anyway?
  • Giggling Villain: Ramon Salazar, the Ashford twins.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: Pretty much every game until 4.
  • Goddamned Bats: Lickers, in Resident Evil 5, crows and bees in 1 and the actual bats in 0 and Code: Veronica.
  • God Mode Sue: One of the common complaints about Alice.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Brutally averted most of the time, but Resident Evil 5 censors the chainsaw deaths by having the camera cut to just below Chris' neckline.
  • Guide Dang It: In the original Resident Evil, it's possible to kill Rebecca, but it involves ignoring her for much longer than most players will. Similarly, triggering the alternate ending of 3 where Barry Burton rescues Jill requires a series of bizarre choices with no apparent connection to his story.
  • Gun Fu: Wesker vs. Chris and Sheva in Resident Evil 5.
  • Hand Wave: Chris, Jill, Barry and Rebecca all survive the Mansion Incident. This is 100% accepted canon straight from Capcom. However, in every iteration of RE1 available (the original, the Director's Cut, REmake, Deadly Silence and the RE1 scenarios of Umbrella Chronicles), it is impossible to have Barry and Rebecca in the scenario simultaneously, and Capcom has never offered a concrete explanation for what happened in their surviving aside from, "They just did."
    • Ironically enough, having Rebecca dying in the mansion would have not changed the following story at all, because she was Put On A Bus.
  • Harder Than Hard:
    • Resident Evil 4's Professional Mode. You will run out of ammo in the village intro, and you can't bring weapons and ammo from previous playthroughs. Hope you learned knife-fu!
    • RE5 has it worse. Every attack does 10x damage, while you do a about 15% less damage. Hope you like the game over screen, because most attacks will put you in Dying state, and the resuscitation timer drops from about 15-20 seconds down to three. If you and your partner (be it AI or human) don't stay joined at the hip and help each other instantly upon getting clipped, the game is over.
  • Hate Plague: Las Plagas in both RE4 and 5, and it also turns the entire society into Bee People. Why do you think Ashley was kidnapped in the first place?
  • Heart Container: Yellow Herbs in Resident Evil 4 and the Degeneration mobile game.
  • Hellish Pupils: Wesker's cat eyes are the first sign of his self-imposed infection kicking in.
  • Heroic BSOD: Alice, in Extinction, though this is a result of Umbrella's mind control.
  • Hero Tracking Failure: A rather blatant example in Degen, when bullets fired by US Army Rangers bounce off the ground in near their target in standard trope fashion. Except said target was standing still. The Rangers in question were moving, but at the speed of a slow walk, with scoped weapons.
  • Hey Its That Voice: I swear to god, Nergal and Wesker are related.
  • Hide Your Children: Averted with Sherry Birkin and Lotte and Lily Klein; ESPECIALLY averted with Sherry, who can be killed by zombies or Cerberus hounds. Played mostly straight with the fact that you hardly ever find any zombified children, though there are a few.
    • It could just be due to her size though. Cerberus hounds will bit her just fine.
    • Zombies can't grab or bite Sherry. So it neatly avoid anything that may looks like pedophilia. They can...barf on her though. The reason they can't bite or grab her is because her character model is so much smaller than anyone else in the game.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Mutant Steve. You can only 180° turn and run away, and you are bound to take at least one hit unless you're very quick with dodging at the battle's start.
  • I Got Better: Both Wesker and Ada are guilty of this.
  • I Know You Are In There Somewhere Fight: Rather literally in Resident Evil 5, in the boss battle with Jill. You even have to yell encouragement and everything.
  • Implacable Man: Lisa in the RE1 remake, Mr. X in RE2, and Nemesis in RE3.
  • Internet Backdraft: The debate as to whether or not 4 and 5's new direction is a good thing rages to this day.
  • Incendiary Exponent: Oven Man, a Militia Ganados who stuffs himself in a gas oven for the express purpose of bum-rushing you while on fire.
  • I Wont Say Im Guilty: Billy Coen, who, for some reason, doesn't deny being forced to massacre an entire village by his commanding officer, though the FMVs make it obvious he didn't.
  • Its A Wonderful Failure: Dying in RE 2 results in a brutal animaation of your character getting graphically killed by whatever baddie did you in.
  • Joke Character:
    • In Resident Evil 2, you could play through Hunk's "Fourth Survivor" minigame. As a giant, knife-wielding block of Tofu that wears Jill's beret. Crank up the crazy awesome all the way up to eleven.
    • Also the Mr. and Mrs. series of characters in Outbreak and File #2, they're coloured stick figures.
  • Kill It With Fire - Molotov, incendiary grenades and flamethrowers in each game up to 5.
  • Kill Sat - Used to kill an Uroboros creature in Resident Evil 5. Also, is used to try and kill Fong Ling in Dead Aim after China pays off Duvuall to try and not turn their land into a radioactive zombie wasteland.
  • Large Ham - Alfred and Wesker.
  • Lampshade Hanging - Resident Evil 5 does this quite a bit.
    • "I just got an extreme makeover!" Irving try to go One Winged Angel. It's not pretty.
    • "Do you get all your ideas from comic book supervillains?" Chris, to Wesker, after the latest explain his evil goal.
    • "Why do I always feel like I'm trapped in a monster movie?" Chris, when not player-controlled, is about to fight the biggest boss in all of RE history. The thing is Godzilla-sized.
    • "Great. I feel more crazy talk coming." Chris, getting fed up with Wesker's constant monologues.
    • "A chain saw? Are you kidding me?" Chris, again when not player-controlled, sees the first Chainsaw Majini.
  • Large And In Charge: The mayor of the Ganados village is eight feet tall if he's an inch.
  • Last Name Basis: Albert Wesker. That may as well just be his driver's license — "Wesker."
  • Lazy Backup: If there's no "player two" in Umbrella Chronicles, your "partner" is perfectly fine with watching you get eaten alive/beaten to death.
    • Particularly awkward in Rebecca's side scenario, which, unlike the main game, is meant to be one player and one player only - she still gets a partner, Richard, who is clearly seen following her with a gun at the checkpoints and yet does nothing until she gets attacked by crows in a cutscene before the boss fight.
  • Lethal Joke Item - Jim's coin from Outbreak. Each flip which came up heads give him a stackable (to 3) 15% critical hit chance. If he had the time to flip three heads in a row (many levels had safe rooms where you could), he'd become an absolute Badass.
  • Light Gun Game - The Gun Survivor series, which came about with the intention of turning this genre into a free-roaming one. The Chronicles games are putting them back on rails.
  • Lost Forever - The online components of Outbreak and File #2 have been permanently shut down by Capcom unless you're willing to pay for a Japanese PS 2 and a montly fee, probably the reason why the servers are still up in Japan.
  • Lower Deck Episode - Assignment Ada and Separate Ways follow Ada through Resident Evil 4.
  • Lovecraftian Superpower - even those human (or formerly human) villains who do go outright One Winged Angel with mutation will generally have strange claws or Combat Tentacles
  • Mad Libs Dialogue: Outbreak's canned phrases, and one might argue part of the reason for said spinoff's lack of success. Word Of God at the time was this was deliberate in order to ratchet up tension between the players.
  • Mad Scientist: Both Doctor Birkins, Albert Wesker, the Ashfords, and James Marcus. Actually, pretty much anyone who worked as a researcher at Umbrella was required to have Hojo-levelsof scientific obsession and disregard for ethical standards.
  • Made Of Iron: Most of the cast, really, since the most common enemy attack involves zombies chewing through your jugular vein.
  • Male Gaze:Jill's skintight purple leather battle suit when you play as her in RE5's Mercenaries mode. You basically spend the entire level with the camera focused on her very well defined butt. So Yeah.
    • Also in RE5, we're introduced to Sheva via a shot of Chris from around her ass.
    • You start noticing this more in RE4 when you put Ashley in her alternate outfit. The president has equipped his daughter with ballistics, indeed.
    • Interestingly, the Female Gaze comes into play for at least one novelization, where the author spends a little bit too much time talking about Leon and Chris' faces in soft, subtext laden narration...
  • Malevolent Architecture: The series is, at a whole, more or less the platonic ideal of this trope.
  • Man Eating Plant: The I.V.Y. weapon and Plant 42, the latter of which ate several researches before anyone noticed.
  • The Many Deaths Of You: Oh HellYes
  • Mask Power: HUNK, and his awesome gas mask.
  • Mascot Mook: Dr. Salvador for 4.
  • The End Of The World As We Know It: Surprisingly, the RE world's regular T-virus zombie outbreaks are not a threat that may lead to this, as they seem relatively self-contained even with minimum government intervention (the Extinction movie is another story entirely). Also, the plot of at least three of the series' major bad guys (Dr. Marcus in RE0, Saddler in RE4, and Wesker in RE5), although Wesker was the only one who ever came anywhere close to implementing the plan.
  • Man Of Wealth And Taste: Wesker from RE4 onwards.
  • The Medic: Rebecca Chambers, George Hamilton, Cindy Lennox.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Albert Wesker is responsible for all the events of the Resident Evil universe and manages to win EVERY SINGLE GAME (even when he appears to lose). He is, quite understandably, pissed when he realizes that all his schemes, his activities, his Darwinist beliefs — in short, the entire pattern of his life — were programmed into him from the beginning by Ozwell Spencer, an even bigger bastard.
  • Memetic Mutation: Not surprising, considering the series is almost filled to the brim with Narm.
  • Mighty Glacier: Several enemies are very slow, but have high durability and damage output to compensate, such as the Executioner from 5.
  • Minigame: A staple of the series, usually involving short missions where you guide a character around an area and take out as many BOWs as possible within a time limit.
  • Mistaken For Racist: What many fans felt about the controversy in the 5th game, namely the debate on if its racist or just Un-PC
  • The Mole: Wesker, who turns out to be an Umbrella employee leading the STARS to destruction to test the BO Ws.
  • Money Dear Boy: Milla Jovovich flat out admits that this is why they're making a 4th live-action movie.
  • Most Annoying Sound: "LEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNN!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAALP!"
  • The Mountains Of Illinois: Though Raccoon City is in the Midwest, the climate and topography don't fit. The novelization moves it to Pennsylvania.
  • Multiple Endings: Most of the games have this in some form, though Outbreak and File #2 take the cake with more than 20 possible endings each.
  • Mysterious Waif: Lucia from Gaiden.
  • The Napoleon: Ramon Salazar in RE4.
  • Narm: "The Master of Unlocking", Jill Sandwiches, a minimum requirement of one horrible voice actor per game, unintentionally hilarious scripts.
  • Narm Charm: One gets suspicious that Capcom has caught on that the voice acting was bad, and are now doing it on purpose.
  • Neck Snap: Rain Ocampo to a zombie in the first movie.
  • Never Split The Party: In those games where you're either escorting someone or have a partner, it's generally in your best interest to stay close together. Whenever the plot separates you, it's generally so it can throw a really big monster at one character.
  • Nightmare Fuel: The Nemesis, Lickers, Crimson Heads, G, Lisa Trevor, Regenerators.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Popular conception has it that Steve Burnside's haircut was altered to lessen his likeness to Leonardo DiCaprio. Also, Kevin Ryman looks a lot like Tom Cruise. A lot. Also, did nobody notice David King's simularity to Dylan McDermott?
  • Nobody Poops: Toilets appear to be very scarce in Raccoon City. An issue of the British publication NGC Magazine handwaved this saying that the citizens of Raccoon had evolved beyond such base needs, as well as lampshading said trope by saying, "And can you blame them? Everytime you nip off for a quick dump there's always a bleedin' zombie in the bath."
  • Not A Zombie: Twice, once with the very first enemy in RE4, another with yet the very first enemy in RE5, though slightly different. (Chris notes the guy he shot doesn't move like any other zombie he's seen.)
  • No One Could Survive That: In Leon's B scenario and its Darkside Chronicles recreation, Ada gets slammed against the power generator pretty hard by Mr. X. And it in fact appears that Hes Dead Jim. But she's back up to throw a Rocket Launcher to Leon during the battle with his final form. It's better than Leon's A scenario, though, where Ada falls down a Bottomless Pit and still shows up to give Claire the rocket launcher.
  • Notice This: Oftentimes, your character will look at objects that could need picking up. Or enemies in the room.
  • No Sneak Attacks: RE 4. The ganados will yell "Detras de ti, imbecile!" whenever there is someone right behind you that is going to kill you in the next few seconds.
    • Actually, it seems to be the ganado who sneaks up on you who yells it. Premature gloating?
  • Ominous Walk: In the fourth game enemies will often run towards you until they get within a certain distance and inexplicably start using this trope.
  • One Winged Angel: Pretty much every human Big Bad will turn into a horrible abomination against God. However, they are often reduced to Clipped Wing Angel in their final form, eg Birkin and Nemesis.
  • One Woman Wail: Used in the RE 5 opener to indicate how awful Africa was even before the zombies arrived.
  • Only Sane Man: Edward Ashford was the only one of the original founders of Umbrella who actually wanted to use the Progenitor Virus for legitimate medical research to benefit humanity. His son and his grandchildren make up for his lack of batshit insanity in spades.
  • Personal Space Invader: Zombies and Ganados alike.
  • Personality Blood Types: Blood types are listed in the intro
  • Poor Communication Kills: The Outbreak series didn't include voice communication, only a small number of prerecorded lines. Unless the players knew what to do in the level, this could very easily get someone killed.
  • The President's Daughter
  • Prequel: Resident Evil 0
  • Press X To Not Die: RE4 was largely responsible for popularizing it, but RE5 abuses it profusely, especially in the boss fight with the Uroboros infected Excella.
  • Psychic Nosebleed: Alice in Extinction.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Ramon Salazar in 4 is most likely about four feet tall with the proportions of a child, though he claims to be twenty. And is he psychopathic? Oh, yes. For an equally strong example in more frame of mind alone, Code: Veronica has the Ashford Twins, though one of them has an excuse. Their house is full of dolls, music boxes, and more, along with Alfred's fits of immaturity. It looks as though this will be played up even more in Darkside Chronicles.
  • Quest For Identity: Ark Thompson in Survivor. Alice has shades of this, too.
  • Raising The Steaks: Zombie dogs are the most iconic, but there are also zombie bats and crocodiles, for a start.
  • Recurring Traveller: The Merchant from RE4.
  • Red Oni Blue Oni: Ada and Leon, respectively. Alfred and Alexia as well, also respectively, though each has traces of the other as well, incidentally also reflected by the "blue king and red queen."
  • Revenue Enhancing Devices: Capcom decided to sell the Deathmatch component of 5 as DLC.
  • Roar Before Beating
  • Rule Of Cool: The laser hallway in the first movie. No real reason why it couldn't have just killed everyone right away by using the "laser grid" on its first pass, other than because watching it adapt to the victims' attempts to avoid it and take them down one by one makes for a much more awesome scene.
  • Rule Of Sexy: Jill's default outfit in 3, and the reason Leon loses his jacket in 4. (Incidentally, Leon's shirt is an actual "tactical shirt".) There's also Excella Gionne in 5, as well as Chris and Sheva's outfits, to varying degrees.]]
  • Russian Guy Suffers Most: In 3, Jill finds herself having to work alongside three U.B.C.S. members - Nicholai, Mikhail, and Carlos. Guess which one doesn't die horribly.
    • Actually, in Canon Nikolai escapes.
      • In one version of the ending, albeit the most accepted one. Even then, he still survives either an explosion or a zombie attack as well as a dive out of a window, no matter which ending you get - and the ones in which he does die are probably pretty damn painful.
  • Save Game Limits: Typewriter ribbons. Justified Trope as part of the player character's personal Apocalyptic Log. Lampshaded by Jill Valentine's verbal situation report when starting or restoring a game. A sitrep that ends with "I'm still...alive..." in a wondering tone complete with dramatic echo.
  • Say My Name: Pretty much all of the series. "LEON! HELP!" "ADA!" "BIRKIN!" "ALEXIA!" "JILL!" "BARRY!" "CLAIRE!" "SHEVA!" "CHRIS!" "WESKER!" And so on.
  • Scenery Gorn
  • Scrappy Level: Level 5-3 in RE5. Chris and Sheva have to go through three Reapers, a spinning Elevator Action Sequence, a small army of Lickers, Wesker, and Jill Valentine.
  • Self Destruct Mechanism: Just about every Umbrella laboratory or other important location of biohazard research is subjected to this trope, with the final final boss fight occurring while the detonation countdown is in effect). The CGI movie Degeneration gives us the mind-boggling containment system in the WilPharma facility, which includes: spraying everything with flammable liquid, detaching contaminated sections, dropping them in a 3000 foot shaft (in sequence no less), incinerating them in a giant fireball (twice), and sealing them behind a steel covering thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast. How the hell did they have any funds left for medical research?
  • Shapeshifter Baggage: Uroboros, in addition to all its biological properties, also gleefully flips off the laws of physics and is more than capable of turning your average human being into a 100ft tall monstrosity in a matter of seconds, no extra mass necessary. It's that kind of series, though. Ironically, Uroboros Aheri required a pile of corpses to turn that big, and so did Birkin's final form. Same with Nemesis and NYX.
  • Shilling The Wesley: S.D. Perry, author of several RE Novelizations, seems to have a massive hardon, so to speak, for plucky little Rebecca Chambers... Just read Caliban Cove for proof.
  • Shout Out: One of Jill's extra costumes in RE3 mimics Regina's appearance from Dino Crisis, which was developed concurrently.
  • Shut Up Hannibal: When Ramon Salazar gives Leon one too many smarmy monologues, Leon cuts him short with a knife to the hand.
  • Sigil Spam: The Umbrella Corporation's logo is everywhere.
  • Soup Cans: If the Resident Evil series featured the original "soup cans" puzzle from The Seventh Guest, it still wouldn't nearly be the most out-of-place puzzle in the series. The usual justification, if any, is that the people who designed these places were insane. Toned down somewhat in RE4 as part of the Genre Shift.
  • Spexico
  • Spotlight Stealing Squad: If your last name isn't Wesker, Redfield, Valentine or Kennedy, the overall plot does not care about you.
  • Sprite Polygon Mix: 0, 1 and its remake, 2, 3, and Outbreak.
  • Spy Catsuit: Jill gets one of these as a part of her transformation into Wesker's sidekick. Couple that with her going blonde, and it might be a Shout Out to Starcraft: Ghost.
  • Stat O Vision: How Resident Evil: Apocalypse's Nemesis sees the world.
    • Also applies to the Red Queen from the first film.
  • The Stoic: Leon, at least in Degeneration, where his emotional range varies between "..." and "....." He's better about it in RE4, but still...
  • Stripperiffic: Most of the female characters' alternate costumes.
  • Sunglasses At Night: Wesker always wears sunglasses, even during night missions. Not that this impairs his ability to shoot a zombie dog out of midair with a single bullet. At range. In the middle of the night. Later, he also uses them to hide the effects of his bio-enhancements, which turn his eyes a reddish-golden color.
  • Super Soldier: The various Tyrants, Nemesis, Mr. X, the rest of the T series.
  • Surprisingly Easy Mini Quest: portions where you're controlling a side or sub character usually fall into this.
  • Survival Horror: Hugely popularized the genre.
  • Tempting Fate:
    Chris: That's the last of them.
    Sheva: Thank goodness. We wouldn't have lasted long against a whole horde of them.
  • Tentacle Rope: In the remake of the first game and Code: Veronica.
  • Theme Initials: Ada Wong and Albert Wesker. Bit of a stretch but the Birkins' first names are Annette and William.
  • The Scrappy: Angela in Resident Evil: Degeneration due to her constantly needing to be rescued. Also an argument for Sherry Birkin and Leo. Your Mileage May Vary.
  • Timed Mission: Crops up every now and again in the canon games, usually paired with the Self Destruct Mechanism. Gun Survivor 2 uses this for every level; run out of time, and the Nemesis will start to chase you until you complete the level.
  • Title Drop: In the final chapter of Resident Evil 5, but the Japanese name of Biohazard instead of Resident Evil. "Resident Evil" is a bit hard to fit into a normal conversation, and the Japanese version also uses the English voice track, so it's an unqualified title drop in Japan.
  • Too Dumb To Live: Brad Vickers in RE3. Also, Excella in RE5. Seriously, how could she NOT expect Wesker to stab her in the back, especially with the way he was acting towards her?
  • Took A Level In Badass: Leon S. Kennedy as seen in RE4.
  • Torches And Pitchforks: As wielded by the Ganados from RE4.
  • Tragic Monster: Mutant Steve, and "Nosferatu", Alfred's mutated father, in Code: Veronica. Lisa Trevor of the Remake
  • Transformation Trauma: Most of the many One Winged Angel mutations.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Resident Evil 5.
    • Which is hilarious because no one bitched and whined when 4 had you killing Spanish zombies.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: In RE2 the player comes upon the remains of Hunk's commando team in the sewers, and cannot loot the submachine guns they carry in cutscenes. This was a common complaint about the game even though realistically they *would* be unusable, as they'd been sitting in dank sewer water for nearly a week. In Outbreak, however, you come upon a freshly dead UBCS team next to Raccoon University and can't take any of their stuff either.
  • Unwilling Suspension: Ada at the end of RE4.
  • Updated Rerelease: Resident Evil: Director's Cut, Resident Evil: Director's Cut: Dual Shock Edition Resident Evil 2: Dual Shock Edition, Resident Evil Code: Veronica Complete, the Game Cube remake of Resident Evil, and Resident Evil: Code: Veronica X; Resident Evil 4 Wii. For a while there, it seemed it was Capcom's goal to release every game in the series for every system available.
  • Vader Breath: Regenerators.
  • Vasquez Always Dies: Played straight in the first movie with Michelle Rodriguez, but averted with Claire and Jill in the sequels (who both survive).
  • Victorias Secret Compartment: In Nemesis, Jill is dressed kinda like a streetwalker (minskirt, tube top, sweater around her waist), and later on gets a harness which adds inventory space, yet she can somehow carry more than Carlos, her erstwhile ally. Carlos is dressed in military fatigues loaded with pockets, and is demonstrably stronger than Jill. So, where's Jill carrying all her gear?
  • Video Game Movies Suck: Semi-exception; the movies were critically panned, but did well enough at the box office to be expanded into a trilogy. Degeneration is somewhat of a subversion, since it was produced by Capcom and, unlike the Live Action Adaptations, is completely canon.
  • Video Game Remake: A Gamecube remake of the original in 2002.
  • Villainous Breakdown:
    • In RE5, Wesker suffers a huge one when the heroes stop his plan to spread Uroborus virus at the last minute.
    • Salazar in RE4 goes from being cocky to throwing a crazier-than-usual tantrum every ten seconds after Leon knifes him in the hand.
  • Villainous Crossdresser: Alfred Ashford from Code: Veronica. Justified in the fact that he has a split personality disorder.
  • The Virus: Several viruses, but only the T and G viruses are The Virus in the trope sense.
  • Virus Misnomer: Almost every single virus in the series.
  • Wake Up Call Boss: Countless are the players that met the Game Over screen for the first time thanks to Dr. Salvador in the village - and he's an optional miniboss.
  • Wall Of Weapons: The merchant in RE4 has a massive arsenal. If only he'd actually use it to HELP you...
  • Was Once A Man: Most of the high-end and creepiest monsters you kill.
  • Weapon Of Choice: You can be almost certain that the final boss is going to be finished off with a rocket launcher shot to the face.
  • With This Herring: You often start out with a weak weapon (unless you're Kevin in Outbreak, but he can barely find any ammo). The games at least attempt to justify this:
    • Resident Evil 0 and 1 - You are a cop caught in a situation way over your head.
    • Resident Evil 2 - You blunder into the Zombie Apocalypse without warning.
    • Resident Evil 3 - Jill's off the force and doesn't have access to the guns any more.
    • Code: Veronica - Claire starts the game in prison and Chris loses a bag of weapons into the sea.
    • Resident Evil 4 - We never see what Leon had in the police car, and it's destroyed before he can return.
    • Resident Evil 5 - Excella is setting you up.
    • Resident Evil: Outbreak - most of the characters were just chilling out at a bar when the outbreak got really bad. Kevin and Mark both retain their weapons, as they are a cop and a security guard. The rest have to find handguns dropped in bathroom wastebaskets, beat zombies to death with scrub brushes, or hack and slash with kitchen knives.
  • What Happened To Mommy: One of the child test subjects in the remake of the first Resident Evil, as well as William in RE2. This is also Sheva's motivation for joining the BSAA in 5.
  • What Happened To The Mouse: Rebecca Chambers hasn't been seen since the first game, despite having canonically survived the events and also being the only Spencer Mansion survivor who hasn't played a role in any of the subsequent games (and also despite managing to be the main character in the Resident Evil 0 prequel).
  • What The Hell, Hero?: Just try looking up Ashley's skirt.
  • Where The Hell Is Springfield:
    • Raccoon City is stated as being in the Midwest, but the presence of high mountains makes this very unlikely. Fanon places the city in either Colorado or Pennsylvania, the only mountainous states that can be described as being remotely Midwestern, and the latter being where the novelizations placed it.
    • The Spanish-speaking European country in RE4 is never explicitly stated, and Word Of God says that this was deliberate. However, the fact that a) it's a Spanish-speaking European country, b) a satellite shot showed the Iberian Peninsula, and c) Luis is from Madrid leaves very few choices as to what country it is.
    • Kijuju, the setting of RE5, is only described as being in Africa. The only hint as to where in Africa it's located is the fact that Sheva is from the BSAA's West African division.
  • Worst Aid:
    • In Resident Evil 2, when Leon is injured, Ada dresses the wound... by wrapping the bandages outside his clothes.
    • If you take Rebecca's offer to heal you in Chris' story in Remake, she just inspects your right forearm from a few different angles before declaring that you have a clean bill of health, as parodied in this chapter of the Resident Evil fanfic Welcome to Umbrella.
  • Wrestler In All Of Us:
    • In the fourth game Leon has an ability to shoot an enemy in the knee, then run up to them and perform a Northern Lights Suplex. Quite effective, and generally prevents Plaga creation, which is handy.
    • In the fifth one, in a similar vein, Chris taps into his inner Snake if you stumble an enemy with a leg shot from behind. He walks up behind them, grabs their head, and snaps their neck like a twig. Sheva gets her Big Boss on with her equivalent - she walks up behind them and slits their throat.
  • Xanatos Gambit: The Red Queen, you know being that she's a terrifyingly intelligent supercomputer, pulls one in the first movie when the protagonists are trying to escape the labs to get out of the Hive before it seals, trapping them. In addition, a Licker is at the window of the lab slowly breaking through. The choice? Kill Rain, thereby invoking Vasquez Always Dies, who was infected with the T-virus insuring zombification or let her live and be trapped in the lab and be killed by the Licker. Either way the Queen wins as the virus is contained regardless. At least until Kaplan takes option three by frying the Red Queen, unlocking the door and allowing everyone to escape.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Resident Evil: Code Veronica X, the Updated Rerelease.
  • You Have To Burn The Web: In Resident Evil, you end up trapped in a room where the exit is webbed over by Giant Spiders, and when playing as Chris, can burn the web off the door with a flamethrower. If you're playing as Jill, on the other hand, you just cut the web with a knife.
  • Your Mileage May Vary: For quite a long time, Resident Evil games were decidedly Survival Horror, but then Resident Evil 4 changed the formula when it shifted heavily towards Third Person Shooter. Reactions were mixed.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Obviously.
  • Zombie Gait: Do we need to explain?
  • Zombie Infectee: Averted the first movie, with the female soldier insisting she be killed. Inverted somewhat in the second movie when Jill's friend is infected and she won't kill him until he's a full zombie. In the third movie played completely straight with the black dude who survived the second movie and probably should have known better.
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