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  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Oddly enough, a virus gets hit with this. There's notably no evidence that Uroboros works the way Wesker says it does - the only three people in the series to not be overwhelmed are already infected with something else, and Uroboros Mkono indicates people can resist being consumed for a bit with no ill effects, which raises the idea that even if Wesker survived his final battle, he could very well have been rejected by Uroboros immediately after.
  • Annoying Video Game Helper: While the A.I. can perform something that normal players would have difficulty to do, like aiming down potshots easier, the A.I. would occasionally do something you really don't want to unless it's needed, like breaking boxes, or wasting healing items (as they're very important in Veteran Difficulty and higher), and they'd occasionally be doing something stupid, like trying to collect a trapped item, trying to melee a downed opponent close to a looming horde, or trying to shoot through you and refusing to adjust their position. They also had a terrible pathing and couldn't dodge and cheese the enemy, which makes ammo preservation a pain in the ass. Needless to say, the A.I. controlled player didn't age well, adding up another reason to play the game with other player. At least Ashley tried her best to stay out of the way and not wasting resources.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Sheva generally is very polarizing with most Resident Evil fans. To some, she's a typical bland, one-dimensional, and uninteresting character whose main purpose in the game is to be Eye Candy and to push the game's new "partner" system.note  A large number of fans also were quite disappointed she got to assist Chris in finishing off Wesker; an honor that many believed she was undeserving of and should have gone to Jill. There's also those who believe she was created simply to respond to the allegations of racism surrounding the game's pre-release. On the other hand, Sheva also has a few supporters who liked her characterization as a loyal soldier who'd been pushed into a situation that was way over her head. She's completely locked out of Chris and Wesker's history and provides a fresh perspective against the monsters that Chris is so jaded with fighting.
  • Breather Level: Part of the ancient city is a series of light and mirrors puzzles. The puzzles aren't hard, and the enemies are weak.
  • Broken Base: The inventory system is entirely reworked compared to Resident Evil 4. Some fans find it much more dynamic to be able to switch weapons on-the-fly, while just as many lament the loss of "Inventory Tetris" and bemoan that a rocket launcher now takes up the same space as a grenade, that the inventory is entirely too small and never upgrades, that the player is forced to choose between taking up inventory slots with defensive upgrades or not using them, and that the lack of a mid-scene switch command makes changing up inventory slots on the fly an exercise in frustration.
  • Common Knowledge: While Sheva is contested for the reasons above, the negatively received A.I. actually isn't exclusive to just her as is commonly believed. When you unlock the option to play as Sheva, Chris' A.I. plays more or less the same as her. The same goes for Josh and Jill's A.I. in the DLCs.
  • Contested Sequel: Compared to 4, whether or not the level design and gameplay are just as good as series landmark 4, much weaker, or even represent improvements are all up for debate, as is the game's color palette and aesthetic design compared to its graphical horsepower. The game's Co-Op functionality (and the fact that this co-op functionality is mandatory) often drags it down in the eyes of fans and critics.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • Lickers, as par for the series' course. Their regular claw attacks pack quite a punch, their tongue spear holds its victim in place, perfect for others of its kin to start a Cycle of Hurting, and if you miss the button prompt that repels their leap attack, you're guaranteed to die unless helped by your partner, no matter how much health you have. To put the cherry on the cake's icing, they always show up in packs. Also, their weakness is only vaguely hinted at, being acid rounds for the grenade launcher. Now you can buy and use them before the level, but they're one of the more expensive types of grenade ammo, and once again you're lucky if you know of them beforehand.
    • Reapers. Giant, vaguely humanoid insectoid creatures that resist most of your gunfire, regenerate what you can damage, including their heads, spew noxious gas, and have a very tricky weak point that you need to hit. The best part is that they have a One-Hit Kill. If they manage to grab you, they will kill you, full stop, no calling for help. As bad enough as this all is, it gets worse playing on single-player, when Sheva decides the best thing to do is to rush in and close the distance.
  • Disappointing Last Level: Chapter 5 and onward start throwing more cheap deaths and frustrating enemies (such as the aforementioned Reapers and Lickers) at you, with the enemy base ending up rather generic and flat in comparison to the somewhat lively and creepy villages and jungles the game used previously. Chapter 6-2 onwards, however, is quite fun in its own right, and the final boss(es) are both challenging and fun.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Josh Stone is this. Reasons include his accent, his knack for saving Chris and Sheva multiple times, especially from Jill, the spectacular wrestling moves he performs in the Mercenaries Reunion Mode, and the fact that he's the only minor character in the whole game that makes it out alive. He was also there to save Jill after she was released from Wesker's mind control and piloted the helicopter to rescue Sheva and Chris along with her. By the way, did you know that he's A LEGEND!!!
    • Ricardo Irving was seen as a spiritual successor to Ramon Salazar and has a healthy fanbase.
    • One of the series' long standing dark horses, Barry Burton, was brought back for the Mercenaries Reunion solely because of this. Same applies for Rebecca as well.
  • Evil Is Cool: Wesker is in top form for this game, backed by DC Douglas' spirited performance.
  • Fan Nickname: Chris is referred to as "Chris Roidfield" by American fans, thanks to his bulky appearance. Japanese fans like calling him a "gorilla" for the same reasons.
  • Fanon: A lot of fans assume Sheva is meant to be mixed-race, mostly due to one of her outfits being an homage to Halle Berry's character in Swordfish, but nothing is said of her parents' ethnicities one way or the other. Her motion actor is Dutch/Indian.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • S.T.A.R.S. Wesker in The Mercenaries is just one example. On the other hand, Midnight Wesker is das professional character, meaning he has all that is needed for overinflated combos and scores, but you need to be good. In Versus mode, Midnight Wesker becomes even worse. Normally the Handcannon in his set would be used to quickly dispatch a boss, or just get a kill to keep up the combo in desperate situations, before going back to handgun and melee attacks. However, since you can shoot other players to damage and kill them in both Slayer (PVE focus) and Survival (PVP focus), it becomes a lot more useful to take a single, deadly potshot at your enemy.
    • Rebecca. Yep, that Rebecca. With an auto shotgun that can one shot most enemies and a MP5 for long range work, a good player can kill everything before time runs out. In addition two of her melee options, flamethrower and tear gas,note  are excessively good for combos, both having a very wide range with flamethrower doing good damage and tear gas being useful in emergencies to clear some room if you don't have the shotgun out.
    • The SIG P226. It costs ₦69,000 to fully upgrade the damage to a whopping 480, which means it's the cheapest of the handgun upgrade cycles to get more damage than most shotguns — if you save up cash from the item drop-rich Chapters 3 and 4, you can easily grab an absurdly powerful handgun as soon as it's available. For even more game-breaking fun, give it to your A.I. partner, for reasons detailed below.
    • Your partner. They are a dirty, cheating A.I. on your side, because they're programmed to always pass their QTEs., always land their shots up to a ridiculous range, and is a reliable asset if well-stocked right up until Licker Betas and other high-HP enemies begin appearing regularly.
    • The Good Bad Bug allowing you keep any loot you picked up in a section of a stage whenever you voluntarily quit. Since several chapters have very useful goodies laying around near the start, you can easily exploit this to stockpile loads of treasure and rare, powerful equipment like magnum ammo and rocket launchers.
    • In a Co-Op session, one player can give a human partner stuff (weapons, healing items, rotten eggs, etc.), have the player with the donated goods to quit the game and save what they got in their inventory while the other player does not save what's lost at all. This results in items being duplicated, making it quite easy to rack up money, especially from valuable equipment. Xbox 360 players can easily do this with just two gamer profiles and two controllers; PlayStation 3 player don't have the same game-breaking luxury as they require another player online to duplicate items.
    • Heavy Metal Chris can be added to the list of top tier mercenaries characters. The simplest reason is that the stun rod counts as a melee, so getting kills with it will add to your timer, in addition an infinite ammo Gatling gun which can be used to get a quick kill, pepper boss monsters, and protects Chris's back at all times. Unlike Wesker or Rebecca, his actual melees aren't top tier, so he has to mostly rely on the stun rod for timer inflation, but even that means he's at an advantage against exposed parasites.
    • As annoying as the placements of the buttons are, the PC version has a built in crosshair that helps you with aiming better at longer range as the laser sight loses its clarity after aiming at certain distance. This is very useful when wielding weapons like the Magnums or the Longbow, as the crosshair doesn't follow the weapon recoil like the laser sight does and it offsets the lack of laser sight for Sheva players when using the Longbow.
  • Goddamned Bats: Adjules. They don't inflict or sustain that much damage, but their speed and low stature mean that you will likely waste a lot of ammunition trying to hit them.
  • Goddamned Boss: The final boss is fought in three stages. The fights are not that hard if you know what to do, but the boss's persistent failure to just die already can become tiresome, and all three have either cheap QTE instant-death cutscenes, cheap instant-kill attacks with weird range that don't play well with the gameplay or the partner AI, and weird gameplay changes that don't play well with the reworked inventory.
  • Ham and Cheese: D.C. Douglas was clearly enjoying himself in this game.
  • He's Just Hiding: Countless fans don't buy the apparent Word of God that Albert Wesker is dead and insist that for now the character is retired, but believe he will one day return. Considering the creation of Jake Muller in the sequel and the mysterious Alex Wesker, it's clear Capcom realized the gravity of their mistake killing him off early and tried to compensate for one character with two.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Chris says "Do you take all of your ideas from Comic Book Villains?" to Wesker. It turns out that Wesker and Dr. Doom are teaming up in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. The same line also becomes hilarious with the release of Captain America: The First Avenger and its climax, where its main villain, Red Skull (himself a Comic Book Villain), enacted a very similar plot to Wesker in this game, complete with a large bomber jet and delusions of godhood.
    • In one scene, Sheva refers to Chris as a superhero. Even though Chris doesn't think himself as such, his voice actor Roger Craig Smith would later go to voice Captain America in Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble as well as Batman in Batman: Arkham Origins. In addition, Chris himself would later appear in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite in which he interacts with Marvel superheroes and is treated by the game as a superhero in his own right (in the vanilla version of Marvel vs Capcom 3, his strength levels are listed as higher than Captain America's on his power chart).
    • D.C. Douglas, Wesker's voice actor, facetiously mentions in a Resident Evil 5 interview that he would have liked to see Wesker gotten laid. Then Resident Evil 6 came out, and players are treated to Jake Muller, Wesker's son.
    • Mixed a little with Harsher in Hindsight, considering the circumstances, but in this game, D.C. Douglas voices a villain who mind-controls a leading female into being his Dragon and sics on the hero, who has to snap her out of it. Douglas also played Alexei in Tales of Vesperia, which not only had the same plot point, but came out that same year.
    • As shown in the "Spencer's notebook" file, one Umbrella researcher who was working on the African facility was named Ethan W. Years later, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard would introduce a new protagonist for the series, Ethan Winters.
    • Months after the release of Resident Evil 5, GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra came out, which depicted a version of Baroness who has a very similar story arc to what Jill had in Resident Evil 5. Instead of being an Eastern European aristocrat and obvious Saturday morning cartoon villain who willingly joined the Cobra terrorist organisation,the movie's version was once an ordinary American woman named Ana and the former love interest of Duke, who got kidnapped by Rex, his former special ops teammate turned mad scientist who works for a evil military arms dealing and research corporation, and much like Jill, had a mind control system implanted on her body and was turned into Rex's Dragon, complete with a new hair colour, tight bodysuit and newly acquired unarmed fighting capabilities. Duke like Chris Redfield, avoids fighting her throughout the movie to try reason with her to resist her machine's control, and she briefly regains control only to lose it again after Rex, much like Wesker, pacifies her with his handheld control panel linked to her mind control device.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: The final section of the game from Chapter 5-3 onward (namely, starting with the boss fight against Jill) is packed with awesome boss fights and hilariously cheesy dialogue to give a satisfying conclusion to Chris and Wesker's longstanding rivalry.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • You will GIVE me an egg!note 
    • Complete. Global. Saturation.note 
    • Fans ate up the ridiculous QTE where Chris punches a boulder with his bare hands to the point of a Running Gag where one meme in the wake of the Resident Evil 2 (Remake) has Chris give Leon very specific instructions to go on a date with Claire while destroying Ada's car with a boulder. Even Capcom got on the joke in the eighth mainline game, where an irate Heisenberg refers to Chris as a "boulder-punching asshole".
  • Narm: It wouldn't be Resident Evil without it.
  • Narm Charm: Chris punching a boulder. Ridiculous? Yes. Totally friggin' awesome? Also yes. There's a reason it's constantly brought up by fans as the character's most memorable moment.
  • Older Than They Think: Some of the more "crazy" action-style stunts that show up in this game have appeared in other Resident Evil media before. Case in point, the comic book adaptation of Code: Veronica turned the protagonists into full-fledged shonen anime heroes, with stunts like Claire somersaulting all over the Tyrant or Chris killing both a Hunter and a Bandersnatch with his bare hands.
  • Polished Port:
    • Aside from some weird KB+M issues as detailed down in Scrappy Mechanic, the port released on PC is excellent, featuring well optimized and beautiful graphics that hold up well today. As of 2015, it doesn't even need to run on the unwieldy and now-defunct Games For Windows Live (and retail copies can even be inserted to the Steam version), and said patch adds back in laser sight aiming with a KB+M setup. The Games for Windows Live requirement was later removed in 2023 on the Steam port, along with integrating the later releases' option to turn off the Action Commands.
    • Capcom responded to the general vitriol surrounding Action Commands by making them optional in later releases of the game, such as the Triple Collection for the Nintendo Switch. While they still exist mid-gameplay, like having to dodge Ndesu's attacks or rescue your partner from grapples, the player is no longer obliged to wigglestick their way through cutscenes, lest they meet an untimely, rank-damaging demise.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • In Mercenaries, have fun being randomly grabbed by Majinis while you are desperately trying to keep your combo up. Bonus points if the Executioner is around.
    • The inventory is incredibly limited, only providing you with nine slots per character. And unlike Resident Evil 0, you can't switch partners during gameplay, which means you can't give Sheva specific items and expect to switch back and fourth between her and Chris if wish to use them in a playthrough. Though you can request or trade the actual items themselves, that requires real-time pausing and thus not recommended during moments where you have to fend off enemies. The game does provide the Item Management menu to mitigate this, but it can still be pretty annoying to have to sacrifice some of your items to make room for other items.
    • While the PC controls are in general somewhat wonky (for example, by default the quick turn is relegated to the C key, but the "locate partner" button is bound to Q, next to the WASD keys, when the other way around would be much more useful), for some godforsaken reason Capcom decided to make the QTE buttons stay whatever keys you remapped certain functions to. This is extremely wonky, as rebinding your keys can result in weird combinations like E+V if you made "item recovery" and "co-op action" those two buttons.
  • Scrappy Weapon: Proximity Mines. Though they have some use in Story mode (usually by leading bosses and strong enemies on them or setting up for groups you know will be there in reruns), in Mercenaries they are next to useless, with melees giving you more time on kill, and taking a while to set up for little payoff, as far as comboing goes. In Mercenaries you might be able to use one or two while on the run from a horde, but in versus, they are next to useless, as it's obvious when one has been set where you might step on it as well as the possibility of it being shot while you set it.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop: While still a tough game on the first playthrough, it gives more breaks to the player compared to Resident Evil 4: You have a partner this time around, who's very useful for bailing you out of trouble (if you utilize them properly), there is a last-chance "dying" state so you can heal one another, and exposed-Plaga Majini are much, much less common here and come in fewer varieties compared to Ganados. At the same time, the game expects you to be a veteran of 4, which means that it will not hesitate in tossing some dangerous enemies and situations your way, and if you don't know how to use your partner effectively, they will be the bane of your existence.
  • Signature Scene: Chris punching a boulder; there's a reason why it's at the very top of the Awesome Moments page here.
  • Tainted by the Preview: When the game was first revealed, allegations of racism were leveled against it in a variety of ways.
  • That One Achievement: One of the game's achievements/trophies is to beat Professional Mode, which is extremely difficult if not downright impossible due to Chris and Sheva being made into One-Hit-Point Wonders, even with the Melee and Bulletproof vests on, along with the fact that there are a lot of enemies that either are fast (the dogs), attack from a distance (the Majinis with guns or crossbows), tend to be in groups (the Majinis as a whole), or all three (the Lickers).
  • That One Boss:
    • Ndesu, a.k.a. El Gigante of Africa. You are caught in an immobile truck, and the only ways to not be hit are to either shoot him enough to stop him or hit the action commands that flash for a split-second. You need to concentrate fire on him (unless he tosses a hard-hitting boulder) while keeping an eye out for action commands. Random enemies like to come throughout the fight and shoot you with flaming arrows or molotov cocktails, and you can't even heal yourself if your health is too low! This is just a midgame boss, even!
    • Fights that aren't exceptionally difficult normally become ridiculous on Professional. Irving's tentacles become one-hit kills, and the window for the dodge command is buggy and sometimes lasts less than a half-second. The Wesker+Jill fight is even more absurd, at least on single player. Normally, the enemies on professional ignore your partner for the most part and focus on you, but Wesker and Jill ignore this entirely. Your partner will die, a lot. Two of Jill's SMG bullets will kill you, and it's almost impossible to incapacitate her in the first phase, as your partner refuses to help after you restrain her. Once you get to the second phase, your partner will run off to try to knock out Jill, but will usually just get SMG'd or smacked by Wesker.
    • Uroboros Mkono. Even if you do it "right",note  it still takes forever to kill. The solution? Lower your game's FPS to 30. This is because the damage calculations for the flamethrower and similar weapons get messed up if it's set above that and the weak spots most likely won't get exposed at all as a result.
  • That One Level:
    • Level 5-3. Chris and Sheva have to go through three Reapers, a spinning Elevator Action Sequence, a small army of Lickers, Wesker, and Jill.
    • The chase sequence leading up to the Ndesu battle. Enemies have an annoying habit of nailing you from behind with highly damaging Molotov Cocktails while you're busy fighting off armored trucks, there's no way to heal the damage you take on, and it's far too easy to lose track of your tiny, faintly red aiming reticle against the predominantly orange and brown backdrop.
    • Any level which requires splitting up for extended periods, making one partner useless, or any level that utilizes Hollywood Darkness.
    • 4-1 and 4-2. Both levels are huge, sprawling mazes, and in 4-2 you're constantly dodging extremely damaging waves of fire (unless you know where to stand to shoot the Majini operating the mirrors, or you have the infinite rocket launcher), followed by an extremely tedious trio of mirror puzzles. At least they look absolutely gorgeous.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Sheva's history is only lightly touched upon in-game. In the unlockable content, her file is 36 pages long, having a good 10 pages on series protagonist Chris and only being outstripped by the History of Resident Evil file.
    • Spencer, the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire series who created Umbrella, outlasted his partners, and helped create the T-Virus itself, is reduced to a dying old man who Wesker murders in a cutscene. The main characters don't even get to meet him, never mind fight him.
  • Too Cool to Live: Unless Capcom decides to start making prequels or pull a Back from the Dead, this is going to be the last we see of Wesker, who is widely considered the best villain in the series. Then again, succeeding games Umbrella Corps and Resident Evil: Revelations 2 shows that in the former, Wesker, as the unseen announcer, is implied to be still alive and running a new offshoot cleanup crew in secret, and in the latter, no matter how it ends, it is implied Alex Wesker, his sister, survived through transferring part of her soul.
  • Vindicated by History: Although it's still seen as one of the weaker games, opinions of it have become much more favorable in over the years, no doubt aided by is numerous re-releases, and for having a genuinely fun multiplayer.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Great detail in the environments and texture work, excellent-looking and shot cutscenes, great animations, some really good effects and well-done lighting make Resident Evil 5 look fantastic, especially by modern standards.

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