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Resident Evil Zero, the fifth main game in the Resident Evil franchise, came out for the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. It serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. Capcom initially slated this game for the Nintendo 64 as a follow-up to that system's port of Resident Evil 2, but scrapped the original version of Zero halfway through development when Nintendo unveiled their next console (the GameCube). Capcom made the decision to have Zero Moved to the Next Console instead; at the same time, Shinji Mikami's team began development of a remake of the first Resident Evil for the GameCube. The development of the two projects overlapped, which led to both games sharing many of the same assets (chiefly the character model for Rebecca Chambers). As a result, development on Zero finished only a few months after the release of the remake of the first game. For more than a decade, Zero was exclusive to Nintendo platforms, as its only port was on the original Wii in 2008. However, Capcom released the Resident Evil Zero HD Remaster for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC on January 19, 2016. A Nintendo Switch version was released on May 21, 2019.

Bravo Team, one half of the Raccoon Police Department's elite S.T.A.R.S. unit, heads into the Arklay Mountains to investigate the reports of recent "cannibal murders", but a mechanical failure brings their helicopter down. The team searches the nearby area and discovers a crashed military police van; it contains the van's murdered drivers and a transport log for former Marine Lieutenant Billy Coen, a convict scheduled for execution after committing twenty-three murders. After Bravo Team separates to find Billy, new team member Rebecca Chambers finds her way to a broken-down train, the Ecliptic Express, in the middle of a forest.

Rebecca has incredible luck for her first day on the job: she not only encounters Billy, but also ends up face-to-decaying-face with scores of zombies, who force Rebecca and Billy to work together in order to survive. The duo escapes the train, then head down the tracks, where they discover the Umbrella Management Training Facility. Their struggle for survival pits them against hordes of Umbrella's nightmarish bio-weaponry and a mysterious young man who bears a grudge against the company.

Zero employs a character-switching system where the player controls both Rebecca and Billy throughout a single playthrough: the player can either have Billy and Rebecca explore the same areas together, with one character controlled by the player and the other by the computer, or split them up. The knowledge of when to stick together or split up becomes integral to solving many of the puzzles. The game also eliminates the series staple of item boxes; Rebecca and Billy can instead drop their items anywhere and later retrieve them from the same locations.

Zero became the last game of this franchise to utilize pre-set camera backgrounds and exploration-oriented game design; Resident Evil 4 marked the series' shift towards action and shooting. While Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2 (Remake) marked a return to the franchise's survival horror roots, the fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds remain a relic of the past.


Resident Evil Zero contains examples of the following tropes:

  • Academy of Evil: The Umbrella Management Training Facility. The place basically exists to instill unswerving loyalty to the company and has its students conducting the unethical experiments the company is famous for. Furthermore, this was the school where series villains Albert Wesker and William Birkin got their start.
  • Action Girl: Rebecca, sort of. She's certainly much braver and more capable than her earlier/later self from Resident Evil. Easily justified considering that by Resident Evil, she's been up for a couple days straight and is running on nothing but fear and adrenaline in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. However, in The Umbrella Chronicles, we find out she has at the very least had a nap, albeit a nightmare-filled one.
  • Always Close: No matter how quickly you get to Rebecca, she is always saved just in time when she's dangling from a ledge.
  • And Then John Was a Zombie: Edward Dewey becomes a zombie shortly after being killed by zombie dogs, while Dr. James Marcus becomes the Leech Queen.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes:
    • Rebecca gets her cowgirl ensemble from Resident Evil, plus a new leather outfit, while Billy gets a fancy suit. Since the closet is located only on the Ecliptic Express, it becomes impossible to change outfits after reaching the Management Training Facility.
    • Continued in the Remastered edition, although there are a couple differences. One, you're given a second personal item in the form of a Suitcase, from which you can change costumes at any time right from the start. Second, apart from the three original alternate costumes, there are eight additional costumes available as DLC, not including the novelty T-shirts. Billy is given the option to cosplay as Cody from Street Fighter Alpha 3 or a Wolf Force member (specifically Joseph Gibson) from Mercs, while Rebecca's outfits are all from other games in the series: her original outfit from the first Resident Evil (S.T.A.R.S. 1996), her Arrange Mode outfit from Director's Cut (S.T.A.R.S. 1997), her outfit from the unreleased N64 version of RE0 (S.T.A.R.S. Prototype), her RPD basketball uniform from the hidden photo in RE2, her cheerleader outfit from Deadly Silence, and her sexy nurse costume from Mercenaries 3D. The game also adds a "Wesker Mode" that replaces Billy with Wesker and gives Rebecca an Evil Costume Switch similar to Jill's in RE5, the latter of which is unlocked for the main game after completing Wesker Mode for the first time. Rebecca also has twelve novelty T-shirts to choose from, although seven of them are Japanese-only.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Believe it or not, the game actually seems to assess your ammo and health upon entering a room and will allow enemies to be killed much more easily if you're low on health/ammo.note 
    • Once the Ecliptic Express crashes, it's no longer accessible. However, to avoid the loss of important items, everything you had set on the Ecliptic Express miraculously ends up at the crash site.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • William Birkin gets some more screentime in a non-monster form.
    • Billy Coen was originally just a character mentioned in a report by Rebecca in the Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 2 (where his last name was misspelled as Koen), who was said to have been killed. Here, he is Rebecca's main ally and is revealed to have been framed for a crime he didn't commit, leading to Rebecca helping him fake his death at the end of the game.
    • James Marcus was first mentioned in another file exclusive to the Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 2 where it was stated that he was the scientist responsible for researching the Mother Virus after Spencer discovered it before being fired and his research being continued by Birkin. Here, he is revealed to have been one of the founding members of Umbrella and was actually assassinated by Spencer ten years prior by Wesker and Birkin, two of his top students.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: Attacking the Proto-Tyrant's exposed heart or spine deals massive damage to the creature.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Downplayed, but every single boss other than the Proto-Tyrant and the Queen Leech consists of an ordinary animal grown to a gargantuan stature — in order, a scorpion, a centipede, and a bat. A file in-game justifies this by explaining that a dramatic increase in stature was the most consistent mutation produced by the Progenitor Virus; more drastic mutation potential was why it was superseded by the T-Virus. It also doubles as a Mythology Gag; the original Resident Evil consisted mostly of giant animals for bosses until the remake of the first game added the Crimson Head Alpha and Lisa Trevor.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The Hunting Gun. It's powerful, but only holds two shells at a time and takes up two precious inventory spaces like most of the other heavy weapons. Most players will likely dump it for good not long after reaching the Management Training Facility, seeing as the other shotgun can be found relatively quickly which can hold five more shells.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Marcus claims he wants to destroy Umbrella. By causing the viral outbreak at the Spencer Estate, which ultimately brought attention to what Umbrella was doing, he got exactly what he wanted. He also wants to set the world on fire, which is hard to deny is happening by Resident Evil 6, again in part due to him. The only thing he didn't plan was getting killed by Rebecca and Billy.
  • Badass Normal: Billy, a former Marine, is naturally a well-trained kicker of asses. In the Zero section of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, he uses his handcuffs as makeshift brass knuckles, and is also capable of dropkicking a full grown man in the face.
  • Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: A number of Rebecca's alternate costumes.
  • Bat Out of Hell: Bats infected by the T-Virus are among the enemies faced by Billy and Rebecca, and there's a boss battle against a giant mutant one.
  • Behind the Black: Inverted with the leech zombies purely for shock and surprise. There's a few rooms you'll enter and the layout of the room means the leech zombie should see you as soon as you're in the room, but it won't start attacking until the camera angle changes to show it. This is when the Scare Chord and "Psycho" Strings start up.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: invoked Wesker and Birkin, who show up at several points in cutscenes watching the events on the security cameras and attempting to contain the situation.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: The bosses include a giant scorpion and a giant centipede. The regular monsters include the smaller-but-still-giant insects, the Plague Crawlers, and the Spiders. And let's not forget all the leeches.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Rebecca and Billy escape from Marcus' facility, killing him in the process, and despite Billy being framed for murders he didn't commit, Rebecca lets him go, taking his dog tags and promising to have him declared dead. But she's still separated from her squad, her narration outright states that she never sees Enrico again, and she's stuck in the middle of nowhere, so her only option is to head for the nearby mansion Enrico told her about. Cue a blatantly symbolic shot of a butterfly stuck in a spider web, showing that Rebecca's ordeal is far from over...
  • Blown Across the Room: If the player tries to attack the Stinger up close, it will respond by throwing them across the room. It will also do this upon death if the player is too close when it dies.
  • Body Horror: Dr. Marcus is the best example. There's just something repugnant about a guy vomiting several dozen fist-sized black leeches and copious amounts of slime, after which they crawl all over him and fuse with him to change him into the Queen Leech.
  • Bonus Feature Failure
    • You can unlock Leech Hunter on Easy but if you unlock the E rank reward from said mode, it won't be useful at all since you can't obtain the sub-machinegun in that difficulty level.
    • Besides gameplay differences, Wesker Mode in the HD versions is pretty much the same deal as the main game, only with Wesker's model instead of Billy's and nothing else was done to acknowledge the change.
  • Boring, but Practical: If you're playing on Easy, then nearly everything can be killed with the basic 9mm pistols. This includes the Proto Tyrant boss which Rebecca faces alone.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Mimicry Marcus, a.k.a. the leech zombies. They usually show up in heavily traveled, plot essential areas that also tend to be extremely cramped, and like to come in pairs that occupy adjacent rooms so that the player might run into another one when they run away from one. They pose a serious threat whether you decide to fight them or attempt to run past them. Guns do very little damage, and even Molotovs are of limited effectiveness, because it takes three of them to kill just one leech zombie and they have a short range and a long throwing animation. Fire grenades are no stronger, but at least have a longer range.
  • Chained by Fashion: Billy only managed to break one arm free when the MP van overturned and spends the entire game with his cuffs hanging off of his left wrist.
  • Chain of Deals: Instead of finding the key to the door, you're more likely to find the key to the locker which contains the puzzle piece that opens the briefcase that contains the key to another room that contains the battery for the forklift truck that can now lift your partner up to the shelf with the key to the door.
  • Clown-Car Grave: Justified in that not all corpses reanimate at the same time and there were dozens of people on the Ecliptic Express when it was attacked. You can see corpses still in their seats or lying on the floor all over the train, so it makes sense that the "fresh" zombies are passengers finally completing their reanimation and shambling off to hunt.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • The opening text crawl goes out of its way to not only mention Raccoon City and Rockfort Island, but also Sheena Island from Resident Evil: Survivor as locations of T-Virus outbreaks.
    • A subtle one. Rebecca is unable to operate the piano to get the battery, justifying why she had to practice in the first game.
    • Rebecca at one point visits the turntable and the entrance to Birkin's lab from Resident Evil 2, which establishes that the cable car ride in RE2 took a lot longer and covered a lot more ground than anyone thought before this game was released.
    • The HD Remaster gives the achievement/trophy "Apprentice of Unlocking" after you open the last locked door in the game that leads to the final boss fight.note 
  • Cool Train: The Ecliptic Express is a ridiculously luxuriant train complete with private sleeping cabins and a restaurant, all to ferry Umbrella employees between Raccoon City and the Management Training Facility, which has to be a couple of hours long trip at best.
  • Creepy Centipedes: Centurion, who's big enough to devour people whole.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max:
    • Billy diving into Bullet Time while shooting the leeches off Rebecca.
    • Rebecca when she ducks through an otherwise typical Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence. Billy also jumps over said fence if you control him when you enter the cable car room.
    • When the story dictates it, leeches are seen effortlessly killing swathes of civilians and soldiers just by swarming over them.
  • Cycle of Hurting: If the player only attacks stinger when it raises its claws to strike, it will always stagger back and resume the same attack pattern.
  • Deadly Gaze: In the HD Remaster, Wesker gets this as a special attack in "Wesker Mode", along with his super speed dash. It's not really consistent with his established powers, and was most likely implemented because his super strength punches couldn't be properly animated within the context of the game's engine.
  • Death Faked for You: Rebecca allows Billy to escape at the end by falsely reporting his death.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: Mimicries blow up when they're killed, dealing heavy damage to the player if they're caught up in it.
  • Demoted to Extra: The zombie dogs only make two appearances during the entire game, both of which occur on the Ecliptic Express.
  • Developer's Foresight: When the timer on the train starts, and you go to engage the brakes as Rebecca, seeing Edward as a zombie includes a special cutscene of her begging him not to attack. Billy gets no such scene, having no connection to him.
  • Door to Before: You don't deposit spare items in the item box anymore. You just drop them on the ground and have to backtrack to pick them up. To make this easier, nearly every stage of the game has shortcuts that let you go back to an earlier part of the game. Except the Ecliptic Express, obviously, though any items you left on the train end up on the floor in the room where the train crashed.
  • Double Unlock: Getting an E rank in the Leech Hunter minigame, which is as easy as picking up a single leech charm, will unlock bonus Sub-Machinegun ammo in the main game. However, actually getting your hand on the Sub-Machinegun requires you to beat the main game with either an S or A rank, and you can't play on Easy mode.
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: Beating the game on Easy will not unlock the special weapons.
  • Episode Zero: The Beginning: As the title suggests, this is chronologically the first game in the Resident Evil series.
  • Evil Laugh: Dr. Marcus is quite fond of this.
  • Evil Versus Evil: While Rebecca and Billy are the protagonists, they are largely unrelated to the main plot of the game, which is Dr. Marcus's plan to enact revenge on Umbrella, outside of just happening to be where leeches appear for the first time.
  • Fake Longevity: In Leech Hunter, each rank offers different rewards. In the GameCube and Wii versions, each rank has to be obtained individually. For example, getting an A, by collecting all 100 leech charms, only unlocks the infinite ammo for all weapons in the main game. Thankfully, this was fixed in the HD Remaster, where achieving a high rank will also unlock any of the lower rewards.
  • Female Angel, Male Demon: The statues of good and evil.
  • Foreshadowing: When you get the the Laboratory, you'll find a photo. If you look at it, you can see a tall student that eerily looks like the mysterious figure you kept seeing, who Rebecca or Billy interpret as being Dr. Marcus' son/grandson. In actuality, it's a young Marcus.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the story, both characters are shown to have working walkie-talkies at the beginning of the game. However, there are certain moments where the player has to do something with one character that will affect the other. Story wise, there is nothing that indicates that Rebecca and Billy relayed any information to each other during these moments.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Most of the bosses. At least the Stinger was explained away in a file that says the researchers on the Ecliptic Express were studying it, prior to the whole "attack of the killer leeches" thing. It was probably being transported on the train and broke free during the whole mess.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: If you unlock Wesker Mode (by finishing the game) then Billy is replaced by Wesker, and Wesker and Rebecca both have glowing red eyes.
  • Grappling-Hook Pistol: Reasonably subverted. The hookshot is quite large (taking two blocks of inventory space to have, similarly to large guns), it can only hold 80kg without getting damaged, and is slow.note 
  • The Greatest Story Never Told: The only witnesses to the events of game besides Rebecca are the officially dead Billy, Wesker, and, to a lesser extent, Birkin, who was watching the Management Training Facility's security feed for at least part of the game. There's no indication that Rebecca told Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine what happened.
  • Groin Attack: If Rebecca is pinned to the ground by a Hunter and manages to struggle free, she does so by kicking it squarely in the crotch and then throwing it off of her whilst it's stunned.
  • Hand Cannon: The magnums, as usual. The unlockable Magnum revolver is explicitly noted in outside reference materials to be an Umbrella Ace Custom, something they modified as a self-defense weapon for the researchers as a means of combating their own creations.
  • Handguns: As usual, the staple weapon, though the ones Billy and Rebecca start out with are subtly different. Billy's is slightly more powerful and will randomly headshot zombies, and either gun can be upgraded later on for more power and faster firing.
  • Head Crushing: If a downed zombie latches onto the Player Character, they can be dispatched with a boot to the skull.
  • Here We Go Again!: Sorry Rebecca, but that mansion is not going to be a reprieve.
  • Hero of Another Story: Inverted when you think about it. As pointed out by Tom Wilde's plot analysis, Billy and Rebecca sort of just happened to wander into The Last Dance between Birkin and Wesker and Dr. Marcus and don't actually contribute anything until the very end. In any other context, Birkin would be the protagonist (albeit an evil one) for blowing up the facility.
    The weirdest thing about RE0's plot is that it isn't about Billy or Rebecca at all. They've stumbled into the middle of a grudge match between Marcus and Wesker, and by rights, Wesker should be the protagonist. Instead, he's barely in it and you're caught in the fallout.
  • Hidden Depths: Gruff, short-spoken Billy is remarkably talented at playing the piano.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: One way of emphasizing Billy and Rebecca's "unlikely partner" status.
  • I Gave My Word: Invoked by Billy when saving Rebecca.
  • I Won't Say I'm Guilty: Billy refuses to confirm or deny whether or not he really did commit the murders he was sentenced for. He didn't. The flashback concerning this issue reveals that it was his commanding officer who was responsible. When Billy tried to stop it, he was knocked out cold. When the massacre was discovered, the unit pinned the blame on him.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Stinger's fatal strike on players with low HP is to hoist them in place with its pincers and impale them with its stinger.
  • Informing the Fourth Wall: Some items have very specific uses. For example, early on there's a room where a character will get trapped in because there's something stuck in the keyhole, and the character mentions they need something sharp to poke it out. The knife doesn't work, and if it's Rebecca, neither does her mixing kit, which is shown to include syringe needles. The only way to open the door is to find an ice pick and give it to the character via a dumb waiter.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence:
    • At one point, Billy and Rebecca have to get into the kitchen, which is locked behind a special door. They never consider hopping over the open counter into the kitchen.
    • Billy, a former Marine who just survived going through a water treatment facility's river with a zombie toad on his back, cannot swim across a 3-meter gap of water to get a valve handle.
  • Interface Screw: Unintentionally. The giant bat monster is infamous for exploiting 0's aiming system with its little bats that will cause the player character's aiming to go all over the place.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle:
    • Pretty much the whole game. Each character can only hold six slots worth of items, and the series standard item boxes are nowhere to be found. If you don't know what's coming, you'll probably have to trek back and forth to whatever room you've designated your item room to resupply.
    • Inventory struggles are taken to the extreme in the Leech Hunter minigame. Billy and Rebecca each have to collect fifty leech charms, for a total of one-hundred. However, they can only fit ten charms in a slot, and when a charm is picked up it can't be dropped or traded between characters. By the end of the ordeal, the player won't be able to mix herbs or even reload their guns, so charms in dangerous areas have to be collected first.note 
  • Invisible Backup Band: Dr. Marcus inexplicably has instruments playing in the background when he's singing during the opening scene. Later on, he sings with no backup whatsoever.
  • It Can Think: The leeches show definite signs of this. On a few occasions, they can follow you in different rooms. They also try to cut off your escape by removing the cable car's circuitry.
  • Jump Scare:
    • The zombie that comes out of the refrigerator after a certain point in the Ecliptic Express.
    • Four crows will fly through a window once you grab the Crank Handle in the Management Training Facility.
    • The first encounter with the Plague Crawlers is this as two of them will drop from the ceiling.
    • Leech zombies have a nasty habit of staying silent and inert offscreen when first entering a room then immediately springing into action when the player moves near them and the camera reveals them. It doesn't help that their rooms tend to be eerily quiet rooms with no music, and their Scare Chord-like Leitmotif immediately blasts away when they awaken.
    • The Lurkers, which are encountered late in the game. They will pop out of watery areas.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • Billy's unit attacked a village, killing 23 people. They then blamed him for it when he tried to stop them beforehand. Since Billy doesn't care about proving his innocence to the point he doesn't confirm or deny to Rebecca if he was involved, they got away with it in the end.
    • Averted with Umbrella itself, this game started a domino effect that caused their crimes to be exposed and they were shut down years later, while some like HUNK and Nikolai seemingly got away with their crimes, in general the villains involved with Umbrella were killed off, all because of the consequences of the Mysterious Young Man's revenge.
  • Kill It with Fire: Flame grenades and Molotov cocktails are the best weapons to use against Mimicry Marcus/Leech Zombies; not only do they inflict the most damage, they cause them to die without exploding.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Billy. He's accepted his death sentence with resigned bitterness, but is the one who suggests that he and Rebecca team up.
  • Last Lousy Point: In the Leech Hunter minigame, there are absolutely no indicators where any of the charms are located. If a player carefully goes through the Management Training Facility and ends up with ninety-nine charms, they'll be forced to do another sweep to get number one-hundred.
  • Let's Split Up, Gang!:
    • Bravo Team does this when they decide to search for Billy.
    • This can be done by the player as part of the partner system. Some puzzles also force you to do this.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: Permissible on the GameCube version, because of the time of release and the high end graphics. On the Wii, however, this becomes frustrating very quickly.
  • Made of Iron: Billy, when compared to Rebecca.
  • Malevolent Mugshot: The large portrait of Dr. Marcus in the entrance of the Management Training Facility is weird but not unheard of in a school. What's really silly are the doors with his profile on them that can only be opened with leech shaped keys.
  • The Medic: Rebecca, as the field medic of S.T.A.R.S. is the only one who can combine herbs to make stronger medicine.
  • Minigame: Leech Hunter.
  • Never Split the Party: For the most part, the game's easier if you keep Billy and Rebecca together, since it lets you put out twice as much firepower quickly. However, there's parts where you have to split them up, and others where it's easier to sneak by monsters if there's only one of you around. Particularly anything with leech zombies.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Eliminators, which are zombie monkeys.
  • Odd Couple: An innocent, delicate-looking, 18-year-old rookie of an elite police force teams up with the escaped convict she is supposed to be arresting, a gruff, cynical, rather intimidating-looking 26-year-old ex-Marine who was sentenced to death for murdering 23 people. Their relationship starts as Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, but they eventually become Fire-Forged Friends after he saves her life repeatedly, proves to be a decent guy, and she lies to her team to protect him.
  • One-Hit Kill: Lurkers are capable of doing this, regardless of health, if you don't escape their grasp in time.
  • Papa Wolf: Billy becomes a "big brother" version of this to Rebecca over the course of the game.
  • Permanently Missable Content: Any item the player doesn't interact with in the Ecliptic Express before it crashes will not be transferred over to the Management Training Facility. Likewise, the wardrobe closet will become inaccessible after the crash, meaning that Rebecca and Billy will be stuck with whatever outfit the player picked for them. The HD Remaster, however, adds a suitcase to your inventory as a new personal item, from which you can change your costumes at any time.
  • Plot Hole: Rebecca is bitten, scratched and even swarmed by leeches and Eliminators, but she never contracts the T-Virus. This is not even a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation as it happens during several cutscenes. To make matters worse, there is a file in the game implying that by simply touching a leech will get you infected immediately after. About the only in-universe explanation is that Rebecca is one of the 10% of people that's immune to it. Out-of-universe, it's essentially Plot Armor to make sure she survives intact for the first game.
  • Prequel: This game is set before the events of the original Resident Evil.
  • Puzzle Reset: Thankfully, all the puzzles in the game. The most notable is the one near the end of the game. It requires you to push wooden crates to one side of a pit and fill it with water. Two catches: One, there's a metal one in there too that needs to be dealt with. Two, there's also a grate that impedes how you move the crates.
  • Refrigerator Ambush: A zombie pops out of the refrigerator in the dining car after you've solved a few puzzles.
  • Respawning Enemies: In a viciously cruel take, if the player decides to backtrack to earlier areas before the final battle with Marcus, likely to scrounge for supplies, every area in the game is suddenly filled to the brim with zombies that weren't there before or already disposed of prior.
  • Retcon: The mutilated remains Alpha stumbled across in the opening of the first game was Edward. This was retconned to be Kevin Dooley, a backup pilot for Bravo team. Edward himself was formally introduced in 0 and meets a different fate.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The "mysterious youth"/ Dr. Marcus, as he is sure to announce in every single line of dialogue. His rampage sets in motions the events of the rest of the series.
  • Say My Name: Upon finding Billy limply hanging on to a rock in a roaring river with a lurker sneaking up on him, it's all Rebecca can do to scream his name several times.
  • Scare Chord: The theme that plays whenever a leech zombie shows up, which also contains "Psycho" Strings.
  • Scary Scorpions: The first boss, the Stinger, is a scorpion the size of a pickup truck.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Rebecca refuses to arrest Billy once she learns the truth about him, and by the time she manages to reunite with Enrico, she abandons her mission completely to save him. By the end of the game, she's faking his death.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Wesker explicitly states he is "abandoning ship" several times after the resurrected Marcus rampages, recognizing it's practically over for Umbrella.
  • Selective Memory:
    • Inverted. At one point, the player has to split Rebecca and Billy up. The one who goes upstairs, by using the hookshot, will find a file that hints at the combination to a locked room. It is explained how the other character gets the dial to enter the combination, which is inexplicably off, but not how they know about the file, let alone the password. And that knowledge is needed for the other character to progress.
    • Just before Billy has to save Rebecca from falling into a chasm. In order to unlock the door, Rebecca needs to pick up a note that says what the power settings need to be. However, when she falls into the chasm, Billy needs that note, because it hints that he's got to go through the boiler room. So he really shouldn't know that.
  • Semper Fi: Billy, who is a badass former Marine.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: You get two in this game: a Hunting Gun, an over-under shotgun that only holds two shells but is slightly more powerful (and actually fired correctly, from the shoulder), and the usual pump-action shotgun, which holds more shells but is slightly less powerful.
  • Shout-Out: Shout Out Page.
  • Silliness Switch: Wesker Mode in the Remastered version allows you to play through the entire game with Wesker replacing Billy, and a new black costume for Rebecca. Wesker has a few attacks and abilities unique to him, but the real kicker is that all the cutscenes play exactly the same with just the models swapped, making Wesker act hilariously out of character as Billy.
  • Skippable Boss: You can just run away from the first encounter with the leech zombie, instead of fighting it. This will skip straight to the cutscene where Billy comes in to help Rebecca, and save you a good 15-16 rounds of pistol ammo.
  • Solve the Soup Cans: The train's E-brake system. Any possible rationale for this puzzle just makes it even crazier.
  • Stock Video Game Puzzle: Several puzzles are these. For example, there's a Block Puzzle late in the game.
  • Stylistic Suck: The acting in this game is rather odd. Considering it was released after Resident Evil's remake, which mind you, has good voice acting and script, one can assume the script and the acting for this game is deliberate after fans missed the original lines that made the original Resident Evil famous.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Right before the final boss, you find some ammo and healing items.
  • Swallowed Whole: Lurkers have a swallow attack that will One-Hit Kill Rebecca or Billy if they don't escape their grasp in time.
  • Take Your Time:
    • The player can take as long as they like on the Ecliptic Express until the sudden urgent need to slam on the brakes appears.
    • Averted at one point when Billy must save Rebecca from falling into a chasm. If he dawdles for too long, Rebecca dies. This requires a good portion of time and not realizing that you need to go through the boiler room.
    • Getting to Billy, after he's nearly drowned.
  • Timed Mission:
    • Stopping the Ecliptic Express before it crashes.
    • Saving Rebecca from Centurion.
    • Saving Rebecca before she falls, although most players won't realize it unless they wait around long enough.
    • The final boss fight.
  • Two-Keyed Lock: More than a few of these around to take advantage of the partner system, including the exit.
  • Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: A lot of cases, really. The inexplicably-linked item boxes of old are gone, forcing you to trade items with your partner or drop them on the ground where they can be picked up again, unlike any other Resident Evil game that treats drops as permanent discards. Rebecca has the medicinal knowledge to combine herbs, while Billy doesn't which is a departure from the rest of the series allowing it with anyone, and despite her S.T.A.R.S. uniform vest, being a Teen Genius also means Rebecca is one of the lowest health characters in the franchise, even compared to the likes of Yoko.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: The boss battle against Centurion is the only mandatory character fight in the game, as the giant centipede captures Rebecca and starts running around the room with her, leaving Billy to save her by killing it. If you don't give him sufficient firepower before Rebecca gets grabbed, you can run out of ammo and will be unable to do anything to hurt it, forcing a restart.
  • Villainous Friendship: Notes lying around the facility and cutscenes highlight a sincere friendship between Birkin and Wesker, which is a rarity as far as Umbrella employees are concerned.
  • Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Infamously, the Queen Leech violently pukes up a storm of leeches when undergoing its transformation for the final battle.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Billy hasn't been heard from in the series since.
  • Wicked Cultured: Dr. Marcus. Humanoid Abomination, Mad Scientist, talented opera singer?
  • Worf Had the Flu: The Eliminators have apparently been weakened by severe starvation. This is a very good thing for the player.
  • The Worm That Walks: The leech zombies and Dr. Marcus himself.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: The earliest point in the Raccoon City zombie apocalypse timeline.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Resident Evil Zero

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Resident Evil 0

Resident Evil Zero, the fifth main game in the Resident Evil franchise, came out for the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. It serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. Capcom initially slated this game for the Nintendo 64 as a follow-up to that system's port of Resident Evil 2, but scrapped the original version of Zero halfway through development when Nintendo unveiled their next console (the GameCube). Capcom made the decision to have Zero Moved to the Next Console instead; at the same time, Shinji Mikami's team began development of a remake of the first Resident Evil for the GameCube. The development of the two projects overlapped, which led to both games sharing many of the same assets (chiefly the character model for Rebecca Chambers). As a result, development on Zero finished only a few months after the release of the remake of the first game. For more than a decade, Zero was exclusive to Nintendo platforms, as its only port was on the original Wii in 2008. However, Capcom released the Resident Evil Zero HD Remaster for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC on January 19, 2016. A Nintendo Switch version was released on May 21, 2019.

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