Video Game / Resident Evil Village

aka: Resident Evil 8 Village

"Let's see what you're really made of, Ethan Winters."

"Long ago, a little girl went with her mother to pick berries for her father who was hard at work. But the forest greeted them with a dark cold silence, the bushes empty. Yet too determined to find berries, the rascal broke free from Mother's grasp and vanished into the trees. Mother's worried cries faded fast as the girl ran on; over vine, and under branch and into the forest deep."

— Mia Winters

Resident Evil Village (Biohazard Village in Japan),^note Stylized as Ⅶ.Ⅰ.AGE RESIDENT EVIL and Ⅶ.Ⅰ.AGE BIOHAZARD respectively also known as Resident Evil 8 and Resident Evil 8: Village, is a First Person Survival Horror game and the twelfth mainline entry in the Resident Evil series, released on May 7, 2021 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC via Steam and Google Stadia.

Set three years after the events of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Ethan Winters is living happily with his wife Mia in Eastern Europe after surviving the events in Dulvey, Louisiana and has a daughter, Rosemary. One night however, BSAA operative Chris Redfield assaults his home, kills Mia, and takes away Rose. Ethan gets knocked out and taken away, but wakes up in the middle of rural Europe, next to his crashed transport and a mysterious village. Now Ethan has to track down the whereabouts of Rose, uncover the truths behind the village, and confront new foes that crawled out of the old world.

During the Showcase preview, it was announced that purchasers of Village would get a free copy of the multiplayer third-person game, Resident Evil ReVerse.

Similar to Resident Evil 7's "Kitchen" demo, a playable demo titled "Maiden" was released January 21, 2021 for the Playstation 5, in which you play as a prisoner of Castle Dimitrescu who tries to escape. It, more or less, is just meant to show off the improved RE Engine and preview the castle setting. The month of April saw some more demos, this time limited to 30 minutes each like Resident Evil 2 (Remake)'s "1-Shot" demo, released to the lead up to the game. The first centering around the starting village portion, the second focusing on the castle and the final demo being both areas combined and able to be played for 60 minutes.

In June 2021, Capcom announced, due to the game's massive success and demand, that additional DLC was in development. On June 13, 2022, the Winters' Expansion was fully revealed and given a release date of October 28, 2022:

• Third-Person Mode for the main story
• The Mercenaries Additional Orders adds more stages and Chris Redfield, Karl Heisenberg, and Lady Alcina Dimitrescu as playable characters
• Shadows of Rose, which is set 16 years after the end of the main story and deals with Ethan and Mia's daughter, Rosemary

The PS5 version also has a VR Mode. It was released on February 22, 2023.

A Cloud Gaming version for the Nintendo Switch was announced in a Nintendo Direct on September 13, 2022 and released on October 28 the same year.

On September 21, 2023, during the Tokyo Game Show, Resident Evil Village is confirmed to be given a direct and unabridged conversion for Apple devices iPhone 15 Pro and onwards, and was released on October 30 the same year, in time for Halloween.

Previews: Announcement Trailer, Special Developer Message, Story Trailer. Showcase, Story Trailer 2.

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Resident Evil Village contains examples of:

Previews and Demos

• Ambiguous Time Period: When the demo takes place in is unclear; a note found gives a year as 1958 but it could've simply been an extremely old note left behind by the writer.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The first demo has you playing as an unknown girl, the "Maiden", who is imprisoned in the castle's dungeon.
• The Baroness: Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, the apparent matriarch of the Dimitrescu family, who quite happily calls the Maiden "it" in the demo.
• Barrier-Busting Blow: In the first preview trailer, Ethan is grabbed by a monster that punches through a wooden floor and then drags him out through the crumbling floor.
• Denser and Wackier: To promote the game, Capcom released a series of puppet shows with the Four Lords going through some odd shenanigans. Such as Alcina going crazy after tasting the paint (actually blood), Moreau being The Chew Toy, as well as a couple of Freeze-Frame Bonus of Miranda well-hidden in the background.
• Downer Ending: Maiden ends with the Maiden running into Alcina just as she tries to escape outside. She then promptly grabs you and kills you with her claws.
• Evil Is Bigger: The first gameplay trailer shows Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, the head vampire, as exceptionally taller than Ethan, looking down on him with a sneering smile. She even has to crouch just to fit through a standard door frame. According to a statement by the game's art director, Dimitrescu's canon height is 9'6"/290 cm tall.
• Evil Matriarch: As seen in Maiden and the January 2021 Showcase, Lady Dimitrescu is "mother" to at least three other vampires.
• Featureless Protagonist: The protagonist of the Maiden demo has no identifying features about them. They don't even have a character model or make any damage grunts, and there's nothing in the demo that identifies who they are or why they've been locked in a dungeon other than being an unnamed girl dubbed the Maiden.
• First-Person Perspective: The Maiden demo and the Resident Evil Showcase video both show that Village uses a first-person perspective. In the latter case, aiming and blocking is similar to how it was in Resident Evil 7, as shown by Ethan shooting at monsters with a gun then holding up his arms to block their attacks.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the first puppet show advertisement, Donna is seen where Angie is, showing her as her controller while Heisenberg's isn't shown in the same frame.
• Giant Woman: Lady Dimitrescu towers over normal humans at 9 feet 6 inches (2.9 meters) tall, having to crouch in order to pass through a normal door frame. She is also able to easily pick up the Maiden by her throat at the end of the Maiden demo.
• Hope Spot: Maiden ends with the Maiden finding the key to escape outside only to be confronted by Lady Dimitrescu and promptly killed.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Along with the blatant vampire motifs, the residents of Castle Dimitrescu are implied to be cannibals as well as vampires due to the fact that Alcina is well known for her wine dubbed "Maiden's Blood". In the trailers, Alcina's daughters taunt Ethan on how it's been a long time since they tasted "man blood" and their main attacks involve them visibly biting the player in the neck. In the Maiden demo, you quickly discover that the many wine caskets stored under the castle are holding human bodies inside them.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: At the end of the Maiden demo the titular character is speared through the face by Lady Dimitrescu.
• Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: The limited beta version of (technically separate games but included in purchase) Resident Evil RE:Verse is generally negatively received. Making the heroes of RE shooting each other in a free-for-all deathmatch is very highly out of character, but the distinct gameplay mechanic of killed hero turning into a BOW or series antagonist is even more so. It didn't help that gameplay demos feature Jack Baker fighting in RPD office while Jack Baker is never recorded in history to even visit Raccoon City. As of 2022, the RE:Verse is delayed perpetually for "quality" reasons.
• Monster Lord: The leader of the vampires seen in the Maiden Demo, Alcina, is not nearly as ugly as her "daughters" are, simply being freakishly tall and able to extend Wolverine Claws from her fingers, otherwise being able to pass for a normal human.
• Newhart Phonecall: In the January 2021 Showcase, Lady Alcina Dimitrescu is talking to a "Mother Miranda" over the phone, with only Alcina's part of the conversation being heard by the audience.
  Alcina Dimitrescu: Mother Miranda, I regret to inform you that Ethan Winters has escaped that fool Heisenberg. ...Because he is in my castle, and has already proven too much for my daughters to handle! When I find him— ...No, Mother Miranda. ...Yes, of course I understand the importance of the ceremony. I won't let you down.
• Nice Guy: Judging by the demo and previews, Ethan has become this, if he wasn't one before. He's helpful and patient to the villagers despite many of them treating him with disdain and suspicion. After Elena is forced to kill her infected father he comforts her and refuses to leave her behind despite her insistence. Elena even comments on it during an exchange:
  Elena: Thank you, Ethan. You're kind. I hope your family's safe.
  Ethan: I do too. Once we get out of here maybe you'll get to meet them.
  Elena: That'd be good.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the Village demo, Ethan finds refuge in the house of a villager named Luiza. It would have been just fine if he didn't bring with him a wounded old man who transforms into one of the Lycans after arriving and kills all of the occupants who until now had managed to hide, ensuring that Camp Unsafe Isn't Safe Anymore.
• Properly Paranoid: In the Village demo, a drunk villager named Anton believes that bringing in a wounded man (Leonardo) and an outsider (Ethan) to Luiza's house is going to get them all killed. It seems like the ramblings of a drunk and angry man until Leonardo turns into a Lycan and slaughters everyone in the room except for Ethan and Elena.
• Shout-Out:
  • At the end of the Maiden demo, Alcina is seen sprouting long Wolverine Claws from her fingers, akin to Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist. It also makes it more ironic when the Japanese VA for Dimitrescu is the same for Lust.
  • One of the homes contains a bottle of cleaning fluid with the first verse of Radiohead's "Creep" scrawled on the label.
• Statuesque Stunner: Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, an attractive woman in a tight dress who towers above the player character in the Maiden demo and Ethan in the Jan 2021 Showcase footage. Art Director Tomonori Takano noted that if you include her hat and heels, she stands at 2.9 meters / 9'6".
• Torture Cellar: The Maiden demo starts off in the dungeon area of Dimitrescu's castle with the titular character having to escape from it and up into the castle. As you make your way around through it, you find various torture devices like pliers, iron chairs, and masks. A gameplay trailer shows Ethan making his way through this same dungeon area as well, having to fend off some of the denizens within.

Main Game

• 11th-Hour Superpower: From the player's perspective. You've played the entire game as Action Survivor Ethan Winters, desperately stumbling through the village by the skin of your teeth, trying to get by with luck, pluck, and WWII-era weapons sold by a local merchant. Come the final hour, and you suddenly get to play as Chris Redfield, a highly-trained special forces operator and long-time series veteran clad to the gills in military-grade gear, large amounts of ammo, and modern, laser-guided fire-support at his back, and all of a sudden the game turns around as you effortlessly blow up your way through hordes of what had previously been intimidating monsters.
• Abandoned Mine: Moreau's lair is situated in one, albeit he quickly moves out of it into open waters not long after Ethan finds him.
• Accidental Murder: Eveline reveals in Village that Jack murdered Ethan Winters by accident during the prologue of 7 in an attempt to knock him out. The Mold that Ethan was infected by during his time in the Baker plantation revived him after death, having his body’s cells replaced/infected by the Mold, yet he retained his consciousness due to sheer determination and willpower.
• Actionized Sequel: As a sequel to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Village seems to take its pacing from 4: Ethan can sprint and parry enemies after a successful block, which allows him to kick enemies away and give the player more breathing room. He has also been given more expert reloading animations, letting him reload a magazine quicker, as well as gaining auto and semi-auto guns in his arsenal. To compensate, there are more enemies to deal with at once, they're faster and more agile than the lumbering Molded, and ammo is far more plentiful: it can be outright purchased (in limited amounts) from the merchant, something even the actionized 4, 5 and 6 didn't have.
• Advertised Extra: The villagers were shown very promptly in the launch trailer where every named character had some sort of role, including Elena and her father, Leonardo, looking to be a playable character, but in the game itself, all of them die after being introduced.
  • Despite their prominence in the promotional material for the game, Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters actually serve as the game's Starter Villains, being the first major obstacle Ethan faces and dying before he even learns what really happened to his daughter. That said, Lady Dimitrescu has the biggest onscreen presence of the Four Lords in the game, appearing quite a bit in cutscenes and actively stalking Ethan around the castle when he kills one of her daughters. While she might be the first to die, her presence is quite noticeable.
• A.K.A.-47: Zig-zagged. Some guns like the M1911 have their real names, some have real names along with a few additional made-up signifiers (like the GM-79), while the rest are given this treatment (like the LEMI pistol, which is based on the CZ 2075 RAMI).
• All There in the Manual:
  • The Baker Incident Report, which is included in the Trauma Pack DLC from the Deluxe Edition, contains a lot of information about the events between 7 and Village, such as how Ethan and Mia ended up in Europe and what's going on between Chris and the BSAA. The report is compiled by Zoe Baker herself.
  • Some bits of lore and backstory are only revealed through the unlockable concept art, such as why you find the Dagger of Death's Flowers inside a coffin, held by a long-dead corpse (it was a villager who failed to assassinate Lady Dimitrescu with it, so she had the dagger sealed up into a crypt with his body so no one could recover it and try again).
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Most of the time, you'll get some kind of visual cue when you're near hidden goodies, such as objects marked with yellow, gems that sparkle, or the UI displaying a prompt. Now and then, they'll do nothing of the sort, meaning you may have to go through some areas with a fine-tooth comb before that area on the map finally changes from red to blue (with the hidden jewel in the Luthier's House being a notorious offender). Some Goats of Warding are also pretty bad about this; they do make a noise, but only when you're in close enough proximity that you've effectively found them already.
• Ambiguous Ending: A rather meta example. In the ending, you see a car with a now teenage Rose inside driving off into the distance. And walking towards the car from the other direction is the sillouette of someone who you can't really make any details of due to being so far away. For most players, this serves as a mystery in of itself as to who the person is. However, if you use third party software to move the camera, you can see that the figure is Ethan, who as far as everyone knows died during the climax of the story. So was his model (which still shows wounds and calcification from the ending) simply being used as a place holder, or did he somehow survive?
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • It's unclear exactly how long Mother Miranda has been posing as Mia prior to when the game starts and how much of Mia's strange behavior can be attributed to her not wanting to revisit her trauma or Miranda pretending to be her.
  • Donna's entire character is extremely hard to discern. What is known that Donna herself is a Shrinking Violet to the extreme who likes dolls, being a member of family of dollmakers. But her moral alignment is hard to determine. Various notes indicate that her mental illness only manifested as a result of the Cadou parasite. And it's unknown if Angie is just Donna herself or has an independent personality. If the latter is the case, then how much of what happens in House Beneviento is Donna's or Angie's doing?
  • The nature of the "Baby" in House Beneviento. Donna Beneviento is a Master of Illusion and the horrid creature is evidently tailored to exploit Ethan's own fears, but it's obviously not just a harmless vision, given how it can kill Ethan and Donna was apparently counting on it doing so. We aren't given any concrete ideas as to what this thing actually is.
  • The ending of Village reveals that Rose Winters is Eveline's reincarnation as a result of the Mold transferring her consciousness and memories to her body, but how separate they are and how much they are the same is currently debatable.
  • It's unknown if Lycans are capable of infecting normal humans to increase their numbers ala T-Virus monsters. Though we witness people becoming Lycans after being injured, it's unclear if they were simply infected with Cadou eggs beforehand.
  • The existence of the Moroaicǎ and Samcă casts an unanswered question on the Molded monsters that Eveline created in 7. Despite being corpses reanimated by Mold, it's unknown why these monsters turn up instead of the Molded, who make no appearances in this game.
• An Arm and a Leg: Ethan gets two fingers of his left hand bitten off by a Lycan and his right hand chopped off by Lady Dimitrescu. He simply retrieves his lost limb and reattaches it to his arm shortly after.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The player controls Chris near the end of the game when he leads a one-man assault through the village.
• And Show It to You: At the climax of the game, Ethan's heart is torn right out of his chest by Mother Miranda, who proceeds to pulp it in front of him. Due to the metamycete in his body keeping it from falling apart, this fails to do him in, at least not immediately.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Restarting is your best friend once again since Resident Evil 3 (Remake). There are things the game allows you to do once you get yourself going:
  • If you're aiming to get every weapon kill doing challenges, restarting after cleaning house will load the last autosave point. Restarting does not count against you, since dying means little here unlike the previous game.
  • All animals you can hunt are marked on your map, so if you need a certain ingredient to boost your stats, it will show where the animal is, and will drop whatever meat they can provide. If you're unsatisfied by what meat it gives you, restart away.
  • The game is far more conductive to multiple playthoughs as you can now skip the cutscenes, unlike 7.
  • Ammo is extremely plentiful here. Aside from making ammo for your weapons, you can look around using lock picks and destroy wooden boxes and barrels, and they'll likely give you ammo of your favorite weapon. Restarting will actually change whatever ammo you do need if you ended up with more handgun bullets and you only need the shotgun bullets.
  • Item crafting is in its own space, meaning it does not take up space if you want to craft healing items, ammo, landmines, or pipe bombs. But it means herbs are no longer used by themselves.
  • Unlike 4, the game allows you to sell multiple different items all at once to clean out your inventory space, whereas before, you could only fence off one type of item at a time.
  • All of the mods and enhancements you've accrued on a given weapon will be retained should you decide to sell it to the Duke, making it so that it's possible to pawn off an upgraded gun for some cash and inventory space and get it back later no worse for wear, though its buyback price will adjust accordingly.
  • Unlike 4, with the exception of the Samurai Edge AW-01, you can fully upgrade all of your weapons and unlock infinite ammo for all weapons available^note In 4, the infinite rocket launcher, Chicago Typewriter, and a fully upgraded Handcannon are the only weapons with infinite ammo.
  • Absent from 7 but returning from the remakes of 1-3 is the colour-coded map. All interior spaces are coloured depending on whether or not you've cleared the area of resources. The village map also denotes which wells have been searched and which animals have been hunted.
  • Pointing at a breakable item with a gun equipped will bring up a "break" button prompt that has Ethan quicky whip out his knife to smash it, meaning you don't need to shuffle your knife back-and-forth from your shortcut slots when you're scavenging for resources.
  • There are achievements (and CP) to obtain for it and some bonuses can be very challenging to unlock, but there is no post-game content that specifically relies on completing a Speed Run to obtain. If anything, the player is encouraged to take their time and explore in order to earn most unlockable goodies.
  • Using firearms for the purposes of hunting, puzzle-solving, and otherwise not combat-related activities will not void progression for a Knives Out run. This is especially relieving for those who are attempting to collect the Goats of Warding at the same time, and there are certain segments of the game where a knife alone will not get you through due to the things that needed to be hit being placed well out of melee range (e.g. Moreau's reservoir). As long as none of those shots hit an enemy, you're good, though like many other things, the game isn't particularly good at telling you about this.
• Apocalypse How: A Class 0 for the village in question. The Lycans began attacking the village the night before Ethan arrived, and have wiped out almost everyone by the time he shows up. The last remaining survivors he meets don't last beyond the first hour of the game, leaving the village desolate save for Ethan, the Duke, and Mother Miranda's forces.
• Arc Welding: The game does this to the entire franchise with lategame reveal that Oswald Spencer was Miranda's former student, the two having first met after she saved his life in the 1950s, and Spencer founded Umbrella to continue his research into the Megamycete, leading to the many bioweapons and viruses seen throughout the series. Umbrella's logo is even revealed to have been derived originally from the symbol found around the village, further tying everything to this game.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: All four of the Lords qualify, as they are noble-blooded and very evil.
• Arrows on Fire: On occasions, Ethan will encounter Lycans with bows and arrows, with the arrows always being on fire.
• Artificial Brilliance: Much like Mister X and Nemesis, Lady Dimitrescu cannot follow you into saferooms. However, if she sees you waiting in the doorway, she will eventually charge the door and swipe her claws inside the saferoom.
• Artificial Human: The Megamycete is able to sample, copy, and store genetic data from anyone it infects, which allows it to produce endless copies of Lycans near the end of the game. Mother Miranda, who is thoroughly infused with the fungus, uses this ability to shapeshift into multiple figures, and used it to take Mia's place before the events of the game.
• Artistic License – Military: It doesn't crop up often, but whenever it does, it's rather noticeable.
  • While the Winchester M1897 was indeed a common hunting shotgun during its time, the specific "Trench" model featured in the game is not, being explicitly designed for combat in mind. The models built for hunting lack the heat shield/bayonet lug combo, and sport a substantially longer barrel.
  • The WCX itself is sold without ironsights of any kind, not that it would inconvenience the player anyhow considering the style of aiming used by the game.
  • The reloading animation for the Dragoon includes every "tacticool"-looking feat you can imagine, from the popular AK magazine bump to the underhanded charging, both of which are gimmicks which have been recommended against time and time again by actual military professionals. It's a rather telling case considering how reloading every other magazine-fed weapon in the game before it has run dry will show the player character retaining the old mag instead of flinging it away like topping off the Dragoon does. The SYG-12 shotgun is likewise guilty of this owing to both guns sharing the same animations.
  • The type of mine used in the game is the Russian TM-46, an anti-tank model, which cannot be detonated by an individual stepping on it (unless that individual happens to weigh about 120-400kg, but the ones in-game appear to use a completely fictional motion-sensing trigger).
  • The Handcannon PZ using sniper rifle ammunition is particularly odd, given that the Magnum Research BFR on which it was based cannot. Even for the long-cylinder model seen in-game, none of the available commercial calibers it is offered in are sniper-grade ammunition, being essentially enlarged pistol cartridges used for hunting purposes. Given that Magnum ammo is universal, it's quite headscratching as to why it couldn't have been programmed to use that type instead (other than it making the PZ a lot easier to feed, since rifle ammo is much more commonly found and less costly to make/buy).
  • The Rocket Pistol is also its own can of worms. For one, the 13mm rockets fired by the actual Gyrojet aren't explosive; the "rocket" part refers to the secondary thrusters built into the rounds that act as a propulsion system in lieu of traditional gunpowder. For two, Ethan's handling of the weapon is considerably simplified compared to how it's supposed to be done, as he doesn't decock the hammer and put the thing on safe when reloading, nor does he unlatch the slide when he opens it up, and the hammer is not cocked back when he prepares to fire it again.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Chris's boulder punching from Resident Evil 5 is directly referenced by Heisenberg during the latter's Boss Battle, where he explicitly calls Chris "that boulder-punching asshole" and promises to kill him once Ethan is dead. The same line is changed in Japanese to have Heisenberg call Chris a "fucking gorilla", in reference to Japanese fans having given Chris the Fan Nickname of "gorilla". invoked
  • According to Nicole Tompkins (voice of Daniela Dimitrescu and Elena, and Jill in Resident Evil 3 (Remake)), Ethan's throwaway mention of "military training" in the prologue is this, as the cast would ask how Ethan can be a One-Man Army through most of Biohazard when he's supposed to be just an average guy, and they were given a Hand Wave of "he got military training" which turned into an in-joke on set.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • Ethan must shoot the Soldat in the red reactor exhausts they have on their bodies. Most will have it where the heart is but hide it with their drills, which forces Ethan to have good timing or stun them via explosives or other hazards. A couple have the exhaust at the back, which makes it even harder to shoot.
  • Alcina Dimitrescu's still humanoid torso is the weak point of her draconic mutation.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Zigzagged with the unlockable LZ Answerer, it's very powerful if you can get consistent hits in on your enemies, but it's clunky to use due to how the blade needs to be manually extended and will deactivate every time you're struck, in a game where every monster you see will get up in your face to give you the business. You might as well not bother with its dual-bladed mode. Compared to Chris' Karambit Knife, which is unlocked in the Bonus shop simply by beating the game once instead of having to attain a high completion rank on every Mercenary map, and is also vastly more practical to boot since it takes up half as much inventory space and doesn't need that extra activation step, the Answerer becomes more or less a novelty toy. But it can still be a big help on a "Knives Out" run, since the red blade is much stronger than the Karambit, while the green blade is a lot weaker but it heals you with each successful hit on an enemy, and this heal will also not void progression for "Don't Trust That Snake Oil", giving it a bit of utility when tackling both of these challenges.

  • Note that this, and the Boring, but Practical aspects of the Karambit Knife can basically be balanced out against each other by dual wielding them together in a VR game, dealing more damage between the two weapons to boot.

• Backup from Otherworld: It's implied Eveline's memories live on in Rose through the inactive Mold that both Ethan and Mia are still infected with and passed on to their daughter. She shows up in the finale to goad Ethan into a Heroic Second Wind and seemingly starts screwing with Miranda's own control over the Mold before the final battle, giving Ethan a chance to actually kill her.
• Badass Normal: Chris has nothing but training and skill on his side and goes on a One-Man Army rampage near the end. If Ethan hadn't come back it's likely he could've defeated Miranda on his own.
• Bag of Sharing: Towards the end of the game, you have a final fight with Urias underground. After defeating him, he drops his crystal mace, which you can then sell to The Duke. The problem is that you fight Urias as Chris and get the item as him, but it somehow ends up in Ethan's inventory when you resume playing as him.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Mia's small emotional outbursts and Major Injury Underreaction in the beginning incline to the player that she's still suffering aftereffects of the Mold infection in the prior game, complete with psychiatric medication in the bathroom to help. Actually the real Mia is seemingly perfectly normal by comparison and devoid of this, as it was Miranda in Mia's place trying to divert Ethan from particular topics he might catch her on and more surprised at the attack rather than really being injured.
  • The first few seconds of Lady Dimitrescu's transformation and her crest of a bat makes you think her final form would be a giant bat. Then she turns into a Mold dragon.
  • The player is given various snippets of information, particularly in House Beneviento, suggesting that Mia learned something awful about her daughter and had to hide it from Ethan, perhaps even suffering some guilt for something she did to address it. Turns out, the secret she felt forced to keep was her discovery that Ethan was infected, which she reveals to Chris when she seems oddly unworried by pronouncements of Ethan's death. House Beneviento, being a site of psychological torture, took evidence out of context to make Ethan fear for Rose and Mia rather than himself.
• Bait the Dog: In her gardener's diary entry, Donna gives him a hallucination of his deceased wife, and states she'll let him see the rest of his family soon. The gardener then remarks how kind Donna is. Given how her gardener is nowhere to be found, it's implied she let him see his family in a different way. The act of giving her gardener a dream like that probably wasn't even for the purpose of making him happy, either — it was probably just a way to test her newfound powers.
• The Battle Didn't Count: During the initial Lycan ambush, Uriaș can be defeated for a vast amount of treasure. Hovever, he just falls over and does not calcify, then is back up and on his feet after Ethan is overwhelmed.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Averted in most of the game, but Ethan actually invokes this trope. When Lady Dimitrescu changes into her One-Winged Angel form, he taunts that now her outside matches her inside.
• Beauty Is Bad: Whilst Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters, as well as Heisenberg and Mother Miranda, are all human looking and attractive, they're no less depraved and evil than their Lycan minions or the other, more grotesque House Lords.
• Big Fancy Castle: Castle Dimitrescu is one, with quite the luxurious interior and striking gothic architecture. Its layout is quite labyrinthine, which comes into play when Ethan begins to get pursued by Alcina Dimitrescu. In contrast to the opulent living quarters of the Dimitrescu family, the castle also has forgotten oubliettes full of cobwebs, dust and Ghouls, when they aren't flooded with blood.
• Big "WHY?!": This is Ethan's reaction to Chris killing Mia due to not knowing that it's Mother Miranda disguising as Mia. He has a similar reaction when the Duke inform him that Miranda cut his baby into multiple pieces and gave one to each of the Four Lords.
• Bilingual Bonus: Due to the setting, many words from Romanian (and a few other European languages) are used as appropriate names in the game:
  • For the enemies: Vârcolac is Romanian for "werewolf", Moroaică is the feminine form of "poltergeist", Samca is the name of a witch from Romanian folklore, and Uriaș means "giant" (Uriaș Străjer means "watchman giant" or "guardian giant").
  • Heisenberg's cyborgs are given German names instead: Soldat means "soldier" (with Soldat Eins and Soldat Zwei meaning "soldier one" and "soldier two"). Then Sturm means "storm".
  • The parasite Cadou means "gift" in Romanian.
  • Each of the Four Lords has a different language for their last name: Dimitrescu is Romanian, Heisenberg is German, Beneviento is Italian, and Moreau is French.
  • The M1851 Wolfsbane magnum has the Latin phrase "Fiat Voluntas Tua" written on the barrel, which translates to "Thy will be done".
• Bittersweet Ending: Ethan dies and he never reunites with Mia or has a chance to say goodbye to her. However, he manages to save his daughter's life and entrusts her to Chris' care, as well as killing all the members of the Four Houses and Mother Miranda, avenging the deaths of the villagers. After a time skip, Rose herself has seemingly become an agent working under Chris, though her (implied) powers seemingly alienate her from her own handler, with a sniper on standby ready to take her out if she acts out too much.
• Blackout Basement: The basement of House Beneviento becomes this. When Ethan visits it, it is well-lit although creepy, but after finding a key item, the lights go out, forcing the player to navigate with just the light of a torchlight.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Several guns, like M1897 shotgun, the GM79 grenade launcher, and the M1859 Wolfsbane magnum look very snazzy, sporting beautiful custom engraving, gold & silver inlay, and intricately-carved stocks.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Lady Dimitrescu's three 'daughters', as shown in the concept art and gameplay. Bela is the blonde, Cassandra the brunette, and Daniela is the redhead.
• Blood Bath: She's never seen using it, but Alcina's got a blood pool with candles and fancy statues about it, and it's even called the Room of Ablution (i.e. "bathing"). It also leads directly to her cellars, which are full of blood.
• Blood Countess: Alcina Dimitrescu is not a vampire, nor a witch. However, she's an aristocrat, sexy (which is the main reason she received internet notoriety), has "daughters", drinks blood, is a serial killer, and owns a very gorgeous yet scary castle.
• Bond One-Liner: Ethan tries to quip after most of the boss fights — and his one-liners are all terrible. It's like he's trying to emulate an action movie hero, but the best he can manage are dad jokes. Rather hilariously averted after the Uriaș boss fight in the Lycan stronghold, however.
  Ethan: Eat shit!
• Bond Villain Stupidity: At least twice Ethan is thrown to the dogs and abandoned by villains who probably should have known better.
• Bonus Feature Failure: Some of the pre-order bonuses would be questionable even if you hadn't paid extra for them:
  • The Albert-01 is severely nerfed from its last appearance in RE7, and is only useful in the very early parts of the game because, while it has a 10% power boost over your starting handgun, it can't be upgraded at all; it doesn't even have an infinite ammo option to unlock. The moment you find and equip the LEMI's compensator, the Albert-01 effectively becomes a waste of inventory space.
  • The two bonus weapon charms. Being cosmetic, they have no functional use, but their silliness and cuteness might be fun for a little Mood Whiplash. If you happen to not enjoy the look, you'd be wise to just let The Duke keep them: Once they're put on, they cannot be removed.^note Not during gameplay, anyhow. You can disable them, but only through the main menu and turning them off under the "Special" options.
• Bookends: The first scene of the game begins with Rose being read a bedtime story from a book called a Village of Shadows while Ethan watches. The last scene begins with her closing the same book while she goes towards Ethan's grave.
• Boom, Headshot!: Chris comes in with a Big Damn Heroes headshot. Due to her powers though, the damage regenerates, leading to a final battle with Ethan. She also survived five shots to the head while disguised as Mia.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The unlockable Karambit Knife is a straight upgrade from Ethan's dinky blade. It doesn't do anything fancy other than dealing noticeably more damage per hit, which makes it very much recommended for a Knives Out run, very much so over the clunky LZ Answerer which has an awkward activation step. That it's unlocked simply by beating the game once on any difficulty really helps.
    • Note that this, and the Awesome, but Impractical aspects of the LZ Answerer can basically be balanced out against each other by dual wielding them together in a VR game, dealing more damage between the two weapons to boot.
  • When unlocking infinite ammo the grenade launcher is expensive but has great utility. While the explosive rounds don't pack an outrageous punch there are several secrets/enemies that require an explosive to take care of properly, plus on lesser enemies it can still clear house on lower difficulty. Flashbangs, in tradition, are resisted by vanishingly few enemies while its effects open them up wide for you to unload into or simply ignore and outrun which is even better and safer for speedruns, your choice. Overall there are better weapons but the grenade launcher does have a few uses when you don't have to worry about ammo.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy:
  • All three of the Dimitrescu daughters run headfirst into this. Since they can avoid physical attacks by shifting into swarms of flies, they'd be completely unbeatable if they fought Ethan in one of the castle's inner rooms or underground chambers. Instead, each of them challenges Ethan in a room with a window or a breakable wall leading to the outside. And when Ethan inevitably opens the window or breaks the wall to let in cold air and make the Dimitrescus vulnerable, each of them continues fighting, not even trying to retreat.
  • Sturm in Heisenberg's factory is completely invulnerable from the front, as his only weak point is on his back. Your first two encounters with Sturm happen in narrow corridors, so all you can do is run away. Then your third encounter starts in a similarly narrow labyrinth — but this time Sturm smashes through the walls as he chases you, finally opening up the arena enough for you to flank him and take him down.
  • The Uriaș Drac are subject to this despite being set up as the toughest optional encounters. Both Dracs are fought in very open arenas catered to them — but scripted to deaggro should Ethan run a certain distance; there is nothing preventing a player from fleeing at any point should they desire, unlike major scripted fights. A player wishing to save precious ammunition can simply lead Uriaș Drac to the chokepoint of deaggroing and knife them to death with them as they ineffectually go back and forth with engaging and desisting combat.
• Bowdlerise: As per Japanese law involving blood and gore, the Japanese editions of the game contain censorship, with much of the gore and dismemberment being removed entirely in the most heavily censored version. This means that Ethan's Fingore treatment courtesy of the first Lycan is absent, and nailing a critical headshot will not cause the enemy's head to pop off even though the graphical effect of it happening is still present. The least censored version does keep the part where Lady Dimitrescu slices off Ethan's right hand. However, the texture of the arm's cross-section is painted entirely black instead of blood red with visible white bone.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: As per the tradition set by the Resident Evil 2 remake, a post-launch DLC was released for Village that unlocks every piece of additional content for the game upon purchase, meaning that instead of spending upwards of a week grinding Mercenaries and completing Challenge Runs to get those shiny bonus items, you can just shell out $5.00 and achieve the same result. To a lesser degree, the Winters Expansion adds Chris as a playable character to The Mercenaries right from the start, with powerful punches that utterly trivialize the ammo management Ethan must deal with, and his ranks still count towards unlocking additional levels and rewards.
• Bullying a Dragon: In the epilogue, Rose's handler has the bright idea to mockingly call her Eveline while she's visiting her father's grave. She quickly grabs him and states that if he does it again there will be dire consequences.
• The Cameo: Considering the letter wrote by Oswell E. Spencer, the other two hikers in the photo next to said letter should be the other two founders of Umbrella, James Marcus and Edward Ashford.
• Camp Unsafe Isn't Safe Anymore: Early in the game, Ethan finds refuge in the house of a villager named Luiza. However, he brings with him an old man who has been wounded and he transforms into one of the Lycans, killing all of the occupants who until now had managed to hide.
• Capture and Replicate: It is revealed that the woman shot in Ethan's home wasn't Mia, but Miranda disguised as her. The real Mia was held captive in her lab. Chris orders the Hound-Wolf squad to confirm Miranda's location to assure himself that he's found the real Mia.
• Cat Scare: Or Rat Scare, rather. In the prologue, the player explores a pitch black house and when they get to the basement they will find an ominously blood-smeared closet that has something knocking from the inside. Opening it reveals a rat that scuttles out. Some Genre Savvy players might also predict the real scare jumping out from the corridor they just passed through. It actually comes from above, when an unseen creature trashes the ground floor and shakes the ceiling.
• Central Theme: Daughters place a heavy emphasis in the game. Ethan and Mia love their daughter Rosemary after she was born, Alcina Dimitrescu loves all three of her daughters, and Mother Miranda's atrocities are driven by a love for the daughter she lost. Alcina feels inadequate as a daughter of Mother Miranda. Donna herself may be the first or second child of her parents with the death of Claudia, but loved her parents before their tragic deaths, and Moreau fearing being replaced by Rose as an artificial member of their "family". Ethan and Alcina's respective daughters love their parent back. Ethan, being the protagonist, goes out of his way to save his own, and not even death will stop him until he finishes that job, and Mother Miranda's so warped, she's willing to use Rose to resurrect hers, and both she and Dimitrescu try to hypocritically guilt Ethan for standing against their children. This comes to a head where a grown up Rose visits her father's grave and misses him, showing that Ethan's love for her isn't lost on her.
• Challenge Run: A challenge menu is unlocked the first time you beat the game that will award high amounts of CP for finishing playthroughs under certain restrictions. This is made easier by the fact that playing on a lower difficulty, with New Game Plus equipment, and even with the infinite-ammo switched on won't void your progress. These are some of the challenges tracked in the menu:
  • Dashing Dad: Finish the game in under three hours.
  • Frugal Father: Finish the game without spending more than ten-thousand Lei.
  • Slob: Finish the game without (manually) moving or stacking any items.
  • Dense Dad: Finish the game without crafting any items.
  • Don't Trust That Snake Oil: Finish the game using no more than four healing items. Being healed at specific points in the story, via the Duke's cooking, or the LZ Answerer's green blade doesn't count against this.
  • Knives Out: Finish the game using only melee-weapons in combat. Firearms can be used for puzzles and select setpieces.
• Conflict Ball: Heisenberg spends a lot of time sizing Ethan up and trying to intrigue him, but when it comes time to actually make his proposal, the Lord seizes the Villain Ball with both hands — he gives Ethan an awful sales pitch; responds to Ethan's understandable hostility with barely-contained contempt; gives up at the first sign of rejection; and then immediately hurls Ethan to the dogs. He makes a few belated attempts to actually sell it with overdue Motive Rants but eventually starts pointlessly taunting him about Rose.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The player can find books written by George Trevor and Joseph Kendo in the Winters' home. The book written by Kendo is also called "Gun Survivalist" which sounds almost like the name of a certain series spinoff game.
  • While escaping a burning house, Ethan tells Elena, "we are getting out of here... together." In the same manner that Zoe told him in the previous game.
  • The Osprey aircraft used by BSAA looks exactly as the one seen in Resident Evil: Vendetta.
  • Chris' boulder-punching shenanigans are apparently well-known in-universe. Enough that even someone like Heisenberg references it during his Boss Battle.
  • Chris having a smoke just before the final raid on the village. This habit was established in his character introduction in the original game of the franchise, explaining why the Lighter was his default item. One of his lighters was also an important inventory item in Code Veronica.
  • The Bakers being able to persist after death in Eveline's fungal Hive Mind is brought up again. Not only does Mother Miranda's plan hinge on the Megamycete storing the minds of everyone it's infected, but Eveline herself still has a presence within Ethan's fully-Molded body.
  • In the Winters' household, Ethan can find a much cleaner and newer version of the Mr. Everywhere bobbleheads. When inspecting it Ethan brings up that he should probably get rid of it, most likely because it reminds him of the dirty ones he had to look for in the Baker Household.
  • You can find an antique coin, that according to the description "looks like one from the Baker house".
  • Bottles of Dulvey Beer can be spotted in random places around the village. It's likely an intentional back-reference to the ones you'd see in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, seeing how very few, if any, other assets from that game were recycled here.
  • When buying supplies from the Duke, one of the lines he may say is an impression of the Merchant's famous "Whaddaya buying?" line from Resident Evil 4, which he further notes is something that he picked up from an old friend of his.
  • The bandages on the Mia doll in Donna Beneviento's basement look suspiciously similar to the infamously bad wound dressing Ada gives Leon in Resident Evil 2. The blood splatter is even in the same spot!
  • The ending credits show a slideshow of life in the village while people are cured or turned into Lycans, similar to Resident Evil 4's credits. The last slides also recreate the first game's infamous Face-Revealing Turn with a man turning into one of the first Lycans.
  • One form Miranda takes during the final boss is suspiciously similar to Saddler's own mutated form for the Resident Evil 4 final boss, being a long-legged spider creature with rounded joints and a human body dangling from the center.
• Continuity Snarl: The previous game makes a big deal out of going into a Megamycete-infested areas without protection and upgraded equipment, which required Chris to wear Umbrella's specifically-made uniforms to go in without issue. Here, while some members of Hound Wolf Squad mention keeping their masks on to protect themselves against the Megamycete, Chris heads straight into the source of the Mold without any form of protection and tries to help Ethan and Rosemary escape without an issue.
• Contrived Coincidence: Ethan and Mia just so happen to be relocated to the same Eastern-European country (implied to be Romania) as the village that's the home of Mother Miranda, the person who is responsible for the events of the last game via her research on the Mold. In-game documents, as well as the ending, imply that the BSAA is becoming corrupt, so it's possible they may have relocated the Winters to be nearby Miranda's Village on purpose.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The premise of the story certainly contains several elements of one!
  • First, the primary antagonist, Miranda, discovered a mysterious source of Mold that could serve as a miracle cure as well as apparently the answer to giving her back her late daughter. She would then declare herself the prophet of the "Black God," a mysterious Fungal Root that was revered by an ancient civilization where the Village is located in the present.
  • Various experiments with the Mold would lead to Miranda creating an off-shoot series know as The Cadou Parasites which, if successfully implanted in a potential host, could bestow upon them various kinds of powers and abilities.
  • Miranda's plot is to create a "perfect vessel," to bring back her late daughter, and this experimentation resulted in several of the residents of The Village turning into hideous monsters and abominations.
  • Once The Black God is destroyed, everything that was ever touched by it drops dead.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The Hound-Wolf Squad points out to Chris if they had bothered to tell Ethan about Mother Miranda impersonating Mia and cooperated with him instead of shutting him out, most of the plot wouldn't have happened.
• Covers Always Lie: One of the covers has Chris having a Two-Faced with a wolf, making him out to be the main antagonist of the game. He's actually Good All Along, trying to protect Ethan and Rosemary from Mother Miranda, who is the true Big Bad.
• Create Your Own Hero: It is revealed that Ethan's inhuman resilience is the result of having been killed by Jack Baker and brought back to life with the Mold- the same substance Mother Miranda indirectly infected the Bakers with through Eveline. This means the villains of both of Ethan's games have created the very protagonist that would bring them down. This also extends to Rose, born with the Mold powers that would ultimately destroy Miranda twice.
• Creepy Basement: It's where Ethan spends most of his time at in House Beneviento. As he progresses through, the basement starts getting dark and eventually a monster version of his missing baby starts chasing after him.
• Creepy Cemetery: The first part of the Beneviento territory is a long cemetery, full of unsettling porcelain dolls. It's also where the treasure is located.
• Creepy Doll: Donna Beneviento has enough to start an entire creepy doll shop. Hanging, posed, staring at Ethan, bearing Spider Limbs full of knives, the list goes on...
• Cult: Miranda operated a cult in devotion to the "Black God" Fungal Root to acquire loyal followers. Brainwashing aside, it was necessary to keep a stable lid on an operation the scope of a whole country.
• Cutscene Incompetence: There are multiple times in the game where Ethan just stands around and lets his enemies attack or manhandle him rather than attempting to fight back or run away.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Despite how dangerous the Lycans are to Ethan when put up against Chris they die by the dozens. Chris can actually mow them down in mass with little difficulty. Justified as Chris is using much more advanced weapons compared to Ethan's scavenged arsenal.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Considering Mia, and her and Ethan's daughter, factor into Ethan's motivation here, the ending from the previous game where Mia dies after turning has been cut. Not too surprising, as the End of Zoe DLC had already confirmed that ending to be non-canon. The optional recap of Biohazard also outright shows what Last-Second Ending Choice Ethan made.
• Darker and Edgier: Manages to be both Denser and Wackier than 7, with its classic Gothic Horror monsters and setting and even hammier villains, and at the same time darker and edgier in its gore and subject matter. One of the darkest games in the series, the plot involves themes like children being kidnapped and dying, the environments are big, cold and lonely, Ethan gets repeatedly mutilated, what few survivors he encounters die violently, the series' mainstay hero, Chris Redfield, is at his most jaded and brutal... And top it all off, the BSAA, the closest thing the franchise has ever had to the good guys, have seemingly gone off the deep end and started using B.O.W.s. Oh, and Ethan dies at the end. Not to mention how, apart from some quips by Ethan and Continuity Nods to previous games in the series, Village has very little in the way of the series' usual self-awareness.
• Dash Attack: The Soldat Jet has a jetpack at the back that they can use to propel themselves forward and try to impale Ethan at high speed with their drills.
• Dead All Along: This game reveals that Ethan has been dead ever since the prologue of 7 when Jack apparently knocked him out, but instead accidentally murdered him.
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Cassandra seems to hold back more than her sisters, instead of biting Ethan herself, she lets her fly swarm slowly bite him to death.
• Death from Above:
  • During Ethan's first encounter with the Lycans, one of them snatches up an elderly farmer through his roof.
  • Turned on its head and put in the hands of the player during the endgame, as Chris gets to call for fire support from a laser-guided mortar and can use it to rain death on the very same Lycans.
• Decapitated Army: Averted. Though Uriaș is the alpha Lycan primarily leading the Lycans fought throughout the game, Lycans continue being a threat throughout Chris's section, which takes place after Ethan kills Uriaș. Justified in that they're tied to the infection Miranda spread rather than to Uriaș specifically.
• De-power: Miranda's completion of the ceremony has the now reformed Rose draining her immortality powers thanks to her own connection to the Mold. This is what allows Ethan to defeat her.
• Defeat Equals Explosion:
  • In Moreau's case, his mutated stomach swells up uncontrollably before he bursts into fleshy chunks.
  • Once you defeat Heisenberg after he becomes a metallic monster, he combusts and explodes, turning the surrounding area into a world on fire.
• Determinator: Nothing — not werewolves, vampires, or the four Monster Lord rulers of the Village — will keep Ethan from rescuing his daughter. Not even death stops him. Even after Miranda literally rips his heart out and Eveline taunts him about having died back in the Baker house, Ethan wills himself back to life just long enough to save Rose even as his body falls apart.
• Demoted to Extra: While still an important character, the real Mia shows up at the tail-end of the game after being rescued by Chris while throughout the game, Ethan was full of vengeance after her supposed murder (it was actually Mother Miranda disguising herself as her), and Ethan doesn't even get the chance to see her at all after he kills Miranda.
• Denser and Wackier: While it's still Darker and Edgier than 7, it has its light-hearted and even goofier moments. As such, your main villains act like your typical Saturday morning cartoon villains, The Duke is the Big Fun who will make some occasional quips, various Lampshade Hangings by Ethan (such as his frustrations with Fake Longevity, Back Tracking, and an Implacable Man that keeps chasing him in Heisenberg's factory), and the general bat-shit insanity from the previous games return here when they were almost completely absent from the previous game.
• Desperate Plea for Home: During your visit to Castle Dimitrescu, you can find a diary left behind by one of the maids; as the abuse of her fellow servants stacks up and the place becomes progressively more disturbing, the terror-stricken maid writes that she wants to go home. Her final entry features her making a serious mistake in front of Lady Dimistrescu's daughters, so it's likely that she was taken downstairs to the Torture Cellar for experimentation.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Since you start New Game Plus with whatever guns you had at the end, certain shootable locks will be covered with indestructible boards until you're supposed to go those ways to keep you from Sequence Breaking.
  • When Lady Dimitrescu severs Ethan's hand, you can inspect it when you pick it up from the lever. If you turn the hand so the "stump" is facing you, you can actually see that there is mold growing in the fleshy areas. A subtle foreshadowing to Ethan's true nature.
  • After killing Daniela, Ethan is treated to a scene of Lady Dimitrescu summoning Cassandra and commanding her to kill Ethan. If you kill Cassandra before Daniela, Lady Dimitrescu will call Cassandra, and when she doesn't come to her, gets furious with Ethan for killing all her daughters.
  • When Ethan has to unlock the Big Wooden gate for Luiza's house in the beginning he struggles to open it because it's heavy. But when playing as Chris he almost effortlessly opens it easily due to his physique.
  • It can normally only be seen with a free-look camera mod, but Angie's character model has a Cadou parasite pulsing away inside the head, long before it's ever exposed by Ethan stabbing into it.
  • In The Mercenaries Additional Orders, playing as Lady Dimitrescu prompts some new pieces of dialogue for her daughters. Heisenberg and Lady Dimitrescu also have additional victory dialogue for killing Miranda at the end of the Mad Village level.
• Diabolus ex Machina: At the end of Maiden, Alcina comes in through the door after the maiden unlocks it and is about to escape, leading to Alcina killing her. In the full game, Alcina comes in through a door to chokeslam Ethan through the floor and into the catacombs of her castle, slices his hand off as he's about to pull a lever to an elevator, and as he finds the Dagger of Death's Flowers, Alcina throws him out of a window, causing him to drop it into the mountain range (but not before he gets to stab her with it, culminating into her boss fight).
• Didn't Think This Through: While Chris' intentions were good, his execution was flawed as he intentionally kept Ethan in the dark about what was happening while the Winters were living in Europe. Realizing Miranda was disguising herself as Mia, he immediately took action without any explanation to Ethan, which made the latter perceive him as a threat to his family. As a consequence, Ethan is completely thrown into another world of bioweapons he was unprepared for, having to fend for himself, restore Rosemary, and confront Miranda whom ripped his heart out. Even one of his own men told Chris he should have told Ethan from the beginning.
• Diligent Draft Animal: Invoked, House Heisenberg has a horse and horseshoe as their crest to reflect their industrial history.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: A quite horrific take on the trope. Ethan eventually discovers that Rose's body has been cut up and split in four jars that are in possession of each of the Four Lords of the village. This is why he has to go to each of the Lord's territories to fight them and reclaim Rose's body parts in order to save his baby. A note you can find written by an eyewitness clarifies that Miranda put Rose into an inert, crystalline stasis before dividing up her body, explaining how the infant can be reassembled again afterward, no worse for the wear.
• Disproportionate Retribution: A note from a former maid talks about how Daniela slashed another maid's face with a knife for making a simple mistake.
• Distant Finale: The last scene of the game shows Rose as a teenager at Ethan's grave. Since the game takes place in February 2021, this places the ending sometime in 2037, 16 years later.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Most of the puzzles Ethan has to solve in the basement, using a pair of scissors to cut the bandages around the Mia mannequin's chest to retrieve an item and entering a well to retrieve another, symbolize Ethan entering a person's womb and the baby coming out from the mannequin.
• The Dog Bites Back: It's revealed Eveline's "mother" Miranda created her and her siblings as nothing more than a potential vessel for Miranda's actual dead daughter Eva to be "reborn" through using the Mold's ability to hold memories from those it infects. And when they failed in this purpose, Miranda discarded them all to endless experimentation and torture. Eveline's memories continued to live on through the Mold in the Winters family, and she deal Miranda a blow in the finale by goading Ethan into a Heroic Second Wind after Miranda leaves him for dead, and then breaks part of Miranda's connection to the Mold, leading to Miranda finally getting offed by the heroes.
• Doing In the Wizard:
  • The game sets up like we're suddenly dealing with monsters out of the blue, which is an odd turn around for the franchise that normally focuses on zombies or mutants. But notes you find eventually reveal they're offshoots of the Molded that Miranda experimented with. Thanks to the fungus' unique properties, in her pursuit to find a suitable vessel for her daughter, Miranda ended up creating a variety of creatures that resemble monsters from folklore like vampires and werewolves. Essentially, bio-weapons that have much higher intelligence.
  • Miranda's medical reports on the Four Lords reveal their more fantastical aspects were actually created by Cadou experimentation. Alcina isn't a vampire, her mutation requires her to eat flesh and drink blood to keep her Healing Factor due to her having a blood disease. Angie isn't a haunted puppet doll, the reason she moves on her own is because Donna spread a part of her Cadou to Angie to control her from a distance. Karl's magnetism powers come from his mutations giving him electric organs like a Japanese sleeper ray, allowing him to control metal.
• Downer Beginning: After the events of the previous game, Ethan and Mia are living in Europe under witness protection from the BSAA, and they now have an infant daughter named Rosemary. Then one night, soldiers raid their home and Mia is shot repeatedly right in front of a horrified Ethan. The soldiers' leader? None other than Chris Redfield, the man long considered the Big Good of Resident Evil, who shoots Mia five more times, kidnaps Rosemary, and has Ethan knocked out.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Lady Dimitrescu is subservient to "Mother Miranda", but doesn't care much about her goals. After the Newhart Phonecall where Miranda (seemingly) warns her that "the ceremony" requires Ethan alive, despite the trouble he's caused, Dimitrescu calmly assents, hangs up, and then hurls the entire dressing table she's sitting at across the room in a rage for killing her daughters.
  Alcina Dimitrescu: To hell with the ceremony! That man will pay for what he's done...
• Dramatic Gun Cock: You can do this whenever in the VR mode. Thankfully, doing so will eject a round but not actually waste a bullet (same with "wastefully" ejecting a magazine, because anything dropped is automatically/magically picked up by Ethan without him visibly doing so).
• Driven to Suicide: Elena's fate is framed like this. With her father dead and believing there's no hope in the monster-infested village, she refuses to take Ethan's hand despite his pleas and encourages him to find his daughter shortly before she falls into the burning house.
• Dual Wielding: Only in the VR version offered as DLC. Unlike in 7's equivalent mode (which had controls restricted to those available to a Dual Shock 4 controller) the game benefits by mapping both of Ethan's hands to each of the player's Sense controllers, left and right respectively (which consequently locks the original/flat version of Village out of dual wielding). This means basically any weapon (plus the flashlight as an alternative) can be held in either hand, simultaneously. This is more in line with the Oculus Quest 2 implementation in Resident Evil 4. It does have realistic drawbacks, such as reduced accuracy over a two-handed grip of one single gun and the inability to pump a shotgun one-handed, but it opens up a lot of options regardless.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Ethan stood behind and detonated the switch to destroy the village to give everybody a chance to escape alive once and for all before he finally dies.
• Early Game Hell: As is often the case for Resident Evil titles, you start out with a remarkably limited arsenal. The Lycans are also astonishingly resilient and mobile, especially on higher difficulties, and while much of the early game can be gotten through by running past or ignoring enemies, the attack on Ethan in the village requires that he Hold the Line for a period of time with little to work with against an infinitely-spawning horde of Lycans.
• Empowered Badass Normal: In addition to his improved combat skills, Ethan is still infected by the Mold, given that he takes injuries that would kill most people with only minor issues and even re-attaches his severed limbs when needed.
• Equipment Upgrade: For a fee, Ethan can enhance certain aspects of his guns through the Duke, who acts as a weaponsmith. Just like in RE2R and RE3R Ethan can also find or purchase attachments or parts that he can attach to his weapons, for instance a red dot sight, stocks a longer barrel or a better grip.
• Establishing Character Moment: The meeting after Ethan is captured showcases the personalities and relationships of the four houses and Mother Miranda.
  • Lady Dimitrescu acts classy and asks for Ethan so her daughters can "enjoy him" and she offers to make his blood a gift for Mother Miranda. She also alludes to her hatred of men and only raises her voice against Heisenberg who she describes as disloyal and a child.
  • Lady Beneviento's doll Angie acts hyper, insults Moreau in a very childish manner when he tries to see Ethan, and chants "Fight!" when Dimitrescu and Heisenberg almost come to blows. She also giggles maniacally and cheerfully shouts that Ethan is awake.
  • Lord Moreau simply hobbles over to see Ethan better and is insulted by Angie and cowers into the background as he silently gets closer to Mother Miranda and Angie's insult is the only acknowledgement he gets the whole meeting. He mostly makes a low, slow imbecilic laugh as his only dialogue, such as after Heisenberg makes a blue joke at Dimitrescu. This highlights his place as an idiotic manchild who serves as the snivelling middle child that nobody takes seriously and wants his mother's approval and attention.
  • Lord Heisenberg wants to make a show out of killing Ethan, screams at Angie and Moreau to shut up, and starts a fight with Dimitrescu. When given Ethan, he gives a Ladies and Germs announcement and gives Ethan a head start to make things interesting. However, he is the only one who calls Ethan Winters by his full name, compared to Dimitrescu's "manthing" and "mortal", and hints at making it a test for a potential ally.
  • Mother Miranda is touted by Elena and the surviving villagers as a benevolent leader who's always protected them... Except that after Ethan escapes from Luiza's house, he sees her callously murder the only villager that's not inside when it burns down and laugh after he begs her to stop, cementing that Miranda doesn't care nearly as much about the villagers as they thought. She also initially appears to come off as Affably Evil, having listened to the four Lords' arguments about who should get to kill Ethan before impartially deciding on Heisenberg, but when he and Dimitrescu start arguing about Miranda's decision, she yells at them to be silent and that her decision is final, showing that she barely even tolerates her own servants. In short, all of the above shows that Miranda only sees the villagers and the Lords as a means to an end.
• Exact Words:
  • At the beginning of the game, shortly after the van transporting Ethan and Rose crashes, Ethan can find a document stating that Chris had ordered the squad to kill the target and recover Ethan and Rose Winters. The fact that the target isn't named in the report foreshadows a late-game reveal that it wasn't Mia.
  • At one point, Alcina taunts Ethan by saying Rose isn't in her castle, and that he's wasted his time coming there. She's not lying, Rose herself isn't there, but part of Rose is certainly there.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: When Bela corners Ethan and gets on top of him, it seems like he's firing his gun wildly at her which she mocks for not being able to harm her. It turns out that he was actually aiming at the window behind her, which lets the cold in and makes her vulnerable to damage.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Based on the Hound Wolf mission briefing at the start of Chris' segment, the majority of the game's events from the prologue up until after the Heisenberg boss fight took place within less than twenty-four hours. Seeing as the game concludes at the break of dawn, it can be assumed that the whole game spans the length of about a day, give or take a few hours.
• Failure Is the Only Option: There's a chance that Miranda's century-old plan to bring back her daughter was completely doomed from the start, as it's completely unknown if Eva died anywhere near the village where the Megamycete is buried. Eva might have never been absorbed into it in the first place and Miranda might actually never get her back no matter what she does.
• Fingore: Early in the game, a Lycan bites off part of Ethan's left hand, removing his pinky, part of his ring finger, and a chunk of his palm. He spends the entire game afterwards with it bandaged, though it thankfully doesn't affect his combat skills.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Village of Shadows, the creepy fairytale that Mia reads at the start of the game, is positively saturated with foreshadowing.
    • The different regions of the forest and the monsters dwelling there — the Bat Lord, Dark Weaver, Fish King, and Iron Horse — foretell the Lords of the Four Houses Dimitrescu, Beneviento, Moreau, and Heisenberg, their domains, and the order that they are confronted in. Their leader, the witch, foretells the head of the Four Lords Mother Miranda.
    • The girl, who runs away from her mother to continue looking for food for her father to inadvertently fall into the clutches of the witch after taking parts from the four monsters, foretells the fate of Rose being kidnapped by Miranda and the Four Lords, who each obtain a piece of her.
    • Mia's Dissonant Serenity while relating the creepy tale to Rose (despite her apparent trauma), is itself a sign that she is not Mia but Mother Miranda, who probably read the same story to Eveline when she was a baby. For bonus points, the "dark, yet regal" witch's monologue doesn't start until "Mia" is revealed to be the storyteller. Even Mia's rapidly acquired taste for local cuisine and customs is a sign that she is, in reality, a local.
    • Also the part Mia stops at has her stating the child was put into a mirror as punishment for her "greed", with an image of the book showing said witch. Takes on a new context when it's revealed that this Mia is Miranda, juxtaposed against that scene and is plotting to kidnap both Ethan and Rose for her own ends, symbolizing that The Mirror Shows Your True Self.
    • Mia also gets rather standoffish and angry whenever the events of the last game are brought up, trying to change the subject whenever it gets brought back up. At first, it seems like she just understandably doesn't want to remember the events of that incident. However, after beating the game, it seems more like Miranda acted that way to keep her cover up, since she was not there for the events of Resident Evil 7 and so it would potentially blow her cover if that incident was talked about.
    • It turns out that the story was very much In-Universe foreshadowing, as the section of the book that Mia stops at, which is finished during the credits as the story replays silently from the start up to that section, turns out to be foreshadowing Miranda and Ethan's fight and his eventual Heroic Sacrifice to kill her, destroy the Mould saturating the village and save Rose at the cost of his life.
  • You can read a note written by Ethan that after the events of the previous game that he feels a part of himself is trapped in Dulvey. This is one of the tell-tale signs that he actually died there, and came Back from the Dead as a walking B.O.W., in essence he wasn't wrong that a part of himself was trapped back there.
  • When tasting Ethan's blood, Dimitrescu refers to him as "stale". This sets up the reveal in the ending that Ethan has been Dead All Along. The way Jack knocked him out in Resident Evil 7? It didn't knock Ethan out; it killed him.
  • Lycan bites and scratches turn their victims into Lycans as Leonardo's quick transformation shows. The infection doesn't work on the dead which is why Ethan never turns despite having two of his fingers bitten off by one.
  • When Ethan confronts the old woman and says he almost died at the castle, she states: "How can a man be almost dead?" alluding to the fact that Ethan is practically a zombie being kept alive by Mold, and therefore is "almost dead."
  • At the start of the game, Mia is remarkably calm for someone who just got shot in the shoulder, and is also remarkably durable, still being alive and able to move after having her torso riddled with bullets. It's later revealed that wasn't actually Mia, but Mother Miranda disguised as her.
  • While it's hardly a surprise for veteran players, Chris being Good All Along is hinted at when he shoves Ethan out of the way of Moreau's attack despite the latter's hostility towards him.
  • The altar where Ethan places the vials has a symbol that he feels is familiar, but can't quite place. Longtime Resi fans should definitely recognize it, however: it's the logo of the Umbrella Corporation. A file late in the game eventually reveals that Spencer himself was a colleague of Miranda's and while working with her in the village he decided to co-opt the symbol for his new company.
  • At House Beneviento, Ethan hears clips of Mia on the radio from their relationship and pregnancy, with some hinting that she has learned a terrible secret she can't tell Ethan. The house setup and earlier info that the Winterses were having their baby tested outlines that there may have been something terribly wrong with Rose...but the phone flashback at the beginning of the game has Mia saying she's not scared about Rose, and indicates she's specifically worried about Ethan somehow. It turns out the secret Mia is tormented by is her learning or realizing Ethan has been killed and kept alive by the Mold since the previous game, as she later indicates she knows this when denying Chris and the audience's belief that Ethan has died.
  • In the graveyard near the entrance of Castle Dimitrescu, there is a grave that reads "Eva; June, 1909 — August, 1919; May you slumber for only a short while."
  • The bosses, when defeated, turn into stone and crumble into dust. The visual effect is extremely similar to the calcified Mold victims in 7, foreshadowing the Megamycete, which is essentially the Mold's parent, being the explanation for this game's monsters.
  • A note you can find in Moreau's reservoir states that a guy named Hans was eaten by a giant fish. When you meet Moreau again, you find that he was the giant fish the note spoke of.
  • While chasing you around, Dimitrescu might cry out "a rat can't run from the dragon's claws!". Her One-Winged Angel form resembles some kind of dragon monster.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: The Framing Device of the game's narrative, foreshadowing the villains that Ethan are about to confront, was literally a Gothic Fairy Tale Storybook, told in paper-cut-out stop animation like the nightmares of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. And sure enough, as Ethan enters the nightmare-proper of the village itself, he is confronted with the Gothic Caricatures of the Vampire (Lady Dimitriscu), Gepetto the Puppeteer (Donna Beneviento), The Merman (Moreau), Black Knight (Heisenberg) and the Wicked Witch (Lady Miranda) archetypes; all to the backdrop of a deep black forrest filled with Big Bad Wolves (The Lycans) that would not be out of place from the pages of The Brothers Grimm
• Framing Device: An eerie fairy tale told in the form of the a Gothic children's story book.
• Game Hunting Mechanic: There are animals scattered in the map, that act as neutral entities. Ethan can hunt them down to collect pieces of meat so that the Duke can cook Power-Up Food for him. Some of the animals, like the goat, can actually fight back.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Neither of the playable characters in the game know how to use ironsights of their guns barring the sniper rifle, even though Chris is a seasoned veteran who could already do this in 7, and Ethan having supposedly undergone military training during the interim between the previous game and now. It's especially galling considering how many of the weapons Chris starts out with come with optical sights attached that cannot be aimed through at all. At least it's somewhat zig-zagged in that most of their weapon handling animations do reflect this training, even if not entirely accurate.
  • Ethan will draw out his default Lemi handgun (with no upgrades) in cutscenes even if the player sold it for stronger weapons. He will also use his default knife even if it's not equipped in his inventory.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: A newspaper in Chapter 1 has a story on The Dulvey Gas Incident that says everything that happened was this.
• Genre Shift:
  • Playing as Chris turns the game from Survival Horror to the more action-packed romp of Resident Evil 6, with an overabundance of ammo, better weapons and enemies coming out by the dozens and falling just as quickly.
  • Ethan gets to experience both extremes of this, as House Beneviento is a tense No-Gear Level where you're forced to run and and hide like in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, while the Lycan stronghold briefly drops you into an experience akin to Doom (2016), where you have to constantly stay on the move and gun down hordes of enemies that come from all sides.
• Go for the Eye: Shooting out the face coverings on the Soldat Eins and Zwei makes dealing with them significantly easier, as it causes them to lower their guard as they move much more erratically.
• Gone Horribly Right: After kidnapping Rose and then chopping her up into four flasks, Miranda (mockingly) assures Ethan that Rose will be saved not long before she tears his heart out... If only she knew how right she actually was once the ceremony was complete.
• Good All Along: Chris supposedly executing Mia is because he wasn't trying to execute Mia, he was trying to execute Miranda disguising herself as Mia, but Poor Communication Kills made Ethan perceive him as a threat to his family, but he was in fact trying to save Ethan and his family from Miranda and her cult. On the flip side, Chris thought Ethan had potentially been infected by Miranda since he was living with her for an extended period of time, so he had his men capture and quarantine him instead of bothering to explain the situation.
• Goodies in the Toilets: The village has several outdoor toilet shacks, which mostly serve as a kind of hiding spot for supplies.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Lady Dimitrescu is seen smoking with a long cigarette filter in her room. The Duke is also often seen smoking a cigar in his shop. Chris smokes a cigarette in his SUV before he and the Hound Wolf team assault the village.
• Gothic Horror: In contrast to its distinctly Southern Gothic predecessor, this game showcases a strong turn towards a more traditional Gothic Horror. Locations include a Romanian castle framed in snow and thick fog, disgusting and dilapidated Eastern-European villages, dark and misty woods, and so on. Not to mention all the creepy fairy tales, apparent inspiration from Elisabeth Bathory and Carmilla, and the whole deal with the werewolves walking about...
• Guns Akimbo: As noted under Dual Wielding, only possible in the VR mode. Even unrealistic combinations like a handgun in your left hand and a shotgun in your right are achievable, albeit the shotgun cannot be pumped with only one hand. The difficulty of aiming two handguns with iron sights simultaneously can be overcome. The Samurai Edge - AW Model-01 can be bought via the Trauma Pack DLC, and has a laser sight attached. This can be put in the player's off-hand, leaving their dominant one to wield e.g. the LEMI via the iron sights (assuming e.g. a right-handed player who is also right-eye dominant) and even with their non-dominant eye closed to facilitate that, the laser sight can still reliably track targets. This is actually something which reasonably justifies the Samurai Edge's continued use (and space in the inventory) when ordinarily it was considered a Nerf over its previous appearances in the series. However, again, any second gun must be dropped (automatically reholstering it) to allow the first, and then the second to be reloaded^note One tip is to drain ammo until there is one bullet left in the chamber, before reloading a clip, which means you don't have to recock e.g. pistols.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Things can get really hammy between Ethan and the enemies he deals with. In addition, Lady Dimitrescu and Lord Heisenberg's bickering in the meeting is full of flowery rebuke of each other's flowery mannerisms and preferred murder techniques.
• Hard Mode Perks: Playing the game on either Hardcore or Village of Shadows will reward you with more Lei than playing on casual or standard.
• Harder Than Hard: This game features an additional difficulty dubbed "Village of Shadows", which is basically this game's version of Hardcore mode taken up to eleven. Enemies become Lightning Bruisers with a lot of health and have different spawn points, stronger enemies that appear late in the game show up sooner, Ethan loses the ability to naturally heal, checkpoints become few and far in-between each other, and there's an even greater emphasis on resource management. To compensate, moneybags dropped from enemies and crates award far more money than on lower difficulties.
• He Knows Too Much: The reason Ethan and Mia moved to Europe is because Mia's involvement with The Connections, whose leader used to be Spencer's right hand man until he started his own company. Knowing she'll be targeted for her failure, the BSAA and Umbrella written them off as missing, thus them moving to Europe under Chris' protection.
• The Hero Dies: Ethan begins to calcify after defeating Miranda and, knowing he's not going to make it, bids Chris to escape with Rose and Mia while he stays behind to detonate the bomb and destroy the village. The epilogue has a now-teenage Rose visiting his grave, while the closing line states that 'The father's story is now done'.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Ethan stays behind to detonate the bomb to wipe out Miranda and the village, content with the knowledge that his wife and daughter are now safe. Not that it would have mattered anyways, as he was already beginning to calcify after Miranda bites it. At least he takes the Megamycete with him and saves both his wife and daughter.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The BSAA have apparently become this, which is what prompted Chris to break away from them and form his own team with several other likeminded veterans. It's revealed at the end that they've actually been sending BOW's to combat Miranda's forces and claim the Megamycete for their own nebulous reasons. The art director explains further in the concept art.
  "BSAA are now a rotten and ruined organization who use soldiers created with new technology."
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The first Lycan ambush will proceed until a timer goes off, resulting in the ambushers leaving. Nevertheless one can beat the pack leader Urias for a lot of money. He'll still be alive in the following cutscene though and a later boss fight. (There is an achievement for this, as well as one for killing 30 lycans.) If you have enough firepower in your hands (either by being in New Game Plus and/or having unlocked infinite ammo for your starting weapons) you can actually kill enough Lycans that they stop showing. When the timer runs out you'll still be ambushed by one, though.
• Hub Level: The village itself is the hub level, as it's situated between all four of the Lords' estates so Ethan must come back to it to go to the next level. The game keeps the interest up by having all sorts of supplies and treasures hidden in the nooks and crannies of the ruins, and also making different creatures respawn in the village after each completed level.
• Hub Under Attack: Areas containing save points are usually off-limits to enemies, to the point that they're forced to break off pursuit as soon as you're inside; for good measure, most of these areas are run by the Duke, allowing you a chance to stock up on supplies. However, the save point in the Beneviento Estate pulls the rug out from under you by giving every impression of being just as safe as the others — right up until you solve one of the final puzzles. Suddenly, the basement is being patrolled by a giant fetus-monster, and it will follow you into the save point. Because you have no weapons at this time, your only options are to hide in a locker or run for your life.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Alcina concludes as such in her personal diary, after believing she is not as special to Mother Miranda as she thinks she is.
• I Want Them Alive!: Alcina initially restrains her daughters from killing Ethan right away, locking him in a room instead and leaving to inform Mother Miranda of his capture. However, after he breaks free and kills Bela, Lady Dimitrescu vows to kill him herself in open disregard for the ceremony. She may even demand Cassandra to bring her Ethan's head.
• Impaled Palm: Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters impale both of Ethan palms with hooks and then chain him up.
• Improvised Weapon: One of Alcina's attacks in Mercenaries mode has her flinging her incredibly ornate vanity at nearby enemies.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Unlike all other firearms, the grenade launcher has no upgrades or add-on parts, meaning that once the Bonus Shop is unlocked, infinite ammo for the launcher can be purchased immediately. While its rate of fire (and lack of damage surprisingly) leaves much to be desired, an infinite supply of grenades and flashbangs is nothing to sneeze at and can make additional runs significantly easier as the player gathers up the money necessary for the other infinite ammo upgrades.
  • All 3 weapons from Chris' section can be acquired for New Game Plus like the WCX, and while they're all unique and effective, both guns fall into this trope due to the alternate options available in any circumstance being more effective. The USM-AI has above average stats than most other handguns, but its reloading speed is the slowest out of all handguns nor does it have the fully automatic fire displayed by the higher tier ones when fully upgraded. The Dragoon has a higher rate of fire by default when compared against the WCX; however, combined with its smaller magazine size and the relative scarcity of assault rifle ammo, this limits its usage greatly. In addition, both weapons are well-tuned enough on their own that the Duke cannot upgrade them; while they can stand up to normal enemies and early game bosses easily enough, facing tougher opponents down the road can prove to be a bit more challenging when compared to using fully upgraded base game weapons. The only exception to this is the Karambit Knife, which is a straight-up upgrade over the default knife.
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • The S.T.A.K.E. Magnum. Only becoming available starting in New Game Plus, it is the most powerful gun in the game, bar none, especially when upgraded, and can make very short work of even bosses. It is also exorbitantly expensive to buy and upgrade, costing into the hundred of thousands of Lei to buy its later enhancements. Even its Infinite Ammo cheat is terrifyingly costly to unlock, but once it's obtained, it lives up to its reputation as a veritable Hand Cannon that blows everything off the map in less than one full magazine.
  • The WCX assault rifle is likewise only available in New Game Plus, but averts the series' usual convention of Arbitrary Gun Power by packing a lot more punch per round than any of your handguns, and its huge capacity of 80 rounds to a magazine gives it a major advantage over the competing Dragoon. Once you've unlocked infinite ammo, you can pretty much coast through the whole game using only it.
  • Both firearms however are available in the first playthrough of a VR run should one collect 25 and 14 Goats of Warding, but still nevertheless with the high cost upgrades required.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters make plenty of sexual references while hunting Ethan. While Lady Dimitrescu has a hate-filled tone of voice when she says anything that involves the word "man", the daughters of Lady Dimitrescu seem to be quite the opposite, as they sound extremely aroused to be around a man and are very, very excited to kill him. House Dimitrescu possibly target men specifically by using their own sexuality to seduce men, as one note from a previous victim called Dimitrescu's children her "three beautiful daughters". When Lady Dimitrescu finds out Ethan killed her daughters, her choice of words make it sound like Ethan defiled them by taking away their virginity instead of killing them, saying that he laid his "filthy man-hands on MY daughters". One of the most disturbing depictions of this is found in the room of Pleasure, which displays an elaborate statue of the Lady, and her Daughters, straddling a maid in sexually suggestive positions, while impaling her on swords, indicating they've also taken sexual pleasure in tormenting and torturing the countless young girls they've abducted from the Village.
• Intrepid Merchant: The Duke, an extremely obese man who sells Ethan weapons and other items in the monster-infested village, essentially playing a similar role to the Merchant from Resident Evil 4. Going by the Duke's own words, the two are even friends. Aside from that, he can also cook up meals that give permanent stat boosts with ingredients that Ethan can find.
• Irony: Miranda gains the admiration of the village and the love of three of her "children" and likely could've gotten Heisenberg's as well if she treated him with genuine compassion. Instead, she doesn't care for and happily sacrifices all of them because she's obsessed with getting her daughter back, apparently not seeing the irony that she's tearing families apart because she couldn't move on and learn to love others. Miranda's daughter died from a natural illness while she's killing people wholesale in the pursuit of her goals. She disregarded Eveline, a clone of her daughter Eva, because she didn't produce desired results even though she could've started over with her. On top of everything, we're never given any indication that Miranda's real daughter was ever recorded in the Megamycete in the first place, meaning she threw away an entire village of people that genuinely loved her in pursuit of something that may never have been possible, to begin with, even with all of the advancements she made.
• Ironic Echo: When Ethan rejects Heisenberg's offer to team up and use Rose to defeat Miranda, the latter lets him fall into a pit full of his creations with a smug "Your funeral." Later on, during the boss fight against Heisenberg, Ethan himself says the same exact line as he delivers the final blow with the tank's gun.
• It Can Think: The first big encounter with the Lycans ends in a Wham Shot of several Lycans riding horses, revealing that they're more than just brutish animals.
• Item Crafting: Item crafting makes a comeback from Resident Evil 7. Ethan can scrounge for crafting items like chems, herbs, gunpowder and whatnot to craft supplies like bullets or healing items.
• Jump Scare: Cassandra can sometimes pop up in front of Ethan, giving a playful "Rargh!" and giggling before she attacks, as seen here.
• Just Hit Him: In several cutscenes, Lady Dimitrescu has Ethan completely at her mercy, picks him up... but instead of delivering a killing blow, she throws him across the room or smashes him through the floor, giving him the chance to escape.
  Lady Dimitrescu: Like I'd let you get away. [Grabs Ethan by the neck and picks him up.] You'll be sliced to ribbons— [She throws Ethan across the room, instead of slicing him to ribbons.] —before you ever see that child!
• Karmic Death: Miranda originally planned to die alone in a cave and ends up dying alone, now in a wholly deserted village. And the baby she kidnapped to use in her plans managed to become her undoing, by virtue of being a reborn clone of the same daughter she deemed a failure and a reject.
• Kill It with Ice: While the game points towards the classic vampire weakness, memos in the Castle make it very clear that it's not light that hurts them — it's the cold, which forces their component flies into a dormant state. Since it's currently winter, this means that shooting out one of the heavily-insulated windows does lead to them being vulnerable after being exposed to sunlight... but only because it also exposes them to the freezing winds outside.
• Killed Off for Real: After being revived as a sentient Mold colony and living through tons of punishment that would have killed anyone else, Ethan starts to calcify after his body is finally pushed past his limits at the end of the game, resulting in him electing to stay behind and detonate a bomb, incinerating him and ensuring he's gone for good.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Near the end, a vision of Eveline mocks Ethan for never considering how odd it is that he can survive so much abuse or re-attach his limbs with first aid fluid. Turns out, it's because he was already dead and is basically a sane B.O.W. In fact, Mother Miranda also lampshaded this when Ethan returned and confronted her after getting his heart pulled out by her.
  Mother Miranda: Interesting, your body certainly isn't normal.
  • During the section where you play as Chris, his squad share some dialogue where they point out some of the story's more egregious plot holes. Chris essentially just shrugs and agrees with them.
• Laser Sight: The Soldat Jet's lethal Dash Attack is announced via them targeting Ethan with a laser sight as they brace to slide towards him.
• Last Ditch Move: After depleting her health in the final battle, Miranda will perform one last attack, trapping Ethan with her Mold tentacles and attempting to kill him with her claws. You must shoot her quickly so you can finish her off for good.
• Last Request: Before Ethan sets off the bomb, he asks Chris to make sure to take care of Rose.
• Late to the Tragedy: As per franchise standard, Ethan shows up to the village long after things have gone horribly wrong. The presence of barely-rotten food and animals, as well as the general level of carnage, imply that he was only a few days late at least.
• Large and in Charge: Lady Alcina Dimitrescu of her own house stands at an incredibly intimidating 9'6" tall. Indeed, she has to crouch while entering doors, and can lift a fully-grown man like Ethan with one hand.
• Letters 2 Numbers: Similar to Resident Evil 7, the Roman numeral "VIII" is highlighted in the first four letters of the word "VILLAGE" (and since it's the subtitle this time the effect applies to both the western and Japanese logos). However unlike 7 the number is not technically part of the title.
• Licking the Blade: If one of the Dimitrescu daughters strikes Ethan with her sickle, she licks his blood off the sickle before resuming pursuit.
• Locked Door: Advancement in the game is greatly tied to finding keys and unlocking doors. For instance, when Ethan finds himself obligated to go to each of the Lords' estates, the order by which he can fight them is pre-determined as the doors to the estates must be unlocked via a special key, said key being split into parts that must be assembled in order to open the next doors.
• Made of Iron: Ethan takes even more abuse than the previous game, getting impaled, crushed, thrown around and having his right hand cut off in cutscenes, not to mention possible injuries in gameplay. Justified since he's still infected with the Mold, as after Lady Dimitrescu slices his right arm off from the wrist down he re-attaches the limb with a first aid med.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In the opening, Mia is shot on the chest, but doesn't react to the gunshot. Until a hail of bullets starts piercing her body when Chris comes in and unloads several more bullets onto her. This is a major plot point, because that's not Mia. That's Mother Miranda disguising herself as Mia.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The exact nature of the...thing in Lady Beneviento's basement. While it's not impossible for it to be a real monster, it's also possible that it's "merely" one of Lady Bene Viento's illusions, with it acting as a manifestation of Ethan's fear and guilt over losing Mia and Rose.
• Meaningful Name: An avid fan of vampiric folklore and stories will have a chuckle at the name of the S.T.A.K.E. magnum, for what is more effective at killing a vampire for good than a Wooden Stake driven through the heart?
• Money Is Experience Points: The shopping mechanic makes a return and allows you to buy items, weapons, and allows you to upgrade your weapons using money.
• Moral Myopia: When the nobles have the upper hand, they all look at Ethan as though he were a piece of property that they could torture and kill at their leisure. When he manages to prove resourceful enough to both survive them and can even kill them, they change their tune to that of him being a heartless invader who has no business being there regardless of the fact that they kidnapped his infant daughter, hacked her to pieces and then plan on using her as part of Miranda's ritual.
• More Dakka: The "Dragoon" (Chris's battle rifle which is unlockable in new game+) has fairly good damage but can (and will) burn through all of its ammo in seconds, unlocking the infinite ammo perk for the gun invokes this trope.
  • To put the cherry on top of both assault rifles, the achievement for killing a large number of enemies with them is named DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!
• Mortality Ensues: After a century or so of being effectively immortal, Rose's botching of Miranda's ceremony made Miranda mortal again. This is what allows Ethan to defeat her; he wouldn't have had a chance otherwise.
• Motifs:
  • There's something symbolic about the number of sexual references in the game and the symbolism can be seen as an allegory for a pick-up artist taking responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy.
    • Lady Dimitrescu hates men as she uses their corpses as scarecrows, infects women with the mold, uses the blood of her maids as wine ingredients, and talks about the deaths of her daughters as if Ethan took their virginity.
    • The Daughters of Dimitrescu are sexually aroused by the idea of draining Ethan's blood (they even have a statue of a victim in a sexually suggestive position as they have her impaled on swords, in the room of pleasure).
    • Ethan has to run from a monster that looks like a fetus and cries like a baby.
    • Ethan has to collect the dismembered body parts of his own daughter so he can rebuild and rescue her. This act is out of parental love, not sexual love.
    • Moreau is a diseased hunchback who makes comments about his performance in battle and has mother issues.
  • The theme of family and parenthood/parent and child bonds are also prevalent throughout much of the game's premise:
    • Ethan, Lady Dimitrescu, and Mother Miranda are the strongest themes of the power of parenthood in the game. Ethan is a father setting out to rescue his infant daughter from her abductors, Lady Dimitrescu later attempts to kill you to avenge her daughters which you had killed earlier, and Mother Miranda is revealed to have kidnapped Rose because she had wanted to use her to resurrect her own daughter who had died years ago. The fetus monster that chases you in Beneviento's part has been speculated by some as a physical manifestation of Ethan's fear of parenthood or guilt of his perceived "failure" as a parent. Lesser examples would include Elena and her father, and (potentially) Beneviento with her dolls.
    • Family is found near everywhere: the story starts off with a scene of Ethan and his family, and the Four Lords are considered each other's "family" with Miranda as the mother/matriarch. Each of the Lords have their own respective "families" as well: Dimitrescu is part of a royal family and a mother to her three daughters; Beneviento has her "family" of dolls; Moreau yearns for the affection and love that only a family could give; and while Heisenberg doesn't have much of a form of having a family, he does represent the wish to break free from his own "family". These themes can be found way back in the previous game as well.
    • Children and babies are also a common symbol here. For starters, Rose is only a baby and her infancy is something that is constantly reminded to the player during the game. Beneviento and Moreau are both represented with being stuck in childlike minds, each focusing on major topics that a child would concern themselves with (leisurely play and wishing for parental love/recognition, respectively). Beneviento's house also has a mutated fetus chase after you during her part. Heck, even the Cadou is designed to symbolize an infant and childbirth, given that it's shape is much like a developed fetus and Moreau mentions in a diary entry that the Cadou is planted in a victim's stomach much like a pregnant mother. Even the Megamycete root has a fetal shape.
• Mutual Kill: Miranda ripping out Ethan's heart damages his Mold body heavily enough that it was going to collapse one way or another, but he still manages to kill her just in time before he finally starts giving out for real. He even says as much when Chris tries to get him out of there.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Because Chris never told Ethan that his wife was actually Miranda in disguise, Ethan ends up being murdered. One of Chris's squadmates feels that he should have told him about the whole thing, with Chris making excuses, but the squadmate insists he should have told him anyway. Chris finally concedes with, "Yeah."
• Nerf: In the previous game, the Albert-01R is one of the strongest handguns despite its limited capacity of 3 bullets per shot. In this game, the Albert, named AW-01, has the capacity of 9 bullets per round, but has weaker firepower, and its stats can't be upgraded. This is in keeping with its performance in the "Not a Hero" DLC, though, likely lacking the RAMRODs that made the Albert so powerful in 7. Plus, it's also perhaps to compensate for the fact that it's available from the get-go if players purchase the Trauma Pack DLC, and is slightly better than the default LEMI with all of its starter upgrades for the first quarter of the game despite its lack of tuning, but once you find the LEMI's compensator, the AW-01 is Better Off Sold.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The reveal trailer for the game, Chris shooting Mia, and the tagline "His story comes to a close" all seem to be pointing to Chris being an antagonist. Naturally he isn't, he had a good reason to shoot "Mia", and it's Ethan's story that comes to a conclusion with his death at the end of the game.
• The New '20s: Looking at a baby picture of Rose in Chapter 1 reveals it's set within 2021, three years after Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Specifically, Rosemary is stated to be six months old, and her birth certificate says she was born in August 2020, placing the date of this game sometime in February 2021.
• New Game Plus: Loading a completed game save allows you to begin a new save with all the items you had at the end of your complete save. It's a notable return for the feature after its absence in RE7, Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and Resident Evil 3 (Remake).
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Really, the entire game could've been avoided if Chris bothered to tell Ethan why he suddenly attacked his house and killed Mia. Turns out later that "Mia" was actually Mother Miranda assuming her form and trying to kidnap Rose, a fact Chris intentionally left out to make sure Ethan didn't get involved in the situation. But then, Chris goes completely out of his way to be a total and utter dick to Ethan, he also makes the very dumb mistake of kidnapping and transporting Ethan and his daughter in the same van as the dangerous, quasi-immortal, shapeshifting bio-weapon who's desperately trying to kidnap her. In the end, Ethan not only ended up getting involved but also getting him and his daughter killed because of Chris, something his teammates make sure to point out to him. Somewhat justified in that 1. Chris feared Ethan might've been infected by Miranda, not knowing he'd already been infected back in the Baker house and 2. Chris has got precedent for trying to keep people he cares about from getting involved with B.O.W.s by not telling them what's going on.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If Rose coming back completely unharmed during the ritual instead of coming back as Eva like Miranda intended is of any indication. Also, Rose came back as a complete version of Eveline, and Eveline turned out to have beef towards Miranda (both for abandoning her and then using her just to bring Eva back).
• Nightmarish Factory: Heisenberg's factory is one. The underground facility is gigantic and filled with Soldat zombies, cyborg zombies of Heisenberg's creation that are extremely tough and dangerous because of their drill arms.
• No Body Left Behind: Unlike the previous game, a killed enemy will crystalize and calcify upon death. This clues in that the enemies are megamycete B.O.Ws, and their dead bodies dissolve upon death like the bosses in the previous game.
• No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Throughout the game Ethan collects a regular arsenal of weapons, some of which are statistically straight upgrades to others, such as the M1911 to the starting LEMI. But any time a cutscene happens, Ethan will always brandish his plain, unupgraded LEMI at any potential threat. The issue is avoided completely with his default knife, since the game won't let you drop or sell it.
• No Fair Cheating: Fully averted with the Infinite Ammo cheats, which don't void Challenge or achievement progression when enabled.
• No-Gear Level:
  • Your equipment is temporarily gone throughout the segment with the baby. You're forced to flee from it.
  • After a certain point, you have to do Donna's boss fight with no weapon or healing items.
• No-Sell: The heaviest firepower you have may cause Alcina to flinch for a second, but nothing you have is capable of stunning her for any appreciable amount of time.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: Some of the Lycans may simply squat on the ground or on a vantage point, letting the snow cover them. An imprudent player may fail to spot the Lycans and get outflanked for his negligence.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Despite the game being set in Eastern Europe, none of the characters have a region-appropriate accent, instead sporting American accents.
• Not Quite Dead: Near the climax, Ethan has his heart ripped off from his body by Mother Miranda and was thought to be dead by nearly everyone. Then, it turns out Ethan was already a Molded with regenerative powers and is able to get back up one last time to face Miranda and save his daughter.
• Notice This: All interactable objects, from the barrels and crates that hold items to ladders to levers are all marked with yellow tape or paint. Broadly speaking, anything you see that's colored bright yellow to stand out either is or leads to something useful (e.g. spots to take shelter from Moreau's Acid Attack will have yellow cords dangling from the roof).
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • As Ethan makes his way from the crash site to the village, he hears sounds of something inhuman moving around him, and several times objects are nudged or vanish when he's not looking at them, but the creature doing so never appears until Ethan meets the first survivor.
  • The same happens in House Beneviento, the residence of Donna Beneviento who specializes in screwing with her prey's minds. After he enters the house, Ethan suddenly loses his weapons and the gameplay turns into mostly puzzle solving in the dark and quite labyrinthine manor, while strange visions and noise can be seen or heard.
• No, You: When Ethan tries to trash-talk one of the bosses:
  Lady Dimitrescu: Curse you! Aaarrgh...
  Ethan Winters: You're the one who's cursed.
• Obliviously Superpowered: In the climax, it's revealed that Ethan Winters was actually killed by Jack Baker early in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and brought back by the Mould, hence why an ordinary civilian with no military training has somehow been able to defeat Mould-empowered superhumans and reattach lost limbs with just a splash of first aid fluid. Throughout both games, Ethan attributes his feats of survival entirely to the first aid fluid, never realizing the truth even in the face of increasingly unlikely victories. It's not until he survives having his heart ripped out by Mother Miranda that Ethan belatedly realizes his true nature.
• Off with His Head!: One of the ways Alcina can kill Ethan is by impaling him first and then drawing a set of claws in her other hand to behead him.
• Offerings to the Gods: Part of the divine imagery Miranda built for herself includes demanding tributes from the villagers, as shown in Eugen's Diary: the man sacrificed two goats for her and later gave her wool. And then she demanded drugs and tools.
• Offhand Backhand: When chasing Ethan, Alcina never once breaks eye contact — not even while slapping the Moroaicǎ out of her way.
• Origins Episode: This game tells the story of how Umbrella was conceptualized. Young Spencer was rescued from freezing by Miranda who took him under her wings and inspired him to do his own experiments. Spencer later built his own company Umbrella with the logo based on the symbol seen in Miranda's village.
  Chris Redfield:" Spencer... here? No way... ."
• Our Vampires Are Different: The main villains seen in the trailers and the Maiden demo are heavily inspired by vampire lore, particularly Dracula and Elizabeth Báthory. They drink blood, they go for the neck when they do so, they can shapeshift into a swarm of flies, they react with fury when a maid opens a window (implying that they are Weakened by the Light), Lady Dimitrescu runs a winery, her three daughters call to mind Dracula's three brides, and the names imply an Eastern European (specifically Romanian) setting. If a letter you find in the Maiden demo is any indication (it's dated to 1958), they're apparently long-lived, too. Alcina herself is also inhumanly tall (to the point where she has to stoop to walk through normal-sized doorways), strong enough to effortlessly lift a grown adult by the neck with one hand and hurl a large hardwood desk across a room with enough force to shatter it on impact, and possesses gigantic retractable Wolverine Claws. However, in one of the trailers, Lady Dimitrescu can be seen applying lipstick in front of a vanity mirror, and you can see her reflection.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • The game fully runs on this in the beginning of the game where Chris kills Mia that's actually Miranda, but she survives, and takes Rose. Ethan is completely terrified of losing his daughter to the point that he will stop at nothing, not even the aristocrats, to save his baby daughter. And then he finds out that she was cut into pieces.
  • Miranda's daughter Eva died from the Spanish flu at age 10, driving her into deep despair and kickstarting her century-long plan of resurrecting her with the mold. Also, she outlived her other child Eveline, defeated in battle three years prior at Dulvey.
• Papa Wolf: Ethan goes through an entire village full of horrific monsters in order to get his daughter back. His love for her is so great that he refuses to die after Miranda rips his heart out and keeps going through sheer force of will just until he can rescue her.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Each of the first three Lord areas become inaccessible once their respective boss is beaten (Castle Dimitrescu) and Ethan leaves the area (House Beneviento exterior, the Reservoir). Any possible treasures, weapons, or unsolved labyrinths that the player misses will be completely inaccessble from that point onwards.
  • There are two houses in the village that can only be cleared the first time you explore them: the cottage where Ethan receives a handgun, and Luiza's house. Not that there's really much exploration to do in either location.
  • It is strongly recommended not to sell any dish-ingredients to the Duke. Animals spawn in limited numbers and outside of a tiny surplus of meat and fish you will need to hunt down every single animal to unlock every dish bonus. Some fish and poultry are found in the Reservoir, and can only be hunted in a short window of time. Once you've completed every recipe, though, all meat becomes useless, so at that point you can sell away.
  • The very first huntable animals you encounter in the game are a group of fish in a pool of water you pass through after the Castle Area; before the hunting mechanic is actually introduced. You only visit this pool of water once, so the fish are lost permanently if they are not hunted immediately.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite her distaste for men, Lady Dimitrescu seems to have a positive or at least functional business relationship with the Duke. She writes in her notes about reserving some time in her schedule for discussions with him and even gives him a room in her castle to set up shop. Furthermore, she doesn't attack Ethan when he is in the Duke's shop- implying it to be a Truce Zone.
  • Miranda saved a young Oswell Spencer from freezing to death in the past, even though he couldn't possibly be of any use to her at that point.
• Playing Possum: When the Hound-Wolf Squad ambushes her in her disguise as Mia by unloading a storm of bullets into her, Miranda pretends to be dead so she can take Rose later as the team attempts to transport Ethan and Rose to another location.
• Pocket Rocket Launcher: a Gyrojet pistol is available for purchase after beating the "Village of Shadows" difficulty. It is one of the most expensive handguns available for purchase (more than the Magnum Research BFR/"Handcannon PZ") and appropriately enough it's a more destructive Hand Cannon with its capacity of hurting multiple enemies with the rocket's explosion.
• Point of No Return: Entering Heisenberg's factory is the point in the game where you can no longer go back to the village for any additional exploration and collectible mop-up. Additionally, leaving the area after defeating a Lord also prevents you from coming back to sweep for any missed content.
• Poor Communication Kills: If Chris had bothered to communicate anything involving Miranda's plans and machinations and been less, you know, brutal in his apprehending Ethan and Rose to rescue them, maybe Ethan wouldn't have held an enraged vendetta until the truth finally comes out towards the endgame. It mostly happened due to the worry that Ethan might've been infected by Miranda, but then Chris intentionally tried to be vague to prevent Ethan from trying to dive headfirst into the incident to do anything, if mostly to protect his life so Chris could handle the brunt of the duty. Miranda hijacking the transport completely threw that off-kilter, though. The rest of the squad with Chris points this out shortly after Ethan seemingly died by the hands of Miranda; if they had actually bothered to let him know and cooperated with him instead of the way they went about it, the seemingly-fatal encounter could've been avoided. For what it's worth, Chris is well aware of this.
• The Power of Love: Ethan's love for Rose keeps him from crossing the Despair Event Horizon and keep going long enough to rescue her. His last words before sacrificing himself are a tearful goodbye to her.
• Power-Up Food: A new mechanic added to the game, which already maintains the crafting and blocking systems from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and the merchant system from Resident Evil 4, is "The Duke's Kitchen". If the player hunts down ingredients (literally: many of them are meat that can be acquired by killing the animals found in the village), the Duke can cook Ethan a number of recipes. Each recipe that Ethan cooks and eats triggers a corresponding unique power-up that affects Ethan's abilities for the rest of the game, such as increasing how much damage reduction a successful block grants. This mechanic was revealed and discussed in the April 2021 showcase.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • The Rocket Pistol, which can be obtained by beating the game on Village of Shadows mode. As its name suggests, the Rocket Pistol shoots mini rockets at enemies that explode on impact, which makes it great for clearing out groups of enemies or removing enemy armor. Unfortunately, the Rocket Pistol is hindered by two things: it cannot be upgraded (save for infinite ammo) and only has a power rate of 500, not exactly making it recommended against bosses or even stronger enemies.
  • Similarly, the Handcannon PZ. Unlocked by beating the game on Hardcore mode, the Handcannon PZ actually can be upgraded and is significantly more powerful than the Rocket Pistol. However, the Handcannon PZ pales in comparison to the S.T.A.K.E. Magnum for four reasons: it lacks any special attachments, has less firepower than the S.T.A.K.E. (3200 when fully upgraded, when the S.T.A.K.E.'s firepower goes up to 4500), only holds five rounds compared to the S.T.A.K.E.'s 20 rounds (28 with the High-Capacity Mag attachment), and can be obtained much more easily by just beating the game on any difficulty. The one objective advantage it has (using more common and plentiful sniper rifle ammo instead of rare and/or costly magnum rounds) is made permanently moot once you unlock infinite ammo for the S.T.A.K.E.
  • The infinite ammo upgrade for the grenade launcher is not quite as overpowered as it would sound. Despite the fact that you would think having infinite grenades would break the game wide open, the grenade launcher actually is not particularly strong, the standard grunt Lycans can take roughly 3 grenades in a row before finally dying, which combined with the reload time between every shot makes it not particularly efficient for clearing enemies out. However, it can still be used to knock enemies around you down to give you breathing room, and infinite flash grenades is still rather useful for the same purpose.
• Psychological Horror: House Beneviento breaks from the rest of this game by taking this tone. Ethan, sans any gear to help him, is taunted and tormented by images and apparations of Mia, including a picture of her after the shooting and mannequin of her he must dismember to find clues, and he hears anguished recordings of her while being presented with memories of their happy marriage. In the basement, there is also a horrific, unfightable fetus monster likely tied to his fears of something being wrong with Rose. Donna Beneviento is depicted as less physically strong and is revealed to use hallucinogens to toy with her victims instead, so Ethan was deliberately put into a hell of his own fears.
• Psychological Torment Zone: Donna Beneviento's M.O. is to torture her victims with their deepest, most personal fears, and her house and the area leading up to it assault Ethan with apparations, disturbing imagery tied to his memories of his family, and even the huge, horrible Baby in the basement.
• Psychometry: During a few moments after inserting a flask into the pedestal, Ethan briefly experiences Rose's memories when she was taken by Miranda and brought to the lords before they dismembered her.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": In one of Moreau's diaries, he manages to piece together that if Miranda succeeds in resurrecting Eva, she will abandon Salvatore in favor of her real child. The next page consists of the word "No!" written eighty-four times.
• Rare Candy: Surprisingly, fish meat. It is required in considerable amounts for most of the higher-end Power-Up Food that the Duke can cook for you, and huntable fish only appear in a very small handful of briefly-explorable areas that the game is very bad at telling you about.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: During the Final Boss, Ethan calls out Miranda as nothing more than a psychotic freak who is incapable of real love.
• Red Herring: Chris' actions make it seem as if he's undergone a Face–Heel Turn after killing Mia and kidnapping Ethan's infant daughter. It isn't until later that Ethan learns that Chris was actually there to protect the Winters family from Mother Miranda, who wants to use Rose and resurrect her own daughter.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Heisenberg rebels from Miranda upon realizing that he has outlived his usefulness. All of the enemies in the factory are loyal to him instead of her.
• The Reveal: Ethan died in the prologue of 7. He was reanimated by the Mold, which is why he is so difficult to kill.
  Eveline: Wrong. It wasn't Miranda, you were always dead. See? Miranda didn't kill you. You mean you didn't think it was weird— No matter how much you got hurt? Remember? Three years ago, in the Baker house. You were murdered by Jack. You died there, three years ago. You shouldn't even be able to walk around. [...] You. Shouldn't. Be. Walking. [...] Now do you get it? Your whole body is nothing but mold!
• Rewatch Bonus: Pretty much everything in the opening cutscene regarding Mia's behavior takes on a completely different meaning when the twist that she was really Mother Miranda is revealed. From her quickly taking to local foods (they're in the same country Miranda is from, so she probably already knew the recipes), to her refusal to talk about the events of 7 (she wasn't actually there, so she can't really talk about it without letting it slip that she isn't Mia), to her reading a creepy, Grimm-esque fairy tale to Rose (she most likely read it to Eva as a baby over 100 years ago, much closer to when stories like that were actually written), to her surprisingly calm reaction to getting shot multiple times (she's a B.O.W. with superhuman durability, and takes close to an entire arsenal to bring down in the final boss fight).
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Chris doesn't bother telling Ethan that the Mia he tried to kill was actually Miranda, because he believes it's possible Ethan was infected by Miranda, therefore he has his men capture and quarantine Ethan instead. Chris is right that Ethan is no longer exactly human, but that has nothing to do with Miranda, but rather the Baker Incident from three years ago.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Chris Redfield has many reasons to storm the village guns blazing in the final act. The one he voices out loud is avenging Ethan's murder at Mother Miranda's hands.
• RPG Elements: The Mercenaries mode displays damage numbers of the weapons and the health bar of the enemy, turning the mode from a horrorfest into more of an action RPG.
• Rule of Symbolism: The House Beneviento symbol consists of a Sun and Moon motif, evoking the image of a smaller reflective object eclipsing the larger source of its light.
• Run or Die: The House Beneviento level is eventually reduced to Ethan having no choice but to flee.
• Running Gag:
  • It can't be an Ethan Winters game without him and his hands getting mutilated an absurd number of times.
  • Any time Ethan is seen in third person, his face is always hidden in some form or another. The third person mode pushes this further with the camera showing his head from behind but doesn't completely show his face. This continues in Shadows of Rose.
  • After being missing in the previous entry, the "chopper crashes down" series staple returns.
  • The mannequin trend that began in 6 returns and one puzzle involves you dismantling one literally limb-from-limb to get keys and clues.
  • The obligatory chainsaw enemy returns as well, this time in the form of "Sturm", who has three chainsaw blades strapped to the airplane engine that replaces its entire upper torso.
• Scam Religion: Mother Miranda's cult in the village features a lot of folk Catholic trappings and pseudo-Marian imagery, but while the villagers worship her devoutly, her Establishing Character Moment features her murdering a stray villager she encounters in the fields.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • During the escape from Heisenberg's gauntlet after meeting the Four Lords, you'll reach the final room and notices the usual crates. But Ethan won't be able to kick them if you try to go for them. This is a trick by the developers to distract you long enough for the rotating spike trap to reach and kill you. You're meant to wait until Ethan survives the trap to receive the goodies from the now destroyed crates.
  • 'Look Out The Window'. Granted, doing so reveals the code to a very nice new handgun, but getting too close to the window for a better look will get you a Jump Scare from a Lycan.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The Four Lords terrorize the village under the guise of being supernatural entities. They all turn out to be genetically engineered bio-weapons. Though that doesn't stop some of them like Mother Miranda from predating even Umbrella.
• Sequence Breaking: While the developers have made every attempt to avert this, this is actually possible in Donna Beneviento's estate. The code for the door lock and the pattern of symbols for the door to the well don't change, allowing the player to use their memory to solve them. The silver key isn't necessary. It opens the door to the bathroom with a sink for the ring, but it also leads to the other room where the bedroom is, which is locked from the other side. And since the scissors open the back area you need to use, you can open the doors to the operation room without having to pick up the silver key.
• Sequel Hook: Several.
  • BSAA is now using B.O.Ws as their soldiers, and the game ends with Chris and his team setting a course for BSAA Europe HQ.
  • There is a time skip in the end where a teenaged Rose Winters is shown working for the government.
  • During the ending when the car is driving off it suddenly stops as a figure appears and walks towards it. While the figure is obscured due to the distance, using photo mode reveals that it's Ethan; though it might just be a placeholder given that he still appears injured and close to calcifying.
  • Miranda didn't create the Mold, merely discovering it by accident, and she didn't build the giant chalice either. Those murals with the drawings that would be copied by Spencer for the Umbrella logo? Not her doing either. All of those are much older than Miranda. In fact, the chalice was apparently something created to control or keep the Mold dormant. A note found in the tunnels under the village imply that all of those are at least older than the medieval times.
  • One that takes place very early in the game: The Connections, the organization that approached Miranda to gain access to the Mold and create Eveline, was founded by Brandon Bailey, Spencer's former right-hand man who was mentioned all the way back in documents within the fifth game. They're still around as of the ending, allowing for a future confrontation with them later on.
  • During the credits, the finale of the "Village of Shadows" book is read, and a crow is briefly seen consuming a little fleck of gold remaining in the otherwise burnt forest, implying that Miranda could still be alive.
• Serkis Folk: The production of the game was done via motion capture at Sony's Santa Monica Studios.
• Shapeshifter Showoff Session: In the climax, Miranda reveals herself to be a shapeshifter by approaching Ethan in the form of Mia Winters, then reverting dramatically to true form by manifesting massive black wings and appearing suddenly from behind him. The rest of the confrontation is spent with her shifting between Mia and the Hag as she gleefully monologues, before suddenly ripping Ethan's heart out with her bare hands, seemingly killing him, then transforming into a flock of crows and departing.
• Shout-Out:
  • The eerie Gothic Fairytale that foreshadows the horror to come is told in the same paper-cut-out stop-motion storybook style of the nightmares from Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
  • Ethan and Mia's infant daughter is named Rosemary.
  • The Dimitrescu daughters seem to be inspired by the vampire sisters/Brides of Dracula, being a trio of seductive vampiric women subordinate to the master of the house who are seen materializing from gathered fragments (particles of moonlight in Dracula, flies in RE: Village).
  • Lady Dimitriscu sarcastically congratulating Ethan for being the only person "lucky" enough to witness her One-Winged Angel transformation into a hideous dragon is virtually identical to how Lord Freeza of Dragon Ball Z intimidates the Z warriors before his terrifying transformations during the Namek Saga.
  • One of Heisenberg's experimental soldiers, "Sturm", is a dead-ringer for a certain cyborg found in Frankenstein's Army.
  • Heisenberg and his Soldats are basically a love letter to Frankenstein and the Cyberpunk film Tetsuo: The Iron Man.
  • The flasks containing Rosemary's body parts are a direct reference to AKIRA, with the glass being a similar color to the same Specimen Jars that held the titular Akira's own body parts. The jars also need to be together in order for them to revive the being inside of them. In this case Rosemary.
  • Moreau's mutated form looks very similar to the Gwoemul.
  • Right before the showdown with Heisenberg, as he summons metal towards him to activate his One-Winged Angel (heh), a couple of larger pieces are briefly seen attaching to his left shoulder in the shape of a single wing.
  • Near the end of the game, Chris plants a small but incredibly powerful bomb in the Megamycete core that causes an explosion big enough to destroy the entire village. It's called an N2 explosive.
  • Defeating Donna Beneviento unlocks the achievement "Got No Strings", possibly named as a reference to the song "I've Got No Strings" from Disney's Pinocchio.
  • Similarly, the achievement gotten from slaying Heisenberg is called "Iron Giant Down".
  • The scream that plays when you first enter the main hall of Castle Dimitrescu is one of Meg Thomas's voice clips from Dead by Daylight, presaging the RE/DbD crossover that was announced a couple of weeks before Village's release.
  • It's a rather random and off-the-wall one, if intentional, but the treasure you find in Otto's Mill is a statue called "Nichola's Angel".
  • The LZ Answerer is an obvious reference to the lightsabers from Star Wars. Even being able to change the color of its blade and also has a double-bladed option.
  • Completing the game using only the knife gives the Knives Out achievement.
  • A giant baby-like creature that crawls at you, will kill you in one hit if caught, and is encountered only in a single area underneath the ground floor? Dan Barrows, is that you?
• Show Within a Show: More like "Book Within A Game". There is a fictional book called Village of Shadows.
• Shown Their Work: Lady Alcina Dimitrescu is wearing the exact same style of a draped evening dress and wide-brimmed hat combo that became fashionable in 1938.
  • A toxicology book found in the Beneviento study refers to the poisons of mountainous plants. This appears to correspond to Donna's yellow psychoactive flowers produced by the mold, whose description matches the real-life deadly Yellow Monkshood (Aconitum Anthora) and whose natural range extends to the Carpathian mountains.
• Smart Ball: Moreau is explicitly the dumbest of the house-heads, and it is implied his infection has caused mental disability, but he keeps Ethan talking long enough to seal off the exits. He even gets to unironically call Ethan stupid.
• Snow Means Death: The game takes place in an eastern part of Europe in winter. Death naturally occurs with Lycans running around and the Four Lords are responsible for some of them. And after having his heart ripped out, "killing" him, Ethan wakes up in a place covered in snow as far as the eye can see, with Ethan feeling unusually cold.
• Solve the Soup Cans: Strangely enough for this very series, almost completely averted. While the obligatory puzzles do still exist, they (mostly) make sense in the context of the situations you find them in, usually in the form of finding key items to fit into their respective locks, in order to access the next part of the area in a logical manner. Of course, there are still some that don't at all make sense even in the context provided, such as the bell puzzle in the portrait room of Castle Dimitrescu or the entirety of House Beneviento's basement, though at least the latter can be chalked up to being a mind trick that's made deliberately confusing to resolve.
• Stab the Picture: As he explains to Ethan his hate for Mother Miranda, Heisenberg uses his ferrokinesis to control a knife and stab pictures of the other lords on a wall, insulting each one as he does so.
• Stance System: The unlockable LZ Answerer has three settings that you can toggle between by holding the aim button and pressing interact. The default red blade does the most damage, blue does less damage but greatly reduces the damage you take when blocking, while green has the least offensive power, but heals you with every successful hit.
• Starter Villain: Despite how much focus they received during the promotional material for the game, Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters serve as Ethan's first major obstacle in getting his daughter back. and Lady Dimitrescu serves as the first true boss of the game.
• Stealth Pun:
  • At the start of the game, Ethan comes across a pile of slaughtered crows — in other words, it's a murder of crows.
  • Ethan Winters finds himself in a snowy village.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: Played with. While the logo highlights the first letters in 'village' to form the Roman numeral VIII, the official title is just Resident Evil Village, with no number 8, being the first mainline entry in the series since Revelations to not feature a number.
• Storybook Opening: The game opens with Mia reading "Village of Shadows" to Ethan and their infant daughter, Rose. She stops when Rose has fallen asleep, with Ethan making a comment about how creepy the story was. This story Foreshadows a lot of the game, down to the plot of both being nearly identical.
• Super-Soldier: Heavily implied with the new BSAA soldiers who are shown to be Tyrant-type bio-organic weapons and are stated by the art director to be "created with new technology".
• Superdickery: The game prominently opens with Chris and his assault squad breaking into Ethan's home, riddling Mia with bullets, and capturing Ethan and Rose. Turns out Mia was actually the shapeshifting Miranda in disguise, but due to Poor Communication Kills Chris never bothers to explain this and Ethan doesn't find out until the end of the game.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • After the horrors they encountered three years ago, Ethan and Mia both suffer from PTSD and are undergoing psychiatric counselling. Looking in the bathroom in the Winters' house, the player can find that Mia is on medication.
  • Unlike other protagonists of the franchise, Ethan would rather return to civilian life instead of dedicating his life to fighting bioterrorism.
  • Turns out that Jack actually killed Ethan when he first attacked him. Ethan was already half-dead from fighting Mia and the super-strong Jack was in no mood to handle him with kid's gloves. The only reason Ethan got up from that encounter was because the Mold revived him.
• Surreal Horror: The baby is by far the weirdest enemy faced in the game, and sticks out like a sore thumb among the other Gothic Horror creatures you face.
• Swallowed Whole: This can happen on two separate occasions. It's a One-Hit Kill when it occurs.
  • The baby creature in Beneviento's house will attempt to shove Ethan down her gullet if she gets her hands on him, much like an actual baby.
  • When trying to evade Moreau's One-Winged Angel form before draining the dam, falling off into the water will cause Moreau to swim towards Ethan and devour him, killing you instantly.
• Sword and Gun: Another Dual Wield option opened up by the VR mode. You can get shades of Big Boss by putting a knife in your off-hand and a handgun in your dominant. This is facilitated more easily by allowing the player to pick which arm will mount the knife holster.
• "Take That!" Kiss: When her daughters first bring Ethan to her, Alcina has them restrain him and slash open his left-hand palm. She grabs hold of it and kisses the wound, taking a moment to suck up the blood and taste it. She dismissively says it is starting to go stale.
• Takes One to Kill One:
  • To defeat the mechanical monstrosity that Heisenberg has become, Chris rigs up an improvised tank and gives it to Ethan.
  • It's revealed in the ending that BSAA has begun to use intelligent B.O.Ws as their foot soldiers.
  • At the end, it takes Ethan (another Mold-infected) to kill Miranda, the most powerful of the Molded.
• Taking You with Me: At the end of Alcina Dimitrescu's boss battle, she falls through the roof of her castle while grabbing Ethan by the leg, fully intending to kill him as well.
• Talking to the Dead: During the Distant Finale in the game's ending. A now-teenaged Rose leaves flowers at the site of Ethan's grave and wishes him a happy birthday. She doesn't get to speak to him long before a government agent pulls her away, but the ending is presented as Rose having sentimental feelings towards her father.
• Tantrum Throwing: As shown in IGN's first PS4 Pro gameplay footage, Lady Dimitrescu throws the desk in her room at the floor and breaks it after her phone call with Mother Miranda, enraged at Ethan's continued survival in her castle. The full game reveals she's really angry because of her daughter's death at Ethan's hand.
  Lady Dimitrescu: To hell with the ceremony! That man will pay for what he's done...
• Tempting Fate: Ethan says to his baby, Rose, that he "won't let those weird fairy tale monsters get you". Oooh, the irony...
• A Taste of Power: Inverted. Late in the game, you get to play as a character whose firepower makes mincemeat of everything the game throws at you. When the player controls Chris Redfield during the penultimate segment, he comes with a customized pistol, assault rifle, grenades, hundreds of rounds for both weapons and ample access to supply drops that come with even more ammo and healing items. Inverted again when playing on the hardest difficulties, as Chris doesn't have any access to Ethan's unlockable guns, and enemies that went down easily on Amateur and Normal are significantly stronger on Hardcore and [especially] Village of Shadows.
• Tap on the Head: Deconstructed. It is revealed that Jack's haymaker in the prologue to 7 didn't knock Ethan out, it killed him. When he "woke back up", it was actually him being brought back by the Mold.
• This Is a Drill: The Soldat cyborgs in Heisenberg's factory use drill arms as weapons.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Melee blades can be thrown in VR mode, and in fact are infinitely respawning from their holster. However, despite the name of the trope, the default knife is quite hard to throw with good precision, and doesn't deal much damage per throw.
• Time Skip: The game takes place three years after the end of 7 in which Ethan and Mia settled down and have recently had their first child, Rose, which sets it in 2021. The final scene takes place later when a teenage Rose visits her father's grave. How far is uncertain considering that her predecessor Eve had Rapid Aging, though we at least know Chris is still alive.
• Tomato in the Mirror: While savvy players are already aware that Ethan is infected with the Mold, the vision of Eveline near the end pushes it further by telling him he actually died in the Baker house the first time Jack attacked him. Rather than an infected human, Ethan is more akin to a B.O.W, as shown when he survives Miranda ripping his heart out and the ending where his right hand calcifies after he finally gets Rose back.
• Too Dumb to Live: Ethan opens the windows while fighting Lady Dimitrescu's daughters, revealing their weakness to cold. Rather than leave the room and attack him where he can't exploit their weakness, they continue to attack him then and there despite the cold, allowing Ethan to kill them.
• Took a Level in Badass: Downplayed with Ethan who is still a civilian but is able to handle himself against a much larger force of enemies compared to the Bakers and the Molded from the get-go. This in contrast to RE: 7 where Ethan spends a good half of the first game hiding from the Bakers. This is explained in-game by a throwaway comment Ethan makes about military training, as well as a book about guns written by Joseph Kendo found in Ethan's study.
  Ethan: It's not paranoid if they're really out to get you.
• Transformation Discretion Shot:
  • Lady Dimitrescu, after being stabbed with a poisoned dagger, flings Ethan through a window as she becomes a Draconic Abomination, meaning that he can't see the full extent of her transformation from behind the window frame. We see her sprouting a gigantic pair of wings, but then she lurches out of view as the transition continues, and apart from the shadow of a tail, we don't see anything more of Dimitrescu until she ploughs through the nearby wall, ready for battle.
  • Lord Moreau's transformation into his huge aquatic form is never seen in full. The nearest we see to it on camera is during his confrontation with Ethan on the lake: here, he's just changed back and is not wearing his cloak, so we can see tentacles beginning to erupt from his body as Moreau loses control again. He then totters over to the edge of the water and tumbles in... and a split second later, his mutated form begins hurtling through the lake in search of prey.
  • Lord Heisenberg unleashes his magnetic powers on the room around him, simultaneously beginning his transformation into his Mechanical Abomination form and forcing Ethan out of the room; the last thing seen of him is the debris gathering around him, and then a mound of scrap metal covers the door, hiding Heisenberg from view. Then, a huge buzz saw-tipped arm tears through the door, revealing that Heisenberg is now a huge mass of machinery, fungus, and flesh all fused together.
  • In the climax, Mother Miranda reveals herself and her shapeshifting powers by appearing as Mia Winters; a huge set of black wings then emerge from behind her as she reverts to her true form until they unfold to reveal Miranda herself. Briefly dissolving into a flock of crows, she then walks behind a tree, emerging on the other side as Mia again; another disappearing act behind a tree results in her transforming into the Hag as well.
  • The final battle features Miranda summoning up a huge growth of roots from the ground just before the boss fight begins, hiding herself behind them as she transforms into her One-Winged Angel form.
• Translation Convention: It's suggested but never outright stated that Ethan and Mia learned the Romanian language as part of their relocation. The villagers he meets early on all speak with perfectly nonregional English when such a level of fluency would be pretty unlikely given their secluded nature, and the notes and diaries he finds in the village are also written in English despite having no reason to be, suggesting that, like Leon in RE4, Ethan is translating them in his head as he reads.
• Trying Not to Cry: Chris had angrily punch the wall of the helicopter that spirited himself along with Mia and baby Rose into the sunrise of safety and freedom to hold back the tears of grief for a dying Ethan staying behind to detonate the village and destroy the Megamycete fused Miranda once and for all, knowing that this tragedy is fully of his own fault and making.
• Überwald: The titular setting of the game, a European village dominated by a looming castle straight out of classic Gothic horror. The special developer video reveals that the in-game currency is noted as the "Lei" (singular "Leu") — which is the real-world currency of Romania, the nation which includes the region of Transylvania, and is, therefore, the Ur-Example of an Überwald setting.
• Underestimating Badassery: The Four Lords continuously mock Ethan and continue to think he's beneath them. They either don't notice or don't care that he survives injuries that would have killed any normal human multiple times over.
• Universal Ammunition: As is typical for the series, ammunition is found in a small handful of different types, which are shared between weapons of the same class regardless of their real-world equivalent's actual caliber. The only wildcards to this rule are the V61 Custom, which is now treated as a handgun despite sharing the same ammo pool with assault rifles in 5, the Rocket Pistol which runs on its own proprietary ammo, and the Handcannon PZ, which strangely uses Sniper Rifle rounds instead of Magnum ammunition.
• Unorthodox Reload: Chris does the "AK bump" when reloading his Dragoon rifle (using a fresh magazine to quickly eject and knock away the empty one), a reload tactic of which experts question the effectiveness, but everyone agrees sure does look cool.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment:
  • Uriaș type enemies leave their weapons behind when killed. These weapons can be picked up, but their only use is being sold to the Duke. The game anticipates this trope, saying that the weapons are ‘too heavy to use', which is fair, they're all about twice Ethan's size!
  • Less justified are the weapons dropped by Lycans and Moroaicǎ, which have more normal proportions, but for whatever reason will dissolve along with their wielder once the enemy is killed. Concept art shows Ethan wielding a Moroaică sword, but this can't be done in-game.
  • Heisenberg's hammer can be found and pieced together from two parts, but its only purpose is to be sold to the Duke as a treasure and cannot be wielded as a weapon by Ethan.
• Vampire's Harem: Lady Dimitrescu's "daughters", Daniela, Bela, and Cassandra are clear allusions to this even if the household's head vampire is their supposed "mother", not their spouse. Dimitrescu herself is a Gender Flipped version of Dracula, after all.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Heisenberg's Factory, a mechanical stronghold housing an army of his creations, is the last area Ethan explores.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: A very downplayed example. Trying to harm the Duke (like many have tried with the Merchant) doesn't work. Should you detonate a mine near him, he will just mock you sarcastically for wasting your ammo in such a pointless action.
• Video Game Vista: When Ethan Winters gets out of the woods, he can see the whole view of the Village for the first time. The view includes Castle Dimitrescu and Moreau's Mill.
• Villain-Beating Artifact: Ethan manages to stab Alcina with "the Dagger of Death's Flowers", a Medieval weapon said to be coated in poisons specifically to kill demons and monsters. Unlike everything else in his arsenal, this actually hurts her and causes her immune system to go haywire, making her uncontrollably transform as a result. However, she throws the dagger down a ravine before transforming, and her boss fight from then on is fought with conventional weapons.
• Weaponized Car: Heisenberg's Self-Propelled Artillery appears to be a cut-down tractor with a dozer blade. There's a chainsaw, a cannon and heavy machine gun installed on it, letting Ethan go after Heisenberg himself because this vehicle is constructed using so much plastic that Heisenberg's Magnetism Manipulation has little effect on it.
• Wham Line: One delivered to Ethan by Eveline that completely recontextualize the events of both Resident Evil 7 and Village:
  "Wrong. It wasn't Miranda, you were always dead."
• Wham Shot:
  • Once Ethan manages to escape from Castle Dimitrescu, he encounters the Duke. As the two speak, the Duke implores Ethan to check the item he picked up on the way out of the castle in further detail. Ethan scrapes off the side of the bottle, revealing the following words:
    Rosemary W.

    HEAD
  • Inside Miranda's home there's a very familiar symbol present: the Umbrella logo.
    • A letter found near the end of the game not only explains the above but also shows how big of a Greater-Scope Villain Miranda is, especially the who the writer is:
  ''' Sincerely, your life-long student, Ozwell E. Spencer.
  • Chris is not happy when he realizes that the BSAA operatives sent to the village are actually humanoid BOWs. The corpse in the chopper at the end (presumably taken for further analysis) appears to be a Tyrant, meaning that the BSAA is literally no better than Umbrella used to be.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: In-Universe, Ethan questions Mia's choice of the picture book Village of Shadows she reads to Rose as reading material to help her sleep. Mia responds that it's just a local tale. Even the credits are taken into account, with the ending revealing that the girl's parents went looking for her, the father pulls a Heroic Sacrifice while fighting against the witch while the forest they were in was burning down.
• What the Hell Are You?: Miranda is taken off-guard by Ethan showing up still alive after she ripped his heart out, with some of her quotes questioning if he's even human.

Miranda: "Interesting, your body certainly isn't normal."

Miranda: "I've never seen a human live without his heart. Are you sure you're not one of us?"

• What the Hell, Hero?: One of Chris' Hound-Wolf members chastises him for refusing to tell Ethan about Miranda having secretly replaced Mia. Had he been truthful from the start, Ethan's apparent death at the hands of Miranda could have been avoided. Chris reluctantly agrees with this assessment.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Downplayed and Played Straight at different points.
  • Downplayed. While the game and its narrative never deign to make explicit where in Europe the game takes place, all context clues (the currency, the heavy presence of Romanian language for the enemy names and the historic Castle Dimitrescu and its family) indicate the game is set in Romania.
  • Played Straight. At one point, there is a place called Sunshine City, which is a metropolitan city in an undisclosed part of the United States. It's where Rose is taken by Chris to live after her father sacrifices his life for her, and where his headstone is.
• Why Won't You Die?: Miranda shouts this at Ethan during the final battle as it nears the end.
• Winged Humanoid: The Samcas are Ghouls whose arms have been turned into great wings. Mostly appearing on the roofs of Castle Dimistrescu and its surroundings, they are quite annoying to fight because of their mobility and ability to attack from above.
• Wolf Man: The aptly named "Lycans" fully embrace this trope and have been a central focus of the marketing since the reveal trailer displayed them in all their unholy glory; being a group of primal, wolf-fur clad savages armed with improvised weapons like machetes and billhooks, and their own fangs and claws. They represent a pretty classic Gothic Horror depiction of Our Werewolves Are Different.
• Wolverine Claws: Alcina Dimitrescu's signature weapon. The claws grow from her hands at great lengths and are sharp enough to slash, stab, and amputate.
• The Worm That Walks: Alcina Dimitrescu's daughters are revealed to be this, as they are large swarms of sapient, carnivorous flies that can appear in a humanoid shape.
• You Are Too Late: In her final moments while pulling Ethan down in a Taking You with Me, Alcina shouts this at him.
  Alcina: It's too late! You'll never see your Rose again! SUCCUMB TO YOUR DESPAAAAIR!
• You Don't Look Like You: Averted for the most part with Mia, who seems more or less consistent with how she looked in 7. Zig-zagged with Chris, who while looking nothing like his 7 version, is remarkably more faithful to his appearances in titles prior to that.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Miranda considered the Four Lords unfit vessels for Eva, and only kept them around as long as she needed to continue hunting for potential vessels. Thus, Ethan killing them off only aided her plans. Even the village itself ended up disposable; the moment she got her hands on Rose, she had the Lycans immediately massacre all the surviving villagers the very next morning. Ethan himself also outlives his usefulness to her once he's killed all four Lords; she promptly turns up and tears his heart out.
• Zerg Rush: When the Megamycete manifests in the penultimate section of the game, it's able to spawn endless waves of Lycans.

Shadows of Rose DLC

• 11th-Hour Superpower: After shattering the Purifying Crystal in order to fight Mother Miranda, Rose gains the ability to Flash Step, absorb Miranda's Mold fireballs, and hit her right back with huge columns of Mold. She implicitly keeps these abilities after leaving the mindscape.
• All for Nothing: The fake Roses all want the Purifying Crystal but they don't have any powers to lose, so it would be pointless to gain. They just want it as a reflection of the "real" Rose.
• Ambiguous Ending: Did Ethan finally truly die and become Deader than Dead or is he still with Rose via their connection? Did Rose straight out bring him back from the dead with her now fully-enhanced powers? The ending leaves much to interpretation.
• Ambiguous Situation: Is Rose shrunk down to doll-size or entering a giant portion of the house? Does it matter in a Vision Quest?
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: At one point, Rose is shrunk down to a few inches tall or enters a giant version of the House that includes an enormous Mia doll that will eat her if she is caught.
• Back from the Dead: Mother Miranda, Ethan Winters, and Eveline are all part of the megamycete universe.
• Batman Gambit: Miranda manipulates Rose into entering the Realm of Consciousness within the Megamycete by stoking her desire to free herself from her Mold powers. She even creates an illusion of Hound-Wolf member Canine to push Rose into entering the fungal root.
• Big Bad: Mother Miranda continues to live inside the fungus and lured you here in hopes of using Rose as a vessel for her daughter.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • When Eveline fights Rose personally, Rose has superpowers as well while Eveline is reduced to her wind powers.
  • Mother Miranda greatly underestimates who is in charge of the fungus as all she's done is help Rose Take a Level in Badass.
• Call-Back: The escape with the Rose clone plays out almost exactly like when Ethan finds Mia at the Baker’s house.
• Can't Move While Being Watched: The mannequins in House Beneviento behave like this during the "statues" segment, stopping right in their tracks as soon as they're in Rose's field of vision. A note found before you encounter them even hints at it, with the words "Don't look away." Averted with the ones summoned by Eveline near the end of the story, who will pursue you no matter what.
• Clones Are People, Too: Miranda and the Duke dismisses the Rose duplicates as copies with the former even referring to them as "living dolls." However, we find letters by them that indicate they are, in fact, living, thinking, and feeling creatures.
• Creepy Doll: One segment has Rose having to play a deadly game of Hide and Seek with several porcelain dolls that have spider-like limbs with knives attached while she's miniaturized.
• Darker and Edgier: This story does away with the main game being an Actionized Sequel and instead plays more like the previous game. Rose is less experienced and armed than Ethan, and the two main levels are Castle Dimitrescu and House Beneviento revamped to be even more horrifying.
• Deader than Dead: Rose is able to finish the job Ethan started after 15 years of Miranda biding her time within the megamycete's nightmare realm in Shadows of Rose. Miranda actually could've lived forever within the megamycete and maybe found another way to bring back Eva if she wasn't so fixated on Rose. Her final fate in the Shadows of Rose expansion is to calcify into nothing which eliminates her consciousness forever.
• Dramatic Irony: Eveline and Miranda both want a mother and daughter more than anything but reject each other.
• Fat Bastard: Unlike the main game's Duke, the one in the DLC is a murderous evil psychopath.
• Fate Worse than Death: The megamycete's strata are effectively their own place and time, occupied by the disembodied minds of those who were "attuned" to the Black God when they died. The implication in Shadows of Rose is that the original Eveline is trapped in her own strata, with no one to talk to and nothing to do but nurse her grudges. The character whose one goal was not to be alone is utterly alone, forever, in a place that only barely exists.
• Foreshadowing: When Rose first enters the memories, she hears the voices of her classmates creeped out by her powers. One mentions she sees things that aren't there. Later, Mother Miranda tells Rose that she never actually spoke to K - that K was just an illusion Miranda put up to lure Rose into the memories.
• Friendlessness Insult: Rosemary Winters is very lonely due to bullying and ostracization from her classmates because of her mutations and desperately wants to have friends as a result. She at one point encounters Eveline who regularly taunts her with her loneliness by telling her how unloved and friendless she is, which severely bothers Rose. In the end, this is Psychological Projection, as she later complains about how unloved she is herself, showing that she transfers her grievances onto Rose.
• Happy Ending Override: According to notes in the game, Rose was raised by Chris and his wolfpack as opposed to her mother Mia. Eveline also states that "mommy is dead" which seems to imply something happened to her as well.
• Hate Sink: The fake Duke is a misogynist murderous Serial Killer who routinely mocks Rose while breaking his own rule.
• Hijacked by Ganon: A Downplayed Trope example as the second of the bosses in the DLC is Eveline. Later, Mother Miranda is revealed to have manipulated Rose and serves as the final boss again.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: The Duke spends all of his time hunting "rabbits" (Rose's dream doubles).
• I Lied: The fake Duke does this when he reveals the Purifying Crystal is a fake and that he would never offer something so valuable as a prize.
• Interquel: It takes place right before the Distant Finale of Village, to the point that the final cutscene is identical in both stories. The big difference is it gives context for what happens in it that the main game doesn't provide.
• Karma Houdini: The fake Duke is escaped from but is never confronted by Rose before she escapes the megamycete.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: The expansion centers around Rose delving into the memories stored within a surviving sample of the Megamycete in order to find a way to rid herself of her Mold powers, which means trekking through some of the levels from the main game with new puzzles and threats.
• Killed Off for Real: Mother Miranda is finally eliminated for good, Ethan Winters may or may not have joined her. See Ambiguous Ending.
• Lured into a Trap: Mother Miranda reveals to Rose that she appeared as an illusionary K to lure her into the dream world so that she could continue obtaining a new body for her Eva.
• Macro Zone: The second part of House Beneviento has Rose shrunken down to reach the exit while avoiding Killer Dolls.
• Meat Moss: Much of the dream world consists of bleeding viscera that produces monsters and consumes Rose if she walks through it.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: Or DLC in this case. In this case, Rose must go through a number of locations from the main game via Journey to the Center of the Mind.
• Mood Whiplash: The brief scene where Rose sheds tears reading Ethan's letter is quickly interrupted when Eveline appears behind her.
• Murderous Mannequin: Going through the recreation of House Beneviento, Rose will encounter mannequins with glowing eyes that will pursue her.
• Mysterious Protector: Rose is assisted throughout her journey by a formless entity that manifests as golden sparks writing text on various surfaces, which guides her and occasionally provides useful items. Rose calls it Michael after comparing it to a guardian angel, which the entity decides to go with. It's none other than the memory of Ethan himself, who wanted her to be safe without distracting her with his presence.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The expansion takes place 16 years after the events of the main game, putting it roughly in the year 2037, but there isn't much noticeable technological advancement compared to the present day. To be fair, most of the campaign takes place in a Mental World.
• No-Gear Level: Once again, the player character loses all their items when they enter House Beneviento, this time courtesy of Eveline. It even drains Rose's powers at the start, for good measure.
• Not as You Know Them: Miranda's notes state the Duke inside the dreamworld is an amalgamation of other people's memories of him. Instead of a Big Fun, he is a sadistic misogynist monster.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Ethan is dead and buried in the real world. His consciousness though is still preserved within the Megamycete, and provides his daughter advice and supplies thorugh the DLC until finally showing up in the "flesh" near the very end.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • Mother Miranda reveals Rose's conversation with K at the beginning never happened — she was talking to empty air, a hallucination created by Miranda.
  • The ending cutscene for Shadows of Rose is the exact same one for the base game, but now the player knows a deeper context for Ethan's wedding ring, Rose's anger at being called "Eveline", her threat that she can do things not even Chris knows about, and how Rose knows Ethan would be proud of her.
• Papa Wolf: Even after being dead for 16 years, Ethan still has it out to save Rose from Mother Miranda.
• Redemption Rejection: Rose offers Eveline a chance to be her friend and family but the latter rejects it.
• Shout-Out: There's numerous ones to Alice in Wonderland ranging from the story beginning with her falling down a deep hole, shrinking to tiny size, and the Duke referring to her and the fake Roses as rabbits.
• Stealth-Based Mission: The segment where Rose must get past murderous dolls involves not being caught by their searchlights. Even if you try to run from them, they'll always get you- though it won't always result in instant death. Furthermore, you can use your Mold powers to destroy the dolls.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Rose asks if Ethan's a guardian angel (not knowing he's her father) and lists off two of the stock angel names: Michael and Gabriel. Ethan decides to go with calling himself "Michael" for the duration of the story.
• The Unreveal: The unnamed distant figure that apparently is Ethan Winters is never identified, even here. It's never revealed who the person is supposed to be, or if it's supposed to be Ethan himself.

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The father's story is now done.

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