                  A DETAILED PLOT ANALYSIS OF THE
              ---------------------------------------
              ----         RESIDENT EVIL         ----
              ---------------------------------------
              VIDEOGAME SERIES BY CAPCOM ENTERTAINMENT

Begun by Dan Birlew, 1998
Updated by Thomas Wilde with permission, 2000-2001

*****************************CONTAINS SPOILERS**************************
This thesis contains spoilers. If you have not already played the games,
the authors strongly suggest that you do so before reading the document.
The best introduction to the games is to play them.
************************************************************************

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 1.  Introduction, Legal Stuff, Disclaimers, and Update History
 2.  Dead Men Telling Tales: RESIDENT EVIL
      i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL
     ii. Story Differences Between Chris and Jill's Games
    iii. Differences Between RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL "2.0"
     iv. Random Musings
 3.  Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2
      i. The Plot Thickens
     ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3
    iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2
     iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2
      v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B
     vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame
    vii. Conclusions About The Conclusion
   viii. Random Musings
 4. Nobody Here Gets Out Alive: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
      i. The Death of Raccoon City
     ii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
    iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
     iv. Different Paths
      v. Different Endings
     vi. The Epilogue Files
    vii. Conclusions About The Conclusion
   viii. Random Musings
 5. Ten Thousand Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
      i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
     ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
    iii. Different Routes
     iv. Conclusions about the Conclusion
      v. Random Musings
 6. Sibling Rivalries: RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
      i. A Lovely Island Hideaway: CODE VERONICA, Part One
     ii. The Return of Chris Redfield: CODE VERONICA, Part Two
    iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE
         VERONICA
     iv. Conclusions About The Conclusion
      v. The Ashford Family Diaries
     vi. Random Musings
 7. Becky's Big Adventure: RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
      i. Coming Soon
 8. Ghost Ships: RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN
      i. Coming Soon
 9. Ten Thousand *More* Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: GUN SURVIVOR 2
      i. Coming Soon
10. Unanswered Questions
      i. RESIDENT EVIL 2
     ii. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
    iii. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
     iv. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
      v. A Look At Wesker's Report
     vi. Wesker's Report 2
11. Frequently Asked Questions
      i. Document and Series Questions
     ii. RESIDENT EVIL
    iii. RESIDENT EVIL 2
     iv. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
      v. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
     vi. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
    vii. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
   viii. RESIDENT EVIL 4
12. Say What?!
      i. The Weirdest of the Lot
13. Mistakes
14. About the Authors
15. Conclusion

=============================================================
1. Introduction, Legal Stuff, Disclaimers, and Update History
=============================================================

This ain't livin'
It's just survivin', you know
   -- Luscious Jackson, "One Thing"

Dan Birlew began this thesis in 1998. I lucked across it in
1999, just when I was starting to get good and obsessed with
Resident Evil, and found it to be a useful resource.

After the release of Resident Evil 2 for the N64, I wrote a
transcription of the EX Files from that game, combined with
some notes on the RE storyline for the sake of the N64 crowd.
That transcription is currently hosted by gameFAQs.com (among
others), and after I wrote it, I got a lot of e-mail from N64
owners asking about the finer points of the storyline.

After about the twelfth e-mail I got, I went back to look
at Birlew's analysis for help, and wound up deciding that it
needed an update; rather than answering a flood tide of
e-mail, I could just point at this document and say, "Lo!
I have come down from the mount with answers!"

Birlew had already told me earlier that he wasn't planning on
updating this document and, in fact, was legally prohibited
from doing so. I asked him if I could do it. Please note the
following, which was not extracted under duress of any sort:

> Thomas Wilde has my full permission to continue the
> Resident Evil Thesis in my place. He has full permission
> from me to use any materials from my former versions that
> he sees fit. I relinquish these materials to him, since I
> am unable to continue or update the Thesis due to certain
> agreements I have made with certain companies.
>
> Sincerely,
> Dan Birlew
> formerly known as "President Evil"

Every time I say "me" or "I" in this document, it's Thomas
talking; every time I say "we," I refer to the audience of RE
as a whole. This document is copyright 2000-2002, Thomas Wilde,
except for those clearly labeled parts that are copyright 1998,
Dan Birlew. All recognizable concepts from the Resident Evil
series are copyright Capcom, and their usage in this document
does not constitute a challenge to that copyright. And so on.
And so forth. All rights reserved; violators will be punished,
once again, with JR Kerr's "powerful Internet voodoo" (TM; used
without permission, but I'm sure he doesn't mind).

+------------ READING THIS DISCLAIMER *COULD* SAVE YOUR LIFE -----------+
|                                                                       |
|  Before we begin, I'd like to issue a general disclaimer. I don't     |
|  mind people e-mailing me to ask questions that aren't covered in     |
|  this FAQ, but:                                                       |
|                                                                       |
|               I'M NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR "THEORIES."                  |
|              I'M NOT INTERESTED IN "ANONYMOUS SOURCES."               |
|        I'M NOT INTERESTED IN INFORMATION "FROM THE RE STAFF."         |
|                                                                       |
|     This document deals in actual, documented, in-game plotline       |
|  information. Don't send me your dissertation on why Rebecca is a     |
|  spy, don't tell me anything that you got out of one of S.D. Perry's  |
|  novels, don't tell me anything that a friend of a friend was told by |
|  a friend who had a friend who delivered pizza to the RE staff, and   |
|   don't e-mail me naked pictures of your sister because "she looks    |
|     just like Jill" (wait... actually, go ahead and send those).      |
|    I don't mind questions, but I do mind having my time wasted.       |
|      If you *do* send me a theory, don't expect me to reply.          |
|          If I don't reply, don't get upset. I warned you.             |
|      Read this entire document before you send me any questions.      |
|         If you send me some kind of outlandish claim, have an         |
|                   official source ready to back it up.                |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

+-------- NOT READING THIS DISCLAIMER CAUSES CANCER IN LAB RATS --------+
|                                                                       |
|    This is a *storyline* FAQ. It deals strictly with plot             |
|    elements of the Resident Evil series. It is not a gameplay         |
|    FAQ. If you're having trouble getting through the game, I          |
|    encourage you to seek out the various online FAQs written          |
|    for the Resident Evil games (particularly those by Dan             |
|    "President Evil" Birlew, Brett "Nemesis" Franklin, Vincent         |
|    Merken, Henry LaPierre, Vesther Fauransy [although I recommend     |
|    him with slight reservations; his FAQs are a little weird],        |
|    and "Stinger 3:16"). They are all available on www.gameFAQs.com,   |
|    among other places, and can probably be found at the same place    |
|    where you found this document.                                     |
|                                                                       |
|    In short, send the gameplay questions to one of those              |
|    talented gentlemen, and/or check out their FAQs. They're           |
|    very well-written, and have helped me with my own                  |
|    gameplay problems in the past.                                     |
|                                                                       |
|  I *WILL NOT* reply to e-mail asking for gameplay information, Game   |
|          Shark codes, cheats, secrets, or file transcriptions.        |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

+-- IF YOU DON'T READ THIS DISCLAIMER, I GET TO HIT YOU WITH A PICKAX --+
|                                                                       |
|     No, you are *not* Shinji Mikami. I'm comfortably certain that     |
|   you don't work for Capcom of Japan, either, especially if you're    |
|  e-mailing me from an America Online account. Please do not assume,   |
|   dear readers, that I am an idiot. If you wish to converse with      |
|          idiots, get an AOL subscription and go buck wild.            |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

=======
Updates
=======

[Old updates deleted.]

May 20th, 2002:
   -- okay, dammit, I'm done playing the GC RE (this after
   roughly thirty e-mails asking if I had played, was playing,
   or would play the GC RE), and I'm updating the original
   game's summary accordingly. The original summary, which
   covers the original game, will be put up as a separate
   file on my website.

May 23rd, 2002:
   -- the summary and FAQs on RE 2.0 are updated. I also
   adjusted a couple of FAQs to accomodate movie information,
   and moved the timeline FAQ from the RE3 section to the
   general information section. I also added a link to
   Nicolas Falduti's French translation of this analysis.
   By the way, folks, do me a favor and run some virus
   searches, would you? I'm getting a *lot* of copies of
   the Klez virus.

June 10th, 2002:
   -- I have been made fully aware, by what would appear to
   be the *entire Internet*, that I had some kind of tiny
   seizure and misidentified George Trevor as Trevor Spencer.
   I pray forgiveness. Also, thanks to Chris Bound, I've
   finally been able to read Wesker's Report II; strangely,
   that stupid thing has been evading me for about a month
   now.

   By the way, readers in the UK should check out this month's
   issue of "Tip Station," which contains the first half of my
   full walkthrough for Final Fantasy X. Next month's issue
   will feature the second half, as well as my walkthrough for
   Medal of Honor: Frontline. And yes, I did get paid. :D

June 11th, 2002:
   -- I've revised the analysis to include the information
   in Wesker's Report 2.

========================================
2. Dead Men Telling Tales: RESIDENT EVIL
========================================

So it's like this.

In 1996, Capcom released Resident Evil for the PlayStation. RE
was, and is, a strangely difficult adventure game which put the
player up against an ancient mansion, filled with secrets, puzzles,
and, incidentally, ravenous flesh-eating zombies. While the game
gained a degree of deserved notoriety for some of the worst dialogue
and voice acting in console history, it also gained a fanatical
following.

In 2001, Capcom announced that they were remaking the original
Resident Evil for the Nintendo GameCube. The remake, released
in North America on May 1st, 2002, represents a new beginning
for the series; it boasts ridiculously realistic graphics, a
much-improved script, a cast of talented voice actors, and
the same difficult gameplay that characterized the original,
as well as a number of story elements that were left out of
the original game (such as the infamous Trevor's Letters).

This synopsis covers the storyline of the 2002 remake of RE.
If you're looking for the original game's synopsis and FAQs,
you can check them out as a separate file (eventually) at:
http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/writing/birlew-re.txt

===============================================
i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL
===============================================

Following the strange deaths of a number of citizens of Raccoon
City, the local police department has put the STARS to work on
the case. The Special Tactics and Rescue Squad, a special force
dedicated to stopping local terrorist activity, immediately sent
its Bravo team, led by Enrico Marini, into the Raccoon Forest.

The Bravo team promptly disappears. On the night of July 24th,
the STARS Alpha team follows the Bravos into the forest by
helicopter, looking for clues as to their disappearance.

They soon find the Bravo team's helicopter... and the helicopter's
pilot, dead and mangled beyond recognition. The architects of this
massacre, a pack of wild dogs, soon spring an ambush, which kills
Joseph Frost, a member of the Alpha team. The rest of the team
attempts to fight the dogs off, but the dogs don't seem to mind
gunshot wounds.

The whole situation proves too much for Brad Vickers, also known
as "Chickenheart," the helicopter pilot for the Alpha team. He
panics, and takes off, leaving the rest of the Alpha team stranded
on the ground. After a headlong flight through the woods, the Alpha
team takes shelter inside the nearby Spencer mansion, an old estate
which was supposedly abandoned.

The player's role in the game begins at this point. As either Chris
Redfield or Jill Valentine, two of the five survivors of the Alpha
team, the player must find out just what's happening here, while
defending himself against the mansion's current inhabitants. Chris
will run into Rebecca Chambers, the field medic and lone survivor
of the STARS Bravo team, while Jill will be assisted by Barry Burton,
a police veteran and fellow Alpha team member. The game unfolds
differently depending on which character is chosen.

The character's investigation of the mansion begins with Albert Wesker,
the captain of the STARS Alpha team, instructing the character to
check out the source of a nearby gunshot. Upon investigating, the
character finds Kenneth Sullivan, a member of the Bravo team, dead
on the floor... and crouching over him is the zombie that killed him.
When the character tries to report back to Wesker, he's vanished.

Wesker's disappearance is the beginning of a long stretch of bad luck.
The mansion is inhabited by hordes of flesh-eating zombies, killer
crows, more dogs, and a giant snake. Even worse, the zombies must
be decapitated or incinerated, or a second "death" will simply cause
a zombie's mutation into the berserk clawed monster that the mansion's
former inhabitants have nicknamed a "Crimson Head." Fortunately,
there are more powerful weapons and ammunition hidden within the
mansion, as well as stores of kerosene to use against the zombies.

As the character advances through the mansion and the outlying
buildings, discarded papers and uncovered journals begin to hint
at what's really happened here. Apparently, the people who once
lived here were working on some kind of experiment... and that
experiment has gone awry. Notes from the mansion's original
architect, George Trevor, reveal how the mansion's new owners
left him to die in the mansion's hidden labyrinths, and how
they may have tortured his wife and daughter in a similar fashion.

Eventually, the character manages to unlock a door at the back
of the mansion, opening the way to the graveyard and dormitories.
Here, in an isolated cabin, the character is ambushed by a twisted
parody of a woman. Clad in a tattered dress and shuffling towards
the character on legs that have been chained together, the creature
screams as it attacks. Conventional weapons do no good, and the
character is forced to retreat.

In the scientists' lodgings, the mystery only deepens. Other
experiments have produced a massive, bloodthirsty plant, codenamed
Plant-42, as well as a trio of mutated sharks. The character manages
to dispatch the plant with the help of the scientists' notes, and
the sharks die easily enough when the flooded observatory is drained.
It's in the dormitories that new clues to the nature of this mansion
are discovered; the powerful Umbrella corporation would appear to
have something to do with these scientists, and for whatever reason,
the scientists are very interested in the STARS.

After Plant-42 is dispatched, Wesker reappears, claiming to have
been separated from the rest of the team following a monster
attack. He tells the character to return to the mansion and finish
the investigation there.

Upon the character's return to the mansion, a new monster joins
him. These "Hunters" are powerful and relentless, and rarely show
up alone. Evading this new threat, the character is able to go
places in the mansion that were previously locked, using a key
gained in the dormitories, and is thus able to find the materials
to reactivate an elevator in the courtyard behind the mansion.

The elevator lets the character through a secret door, which leads
to an old series of mining tunnels, the purpose of which is unknown.
At one end of the tunnels, hiding in a darkened dead end, the
character finds Enrico Marini, the captain of the Bravo team. He's
wounded, and tells the character to stay away. STARS, he says, has
been betrayed. Just as he's about to reveal the identity of the
traitor, a single gunshot rings out from behind the character.
The bullet hits Enrico in the heart, killing him instantly. The
character gives chase, but the sudden arrival of a pack of Hunters
lets Enrico's assassin escape.

At the tunnels' end, yet another elevator takes the character to
an underground river and a loading dock. After another encounter
with the twisted creature from the cabin, the character unlocks
yet another door, this one leading to a candle-lit hideaway.

In this hideaway, which looks like nothing so much as a young
girl's room, the character finds the last thing he needs to
open the last door back in the mansion. A ladder in the hideaway
leads back up to the cabin in the graveyard, where the twisted
creature was first encountered. When combined with the information
in Trevor's letters, and recently discovered research notes, a
sick suspicion may begin to grow in the player's mind.

The last door in the mansion leads down a long flight of stairs,
to the crypt of Jessica Trevor. It is guarded by the twisted
creature from the cabin, which has somehow reached this area
by unknown means. The character, assisted by either Barry or
Wesker, manages to open Jessica Trevor's sarcophagus, and the
creature jumps into a nearby pit after taking Jessica's skull.
A letter in the coffin removes all doubt; the twisted creature
is, in fact, Lisa Trevor, who was experimented on by Umbrella's
scientists. She has eked out a miserable existence underneath
the Spencer mansion for thirty years, friendless and in pain,
wishing for a reunion with her dead parents that she has grown
to believe is possible.

The character proceeds on alone. Trevor's crypt leads directly
to an ornate fountain, which conceals the entrance to the real
laboratories, deep underneath the Spencer estate. The character
descends, into the dank corridors of the laboratory, where more
surprises await.

Not only has Wesker betrayed the STARS, but he has been complicit
in this mansion's experiments all along. A slideshow in the lab's
audiovisual room identifies Wesker, wearing his characteristic
sunglasses, as one of the leaders of this group. He has been
instructed by his supervisors at the megacorporation Umbrella
to sacrifice the STARS, in the name of covering up the accident
and generating combat data on Umbrella's monsters. As if that
wasn't enough, the team member that Wesker claimed to be
"separated" from has been captured. He or she is inside a
dark cell in the laboratory, awaiting release.

Wesker himself is preparing for his last and greatest betrayal,
deep in the laboratory's storage room. He explains himself to
the character, almost as if he needs someone to tell his
secrets to. He plans to doublecross Umbrella by blowing up
the mansion and all its secrets; the betrayal of STARS was
simply to cover his tracks as well as the company's. To this
end, he's blackmailed Barry Burton to help him destroy
evidence.

As the horrified character watches, Wesker unleashes the most
powerful bioweapon in Umbrella's arsenal: the Tyrant. This
incredibly destructive creature emerges from its storage vat,
and its first act is to turn on Wesker. After having dealt with
him, it turns on the character. Unfortunately, the "ultimate
bioweapon" is nowhere near as good as advertised, and it slumps
over, seemingly dead, after taking surprisingly little damage.

The character must now run for his life. The laboratory's
self-destruct sequence has been activated (either by Wesker
or by a well-meaning Rebecca), and very little time remains
before the entire mansion is blown sky-high. Rescuing the
captive STARS member in the back room, the character runs
out to the mansion's helipad and signals Brad "Chickenheart"
Vickers. Brad has been circling above the forest all this
time, awaiting word from one of his teammates, and upon seeing
the character's signal flare, he begins to descend to the
helipad.

Of course, nothing is ever that easy. With two minutes to
go until the mansion's destruction, the Tyrant bursts from
the rooftop. It has shaken off the sluggishness from its
months of storage, and now moves with the controlled strength
and speed of a freight train. Even with help from Barry or
Rebecca, the character is barely able to stay alive against
the Tyrant, let alone kill it.

With seconds to go before detonation, Brad Vickers drops a
rocket launcher onto the helipad. The Tyrant is seemingly
immune to bullets, but an anti-tank rocket is quite another
matter.

With the Tyrant a smoking heap on the helipad, the surviving
STARS climb onto Brad's helicopter, which quickly lifts off.
As it does, the Spencer estate explodes into a pillar of
flame. The STARS are left battered and bloodied, but alive...
with a story to tell that no one will believe.

====================================================
ii. Story Differences Between Chris and Jill's Games
====================================================

1. At various points in Jill's game, you may run into Barry,
who's acting very suspicious. You'll find him in the aquarium
room on the second floor at one point, where he's destroying
evidence (he'll already have torn the first couple of pages
off of the Researcher's Will file), and overhear a conversation
between him and Wesker outside Dormitory 002. To trigger the
encounters with Barry, return to the dining room without
fighting the zombie that's eating Kenneth's body. Barry will
take care of it for you.

2. If Chris is poisoned by the giant snake, you'll take control
of Rebecca, who'll have to go get Chris some serum from the
infirmary. If Jill's poisoned, she'll pass out in the hall
outside the attic, and will wake up in the infirmary.

3. Jill can manufacture V-Jolt by herself, then use it in the
boardroom in the Aqua Ring to weaken Plant-42. When she enters
that room, Plant-42 will grab her, and Barry will come in with
a flamethrower to rescue Jill. Chris has to fight the plant on
his own, unless Richard died in the mansion attic; if that's
the case, Rebecca will have to save Chris by making V-Jolt.

4. In the final encounter with Lisa Trevor, Jill will find
Barry standing over Jessica's coffin. When Barry tries to
point his gun at her, Jill takes it away from him and points
it at him. Then, when Lisa arrives, the player can choose
whether or not to give Barry his gun back. If you do, Barry
will help out in the ensuing fight with Lisa; if you don't,
Lisa will kill Barry. In Chris's scenario, you'll run into
Wesker in Jessica's tomb, who'll aid you against Lisa. It
doesn't seem to be possible for Wesker to die in this fight.

5. If your supporting character is still alive, it will change
the final encounter with Wesker:
    -- Chris, with Rebecca: inside the lab, Wesker will
       explain his motivations and shoot Rebecca in the
       chest. While Wesker's standing in front of the
       Tyrant's tank, it will wake up and gut him like a trout,
       stabbing right through the side of its containment
       tank. After Chris defeats the Tyrant, he'll find
       that Rebecca's still alive, thanks to her bulletproof
       vest, and that Wesker's definitely dead. Upon leaving
       the laboratory, Rebecca will set the charges in the
       power room, which will trigger an emergency evacuation
       procedure and unlock all the doors in the lab. You
       may then rescue Jill and get to the helipad.
   -- Chris, alone: Wesker will be slain by the Tyrant, and
      will drop the Master Key. You can use that key to open
      Jill's cell door and to get to the helipad.
   -- Jill, with Barry: Barry will hold Jill at gunpoint
      when she enters the lab. Wesker will gloat to Jill
      about his plan, but in so doing, will let slip that
      the threat he's been holding against Barry was a
      bluff; his family isn't in any danger. Barry will
      unexpectedly overhear that and knock Wesker
      unconscious. He doesn't do that in time to prevent
      Wesker from draining the fluid from the Tyrant's
      tank, however, and the Tyrant will escape shortly
      thereafter. It knocks Barry unconscious before it
      turns on Jill. After the fight, you'll find that
      Barry's okay, but that Wesker's slipped away in
      the confusion. You soon find out that he's set the
      charges in the power room, as with Rebecca, above.
   -- Jill, alone: almost identical to Chris's scenario
      without Rebecca, as above.

==============================================================
iii. Differences Between RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL "2.0"
==============================================================

1. If you're a veteran player of the first game, the remake is
expressly designed to mess with your head. In the event that
a puzzle or ambush has carried over to the remake from the
first game, there's usually a different solution, another
wrinkle to the puzzle, or monsters come from completely
unexpected directions. (Zombies can open doors now.)

2. Richard Aiken would die no matter what you did in the
first game, regardless of how quickly you brought him the
serum. In the remake, saving Richard will let him survive
until you fight the giant snake (Jill's game) or enter the
Aqua Ring (Chris's game), whereupon something large will
eat him. If you save him, he'll give you his radio, and
you'll be able to take his combat shotgun after his death.

3. The Chimera that haunt the power room now look a great
deal like RE3's drain deimos.

4. As mentioned above, zombies that are "killed" without
being decapitated must be incinerated. Otherwise, they'll
eventually rise again as steam-breathing, clawed Crimson
Heads.

5. It is *much* easier to get your support character killed
in the remake.

6. Naturally, the biggest addition to the remake is that of
the unfortunate Lisa Trevor, as mentioned above. More about
Lisa can be found by reading Wesker's Report 2, as detailed
below.

7. If Wesker "dies" in the encounter with the Tyrant, you
can search his body to find a file written by William
Birkin. In it, he writes about how the G-Virus is almost
finished, and how he wishes he could rub his success in
Alexia Ashford's face.

8. If your support character manages to make it to the end
of the game, he'll help you in the final battle with the
Tyrant, on the helipad. During this time, if the Tyrant
manages to knock your character down, it'll leave you
alone in favor of grabbing your support character and
lifting him into the air by his neck (I use the male pronoun
so I don't have to type "he or she" a lot). Unless you
shoot the Tyrant at this point, it'll kill your support
character, which will cue the fifth possible ending.

9. In the original game's best ending for Jill, you could
return to the power room after the self-destruct sequence,
and you'd find a Chimera standing over Wesker's dead body.
Such is no longer the case with the remake; the power room
is empty.

10. The mansion wardrobe is now hidden in the darkened
closet in the east statue room. Check the large painting
against the back wall. It's actually a door.

===================
2iv. Random Musings
===================

1. I have to admit, I'm disappointed with the remake. They
kept some of the stupid things, like Chris's low item
capacity, and didn't address the confusion about Rebecca's
survival.

2. The Lisa Trevor subplot appears, at first glance, to be
almost completely meaningless; it's just there to add another
Tyrant-esque monster. To understand her true significance, it
helps to hunt down a translation of Wesker's Report 2, which
is discussed further below.

3. The existence of Crimson Heads in RE lends additional
credence to the statement, in Survivor, that Lickers are
mutated zombies. If a zombie can mutate into a faster
form that's sporting vicious claws, it's entirely feasible
for it to mutate further, into the still-vaguely-humanoid
Licker.

4. Cinematic references in RE:
    -- the deer head in the study is from the 1990 remake of
       _Night of the Living Dead_. It might've been in the
       original, but if it was, I didn't see it.
    -- I may be on crack, but the end sequence of the game,
       with the Tyrant bursting from the rooftop, seems to
       be taken almost frame-for-frame from a 1990 Japanese
       sf film called _Zeram_.
    -- according to Dan's official RE strategy guide, Chris
       and Jill's alternate costumes are from _The Mexican_
       and _Terminator 2: Judgement Day_, respectively. Chris
       is dressing like the Brad Pitt character in the former
       film, while Jill is dressing like Linda Hamilton in
       the latter.

============================================================
3. Things To Do In Raccoon When You're Dead: RESIDENT EVIL 2
============================================================

=====================
3i. The Plot Thickens
=====================

The original Resident Evil is a relatively straightforward
horror game. Its sequels have been entirely different,
mixing horror with equal parts of action, mystery, and
conspiracy. Each RE game since the second has had an
intricate series of subplots, as well as at least a few
independent mysteries to solve. Furthermore, each game
has left a lot of questions unanswered at the end. In other
words, things get a lot more complicated from here on out.

One of the stranger wrinkles in the RE storyline is the
weird way that RE2 and RE3 relate to each other. I have the
two games listed separately here for the sake of maintaining
some kind of order, but in actuality, half of RE3 takes
place before RE2, and the other half takes place well
afterwards. This is noted in RE3's plot summary, below.

==================================
3ii. Events Between RE and RE2/RE3
==================================

After the "mansion incident" in July of 1998, Chris Redfield
attempts to start an official police investigation of
Umbrella, but Chief Brian Irons sabotages it. Suspecting that
Irons might be on the take, Chris requests an investigation
of Irons's background and a federal probe into Umbrella.
With typical government efficiency, the FBI doesn't respond
to Chris's requests until the night of September 29th, when
Claire gets their fax in Chris's old office.

Chris begins investigating Umbrella alone. He manages to
uncover a great deal about Umbrella's operations inside
Raccoon City, including the work on the G-Virus and the
location of the labs underneath the city. He's apparently so
intent upon his work that, to his sister Claire, it looks
as though he's dropped off of the face of the Earth.

In August of 1998, Chris finally tells Jill Valentine about
what he's been doing. In mid-September, without telling Claire,
he and Barry Burton leave for Europe to further investigate
Umbrella. Jill elects to stay in Raccoon City for a while,
intending to investigate Umbrella's underground labs.

At some point, Jill resigns from the S.T.A.R.S. and the Raccoon
City police department for unknown reasons. (We can make all
sorts of guesses, though, most of which involve Brian Irons.)

====================================================
3iii. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 2
by Dan Birlew
====================================================

On the night of September 29th, 1998, Claire Redfield
motorbikes into Raccoon City. She is a college student, and
is searching for clues in the disappearance of her older
brother Chris. On the other side of town, Raccoon Police
Department recruit Leon Kennedy is making his way to the
Precinct for his first day of duty. Stopping to investigate
a mysterious corpse in the middle of the street, he fails to
notice the figures closing in behind him. Claire pulls up to
a diner for a late meal, but finds that she is intended to
be the next course.

Both characters are surrounded by zombies. They collide in
the alley behind the diner, where Leon saves Claire. Finding
an abandoned police cruiser, they make a run for it.

In the car they get acquainted, while Claire finds a gun in
the glove compartment. But they are not alone. In an amazing
sequence, a zombie leaps out of the backseat and struggles with
Leon. The rookie loses control of the vehicle and they crash into
a wall. The zombie flies through the windshield. Before they can
catch a breath, a dying trucker bears down on them in a massive
gas tanker. The two leap out of the wreck as the tanker collides
and flips over, exploding in a huge ball of flame. The characters
are separated by the blaze, and each must make their individual
way through the game.

This is the point at which the player begins, choosing which
character to assume based on which of the 2 game disks are
loaded. When the player finishes with one character's adventure,
the save file enables the player to approach the same game from
the other character's perspective, in a reverse game. Thus, the
scenarios progress as either Claire A & Leon B, or Leon A &
Claire B. There are differences in each game, and there are
differences in each combination. In addition, whatever the
first character does in their scenario affects the second
character's game.

For the purpose of brevity, this synopsis will follow the
plot as it occurs in the Claire A & Leon B combination, by
far the more structurally sound of the two scenario
combinations.

Claire begins on the Raccoon City streets, now overrun by the
zombies who have come out due to the crash. By baiting them
in a certain direction, she figures out that she can create
openings in their ranks and slip past them. She ducks into a
gun shop, hoping to find ammo for her weapon.

Inside, the clerk points a crossbow at her. After she
convinces him that she's not a zombie, he locks his door.
With a slightly sexist attitude, he admits he doesn't know
what is happening in Raccoon City or where the zombies have
come from. Claire finds some ammunition for her gun and
starts to move on just as the undead lay siege to the store.
Crashing through the display window, they tackle the shop's
employee and chew him to pieces on the floor. Unable to save
the man, Claire's only hope is to run through the back door.
(In the N64 RE2 'port, we find out this man's name is Robert
Kendo, and he's the owner of the gun shop.)

Weaving her way through the slow moving ghouls, she makes
her way to the police station. S.T.A.R.S. helicopter pilot Brad
Vickers is encountered near the precinct, recently deceased
and come back by diabolic means. Executing this former hero,
Claire enters the Raccoon Police Department. She finds that
the place has been electronically locked and barricaded
against an apparent siege by the undead.

Leon finds himself directly behind the Police Department. He
has a shorter run than Claire, but must find the key to get
into the maintenance shed at the back of the Precinct. All
the while, flesh eaters converge on him. He gets lucky and
finds a back stairway to the roof of the station, but he
witnesses a rescue attempt fail.

A helicopter appears overhead. There is a lone precinct
survivor on the roof, signaling to it. Zombies attack the
unfortunate wretch. He sprays random machine gun fire
everywhere, accidentally killing the helicopter's pilot.
The helicopter crashes into the station and explodes into
flames. There's a water tank near the wreckage that can be
used to put out the fire, but Leon will need a valve handle.

Claire finds a cop lying on the floor of an office, seriously
wounded and dying. (In RE3, we learn that the cop's name is
Marvin Branagh.) In a brief speech, he tells Claire that her
brother Chris, and the other S.T.A.R.S., tried to get them to
believe that they'd encountered zombies in the woods outside
Raccoon, but no one would listen to them. He gives her the
card key that will open the electronic locks in the Precinct.
He tells her to rescue the other survivors in the police
station and get out. When she starts to protest, the
half-disemboweled officer sticks a gun in her face and
rudely orders her out. He locks the door behind her. Claire
accesses the computer in the main hall, unlocks the doors,
and continues on.

In the zombie-infested office on the first floor, Leon finds
the necessary tool to put out the fire. When he opens the
water tank and douses the blaze, another helicopter appears
overhead. This one is towing a rack of huge cylinders. One
of them detaches and drops. The bomb-like container blows
apart, revealing a huge humanoid creature. The giant crashes
through the roof of the precinct. The trenchcoated menace
heads right for Leon, who empties his weapon into the
stalking monstrosity before it falls. When Leon leaves the
room, the sinister intruder rises... and follows. Little
does Leon know, but anyone who had survived the mansion
incident might recognize this creature as a new and improved
version of the Tyrant.

At the same time on different sides of the station, Claire
and Leon both encounter a new and deadly lifeform.
Amphibious and spider-like, these creatures look like
crawling people turned inside out. They lash out with claws
and an incredibly long and sharp tongue. Police documents
refer to these creatures as "lickers," and no one knows
where they came from.

On the second floor of the west wing of the precinct house,
Claire finds the S.T.A.R.S. office and the log kept by her big
brother Chris. This document explains that he and the other
S.T.A.R.S. members had no luck investigating the involvement
of the Umbrella Corporation in the mansion lab incident. They
departed for Europe to search for Umbrella's main
headquarters. Suddenly a fax comes in, addressed to Chris. A
federal investigation on Umbrella has yielded naught for
clues, but an inquiry posted to the internal affairs
division by Chris regarding Raccoon Police Chief Brian Irons
has been answered. By his record, the Chief would appear to
be a deranged genius and former rapist.

Back outside the office, Claire catches sight of a young
girl being pursued by a zombie. While Claire dispatches this
thing, the fleeing little girl bumps into Leon. Frightened
out of her mind, she ducks into a small opening in a broken
door before he can stop her. Leon and Claire reunite. Leon
admits that this place is dangerous, and Claire suggests
that they split up and look for the girl and a safe exit. The
rookie cop gives her a radio so they can keep in contact.

Leon finds the two parts of a police operation report,
detailing the events of the past few days. The courageous
citizens of Raccoon made a grim standoff in the precinct
house against the flesh-eating undead. But some escaped the
precinct through the exit to the basement in the east wing.
He also finds a note addressed to him from the RPD, and the
party favors for a surprise welcome party they were planning
to throw for him. It seems his party has been cancelled.

He heads for the basement while Claire is startled by a
woman's screaming on the second floor. In order to save
whoever's in trouble, she needs a bomb to clear the helicopter
wreckage. Nearby, she finds the key to unlock the door
downstairs and save the wounded cop. When she returns to
him, he has been fighting off zombies unsuccessfully. Claire
now learns why he rudely forced her to leave him. He
rises, transforms into a zombie, and attacks her. Sadly,
Claire incinerates him. She finds a detonator and a chunk
of plastique, and heads back upstairs.

In the basement, Leon is fired upon by a beautiful woman
named Ada Wong. She's looking for a reporter named Ben
Bertolucci in one of the basement jail cells. After Leon
graciously helps her clear some wreckage out of the way, she
ditches him. He tries to catch up to her, but instead finds
the incarcerated reporter in one of the jail cells. Ada
catches up to them now, but where she went first is a
mystery. Questioning Ben, Ada reveals that she's looking for
her boyfriend John, who works out of an Umbrella branch
office in Chicago. He disappeared in this area some months
ago. Ben refuses to tell her what he knows about what's
happening in Raccoon City. Just then, a monstrous roar fills
the air. Ben has locked himself in his cell for protection
and refuses to leave, but directs the others how to get out
of the Precinct. Ada takes off, and Leon runs after her.

Claire detonates the plastique near the helicopter wreckage
upstairs. She finds an office full of stuffed trophy
animals... and a more gruesome trophy on the desk. The
Mayor's daughter lies sprawled out, a medium-sized wound at
her abdomen. Behind the desk sits Police Chief Brian Irons.
He has completely lost his mind. Although the girl's wound
looks like a bullet hole, he claims that she was attacked by
a zombie, and that she will resurrect within an hour. The
only way to stop the zombification is to decapitate the
victim or put a bullet through the brain. He admits that
taxidermy used to be his hobby (which links him to the
Umbrella mansion, because of all the stuffed trophies found
by the S.T.A.R.S. team there). He asks to be left alone,
and Claire is only too willing to get away from him.

In the room next to the Chief's office, Claire hears the quick
footsteps of someone fleeing from her. She finds the little
girl crouched in the dark. She radios Leon to let him know
that she cleared the helicopter wreckage and found the
little girl. The little girl says her name is Sherry Birkin,
and her parents work at the Umbrella plant. Her mother
called her during the T-virus outbreak and instructed her to
go to the police station for safety. She has heard her
father's voice in the station, but can't find him. Also, a
creature is stalking her. A mighty roar emanates from
nearby. Sherry runs off, and Claire tries to pursue her. In
the office, the Chief and the dead woman's body have
disappeared. However, he has left behind his diary detailing
the extents of his depravity. Thanks to Irons, there are
no survivors of the RPD's siege besides himself.

Leon has found the sewer system that runs under the city. In
the processing plant, he comes across what appears to be the
exit door but doesn't have all the necessary keys to get
through. Going back, he finds Ada also investigating the
sewage plant. She has found an open vent shaft that she can
get through with a boost. She hits the ground on the other
side, startling the same little girl Leon and Claire
encountered previously. As she runs off, Ada notices that
the little girl dropped her pendant. Amused, she decides to
keep it in case they meet again. After a quick search, she
finds a precinct key and returns to where Leon waits. She
throws the key back through the vent, but she can't get back
herself because the vent is too high. Once again, Ada runs
off on her own against Leon's orders.

Leon returns to the precinct house, searching for the last
few keys he needs to get out. While looking for clues on the
first floor, the horrible Tyrant bursts through the wall, and
only falls after Leon empties his shotgun into it. Leon races
upstairs and finds more items he needs. The Tyrant follows.
Again, Leon is forced to shoot it out with this brute. The
thing is finally subdued, even if only for the moment.

After gathering several keys of her own, Claire finally
catches up to Sherry in the Chief's office. Behind the desk
is a secret elevator, and Claire makes Sherry stay behind
while she goes to investigate. The elevator lowers her into some
kind of custom dungeon beneath the precinct, lit by flickering
torches. As Claire cautiously creeps down the hall, she hears
the Chief scream.

In his private chamber, Chief Irons is backed into a corner
by a hideous mutating creature. Something shoots out of this
thing's hand and down Irons's throat.

In a hideous torture room, Claire finds the Chief, ranting,
raving, and armed. He explains to Claire that his town has
been torn apart by the experimental monsters of the Umbrella
corporation. He tells her that a man named William Birkin is
to blame. Claire recognizes the name. Irons states that
Sherry is Birkin's daughter. Completely paranoid, the Chief
is ready to kill Claire. Before he can execute her, something
bursts through his upper torso from within. A small creature
leaps out of Irons and falls down an open chute nearby. Claire
follows this thing, only to see it quickly grow into some kind
of horrible infant. The thing attacks her, but she destroys it
fairly easily. She runs back to the second floor to get Sherry;
their escape route is now clear.

Leon makes his way to the precinct's clock tower where he
finds the final piece in the Chief's bizarre architectural
puzzle. Now able to exit the police station, he finds an
open dust chute and slides back down to the basement. Upon
landing, he hears Ben screaming in the jail cell nearby.
Leon runs to the reporter's aid, but is too late. The same
thing that impregnated Irons has gutted Ben. The dying
reporter gives Leon a document which entangles Raccoon
City's chief of police in a government conspiracy. In terrible
pain, Ben dies. Ada finally catches up to Leon, and they
read this document together. It is a series of letters from
William Birkin to the police chief, describing in detail how
Umbrella was bribing the chief to keep secret their actions
in the town. Birkin had learned that Umbrella sent spies to
steal his research. Ada then rushes off, explaining only
that she has to find John. She thinks he's in the chemical
plant. Leon is prevented from following by another call from
Claire. She has found a different exit from the precinct and
will join him in the sewers.

Leon runs after Ada, but in the sewage plant, he is
confronted by the mutating Dr. Birkin. The scientist wrenches
a steel pipe off of the wall and attacks Leon with it. Leon
empties a full clip of Magnum bullets into the scientist,
who doesn't fall. Instead, Birkin dives into the muck of
the sewers.

In the sewer beneath the station, Sherry is separated from
Claire when a drainage chute opens and sucks her into a
lower level. Sherry runs for safety, finding herself in a
garbage room. Just when she finds a nice shiny trinket, the
floor springs open and dumps her into the garbage hold.
Knocked unconscious, she fails to see a monster slouch out
of the darkness. Birkin has found his daughter at last.

Ada abruptly rejoins Leon, and he admonishes her for
running off. She agrees to stick with him, for now.

Searching everywhere to find Sherry, Claire runs into her
mother, Annette. The suspicious woman worked with her
husband William on a bioweapon called the G-Virus, a
mutagenic substance that turns whatever it infects into
a giant monster. Birkin injected himself with the virus when
armed Umbrella agents seized the virus from him. When Birkin
was accidentally shot, he used the virus to keep himself
alive. The G-Virus rejuvenates dead cells, but it also
mutates them. He became a monster, a "G-Type," and hunted
his killers down. The T-Virus leaked from his laboratory
after the attack, and was carried into Raccoon City by the
rats in the sewers.

The G-Virus seeks to spread by finding other host bodies.
When Annette learns that Sherry is in the chemical plant,
she becomes upset. The virus can only be spread through a
complimentary genetic host. Birkin will try to find and
impregnate Sherry with a virus embryo. From somewhere close,
they hear the little girl scream. Claire sends Annette
searching in the opposite direction and continues on.

Leon and Ada search the chemical plant for weapons and
ammunition. They bump into the frantic Annette. Ada chases
the armed scientist. Annette turns and fires on her pursuer,
but Leon jumps in front of Ada and takes the bullet. While
Leon lies unconscious and seriously wounded, Ada chooses to
run after Annette.

Claire finds the garbage dump and spots Sherry, lying
unconscious on a heap of rubble. She calls out to the little
girl, but a gigantic alligator hears her and attacks. Claire
runs back down the corridor and finds a switch to release a
gas canister. When the alligator grabs the canister in its
huge maw, Claire shoots the cylinder. The resulting
explosion flings chunks of the sewer beast's head
everywhere. Moving to Sherry, Claire spots some sort of red
worm slithering away; it is one of William's embryos. Stirring,
Sherry complains of stomach pains. Claire assures her that
everything will be all right. She leads Sherry out of the
spider-infested sewers, past the bodies of several soldiers
wearing gas masks...

Ada hounds the scientist through the sewers to the central
control area. Annette blasts Ada's gun out of her hand, an
adept shot for a scientist. She advances on Ada,
interrogating her. Learning that Ada is looking for her
boyfriend John, Annette realizes that she's talking about
one of the researchers at the mansion lab. She knows that
John turned into a zombie, and then died when the lab was
destroyed. She makes it seem that William was working at the
mansion as well, and that he developed the G-Virus there.
Annette starts to explain the new G-Virus to Ada when she
spots her daughter's pendant around the woman's neck. In a
suddenly aggressive manner, she demands to have it. A cat
fight ensues, ending with Ada punching Annette and sending
her flying over the rail. Inside Sherry's pendant, Ada finds
a secret compartment containing a sample of the G-Virus.

Claire and Sherry discover an underground tramcar. After
powering it up, they ride for some distance to an unknown dock.
Apparently they aren't out of danger yet, as the grunts of
the undead are heard nearby. Claire blasts through corridors
full of zombies. They arrive at a train turntable platform.
Inside the engine car, Claire finds the key to the control
panel outside. An alarm sounds upon activation, and the
girls run back inside the car. The entire platform
disengages and drops. It seems they have found some sort of
large secret elevator. Sherry is overcome by her stomach
pains and passes out. Her monstrous father shows up,
threatening to smash the traincar to pieces. Claire runs
outside and ducks a steel rod flung at her by William. The
screaming madman mutates, growing a new head and a
vicious-looking claw. Claire quickly pelts the thing with
enough flame grenades to burn down a forest. When the G-Type
is finally face down in a pool of its own blood, Claire runs
back into the train car. The elevator finishes its descent,
and she carries the unconscious girl into an Umbrella
loading dock. It would seem she has discovered a large
underground laboratory.

A slightly delirious Leon awakens and hunts for Ada. He
finds her in the subterranean garbage dump. After bandaging
his bullet wound, she lets him know that John is dead. She
doesn't seem terribly upset though, and insists they get out
of the sewage plant. At the tram platform, Leon recalls the
car. They board and head for the train elevator. On route,
they are attacked by the G-Type, which isn't dead yet. It
stabs one gigantic claw through the ceiling over and over,
seeking the passengers. Ada fires at the hand, blowing off
one of the fingers. The monster retreats. The two slip out
of the tram and make for the train platform.

Claire sets Sherry on a cot in the security office. She
gives Sherry her vest to keep her warm. The girl stirs, and
lets Claire know that she trusts her and depends on her.
Claire assures her that she will find something to cure her.

Leon has to recall the train elevator platform. Leaving Ada
in the control room, he descends to a secret security room
and there finds the necessary key. When he flips on the
surveillance camera aimed at the door he just entered, he
sees Umbrella's ugliest and most fearsome agent hot on his
trail. After one more battle with this 'Mr. X', Leon returns
to the upper control room to find Ada unharmed. He recalls
the elevator from there and they descend to the lab. But
their moment alone is not to be enjoyed. William is back,
and he exacts a terrible revenge against Ada. His claw
shoots through the wall, stabbing her in the back. She
passes out, and Leon goes out to fight William. The
G-Virulent has grown two new arms and doubled in size. Leon
pumps the thing full of shotgun blasts before it does any
good. Bleeding heavily, William leaps onto the elevator
shaft wall and leaves Leon alone.

In the lab, Claire figures out that the main power conduit
has been shut down. She finds a fuse for power connection,
and then she is free to explore the lab. Umbrella has
conducted further experiments with plant vegetation, as a
titanic vine grows up from the bottom of one shaft. Its
offspring slide along the ground, spitting acid at her. Worse,
there is an even stronger variety of the "lickers" here than
those encountered before.

The elevator platform's engine overheats, and it stops on an
upper floor of the lab. Leon leaves the wounded Ada in the
train car while he goes searching for something to patch her
wound. He crawls through a vent duct and drops into a
corridor. The elevator platform restarts and continues to
descend. Leon has lost Ada again. He finds an emergency
elevator that will take him down to where Ada has gone, but
it needs power. He finds a door to a "Power Room," but it is
locked. In a room with a huge smelting pit, he fights his
way through the tougher new breed of "lickers." He connects
the emergency elevator's power and goes up to the lab. In
what is obviously William Birkin's former experiment room,
he finds the power room key and goes back to the first level.

Leon runs off the elevator, but not very far. Annette Birkin
somehow sneaks up on him, brandishing a pistol and a vial
of blue liquid. She accuses him of being a spy, just like
the girl he's with. Leon denies that Ada is a spy, and Annette
laughs. She's done a background check on Ada, and has discovered
that Ada works for "the Agency." She's an undercover agent,
using her relationship with John, the researcher, to gather
information on Umbrella. Annette declares that no one will
take her husband's virus from her, and prepares to shoot
Leon. Mr. X suddenly crashes through the ceiling behind Leon.
Annette flees. Evading the powerful giant, Leon gets to the
power room and unlocks it. The monster has followed him, and
now the rookie cop is cornered. Shots ring out. Ada is back,
blasting away at the unholy behemoth. Unfortunately, she runs
out of bullets. As she reloads, the Tyrant seizes her and
lifts her into the air. Ada fires several rounds point blank
into his face. Temporarily blinded, the giant swings Ada into
a control panel, denting the panel and probably breaking every
bone in her body. Blood gushing from his face, Mr. X falls off
the platform into the smelting pit. Leon runs to Ada's side.
In her last moments, she tells him that she's fallen in love
with him. Leon kisses her passionately. Ada goes limp and dies.
Leon screams in grief. Near Ada's body, Leon finds a master key
that fell out of Ada's pocket when Mr. X dropped her.

After Claire finds a keycard in the research room, Annette
pops up again. She's still armed and dangerous, and somehow
knows that Claire tried to kill William. After Claire tells
Annette that Sherry has been infected by the G-Type, the
monster growls nearby. Excited, Annette runs after him.
William crashes out of the ceiling, still alive. More
monster than human now, he cuts his own wife down with one
terrible claw swipe. When Claire rounds the corner he leaps
back up into the ceiling. A dying Annette begs Claire to
save her daughter, giving her detailed instructions on how
to create an antidote to the G-Virus, using materials that
can be found somewhere in the lab.

The damaged central unit in the power room is wracked by
explosions. Lightning bolts course up and down the huge
column. A computer voice comes online to announce that the
self-destruct sequence has been activated, and all personnel
should evacuate to the cargo train platform at the lowest
floor of the lab.

At the edge of the iron smelting pit, a gigantic clawed hand
emerges from the red hot pool. Mr. X isn't down for good
yet, and he may be more dangerous than ever.

Claire runs out to the monitor room. A motion detector
alerts her that someone else is in the lab. Leon is
onscreen, emerging from the power room. Claire tells him to
go back to the security office to rescue Sherry while she
creates the G-virus antidote.

Leon rides the elevator back down into the lab, and retrieves
the barely conscious girl. He uses the master key in the
elevator to take the emergency access tube and reach the
lab's escape route, a high-speed train.

Following the instructions for the G-Virus vaccine, Claire
rushes to the VAM room on the Lab's fourth floor. Killing
several last zombies, she finds a vaccine cartridge. Reading
the instructions for the "Devil" vaccine, she inserts the
cartridge into the machine and starts it up, allowing the
base vaccine to be synthesized. She takes the cartridge and
heads back down to Birkin's lab.

Leon finds the train without power. Laying Sherry on the cot
inside, he finds a platform key at the back of the train and
hurries to power up their escape transport.

Claire inserts the base vaccine into the virus antidote
synthesizer in Birkin's lab, and the machine creates the
"Devil" automatically. On her way back out, she accesses a
corridor to the experimental containment room, where she
finds a huge cargo elevator that will take her down to the
train platform.

An explosion rocks the entire lab. The computer announces
that the self-destruct sequence has begun. There are only
five minutes remaining until total detonation.

Leon races across a bridge over the train to the opposite
platform. There he unlocks the containment chamber for the
power plugs for the train's generator. He takes the plugs
into the next room and inserts them into the power grid. The
computer warns him that the power will be completely shut
down momentarily in order to power up the train. In the
blackout, a huge creature lands behind him. A transformed
Mr. X is ablaze from his dip in the molten vat. With two
huge claws, he charges at Leon, knocking the poor guy from
one end of the room to the other. Suddenly another familiar
shape appears, at the top of the gantry over them. Still
wearing Sherry's pendant, Ada drops Leon a rocket launcher.
The cop recognizes her, but doesn't have a moment to spare.
He dives for the launcher, scoops it up, and fires at his
vicious adversary. The creature explodes into a dozen body
parts. The power comes back on and so do the lights. With
two minutes until detonation, Leon runs back to the train.

Waiting patiently for the elevator to reach her floor,
Claire's thoughts are suddenly interrupted as something
smashes through the ceiling right above her. She backs up
just in time to avoid being squashed as the G-Type drops
into the room. She fires several grenades into the genetic
monstrosity, but all she does is trigger yet another mutation.
The creature's newest form is doglike, pursuing Claire on
four legs and slashing at her with a mouthful of jagged
fangs. Claire runs around the room, playing matador as it
charges at her. Finally, her weapons have an impact on the
thing, and it dissolves into a puddle of genetic jelly.
Claire's elevator arrives, right on cue, and she descends
to the train loading platform.

Leon finds the train platform crawling with naked zombies.
Blowing their heads off left and right, he fights his way
to the switch that opens the gate blocking the train's path,
and throws it. As the gates open, he returns to the train
and starts it up. Slowly, the train comes to life.

Claire gets to the platform just as the train is taking off.
She sees Leon, leaning out an open door, yelling for her to
get on. She misses that opportunity, but luckily there is
another open door.

Once she's inside, the Umbrella lab completes its detonation
sequence in a huge explosion. The train rocks, throwing a
still-unconscious Sherry to the floor. Claire quickly
administers the vaccine to her and they wait. Finally, Sherry
comes to and thanks Claire for saving her. Leon thinks that
the danger is over, but Claire disagrees. She still has to
find her brother. Leon moves up into the cockpit. Still upset,
he says goodbye to Ada.

The train suddenly lurches. Leon moves back into the cabin
with the girls. No one can figure out what the disturbance
was. Leon runs toward the back of the train. The train is
equipped with the same computer system as the lab. The
computer warns them that a bio-hazardous material has been
detected on board. The train will detonate in just two
minutes. The cabin is locked, and Leon is unable to get back
to Sherry and Claire. He runs to the back of the train to
search the cargo compartments.

At the rear, giant tentacles smash through the ceiling. Leon
races back to the front as the G-Type makes an encore
appearance. Birkin is now nothing more than a gigantic black
blob, pulling itself forward with four huge tentacles. Leon
blasts the thing until it loses solidity once more. Then he
heads back toward the cabin.

===================================================
3iv. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 2
===================================================

Leon, standing on the gap between the train's two cars,
tries to get back inside and discovers the door has locked.
Claire can't open it from the other side. The biohazard
is still present, apparently... and still after Sherry.

The G-Type has reformed, and attempts to smash into the
cabin. Claire, not knowing where Leon is, tells Sherry to
hide. Sherry opens a vent to the cockpit and crawls through.
She promises Claire that she can stop the train.

Leon is on top of the engine car, climbing up to the
cockpit. He looks behind him to see the G-Type's tentacles
searching for him.

The main body of the G-Type smashes into the cabin. In order
to hide, Claire climbs down through a hatch and hangs onto
the bottom of the train while it's still moving.

Leon rips open an escape hatch on the roof of the cockpit.
Sherry hasn't had so much luck figuring out which button to
push. Leon spots the emergency stop switch immediately and
points it out to her. Sherry slams her fist on the button.

The train brakes. Sparks shoot out from behind the wheels as
the transport slows, dousing Claire in a shower of yellow
fire. She fights to hold on.

The train stops. The computer warns that the train will
detonate in thirty seconds. Claire crawls out of her hiding
spot and with a sigh of relief, spots daylight at the exit
of the train tunnel. Leon and Sherry are out, looking for
Claire at the front of the train. She joins them just as the
G-Type smashes into the cockpit. The heroes dash for the
mouth of the tunnel, through which they can see the rising
sun. They've lived to see the morning of September 30th.

The monster's tentacles smash through the cockpit
windshield, searching for its enemies. The computer counts
down, 5, 4, 3, 2...

At the last second, the G-Type realizes what's about to happen.

The heroes leap clear of the tunnel.

The transport train detonates quickly car by car, from the
rear to the front. A vicious geyser of fire blasts out of
the tunnel.

Claire and Sherry get up, commenting that they both look
pretty awful. Leon rises, but is already moving off, saying
they don't have time to waste. Claire wonders why. Leon
turns and tells them, "Hey, it's up to us to take out Umbrella."

Blackout. Heavy metal theme music and the credits roll.

===========================================================
3v. Differences Between Claire A/Leon B and Leon A/Claire B
===========================================================

If you play the game in the opposite order, starting with
Leon first, the plot is different in several respects:

1. Sherry keeps her pendant throughout the game. This means
that Ada never obtains the pendant or the G-Virus sample it
contains. Also, Mr. X wants the G-Virus, so he goes after
Sherry and Claire and not Leon and Ada.

2. Annette explains William's mutation and the cause of the
outbreak to Ada, rather than to Claire. Claire finds Annette
after Ada knocks her over the rail, and Annette falls
unconscious soon afterwards.

3. Sherry is never impregnated with a G-Type embryo, so
Claire doesn't have to create a G-Virus antidote. Thus, no
mention of an antidote is heard.

4. Ben Bertolucci is impregnated by Birkin with a G-Type
embryo that later bursts out of him. Why Birkin would
implant him with this is never discussed or explained.

5. Chief Irons is ripped in half by Birkin instead of
implanted.

6. Annette is fatally wounded when the G-Type pounds on the
ceiling in the lab and drops a pipe on her head. Leon takes
the G-Virus sample that she is holding.

7. Leon confronts Ada about being a spy. Annette, barely
alive, shoots Ada. Leon's love falls over the rail into a
deep chasm. Enraged, Leon tosses the G-Virus after her.

8. In the game's finales, Leon confronts the G-Type while
Claire battles Mr. X. Likewise, while escaping from the RPD,
Claire fights the G-Type embryo and Leon is attacked by
Dr. Birkin.

9. In Claire's final confrontations with Mr. X, she lures
him into the smelting pool by tossing Sherry's pendant with
the G-Virus over the side. On the trainpower platform, Claire
is aided in her battle against the mutated Mr. X by Ada. This
provides a larger mystery than the previously explored
scenario. How did Ada survive such a fall?

10. At the end of the closing movie, it is Claire instead of
Leon who leads them off, saying, "Chris... I have to find you."

Perhaps the reasons why the previous plot summary focused on
Claire A/ Leon B are now clear. The focus scenario is much
richer in plot and explanations. There is not as great a
leap of faith required to believe that Ada still lives.

Resident Evil 2 is a game much richer in story than its
predecessor, as is evidenced by the number of pages needed
to summarize the plot versus that of the original Resident
Evil. In this chapter of the story, questions are raised.
Some are answered, while others may never be solved.

==============================
3vi. The 4th Survivor Minigame
==============================

A couple of secret games are available to the most capable
of Resident Evil survivors. With the right timing, skill,
and stamina, players will receive an A ranking in Resident
Evil 2. While the secret weapons gained make for a fun
replay, the most interesting aspect of this ranking is a new
playable character named "Hunk." The players are asked to
create a new save file for a minigame called The 4th
Survivor, the special mission suitable only for this
seasoned Umbrella agent. The 4th Survivor is a "battle
game." The player is given a limited amount of ammunition, a
simple goal, and an enormous army of evil monsters to outwit
in order to survive. This side-adventure is a true test of a
player's survival skills.

Whether it is his real name or a codename is uncertain, but
Hunk is certainly a buff character. Dressed in militaristic
biohazard containment gear, Hunk's eyes glow with the power
of his infrared goggles. He runs much faster than the usual
Resident Evil playable character, even when seriously wounded.

Playing as Hunk requires a good amount of quick thinking and
strategy on the part of the player. While some strategies
can be useful every time, the game's enemies sometimes react
differently to Hunk. This means that The 4th Survivor is
always a challenge, even to seasoned Resident Evil veterans.

==========================================
3vii. A Brief Summary of The 4th Survivor
==========================================

The game begins in a total blackout. Someone is thinking,
"G-...G-Virus... I have to deliver it to Umbrella..." The
scene opens at the end of the sewer station, sometime after
Ada and Leon have made their way to the Lab, but before the
end of the regular game. A body floats face down in the
muck, one of the Umbrella infiltrators sent to steal the
G-Virus from renegade scientist William Birkin. The body
stirs, shifts, and shows signs of life. Slowly, Hunk regains
consciousness and rises.

After a quick look around, Hunk pulls out his radio. "Alpha
team here," he says through his gas mask, "Mission
accomplished." "Roger," confirms another agent on the radio.
"We'll meet at the rendezvous point."

A map cuts in. A blinking beacon light shows Hunk that he
has to get to the second floor roof of the RPD precinct house
in order to be airlifted out. Hunk takes off up the stairs.

Between this stealthy agent and his goal is a small army of
the evil dead.  Zombies plague his flight, along with giant
spiders, killer dogs, and slithering botanical experiments.
He has only a limited amount of ammunition, and must balance
his present needs against what he may encounter in the future.
Luckily he has some herbs to heal himself and treat poisons,
but it's not a lot. Leon and Claire have already taken all of
the ammunition from the RPD, so Hunk is stuck with what he has.

The zombies have retaken the Precinct in greater numbers
than ever before, and have laid several traps for the
unfortunate Umbrella agent. With some skill, he just barely
avoids these. But as he nears his goal, the insanity grows.
Each room bears an ever-greater horde of ghouls, quickly
converging on the lone survivalist. Shaking off his
attackers, he clears a pathway out with the barrel of his
gore-splattered gun.

After several close calls, Hunk tops a staircase to the
second floor of the RPD. He's halfway home, but the
nightmare is not yet over. Stomping toward him is a
monstrosity he has only heard rumors about at his agency. At
long last, Umbrella has perfected the Tyrant, and they've
sent it after the G-Virus. Somehow able to sense that Hunk
possesses a sample, the monster attacks him. Reasoning with
the beast would be no use, so Hunk evades the slowly
advancing thing and moves on.

In the final hallway, Hunk meets the Tyrant once again. How
it got over here so quickly is a real mystery, one Hunk
doesn't have time to solve. Evading the hulk yet again, the
agent reaches the roof and lights his last flare to signal
for a rescue.

The pick-up chopper swoops overhead immediately, as if it
has only been a block away this entire time. It hovers over
the precinct for an unbearably long mospotlight is trained on Hunk. Impatiently, he waves for them
to come down and get him. The helicopter quickly lands and
airlifts the tired and wounded operative. As the Umbrella
chopper soars off into the ominous skies, a brief epilogue
appears on the screen. The agent has delivered the virus to
Umbrella, promising that this is the end of one nightmare,
but only the beginning of another.

=======================================
3viii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
=======================================

Resident Evil 2 leaves us with the following resolutions:

1. William Birkin's laboratory and research have been
destroyed.

2. Somehow Umbrella has almost perfected a Tyrant, and has
more at their disposal. Their research continues elsewhere.

3. Leon, Claire, and Sherry have all survived.

4. Ada may have also survived.

5. Raccoon City is in ruins.

6. Leon has a new mission in life, while Claire continues hers.

7. The rest of the S.T.A.R.S. team may be somewhere in Europe.

===================
3ix. Random Musings
===================

1. As pointed out by Dan Birlew in the original version of
this document, Tofu, another hidden character, is also
accessible in RE2. However, his scenario is so incredibly
silly that it doesn't really apply to the storyline. He is,
after all, a block of bean curd with a knife.

2. Mr. X isn't really very committed to his mission. He seems
to deliberately put it on hold a couple of times to go after
the player. This is most obvious in either B scenario, where
Mr. X leaves the character carrying the G-sample alone in
order to go down the elevator shaft after the player.

3. So why, exactly, didn't anyone clean out Wesker's desk?
They thought he was dead.

4. Annette claims, to Ada, that William Birkin is the man
responsible for the T-Virus, a statement that's blatantly
contradicted by files in CV. I tend to side with CV's files,
as they're the more recent source and they're far more
interesting, but the question still stands: who really
created the T-Virus?

5. Note that "The 4th Survivor," as of right now, is the
only RE minigame to actually figure into the plot.

6. Cinematic references in RE2:
   -- the Umbrella lab is sort of a mixed bag of film
      influences; I recognized bits taken from _Day of
      the Dead_, _Return of the Living Dead Part 2_, and
      _Return of the Living Dead Part 3_.
   -- Leon is dressed more like Peter and Roger in _Dawn
      of the Dead_ than like any other officer in the RPD.
   -- okay, so I mentioned _Zeram_, right? The big pink
      quasi-embryo that crawls out of Irons/Ben, as well
      as the little pink embryos that crawl out of *that*,
      look a lot like a similar creature, which is spawned
      by an alien, in _Zeram_.

=======================================================
4. Nobody Here Gets Out Alive: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=======================================================

RE3 has more replay value than any other RE game to date,
with three endings and plenty of secrets to unlock, as well
as the incredibly fun (read: addictive and frustrating)
Mercenaries minigame. It also introduced the Dodge feature,
which let players duck or roll out of the way of incoming
attacks with the push of a button, and featured the return
of RE's Hunters.

=============================
4i. The Death of Raccoon City
=============================

Even though the Spencer mansion was destroyed, the threat isn't
over. There are still monsters loose in the Raccoon Forest, some
of which actually wander inside the Raccoon City limits. Umbrella's
experiments continue, despite the loss of their mansion laboratory.

Everything changes in late September of 1998. After Umbrella's
attack on William Birkin, as shown in RE2, sewer rats carry
the T-Virus into Raccoon City. While the epidemic is somewhat
slow to start, it spreads very, very quickly. Soon, zombies
are roaming the streets. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people
are killed by both the zombies and the mutants the T-Virus
creates. Raccoon City is placed under martial law.

The Raccoon police force tries to fight back the zombie invasion,
but their efforts are sabotaged from within by their police chief,
Brian Irons. Not only does the steadily-getting-crazier Irons
somehow prevent the RPD from calling in backup from outside Raccoon,
but he deliberately spreads confusion among the policemen. As a
result, the police's first major battle against the zombies, on
September 27th, is a near-total disaster. The few surviving police
withdraw to the RPD building and reinforce it to withstand a siege
by the undead. Over the next three days, the policemen and surviving
civilians die one by one, cut down by either mutants, zombies, or
Irons himself. By the time Claire and Leon arrive at the RPD on
September 30th, the only living cops are Irons and Marvin Branagh.

As the police battle the zombies, two helicopters marked with
Umbrella logos land in the city and drop off a small number of
armed men. These men are much better-equipped than the police,
but they're a relative handful of men against an army, and soon
they, too, are running for their lives.

By September 28th, Raccoon City is a ghost town, swarming with
zombies and monsters. A military blockade surrounds Raccoon City,
enforcing a quarantine. No help is coming. Thousands are dead.

Somehow, Jill Valentine has managed to survive all of this.
On the morning of September 28th, alone, she makes her last
bid for survival: her last escape.

=======================================================
4iii. A Summary of the Plot of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=======================================================

Jill's escape attempt begins with an explosion, as she literally
blasts her way out of an apartment building. Jill takes shelter
inside a nearby warehouse and meets another survivor. She tries to
get him to come with her, but he refuses to leave the warehouse.
Jill tells him that their only hope is to get out of town, but
he shuts himself inside a nearby trailer rather than listen.

Jill, alone, leaves the warehouse. The streets are disturbingly
quiet, with only the occasional zombie wandering around. On
her way through a back alley, Jill is surprised when a man
suddenly bursts out of a nearby alleyway, pursued by a mob
of zombies. She's doubly surprised when she recognizes him
as Brad Vickers, and runs after him.

After chasing him through the streets and back alleys of
Raccoon, Jill finds Brad inside a local bar. They briefly
talk about what's happened to the city. Brad, although he's
wounded, gets up, telling Jill that "he's comin' for us.
We're all gonna die! He's after S.T.A.R.S. members. There's
no escape!" With that enigmatic comment, he leaves the bar.

Outside, Brad's nowhere to be found, so Jill sets out on her
own. She emerges onto the street in front of the RPD building.
Both ends of the street are blocked by car crashes, but a nearby
alleyway leads further uptown. The door to it is locked, but Jill
left a set of lockpicks in her desk at the RPD, so she heads there.

In front of the RPD building, Brad Vickers finds Jill again.
He looks like someone dropped a truck on him. He starts to
say something, but is cut off by the arrival of a new monster,
a humanoid creature dressed in black. Its face is permanently
stuck in a lipless grimace. (Roughly two days from now, Leon
will meet Mr. X, who looks a lot like this thing.) Jill is
frozen in horror as the creature grabs Brad by the face and
lifts him into the air. It kills Brad by shoving a tentacle
through his head, throws away his body, and advances on Jill,
muttering a single word: ."..S.T.A.R.S...."

Jill's weapons seem to have no effect on the creature. She
ducks inside the RPD building and slams the doors behind
her. Although the doors buckle under the creature's attack,
they don't give. Safe for the moment, Jill searches the
building for equipment and ammunition. More than half of the
building has been sealed off by the surviving police, but
fortunately, she can still get to her old office.

The S.T.A.R.S. office is wrecked. Someone has deliberately
broken the radio, and the desks have been ransacked. As Jill
leaves with her lockpicks, the radio plays an incoming
transmission from a man named Carlos. His unit has been cut
off and no survivors have been found. He asks for anyone who
can hear him to respond, but the broken radio can only receive
transmissions. All Jill can do is wish him luck as she leaves.

The only warning Jill gets before the creature returns is the
sound of shattering glass. It jumps through a window on the
first floor of the RPD, toting an oversized cannon in one hand.
Dodging a barrage of missiles, Jill barely manages to get out
of the RPD building alive. She picks the lock on the alleyway
door and keeps running. She seems to have lost the creature.

As Jill makes her way uptown, she finds a dead man wearing
the Umbrella logo. According to his diary, the dead man was a
member of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service, an
in-house paramilitary unit maintained by Umbrella. For some
reason, Umbrella's hired and sent mercenaries into the city.

More dead UBCS soldiers turn up elsewhere. One is lying in
front of a nearby parking garage, killed by a pack of zombie
dogs, and another has fallen victim to a new creature, some
kind of giant, mutated insect. These "drain deimos" attack
Jill as she passes through a construction site, and they
don't live long enough to regret it.

Jill steps back onto the street outside the construction
site, and sees a man run into a restaurant. Jill follows him
inside, and the man introduces himself as Carlos Oliviera, a
corporal in the UBCS. His squad was told to rescue Raccoon's
civilians, but the mission went wrong the moment they landed.
Before he can continue, the creature stalking Jill appears
again, entering through the restaurant's back door.

As the creature charges, Jill notices a gas leak in the
restaurant's kitchen. She and Carlos hide behind the
restaurant counter. As the creature stops next to the
leaking pipes, Jill throws a lit oil lamp at it. The ensuing
explosion nearly kills both Jill and Carlos, but also knocks
the creature unconscious.

As they leave the restaurant, Jill asks Carlos why his squad
was sent to Raccoon. Carlos's answer--that they're rescuing
civilians--isn't good enough for Jill, since the destruction
of Raccoon is largely Umbrella's fault. Carlos replies that
he and his fellow mercenaries are just hired hands, and if
Umbrella had some kind of ulterior motive for sending them
in, he doesn't know what it is. If Jill wants answers, she's
asking the wrong guy. The sound of shattering glass inside
the restaurant cuts him off. Carlos invites Jill to join his
squad, and runs off. Jill follows him, but the creature makes
its return appearance, seemingly unhurt.

After losing the creature in Raccoon's shopping district,
Jill hides inside the offices of the Raccoon Press. Inside,
she finds another gemstone that matches one she found in
the RPD building. They turn out to be missing parts to a
time lock on the gates to Raccoon's city hall. Jill repairs
the lock and opens the gates.

The city hall is boarded up, and looks as though it's been
undergoing the same kind of siege as the RPD. Past it is a
trainyard, where one of Raccoon City's cable cars is parked.
Inside the cable car, Jill meets a gray-haired man wearing
the same logos as Carlos. Jill greets him, assuming he's one
of Carlos's teammates. The man asks her insultingly how she
managed to survive. Jill replies that she's a S.T.A.R.S.
member, which seems to satisfy him. He walks into the next
car, leaving Jill alone with a badly wounded and delirious
UBCS officer. Jill tends the man's wounds as best she can,
then follows the grey-haired man.

Carlos is in the next cable car, and renews his invitation
from earlier. The gray-haired man, who is apparently Carlos's
commander, says that they can't trust Jill. Before Jill can
respond, Carlos says that they need her help, as their unit
has been reduced to Carlos, the gray-haired man, and Lieutenant
Mikhail, the injured man in the last cable car. His commander,
Nicholai, grudgingly agrees, and tells them about his plan.

An extraction helicopter is waiting for a signal from their
team. The designated landing zone is by the St. Michael Clock
Tower, a Raccoon City landmark. Nicholai intends to use the
cable car as a mobile shield to get them through Raccoon City,
although the car will require repairs first. Carlos and Jill
agree to this plan, and the three of them split up to look for
parts for the cable car.

Jill heads to a nearby gas station first, to get motor oil.
Carlos enters the station behind her, but a mob of zombies
sniffs them out. As Carlos keeps watch, Jill finds a locked
cabinet with oil in it. Carlos steps outside to fight off the
zombies. Jill hurriedly opens the lock and grabs the oil.
Before she can get outside, a live wire falls into a pool of
motor oil in the gas station's garage, starting a fire. Jill
sprints out the front door as the place burns down around her.

Outside, Jill finds Carlos slumped against the wall, next to
a pile of dead zombies. Jill briefly thinks he's dead, but
Carlos shakily gets to his feet. The fire suddenly spreads
outside, to the pools of gasoline leaking from wrecked cars,
and then to the gas station's pumps. Jill and Carlos barely
escape an explosion that completely destroys both the gas
station and most of the block that it's on. As they pull
themselves to their feet, Carlos tells Jill that he's going
to look for extra equipment, and leaves.

Jill manages to find some engine parts and returns to the
cable car to see if she can fix it. Outside the cable car,
Mikhail, despite his wounds, massacres a horde of zombies
and collapses. Jill runs up to him and demands to know if he
has a death wish. Mikhail insists that he cannot stop
fighting just because he's wounded. Even though the zombies
are innocent victims as well, as Jill says, there's no
reason for him to take responsibility for anything that's
happened to Raccoon. After all, none of the UBCS soldiers
are really involved with the company. Jill agrees, and says
that that's the only reason she's trusting the UBCS at all.

Jill helps Mikhail back into the cable car and tells him to
rest. She also tries to repair the cable car's engine.
While the power cable and fuse she's found will work, she
needs a special additive for the motor oil. She heads back
into Raccoon, towards an Umbrella-owned sales office and
chemical warehouse.

Before going to the office, Jill stops by the warehouse in
downtown Raccoon where she left the survivor earlier.
Inside, she finds a group of zombies greedily devouring his
dead body. In the trailer that the man was hiding in, Jill
finds a book where the man has written his final words. His
name was Dario Rosso, and he had always meant to be a novelist.

When Jill reaches the office, Nicholai is already there. He
has just killed another UBCS trooper who was infected with
the T-Virus. Jill demands that Nicholai explain why he shot the
man, who was still conscious. Nicholai explains to Jill, as
if it's obvious, that it took fewer bullets to kill the man
before he became a zombie. His callousness horrifies Jill.

Jill lets herself into the office's storage locker, where she
finds the additive she needs. At the same time, though, another
horde of zombies finds the sales office. Jill hears Nicholai
scream in agony, and when she fights her way back into the
office, both Nicholai and the UBCS mercenary's body are gone.

On her way back to the cable car, Jill has another encounter
with her stalker outside City Hall. Once again, Jill runs
for her life. The creature doesn't follow her to the next
street, and before Jill can wonder why, the ground crumbles
under her feet. She's dumped into part of the Raccoon sewer
system, which a large, mutated worm has claimed as its own.
Jill fights it off and escapes from the sewers via a
conveniently located emergency ladder.

Jill finishes her repair work on the cable car. Carlos walks
in, and Jill tells him that Nicholai won't be joining them.
Carlos grimly accepts the news, and offers to drive the
cable car. The car begins to glide smoothly away from the
station, but suddenly, it shakes with a tremendous impact.
Jill cautiously investigates, to find that the creature
stalking her has somehow broken in. With nowhere to run,
Jill knocks it to the ground with a barrage of grenades.
The creature gets right back up again, seemingly unhurt
by an attack that would have killed anything else.

Suddenly, Mikhail opens fire on the creature with his
assault rifle, commanding Jill to get out of the cable car.
The creature advances on Mikhail, whose rifle jams at
exactly the wrong moment. The creature backhands him against
the wall, then throws him across the cable car. A tentacle
emerges from the creature's hand, coiling around its wrist
like a striking snake, and it walks towards Mikhail to
finish him off. Just before it reaches him, Mikhail rolls
over, pulls a grenade from his vest, and pulls the pin. The
resulting explosion knocks the creature out of the back of
the cable car, kills Mikhail, and destroys the cable car's
brakes. Jill pulls the emergency brake, but the car doesn't
come to a full stop until it hits a wall. Jill blacks out.

Jill regains consciousness alone in the courtyard of the St.
Michael Clock Tower, next to the twisted ruin of the cable
car. Night has fallen. She finds Carlos inside the tower.
For some reason, Carlos is now convinced that Umbrella has
no intentions of letting them out of town alive. Before he
can get hysterical, Jill slaps him, asking him if he's just
going to give up. Carlos retorts that he just can't handle
what's happening, and runs off.

The clock tower is nearly deserted, except, as usual, by the
occasional zombie or giant spider. Jill finds several more
dead mercenaries within it, one of whom is carrying a copy of
the UBCS's mission plan; sure enough, they were here to rescue
civilians, but were specifically after Umbrella's employees.
The UBCS's extraction chopper is in the suburbs of Raccoon,
waiting for someone to signal it by ringing the clock tower's
bell. Jill runs up to the bell tower, to find the bell's
mechanical ringer has been dismantled. Solving another of the
puzzles that seem to be everywhere in Raccoon City, she finds
a key to unlock a storeroom downstairs.

On the balcony of the clock tower, the creature returns,
seemingly unhurt. Jill rips the wiring out of one of the
clock tower's searchlights and electrocutes the creature. As
it lies twitching, Jill makes her escape, but once again, it
gets up and gives chase. For some reason, though, it doesn't
follow her downstairs.

In the storeroom, Jill finds an ornate gear that'll fit in
the bell's ringer. She runs back upstairs and installs it.
The bell starts to ring, and as Jill rushes outside, the
extraction chopper comes flying in. Jill waves it down, and
for a moment, thinks that she's finally safe.

She is, of course, wrong.

Someone fires a missile at the helicopter. As it explodes,
the helicopter plows into the clock tower. Burning wreckage
showers the courtyard. Jill looks up to see the creature
standing on top of the clock tower, its missile launcher
in its hand. It jumps down in front of her, intent upon
finishing her off once and for all. Before Jill can react,
the creature stabs her with one of its tentacles, and Jill
immediately begins to feel shaky and ill. She's been
infected with the T-Virus.

Suddenly, Carlos arrives and attacks the creature. The
creature, more annoyed than hurt, returns fire. Carlos is
knocked silly by a near-hit, but manages to blow up the
missile launcher. As he passes out, Jill opens fire on the
creature, hitting it with everything she has. The creature,
after taking enough damage to kill an army, finally staggers,
then falls face-down into the flames from the burning helicopter.
Jill limps over to Carlos and passes out. Carlos wakes up
and cradles Jill in his arms, desperately trying to wake her.

Jill is unconscious for two days, during which Leon Kennedy
and Claire Redfield make their own escape from Raccoon City.
She wakes up in the chapel of the clock tower on the night of
October 1st. Carlos has been watching over her. She doesn't
feel any pain from her infection, but that in itself worries
her. Jill makes Carlos promise that if she turns into a zombie,
he'll kill her. Carlos says that he'll find something to help
her, and that she'll be safe in the chapel until he returns.

Carlos leaves the clock tower through a door in the storeroom,
and finds that he's down the street from a hospital. He
investigates, hoping to find something to cure Jill.

The hospital lobby is strewn with dead men and partially
locked down with a steel shutter. As Carlos enters, a zombie
slowly shuffles towards him from the back of the room.
Before Carlos can shoot it, something decapitates the zombie
from behind. A new creature, some kind of viciously clawed
reptile, screams at Carlos. Jill would recognize it as a
Hunter, one of the deadlier bioweapons she encountered in the
mansion. After a vicious, albeit brief, fight, Carlos
kills the thing and enters the head doctor's office.

Carlos takes the head doctor's private elevator to the fourth
floor. The hospital is crawling with Hunters and the occasional
zombie. There, in the hospital's file room, he finds Nicholai,
who is holding a smoking gun and standing over the body of
another UBCS member. Carlos has a lot of questions for Nicholai,
but the only answer Nicholai has is that he--Nicholai--is
"one of the supervisors." That's all Carlos needs to know.
Nicholai points his gun at Carlos, but before he can fire,
the man on the floor pulls the pin on a grenade. Both Carlos
and Nicholai run for cover, and Nicholai winds up going out
the fourth-floor window.

Carlos is confused about what just happened, but he continues
his search. To his surprise, he finds another of Umbrella's
laboratories in the hospital's basement, where two creatures
are floating in incubation tanks. They look like Hunters,
but where the Hunters Carlos has been fighting are sort of
generically reptilian, these appear to be deliberately
patterned after frogs. (These are probably the MA-121
Hunters mentioned in RE2's EX Files. See Frequently Asked
Questions, below.)

Carlos finds a set of instructions in the lab. Using them as
well as the laboratory's machines, he creates a vaccine that'll
be effective against the T-Virus. Running back to the clock tower,
he finds a surprise waiting for him in the hospital lobby. Someone
has set explosives to demolish the hospital. Carlos leaves the
hospital at a dead run, taking cover from the explosion inside
the alley leading to the clock tower. The hospital is completely
destroyed, crumbling inward on itself.

In the clock tower, the ceilings are buckling and groaning,
as if the tower is planning on following the hospital's
lead. As Carlos crosses the clock tower's front hall, the
creaking intensifies into a pounding. With a sudden
crash, the creature that has chased Jill throughout Raccoon
City breaks through the wall. The creature's heavy coat has
burned away, revealing that it's covered in writhing tentacles.
Either the fire has forced it to mutate, or it just burned
off its clothes and this is how it's looked all along.
Carlos tries to fight the thing, but it's only interested in
getting to Jill. Fortunately, Carlos beats it to the chapel.

Carlos gives Jill the vaccine. The drug takes effect almost
immediately, and Jill wakes up. She asks Carlos what
happened to him, and Carlos says that he just had another
fight with the monster. Jill starts to wonder aloud whether
the creature can be stopped at all, and Carlos says that
he's sure it can; he doesn't sound real convinced. Jill
realizes that the creature is toying with them. Carlos then
tells her about Nicholai's survival, and warns her that
although he doesn't know what Nicholai has planned, he's
sure that Nicholai is their enemy. Claiming that he has to
"take care of some things," Carlos leaves.

Jill runs into the creature as she leaves the chapel. She
leads it a merry chase through the clock tower, losing it
along the way, and ducks into Raccoon's city park.

The park is infested with monsters, but Jill easily takes
care of them. Inside the tool shed in a local graveyard, Jill
breaks through a bricked-up doorway and discovers an abandoned
Umbrella command center. Several documents are scattered
throughout the room. One of them, a report from one of the
supervisors, finally gives her a name for the creature that's
been chasing her; Umbrella calls it the "Nemesis," and they
sent it to kill the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members. The unnamed
supervisor continues to speculate that if the Nemesis is still
loose in the city, then the S.T.A.R.S. must be very hard to
kill... but they can't hope to evade it much longer.

Nicholai is waiting for Jill when she leaves the command
center. He's impressed at her survival, but refuses to help
Jill in any way. When Jill asks him, he admits that the true
mission of the UBCS was to gather data on Umbrella's
bioweapons in a combat situation, but no one ever expected
the UBCS units to be completely wiped out. After a sudden
tremor shakes the ground, Nicholai runs off.

As Jill follows Nicholai, the earth falls out from under
her. The giant worm that Jill fought in the Raccoon sewer
system is back, but not for long. The worm destroys the
graveyard trying to kill Jill, and she responds with a
barrage of bullets and grenades. When Jill climbs out of
the wreckage of the graveyard, she leaves the worm's
cooling corpse on the ground behind her.

The park has been overrun by a fresh wave of zombies while
Jill fought the worm, but they're little more than
annoyances at this point. On one of the park's isolated
footpaths, Jill finds two more dead UBCS soldiers, one of
whom is clutching a set of orders from Umbrella. The orders
confirm what Nicholai said earlier. The supervisors were
also instructed to destroy the hospital and all the data
stored inside it. Umbrella is covering its tracks, and, for
some reason, a lot of their supervisors are winding up dead.

The footpath leads to a rickety bridge, which in turn leads
to an abandoned factory. As Jill walks across the bridge
towards it, the Nemesis jumps onto the bridge in front of
her. Jill throws herself off of the bridge and into the
river below it. The Nemesis, after she's gone, turns and
walks towards the factory.

Underneath the bridge, Jill finds an entrance to an old
sewer duct, and from there finds her way into the factory. A
quintet of zombies spring a crude ambush on her, but Carlos
arrives and saves Jill a second time. Jill thanks him, and
he tells her that a nuclear missile is going to be launched
into the center of the city at dawn, which is coming soon.
The two of them have to split up and find some way to
escape, or they'll be caught in the blast. Carlos puts a
hand on Jill's cheek and tells her to watch out for Nicholai.

The factory is obviously nowhere near as abandoned as it was
supposed to be. Umbrella has been conducting experiments
with the T-Virus here and using the facility to dispose of
toxic waste; as a result, the factory is crawling with Stingers,
Hunters, and powerful, mutated zombies. As Jill explores, a
sudden burst of gunfire sends her running for cover. Chortling,
Nicholai walks through a door and locks it behind him.

Jill accidentally stumbles into the facility's trash
room. Not only does the door lock behind her, but the room's
automated systems come online; in five minutes, the room
will automatically dump everything in it into the factory's
waste area. Given what's *in* the waste area, that might be
a fate worse than death. Just as Jill thinks things can't
get any worse, the trash room's lights come on, revealing an
old friend. The Nemesis has been waiting for her.

For the first time in four days, Jill gets lucky. She ducks
underneath one of the Nemesis's wild swings, and it tears
open a pipe on the wall. Whatever is flowing through the
pipe is corrosive enough to burn off half of the Nemesis's
tentacles almost instantly. As the Nemesis recovers, Jill
shoots out another pipe, drenching it in acid a second time,
and then a third. The Nemesis screams, covered in horrible
burns. As it falls dead for a second time, Jill notices
the body of an Umbrella scientist in one of the trash heaps.
Searching his pockets, she finds a keycard which unlocks the
trash room doors. As she gets out, the Nemesis's body is
dumped into the waste pool.

The factory's speakers crackle to life, and a woman's voice
reports that a missile attack has been detected. Jill runs
towards the door Nicholai went through and unlocks it with
her new keycard. The door leads to a communications tower. As
Jill picks up a portable radar receiver, the radio suddenly
comes to life. Outside, Nicholai taunts Jill from a helicopter,
and rakes the tower with a burst of machine-gun fire. Apparently,
he's the one who's been killing supervisors, simply so Nicholai
could get more bargaining power when it comes time to negotiate
his bonus with Umbrella. He says that he had also intended to
collect a bounty which Umbrella had placed on Jill's head, but
he decides to fly away instead. Jill, he says, is doomed anyway.

Carlos runs in. He hasn't had any luck in finding an escape
route, but he refuses to give up. He frantically uses the radio
to scan all frequencies. A familiar voice comes over the
radio. Someone else is coming in a helicopter, specifically
for Jill. All the two of them have to do is meet it at the
factory's helipad. The factory's systems alert Jill and
Carlos that the missile has been launched, and unlock
the door to the helipad. Jill heads there, and Carlos runs
back into the factory to make last-minute preparations.

Apparently, the factory used a scrapyard as their landing
zone. Jill runs through a maze of crushed and stripped cars,
and finds that a small war was fought here recently. Several
dead U.S. Special Forces soldiers are lying outside of the
factory's power room, as well as the burning corpse of a
mutant (actually a Mr. X unit, like the one that attacked
Leon the day before). An official report is on the ground
near one of them, accompanied by a photograph of an
experimental new weapon code-named "Paracelsus's Sword." The
report specifically mentions using it to fight Umbrella's
bioweapons. The Sword is an enormous rail cannon, and looks
like just the thing to take out a Tyrant, but it's far too
big to have been snuck in. There's a mystery here, but Jill
doesn't have time to figure it out.

Jill enters the power room, and an explosion from outside
seals the door shut behind her. Dead bioweapons are lying
everywhere, including several Mr. X units and an older model
of the Tyrant, with several dead soldiers lying among them.
(Alert reader Petri Rantala points out that the dead, clawed
Tyrant in the corner has claws on both hands, which would
lead one to believe that it's a mutated Mr. X rather than
an old Tyrant.) On the other side of the room, Jill finds
the Paracelsus's Sword cannon, still hooked up to the
factory's power plant and aimed directly at the dead Tyrant.
Jill tries to turn it on. The cannon's computer tells her to
hook up several oversized batteries strewn around the room.

As Jill shoves the first battery into place, she hears the
sound of dripping water behind her. Chemicals slowly begin
to leak into the room. Jill turns around, and the Nemesis's
"corpse" falls through a hole in the ceiling. It squirms
towards her, mutating with every move it makes. Apparently,
exposure to whatever was in Umbrella's toxic waste dump
somehow allowed it to survive. It is now saturated with
acidic toxins, and spits them forth in a lethal shower.

Jill frantically hooks up the last two batteries to the rail
cannon. Paracelsus's Sword begins to charge up. Left with no
other choice, Jill has to turn and fight back. The Nemesis is
still a vicious opponent, but it's nowhere near as tenacious
as it was, and Jill's assault drives it away. The Nemesis limps
to the other side of the room and begins to chew on the Tyrant's
corpse. This places it in front of the rail cannon, which fires.

The rail cannon's blast shakes the room, tears through a
four-foot block of scrap metal, vaporizes the Tyrant's
corpse, and doesn't really look like it hurts the Nemesis
much at all. A second blast finally sends the Nemesis
screaming to the ground. Jill checks the radar receiver, which
tells her that she has less than five minutes before the nuclear
strike hits. Before she can leave, the Nemesis gets back up
for one last attempt to kill her. Jill dodges a blast of
venom and grabs a Magnum from one of the dead soldiers. Jill
stands over the the Nemesis and empties the gun into its head.
Finally, bleeding from its every pore, it stops moving.

Jill leaves the power room and takes an elevator up to the
helipad. Carlos takes the elevator up just after she does
and runs forward, lighting a signal flare. A blue-and-white
helicopter slowly descends to the ground in front of Carlos,
and both he and Jill climb aboard with a few minutes to spare.

=============================================================
4iii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=============================================================

Jill thanks the helicopter's pilot, who says that he couldn't
just let her die. Jill seems to recognize him and leans forward.
The pilot turns to her and asks her, "Are you ready to finish
this?" (The pilot's apparently supposed to be Barry Burton,
although it's never said out loud.)

A flash of light outside the window draws Jill's attention.
The nuclear missile flies past the helicopter and hits the
center of Raccoon City. The surviving zombies look up at
confusion at the bright light, just before they're
destroyed. A wave of fire rolls across the entire city,
utterly destroying it. All that remains is a smoking crater.

As the helicopter flies east, Jill, looking out the window
at what used to be Raccoon, vows that Umbrella is going down.

We're then treated to a news broadcast. The morning's top
news story is, of course, the nuclear strike on Raccoon. The
President and Congress planned and executed the destruction
of Raccoon City, which has been "literally wiped off the
map." More than a hundred thousand casualties are expected.

"Our hearts go out to the citizens... of Raccoon City."

====================
4iv. Different Paths
====================

The game's basic plotline can vary each time you play
through it. However, while the details change, the
fundamental events are always the same (Nicholai always
seems to have died, Jill always finds Carlos inside the
clock tower, etc.), so they aren't worth listing in full
here. For most of the choices, I've just kinda picked the
one that I liked more and used it for the summary.

The exception is that I deliberately placed Carlos in the
gas station. Nicholai is a huge badass, but I'm not willing
to believe that he's enough of a badass to survive an
explosion that levels a city block (unless the explosion, as
Vincent Merken and I have theorized, knocked him through a
plot hole). I can accept a lot, but that's just crazy.

=====================
4v. Different Endings
=====================

The ending I've used for the summary is apparently the
official one, as one of the files in Resident Evil: Survivor
is written by Nicholai on October 5th. The other two possible
endings are detailed below, and both of 'em wind up with
Nicholai being real dead.

Ending #2:
Instead of negotiating with Nicholai, Jill blows him out of
the sky. Aside from that small, yet satisfying, detail, this
is the same as Ending #1.

Ending #3:
Instead of jumping off the bridge, Jill shoves the Nemesis
off and walks into the abandoned factory via the front door.
She and Carlos meet up in the second-floor break room, where
a visibly exhausted Carlos tells her about the incoming
missiles. Things proceed as above after that, but when Jill
reaches the trash room, she's ambushed by Nicholai. From
cover in front of the trash room, Nicholai explains that
there's a "modest" bounty offered by Umbrella for whoever
kills Jill, which he intends to collect. Jill tells him,
basically, to stick it.

Nicholai replies by firing a couple more shots at Jill.
Something, probably the Nemesis, grabs Nicholai from behind.
Jill hears him scream, followed by some wet crunching
sounds. When she rounds the corner, she finds Nicholai's
dead body, hanging off of the pipes in the ceiling.

When Jill reaches the communications tower, she hears an
incoming transmission from Carlos. Carlos tells her to take
the nearby radar receiver and meet him elsewhere; he's found
a helicopter.

After Jill's showdown with the Nemesis, she rides the
elevator up to find Carlos waiting for her in Nicholai's
helicopter. Jill watches Raccoon explode as they fly off,
saying that this time, "they've gone too far."

=======================
4vi. The Epilogue Files
=======================

Every time the game is beaten on Hard Mode, an Epilogue is
shown after the credits and ranking screen. There are eight
Epilogues, each dealing with a major character from RE; in
order, the files are about Jill, Chris, Barry, Leon, Claire,
Sherry, Ada, and Hunk. Each file is about a paragraph long,
and is accompanied by original character art.

From the Epilogue Files, we know the following:

-- after escaping Raccoon, Jill found one of Chris's hideouts.
It was trashed, but Chris wasn't there. She plans to keep
looking for Chris so the two of them can finally take down
Umbrella. Carlos and Barry may or may not be with her.

-- Barry has left his family. He doesn't intend to return to
them until he's paid his friends back for betraying them.

-- after they escaped the lab at the end of RE2, Leon angrily
told Claire to leave him and Sherry alone. She promised to
return, and disappeared into the woods near Raccoon.

-- Leon has been made some kind of unspecified offer by
either the U.S. government or someone claiming to represent
them. He attempted to get them to leave Sherry out of this
offer, but she "knows too much." We do not know what Leon's
response to the offer was.

-- Sherry is in the custody of the U.S. Army, and is waiting
for Claire to come back.

-- the woman who had called herself Ada Wong survived. She
is leaving that identity behind, although not without tears,
and preparing for another mission.

-- Hunk is a little crazy, and has a tendency to be the
only one to survive the missions he's sent on. He's seen
without his mask in his file.

======================================
4vii. Conclusions About the Conclusion
======================================

Resident Evil 3 leaves us with the following information:

1. Raccoon City has been vaporized. Thousands are dead.

2. Jill and Carlos have survived, thanks to Barry Burton.

3. A vaccine exists for the T-Virus, and it's been given to
Jill. In theory, she's now immune to it.

4. Ada and Hunk are both still alive. This brings the known
total of Raccoon survivors to eight, out of more than a
hundred thousand.

5. Jill is newly dedicated to the destruction of Umbrella.
She's looking for Chris.

6. Umbrella is actively seeking the deaths of the remaining
members of S.T.A.R.S.. They have a "modest" price on Jill's head.

7. Claire Redfield is somewhere in America, continuing her
search for her brother.

8. Leon Kennedy and Sherry Birkin are in government custody.

9. Leon has gotten an unspecified "offer" from someone claiming
to be a government agent. While we know that he's still alive by
the time of Code Veronica, we don't know what his reaction to the
offer was or if the man making it was actually with the government.
(Wesker's Report says that Leon has joined an "underground anti-
Umbrella group," but once again, nothing specific.)

10. The U.S. government has attacked at least one Umbrella
facility with very little, if any, success.

11. Umbrella actually tried to *stop* the government from
nuking Raccoon. Apparently, there's something else going on
here that we don't know about.

12. Hunk survived. Umbrella has a sample of the G-Virus.

13. Someone on the development team hated Brad's guts.

=====================
4viii. Random Musings
=====================

1. In the power room, scattered amidst the dead Tyrants, are shards
of red containment capsules, similar to the one that Umbrella used
to transport Mr. X in RE2. If anyone was wondering where that
helicopter might have gone after it visited the RPD, it isn't a
enormous intuitive leap to say it went to the Dead Factory.

2. As I've mentioned below under Unanswered Questions, the
military blockade around Raccoon is apparently manned by spider
monkeys. Neither Leon or Claire so much as see a blockade, and
we've seen no fewer than six helicopters, some unmarked, enter
and leave Raccoon's airspace without any problems. (Count 'em.
You might even come up with a few that I missed.)

3. The Mercenaries minigame, while horrifyingly addictive,
doesn't really apply to the storyline. I would've thought
that this was obvious, but apparently, it isn't.

4. For those who didn't know, RE3 was subtitled Last Escape in
Japan. This is why Jill uses that phrase a lot. (Personally, I
think it's cool and should've been the subtitle of the American
version, but that's me.)

5. Although the back of the CD case says that Jill quit S.T.A.R.S.,
she never says as much in the game. As a matter of fact, she claims
membership several times ("Hey, I'm no ordinary civvie!" Shut up,
Jill. Just shut up).

6. According to an article in "Game Informer," Nemesis's design
was one of the rejected versions of Mr. X.

7. Cinematic parallels in RE3:
   -- _Return of the Living Dead_ also had an ending which involved
      a nuke. The end scenes of the movie and the end scenes of RE3,
      showing the nuke arcing towards ground zero, aren't identical
      but are thematically similar.
   -- furthermore, _Return of the Living Dead_ also has a scene
      where a small army of zombies rush a police barricade.
   -- the power station sequence is much like a similar scene in
      _Return of the Living Dead, Part 2_, especially if you opt
      to electrify the zombies.

================================================
5. Ten Thousand Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
================================================

Survivor, also known as Gun Survivor, is a cross between
Resident Evil and a first-person shooter. If you're playing
something other than the North American release, then you
get to use a light-gun with the game, which is probably
a lot more fun; if you're in North America, however, you
get to move your gunsight around the screen with your
control pad, and the game gets very annoying.

In any event, Survivor is the story of an amnesiac man who
wakes up in the middle of a biohazardous outbreak. He must
fight to stay alive, while he tries to figure out just who
he is, what he's doing here, and why everyone he meets is
either scared of him, or is trying to kill him...

==========================================================
5i. A Summary of the Basic Plot of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
==========================================================

In late November of 1998, an isolated city called Sheena Island
is the site of another T-Virus outbreak. In a short time, Sheena
Island is a ghost town, chiefly inhabited by Umbrella's monsters.

As the undead mill through the streets, a helicopter flies over
the town. A man in white, holding a gun, clings to one of the
helicopter's landing struts. He yells, "You won't get away!"
He fires once, apparently hitting something vital, and the
helicopter begins to burn. As the helicopter plummets towards
the street, the man in white falls off.

Some time later, a man in jeans and a brown parka wakes up
next to a burning helicopter. He doesn't remember anything about
who he is, where he is, or what he's doing there. All he has
is his Glock 17 pistol.

The man, our hero, sets out to explore the city. On the next
street over, he finds the body of the man in white, who looks
like he's dead. Our hero kneels over him, and finds a set of
dogtags in the man's hand, identifying him as Ark Thompson.
Our hero thinks that the man looks familiar, but a lone zombie
interrupts his examination. He executes the zombie,
and finds a rusted key in its pocket.

The key unlocks the front door of a nearby church. The church is
small, and relatively well-maintained; the only discordant note
is the Umbrella logo, carved into the wall above the altar. In
the church manager's office, our hero finds the man's diary, where
he has written about the destruction of the American city of Raccoon
at the hands of the renegade scientist, William Birkin.

Our hero leaves through the back door of the church, to an isolated
street where a pay phone is ringing. Whoever it is hangs up as soon
as our hero answers the 'phone.

After a brief fight with a pair of Lickers, our hero finds his way
to another ringing pay 'phone. He picks it up, and whoever is on
the other end calls him Vincent. Our hero is confused, but the
man continues talking, calling him a murderer. He denies it, demanding
more information from the man on the 'phone, but the man hangs up.

Suddenly, helicopters appear overhead. Our hero ducks into a nearby
arcade as men in the black and blue uniforms of SWAT officers
descend from overhead. Their commander, his voice muffled by a
respirator, reminds them of their orders; they are to cleanse the
area of its infection.

Inside the arcade, our hero sees a team of cleaners dispatch two
zombies, but then they attack him. Apparently, "cleansing the area"
is synonymous with "killing all the witnesses." Up close, the
"cleaners" look more like gorillas dressed in body armor than anything
else; their arms reach almost to their feet, and they roll around on
their knuckles like apes. They're remarkably fragile, though, and our
hero easily dispatches them. As they die, they scream like wildcats,
and their bodies dissolve into nothingness.

Our hero, as he searches the arcade, is nearly killed by a sniper.
The sniper yells a threat at "Vincent," but doesn't take another
shot. Our hero sneaks out of the arcade's basement, jimmying open
a manhole and entering the sewers.

The sewers are blissfully quiet. In the sewer manager's office,
our hero finds the man's diary. He has written about his meeting
with Vincent, the cruel and vicious man who was promoted to the
post of the city's supreme commander. When the manager took a
picture of Vincent for a souvenir, Vincent got angry. As our hero
searches the manager's desk, he finds the picture of Vincent. It
is of himself. Clearly, our hero concludes, he must be Vincent. He
must be this cruel man that he keeps hearing about.

As he contemplates this, a young boy enters the manager's office
behind him. As Vincent turns around, the boy begs him not to
kill him. Vincent is confused, and tells the boy that he won't
hurt him, but the boy doesn't listen, and runs away. Vincent
gives chase.

The boy's exit route leads straight to the front doors of a place
that claims to be Paradise. It is, in fact, a prison. Inside,
Vincent kills several zombies, and finds the diary of the prison's
warden. He refers to the prisoners as "guinea pigs," and has
written that a "mass suicide" that had taken place in mid-October
was, in fact, an escape attempt. Vincent put down the escape
attempt by shooting down the fleeing boys as they tried to
escape. Vincent intimidated the prison's chief into reporting
the incident to Umbrella as a mass suicide.

As bad as that is, the cell block is worse. Vincent finds the diary
of one of the former prisoners on a bed in one of the cells. The
prisoner was a boy, abducted from the Congo in late August and
brought to Sheena Island. He and his fellow prisoners were all
young, between fourteen and twenty years of age, and were gathered
from all over the world.

According to the boy, everyone in Sheena Island was an Umbrella
employee, even the women and the children. While he and his fellow
prisoners weren't mistreated, the guards took one of them to a
factory, elsewhere on the island, every so often. Whoever was
taken would never come back.

The boy eventually found out why, by eavesdropping on a conversation
between some factory workers in the nightclub. For whatever reason,
the factory workers were ordered by Vincent to take the prisoners,
the "guinea pigs," and extract some kind of material from their
brains. The boy heard this, and immediately resolved to escape.

When word of the disaster at Raccoon City reached Steena Island,
the prisoners used the guards' uneasiness to stage their escape
attempt. One way or another, the boy writes, he's probably dead,
but he'd rather die trying to escape.

Vincent finds a coil of rope nearby, and winds up reenacting the
boy's escape route by climbing down the side of one of the
guard towers. At the bottom of the guard tower, Vincent finds
himself face-to-face with a massive, trenchcoated figure. Clearly
inhuman, it attacks Vincent, and takes nearly three dozen
bullets before it falls. While Vincent has no idea what he's just
killed, Leon would recognize it as Mr. X.

Two more of the creatures are waiting for Vincent inside a nearby
nightclub. Barely evading them, Vincent bursts out the front door,
and finds himself across the street from a skyscraper bearing
the Umbrella logo. Clearly, he thinks, this is where Umbrella
controlled the island from. Memories flash through his mind as
he looks at the building, but they come and go too quickly.

The office is populated by zombies, lickers, and the occasional Hunter
bioweapon. Vincent blasts his way to the thirteenth floor, into what
would appear to have once been the office of the supreme commander--
his office. There's been extensive fire damage recently; the entire
room looks like a charcoal briquette. A bank of security monitors is
still active, and he can see a little girl sitting at a security
console elsewhere in the building.

Vincent finds his own diary on his old desk. In it, he's written
about many things, such as the escape attempt that he thwarted via
gunfire, and a boy named Lott who told him about a spy on the island.

His final entries speak of a plot amongst his subordinates on the
island. Due to his brutal execution of the escapees, his subordinates
planned to gather evidence about the incident and report it to Vincent's
superiors at Umbrella. Vincent, in a fit of insane rage, unleashed
the T-Virus on Sheena Island, making it look like an accident. Now,
he intends to dispatch the spy, and return to Umbrella for his reward.

Vincent's search is interrupted by a Mr. X unit punching through the
wall. After another intense gunfight, Vincent sends it crashing to
the ground, and picks a keycard out of the rubble. The keycard opens
a door further down the hallway, to the security office.

As Vincent enters the office, he hears an aged voice, claiming to
be his mother. His mother begs him to stop committing his horrible
crimes, and just come home. When he rounds the corner, he finds the
little girl, who's listening to one of Vincent's own telephone
conversations on tape. He tries to talk to the girl, who's upset
and crying, but someone nearly caves his skull in from behind with
a baseball bat. The boy from earlier threatens Vincent with his bat.
He grabs his sister, Lily, and runs for it.

On the security desk, Vincent finds yet more allegations against
himself. A document, apparently written by one of the leaders of
the conspiracy against him, says that not only did Vincent kill
one of his colleagues for a promotion, before coming to Sheena
Island, but through tapping Vincent's 'phone, the conspirators
had unquestionable proof that Vincent killed the escapees and
hushed it up. If Vincent hadn't destroyed Sheena Island, he'd
probably have wound up in a prison somewhere. Vincent pockets
the document and runs after the children.

While he's waiting for an elevator, Mr. X catches up to Vincent
once again. Another volley of gunfire takes the creature down,
and Vincent takes the elevator back down to the first floor. He
pursues the children through a parking garage, and through an
overflowing rain gutter choked with Hunters.

Finally, Vincent finds his way out of the gutter, to a small,
well-furnished house. He finds Lott's diary, and in the same
room, he finds Lily hiding in a closet. She tells him that Lott
has gone to the nearby factory, hoping to find a way out, but
she's afraid that with all the monsters in the factory, Lott
will be killed. Vincent decides that no matter who he was in
the past, that's not who he is now, and tells Lily that he'll
save Lott. He leaves Lily in her house, and enters the factory.

Lily wasn't kidding. The factory is overrun with lickers, Hunters,
zombies, and dogs. Vincent barely manages to stay alive as he
activates a tram car, taking him to another part of the factory.
He dispatches yet another Mr. X, only to find himself dumped
onto a mountain path where *four* of the creatures are standing
guard. These creatures are smarter than the ones he's fought
before, shielding their faces from Vincent's attack, and rushing
forward to try and knock him off of the path. Vincent blasts
through them, fighting his way to the top of the mountain.

The factory's entrance is a once-palatial mansion, now falling in
on itself. As Vincent picks his way through the wreckage, he hears
Lott scream from somewhere below. He makes his way downstairs.

Yet *another* Mr. X is waiting to greet Vincent. He blows it away
and proceeds into a control room, where he finds a Magnum revolver,
the controls to an elevator, and a panicked confession written by
one of the factory workers. The worker is hysterical over his work
in the factory, which involves removing parts of the brains of the
"guinea pigs," the teenage prisoners, and using those parts to
create Tyrants. Vincent has ordered that this operation be carried
out without anesthetic, which is driving the factory worker insane
with guilt and grief. After reading this, Vincent activates the
elevator, which carries him deeper into Umbrella's factory.

More zombies, lickers, and Hunters, led by yet another Mr. X,
are waiting for Vincent. More of Umbrella's experiments in the
creation of plant life are stored in tanks in this area, and,
of course, they escape at the worst possible time. With luck,
stealth, and sheer firepower, Vincent avoids or dispatches them
all. Finally, he catches up to Lott, just in time to save the
boy's life.

Lott thanks Vincent, who starts to explain his actions. Lott stares
at him blankly, and tells him that he's not Vincent after all. His
name is Ark Thompson. Lott had told the real Vincent about Ark's
arrival; Ark was the spy Vincent mentioned in his diary.

As Ark tries to digest this, a woman's voice comes over the factory's
speakers. Someone has triggered the base's self-destruct mechanisms.
Ark asks Lott how they can get out of the factory, and Lott says that
there's a railway system nearby. Ark says that he'll go there and set
it up, and tells Lott to go back and get his sister. Lott takes off.

As Ark heads through the next door, his memories suddenly return to
him in a rush. His friend, Leon Kennedy, had asked him to come to
Sheena Island and investigate it, and he'd posed as Vincent to do so.
That's how he had introduced himself to Andy, the sewer manager, and
how an eavesdropping Lott had found out about the "spy."

Ark remembers what had happened, just before the helicopter crash.
He had been ransacking Vincent's office when Vincent himself snuck
up on him. Vincent had been ready to shoot Ark, but Ark overpowered
him and escaped. During the scuffle, Vincent grabbed onto a set of
dogtags Ark was wearing and pulled them off, which is why he had them
in his hand when Ark found his body. As Ark attempted to take off
in a helicopter, Vincent grabbed onto the landing gear and took a
shot at him, which made the helicopter crash.

Ark unlocks the way to the railway station, and finds himself in
a final laboratory. At the lab's end is a vaguely humanoid creature,
floating in a vat. It is roughly the size of a teenage boy, but has
blue skin, no visible gender, and short claws on its left arm. A
nearby document, written by the real Vincent Goldman, tells of how
the prisoners were to be used.

The process that creates Tyrants requires a chemical called Beta
Hetero Nonserotonin. The chemical can only be found in the brains of
pubescent human beings between the ages of fourteen and twenty, and
is secreted by the pituitary gland when the human in question is
extremely terrified or tense. Vincent's recommendation is to perform
the necessary operation without anesthesia, which will cause the brain
to secrete plenty of the needed chemical. Ark pockets this last file,
takes a key from the lab, and heads towards the railway station.

Unfortunately, some old friends have invited themselves to the party.
Ark is confronted outside the Tyrant's lab by the leader of the Cleaners,
who is surprised that Ark is still alive. Just before he can shoot Ark,
he is suddenly impaled from behind. The Tyrant, fresh from its storage
vat, pulls its claws out of the man's back and advances on Ark. Luckily,
it's still slow and sluggish from its imprisonment, and Ark overcomes
it with relative ease. He leaves it in a bloody pile on the floor, and
is long gone when it stands back up and roars.

The Cleaners are waiting for Ark on the path to the railway station,
but compared to what he's been fighting, they're barely a threat at
all. He blasts through their ranks and finds Lott and Lily waiting
for him at the railway station. Ark opens the gate on the subway
tunnel, just in time for the Cleaners to spring one last ambush.
Ark foils their plans, and jumps into the train as it takes off.

The train takes them to an isolated helipad, and luckily, there's
still a helicopter on the ground. Lott and Lily climb into the
helicopter, but before Ark can join them, a large shape crashes
down in the middle of the helipad.

The Tyrant has returned.

===========================================================
5ii. A Summary of the Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
===========================================================

As one might expect, the Tyrant has mutated after its earlier defeat.
It is now much faster and stronger, and Ark can barely keep up
with it. He blasts it again and again with acid-laced grenades,
dodging its claw swipes and mad lunges.

For once, the Tyrant's uncontrollable mutations work against it.
Ark's assault eventually triggers another mutation; the Tyrant's
muscles swell to an immense size, to the point where it can barely
move. It is still dangerous, but it's no longer able to dodge Ark's
assault. Eventually, his attacks wear the creature down, and it
collapses in a bloody heap.

Ark hastily scrambles aboard the helicopter and takes off. As he
flies away from Sheena Island, the factory detonates. The explosion
utterly destroys Umbrella's factory, and devastates the remainder
of the island.

Suddenly, the helicopter shakes. Ark looks out the window, and finds
that once more, he's acquired a stowaway. The Tyrant slowly pulls
itself on board the helicopter, towards Lott and Lily.

Ark banks the helicopter, putting the Tyrant in line with one of the
helicopter's onboard missiles. He fires, and the missile takes the
Tyrant in the stomach. It screams in rage as it's carried away
from the helicopter by the impact, right up until Ark fires his
second missile at it. The Tyrant disappears in a flash of fire,
pieces of it raining into the ocean.

In the helicopter, Lott and Lily hold each other. Finally, Lily
asks Ark where they're going. He says that he doesn't know, but
that they can fly as long as they have fuel.

They fly into the rising sun, and the credits roll.

======================
5iii. Different Routes
======================

Survivor frequently makes you pick where to go, usually by offering
a choice between three doors or something like that. Most of the
time, the only real difference between routes is what you fight and
what you'll find. Please note that you can never double back and
choose another route once you've picked one, and that it's impossible
to collect all of the guns and files on a single run through the game.

The exception here is the second choice of direction, where you pick
between the Library, the Arcade, and the Hospital. Which of these you
pick determines what cutscene you see, and who shows up to get
slaughtered by the Tyrant at the end of the game.

If you enter the Arcade, you'll see a brief cutscene, as described
above, where the Cleaners descend upon the city. The leader of the
Cleaners will show up at the end of the game.

Upon going into the Library, you'll meet Andy the sewer manager, who
will beg for his life right up until you hear the sound of an
approaching helicopter. Andy will suddenly turn on you, and try to
catch you in a deathtrap on the second floor. For his efforts, he
gets the chance to be the Tyrant's victim.

Finally, if you choose the Hospital, Vincent will come back from
the dead. He watches Ark enter the hospital through the security
cameras in his office, and unleashes a Mr. X unit to track you
down. Vincent is the only one to hear the Cleaners' arrival, and
he muses aloud that Umbrella must be in a hurry. At the end of the
game, he gets to die again at the claws of the Tyrant.

Much like in my summary of RE3, I chose a route at random and went
with it. To duplicate my summary, go to the Church and the Arcade,
exit the Prison through the guard tower, run through Heaven's Night,
and take the door on the right when you leave the Factory.

=====================================
5iv. Conclusions about the Conclusion
=====================================

1. Ark Thompson, Lott, and Lily have survived.

2. Vincent Goldman is dead. Good riddance.

3. Nicholai Ginovaef survived Raccoon City.

4. Sheena Island has been destroyed, along with its laboratories
and its research. Umbrella has apparently lost a major facility
for production of its bioweapons.

5. Nicholai Ginovaef is currently working for Umbrella in some
kind of advisory capacity.

6. Leon Kennedy is alive and is still working against Umbrella.

7. Umbrella is a lot more depraved than we thought. Each Tyrant
that's created means that a teenager, somewhere, died screaming.

==================
5v. Random Musings
==================

1. Say what you will about how lame CV's ending is, but Survivor's
ending just blows it out of the water.

2. Separated at birth: Andy, and Chrono Cross's Sprigg?

3. I really don't much care for this game. I can see how it'd be
a lot more fun with a light gun, but with a control pad, it
becomes incredibly frustrating. For example, due to the limitations
of the control pad, dogs are the toughest enemy in the game.

4. Alert reader Phoenix notes that the endings of Survivor and
George Romero's _Dawn of the Dead_ are remarkably similar.

==================================================
6. Sibling Rivalries: RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
==================================================

Code Veronica initially came out for the Dreamcast, but was
rereleased as Code Veronica X in September of 2001. It's
easily more than twice as long as any previous RE game, with
a surprisingly elaborate story, and as such, is going to
require the Plot Summary From Hell. You might want to go
get a drink or something.

The rerelease of CV contained a few new scenes and a much
longer ending. All new scenes will be enclosed in [brackets]
over the course of the summary. If they aren't here, that's
because I haven't seen them, and they'll be added eventually.

Code Veronica, in brief, follows Claire Redfield as she
continues to look for Chris. She's captured in an Umbrella
facility in Paris and sent to an Umbrella-run prison camp
in South America. She manages to escape when the prison
is attacked by an unknown third party, and must contend
with Alfred Ashford, the insane descendant of one of the
original founders of Umbrella.

The last third of the game features the long-awaited return
of Chris Redfield, as he arrives on the island to try and
save Claire. Unfortunately, not only is he too late, but
an old enemy is waiting for him.

=====================================================
6i. A Lovely Island Hideaway: CODE VERONICA, Part One
=====================================================

In December of 1998, Claire Redfield travels to Paris and
infiltrates an Umbrella facility there, hoping to find clues
to the whereabouts of her brother Chris.

She's discovered, and a chase ensues. As she runs from a
pair of armed guards, a bright light coming through a window
blinds her. When her eyes clear, she sees an attack helicopter
hovering outside the building. Its chaingun begins to warm up.
Claire doubles back and ducks into the nearest hallway, as the
chaingun chews the guards that were chasing her to ribbons.

The helicopter chases Claire the rest of the way down the
hall. Just before its gunfire catches up with her, Claire
jumps through an open door and down a flight of stairs. She
rolls to her feet and finds herself eye-to-eye with at least
two dozen of Umbrella's guards, all of whom are pointing guns
at her. As they walk forward, Claire sees that they're standing
in front of a tank full of flammable chemicals. Claire puts
her hands up, drops her gun, hits the floor, catches the gun
before it hits the ground, and puts her last three bullets
into the tank. The resulting explosion sends the guards flying.

Claire gets to her feet as another guard comes down the
stairs. Both she and the guard react at the same time,
shoving their guns in each other's faces, but the guard's
gun has bullets in it. Hers doesn't.

Claire is captured, and, ten days later, is taken by
helicopter to an isolated prison. She spends most of the
ride there with a bag over her head. It's taken off as a
guard tells her what her serial number is, and welcomes her
to her new home. Another guard cracks Claire in the face
with the butt of his rifle. Claire blacks out.

She wakes up in a dank cell, somewhere underground. As Claire
stands up, the cell shakes with distant explosions. It sounds
as though a war is being fought aboveground. The lights flicker
and die, leaving Claire alone in the darkness.

Slowly, someone clutching his stomach shambles into the room
and stands outside Claire's cell door. Claire uses her lighter
to see who it is, and is surprised to see the face of the man
who took her prisoner in Paris.

The man unlocks her cell and opens the door. As Claire
hesitantly steps outside her cell, he slumps into a nearby
chair and pulls an empty bottle of medicine out of his
pocket. He throws it against the floor in frustration. Not
looking up, he tells Claire that this place is finished.
They've been attacked by what he thinks is a "special forces
team." Claire's free to leave the prison grounds, but he
warns her that she has no chance of getting off of the island.

Before leaving the cellblock, Claire picks up a knife, and
notes that the man needs hemostatic medicine. A manifest on
the desk tells her that the man's name is Rodrigo Juan Raval,
and that he's a member of Umbrella's medical division.

It's raining gently when Claire gets outside. The cellblock
opens into a small graveyard. A truck has crashed through
the wall, and is burning merrily. Suddenly, it explodes. A
burning man climbs out of the driver's seat. One good look
tells Claire that the man's become a zombie. Somehow, the
T-Virus has been released. As Claire backs away from the
burning zombie, more emerge from open graves all around her.
Claire scrambles to her feet and runs through the nearest door.

Claire gets about two steps out of the door when someone
opens fire on her from a guard tower. Taking cover behind
the crashed truck, she grabs a handgun off of a dead man and
returns fire, shattering the gunman's spotlight and forcing
him to take cover. The man screams. Claire demands that he
tell her who he is. The man--a boy, really--is glad to
see that she's not a zombie like he'd thought, and hops down
from the tower. He introduces himself as Steve, another
prisoner, and says that he's looking for an airport that he'd
heard was on the island. Claire tries to follow him as he
leaves, but Steve claims that she'd only slow him down.

The prison is only lightly populated with zombies, so Claire
doesn't have much trouble as she searches the place. Inside
a nearby mess hall, she finds a map of the facility, as well
as one of the other prisoners' diaries. The prisoner had
managed to figure out that the island is south of the equator.

The prison's file room and computer lab is nearby. Claire
runs into Steve, who's playing with one of the computers.
Steve asks her if she's related to Chris Redfield. When she
says she is, he shows her that Chris is under electronic
surveillance by Umbrella. Claire uses the computer's Internet
connection to forward Chris's location to Leon Kennedy via
e-mail, hoping that Leon can figure out some way to help
her. Steve tells her that the latitude and longitude of the
prison is stored on the computer and, with a snort, suggests
that she have Leon forward that to her brother so he can
come help them out. Claire thinks it's a good idea and does
so, but Steve indignantly claims to have just been kidding;
Chris won't come to help them. Claire denies this. Steve says
angrily that other people will just let you down, and storms
out of the computer lab. Claire is left alone again, wondering
what Steve's problem is.

Using one of the machines in the file room to forge a key,
Claire lets herself out the prison's front gate. A recent
rockfall has blocked the main exit and destroyed the main
bridge, so Claire runs up a nearby staircase instead. To her
surprise, she's now standing in front of a military training
facility on one side, and a mansion on the other. She decides
to investigate the mansion first.

The mansion hasn't escaped damage in the recent assault, but
the interior is more or less intact. Claire finds an ornate,
locked door in a study on the second floor, but instead of
keys, the door is molded so as to accept a pair of guns. In
the same room, she finds a diary kept by one of the servants
that lived here. The servant talks about his master, Alfred,
and how Alfred is incredibly secretive about his relationship
with his sister Alexia. No one is allowed near her, or has
even seen her except at a distance, sitting in the window of
Alfred's house.

Someone's private war museum is on the first floor.
Antique handguns and models of battleships line the walls.
Claire presses a button near a sculpture of a giant ant, and
an old movie begins to play on the room's screen. The movie
features two blond-haired, beautiful children, a boy and a
girl, obviously twins. Slowly, the boy plucks the wings off
of a dragonfly, and sets the helpless insect in an ant farm
to be devoured. As the dragonfly writhes, the boy turns to
the girl, and both share an innocent smile.

The end of the movie coincides with a secret door opening in
the corner of the room. Claire finds a pair of gold-inlaid
Luger handguns inside, but taking them from the wall mount
they're on sets off a trap. The door slams shut, and hidden
heaters turn the secret room into a furnace. Claire quickly
replaces the guns and tries to leave the mansion, but as she
reaches the front door, she hears Steve scream for help. She
returns to the museum to find that he's caught himself in
Alfred's trap, and refuses to put the Lugers back on the wall.
Claire quickly figures out the room's computer systems and
releases the secret door, freeing Steve from the trap. Steve,
happy with his new guns, shows off for Claire. Claire recognizes
the guns as the ones she needs to open the door in the study,
but Steve refuses to give them to her unless she gives him
something fully automatic. Once again, he runs off.

In the front hall of the mansion, Claire notices a laser
sight as it focuses on her head. She dives to the side and
hides behind a pillar. The gunman, a blond man dressed in a
blend of preppy fashion and military gear, demands that she
tell him who her friends are. He's convinced that Claire
deliberately let herself be captured so she could lead her
allies to his base to destroy it. Claire says that she
doesn't know what he's talking about, but he doesn't believe
her. His name is Alfred Ashford, he says, commander of the
base. Claire retorts that he must be one of Umbrella's
low-ranking employees if he's in command of such a small,
isolated facility. Alfred angrily tells her that his family,
the Ashfords, is one of the oldest and greatest in the world.
His grandfather was one of the original founders of Umbrella
Incorporated. Having said his piece, he leaves, telling Claire
that she's just a rat in a cage.

A strange setup outside the palace, when Claire plays with
it, brings a submarine to the surface. She goes in,
hoping to use it to get away, but instead, winds up in an
underwater port for seaplanes; this must be the "airport"
that Steve was talking about. A cargo plane is docked inside.
If Claire finds a pilot, she could use it to escape. Even
better, she's already found one of the three keys she'll
need to unlock its hatch.

Claire finds a keycard inside an abandoned cargo bay, and heads
back to the military training facility to see what it unlocks.
The training yard is guarded by an enormous worm, which
tunnels under the ground and attempts to devour Claire. She
dodges it and runs into the facility.

Stairs just inside the entrance lead to a lab on the second
floor. The lab's experiment area is locked down due to
environmental pollution. As Claire walks by the lab's
observation window, a man in a biohazard suit desperately
beats against it, trying to get her to open the door. Claire
can't, and helplessly watches as something behind the man
grabs him. The man's skull is crushed against the glass.
As he sinks to the floor, a recording on the overhead
speakers alerts Claire that the area has been contaminated,
and will be locked down for ventilation. Claire barely makes
it out of the lab before it seals itself.

Claire finds extra ammunition in the facility's locker room,
then sets out to explore the rest of the first floor. As she
walks down a hallway, a steel gate silently shuts behind her.
In the next room, Alfred Ashford tries to ambush her, and
fails. Claire dodges his badly aimed gunfire and runs up to
the balcony where he's aiming from, but Alfred is already gone.
She chases him in the only direction he could've run in, but
he seals every door behind her from somewhere else in the
complex. As the final door locks, he jeers at her from a
hidden speaker, telling her that he's prepared a special
surprise for her. He hopes that she won't die too quickly.

The only door that Alfred's left unlocked leads to a
storeroom. A discarded pair of Ingram submachine guns lies
on the balcony with Claire. She picks them up, just in time
to watch a door on the other side of the room open. A new
creature makes it way in; it resembles a zombie, except it
only has one long arm. Its upper body is bulging with
muscle. As Claire watches in horror, the creature's arm
stretches to an impossible length, grabbing a pipe in the
ceiling and using it to swing over to her. Claire barely
manages to kill the creature.

As the rubber man falls dead, Alfred opens a door via remote
control. Claire tries to walk through it, but another rubber
man drops from the ceiling and seizes her head with its arm.
Claire struggles vainly against it as it hoists her into the
air, threatening to either crush her skull or suffocate her.

Suddenly, a window above the creature shatters. Steve
dives through it, blasting the rubber man with the Lugers.
Roaring in pain, the rubber man drops Claire. Steve drives
it backward with a barrage of gunfire, kicks it into the
corner, and finishes it off with a final gunshot to the
head. He walks over and greets Claire, claiming to be her
"knight in shining armor." Claire denies that he's any such
thing, but offers him the Ingrams she found as a trade for
his Lugers. Steve accepts the trade. Suddenly, the floor
they're on begins to descend.

When the floor stops moving, Steve runs ahead of Claire
through the nearest door, anxious for an opportunity to try
out his "new toys." Claire catches back up to him on a
bridge overlooking the facility's sewer system, probably by
following the long trail of spent shells and dead zombies
he's left behind him. Steve claims that this is why Claire
needs him around; he'll watch her back. He then contradicts
himself, saying that the Ingrams he's been using are more
reliable than any person. Claire, who's still confused by
him, asks him why he's on this island, and where his family
is. Steve's response is to yell that he doesn't want to talk
about it and to shoot at the wall. He runs into a nearby
elevator, and Claire follows.

The path Alfred has set for them leads to a balcony
overlooking a motor pool. As Claire runs up to Steve, the
balcony collapses underneath them. Steve falls free of the
balcony, but Claire drops her gun and is pinned underneath
a chunk of rubble. A zombie shambles towards Steve, who
raises his Ingrams, but doesn't fire. Claire yells at him
to shoot it, but Steve is seemingly frozen in place. The
zombie turns towards Claire. Claire yells for Steve to help
her as the zombie bends down to attack. Steve hesitates
for a single long moment, then levels both Ingrams at the
zombie and yells, "FATHER!" He empties both guns into the
zombie, trying to fire even when he's out of ammunition.
Slowly, Steve sinks to his knees, sobbing.

Steve explains to Claire that his father used to work for
Umbrella, but had begun stealing information and auctioning
it off to the highest bidder. Umbrella caught him. Steve's
mother was killed, and he and his father were sent to this
prison. He despises his father for being so reckless and
stupid. Claire comforts him, telling him to rest, and leaves
him alone to mourn.

Alfred has apparently given up on his "deathtrap." The only
other problems Claire encounters in the military facility are
zombies and the odd mutated dog. In a storeroom, she finds
a copy of the Ashford family crest, which depicts an eagle
clutching a halberd in its claws. The crest is forged of
some kind of blue metal, while the halberd seems to be inlaid
gold. Elsewhere in the facility, the crest opens a compartment
containing a copy of Alfred's personal keycard. Using that
and the keycard she found earlier, Claire is able to unlock
most of the doors inside the base. Among other things, she
finds a grenade launcher and a vial of the kind of medicine
that Rodrigo needs.

Claire unlocks another door to find a monitor room. The
screens are still lit up. Inside, she finds the second key
to the cargo plane's door, as well as data on a creature
called an "Albanoid," the result of injecting the T-Virus
into a salamander. The creature is capable of generating
powerful electric shocks, and reaches adulthood only ten
hours after being "born." One of the monitors tells her what
the password to the lab she had to escape from earlier is,
as well as letting her know that the lab's systems have
finished the ventilation process. Claire heads back there.

Inside the lab, Claire takes a painting she finds on the wall.
As she does so, an infant Albanoid breaks out of one of the
nearby storage vats. Before Claire can do anything, the
insanely quick creature disappears into one of the ventilation
shafts. Claire is forced to escape from the lab a second time,
as the automated systems declare the lab contaminated and
permanently seal the area.

In the storeroom where Claire found the Ashfords' crest, she
uses the painting to solve a puzzle. The wall of the
storeroom slides back, revealing an elaborate diorama of the
facility and a golden key.

Heading back to the mansion, Claire uses the Lugers to
unlock the door in the study. The door leads to what looks
like Alfred's private office. Using his computer, Claire
discovers yet another secret passage, leading through an
abandoned aqueduct to an enormous house, sitting high up the
side of a mountain. Claire heads towards it as lightning and
thunder crash in the distance, and a woman's mocking
laughter echoes over the island...

The house has been hit fairly hard by the assault on the
island. It's guarded by rubber men, but Claire easily avoids
them and gets inside. The interior of the house is a twisted
parody of childhood; either dolls or books cover every
available surface. A larger-than-life doll dangles from the
chandelier hook in the ceiling; it has been eviscerated.
Most of the furniture is sized for children, or for dolls.

On the house's second floor, Claire walks in on a
conversation between Alfred and his until-now-absent sister,
Alexia. As Claire lurks outside her bedroom window, Alexia
asks an unseen Alfred what's taking so long, when his
opponent is only a little girl. Alfred's success is
necessary, Alexia continues, to restore the honor of the
Ashford family. Alfred insists that he doesn't need to be
reminded. He intends to raise Alexia to the position of
leader of the once-again-glorious Ashford family. Alexia
sees Claire, but chalks it up to her own imagination.
The twins, having finished their conversation, leave.

Cautiously, Claire enters the twins' bedrooms, but no one is
in either of them, and she didn't see either of them in the
hall. A locked secret door above the bed in Alexia's room
tells her why. Both rooms have an ornate, locked music box,
both of which require yet another unique key. Claire finds a
silver key in Alexia's room and heads back to the mansion.

Claire uses the keys she's found to unlock several doors
inside the palace. One door leads to a boardroom, where,
after a frantic battle with a pair of rubber men, she finds
another copy of the Ashfords' crest. Another room, a private
casino, is apparently where Alfred goes for recreation.

The last and largest room in the palace is a shrine to the
past leaders of the Ashford family. An oil painting of a
twelve-year-old Alfred is in the place of highest honor. An
inscription tells the onlooker to find the family's real
master, with a history of the Ashfords lying underneath it.
When Claire solves the puzzle, the picture of Alfred
rotates, revealing a painting of an adult Alexia. Underneath
her picture, Claire finds an ant-shaped key that will fit
the music box in Alexia's bedroom.

With nowhere to go for now, Claire takes the crest back to
the prison, where it unlocks a door she saw earlier. The door
leads to the prison's medical facility, which is guarded by
a mob of zombies. Claire dispatches them handily. Inside the
medical facility, she finds stacked body bags and the journal
of the facility's doctor. The doctor is apparently just as sick
and crazy as everyone else who works for Umbrella, and Alfred
lets him use the base's prisoners to pursue his "studies." If
the base hadn't been attacked, Claire herself might've been one
of the doctor's guinea pigs.

Claire investigates the prison's crematorium, which has
little of interest besides a small chair in the corner,
sized for a child. When she comes back, one of the body bags
is empty, and a zombie in a lab coat is feeding desperately
on the dissected corpse. The doctor has apparently returned.
Claire shoots him dead, and finds a glass eye on his body.
The eye fits in the doctor's anatomical dummy, which opens
a secret passage to the doctor's private torture chamber,
filled with antique but well-used torture devices. Blood
cakes the floor. Claire finds a roll of piano music in this
hellish place, and leaves as soon as she can.

Rodrigo is still in the dark cellblock when Claire gets back
there. She gives him the vial of medicine. A surprised Rodrigo
thanks her, but refuses any further help. Claire lets him keep
her lighter, and mentions that it was a gift from her brother.
In gratitude, Rodrigo gives her a set of lockpicks, and urges
her to leave while she still can.

[Claire returns to Alfred's palace. As she puts her hands on
 the front door, someone behind her says her name. She asks
 who he is, and he claims he is a "ghost from the past, come
 back to haunt your brother Chris." Claire recognizes the man
 as Wesker. Wesker says that it's good to see her; he attacked
 the island, but wasn't expecting Claire to be there. Now
 Chris will definitely show up, he says with a smile. Claire
 says that she doesn't know what went on between Wesker and
 Chris, but Chris isn't the kind of person Wesker seems to
 think he is. Wesker's response is to grab Claire by the
 throat and toss her about twenty feet away.

[He walks up to the struggling-to-move Claire and cruelly
 puts one foot on her shoulder. It will pain Chris to see
 Claire die, Wesker says. However, he's interrupted by a
 radio message. Whoever it is apparently has new information,
 and Wesker winds up walking away. Apparently, Claire may
 still be of use to him, Wesker says. He looks back at
 Claire, and his eyes glow red through his sunglasses.
 Claire gasps, and Wesker, his body blurring with sudden
 speed, jumps over the patio railing into darkness.]

The piano roll from the torture chamber fits in the piano in
Alfred's recreation room. As the piano plays the same song
that Alfred's music box did, a secret panel in one of the
slot machines swings open. Inside, Claire finds the key to
Alfred's music box.

The music boxes are the disguised keys to a secret door in
Alfred's bedroom. Claire goes through to find herself
standing on a full-sized merry-go-round with only two
horses. The room is filled with toys and keepsakes of the
twins' childhood. A golden dragonfly sits on a child's
chair, across the room from a painting of an ant. The ant's
mouth is a concealed keyhole. Remembering the movie in
Alfred's museum, Claire plucks the dragonfly's wings off and
puts it in the ant's "mouth." Behind her, the merry-go-round
starts up again and turns, orienting itself so Claire can
climb up to yet another level in the room.

The final tier of Alfred's hideaway is a well-cared-for
study. Thick, well-thumbed books on biology, chemistry,
and genetics fill the bookcases on the walls. A newspaper
clipping on a stool is about a 10-year-old girl, maybe
Alexia, who graduated from a university with top honors.
She was offered a job as a head researcher by Umbrella
Incorporated. On top of one of the bookcases, Claire finds
Alfred's private diary. He has written of his unwholesome
obsession with his sister; he regards Alexia as his queen,
a woman who the entire world must worship. Claire takes the
diary, and finds that it hides the final key to the cargo
plane. She can finally escape.

As she climbs down into Alexia's bedroom, Alexia herself
somehow sneaks up on Claire. Holding Alfred's rifle, Alexia
tells Claire that for the glory of the Ashfords, she must
die. Claire dodges Alexia's first shot, but she knows the
second won't miss. Alexia moves in for the kill.

Suddenly, Steve kicks in the bedroom door. He sees Alexia at
the same time she sees him, and each point their weapon at
the other. Alexia fires first, grazing Steve. As Steve
falls to the floor, he returns the favor with a wild burst
from one of his Ingrams. Alexia retreats into Alfred's bedroom
through a secret door.

Steve and Claire cautiously follow Alexia. At the end of a
trail of blood, Claire finds a blond wig on Alfred's music
box. As she picks it up, Alfred suddenly jumps from above
his bed, meaning to crush Claire's skull with the butt of
his rifle. Claire dodges, and as Alfred takes a second swing,
Steve kicks him across the room and holds him at gunpoint.

Alfred drags himself shakily to his feet, and accidentally
catches a glimpse of himself in the bedroom window. He's
wearing the same makeup that Alexia was. Screaming insanely,
Alfred runs, and a shocked Steve lets him go.

Steve, confused, asks what just happened. Claire, realizing
that she never did see Alfred during his "conversation" with
Alexia, concludes that there must never have really been
an Alexia. Alfred went to such extremes to hide Alexia from
everyone on the island because he thought he *was* Alexia.

This weirds Steve out, who decides that now they *really*
have to get out of this place (forget about the undead monsters;
it takes a *transvestite* to bother our man Steve). No sooner
does he say that than alarm klaxons start ringing all over the
factory. Alfred has activated the base's self-destruct system
by remote control.

Several cargo planes fly overhead as Claire and Steve leave
the mansion. Steve guesses that the other survivors are on
them. Quickly, Claire and Steve follow their example and run
for the underwater airport. Claire's keys unlock the cargo
plane's door, and Steve sets into the pilot's seat. He begins
to prepare the plane for takeoff, but he realizes that the
airport's maintenance bridge is in the way. Claire volunteers
to raise the bridge while Steve gets ready to take off.

Claire dashes across the airport and throws a switch, raising
the bridge. This forces her to take the long way around to get
back to the plane. Claire uses the airport's cargo elevator to
return to the training facility's courtyard. A female voice,
almost exactly the same as the one she heard in William Birkin's
lab, tells Claire that the facility will explode in five minutes.

As Claire boards the elevator, Alfred has reached the training
facility's monitor room. Speaking in Alexia's voice, he swears
revenge on Claire. He types a series of passwords into a computer
and punches a red button.

A lab elsewhere in the facility suddenly powers up. Automated
systems defrost a storage tank marked T-078. It swings open, and
a new creature steps out. It looks nearly human, save for its
chalk-white skin and lack of gender. Both arms terminate in
clublike, spiked protrusions. A new Tyrant has been unleashed.

Claire starts running the moment the elevator opens. As she
turns the corner towards Alfred's palace, the Tyrant breaks
down a fence and steps into her way. It wades through a hail
of explosive bolts, only to collapse at Claire's feet. Claire
jumps over its body and takes off towards the airport.

Steve is anxiously waiting for her when Claire gets back to
the plane. He takes off, just as the base begins to rock
with scattered explosions. They get into the air without a
hitch, and for a moment, Claire dares to think that their
ordeal is over. Steve tells her that he hopes she finds her
brother, because he now knows what it's like to be alone in
the world. After an uncomfortable silence, he changes the
subject, asking her where she wants to go. Claire suggests
Hawaii, and Steve sets a course.

Back on the island, Alfred runs to the antique tank he keeps
outside the military training facility. He opens a hatch on
its back and moves the tank forward, revealing yet another
secret passage. Using a special key, a minature gold halberd
like the one on his family crest, Alfred opens the door at
the passage's end. He maintains a hangar here. Alfred climbs
into a Harrier jet marked with the Ashfords' crest, and promises
Claire that he will show her what real terror is all about.

A sudden impact shakes the cargo plane. Steve looks at the
plane's instruments, and somehow, the cargo bay's door has
come open. Claire volunteers to check it out.

Claire finds a stowaway in the cargo bay. The Tyrant turns
to her. It roars in anger, and one of its spikes grows into
a vicious claw. Claire's weapons only seem to slow the
creature down, but fortunately, the cargo catapult is
loaded and ready to fire. Claire leads the Tyrant near the
open cargo bay door, dodges one of its mad lunges, and hits
the switch on the catapult. A crate full of explosives is
fired at the weakened Tyrant, knocking it out the cargo
hatch. Before they can hit the ocean, the crate explodes.

As she walks into the cockpit, Steve asks Claire what was
wrong. Claire nonchalantly tells him that it was nothing. As
Steve grins, the plane's autopilot suddenly turns on. Steve
tries to turn manual control back on, with no luck. Alfred's
sneering face appears on a screen above the pilot's seat.
With a chuckle, he tells Claire and Steve that he's selected
a new destination for them.

Several hours pass. Steve is slumped against the side of the
cockpit, with Claire asleep on his shoulder. He turns to
look at her, and slowly lowers his face to hers. Just before
he can kiss her, Claire starts to wake up, and Steve jerks
away. Standing up, he looks out the plane's window and
realizes that the plane is descending. Steve looks at the
plane's instruments and realizes that they're over the Antarctic.

As the plane heads towards the ground, Claire sees a small
facility on the ground. Parked outside it are the cargo
planes that they saw leave the island. Apparently, Umbrella
owns this base as well.

The plane's autopilot apparently doesn't know how to land.
It descends to the base's runway, but goes into a skid. The
plane crashes into the side of the base. Both Claire and
Steve are knocked unconscious.

More time passes. Claire wakes up on the floor of the
plane's cockpit and shakes Steve. As he comes to, Steve is
surprised to be alive.

Umbrella's base is constructed around a deep chasm of some
sort. Steve kicks the plane's door out and jumps down onto
the base's balcony. As Claire jumps out, he catches her, but
accidentally falls down with her on top of him. After a few
seconds' worth of cheap sexual tension, Claire gets to her
feet and offers Steve her hand. Steve ignores her and gets
up, saying that the plane is trashed. At his suggestion,
they split up and look for a way out.

Alone, Claire explores the base. In a barracks for
Umbrella's employees, she's caught in a crude ambush by a
quartet of zombies. The base may look deserted, but it's
still inhabited by its share of monsters.

The base appears to be both a mine, although Claire never
finds out what it's mining for, and a warehouse for Umbrella's
chemical shipments.  One of the miners has left his diary
behind. He has written about both Alfred's tyranny
as a supervisor, and the creature that's rumored to haunt
the base. The miners call him "Nosferatu," and say that
late at night, you can hear him roar.

A richly furnished office on the base's second floor belongs
to Alfred, and inside, Claire finds a note written to Alfred
from his family's butler, offering Alfred condolences on his
sister's death. There *was* an Alexia Ashford, but according
to the letter, she died in an unspecified accident fifteen
years ago, soon after Alfred's father died. Alfred was forced
to assume the responsibilities of an adult at a young age, and
lost his beloved sister soon afterward. His insanity starts to
make a little more sense.

A second folder contains a report/confession by Alexander
Ashford, the twins' father and the original architect of
this base. His report concerns the founding of Umbrella, the
creation of the T-Virus, the death of his own father, and
the Ashfords' fall from grace. The most interesting revelation
by far is the fact that there's a great deal of competition
in the field of T-Virus research. Umbrella isn't the only
company in the world that deals in monsters.

After dealing with the base's meager population of zombies,
dogs, and giant spiders, Claire reactivates the base's
generator. Now that the lights are back on, Claire searches
Alfred's office again and finds a hidden switch. Pushing it
slides a door back, revealing a room with a mesh floor. Far
below this room, a screaming man is blindfolded, gagged, and
shackled to the wall. An ornate battle axe is embedded in the
wall with its haft across his chest. His scream is a completely
inhuman, bonechilling sound. This must be the "Nosferatu" that
the miner was writing about. Claire finds the key to the base's
machine room and leaves Nosferatu's prison.

The base's mining drill can be controlled from the machine
room. Claire meets back up with Steve, who tells her that
there's an Australian outpost seven miles from the base. If
they can use the drill to break out of the base, they might
be able to reach the outpost. Steve takes control of the
drill and starts to guide it towards the wall, but at a
crucial moment, he's staring dreamily at Claire instead of
watching what he's doing. He winds up smashing open a pipe
filled with toxic gas, which fills the mining and machine
rooms. Claire grabs him by the scruff of the neck and yanks
him out of the room.

Steve gets outside and immediately starts beating himself
up over being so stupid. Claire tells him to not blame
himself. (Not right *now*, anyway.) Whatever happens,
they'll escape, and they'll do it together. Steve is cheered
up by this, and runs off to find a way to fix what he's done.
Claire, using a gas mask and a reshaped valve handle,
proceeds to do it for him by shutting off the flow of gas
through the pipes.

The air clears in the mining room. Claire takes off the gas
mask and is immediately ambushed by a freshly arrived Alfred
Ashford. Steve arrives in the nick of time, and, after a short
gunfight, shoots Alfred in the chest. Alfred falls over the
railing of the machine room to the floor of the mining room,
next to one of the yawning pits that the base was built on top
of. He staggers to his feet, but the edge of the pit crumbles
underneath him. Alfred falls out of sight, screaming. After he
disappears, something at the bottom of the pit roars in rage.

Claire picks up Alfred's sniper rifle and gets into the
mining drill with Steve. Steve throws the drill into gear
and drives forward through the wall. The heat produced by
the drill melts the ice on the other side of the wall, which
in turn floods most of the base.

In his prison below Alfred's office, Nosferatu roars. His
chest splits open with a sickening crack, revealing his
oversized first-generation-Tyrant-esque heart. With casual
ease, he pulls himself away from the wall, snapping steel
shackles like spider webs. The axe across his chest is
thrown across the room and sticks in the floor. Nosferatu
staggers forward, still roaring...

Steve and Claire get out of the drill. They climb up to the
top of a nearby helipad, and find a staircase on the other
side. Claire is about to go down the stairs when she sees
Nosferatu at their bottom, coming up. Steve steps in front
of her and points his Ingrams at Nosferatu, yelling for it
to back off. Suddenly, an enormous mandible, like that of a
praying mantis, sprouts from the Nosferatu's back and swats
Steve, sending him tumbling off of the edge of the helipad.
Claire runs to where Steve fell, to find him clinging by one
hand to one of the helipad's support struts. Steve begs
Claire to run and save herself. Claire replies that she'll
help him up as soon as she, and I directly quote her, waxes
the monster. Using Alfred's rifle, Claire calmly shoots
out Nosferatu's exposed heart. (Claire really has started
being very blase about this whole thing. It's cool.)

Claire helps Steve up. Steve apologizes; despite having
saved her life at least three times in the last day, he
feels that he failed her against Nosferatu. Claire claps him
on the shoulder and tells him to forget it. Steve stands up,
clutching the bullet wound Claire just accidentally hit, and
quietly promises that next time, he will protect her.

At the bottom of the stairs, Claire and Steve find a
snowmobile. Claire gets into the driver's seat and starts it
up. It'll easily reach the Australian outpost.

Somewhere in the base, Alfred Ashford drags himself down a
long hallway. He is mortally wounded. In his own voice, he
promises Claire that things aren't over between them.

Alfred collapses inside a laboratory, on a set of stairs
leading to a raised platform. In a faint voice, he says
Alexia's name. Suddenly, a series of computers and monitors
activate. A cylinder rises in front of Alfred and defrosts.
Fluid drains out of it, revealing the form of a naked,
blonde woman.

"Alexia... you're finally awake. Alexia..." Alfred says.
They are his last words. He dies.

The woman's eyes widen in anger.

Claire and Steve talk and joke as they drive towards freedom.

Something shatters the roof of Umbrella's Antarctic base. In
a blur, moving so fast that it's unidentifiable, it races
towards Claire and Steve's snowmobile. Steve sees it in the
rearview mirror just before it reaches them. Whatever it is,
it hits the snowmobile with stunning force. The snowmobile
is knocked onto its side. The thing that hit it lashes around
the snowmobile like a boa constrictor, slamming it again and
again into the ground.

The naked woman sits on the stairs where Alfred died,
cradling her brother's head. She hums to herself quietly as
she strokes his hair.

On one of the nearby monitors, she is watching the
snowmobile burn.

==========================================================
6ii. The Return of Chris Redfield: CODE VERONICA, Part Two
==========================================================

As Claire and Steve's snowmobile is destroyed, a small boat
lets off a passenger on Rockfort Island.

Slowly, Chris Redfield climbs hand-over-hand up a sheer
cliff, burdened by a heavy bag filled with equipment. Leon
managed to contact him, and he's come to rescue Claire. As
he hauls himself up, one of his handholds breaks away, and
Chris accidentally drops his bag into the ocean. Grimly, he
continues onward, finding a cave on the side of the cliff.

The cave has been turned into a mausoleum. Chris has been in
it for a few seconds when the ground shakes. Something
nearby roars, and Chris's entrance collapses.

A man is slumped against the wall of the mausoleum. Rodrigo,
whose wounds haven't gotten any better, has made his way
here from the cellblock. He says that he had thought he was
the only man on the island who was still alive. Chris
replies that he's looking for a girl named Claire Redfield.
Rodrigo recognizes the name and tells Chris that he's
wasting his time; Rodrigo helped her escape, and he's sure
that she was on one of the planes that left the island.
Chris thanks him for helping out.

Suddenly, the worm Claire encountered returns. Chris is able
to get out of its way, but Rodrigo cannot. The worm swallows
him whole and disappears into the soft earth of the mausoleum.

Chris catches up to the worm in a large cave nearby. If he
hadn't dropped his bag, he'd have something more appropriate
to the job, but all he has is his Glock handgun. The worm is
soft-bodied, though, and the handgun proves to be enough.
After Chris shoots it three dozen times or so, the worm
spasms and dies, spitting Rodrigo out onto the cave floor.

Mortally wounded, Rodrigo tells Chris to leave the island, and
gives him the lighter that Claire gave Rodrigo earlier. Rodrigo
says that it'll be good to see his family again, and dies.

An elevator has been cut into the cave wall. Sadly, Chris
leaves Rodrigo's body behind and takes the elevator down,
winding up in the military training facility's motor pool.
The military training facility has weathered the base's
self-destruct sequence surprisingly well. Chris finds his
way outside, to the courtyard where Alfred kept his tank.
Alfred's escape route is obvious, but he's puzzle-locked
it with an incomplete version of the Ashfords' crest.

Chris hooks up a battery to a lift system in the motor pool,
which takes him up to the balcony. He finds a document and a
key on a shelf, where they've apparently been discarded. The
document is a report on the properties of a new metal alloy
called Duploid. While Duploid is remarkably durable, a
combination of two common chemicals will dissolve it. This
metal is what the Ashford crests were made out of.

A door on the balcony leads to the hall outside the facility
control room. Inside, someone is singing. Chris runs in. The
main screen of the control room shows a woman in an evening
gown, cradling a dead man in her lap. (Alexia is dressed
exactly how Alfred dressed, when he was pretending to be
her.) Chris watches her sing, unsure as to how to react,
until the screen goes dark.

In the airport, near where Claire boarded the cargo plane,
a man in black curses as he watches Alexia sing; she's not
supposed to be fully conscious yet. Another security
monitor comes on, showing Chris. The man in black is
surprised to see Chris, but immediately arranges a surprise
for him. He activates a small hovercraft by remote control
and opens a large white storage device. Slowly, a reptilian
creature climbs out; although it looks different, it is
unmistakably a Hunter. As the hovercraft flies away, the man
in black laughs.

[CV Complete note: the man in black's monologue is slightly
 different. It is also much, much fruitier.]

In the room where Alfred ambushed Claire, one of the Ashford
crests is lying in plain sight, but no sooner has Chris seen
it than it falls through a hole in the floor. Chris realizes
that if he dissolves the crest, he'll be left with a golden
halberd which'll unlock the secret door underneath the tank.
Unfortunately, that means he has to figure out some way to
get into the base's underground waterway and find the crest.

He takes the elevator to the basement. Most of the basement
has been flooded with toxic gas after the failure of the
ventilation system, but a staircase that was raised when
Claire was here has now fallen. At its bottom, Chris
appropriates a shotgun and walks through a storage room,
right by the cylinder from which Alfred released the Tyrant.

The key from the balcony unlocks a chemical storage locker,
in which Chris finds one of the chemicals he needs to dissolve
the crest. In a pile of wrecked transport crates on the facility's
cargo elevator, he also finds a doorknob, which he can use to
open a door on the second floor. He kneels to pick it up, and
a beam of red light shines on his back. Chris looks up to see
a small hovercraft, equipped with a spotlight. It sounds an
alarm. In response, a pair of Hunters leap down on Chris from
the top of the elevator shaft. Chris barely manages to evade them.

The hovercrafts are suddenly everywhere in the base. If they
detect Chris, an alarm sounds, and a Hunter arrives almost
immediately. Chris carefully avoids the hovercrafts' motion
detectors, as well as a swarm of fresh zombies. These
zombies are dressed in black military gear and wearing
night-vision goggles. Obviously, the people who invaded the
facility, whoever they are, are having their own problems.
On the second floor, Chris finds a small model of a tank.
Earlier, Chris has seen the diorama of the facility, so he
heads back there.

The tank model fits into an empty space on the diorama. A
secret panel hisses open behind Chris, revealing a lever
guarded by laser beams, a trio of keyholes, a book, and a
key to the cargo elevator. The book is one of Alfred's
diaries, where he has written about his plans to build a new
bridge from the facility to his mansion, using the labor of
his prisoners. The entrance he uses now, which takes him to
his mansion via the facility's underground waterway, is
sealed by what Alfred calls the "diorama trick."

On his way back to the cargo elevator, Chris is walking
through the storage room when he hears chuckling behind him.
He turns to find the man in black... Albert Wesker. Somehow,
Wesker is still alive. Chris realizes that it must've been
Wesker who attacked the facility, which means Wesker attacked
his sister.

[CV Complete note: this dialogue is slightly altered.]

Chris raises his gun to shoot Wesker. Suddenly, Wesker is
a blur. He covers the space between him and Chris in a
fraction of a second and knocks Chris across the room. With
superhuman speed and strength, Wesker races over to where
Chris landed and picks him up by the throat. As Chris
struggles to breathe, Wesker tells him that since Chris
spoiled his plans, Wesker has "sold his soul" to a new
employer. Furthermore, Wesker's figured out that Claire
isn't on the island any more; she's with Alexia, in the
Antarctic. Wesker slowly begins to strangle Chris. Chris
punches Wesker in the face, knocking off his sunglasses.
This reveals Wesker's eyes. To Chris's shock, they are
yellow, and their pupils are slitted like a cat's.

A screen by the storage cylinders lights up, showing Alexia
Ashford. She laughs, and the screen goes blank. Wesker,
surprised, throws Chris across the room and into one of the
storage cylinders. A rubber man is released into the room
from the broken cylinder, and by the time Chris has dealt
with it, Wesker has disappeared.

Chris takes the cargo elevator up to the first floor of the
facility. The side of the elevator shaft has been breached,
which leads to the partially collapsed front hall. Scattered
fires are still burning fitfully. Chris navigates through
what's left of the first floor and finds the controls to the
ventilation system. He turns it back on, clearing the toxic
gas from the basement. In the basement, by someone's work
desk, Chris finds the other chemical he needs. Mixing them
together, he creates a compound that'll dissolve Duploid.

The front door of the facility is unlocked and undamaged.
Chris walks outside, and while the door to the palace has
been blocked by rubble, the airport elevator still works.
Chris rides it down.

The airport is just about untouched, although it's now
populated by Hunters and a handful of zombies. Chris fights
his way to the bridge controls and lowers the bridge that
Claire raised. On the airport's control platform, Chris finds
the three keys that Claire used to open the cargo plane;
they'll also fit in the keyholes by Alfred's diorama.

When Chris uses the three keys, the diorama slides back into
the wall to reveal an escape hatch in the floor. The tunnel
to Alfred's mansion has partially collapsed, making access
to the mansion impossible, but the Ashfords' family crest is
lying in a pool of water. It's guarded by an enormous
creature that looks like a cross between a manta ray and
an electric eel. This is the Albanoid that Claire saw earlier,
and it has reached adulthood. Chris jumps into the water,
grabs the crest, and scrambles back out before the creature
can electrocute him.

The crest dissolves when Chris uses the chemical mixture on
it, leaving him with a golden halberd. Finally, Chris can
see what's at the end of Alfred's secret passage. The "key"
lets him into Alfred's private hangar. One of Alfred's
private Harrier jets is brought to Chris by automated
machinery. Chris smiles and climbs in.

Chris flies to Antarctica, and lands in an underground
hangar by Umbrella's base. He takes the elevator up to the
base's balcony. Claire and Steve's plane is still sticking
out of the wall, but to Chris's surprise, a pair of
tentacles are lying across the balcony, almost as if they're
standing guard over something. After he shoots them a few
times, the tentacles withdraw in a spray of green blood.

Most of the base's second floor has frozen into a solid
block of ice. Alfred's office is still untouched. Inside,
Chris uses the halberd key to open a locked bookcase.
Inside, he finds an old diary of Alfred Ashford's and an
oddly labelled paperweight. Alfred has written about, among
other things, the "secret" of his and Alexia's birth, an
experiment that turned his father Alexander into a monster,
and Alexia's decision to experiment on her own body. Alexia
Ashford, after faking her own death, has been in cryogenic
storage for the last fifteen years. Alfred also writes that
there's a secret passage in the base, and he needs the three
jewels each member of the Ashford family wears to open it.
Chris makes a note of this before he leaves.

Earlier, when Claire was at this base, part of the walkway
above the sorter had collapsed, keeping her from going through
the doors on the other side of the room. Now, Chris can just
jump off of the walkway and run across the ice to the other
half of the catwalk. A crane hook is submerged in the ice,
but Chris needs a key to work the hook's controls. He leaves
through the nearest door, but as he does, he doesn't see a
massive shape move beneath the ice.

In a hallway, Chris finds two more of Wesker's hovercraft
waiting for him. Apparently, Wesker has come to Antarctica
as well. He adroitly dodges the hovercrafts' searchlights
and ducks into a nearby elevator. On the next floor down, he
finds a switchboard and turns the base's power back on,
reactivating a series of elevators.

The fifth floor of the base has a strange room that's
familiar to Chris; it's a near-exact replica of one from the
mansion outside Raccoon where he first fought Umbrella's
creations. A hall leading out of it, lined with biohazard
suits, has a statue of a tiger at its end that resembles one
in that other mansion's basement.

Chris steps out of the elevator onto the base's sixth floor,
and stops. An enormous anthill has been built here, towering
dozens of feet above the floor and surrounded by thousands of
mutated ants. Chris forges through the ants to the laboratories
on either side of the anthill.

One lab is dusty and little-used, and Chris finds Alexia Ashford's
research notes inside. The girl somehow fused the remnants of a
virus from the body of a queen ant with the T-Virus, creating a
new virus that she refers to as the "T-Veronica," after her ancestor.
This virus is what she used to turn her father into a monster, and
what she used to experiment on herself.

The other lab is cutting-edge and has been carefully maintained.
A trail of dried blood leads to it. The inside of the room is
lined with supercomputers, each one of which is hooked up to a
strange mechanism at the far corner of the room. Chris activates
it by solving another of Alfred's puzzles, and a cryogenic tube
shoots up behind Chris. Alfred's corpse falls out of the tube.
Chris takes Alfred's ring from his body, recognizing it as one
of the three proofs that Alfred mentioned in his diary.

Back on the second floor, Chris finds the key to the crane
in an aquarium, of all places. He starts up the crane, and
it breaks through the ice. Alexander Ashford's dead body is
impaled on the crane's hook. Chris recoils in shock and
disgust. Behind the body, Alexia Ashford is standing on the
other side of the room. She laughs at him, and asks Chris
how he wants to die.

A spider, bigger than any Chris has yet seen, bursts forth
from the hole in the ice. Chris throws himself out of the
crane's control room as the spider crushes it. Alexia has
disappeared. Fortunately, while her spider is huge, it isn't
smart or fast, and Chris can run circles around it. Before
he leaves, Chris takes an earring from Alexander's body.

There's still one place Chris hasn't gone. He heads to the
fifth floor, and as he walks down the hall, he hears...
calliope music. A merry-go-round, sized for children and
with two horses, is spinning in the middle of a carefully
built playground.

The room next to the playground is a rude shock. Alexander's
sanctuary looks very much like the front hall of the mansion
outside Raccoon. At the top of the stairs, Chris finds a
painting of the last generation of Ashfords, with hollows at
Alexander's ear, Alfred's finger, and Alexia's throat. The
jewels from Alfred's ring and Alexander's earring fit perfectly.

Behind the mansion's staircase, Chris finally finds Claire,
unconscious inside a coccoon. He cuts the coccoon off of
her, and waits until she wakes up. She hugs him, and tells
him that she can't leave until they find Steve. She explains
who Steve is, and says that they were separated. She's sure
he's somewhere in the base.

From the balcony, Alexia laughs at Claire and Chris. Holding
Alfred's rifle, she promises to destroy the "genetically
inferior siblings" before disappearing through a nearby
door. Chris and Claire give chase, with Claire in the lead. As
Chris ascends the stairs, a tentacle bursts through the wall
and destroys the balcony beneath him. Chris falls to the floor,
and both he and Claire are knocked unconscious. The
tentacle, which looks like a snake, complete with a mouth,
descends to the floor and examines Chris before disappearing
back through the hole in the wall.

Claire is the first to wake up. She leans over the edge of
the destroyed balcony to look at Chris, who is awake and
clutching at an injured leg. From behind the door Alexia
went through, she hears Steve scream. Chris tells her to
save him, and that he'll be fine. With a final look at
Chris, Claire runs.

Two more tentacles try to ambush Claire as she runs after
Alexia, but she cuts them down with bursts of rifle fire.
She emerges in a cellblock, with Alexia nowhere in sight.
One of the cells has been turned into storage for antique
weapons, and underneath a cannon, Claire finds a blue
binder. A note inside, written by Alexander, tells the
reader how to arm the base's self-destruct system. The
password, of course, is "Veronica." Inside the cannon is a
keycard, suspended in a glass sphere. Claire shatters the
glass and takes the keycard.

The closest place where Alexia could've gone is an empty
room with a lowered gate. Claire opens the gate with the
keycard, but as she does so, the door to the cellblock
audibly locks. Beyond the gate is a hallway lined with suits
of armor. At its end is the room that once imprisoned
Alexander Ashford. It now imprisons Steve Burnside.

Claire hits a switch on the wall, and Steve's shackles open.
The battle axe across his chest refuses to budge, even with
both of them pushing it. Steve tells Claire that the crazy
woman, Alexia, said she was going to perform the same
experiment on him that she did on her father.

Suddenly, Steve's voice distorts. He clutches at his chest,
and screams for Claire to help him. Blood bursts from his
neck, cutting him off. He rumbles, deep and guttural, and
Claire backs away from him in horror. Steve's body begins to
expand and change, growing bone spurs and vicious claws. His
skin turns green and scaly, and he easily triples in size.
His head, grotesquely, is nearly unchanged. With no effort
whatsoever, he wrenches the battle axe from the wall and
stands up. Steve, or the creature that Steve has become,
roars, and swings the axe at Claire... and at the same time,
the gate at the end of the hall begins to lower.

Claire's weapons don't do much more than slow Steve down. She
turns and runs, and Steve gives chase. Ducking Steve's axe,
Claire rolls underneath the gate as it closes. She can
already tell that it won't hold against Steve, and the door
to the cellblock is locked. He begins to hack at it with the
axe. The gate bends and buckles.

A tentacle bursts through the wall next to Claire. With
impossible speed, it wraps around her and pulls her into the
air. Claire struggles helplessly.

Steve finally destroys the gate. He steps through the
wreckage and pulls his axe back. He swings it at Claire's
head... and stops. In a deep, guttural voice, he says
Claire's name. With a furious roar, he cuts the tentacle
holding Claire. Claire falls to the floor.

The tentacle thrashes, like a thing in pain. It lashes out
with its bloody stump. Steve is hit with bonecrushing force.
As the tentacle withdraws, Steve slowly becomes human once
more. Claire runs over to him, to find that he's been
mortally wounded. Claire begs him to hold on, and tells him
that her brother's come to save them. Steve says that he
can't keep the promise he made, to escape with her. He tells
Claire that he's glad to have met her, and that he loves her.
Steve dies. Claire, cradling his body, bursts into tears.

Back in the ruins of the mansion's front hall, Chris is
hiding amidst the rubble. Alexia stands regally at the top
of the staircase, while Wesker is at the bottom. Wesker, who
still isn't wearing his sunglasses, says that he has been
sent to obtain the T-Veronica virus, the only sample of
which is now inside Alexia's body. He demands that Alexia
come with him.

Alexia says that Wesker isn't worthy of the virus's power.
She descends the stairs towards him, and suddenly bursts
into flames. Her clothing burns away. In the middle of the
fire, Alexia changes. Her skin turns slate-gray, and parts
of her body begin to look like the chitinous exoskeleton of
an insect. At the top of the stairs, she was human; when she
reaches Wesker, she is anything but.

Wesker gawks at her. Alexia casually backhands him. Despite
his own superhuman strength, Wesker tumbles across the room;
one might guess that an ordinary man would've been killed
instantly. He shakily hauls himself to his feet. Alexia gently
hops off of the stairs, across the twenty feet that now separate
her from Wesker, and hits him again. Wesker goes tumbling into
the corner of the room. Alexia turns to smile at Chris, as if
she's known where he was all along.

Seeing that Alexia's distracted, Wesker runs for the mansion's
front door. Alexia gestures, and suddenly, a wall of flame
springs up in front of the door. She's not fast enough to stop
him. Chris makes his own move as Alexia attacks Wesker, dashing
towards and up the main stairs. Alexia makes another gesture,
and Chris is nearly incinerated by another wall of fire. He
tumbles back down the stairs, and Alexia steps in front of him.

[Or, in CVX:

[Wesker recovers in midair from Alexia's uppercut, landing on
 his feet. Alexia confidently moves in for the kill, slinging
 flaming ichor from her hands. Wesker, trying desperately to
 avoid her, runs away from her... and *up the wall*. As fire
 crawls up the wall behind him, and breaks out on his clothing,
 Wesker springs off the wall and delivers a powerful right
 cross to Alexia's jaw.

[Alexia spins, dazed, and throws another spray of fire in
 Wesker's direction. Wesker is standing in front of Chris,
 so both men have to get out of the way. As they stand,
 Wesker and Chris notice each other. Wesker grins faintly,
 and says, "Chris, as one of my best men, I want you to
 handle this." He then breaks for the door. Alexia is too
 slow, and her offhand attempt to incinerate Wesker misses.
 Chris tries to get away, as with the other version of
 this scene, but he's a little too late.]

Chris runs from Alexia, whose every gesture sprays some kind
of ichor or blood across the floor. Where it lands, it burns,
creating a short-lived wall of fire. Chris retaliates in kind,
and after six .357 rounds to the chest, Alexia falls to the
floor, seemingly dead.

In the ashes of her clothing, Chris finds a red jewel in a
choker--the final Ashford family proof. Putting it in the
painting, he opens Alexander's secret passage. As the door
shuts behind Chris, Alexia slowly climbs to her feet.

Alfred has remodeled Alexander's hideaway into a set of
children's bedrooms, which don't seem very well-suited to
an adult. (For all intents and purposes, these bedrooms
are exactly identical to the bedrooms on the island
facility.) Chris finds little of interest in them besides
another pair of locked music boxes with jewels missing from
the lids. Chris inserts two jewels he has found, and a
secret passage opens, just as it did for Claire in the
prison's mansion. Above the bedrooms, Chris finds an
abandoned dining room, lined with portraits of the Ashfords.
Alexander Ashford's picture has been crudely defaced.
An ant farm is on the table, in which sits a golden
dragonfly. Chris pockets it. Although he has no way of
knowing it, he's standing in the room where, long ago,
Alfred and Alexia were filmed as they killed a dragonfly.

Fighting his way through a fresh swarm of zombies, Chris
finds an abandoned lab where Alexander Ashford must once
have pursued his research. A journal on the countertop
contains the secret that made Alfred and Alexia destroy
their father; they were never his real children. They
were the result of Alexander's experiments in genetically
determining intelligence. If the twins are Ashfords at all,
it's because Alexander's experiment used a sample of Veronica
Ashford's DNA. They're more her "children" than his.

Alexander's lab connects to the cellblock. Chris hears Claire
sobbing on the other side of a locked door, and tries to open
it. The door is electronically locked, and Chris can't break
it down. Claire tells Chris that Steve is dead, and pushes the
binder under the door with the keycard in it. She's read in the
binder that, once the self-destruct system to the base is
activated, all the locks in the base automatically disengage
to expedite an evacuation. Once she's free, the emergency
elevator to the base's hangar is close by. They can
easily escape before the base explodes.

The control room is locked, but the golden dragonfly serves
as a key. Discordantly, the floor leading up to the control
room is made of mesh, and if Chris looks down, he can see
the top of Alexia's anthill. Chris uses the keycard to gain
access to the control room's computers and inputs the
password: the final code Veronica. The base's nuclear
reactors decouple and prepare for detonation, and the
automatic locks are released. A countdown begins.

Outside the control room, Claire runs up to Chris and hugs
him. Before they can get to the emergency elevator, a
tentacle bursts through the floor. Its "mouth" opens wide,
and it regurgitates the naked body of Alexia Ashford. The
tentacle itself loses its cohesion, flowing onto Alexia's
body. The resulting substance covers her and hardens
into chitinous plates, like an ant's exoskeleton.

As Alexia transforms, Chris spots a nearby emergency locker.
The labels on the outside say that it contains an anti-B.O.W.
weapon called a "linear launcher." Chris and Claire hurriedly
open the locker. Unfortunately, the launcher isn't charged,
and slowly begins to power up.

Alexia turns and smiles at the Redfields, once again covered
in her gray armor. Chris tells Claire to get to the elevator,
while he keeps Alexia busy. Claire tells Chris not to die on
her, and breaks into a run. Alexia throws a wall of fire in
front of Claire, and advances towards her. Before Alexia can
kill Claire, Chris shoots her in the chest. Alexia crumples to
the floor, and her fires die, giving Claire the chance to escape.

Alexia begins to undergo a terrible transformation. Her body
expands like Steve's, changing into something much, much larger.

[The following sequence is not in CVX:

[Chris looks away from Alexia and smiles at Claire, who is watching
 through the glass wall of the elevator shaft. The car descends,
 taking Claire out of sight, and leaving Chris alone with Alexia.]

Alexia's latest incarnation is a sickeningly pregnant cross
between an ant and a woman. As she finishes her transformation,
her face, the only part of her that's still recognizably human,
twists into a contemptuous smile. She attacks Chris with small
"soldier ants" and her ubiquitous tentacles, both of which spring
forth from her bloated torso. Chris returns fire with Claire's
grenade launcher, showering Alexia's body with explosive rounds.
After a vicious fight where the two seem to be evenly matched,
Alexia finally screams in pain. Her lower body begins to break
apart, dissolving into nothing.

Suddenly, swarms of winged ants burst from the anthill underneath
Chris's feet. They cover their queen, and Alexia seems to absorb
their mass into herself. She rises like a phoenix from the ruins
of her body, taking on the form of an enormous, winged ant.

At the same time, the linear launcher finishes charging.

====================================================
6iii. The Conclusion of RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
====================================================

Chris pulls the linear launcher free from its housing. Alexia's
newest form buzzes around him, tossing spurts of flaming ichor,
but she's nowhere near as powerful as she was before.

Apparently, "linear launcher" is Umbrella-speak for "plasma rifle."
When Chris pulls the trigger, a burst of energy strikes Alexia in
the chest. It shines inside her for a moment like a star, and for
a moment, Alexia seems like she might survive even this...

...but then she explodes, nearly liquified by the force of the blast.
Chris drops the launcher and takes cover as the platform is showered
with gore. At the same time Alexia dies, the base begins to shake
with small explosions, as the self-destruct sequence enters its
final stage.

[Chris staggers down the staircase from the laboratory to find
 Wesker... with Claire. He has Claire in a headlock, and tosses
 her ahead of him through a hole in the wall. Chris gives chase,
 following Wesker down a long, zombie-infested hallway. Chris
 dodges the zombies, shoulder-blocking one out of his way, and
 emerges in an underground seaport.

[Wesker is standing by a docked submarine with Claire. He tells
 Chris that the T-Veronica virus turned out to be nothing, but
 Wesker's revenge will be so much sweeter. Chris tells Wesker
 to let Claire go, and Wesker tosses her across the room.

[Wesker tells Chris and Claire that he'd originally come to get
 Alexia, but now that it's over with, he can get on to his other
 job: revenge. Chris says that Alexia is gone, and Wesker's
 response is that it doesn't really matter; now, he has Steve's
 body. Steve still has enough of the "T-Alexia" virus in him to
 work with. "Maybe he'll come back from the dead one day," Wesker
 says, "like I did, to see your sister."

[Claire nearly attacks Wesker, but Chris holds her back and tells
 her to go. It's his job to finish this. Claire tells Chris to
 remember his promise, and leaves.

[Chris and Wesker face each other as Claire runs off. Chris tells
 Wesker to "say hello to my teammates, who you killed!" Wesker
 takes off his sunglasses and says, "I don't know where you get
 your confidence, Chris." He drops them to the floor and walks
 towards Chris, who hits him with an iron bar. Wesker takes one
 shot across the face, blocks the second with his arm--bending
 the bar--and hits Chris in the face. Chris goes sprawling, and
 Wesker presses his advantage. He may not be human any longer,
 Wesker says, but his newfound power more than makes up for it.
 A final uppercut sends a dazed Chris sprawling.

[As Wesker prepares to finish Chris off, Chris notices a load
 of steel beams, suspended overhead on a pulley. Wesker leaps
 into the air for a final, killing blow, but Chris manages to
 get out of the way. He hits a lever and drops the steel beams
 on Wesker, who looks up just in time to intercept the first
 I-beam with his face. Wesker gets buried underneath the pile
 of girders. Unfortunately, it isn't enough.

[Wesker gets up, visibly staggering ("Nice try."), and Chris,
 likewise, climbs back to his feet. As they prepare to start
 the fight again, one of the smaller explosions suddenly takes
 out a nearby bit of machinery, and a gout of flame separates
 them. A massive pipe falls between them, and Wesker takes the
 worst of it by far. Holding his horribly burned face, Wesker
 promises Chris that the next time they meet, he'll kill Chris.
 "Next time," Chris says, and runs out of the room. Wesker
 stands amidst the wreckage, and laughs.]

Chris runs to the emergency elevator, hoping he's not too late.

Under the platform where Alexia died, her army of mutant ants
burst into flames, which in turn ignites her anthill. Chris
barely manages to get into the elevator before the entire
fifth floor of Alexander Ashford's hideaway is scoured clean
by flames. As Chris's car descends, flames chase him down the
elevator shaft.

Claire is in Alfred's jet, waiting for Chris, when the elevator
opens. Chris gets one step out of it before the firestorm hits,
blowing him off of the balcony and to an undignified landing on
the nosecone of the jet. Claire asks if Chris is all right. His
response is to say, with a smile, that she knows he always keeps
his promises.

The jet rises out of the base's hangar in a cloud of flame.
Claire puts her hand on Chris's shoulder, asking him to
never leave her alone again. Chris replies that he's sorry,
but they have a job to do. They've got to destroy Umbrella
once and for all.

As Chris and Claire fly away, Umbrella's Antarctic base and the
legacy of the Ashford family are consumed in an explosion.

====================================
6v. Conclusions About the Conclusion
====================================

1. Claire and Chris Redfield have both survived; as usual,
it was through the creative employ of self-destruct mechanisms.
(If Umbrella ever really wanted to kill Chris, all they'd have
to do is lure him to a base without a self-destruct device.)

2. Albert Wesker has also survived.

3. Steve Burnside may or may not be dead.

4. Rodrigo Juan Raval did not survive. ("I have cool looks,
a great voice actor, and lots of potential... which is why
I'll be killed after three lines of dialogue." Thanks, Nippy.)

5. Alexander, Alexia, and Alfred Ashford are dead. Unless a
distant relative shows up in a future game, the "proud
Ashford family" has died out.

6. Albert Wesker has a new employer. That employer is
apparently a competitor of Umbrella's in the field of
biological research and warfare, and is just as cutthroat
as Umbrella is.

7. Umbrella is not the only company performing research on the
T-Virus. As a matter of fact, they have vicious competition
in that particular field (as embodied by Wesker and his "new
employer"). If Chris and company *do* destroy Umbrella, their
problems may just be beginning.

8. Edward Ashford and "Lord" Ozwell Spencer founded Umbrella.
We don't know exactly how old this makes Umbrella, but it places
its founding within the last hundred years or so, as Edward was
Alexia and Alfred's "grandfather."

9. Ashford and Spencer also discovered the T-Virus. The T-Virus
has actually been around slightly longer than Umbrella itself has.

10. Umbrella is still making Tyrants, and seems to have
ironed most of the kinks out of them.

11. Umbrella is far more powerful than we were led to believe.
We knew it was an international corporation that virtually
owned Raccoon City, but this is the first indication we've had
that it actually maintains its own private army.

12. Albert Wesker stole Steve Burnside's body before he escaped.
Whoever Wesker's working for has a sample of Alexia's virus.

==============================
vi. The Ashford Family Diaries
==============================

The Ashford family is intricately linked with the history of
Umbrella, and thus with the background story of the Resident
Evil series. CV tells this particular story, but it does so
haphazardly; the relevant information is in files scattered
throughout the game, and at least one of them is "hidden in
plain sight," where it's very easy to miss. Therefore, in
this section, I've assembled the known facts about the Ashford
family, and put them together in a rough chronological order.

The Ashford family was founded by Veronica Ashford, about
five generations ago or so. They're constantly referred to
as "glorious" throughout the game, but we're never told
exactly why that is. (Maybe it's the power of positive
thinking. They said assertively that they were glorious for
six generations, and suddenly--bam!--glory.)

A nobleman named Lord Spencer (whose first name is given in
an RE2 EX File as "Ozwell") and Edward Ashford, Alfred and
Alexia's grandfather, discovered the "mother virus." They
eventually derived the T-Virus from it. They studied the
T-Virus's military applications, and founded "Umbrella"
Chemical to serve as a "cover" for their research. By the
time RE begins in 1998, Umbrella's an enormously successful
international corporation, which, in addition to the bioweapons
research that drives RE's plot, makes and sells various
pharmaceutical products. In RE3, we see Umbrella's commercials
for its name-brand painkillers, cold relievers, and whatever
the hell Aquacure was supposed to be. Umbrella also appears
to make its own equipment, as we've seen security systems
(RE2), computer OSes (RE, RE2, RE3, CV), industrial equipment
(RE, RE2), and weaponry (RE, RE2, RE3) with the Umbrella label.

Edward had a son, Alexander, who got a degree in biogenetics
and assisted his father with his research. At some point,
Alexander caused an accident which killed Edward. As a result,
Spencer, or his descendants, rapidly gained more power over
Umbrella, and Umbrella lost ground to its competitors in the
field of T-Virus research. The next generation of Ashfords,
and Alexander himself, trace the Ashfords' fall from grace
directly to the accident that killed Edward, and to Alexander.

In an attempt to gain back some respect, Alexander commissioned
the construction of a research facility in the Antarctic,
making it out of a transport terminal. Inside the facility,
he had a series of rooms built, patterned after the mansion
built by "the late Trevor," where Alexander could cherish his
memories in peace. Trevor's mansion was where RE took place.

(According to various sources, "the late Trevor" was meant to
 be mentioned in RE, but was excised in the final version. See
 the appropriate RE FAQ, below. Thanks to Dana Jones and Ben
 Plante for pointing this out.)

Finally, inside this replicated mansion, Alexander constructed
a private lab that only he had access to. He codenamed this
project "Veronica," after the legendary founder of the Ashfords.

Later, Alexander isolated the gene that controlled
intelligence within the human genome, and developed a way
to deliberately manipulate it. To test it, he impregnated a
surrogate mother, using a sperm cell that he somehow made
using a sample of the genes of Veronica Ashford. To his
surprise, the woman gave birth to fraternal twins, who he
named Alfred and Alexia and raised in his Antarctic hideaway.
Alfred was a smart kid, but Alexia was a complete genius;
Alexander regarded her as the literal reincarnation of
Veronica. After she graduated from college at the age of
ten, Alexia soon had a job as a head researcher for Umbrella
Incorporated.

Early in their lives, the twins became fascinated by ants.
The events depicted in the movie in Alfred's war museum seem
to have permanently left their mark on him, as the motif of
dragonflies and ants is repeated endlessly inside his private
chambers. Alexia was fascinated by the society of the ants,
and how they were utterly dependent upon their queen.

(Lemme English-major at you for a second here. I don't believe
 for a second that this is intentional on Capcom's part, but
 it's interesting to note how the dragonfly-ant theme plays
 out over the course of the game. Early, to escape from Alfred,
 Claire must recreate his torture of the dragonfly, plucking
 the wings off of the dragonfly object and placing it in an
 ant's mouth. Later, Alexia becomes, for all intents and
 purposes, a queen ant, complete with an anthill and her own
 swarm of mutant soldier ants. To kill her, Chris reassembles
 a dragonfly and uses it to unlock the path to the destruction
 of both Alexia and her anthill, thus symbolically undoing
 her torture of the dragonfly.

(...I just scared myself half to death. Let's move on.)

Alexia conducted private experiments on ants, assisted by
Alfred, who she refers to in her private diaries as a
"loyal but inept soldier ant." (Alfred, as an adult, seems
to have taken that comment to heart; he dresses like a toy
soldier, is obviously fascinated by war, and the man can't
shoot straight. He has a laser sight and a starlight scope and
he *still* misses everything he shoots at.) Inside the body of
a queen ant, perhaps the same queen ant that Chris finds dead
in the Antarctic base, she found traces of an ancient virus.
Mixing this with the T-Virus her "grandfather" discovered,
she created what she named the T-Veronica virus.

The twins grew to hate their "father." Alfred eventually
figured out how to get into Alexander's private lab, where
he learned the truth about his and Alexia's birth. Soon
afterward, Alexia deliberately infected Alexander with the
T-Veronica virus as an experiment, transforming him into the
homicidal mutant that would become known as "Nosferatu." The
twins somehow managed to imprison Alexander underneath the
base in the Antarctic. As far as anyone else was concerned,
Alexander Ashford simply disappeared. (It's also worth
mentioning that, at this point, Alexia and Alfred were
probably only twelve or thirteen, and, as such, were above
suspicion. When you're an extremely rich idiot, people
who'd want to make you disappear are probably lined up
around the block.)

Alexia continued her research, and decided to conduct
further experiments on herself. She theorized that cold
storage would slow down the infection, allowing an infected
organism to peacefully coexist with the virus, although it
would take at least fifteen years to do so. Over Alfred's
objections, she infected and stored herself in a secret lab
underneath Antarctica. Either Alfred or Alexia came up with
a cover story for this, saying that Alexia had died in an
unspecified "accident." (Of course, she would eventually
reappear, but she'd be rich, an adult, and theoretically
omnipotent. It didn't have to be a *good* cover story.)
No one ever learned the truth about this until Alexia woke
up, although the Ashfords' family butler at the time, Tom
Dorson, came very close to figuring it out a couple of times.
(Note that by the time of Code Veronica, Scott Harman has
been Alfred's butler for four years. Tom Dorson may have
gotten a little *too* close.)

Alfred was forced to assume Alexander's responsibilities at
a young age, and the problem was compounded by his sister's
"death." Umbrella gave him a meaningless position as the
commander of an isolated prison in the southern hemisphere.
Alfred became obsessed with returning the Ashfords to glory.

Alfred's obsession was the least of his mental problems. The
most obvious is, of course, how he coped with Alexia's "death";
unable to live without her, he simply constructed a delusion
in which Alexia was still around. (I could also add that given
the discrepancies between Alfred-as-Alexia, and Alexia herself,
Alfred's version of Alexia is apparently far kinder towards
him than Alexia ever was.) The extent to which he went to
maintain that delusion is one of the more disturbing things
in CV. Even if you ignore his obsession and denial, it looks
like he consulted Alexia on the decoration of the Rockfort
mansion. (Would a ten-year-old prodigy and professional biochemist
*ever* be that obsessed with dolls, or is that another facet
of Alexia's megalomania?)

The end of this story, naturally, is the story of Code: Veronica.

=====================================
6vi. Random Musings on CODE: VERONICA
=====================================

1. As was pointed out on the Evil-Online message boards,
Claire looks *very* different than she did in RE2, and it's
not just the better graphics. She looks a lot thinner, and
she's become a lot tougher. Moreso than any other character,
I'd really like to know what happened to her after RE2.

2. It's an interesting touch, characterwise, that Chris
still wears gear with RPD and S.T.A.R.S. insignias on it.

3. People were excited that CV would return to RE's
"tradition" of lousy voice actors, and they weren't
disappointed. Claire and Chris's actors are decent,
and Rodrigo's voice actor is actually very good,
but the rest...

4. Alfred Ashford could change clothes faster than any man
alive. Somehow, he managed to change from an evening gown
and long gloves into his preppy-soldier outfit in about
twenty seconds while he had a bullet in his arm.

5. Steve is annoying at first, but he does have his moments.
It's interesting to watch his character develop; at first,
he balances his anger at his father with his need to show
off for Claire, who's the only pretty girl around. After he
kills his father, he attaches himself to Claire, who's the
only friend he's got left. Some real thought was obviously
put into Steve's personality dynamic, and it's a shame that
a lot of it was shot down by a mediocre voice actor. (In his
defense, though, Steve's voice acting gets better the further
you get into the game, and improves markedly right after Steve
is forced to shoot his father. The actor does a great job with
Steve's death scene.)

6. Note the nods to Silent Hill (the crematorium) and Parasite
Eve (Alexia's shapeshifting).

7. The Resident Evil tradition of characters being far too
young to have the skills they're supposed to possess continues.
Chris is ex-Air Force *and* an ex-cop at 25; Jill is a munitions
expert, classical pianist, chemist, gunsmith, mechanic, ex-cop,
ex-Delta Force, *and* the god damn Master of Unlocking at 23;
Claire is a demolitions expert, burglar, motorcyclist, locksmith,
and a student of the John Woo school of physically impossible
gunfighting at 19; Rebecca is supposed to be a trained medic
and a member of an elite police unit at 18; and Steve is a
crack pilot, gunman, and can operate seemingly any kind of
heavy machinery at the tender age of 17. Sherry must have
been hiding her *true* power.

8. If I could get a biker jacket with the same design on the
back as Claire's vest, it'd be very cool. You finally get
to see what it says across her shoulders just before the
last fight with Alexia: "Let Me Live." This is the same
design that's on the back of her alternate outfit in RE2.
Someone or another has written in to note that "Let Me Live"
and "Made In Heaven," the two biker jacket logos in RE so
far, are both Queen songs. I kinda thought it was cooler
before I knew that.

9. CV is the only Resident Evil game so far that hasn't ended
at sunrise. It's full morning when Chris arrives in the Antarctic,
and it looks like high noon when he flies out with Claire.

10. Watch _Mission: Impossible II_ and then play through CV.
See how many similarities you can spot.

11. The visual parallels between RE and RE:CV are as follows:
    -- the shotgun rack/lever trick.
    -- the general appearance of the front hall of Alexander's
       mansion.
    -- the rotating tiger statue.
    -- the goddess statue holding a bowl, which contains a map.
    -- the goddess statue room looks almost identical to the
       same room in RE.
    -- the hallway where Claire encounters the tentacles, while
       she chases Alexia, is modeled after a similar hallway
       in the east hall of the Spencer mansion, right down to
       the extra ammunition hidden under the display cases.

12. You can get a slightly alternate cutscene if you trigger
the Alexia/Wesker showdown fight before you use the Crane Key
to trigger the giant spider fight. It's not a shocking revelation
or anything, but it does spare you one of the stupidest lines
in the game.

13. Cinematic parallels in RE:CV:
    -- the Bandersnatch is seemingly patterned after a similar
       monster in _Return of the Living Dead Part 3_.
    -- more _Return of the Living Dead 3_-referencing fun can be
       had in the laboratory scene, where the man in the clean
       suit meets a messy demise against the observation window.
    -- much of Rockfort Island, particularly the mess hall, looks
       like the military base in George Romero's _Day of the Dead_.
    -- in _Dawn of the Dead_, a character named Peter picks up
       a sniper rifle like Alfred's and says, "Ain't it a crime?
       The only person who could ever miss with this gun would be
       the sucker with the bread to buy it."
    -- as many have noted, Steve's slaying of the Bandersnatch
       and Wesker's fighting style would both seem to owe heavy
       stylistic debts to _The Matrix_ (which, in turn, owes
       heavy stylistic debts to wuxia). I didn't fail to notice
       that; I figured it was kind of obvious. Stop e-mailing me.

============================================
7. Becky's Big Adventure: RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
============================================

RE0 is a brand new game to be released on the Gamecube. The game,
said to be the hardest RE yet, follows the pre-RE adventures
of Rebecca Chambers and a new character, an ex-Navy SEAL
named Billy Koen. The game's development team also promises
that there'll be more background on the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team,
and more information on how they died.

A day before the events of RE, the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team is
sent into the Raccoon Forest. They discover a mysterious train
in the woods, which Rebecca is sent to investigate.

===============
7i. Coming Soon
===============

As soon as the game comes out, I'll work it into this document.
Of course, if it's the continuity nightmare that some fans are
predicting, it'll probably just make my head explode. You know
how that can go.

==========================================
8. A Three-Hour Tour: RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN
==========================================

Barry Burton is sent to board a cruise ship, where the T-Virus
has broken loose, in order to rescue Leon Kennedy, and a mysterious
survivor named Lucia.

===============
8i. Coming Soon
===============

Once I get a chance to play through RE:G, I'll add information on
it to this document. I appreciate the offers I've received to
contribute analyses of the game, but no thank you; this is my
project, and I don't really feel the need to farm it out just yet.

In the meantime, go read Efrem Orizzonte's analysis of Gaiden,
available at www.gamefaqs.com.

============================================================
9. Ten Thousand *More* Bullets: RESIDENT EVIL GUN SURVIVOR 2
============================================================

Also known as "Fire Zone," this Namco/Capcom collaboration is
reportedly a retelling of sorts of Code Veronica. It stars
Claire, Steve, a liberal helping of every monster to date in
the RE series, and apparently features the Nemesis.

===============
9i. Coming Soon
===============

If there *is* any plot information in Gun Survivor 2, I'll add
it to this document when I get the chance to play the game.

========================
10. Unanswered Questions
========================

This section is a list of the storyline questions that still
remain for each of the last three Resident Evil games, when
all has been said and done. This deliberately does not
include small plot holes; this is only for plotline elements
that Capcom has deliberately left unsolved, or for plot
holes that could easily be plotline elements.

In order for a question to be in this section, there must be
*nothing in the game* that answers it. Once again, I feel the
need to restate the point that I don't want or need anyone
to e-mail me their "theories." I'm drowning in them, they're
usually ridiculous, and there's nothing to support any of them
in the game. Stop sending them.

Note that there's no entry here for RE. RE didn't really
leave anything unresolved, aside from the issue of which
scenario is the "official" one. That's dealt with in
Frequently Asked Questions, below.

===================
8i. RESIDENT EVIL 2
===================

1. Who does Ada work for? (No, actually, *not* Umbrella.
See the FAQs for RE2, below.)

2. (from "JRMShutout") Who was the "suspicious individual"
from the Patrol Report file? (It's entirely possible that
this was a member of Hunk's team, but it's never said.)

3. The question has finally arisen enough times for me to put
it in here: if Raccoon City was being overrun by zombies, how
did both Leon and Claire manage to avoid hearing anything about
it? Was the government keeping everything that quiet, and if so,
why did they let Leon and Claire into town in the first place?
("Curses! They used the main road into town! Our one weakness!")

4. (from Michael Conroy) How did Mr. X know to go after the
pendant? (Could it smell the G-Virus or something?)

5. What's with Jill's boyfriend? (When you check Jill's desk
in the S.T.A.R.S. office, the one with the beret on it, you
find a picture of a man who's "probably her boyfriend." However,
when Jill checks the same desk in RE3, there's no mention of
any such thing. This is a minor detail, but one that has me
curious. Who is that guy?)

=============================
8ii. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=============================

1. Why did the U.S. government attack Umbrella's factory on
October 1st? (Did they want to destroy the T-Virus, or did
they want it for themselves? As a corollary, how did they
manage to get the rail cannon into the factory's power room?)

2. Why did the government order a nuclear strike on Raccoon
City? (The issue here isn't how the government knows about
the outbreak; that's obvious. The issue is what they know that
made them decide upon nuclear sterilization of the area, as
opposed to sending in the CDC. This is a B-movie, yeah, but
it could be an interesting plot point. Conspiracies abound...)

3. Why did Umbrella try to stop the nuclear strike? (You'd
think that the whole city being obliterated would actually
help Umbrella, since all the evidence that they were to blame
would be destroyed. I also have a hard time believing that it
was out of some sense of concern for their surviving employees
and mercenaries inside the city. Alert reader Vincent Merken
points out here that Umbrella is notorious for doing really
stupid things in order to collect research data, such as
letting the S.T.A.R.S. into the mansion lab in the first
place, and suggests that that might be the case here as well.)

4. If there was a military blockade in place around Raccoon
City, how did both Claire and Leon manage to drive right
into town? (It's entirely possible that the quarantine was
lifted on the 29th due to the imminent nuclear strike, but
even then, there should have been police, military, and
press stacked three deep in every direction around Raccoon.)

5. What was the offer made to Leon? (According to Wesker,
Leon joined an "underground anti-Umbrella group," but that
technically doesn't explain what RE3's mysterious offer was.)

6. (from Jim Stevenson) Why does Carlos wait for two days
before going to find an antidote for Jill? What does he
do in that time?

7. For that matter, what did Carlos "have to take care of"
when he left Jill in the chapel? (What could have possibly
been so important that he'd leave a convalescing Jill alone
with Nemesis so close by?)

=============================
8iii. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
=============================

1. What were the Cleaners? Why did they dissolve upon death?

2. What's up with Leon? He's not dead, obviously, but how does he
know Ark, and why did he send Ark to Sheena Island?

3. Who *is* Ark? Is he a cop, a detective, a government agent,
a military operative, or something else? (Some people have said
that he's a reporter, but I was paying attention during Survivor,
and he never says any such thing.)

4. Why did Ark think it'd be a good idea to pose as Vincent? (Alert
readers have noted that Ark said it was to collect information on
Vincent. However, this is still pretty damned lame; what did he do,
walk up to people and ask them to tell him about himself?)

5. Who set fire to Vincent's office? (It's the only place in the
entire city that's sustained fire damage.)

6. Who the hell names their kid "Lott"?

==================================
8iv. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
==================================

1. Who are Wesker's new employers, and exactly what are they
up to? (This is also known as the "HCF question," after Wesker's
logo in Battle Mode. Speculations run rampant about who Wesker's
working for now, running the gamut from the American government
to the Lord of Darkness himself, but there aren't any solid
answers just yet. Wesker's Report suggests that Wesker's working
for an unnamed competitor of Umbrella's, which is a different
competitor than the one he was trying to get in good with in RE.)

2. Where did Alfred get the idea that if he killed Claire,
it'd restore the glory of the Ashford family? Does Umbrella
really consider Claire that much of a threat? (Alert reader
Chris Armour points out, and rightly so, that Alfred is
crazy, and, as such, plays by his own rules.)

3. Exactly what was Alexia capable of? She could secrete that
burning ichor, she controlled all those enormous tentacles
that came seemingly out of nowhere, she apparently managed to
spawn and/or control a legion of mutant ants, she changed shape
every so often, she was stronger and faster than Wesker, she
coccooned Claire, and she was still fairly intelligent and
logical. More to the point, she comes out of cold storage early
with no obvious help from Alfred, she activates the computers
in her storage room without touching them, and when she sends
the tentacle to smack the crap out of Claire and Steve, she
has no way of knowing that they're responsible for what
happened. (As a corollary, how did Alfred survive the fall
from the drilling room?)

4. What has Chris been doing for the last three months? For
that matter, what has *everyone* been doing for the last
three months, besides sitting around being prequel bait?

5. This is just an idle question of my own, but what did
Claire do or see inside Umbrella's Paris facility that had
Umbrella going after her, in public, in downtown Paris,
with an attack helicopter?

6. Here's another of my own questions: what was it about
Alexia's appearance that stopped Wesker from killing Chris?
All she does is appear on a viewscreen and laugh.

7. As was rightly pointed out by "Utopia" on the Evil-Online
message boards, how did Claire manage to infiltrate Umbrella's
Paris facility? (She's described in both RE2 and CV as an
inquisitive college student who loves riding motorcycles.
The words "master spy" were nowhere in that description.)

8. What does D.I.J. stand for?

=============================
8v. Imported Headaches:
    A Look At Wesker's Report
=============================

A special-issue DVD was packed in with the Japanese release
of Code Veronica: Complete. Meant to celebrate the fifth
anniversary of the release of the original Biohazard, this
disc contained some bonuses, such as an interview with the
games' directors and Shinji Mikami.

One of those extras is Wesker's Report. This lengthy movie
is stitched together out of footage from each of the games
in the series (with the notable exception of Survivor, which
is apparently counting for even less than I thought it was).
It tells the story of the series from Wesker's perspective,
and in so doing, attempts to clear up some ongoing plot holes
and mysteries about the Resident Evil storyline.

In this section, I'll be examining and summarizing Wesker's
Report, to break it down into useful information and useless
information, and I will do so while popping an aspirin every
thirty-two seconds, because this damn thing makes my head hurt.

Wesker, in narration, tells us about how he'd begun his career
intending to become a researcher for Umbrella. After meeting
William Birkin, however, he made a different choice. Instead,
he wound up becoming a police officer. Due to its illegal
activities, Umbrella had quite a few employees working within
the Raccoon police department for the purpose of covering up
their mistakes. Wesker rose to become the captain of the
Raccoon STARS unit.

In July of 1998, Wesker was told to keep the STARS away from
the Spencer estate, but the murders eventually forced his hand.
The STARS could no longer be kept out of Raccoon Forest. Wesker's
orders promptly changed; instead, he was to lead the STARS into
the mansion to their deaths, and send the resulting combat data
to Umbrella. That way, Umbrella got rid of a thorn in its side,
and it got an idea of how its monsters did against trained
opponents. Wesker followed his orders, and most of the STARS
were killed by Umbrella's monsters.

Unfortunately for Umbrella, Wesker had plans of his own. He
intended to doublecross Umbrella by stealing its ultimate
achievement, the Tyrant, and using it to buy his way into
one of Umbrella's competitors. All he needed was a bit of
combat data in order to expedite the process. To do that,
he needed one of the surviving STARS to fall prey to the
Tyrant. Wesker blackmailed Barry Burton to "play the Judas,"
and Barry led Jill straight into the Tyrant's lab.

(While I'm at it, Wesker's narration seems to imply that he
 blackmailed Barry into killing Enrico Marini; the scenes
 shown of Enrico's death feature Jill, alone, and Wesker
 says that he "used Barry to get to Enrico." I'm not sure
 whether this is sloppy narration, or if it's deliberate.
 In RE2.0, we see Enrico's assassin's leg, which *looks*
 like it belongs to Wesker, but there's no way to be sure.)

Furthermore, Wesker had planned ahead. He had gotten a virus
from William Birkin earlier which induced a deathlike state
in its user. The user would awaken eventually from this state,
with the added bonus of superhuman power. Wesker knew that
Umbrella was a lot less likely to come after him if the company
thought he was dead, so he used both the virus and the Tyrant
to fake his own death. As Jill watched, horrified, the Tyrant
turned on Wesker, stabbing him through the chest. Wesker slumped
to the floor, confident that everything was going according to
his plan. (And what a plan it was, Got-No-Lungs Boy.)

(It's worth mentioning here that Wesker's Report has already
apparently been made obsolete by RE2.0, in that Wesker can
escape. In Jill's best ending, Wesker quietly vanishes
after the fight with the Tyrant.)

Wesker made one serious mistake, however, and that was seriously
underestimating both Chris and Jill. Jill survived her encounter
with the Tyrant in the lab, and when Chris killed the Tyrant on
the roof of the Spencer mansion, Wesker's entire plan was neatly
derailed. Upon waking up, Wesker swore revenge against the STARS.

Two months later, after the botched raid on William Birkin's lab,
Wesker returned to Raccoon City. He was there to gather data on
the Nemesis, sent by Umbrella's European branch to assassinate
Jill. While he was at it, he joined forces with Ada Wong, another
agent sent to spy on Umbrella, in order to lay his hands on a
sample of Birkin's G-Virus. Ada was able to operate in the open,
while Wesker, the "dead man," had to stick to the shadows. Wesker
sent Ada undercover to try to find and capture Sherry, and her
pendant containing the G-Virus sample.

Unfortunately, in a way, Ada betrayed Wesker. She fell for Leon,
failed to obtain a sample of the G-Virus, and wound up nearly
dying in a fall from the lab walkway. She still had some value to
Wesker, however, and he saved her life.

(The version of RE2 shown in the Report has any number of minor
 inconsistencies. Sherry is shown talking to Claire, but she
 doesn't have her pendant; meanwhile, Leon is shown destroying
 Mr. X, as well as in Ada's Leon B death scene. Wesker claims
 that Mr. X was sent to dispatch Leon and Claire, who were
 trying to uncover Umbrella's secrets, but that doesn't make
 any sense; when Mr. X shows up, neither Leon or Claire know
 what's happened in *Raccoon*, let alone anything about Umbrella.
 James Livingston writes to point out that Wesker may simply
 have gotten some bad information, or is leaping to conclusions,
 but that's not in character for a man who is telling us all
 about how he's been the puppet master for the entire series
 up 'til now.)

Somehow, Wesker had managed to get "[his] people" into Raccoon
City. They rushed to get the sample of the G-Virus that Leon
threw away (apparently intending to vacuum it up off the floor
or something), but Hunk beat them to it and escaped. Finally,
Wesker tried to capture Birkin alive, but Leon and Claire had
already killed him. Wesker wound up getting samples of the
G-Virus from Birkin's corpse.

(There's an odd dichotomy here. As Wesker tells the above story,
 about capturing Birkin, the Report is showing the final battle
 between Leon and Mr. X. I think someone may have gotten confused.

(Furthermore, Wesker talks about the bombing of Raccoon City at
 one point, and the Report shows the final movie from RE3. The
 movie, however, shows Barry's helicopter from the outside, and
 on the inside, it shows the scenes from the third ending, where
 Carlos is flying the chopper.)

The Report concludes with Wesker saying that Sherry is "safely in
our hands." He would never underestimate Birkin, and muses that
"there's something about this little girl."

If you've spotted any number of plot holes in the above narrative,
then you're not alone.

(Vincent Merken writes to point out the biggest plot hole, one that
 I'm kicking myself for not noticing on my own. In a nutshell, it's
 this: "...basically Wesker is retrieving inferior products for his
 current employers." If Wesker is infected with a virus that lends
 its host superhuman strength, speed, and resilence, *and* lets
 the host *keep* their human intelligence, why the hell did he want
 the G-Virus or the Tyrant? Couldn't he have just bought his way
 into one of Umbrella's corporations with this wonder virus he
 carries around in his bloodstream? If he *did*, and that's why
 he's working for whoever he's working for in CV, then why do they
 want the T-Veronica virus at all? Wesker's virus works within days,
 while Alexia's takes *years*.

(Oh, and by the way...? SHUT UP. I'm not looking for you to try
 and justify Capcom's enormous plot hole. Those are *theories*.
 You're actually *using* the word *theory* when you write to me
 about this. I grow weary of your tiresome illiteracy, Internet.)

Quite frankly, the Report is a quick fix, a series of hastily
improvised plot fixers that doesn't hold up real well to any kind
of scrutiny. Fortunately, certain events in the Report have
already been addressed by RE2.0, and we can only hope that more
is to come.

================================
8vi. The Woman Who Wouldn't Die:
     Wesker's Report 2
================================

Wesker's second report was only made available on Capcom's
Japanese website, as a series of still images divided into
five parts. Each part represents a report written by Wesker,
supposedly to Ada Wong, over the course of the twenty years
he spent as a researcher for Umbrella. It's decidedly more
interesting than the first Report, and actually does a great
deal to solidify the series's chronology. (I'm using the
translation from rehorror.com. Thanks to Chris Bound for
sending me the link.)

Wesker was first assigned to the Arklay mansion laboratory
at the age of eighteen, on July 29th, 1978. He and William
Birkin, then aged sixteen, were assigned to the facility by
Ozwell Spencer himself, and appointed the chief researchers.

(Note that in 1978, not only was Ozwell Spencer, the co-founder
of Umbrella, still alive, but the T-Virus had already been
invented. Annette's claims that William Birkin created the
T-Virus have apparently been disproven.)

At that time, the Arklay laboratories were performing
research on the Ebola virus. Ostensibly, the research
was meant to study Ebola in the event that someone used
it as a weapon, but Umbrella was really studying it for
use as a bioweapon. At this time, William Birkin also
intended to combine the T-Virus with Ebola, with the
intention of creating a new, enhanced virus.

On their first visit to the Spencer mansion, Wesker and
Birkin had their first encounter with an unidentified woman,
who was then twenty-five. For the last eleven years, the
woman had been a test subject for the research on the T-Virus.
No one knew her name, or how she had come to be there.

Three years later, Alexia Ashford was appointed the chief
researcher at Umbrella's Antarctic facility, which caused
Wesker a great deal of grief. Respect for Edward Ashford,
the late founder of Umbrella and the "first one to find the
original virus," still ran high among the older researchers
at the Arklay facility, and as a result, they couldn't stop
talking about Edward's granddaughter. Wesker decided, out of
irritation with the "old fools" who worked for him, to use
them as test subjects.

Wesker had two bigger problems, though. One was that Birkin's
ego was wounded by Alexia's appointment, and his work suffered
as a result. Another was the problems they were having with the
T-Virus.

At this point, Wesker and Birkin were working at Spencer's
behest on making a fully effective bioweapon with the T-Virus.
They had managed to get it to the point where 90% of the
subjects infected with the T-Virus became zombies, with the
remaining ten percent simply dying, but Spencer would settle
for nothing less than 100% effectiveness. That bothered
Wesker, as Spencer was apparently throwing good money after
bad; he had suddenly stopped caring about the project's
profitability. Wesker began to wonder what Spencer was planning,
even as he and Birkin began work on the bioweapon that would
eventually be known as the Hunter.

Wesker's final report for 1981 deals with the mysterious
woman that was mentioned before. The Arklay lab went through
"test subjects" at an incredible rate, but they were replaced
quickly by Umbrella's president. The only test subject who had
managed to survive was the woman, who clung to life despite
being ravaged by the Ebola virus. Wesker couldn't figure that
out, either, as the data he gathered from her wasn't any different
from any other test subject.

Wesker's next report came two years later, in the winter of the
sixth year he spent at Arklay. Since his last report, the research
at Arklay had come to a virtual halt, but the dry spell was broken
by news of Alexia Ashford's death. She had apparently made a
mistake while working on one of her personal projects: the
T-Veronica virus. It was rumored that Alexia had injected herself
with it, but Wesker disregarded those stories.

(There's a slight discrepancy here, as CV seems to intimate that
the T-Veronica virus was a secret project of Alexia's, while
in Wesker's Report 2, it seems that most people knew about it.
It's odd. On the other hand, Wesker does mention in the Report
that he'd meant to find out more about Alexia's research all
along, but had to put that project aside for later.)

With Alexia dead, William Birkin changed back to the driven
scientist he'd been when he first arrived at Arklay.

While Birkin worked, Wesker began to have suspicions about
Ozwell Spencer's motivations. His private study of the T-Virus
had revealed that it could infect and affect most forms of
life, from plants to insects and larger animals. If that was
the case, then why was the Arklay mansion situated in the
middle of such a large forest? In the event of a breakout,
the mansion's solitude wouldn't prevent the spreading of
the virus; instead, the virus would infect whatever forms
of life it encountered, and those animals and plants would
spread it even further. It almost seemed to Wesker as though
Spencer had set up this laboratory because he *wanted* the
virus to spread.... but why?

Wesker resolved to gather more information, and he couldn't
do that as a simple researcher. Quietly, he continued his
work with Birkin, to conceal his true motivations from
Spencer.

Five years passed. Birkin married another researcher at the
facility, and had become the father of a two-year-old girl.
Unfortunately, Wesker and Birkin's research had run into
problems. They had begun planning the creation of a powerful
bioweapon, the Tyrant. The problem was that Birkin's method
of creating the Tyrant, which utilized the T-Virus, had an
infinitesmal chance of working. In their simulations, only
one subject in a hundred million would actually become a
Tyrant after being subjected to the process. The rest would
simply become zombies.

An Umbrella facility in Europe had come up with a plan to
circumvent this problem, known as the "Nemesis Project," and
Wesker managed to get a sample of their work from the French
facility with Spencer's help.

(1983: Wesker wrings a virus sample out of a French laboratory.
1998: an assault team is sent after the Raccoon City labs on
orders from the head of Umbrella's French division. Coincidences
are not useful.)

The Nemesis itself was a parasitical life form. It would take
over a host and create a bioweapon with enhanced intelligence
and incredible power. The problem that the European branch had
encountered was that the Nemesis parasite invariably killed
its hosts. Wesker theorized that if they could prolong the
survival time of a host, he and Birkin could get the credit
for the Nemesis Project.

It just so happened, incidentally, that Wesker had access to
a woman that seemed unkillable. The mysterious woman was still
alive, despite the tortures inflicted upon her, so she seemed
a natural candidate for the Nemesis parasite.

When Wesker tested the Nemesis parasite on the woman, the parasite
entered her brain and disappeared. After further testing, Wesker
discovered that the woman had somehow consumed the parasite. This
occasioned a new series of tests on the woman, which would, in
time, give rise to a new idea: the G-Virus project.

The next report was written seven years later. Wesker had been
transferred to Umbrella's secret service, while Birkin's work
on the G-Virus was authorized in 1991. Neither of them spent
much time at Arklay anymore, as Wesker was no longer a researcher,
and Birkin did most of his work out of the labs underneath
Raccoon City.

Apparently, Birkin first discovered the G-Virus inside the body
of the woman who wouldn't die, in 1988. The G-Virus, like the
T-Virus, mutated its hosts, but unlike the T-Virus, would keep
mutating the host on its own. While those infected with the
T-Virus might change given the intervention of an outside force,
like radiation, the G-Virus caused constant changes inside its
subjects. That was why the woman had been able to survive anything
the Arklay researchers had thrown at her, from the Nemesis parasite
to Ebola; the G-Virus simply mutated her to accomodate the new
virus in her system. Birkin's stated intention with the study of
the G-Virus was to take this mutation to its furthest extent,
to see what would happen.

Wesker was dumbfounded that Spencer had actually allowed Birkin to
pursue the research, and cynically noted that Spencer hadn't shown
up at Arklay for years, almost as if he was expecting something
bad to happen there. Even with Wesker's move to the secret service,
he hadn't been able to get any more insight into what Spencer was
thinking.

Wesker came to the mansion in 1995 to try and kill the unkillable
woman. The consumption of the Nemesis had made her slightly more
lucid, although her behavior was erratic. When she had first been
injected with the "mother virus," all those years ago, she had
been known to rip the faces off of other women and wear them
herself. She had recently resumed that behavior, and had killed
three researchers as a direct result. Since she wasn't needed
anymore for the G-Virus research, the order came down to get
rid of her. While it took three days, she was finally declared
dead, and the president of Umbrella disposed of her body.

(One of the pictures of the woman in the final report is, indeed,
of the woman from RE2.0. The "mysterious woman" was Lisa Trevor.
This raises the interesting question of how her body was disposed
of, if she was allowed to live peacefully underneath the cabin
behind the Spencer mansion for three years.)

Wesker left the Arklay labs in 1995, still wondering what Ozwell
Spencer had in mind. The "incident" would take place three years
later, releasing monsters into the Raccoon Forest and eventually
causing the death of Raccoon City.

=============================
9. Frequently Asked Questions
=============================

"You can't spell analyze without anal."
    -- Ben Plante

Before you fire off an e-mail, asking me questions that
might wind up in this section, I have four very simple
points to make:

One: The Resident Evil series is, when you take all the
trimmings off of it, a series of B-movies.

B-movies are basically eye candy. They don't have to make
sense, they don't have to be perfectly coherent, and a fair
number of plot holes are usually par for the course. RE
carries on this tradition in high, albeit irritating, style.

Two: Also, you have to remember that these are video games,
and as such, follow their own kind of rough internal logic.
Cinematically, for example, it makes no sense that a police
station would be a strange maze of puzzles, traps, and intricate
locks, but in a video game, it's almost expected. These are
video games, first and foremost; they operate as such. Remember
that at all times.

Three: please consider your question carefully. I've been
getting a lot of questions that could only be answered by
a member of the development team, mostly relating to character
motivations, the absence of various creatures, the Plot Device
Virus plot hole, and the like. If it's a question that you'd
need to be a Capcom employee to know the answer to (i.e.
character motivations), I can't help you with it. I don't
work for Capcom... yet.

Four: *please* read the entire document, searching for the answer
to your question, before you e-mail me. I am not your research
assistant.

=======
LEGEND:
=======

RE = the original Resident Evil
RE2.0 = the Gamecube remake of RE

=================================
9i. Document and Series Questions
=================================

Q. Why'd you write/update this?

A. First, I'm a pretty big Resident Evil fan. Second, I was
getting a lot of e-mail about RE2's various plot holes, and
immediately thought of the previous version of this document.
I was reading it to confirm a couple of things, and it occurred
to me that it could use an update. As I had a lot of free time
that semester, I wrote to Dan and volunteered to update it for
him. He said "yes" and, little suspecting what I was about to
endure, I set to work.

Q. How long did this take you to write?

A. The first update (where this first appeared on gameFAQs.com
with my name on it) took me two or three weeks, most of which
was spent on the RE3 and CV plot summaries. The considerably
more in-depth version you're reading now is the result of a
year and a half spent adding to and editing that original
document, with near-constant feedback from RE fans on the web.

Q. What's with all the disclaimers and their general tone?

A. When people start reading the disclaimers, I'll stop
sprinkling them irritatedly and liberally throughout the analysis.
My feedback for this document is something like 40% theories,
and 20% questions from people who can't be bothered to look for
their own answers. I don't have a hell of a lot of patience with
anyone who can't read for content.

Q. Why don't you want to hear my theory? Don't you have a sense
of humor?

A. I should think it's obvious that I *do* have a sense of humor,
given even a casual perusal of this analysis or any of my other
FAQs. My rationale for not wanting to hear anyone's theories is,
simply, this: Resident Evil fans are *crazy*.

I hung out on RE fan boards fairly regularly before, while, and
after I updated the analysis for the first time (veterans of the
late Evil Online may remember me by my handle, Storyteller), and
it seems like every third RE fan has a vast overarching conspiracy
theory, founded upon the most specious evidence, that Explains It
All (tm). They irritated me then, and they irritate me now. While
I can certainly understand a certain degree of speculation about
the next game in a popular series, particularly one that's as
rooted in mysteries and secrets as RE has become, people take it
to extraordinary extremes. (This doesn't even scratch the surface.
There's a guy in Britain who used to keep me updated on his
attempts to replicate the G-Virus.)

In short, my desire to not hear about your &*$%ing *theory* is
largely born of a desire to not become the sounding board for
every lunatic in the RE fan community. It's nothing personal,
really, even if I do send you a response that intimates that
your ancestors include several species of goat. It's a simple
attempt to keep things as calm and topical as possible.

Q. Could you send me a copy/notify me when you update?

A. Nope. You've got twelve websites you could consult. Use 'em.

Q. Will you put [something from the previous version of the Thesis]
back in?

A. Not likely. This thing is big enough as it is, and if I start
including stuff like Dan's comparison of _Aliens_ and RE2 in here,
then I'll start talking about Code Veronica and the literary Gothic,
which will draw the weirdos out of the woodwork, which in turn
will inevitably lead to my becoming even more of a damn fanboy
than I already am, and quite frankly, no one wants that. Despite
what you may think, I do have something which I laughingly refer
to as a "life."

Q. Here's a joke that implies that the green herbs are, in fact,
cannibis sativa, or, if you prefer, marijuana! Aren't I entertaining?

A. No, actually. I've heard that joke before. Please don't tell it
to me again.

Q. How many RE games are there, and what systems have they been
released on?

A. The original Resident Evil was released for the PSX, Saturn, and
PC, with the Director's Cut and Dual Shock editions following soon
afterward for the PSX.

Resident Evil 2 has come out for the PSX, Dreamcast, N64, and PC.
The PSX has seen the original version, as well as the Dual Shock
edition which included the Extreme Battle Game (see below), and
the N64 'port is a highly-compressed version of the original
which includes some extra files and the Randomizer gameplay option
(again, see below). The Dreamcast version is a Windows-CE-powered
'port of the PC version, which includes the Extreme Battle Game,
two extra difficulty settings, and two unlockable image galleries.

RE3 is available for the PSX, PC, and Dreamcast. The latter 'port
is, again, the PC version, brought to the Dreamcast by CE. The
latter two versions have a couple of extra outfits for Jill, and
the Mercenaries game is permanently unlocked, but are otherwise
identical to the PSX version.

Survivor has only come out for the PSX.

RE:CV originally came out for the Dreamcast. A year and a half
later, Capcom released RE:CVX for the PS2, which is the same game,
albeit with about ten minutes of additional cinema footage. CVX
was also released for the Dreamcast in Japan, under the name
CV:Complete.

Gun Survivor 2, a.k.a. Fire Zone, is a PS2 game. I've also heard
from a fan who spotted it in a Japanese arcade.

Resident Evil Gaiden, for the Game Boy Color, apparently has yet
to be released in the U.S.

Resident Evil 2.0 is, for the moment, a Gamecube exclusive, as are
Resident Evil 0 and the forthcoming Resident Evil 4.

Q. Do you know where I can read the games' files online?

A. You can find transcriptions scattered around various FAQ sites,
like gamefaqs.com.

Q. Do you have any Game Shark or other cheat codes?

A. No. As a card-carrying member of the Survival Horror Elite(tm)
(our motto: "Guns are a luxury, not a necessity"), I don't need them.

Q. Why is the series called Biohazard in Japan and China, and
Resident Evil in North America and Europe?

A. Because the heavy-metal band Biohazard has copyrighted that
name in North America and Europe.

Q. Who does the voice acting?

A. Claire Redfield....................Alyson Court
   Leon S. Kennedy....................Paul Haddad
   Ada Wong...........................Sally Cahill
   Sherry Birkin......................Lisa Yamanaka
   William Birkin.....................Diego Matamores
   Annette Birkin.....................Jennifer Dale
   Ben Bertolucci.....................Rod Wilson
   Brian Irons........................Gary Krawford
   Jill Valentine (RE3)...............Catherine Disher
   Carlos Oliviera....................Vince Corazza
   Mikhail Victor.....................Ben Campbell
   Nicholai Ginovaef..................Roger Honeywell
   Brad Vickers (RE3).................Evan Sabba
   Dario Rosso........................Tony Rosato
   Chris Redfield (RE:CV).............Michael Fipowich
   Steve Burnside.....................Bill Houston
   Rodrigo Juan Raval.................Victor Roach
   Alfred Ashford.....................Peter Oldring
   Alexia Ashford.....................Leila Johnson
   Albert Wesker (RE:CV)..............Richard Waugh
   Chris Redfield (RE2.0).............Joe Whyte
   Jill Valentine (RE2.0).............Heidi Anderson
   Barry Burton (RE2.0)...............Ed Smaron
   Rebecca Chambers (RE2.0)...........Hope Levy
   Albert Wesker (RE2.0)..............Peter Jessop
   Richard Aiken......................Joe Whyte
   Brad Vickers (RE2.0)...............Adam Paul
   Forest Speyer......................Ed Smaron
   Joseph Frost.......................Adam Paul
   Enrico Marini......................Dan Hagen

All of the live-action actors from RE are identified in the credits
by a single name; for example, Chris was played by "Charlie," and
Jill was played by "Inezh."

Q. What else have these people done?

A. Check the Internet Movie Database [http://www.imdb.com] for
their film, voice, and television resumes. The exception is,
naturally, the cast of RE.

Q. What movies are the games based on?

A. George Romero's "Dead Trilogy" of films are the first and
most obvious influences. I'd also point to _Return of the
Living Dead_ and its two sequels, as there are scenes in RE2,
RE3, and CV which appear to be outright taken from those films.

Q. T-Virus, G-Virus, T-Veronica virus... what's the scoop?

A. The T-Virus was created by Edward Ashford and Ozwell Spencer
at some indeterminate point in the early to mid-twentieth century,
after research into the mysterious "mother virus." When it infects
an organism, it mutates the creature into a monster. Humans turn
into zombies or Lickers, while animals tend to get vicious, mutate,
and/or get *very big*. While almost every form of life on Earth can
be infected by the T-Virus, a small number of people are naturally
immune to it for unknown reasons. The T-Virus is also used in the
manufacture of bioweapons such as the Hunter and Tyrant. The
T-Virus's vector and effects are best described as "dramatic
convenience"; the virus more or less does whatever the plotline
needs it to do. Umbrella has created a T-Virus vaccine, which
has been given to Jill Valentine.

Albert Wesker and William Birkin discovered the G-Virus in Lisa
Trevor's body in 1988. The virus differs from the T-Virus in that
it causes constant mutations in its host; while a creature infected
with the T-Virus may mutate further with appropriate stimuli, the
G-Virus simply continually mutates its host until the host's death.
In Lisa Trevor's case, the G-Virus enabled her to survive exposure
to Ebola, the T-Virus, and the Nemesis parasite, although her
survival cost her much of her intelligence and her sanity.

By the time of RE2, William Birkin had spent ten years working on
the G-Virus, and whatever changes he made on it in that time may
be responsible for the very different effects that the G-Virus has
in RE2. A creature infected by Birkin's G-Virus is a rapidly mutating
killing machine. It possesses incredible strength, can heal very
quickly, endure insane amounts of punishment, and generate miniature
embryos, which it'll attempt to implant in other organisms. If these
embryos reach maturity, they'll quickly kill their hosts and crawl
off on their own. The exception here is if the G-Type impregnates
a blood relative; we don't know exactly what would happen next,
but the process takes a lot longer and doesn't produce any
immediately visible results.

There was a vaccine effective against the G-Virus, the "Devil," but
it may have been lost when William Birkin's labs were destroyed. Hunk
and Wesker both got away from Raccoon City with samples of the
G-Virus, although Ada Wong may not have been as lucky. Alert reader
"Knave" points out that according to the Vaccine Synthesis file in
RE2, the Devil vaccine does not destroy the G-Virus, but instead
simply arrests its development. If the official storyline for RE
involves Sherry getting infected, then Sherry herself may be a
viable G-Virus sample, which in turn could account for Wesker's
saying "There's something about that girl..." in the first Report.

The T-Veronica virus was created around 1983 by Alexia Ashford,
by combining the T-Virus with a dead virus Alexia found inside
the body of a queen ant. If it's used on a human, it'll create
an uncontrollable mutant with homicidal tendencies, as evidenced
by both Alexander Ashford and Steve Burnside. However, if an
infected human is placed into cold storage for about fifteen
years, her body is able to cope with and adapt to the T-Veronica
virus, and that human thereby gains a truly obscene amount of power.
Alexia Ashford went through this process, and in so doing became
the meanest mother in the valley. The only surviving sample of
the T-Veronica virus is in Steve Burnside's body, and as of the
new ending for CV, Wesker's got it.

Also mentioned, in RE3, is the NE-T virus. We don't know anything
about it other than that it exists, although its name has led some
to believe that it has something to do with the creation of Nemesis.

Finally, a discussion of various viruses wouldn't be complete without
mentioning the Plot Device Virus, which is what let Wesker survive
the end of RE (see below).

Q. Hey, have you seen the movie?

A. Naturally. You can read my review of the film in my
supposedly-weekly column, "Signal to Noise," at
www.gamepartisan.com.

Q. Hey, [event in movie] figures into the games' plot.

A. So I've been told, at copious length. The film is a prequel
to the games; it's set just after the original outbreak at the
Spencer mansion, in May of '98, and in a lab complex that could
very well be said to be the one from the end of RE2. While no
characters from the games appear in the movies, there are a few
throwaway lines here and there that refer to the games (an
example is the oft-quoted line, regarding the "Nemesis Project").

The movie may very well have a bearing on the games, particularly
taking the RE remake into account, but until I've got some proof
having to do with the games, I won't be using any information from
the film in this analysis. (You know, sometimes I think Capcom is
out to drive me, specifically, crazy.)

Q. If the film's a prequel, then where is it supposed to take place?

A. The movie starts in the Spencer mansion, and moves from there to
the cavernous "Hive" research complex underneath Raccoon City, where
RE2 is apparently meant to take place. The freight tunnel connecting
the Hive and the Spencer mansion is permanently sealed over the
course of the movie, which neatly explains why you can't get from
one place to the other in either RE or RE2.

Q. Will you summarize the film in this document?

A. Probably not, lest New Line Cinema squash me like a bug. Besides,
a film summary is out of place in a document that's specifically
dedicated to games.

Q. I'm confused by the timeline. How can RE3 take place *during*
RE2? What's going on?

A. The official order of in-game events goes something like this:

May 11th, 1998: the T-Virus is spilled at the Spencer
mansion. (The games have never said just how the virus
escaped. In the film, on the other hand, a thief deliberately
shatters a vial of the T-Virus as he's stealing a case full
of viruses and antidotes.) If the film is actually canon,
that outbreak spurs a complete security lockdown at the
"Hive" underneath Raccoon City and, eventually, a rescue
mission. The survivors of that mission escape the Hive via
the underground bullet train just before the Hive's systems
permanently seal off the route between the Spencer mansion
and the Hive. Of the two survivors, one is immediately
dragged off to take part in the "Nemesis Project." See the
FAQs for RE3, below.

July 25th, 1998: the Alpha team is forced to take shelter
in the Spencer mansion, courtesy of Brad Vickers's cowardice.
Stuff happens, people die, and the surviving STARS manage
to escape the mansion at daybreak, just before it explodes.

August of 1998: Chris and Barry both leave Raccoon City to go
to Europe. Jill elects to stay behind, intending to investigate
William Birkin's underground laboratory, and while she's at
it, she quits the RPD. (At this point, she presumably begins
laying low, as according to Marvin Branagh in RE2, Jill
"disappeared" at the same time that Barry and Chris did.)

Around September 22nd: A team of black-ops agents are sent,
possibly by Umbrella's French division, to William Birkin's
laboratory, intending to get a sample of the G-Virus. One
of them is trigger-happy, and hilarity ensues. In the
resulting massacre, the G-Type munches on a number of virus
containers, and sewer rats promptly carry the T-Virus
aboveground to Raccoon City.

Please note that what got loose in Raccoon was, in fact,
the T-Virus. The G-Virus doesn't make zombies (if you find
RE2 difficult now, imagine how tough it'd be with the
streets crawling with Birkins), and both the RE2 and CV
announcers call what happened in Raccoon a "T-Virus outbreak."

(As above, if the film can be considered canon, Alice wakes
up in the hospital at some point during the height of the
Raccoon outbreak. She promptly trips over a sequel hook.)

September 27th: The "cannibal disease" finally breaks out into
the streets, and zombies begin to swarm through Raccoon City.
The RPD tries to fight them back, and is slaughtered, as
depicted in RE3's opening movie. Martial law is declared,
and the quarantine goes into effect.

September 28th, daytime: Jill blows her way out of her apartment
building, meets the Nemesis and the surviving UBCS soldiers, and
fixes the cable car. Mikhail's last stand knocks out the cable
car's brakes, and Jill is knocked unconscious in the ensuing crash.

September 28th, night: Jill wakes up at the St. Michael Clock
Tower. She signals the UBCS extraction chopper, which is promptly
shot down by the Nemesis. Jill faces off against and "kills" the
Nemesis, but it infects her with the T-Virus before "dying." Jill
passes out, and Carlos takes her to the chapel of the clock tower.

September 29th, late at night: Leon and Claire come into town and
get to the RPD building. They meet Ada, Sherry, Annette, Mr. X,
the G-Type, and the rest of the crew. They gain access to the
sewers and William Birkin's lab, and take the elevator down.

September 30th, early morning: The "death" of Ada Wong. The
final encounters with the G-Type and Mr. X. Leon and Claire
make their escape from William Birkin's laboratory by train.

September 30th, daytime: Claire and Leon have their unexplained
argument, and Claire vanishes into the Raccoon Forest. Leon and
Sherry are promptly picked up by the U.S. military; Leon is
approached by someone who might be a government agent, while
Sherry is apparently soon captured by people working for Wesker.

October 1st, the middle of the night: Jill finally wakes up
in the chapel. Carlos finds the T-Virus vaccine for her, and
while doing so, encounters Nicholai and the new incarnation of
the Nemesis.

October 1st, near daybreak: Carlos cures Jill, who makes her way
to the Dead Factory. Nicholai leaves Carlos and Jill to die, but
Barry Burton intervenes at the last minute. He flies Carlos and
Jill out of Raccoon, right before the U.S. government nukes it
at dawn.

Hunk's departure from the RPD takes place at night, at some point
after Claire and Leon have vacated the RPD. It could be set on
either September 30th or October 1st without much difficulty.

November, 1998: Ark Thompson has his little set-to with Vincent
Goldman on Sheena Island, which leads directly to the events of
Survivor. Ark, Lott, and Lily escape the island via helicopter.

December 19th, 1998 (?): Claire Redfield is captured in Paris by
Rodrigo Juan Raval.

December 29th, 1998 (?): shortly after she's taken to Rockfort
Island, Claire is knocked unconscious. While she's out, Wesker's
assault team attacks the island, inflicting heavy damage and
unleashing the T-Virus. Rodrigo lets Claire out of her cell,
and she promptly escapes the island with Steve.

December 30th, 1998 (?): thanks to Alfred Ashford, Claire and Steve's
plane crashes into Alexander Ashford's Antarctic hideaway. Claire
manages to find an escape route, and Alfred's triumphant ambush
is slightly marred by Steve's shooting him repeatedly. Claire and
Steve's second escape attempt is foiled by Alexia's sudden
awakening. Meanwhile, at Rockfort, Chris Redfield arrives, meets
Rodrigo and Wesker, and commandeers one of Alfred's spare jets.

December 31st, 1998 (?): Chris touches down in the Antarctic, saves
Claire, kills Alexia, and survives his ill-advised fistfight with
Wesker. He and Claire escape the Antarctic in Alfred's jet just
as the base explodes.

Q. Why don't any RE games ever take place in daylight?

A. You may as well ask why so few horror movies ever take place
in daylight. Nighttime is scarier.

Besides, the first half of RE3 *does* take place in daylight,
according to Jill. It just doesn't look like it because half
the damn city's on fire.

Q. Where the hell is Raccoon City?

A. Right now, it's slowly drifting to Earth as radioactive dust.

Before the nuke, it was somewhere in "America's Midwest," and
there's nothing in any RE game that would place it anywhere more
specific (i.e. the police car Leon and Claire take in RE2 has
"Raccoon" license plates). Since we know Raccoon is within a
short distance of a large forest and a mountain range, that
does drastically limit the number of places it *could* be.

Q. What is Resident Evil 1.5?

A. I quote Dan Birlew, from the first version of this thesis:

When the original Resident Evil topped the videogame sales
charts, Capcom realized two things: they needed a sequel,
and they should have put more quality into the first game.
Reprogramming it, they re-released it as Resident Evil:
Director's Cut in 1997. The package contained a second disk
this time, a demo version of Resident Evil 2. The demo was
met with extreme confusion, however. Capcom had previously
released to the press screenshots of a prototype for the
sequel. The demo, although definitely not the finished
version, was nothing like what had been previously advertised.

Internet Resident Evil fans have taken to calling this scrapped
prototype game Resident Evil 1.5. Leon appeared in the game,
but the earlier version of Claire was an unrelated college girl
named Elza [Walker]. With blonde hair and red biking gear, she
was similar to Claire only in her love of riding Harleys.

The game was developed with the same map as the game that
was eventually released, but the graphics were steeped in
atmospheric blues and neon lighting. Evidence of widespread
chaos in Raccoon City was far more plentiful and severe in
this game's scenery than in the final version. The Birkins,
Chief Irons, and Ada Wong were all missing from the
ambivalent plotline of this game. Resident Evil 2 in this
version threatened to be too much like the original. The
planners wanted something that would take the storyline
further. What the fans had been shown and told to expect
from the sequel was not what they got.

[Thomas adds: Dreamcast and, presumably, PC owners can unlock
 a special image gallery, containing development sketches of
 RE2 and RE1.5, including a picture of Elza Walker and a group
 shot of the cast of RE1.5. Then again, if you can't find RE1.5
 screenshots on the 'net, you aren't really trying.

[There are four movies of RE1.5 in action on the second disc of
 the Japanese Dual Shock Edition of RE:DC; I don't know if that's
 the case for the American version, or even if there is an
 American version. The movies show brief gameplay sequences from
 various points in the game, featuring scenes set in the sewers,
 the RPD, and an underground complex of some sort. I recognized
 the RPD morgue and the elevator hallway in Birkin's lab from RE2.
 Also, a creature that looks a bit like the G-Type is present
 in several scenes; at one point, it's shown thrashing the
 hell out of another monster.]

Q. Where can I get the RE1.5 ROM?

A. Fantasyland. It doesn't exist, as the game was never completed.

Q. Hey, my friend says he has a copy of Resident Evil 1.5.

A. Your friend lies. Destroy him.

Q. Will Resident Evil 1.5 ever be released?

A. Probably not. Most sources say that Mikami wasn't happy
with the way the game was going, so he canceled it and
started over with RE2.

Every so often, a petition circulates among the online RE fan
community to have RE1.5 released as some kind of "Director's
Cut," or a rumor hits all the RE sites concerning RE1.5's
release, but I wouldn't count on ever playing it by itself.
On the other hand, quite a few of its features and settings
have already been incorporated into other RE games.

Q. Why do RE's women always say "It's over" just before
something bad happens?

A. Both Jill and Claire suffer from a horrible birth defect
that left them without a sense of irony.

Q. Hey, have you read any of the novels?

A. Yeah, all of them. For those who don't know, there are six
Resident Evil novels, all written by S.D. (Stephani Danielle)
Perry and published by Pocket Books. _The Umbrella Conspiracy_
is a novelization of Resident Evil (it's a mix of both games,
where Chris explores the dormitories while Jill encounters
the Tyrant), _City of the Dead_ is a novelization of Resident
Evil 2 (Leon A/Claire B), _Nemesis_ is a novelization of
RE3 (ending #3, where the Nemesis kills Nicholai and Carlos
swipes Nicholai's helicopter), and _Code: Veronica_ is a
novelization of CV (note: *not* CVX). There are also
two original novels, _Caliban Cove_ and _Underworld_; the
former features Rebecca Chambers and a bunch of original
characters, while the latter stars Claire, Leon, Rebecca,
and the original characters who survived _Caliban_. (If you
see someone refer to characters named "David" or "John" in
RE fanfics, they're referring to characters from Perry's
novels.) The books are all right, as pulp-horror novels
based on a video game go, even if--

--*my God, she uses italicized inner dialogue more than she
uses her omniscient viewpoint! After all, why bother with a
concise narrative when you can have characters do the narration
instead, even if they do it in unbelievably stilted prose*--

--Perry's writing style gets on my nerves. (The crew over at
www.spoonyinc.com calls Perry's books "glorified fanfic," and
I'd have to agree with that.) In the United States, the books
are in surprisingly wide circulation, and can be found in any
decent-sized bookstore's science-fiction section. I don't know
if they've been translated into any other languages, but one
reader has told me that the books are available via catalogue in
the UK. Alternatively, you could always order them from Amazon.

Q. Do the novels mean anything to the plot?

A. Not really. The novels exist in their own little sub-continuity,
a point that was driven home by RE3. In point of fact, it almost
looks like RE3 was deliberately crafted to contradict Perry's novels
at every turn.  I'll touch upon the high points:

              Capcom              |                 Perry
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Raccoon City is in the "American |  Raccoon City is in Pennsylvania.
 Midwest." It had more than a     |  It had about eight thousand people
 hundred thousand people in it.   |  in it. It's an hour from New York.
                                  |  (Please note: *eep*.)
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Raccoon City got nuked on        |  A huge fire destroyed the city
 October 1st, right after Jill    |  at some point after Leon and Claire
 escaped. Leon and Claire got out |  escaped on October 4th. The
 on the morning of the 30th of    |  surviving S.T.A.R.S. are, as of
 September. There are about       |  _Underworld_, being framed for the
 eight known survivors: Claire,   |  outbreak by Umbrella. The ruins are
 Leon, Sherry, Hunk, Ada, Jill,   |  being sorted through by the CDC,
 Carlos, and Nicholai. (Alert     |  the military, and some Umbrella-
 reader Adrian Wood points out    |  funded biohazard teams. Besides
 that according to Wesker's       |  Leon, Sherry, and Claire, there
 Report, Wesker technically       |  were close to a hundred survivors.
 counts as well. I don't count    |  (This means, of course, that
 Barry, personally.)              |  _Underworld_ and _Nemesis_
                                  |  contradict each other, but Perry's
                                  |  quite aware of that, thank you.
                                  |  See below.)
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Jill Valentine is ex-Delta Force.|  Jill Valentine is an ex-thief, and
 This means that she is also an   |  the daughter of notorious cat
 ex-Green Beret or Army Ranger.   |  burglar Dick Valentine, hence
 She is 23. This is somewhat      |  explaining why she's the "master of
 implausible. (Depending on who   |  unlocking." She joined the S.T.A.R.S.
 you listen to, women can be in   |  because her father pressured her
 the Delta Force, but only in a   |  to go into a line of work that
 specific division of it. Also,   |  wasn't patently illegal. While
 women in the U.S. armed forces,  |  this makes a little more sense
 according to several alert       |  than Capcom's version, it's still
 readers, are prohibited from     |  ridiculous.
 serving in combat roles.)        |
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Jill stays in Raccoon until she  |  Jill leaves town with Barry and
 blasts her way out of town on    |  Chris on September 26th, well
 October 1st, a day after Claire  |  before the T-Virus outbreak, then
 and Leon forcibly renovate       |  reenters town and leaves again on
 Umbrella's underground labs.     |  the thirtieth, with Carlos.
                                  |  Claire and Leon don't get anywhere
                                  |  near Raccoon City until the night
                                  |  of October 4th. Note the problems
                                  |  with the timeline.
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Claire and Leon don't part on    |  Claire and Leon are picked up
 the best of terms. Claire runs   |  outside Raccoon by Rebecca Chambers
 off, while Leon and Sherry are   |  and her posse from _Caliban Cove_.
 taken into military custody.     |  Sherry now lives with her Aunt Kate.
 Leon joins "an underground anti- |  Leon and Claire immediately head off
 Umbrella group," and Sherry is   |  to have more anti-Umbrella adventures
 at some point captured by        |  together, in _Underworld_. As of
 Wesker's new organization.       |  _Code: Veronica_, Umbrella does not
                                  |  know where Sherry is, but would very
                                  |  much like to.
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Rebecca Chambers is horribly     |  Rebecca is the heroine of _Caliban_
 annoying, and is AWOL after RE.  |  Cove_, where she saves the world
 She doesn't really do one whole  |  and stuff. Perry is fixated on
 hell of a lot.                   |  Rebecca, and displays this unhealthy
                                  |  obsession by having EVERY CHARACTER
                                  |  conduct lengthy interior monologues
                                  |  about how smart, funny, clever, cute,
                                  |  and brave little Becky is. It's
                                  |  really kinda disturbing, when you
                                  |  get right down to it.
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Chris, Jill, Claire, and Leon    |  An enigmatic man named Trent feeds
 survive their adventures by      |  the S.T.A.R.S. and their associates
 being smart, tough, clever, and  |  information in the form of weird
 lucky. They're rarely given any  |  riddles, usually immediately after
 outside help, outside of the     |  appearing or disappearing
 occasional last-minute save from |  mysteriously. Some fans like him,
 a friend or fellow survivor      |  and Trent has a weird habit of
 (i.e. Carlos, Steve, Ada, etc.). |  showing up in fans' theories
                                  |  about the games, even though he
                                  |  isn't in the games. He annoys me.
----------------------------------+-------------------------------------

The exception to this is _Nemesis_, which comes with a disclaimer
regarding this lack of continuity. _Nemesis_ follows RE3's plot fairly
faithfully, albeit with a few additional twists (Nicholai's motivations
and actions are explored further, and Carlos stays with Jill as they
explore the clock tower) and a couple of minor appearances by Trent.
For the record, _Nemesis_ is far and away the best of the five books,
while _Code: Veronica_ is nearly unreadable. (In Perry's defense, she
does do some interesting things with the relationship between Claire
and Steve, but it looks like she simply ran out of space.)

Q. What about the comic books?

A. Avoid the comic books if you have to chew off your own leg to do it.

Q. ...and the manga?

A. There are some decent-looking RE comics coming out of China
(do those count as manga?). You can see a couple of dozen pages of
the BioHazard 3 manga on my personal website, thanks to alert reader
"Rogue TM." They are still in Chinese, however. Point your browser to:
http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/junkdrawer.html

You can also find copies of these manga for sale on eBay, but they'll
probably cost you dearly, if for no other reason than that the
auctioneer is usually in Hong Kong.

Aside from that, the only RE manga I've seen are either short and
jokey ("Nicholai Ginovaef," on Evil-Online, used to have a translated
eight-page manga on his website which was all about Jill running around
the mansion, being stupid and getting killed repeatedly), or, more
rarely, h-doujins. If you find one of the latter, *don't read it*.
They're horrible.

Q. Where can I find Resident Evil hentai?

A. Just cut out the middleman and stick a screwdriver in your eye.

Q. Why aren't there any bathrooms in Raccoon City?

A. Vincent "Guns Are For Sissies" Merken has the answer:

"...there might be a *secret passage* somewhere... that leads to
 the toilets. Since about every room in [Raccoon City] is initially
 locked and requires the fetching of numerous objects in previously
 unlocked areas, why shouldn't the can be the same? But due to
 memory shortage, the necessary items weren't included in the [games].

"So the cops never had to 'hold it.' They did have to plan in
 advance though... 'Hey, Charley, there's a chance that I might
 need to go to the little boys' room in about 45 minutes. I better
 quit and head for it right now. You cover me.'"

Q. Why are the games becoming less bloody?

A. They've stopped that, actually. Starting with RE2.0, the games
are back to the RE2 standard of gore, where you can blow off zombies'
limbs and heads (although the super-gory death scenes for player
characters appear to be a thing of the past).

Admittedly, American gamers should be somewhat relieved. According
to alert European Vincent Merken, the German version of RE3 is
utterly neutered; dead zombies simply fall to the floor, blink,
and disappear.

Q. Why is Capcom releasing RE games for seemingly every system?

A. Well, for a while there, they were doing it because RE is a
popular series. Now, they aren't doing it anymore.

Q. RE should be exclusive to the PSX and PS2! Why isn't it?

A. The only reason that RE was exclusively on the PSX for so long
was because it was the only viable system at the time. N64 cartridges
don't hold enough data for an RE game (it took *months* for Angel
Studios to compress RE2 to fit on an N64 cart). An enhanced version
of RE, featuring a combat-based minigame, was actually released for
the Saturn, but the system was dead by the time RE2 came out. One
would presume that, given how Sega and Capcom seem to have a very
strong business relationship, the Saturn would've hosted the rest
of the series if it had only survived that long.

Q. ...*Gamecube*?

A. What? Nintendo likes money, Capcom likes money... it's a
business decision. You don't *have* to play the damn games,
you know.

Q. Will there ever be a Dino Crisis/Resident Evil crossover?

A. As fun as that sounds, probably not. I've read a number of
interviews with Shinji Mikami where that question has come up,
and the answer is always "no." This is further reinforced by
the revelation, in DC2, that Dino Crisis took place in 2009.
However, some players have reported an Easter egg in Dino
Crisis, where several chemical tanks in the facility's
basement bear the Umbrella logo, and a Dino Crisis 2 poster
in the arcade in Survivor. (These are not "crossovers." These
are visual in-jokes, like Jill's Regina outfit or the movie
theater in RE3 that's playing "Biohazard 4." Don't confuse
the two and send me condescending e-mail.)

Q. Who's Shinji Mikami?

A. The series' producer. He calls the shots.

Q. What other games have RE characters appeared in?

A. Several, actually.

-- Jill's a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
-- for one of Chun-Li's Flash Combos in Pocket Fighter, she
   dresses up like Jill and shoots her opponent.
-- in Card Fighters' Clash for the NGPC, Claire, Leon, and
   Jill all have Character Cards, while Sherry, Chris, and
   Rebecca are on the Escape and Cover Fire Action Cards.
   You can also challenge a guy named "Mikami" in what's
   clearly the front hall of the Spencer mansion, and if
   you defeat him, several zombies will appear.
-- according to alert Frenchman Nicolas Falduti, Chris,
   Jill (wearing her RE3 outfit), and Nemesis have Character
   Cards in Card Fighters' Clash 2.
-- there's a code in Trick'n Snowboarder to play as Leon,
   Claire, or a zombie cop in Free Mode.

Q. What's in the future for Resident Evil?

A. Lots, usually. Check your favorite videogame website (I'd
recommend www.gamepartisan.com, but I'm biased, as I work
there and we need the hits) for the latest news. This, being
a plot summary, isn't really a good place to stop for all your
RE news.

Q. How long will the series continue for, anyway?

A. I've read articles where Shinji Mikami claims to want to make
as many Resident Evil games as there are James Bond movies, and
hell, this is Capcom we're talking about here. If RE games
continue to sell, the series will probably continue for quite
some time.

==================
9ii. RESIDENT EVIL
==================

Q. When does everything take place?

A. According to Nicholai's notes in Survivor, the initial
biohazardous outbreak occurs on May 11th, 1998. Early in
the morning on July 25th, the Alpha Team is forced to take
shelter in the mansion. Stuff happens, people die, and the
mansion is destroyed. The final showdown with the Tyrant
and the escape via helicopter both occur at daybreak.

Q. What's the official ending of the game?

A. Right now, it appears that Jill's best ending might be the
most likely, as it's the only one where Wesker escapes (as opposed
to the whole "Ha! I cleverly *let* this thing impale me!" scheme
from Wesker's Report).

Q. How many endings are there?

A. According to the official strategy guide, there are five endings
for each character, dependent upon whether your supporting character
survives the game. If your supporting character dies, you'll get a
different ending depending on whether they died before or during the
fight with the Tyrant.

Q. How do I kill Rebecca before the second Tyrant fight?

A. When you use the Emblem Key to open the office in the west wing,
Chris will hear Rebecca scream. She's in the study, being menaced
by a Hunter. Ignore her, or wait for a good ten minutes before you
go into that room, and the Hunter will kill Rebecca.

Q. How do I kill Barry before the second Tyrant fight?

A. In your final bout with Lisa Trevor, either don't give Barry
his gun back, or let Lisa hit Barry. He'll be knocked off of the
edge of Jessica's crypt, dropping the Barry's Photograph file.

Q. Can I save Richard or Enrico?

A. It doesn't look likely, no. No matter what you do, it looks
like Rebecca's the only survivor of the Bravo team.

Q. How do I view Kenneth's film?

A. You can use the equipment in the secret area in the laboratory
visual room to watch Kenneth's tape. It depicts, unnervingly, the
last couple of minutes of Kenneth's life.

Q. What's this about Jessica's skull?

A. There are two ways to defeat Lisa Trevor, in your final encounter
with her. One is, naturally, to shoot her until she drops off of the
edge of the crypt, but another method is to shove all four of the
locking stones off of the edge. (If you're playing as Jill, it's very
difficult to do this *and* save Barry.) Once the sarcophagus is open,
Lisa will grab her mother's skull and leap off the edge of the pit.
You don't have to fire a shot.

Q. What happened to Rebecca Chambers after RE?

A. We know she survived, since William Birkin mentions her in
RE2's Mail to the Chief file. However, she seems to have dropped
off the face of the Earth; further complicating matters is that
she's the only plot hole that isn't addressed in Wesker's Report.
Hopefully, RE0 will clear this up.

Q. Have you heard about the researcher John?

A. Actually, yes. In brief: in RE2, Ada Wong says that she's looking
for her boyfriend John, who works for Umbrella. In RE, one of the
files is written by a researcher named John, who's set up the
mansion's security computer with his girlfriend Ada's name as a
password. John mentions that he's turning into a zombie. Therefore,
he did exist (he wasn't just Ada's cover story), and by the time
Ada comes looking for him, he's been dead for about four months.

However, when Annette meets Ada in the waste management plant in
RE2 (a meeting that takes place in either scenario), Annette tells
Ada point-blank that her boyfriend's dead and that he became a
zombie. It's not really that obscure an issue.

=====================
9iii. RESIDENT EVIL 2
=====================

Q. Why are Claire and Leon carrying combat knives? Where did
Leon get his uniform if it was his first day on the job? Why
does Claire know how to use a grenade launcher? What's a hunting
crossbow doing in a police station? Why does a secret biology
lab have a smelting tank and a subway? Why why why why why why?!

A. Look, it's a video game. Calm down, take a deep breath, and
remember: it isn't really all that important. RE games are
often designed according to what would make sense for a game,
or, more rarely, an effective visual, rather than what would
make actual, logical sense. (It's that whole Asian sense of
cinema kicking in, like those large factories in Jet Li movies
that only manufacture cool fight scenes.)

Q. Why doesn't Leon's uniform look like anyone else's?

A. Leon isn't dressed like an RPD beat cop, but he *is* dressed
like Roger and Peter from _Dawn of the Dead_. That may explain it.

Q. What's the official ending of RE2?

A. According to Wesker's Report, it's some kind of mutant version
of Leon A/Claire B where Leon did *everything*. He's shown both
tossing the G-Virus into the pit after Ada *and* blowing away Mr.
X. In the meantime, Sherry isn't wearing her pendant in Wesker's
Report, which would seem to indicate that Ada has it, but she
doesn't; apparently, *Leon* has the pendant, because Wesker says
Leon got the sample of the G-Virus from Sherry, even though Leon
doesn't meet Sherry at all until the end of Leon A, when Sherry
doesn't have the pendant anymore. In addition, the excerpt of
RE2's ending that Wesker shows is from Claire B, so William
apparently never infected Sherry. Furthermore, whoever tosses
Leon the rocket launcher in Wesker's Report isn't wearing
Sherry's pendant, which is gonna bring the "Annette threw the
rocket launcher" clowns out of the woodwork again, and...

I've got a headache.

Q. Why does the plot summary still cover Claire A/Leon B?

A. Because I want something a little more substantial than
Wesker's Report before I go to that much trouble. Wesker's
Report is, as I said, lame, and I'm about half convinced
that the next game will ignore it. If RE4 has something more
concrete (like Ada talking about how Annette shot her or
something), then I'll rewrite the plot summary. Otherwise,
deal with what's here.

Q. How did Ada survive?

A. In Wesker's Report, Wesker says he saved her because
she was still of use to him. Remember, when in doubt,
Wesker was somehow responsible for it.

Q. Who threw the rocket launcher?

A. If you ask me, and quite a few other RE fans, it was
Ada Wong. If you mention this on an RE message board,
though, someone will probably try to correct you. That
someone, incidentally, needs to get out more.

Q. It couldn't've been Ada. Ada died onscreen.

A. So did Wesker (in most of the possible endings for RE2.0),
William Birkin (at least six separate times), Annette Birkin
(three times, in Leon A), Mr. X (at least once), Nicholai
(at least once), Nemesis (at least twice), Vincent Goldman,
Alexia Ashford, and all the Tyrants. In Resident Evil,
getting killed is a minor inconvenience.

Q. If Ada threw the rocket launcher, how did she escape the
base before it exploded?

A. One would presume, given Wesker's Report, that she escaped
via the Blurry Wesker Express. Wesker can do anything, you know.
More specific answers, naturally, will have to Wait Until The
Next Game (tm). Note to Capcom: explain things in more detail
in RE4, or we're going to lynch you. We're gonna come and string
up the *entire building*.

Q. How do you know when RE2 takes place?

A. According to Wesker's Report and the RE3 timeline, RE2 starts
late at night on September 29th, and ends at daybreak on the 30th.

Q. At the beginning of the game, don't Claire and Leon get out
of the wrong sides of the police car?

A. I thought so too, until alert editor Ben Plante pointed out
that the burning truck in the first scene is facing to the right,
when I thought it was facing left. In either scenario, Claire and
Leon do, in fact, get out on the correct side of the car.

Q. How come that truck driver became a zombie so quickly?

A. It's either the aforementioned dramatic infection pattern of
the T-Virus, or he never became a zombie at all. As has been
pointed out to me, he might have just passed out from shock
and blood loss, or something.

Q. What are the RE2 EX Files?

A. RE2 was released for the Nintendo 64 in late 1999. (Surprisingly,
it was a very good port.) Several features were added to this new
version, such as the EX Files.

There are sixteen EX Files, and none of them are anything to get
excited about. Several are taken straight from RE3, and others
hint at developments in RE, RE3, CV, and RE0. While some of them
are interesting, they're mostly intended to provide background
on the series for N64 owners. You can read transcriptions in
the Timeline FAQ, on the N64 RE2 page on gamefaqs.com, or on
my website.

Q. Why are some of the N64 files different than the PSX's?

A. Some minor mistakes were fixed for the N64 port. Check out
the Timeline FAQ for details.

Q. Hey, the Mother Virus Report contradicts CV.

A. Yeah, I've had that pointed out to me a few times (most recently
by alert readers Daniel Blackwell and Andrew Leonard). According to
the Mother Virus Report (and Annette), William Birkin invented the
T-Virus, but in CV, we're told that Ozwell Spencer and Edward Ashford
developed the T-Virus decades ago.

Wesker's Report 2 apparently settles this issue, by noting that
when William Birkin was appointed to the Arklay laboratory in 1978,
the T-Virus had already been invented. The Mother Virus Report and
Annette are either in error or lying.

Q. Are there any other differences between the N64 and PSX versions?

A. Yes, but there's nothing spectacular.

-- the "guest access" password in the Umbrella lab is now "NEMESIS."
-- the safe in the corner office in the RPD building has a different
   combination.
-- both Claire and Leon get new alternate costumes.
-- there's now a dead Hunter lying in the corner of the double-locked
   room in the Umbrella lab. When you examine it, you get the same
   message that you get if you examine the tank it's lying next to:
   "It looks like the remains of a failed experiment."
-- after winning the game once, you unlock an option the game calls
   a "randomizer." At the start of a new game, the randomizer turns
   most of the ammunition and health items in the game into something
   else at random.
-- the Fourth Survivor minigame now has a timer.

Q. What's the Extreme Battle Game?

A. An extra game found in the Dual Shock edition of RE2 for the
PSX and the Dreamcast port. The Extreme Battle Game, a sort of
prototype for the RE3 Mercenaries minigame, lets you pick an
armed-to-the-teeth character (in descending order of difficulty:
Ada, Claire, Leon, and Chris), and fight from the lab's monitor
room back to the police station. Your goal is to find four antiviral
bombs that are hidden in the police station, and use them to
incinerate the train. The Extreme Battle Game is unlocked, like
any other secret in RE2, by finishing a scenario with an A rank.

Q. (from Jim Stevenson) If the T-virus outbreak starts on the 22nd,
then why are there reports of the "cannibal disease" before this?

A. There were still plenty of monsters lurking in Raccoon Forest
after RE, which no one apparently did anything about. Blame them.

Q. Who did Ada Wong work for?

A. It's a common misconception that Ada worked for Umbrella. At
the end of Leon B, Annette tells Leon that Ada works for the
"Agency," and was using her relationship with John to gather
information on Umbrella. As alert reader Justin Kitt points out,
this implies that Ada never worked for Umbrella at all.

So who did Ada work for? There's nothing in RE2 to say who that
is, one way or another, except for the mention of the Agency
(which, in cheap espionage fiction, is usually shorthand for
the CIA). In Wesker's Report 2, Wesker refers to Ada as an
agent for a company competing against Umbrella, but doesn't
get any more specific.

Q. Why do you call it "Mr. X"? It's a Tyrant.

A. Because the first RE2 FAQ I ever read called it "Mr. X."
It's force of habit. S.D. Perry calls it Mr. X as well, and
that's the name on the box containing its action figure.
Besides, it's easier to say "Mr. X" than to constantly have
to specify which Tyrant I'm talking about. Give me a handle,
and I'll use it.

Q. Where did all the Lickers come from?

A. According to the Umbrella Top Secret File in Survivor,
they're mutated zombies. As speculated upon in the RE
writeup, the existence of Crimson Heads lends more credence
to the Survivor file than it previously had.

Q. How did Chief Irons survive the helicopter crash on the
roof of the RPD building?

A. By not being the guy who caught the helicopter with his
face. That was somebody else.

Q. What the hell is with the RPD building? The ammo's all over
the place, all the equipment is hidden, all the keys are hidden...

A. Chalk it up to Brian Irons. As he says in his diary, he did
his best to make sure no one would survive the siege of the RPD
building; in Operation Report 1, Elliot Edward says that Irons
had just scattered the RPD's weapons supply around the building
out of concern over an unspecified terrorist threat. If something
doesn't seem right to you about the fall of the RPD, you can
usually blame it on Irons.

Q. So what explains the statue puzzles/sewer entrance/secret doors?

A. We can also blame Irons for the puzzles in the RPD. Apparently,
he wasn't just on the take, but the maniac was also letting Umbrella
do the decoration. There are some lines you just shouldn't cross.

The sewer entrance, on the other hand, is the work of Thomas, the
chess fanboy who the RPD's night watchman hung out with. There
must be some crazy in the water down Raccoon way. (Do you realize
that it's easier to access the weapons locker in the RPD than it
is to get into the sewers?)

Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Irons was out to kill everyone, how
did Ben Bartolucci manage to survive?

A. Irons couldn't get at Ben, presumably. Ben's shut up in the
cellblock with a conveniently wrecked van blocking him in.

As an added bonus, Irons might not even know Ben's there. He
was, presumably, very busy, what with cops to hunt, the mayor's
daughter to kill, being trapped inside a monster-infested
deathtrap, getting pinned down by a flaming helicopter...

Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Ben was merely hiding in jail and
hadn't actually been arrested, how did Ada know he was there?

A. She didn't. She'd checked everywhere else, and couldn't
check the cellblock without someone else to help her push the
wrecked van out of the way. She tells Leon as much.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) Why did Irons leave Marvin Branagh alive?

A. Probably the same reason Jill didn't try to help him in RE3.
Marvin looked as though he was already dead, and by the time
he was conscious enough to move around, Irons was trapped.

Q. (from Michael Conroy *again*) Why didn't Irons start stalking
around again once Claire freed him? Isn't he a homicidal maniac?

A. Irons is a sociopath, not a complete lunatic. He knows about
the G-Virus, he's learned about what happened to Birkin, and he's
convinced that Claire is an Umbrella agent. Given Irons's inside
knowledge of the situation, and what we know about *other*
Umbrella agents, it makes sense for Irons to withdraw to his
hideaway and wait to see what happens.

Q. {from "NYPlayboy1080") Why did Umbrella attack William Birkin
to begin with?

A. That's a decent question. Although Annette says several times
that Umbrella is out to steal the G-Virus, nothing is ever said
to indicate why Umbrella would *need* to steal it. After all,
Birkin was ostensibly working for them.

Fortunately, NYPlayboy1080 came up with an answer to this question
on his own. He points out that in one of the files for RE: Survivor
(yay, Timeline FAQ!), an Umbrella operative says he was told that
William Birkin intended to keep the G-Virus for himself. In another
file, William gets all the blame for the T-Virus outbreak. While
both sources are given to us by Umbrella operatives and are therefore
suspect, they're the only answers we're getting, since both William
and Annette are dead.

Something else that should be mentioned here is that in the
Operation Instructions EX File, Hunk's orders are from the head
of Umbrella's French division. It's possible that Umbrella's
branch offices may be working against each other, particularly
given the Machiavellian power games we've seen in RE3 and CV.

Q. When did Ada reach the RPD building?

A. We don't know, and to be honest, it doesn't really matter.
She could've been involved in the siege (which would make her
and Sherry the only survivors), or she could've gotten to the
RPD building at some point after Leon and Claire did. Either
way, it doesn't affect RE2's plot.

Q. Did any of the other police officers survive?

A. No. Leon is identified at the start of his B scenario as the
only survivor of the Raccoon City police department. If it's good
enough for the narrator, it's good enough for me.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Leon was the only survivor, what about
Chris, Barry, Jill, Rebecca, Wesker...?

A. Chris and Barry can be assumed to have quit and are long gone,
Jill quit, Rebecca's AWOL, and Wesker was supposedly dead. They
were all also STARS agents, which means they technically weren't
rank-and-file police officers. Granted, that distinction is
packed with delicious sophistry, but it's a valid way around
the narrator's generalization.

Q. Why did William Birkin "impregnate" Ben Bertolucci/Chief Irons?

A. Couldn't tell you on a bet. We know that li'l Willy was out
to perpetuate his species, but we don't know what, if any, criteria
he was using to pick and choose victims. If you like, you could
scrape him off of the escape tunnel's walls and ask him.

Q. How did William get into Ben's cell?

A. No one knows for sure, but you could probably assume that
William tore the door open.

Q. (from "ReBiohazard6587," paraphrased) If William infects
himself with the G-Virus on the 22nd, why hasn't he changed
more in the intervening week?

A. That's a good question. William does munch on a number of
other viruses from the briefcase immediately after becoming
the G-Type, which may play a role; another point that's
frequently made is that William's metamorphoses usually take
place as a reaction to Leon or Claire beating the hell out of
him. If William stayed out of trouble between the 22nd and the
28th, his infection may have slowed down some.

Q. Why is it that William changes instantly upon injection, but
Sherry never changes visibly at all?

A. It's the difference between being exposed to the raw virus
and being injected with an embryo. That much is apparent from
the Vaccine Synthesis file that the dying Annette gives Claire.
The embryo institutes a "gradual cellular metamorphosis," as
opposed to a sudden and no doubt incredibly painful takeover
of the body.

Q. What escaped from the holding tank in the double-locked lab?

A. No one's really sure. I tend to agree with Rob MacGregor, in
that the tank in the Umbrella lab is the same one that's shown
in Film B, which would mean that there was a Tyrant in there. Where
that Tyrant went, on the other hand, remains a mystery. Please note
that the monster encountered at the end of the B scenario is the
mutated Mr. X, not the Tyrant from this holding tank.

Q. Who are all the people in the S.T.A.R.S. group photo?

A. Back row: unknown (probably Ed Dewey), Forest Speyer, Kenneth
Sullivan, Richard Aiken, Albert Wesker, Barry Burton, Brad Vickers.
Front row: unknown, Enrico Marini, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine,
Joseph Frost.

As of RE:CV, the only people in this photo who are still alive
are Chris, Barry, Jill, and Wesker; the rest, except for Brad
and Ed, are either killed or found dead in RE. The director
of RE0 has promised that the game will contain more details
on the deaths of the Bravo Team.

Brad has the dubious honor of being the only character in this
photo to have been killed twice: once by Nemesis in RE3, and
once, as a zombie, by secret-seeking players in RE2. Ed Dewey,
the helicopter pilot for the Bravo Team, is widely held to be
the person who the severed hand from the RE intro belongs to;
one of the early RE0 screenshots showed Rebecca tending to a
guy, dressed like that, who was missing an arm. Ed is also the
only named STARS member who doesn't warrant a picture and a
brief description in the PSX RE manual. If I were him, I'd sue.

Finally, no one has any idea who that guy in the front row,
all the way to the left, is (or, for that matter, why he would
be carrying a mortar; I don't know what kind of police work
S.T.A.R.S. typically does, but it would seem to involve blowing
up tanks). Common sense would seem to indicate that he's
Rebecca's predecessor, but no one knows any more than that.

Q. Secret film?

A. Yeah. Check the messy desk in the S.T.A.R.S. office fifty
times and you'll get Film D. If you develop it, you'll get a
picture of Rebecca doing her best Lolita impression.

Q. Why isn't Rebecca in the group photo?

A. I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that it's because she
joined the S.T.A.R.S. at some point after that photograph was
taken. She is a rookie, after all.

Q. Why did Wesker have that photo of Rebecca?

A. Because he's the captain of S.T.A.R.S. Stop looking for
hidden layers of significance. Sometimes, they just aren't there.

Q. (from "ChronoDK16") How would you explain the door that won't
open on the second floor of the police station?

A. The door in question, which is in the same room as the statue
puzzle, would lead to the second-floor lounge if it wasn't boarded
up. Check the map, or play Leon B and watch Sherry Birkin crawl
under that door.

Q. How do you find the "secret gate" to the RPD building?

A. Check the wall across from the front door to the RPD in
Scenario A. When you find it, you'll see three zombies on
the other side of a gate that won't open. Jill uses this
gate in RE3.

Q. What's the point of the P-Epsilon Gas Report file?

A. It hints at something which isn't widely known about
RE2. If you don't activate the anti-BOW gas using the
dorm computer in scenario A, the Ivies aren't poisonous.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) At the end of RE2, who sets the
Umbrella headquarters computer to self-destruct--and why?

A. In a way, Mr. X does. In either B scenario, Mr. X wrecks
a console in the power room. That console's destruction
triggers the lab's obligatory self-destruct sequence.

Q. How did Hunk manage to survive in the sewers?

A. Yeah, that's a little irritating. Judging by RE2's files,
the attack on William Birkin's lab took place somewhere between
the 19th and the 22nd, as it was the cause of the Raccoon City
outbreak. Hunk, on the other hand, doesn't manage to escape the
sewers until the morning of the 30th, at some point after Leon
and Claire have left the RPD building. This means that, somehow,
Hunk survived both a beating from William Birkin *and* at least
eight days' worth of wandering around in the monster-infested
sewers underneath Raccoon City, carrying a vial of the G-Virus
all the while. In short, we must assume that Hunk was
extraordinarily lucky and is extraordinarily tough.

Wesker's Report seems to say that Hunk isn't carrying the G-Virus
sample from Birkin's lab; he's carrying the sample that Leon had
and abandoned. Mm-hm. Scraped it up off the floor, did he?

As a side note, there are five dead Umbrella agents in the sewer,
even though there are only four of them in Annette's FMV. It's
possible that Hunk survived Birkin's rampage by being conveniently
absent ("Hey, guys, I brought the sandwiches--OH MY GOD!"), and
something else decked him before Leon and Claire's arrival.

Q. If Hunk and Mr. X both work for Umbrella, why does Mr. X
attack Hunk?

A. Because Mr. X wants, and Hunk has, the G-Virus. Mr. X isn't
all that bright.

Q. (from Pedro Luchini) How did Mr. X manage to get back to the
RPD in time to attack Hunk? He should be dead.

A. The Fourth Survivor minigame itself shouldn't be treated as
part of the game's plot, since it has any number of continuity
errors when compared to the main game (such as the missing
bookcases in the library). The only plot-related element of
the minigame is Hunk, and the fact that he survived. Don't worry
about anything else.

Q. Hey, was Hunk Wesker, maybe?

A. Interesting idea, but no. Hunk is shown without his mask in his
RE3 Epilogue file, and he is most certainly not Wesker.

=============================
9iv. RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS
=============================

Q. Why the hell is Jill dressed like that?

A. I'd imagine that it's an attempt at fanservice that tragically
backfired. I'm really glad that, of the RE fans that I've heard
from, they're irritated by Jill's miniskirt/tube top combo, and
aren't, ahem, ogling her polygon count.

Q. How come Jill can blow away zombies by the dozen, but the RPD was
completely wiped out?

A. The RPD didn't know what they were doing. They simply stood
in one place and attempted to drive off the zombies as if they
were fighting normal people, and by the time they realized
that wasn't going to work, they were overrun. The survivors of
that fiasco withdrew to the RPD building, where they had to
undergo a lengthy siege *and* deal with an unexpectedly
psychopathic Brian Irons. Also, Irons started stacking the
deck against Raccoon City the moment he found out about the
outbreak. The RPD lost the battle before it started.

Jill, on the other hand, has experience in fighting Umbrella's
monsters and is relatively mobile. She sticks to the back streets
and alleys of Raccoon City, is lucky enough to never fight
more than eight zombies at a time, and doesn't do any unnecessary
fighting. Note that whenever Jill encounters a large group of
zombies in a cutscene or FMV, she runs away if she can.

Q. (from Angela Gray) How did Nemesis know to go after Jill,
since no one seemed to know she was in town? How did he find
Jill to begin with? How did he keep finding Jill?

A. Umbrella apparently has a very good surveillance network, as
shown in CV. Just because Marvin and Brad didn't know Jill was
alive, let alone in town, doesn't mean Umbrella was as ignorant.

As for finding Jill, and knowing that it was supposed to kill
Jill, what people forget about Nemmy is that he's obviously
intelligent. He opens doors, he springs ambushes, he uses a
firearm, and he's smart enough to attack Jill indirectly by
eliminating her allies. With all that in mind, and the trail
of death and wreckage Jill leaves everywhere she goes, it
wouldn't be all that difficult for Nemmy to find her.

Q. How did Jill know that there wasn't going to be a rescue?

A. Call it an educated guess. There's supposedly a military
blockade surrounding the city and enforcing a quarantine,
which sort of gives one the impression that people aren't
going to be allowed out of Raccoon. (Granted, this isn't
a very effective blockade, but I've ranted about this before.)

Q. What happens to the [construction equipment in the RPD
courtyard/boarded-up doors in the RPD building/movable statues
on the RPD's second floor/the red jewel in the statue/the
inscription on the goddess statue] between RE3 and RE2?

A. They were whisked away by elfin magic.

Q. What?

A. By "elfin magic," I mean, of course, dramatic necessity.
Capcom didn't want to put the whole RPD building into what
was ostensibly a sequel, so they put in a few subtle visual
cues that you weren't going to be able to run off and play
through RE2 again. Relax, kid. It ain't nohow permanent.

(Note that as jarring as you may find the boarded-up doors,
 the game still isn't as outright goofy as Extermination.
 In *that* game, Dennis Riley treats boarded-up doors as
 completely impassable, but he's standing there with a
 *crowbar*.)

Q. Well, then, why is the window that Nemesis jumps through
still there in RE2?

A. Storyline-wise? Couldn't tell you. Maybe it was fixed by
the same guy who steals the corpses while you're not looking.

Reality-wise, Capcom wasn't expecting there to be a Resident
Evil 3 (or, more appropriately, Code Veronica was supposed to
be RE3; I remember seeing *very* early screenshots of CV that
were distinctly polygonal and PSX-esque), so RE3 and RE2 don't
agree on a wide variety of relatively minor points. Examples
include the broken window, the boarded-up doors, the absence
of Lickers in the RE3 RPD, and the general layout of Raccoon
City (such as how the locations of Uptown Raccoon and the RE2
sewage treatment plant overlap). As with many things in RE,
you have to take this with a grain of salt.

Q. Who's Murphy?

A. He's another member of the UBCS. His role in the story changes,
depending on how you dealt with Nemesis in the restaurant/Raccoon
Press encounter.

If you killed Nemesis or went for the cheap knockout, Nicholai
will have just killed Murphy when you reach the sales office.
If you escaped from Nemesis via the basement or the second-floor
window, then Carlos will be at the Umbrella sales office when
you get there. An infected Murphy will beg him for a quick death.

Q. How do I get Nicholai to show up at the gas station instead
of the sales office?

A. Escape from Nemesis via either the restaurant basement or the
second-floor window at the press office.

Q. Who's Tyrell?

A. Tyrell is the black guy in the hospital, and one of Nicholai's
fellow supervisors. If you go to the fourth floor first, Nicholai
will have just shot him, and Tyrell will go kamikaze with a
grenade. If you go to the basement first, Tyrell will die in
an explosion after opening the wall safe.

Q. Can I open the wall safe in the hospital basement? What's in it?

A. Carlos can't open the wall safe without Tyrell's help, and
he wouldn't want to. The safe contains a number of papers, as
well as a shaped plastique charge set to detonate when the
safe is opened, undoubtedly courtesy of one N. Ginovaef.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) Since Umbrella had already sent Nemesis
to do its dirty work, why did it then send a slower, stupider
Tyrant (Mr. X) just to retrieve the G-Virus?

A. Nemesis has its hands full with Jill. Besides, Mr. X was
only sent in a full week or so after Hunk's team failed to
report back, which suggests that Mr. X's deployment wasn't
so much a planned action as it was an act of desperation.

(Of course, there is the realistic answer--Nemesis was only
conceived by the developers when they were making RE3, and
as such didn't exist in RE2's time--but realistic answers
are rarely entertaining.)

Q. (from "ReBiohazard6587," paraphrased) How was Brad changed
into a zombie? Did Nemesis's tentacle do it? Is that why his
corpse goes missing after the second encounter with Nemesis?

A. Brad could've gotten the T-Virus in a number of ways, from
Nemmy's tentacle to the zombie gnawing on him in the Bar Jack.
He shows up as a zombie underneath the RPD in RE2, thus
explaining why his body vanishes in RE3. See Mistakes, below.

Q. Why does Umbrella have secret labs in almost every building
in Raccoon City?

A. Because Umbrella donated the money to build almost every
building in Raccoon City, cf. the City Guide file. Raccoon
was apparently not so much a city as it was the world's most
extensive shell corporation.

Q. Why is Marvin Branagh dead, when he's in RE2 a day later?

A. He isn't dead. He's wounded and unconscious. Next time you
play the game, check that office again on your way out of the
RPD building. Taking the Lockpick is Marvin's cue to leave.

Q. Why did Umbrella send Nemesis after Jill, when all they
did was keep Chris under surveillance?

A. For all we know, Umbrella *did* send something after Chris.
Jill finds a trashed hideout of Chris's in her Epilogue.

Besides, it's easier to send a horrific mutant to kill someone
when that person is in a town full of horrific mutants. Jill
was what's called a "target of opportunity."

Q. (from Michael Conroy) Why does Nicholai wait until the end of
RE3 to claim the bounty on Jill's head? He had three previous
opportunities to bump her off when no one else was around. Why
didn't he?

A. Why would he? If Nicholai's actions over the course of RE3
tell you anything about him, it's that he's a schemer. Jill's
a heavily armed, highly competent fellow survivor with compatible
goals. If Jill finds a way out of town and she still perceives
Nicholai as an ally, Nicholai can take advantage of that. If
she's killed by something else along the way, Nicholai can
claim the credit, because he spends most of RE3 systematically
acing anyone who could say otherwise. By the time he goes after
Jill himself, he's killed off all the other supervisors, secured
his own escape route, and, in what's apparently the official
ending, goes after her with an attack helicopter. Nicholai
leaves one with the impression that he doesn't leave much to
chance.

Q. Why is the rail cannon called "Paracelsus's Sword?"

A. Theophrastus Bombastus "Paracelsus" von Hohenheim was
a German alchemist who lived during the Renaissance. He
was apparently a lunatic, but his work forms the beginnings
of modern pharmacology. He was among the first Westerners
to experiment with medicines as a method of curing diseases.
Given how the rail cannon was made for the express purpose
of blowing large holes in virally created monsters, calling
it Paracelsus's Sword makes a certain sense.

Q. Who made Paracelsus's Sword, and how did it get there?

A. According to the Classified Photo file, an unspecified
agency created the Sword specifically to combat Umbrella's
creations. Since the Sword is found amidst the bodies of roughly
a dozen U.S. Special Forces soldiers and the file is written by
someone who identifies himself as a colonel, one would assume
that the cannon was made by the American government. How they
managed to get that cannon there, on the other hand, is a mystery.
It seems safe to assume that it was assembled at some point after
the 28th, although the dead Tyrants in the power room would
suggest that they didn't do it without some resistance.

Q. How do you get the cutscene from the summary, where Barry
calls over the radio?

A. Opt to jump off the bridge before you get to the Dead
Factory. After the Live Choice involving Nicholai in the
control tower, don't try to use the hatch. Instead, leave
through the door, then immediately go back inside. Carlos
will receive a garbled radio transmission from Barry. (If
you do this, Barry's arrival seems far less like a _deus
ex machina_, which is why it's in the summary.) This also
slightly changes the dialogue leading up to the ending FMV.

Q. How do you know that Jill was infected with the T-Virus?

A. It's the only virus that makes sense. The G-Virus doesn't get
into Umbrella's hands until two days after Jill gets infected,
and we've no reason to believe that it was, say, the NE-T Virus.

Q. So why didn't she turn into a zombie right away?

A. Because it was more dramatic if she didn't. Repeat after me:
the T-Virus does whatever the plot wants it to do.

Q. Who was Nemesis?

A. A snappy dresser, a hit with the ladies, and a good friend.
We mourn his passing.

Q. No, really, who was Nemesis?

A. Okay, from the top: the way I heard it, this question
started because someone at Capcom, probably Shinji Mikami,
said that Nemesis was actually someone we knew from the past
or something. I figure that he was quoted out of context,
mistranslated, or was screwing with people's heads. Ever
since that quote made it across the Pacific, literal-minded
RE fans have been wracking their brains, trying to figure
out who Nemesis could have been.

A few die-hard RE fans, though, had come to the conclusion that
Nemesis must've been Wesker, since every other major RE character
except Rebecca was accounted for, and the idea of Becky "Useless"
Chambers being turned into a killer bioweapon was (and is) just
silly. These people could usually back the theory up pretty well.
Wesker's return in Code Veronica kinda screwed them. Now, they
have to explain how Wesker could've (deep breath now) survived
RE, gotten cloned (optional, dependent upon theorist), become
Super Wesker, gotten turned into Nemesis, survived being shot
to "death" at the clock tower, taken a nice long nap in a gasoline
fire, mutated into Tentacle Nemesis, had his head dissolved clean
off his body, survived being thrown into the Dead Factory's waste
dump, mutated into Kinda-Looks-Like-William-Birkin Nemesis, gotten
into another losing gunfight with Jill, endured two blasts from
Paracelsus's Sword, gotten to a minimum safe distance from Raccoon
City in less than five minutes despite being dead, gotten turned
back into Wesker, quit his job at Umbrella, joined up with
whatever organization he's working for in CV, ran away before
Alexia turned him into Aztec barbecue, swiped Steve's body, beat
the pudding out of Chris, fled the Ashfords' Antarctic base via
a convenient submarine, and still managed to find the time to get
that *great* haircut. The answer is, of course, that Wesker couldn't
and that he wasn't Nemesis, but some people just refuse to give up
on something once they've spent that much time on it. Not even
Wesker's Report is stopping some of these dedicated conspiracists.
Hell, after writing this, *I* want him to be Nemesis.

At this point, there are no straight answers as to who Nemesis
was. That said, Wesker's Report 2 goes into detail about the
"Nemesis parasite," which turns a human host into a powerful
bioweapon, and shows a picture of it. At the end of the RE movie,
when Max collapses from his wounds, small tentacles begin to dig
their way out of his body through the cuts in his skin, and
those tentacles quite resemble the tentacles that the Nemesis
parasite is depicted as having. Max is promptly whisked off by
a bunch of white-suited scientists who identify him as a candidate
for the "Nemesis project." With all this in mind, as well as the
stated rarity of human hosts who can survive the Tyrant process,
the implication is that Max was turned into the Nemesis.

Q. Was Nemesis a G-Virus creature?

A. No. According to Wesker's Report 2, the Nemesis parasite was
created around 1988, before William Birkin discovered the G-Virus
in Lisa Trevor's body. Furthermore, the Nemesis was clearly made
by agents outside of Raccoon City, and no one besides Birkin had
access to the G-Virus before September 30th--two full days after
Jill's first encounter with the Nemesis.

Wesker's Report 2 also notes that a characteristic of creatures
infected with the G-Virus is that they constantly mutate without
any external stimuli. As Nemesis's only real mutation takes
place after he's thrown into the waste dump at the Dead Factory,
it would appear that he's G-Virus-free.

Q. Was Tentacle Nemesis a mutation, or what?

A. I'm of the opinion that Tentacle Nemesis is just Nemesis
without the trenchcoat, since in your first encounters with Nemmy,
you can see the tentacles writhing around underneath his coat.
However, fan opinion is markedly split on this issue, so your
mileage may vary.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) Nemesis, who was designed to kill
S.T.A.R.S. members, ends up hunting Umbrella mercenaries Carlos,
Nicholai, and Mikhail. What's going on here?

A. Nemmy never goes after Nicholai, except in the Mercenaries
game, which doesn't count, and in the Ending #3 trash room ambush,
where Nicholai is bitin' Nemmy's style. ("Hey! That's *my*
victim!") In the ordinary course of the game, he attacks Mikhail,
who was shooting at him at the time, and Carlos, who's a friend
of Jill's and has a history of shooting at Nemmy. Also note that
in Carlos's game, Nemmy will usually only go after Carlos if Carlos
gets in his way. (Unless you keep the fight within a camera angle
featuring the exit door, Nemesis will leave the front hall at the
first opportunity and head for the chapel.) Nemmy doesn't seem to
have a problem with eliminating Jill's allies.

Q. Is the girl with the briefcase at the end of the Mercenaries
minigame Rebecca?

A. That girl's just some generic woman with a briefcase. Don't
read so much into this. (For that matter, the guy wearing the
hood probably isn't Chief Irons, either. They're both recycled
polygon models, just like everyone else in Mercenaries.)

===========================
9v. RESIDENT EVIL: SURVIVOR
===========================

Q. Here's a witty joke involving the phrase "voted off the island!"
Aren't I funny?

A. Nope.

Q. Why was GunCon support taken out of the North American release?

A. The official reason, according to a Capcom rep, is that "there
is no retail support for light guns or light gun games." This
sounds like a delightful crock, but at least it's an answer.
Mark Chang deserves thanks for this one, because he thought to
write to Capcom and get their official answer. I always forget
that that's an option.

Q. What's the difference between the various paths?

A. Nothing, really, except for what you fight and what you find.
The exception is the second choice, as explained above.

Q. Who's this little goblin guy, and why does he hate me?

A. The gnome is Andy, the sewer manager. As is not readily
apparent from his diary, he first encountered Ark when Ark was
claiming to be Vincent Goldman. Later, Andy finds out that
Vincent caused the outbreak, and since he thinks Ark is
Vincent, he undertakes a mission of revenge against him.
If you go to the Hospital, you'll never see Andy, but he's
laid a trap for you in the Library and is waiting in ambush
when you enter the office in the Arcade. That's him on
the pay 'phone at the beginning of the game, by the way.

Q. Who sets off the self-destruct mechanism in the factory?

A. There's no explanation on that score. It can probably be
directly attributed to whoever is about to get whacked by
the Tyrant, although it being Andy is a bit of a stretch.

Q. Why are there so many Mr. X units running around?

A. Sheena Island apparently mass-produced them. At one point,
you fight a Mr. X unit on a walkway in the factory, surrounded
by other Mr. Xs in glass containment tubes. If they were released
with a specific purpose in mind, that purpose isn't mentioned.

Q. Hey, is Hunk the cleaners' commander?

A. I kinda doubt it. There's no hint whatsoever of who the
cleaners' commander is, which leads me to believe that he's
just some generic guy in a uniform. Survivor also hints
rather strongly that the cleaners' commander dies at some
point, whether you see it happen or not, and Hunk is still
alive as of Code Veronica.

Q. Why does the introduction to the game say that Umbrella
destroyed Raccoon City?

A. Because Umbrella *did* destroy Raccoon City, by honeycombing
it with poorly designed secret bioweapon factories. The nuke
was just a formality.

Q. So why aren't there bathrooms on Sheena Island?

A. Look at those graphics, dude. You're lucky Ark has a nose,
let alone the need for a bathroom.

=================================
9vi. RESIDENT EVIL: CODE VERONICA
=================================

Q. What's the difference between CVX and CV: Complete?

A. CVX is the PS2 version, while CV: Complete came out for
the Japanese Dreamcast. They're otherwise identical.

Q. How did Wesker survive the "mansion incident?"

A. According to Wesker's Report, Wesker injected himself with
a virus he'd obtained ahead of time from William Birkin. This
virus would make Wesker look like he was dead, but he would
eventually wake up with superhuman power. He then proceeded
to fake his own death by deliberately provoking the Tyrant
to attack him.

That low grumbling sound you hear is that of a couple of million
RE fans, all complaining simultaneously about how contrived that
explanation is.

(As noted above, Wesker's Report may wind up being contradicted
after all. In RE2.0, it's possible for Wesker to simply disappear
at the end of the game, as opposed to having been visibly killed.)

Q. Y'know, Steve looks a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio. Here's a
witty comment about it!

A. [through gritted teeth] Stop doing that. Everyone does that.
As of CVX, he doesn't look that much like DiCaprio anymore anyway.

Q. What's the difference between CV and CVX?

A. Oh, a few things.

-- the Easy and Very Easy difficulty settings, from the Japanese
   release of CV, have been (unnecessarily) put back in CVX.
-- Steve has a new haircut.
-- a new cutscene featuring Wesker and Claire, triggered when
   Claire returns to the mansion with the Piano Roll.
-- the ending's about three times as long, as detailed above.
-- in CVX, Wesker gets a hit in on Alexia. In CV, Alexia slaps him
   around the faux Spencer mansion like a handball.
-- everyone gets different character portraits in their inventory
   screens. (Steve is such a goober.)
-- really fake-looking fire has been Photoshopped over Wesker's
   Battle Game victory screen.

Q. How did Leon find Chris so quickly?

A. Claire sent Leon Umbrella's surveillance data, so Leon knew
exactly where Chris was at the time. After that, all he would've
had to do is make a few telephone calls. The timing on the whole
thing is a little convenient, but it's by no means impossible,
particularly when you consider the flight time to Antarctica.

Q. (from Joseph Goodman) What's the "Raccoon City Test?"

A. Couldn't tell you on a bet. It's on the DC jewel case, but there's
nothing about it in the game. We don't know what test was completed
in Raccoon City (the Nemesis? the G-Type? the Gamma Hunters? the
effects of the T-Virus on a sizable metropolitan civilian population?),
or where Claire got that information in the first place.

Q. (from Joseph Goodman) How did the T-Virus manage to escape
at Rockfort?

A. As Chris, examine the wrecked ductwork in the chemical storage
locker. Chris will say that "maybe this is where the T-Virus
escaped." This is as close to an explanation as we get over the
course of CV, and all things considered, it's a pretty good one.
It looks like someone chucked a grenade into the wrong room.

Q. If the T-Virus was accidentally spilled at the island
prison, why wasn't Claire infected?

A. Not a whole hell of a lot of people *were* infected. Three
cargo planes' worth of survivors (note that most of the zombies
Claire and Steve encounter are either former prisoners or Ashford
family servants; virtually none of the base's personnel or the
invading soldiers seem to get infected until much later), Rodrigo,
Alfred, Wesker, that guy who gets killed in the experiment room,
Steve, and Chris all also manage to escape infection. All things
considered, Rockfort got off easy. Then again, the T-Virus could've
just had its usual copy of the script.

Q. Where did the Gulp Worm come from?

A. The same place that the Grave Digger and the giant crocodile
came from: the T-Virus. No more explanation is necessary.

Q. (from Joseph Goodman) Rodrigo tells Claire that Rockfort
Island was attacked by a special forces team, but there is
little evidence of an actual military-type battle. Why would
anyone attack a worthless prison island? Where'd everyone go?

A. Rodrigo's "special forces team" is, in fact, a band of
troops led by Wesker. In one of the new CVX cutscenes,
Wesker tells Claire just that.

Looking at the island's layout, much of the island is
off-limits due to fires, explosions, and rubble. Furthermore,
one would assume that Alfred, as the commander of Rockfort,
is doing his damnedest to keep Wesker and his men away
from where he thinks Alexia is. Based upon this, I'd
guess that the fighting is taking place on parts of the
island that the player can't access. Wesker's forces are
only able to take the prison and training facility a day
after Alfred's men have evacuated, judging by the soldier
zombies that Chris encounters. Most of them blow up when
shot, thus proving that you should not believe Wesker when
he gives you what he says is a flak jacket.

As for the "worthless island" scenario, Wesker wants Alexia.
Alfred's strange delusion is apparently effective enough to
convince Wesker that Alexia's on Rockfort, and he only learns
otherwise once he's taken over the island. He says as much
to Chris in their first meeting.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) The servant's memo at Rockfort implied
that Alexia was believed to be alive and living in seclusion,
yet doesn't Alfred's diary (found in Antarctica) mention Alexia
"faking her own death?" Which cover story was correct?

A. The story in Alfred's diary is the truth. The confusion as
to whether Alexia is dead or alive is the major plot twist of
CV, Wesker's return notwithstanding.

In short: Alexia faked her own death and went into coldsleep
so the T-Veronica virus would be allowed to work on her. Alfred,
who was monomaniacally devoted to her, began to construct an
elaborate delusion that she was still around. Alfred's delusion
was good enough to trick his servants, Wesker, and himself, but
when Steve kicks Alfred into the window in his bedroom, Alfred
sees his makeup-wearing reflection and realizes that he's been
fooling himself. Meanwhile, the *real* Alexia has been sealed
in a block of ice in Antarctica.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) Why doesn't Alfred release Alexia from
cryogenic freeze the moment he touches down in Antarctica?
What's he waiting for?

A. Alfred's just as surprised as the player is when Alexia
emerges from cryostasis. Look at his face and listen to his voice.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) Was Alexia even *supposed* to be
released from cryo-freeze at that point in time?

A. Alexia's sudden emergence from the deep freeze is the
second most contested plot point in CV, right behind Wesker's
survival. While it is feasible, given the timeline, for
Alexia's time in cryogenic storage to have run out at some
point in 1998 (Wesker's Report 2 has Alexia's "fatal accident"
occurring in 1983 when she was twelve, which means her fifteen
years were just about up), her dea-ex-cryotube defrosting right
in time to wreck Claire and Steve's snowmobile is one of the
single most convenient plot developments in the history of video
games. If it's keeping you up at night, you may wish to blame
Alexia's sudden return to consciousness on her vast and wildly
discordant powers (as S.D. Perry did in the novelization), and
leave it at that.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) How did Wesker find out about the
T-Veronica virus?

A. Chris found out about the T-Veronica virus by strolling
into an unlocked lab in the Antarctic mine and reading
Alexia's research notes, which were lying on top of a desk.
Given fifteen years of opportunities for corporate espionage,
the general lack of respect for Alfred that seems to be
floating around Umbrella's offices, and the ridiculous lack
of security at the Antarctic base--Chris didn't even need
a *keycard* to get into that lab, for gods' sake; you needed
a key to get into Alfred's *game room*, but he leaves Alexia's
*highly secret laboratory* unlocked--the question isn't how
Wesker knew about T-Veronica. It's how he managed to get
taken in by Alfred's little delusion.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) If Wesker had the inside track on
the T-Veronica virus, why did he attack Rockfort to begin with?

A. He apparently had bogus information. He was looking for
Alexia, and thanks to Alfred, most people thought Alexia was
either dead or sitting prettily in a mansion window in South
America. It's only after Wesker takes Rockfort that he knows
Alexia's in the Antarctic.

Q. (from Michael Conroy) Since Wesker is a superhuman
one-man-army, why does he even *need* a special forces team
to attack the island?

A. There are a lot of guys with guns on Rockfort, and
Wesker's still only one man. If nothing else, he'd want
some extra guys around as cannon fodder. Supervillains
love cannon fodder!

Q. (from Michael Conroy, who asks too damn many questions)
Why doesn't Rodrigo hop aboard one of the cargo planes
fleeing the island?  Why does he stay behind?

A. He's stuck on the same part of the island as Claire and
Steve, due to the various collapses and explosions, and he's
apparently been gutshot. Presumably, he couldn't've reached
the other airport in time, if at all. (You try doing the
two-hundred-yard dash in Danger condition and see how well
you do.)

Q. Why did Alfred send Claire and Steve to Antarctica?

A. Yeah, that doesn't really seem like the brightest possible
move on his part, does it? Sure, it's a more or less completely
inescapable fortress where Alfred can hunt them down at his
leisure, but then again, he's got to know that Claire's
moderately resourceful, and there are all sorts of things in
the Antarctic base that one would think Alfred would be trying
to keep people away from. We may have to chalk this one up to
Alfred's insanity and leave it at that.

Q. Why are there zombies and monsters all over the place in
the Antarctic base?

A. To learn the answer to this question, we must consult the
"Diary of D.I.J." secret file. According to it, the workers
released the T-Virus deliberately, and then escaped via the
cargo planes Steve notices upon his and Claire's landing.

(The CVX version of the same file changes the story, claiming
that the T-Virus escaped from the planes that landed before
Claire and Steve's did, but I find that questionable. None
of the Antarctic zombies are dressed like Rockfort guards,
and if I remember the relevant FMV correctly, Claire and
Steve's plane is the only one that crashed.)

Q. How do I find this secret file?

A. It's one of the random items you can get from the slot
machine in the Battle Game. Once you've found it, it'll be
in your file list whenever you start a new game.

Q. Who's D.I.J.?

A. A mouse. Specifically, he's the mouse that runs under
the closing blast shutter when Alfred traps Claire in the
military training facility. He also shows up again in
Antarctica, when Claire lets him out of the locker in
Alfred's office. Reportedly, if you stay alert, you can
see him again and again throughout Claire's game on
Rockfort, especially if you use a GameShark to get the
sniper rifle.

He is not, repeat *not*, the Ashford family's butler. We don't
know what happened to Scott Harman (although the smart money
says that he was one of the zombies wearing suits marked with
the Ashford family crest), but he wasn't in the cargo plane
when Claire fought the Tyrant.

Q. How the hell can a mouse keep a diary?

A. He's a very smart mouse.

Q. Weren't those two mice different colors? How could it be
the same mouse?

A. He's a *very* smart mouse.

Q. (from Jim Stevenson) How does Wesker have access to
Hunters when he no longer works for Umbrella?

A. He just took over an Umbrella base. He could've gotten
them, and the "Seeker" hovercrafts, out of storage.

Q. What happens with Wesker on the third time through the game?

A. Nothing. "Tips & Tricks" magazine printed that "hint" in
their June 2000 issue, and it's false.

Q. Well, how about unlocking Hunk?

A. A great many websites and magazines, many of which should
know better, have printed that Hunk can be used in the Battle
Game if you win the game with an "A," after collecting all of
the maps and files in the game. This doesn't work.

Q. Doesn't Wesker work for Bioject now?

A. Bioject, Umbrella's "true owner" or something like that,
is an unsubstantiated rumor that seems to have come out of
thin air. There's nothing in CV to indicate who Wesker works
for except for his logo in the Battle Game, and even that
isn't exactly concrete information. (That isn't stopping
people from talking about HCF as if it's actually showed
up and done something, though.)

Q. (from Devvrat Shukla) Why is Claire poisoned when I find her?

A. Because you got a little too close to Alexander when you
fought him on the helipad. Alexander's clouds of purple mist
can poison Claire, and if that happens, she'll stay poisoned
until Chris finds her behind the stairs. At that point, you,
as Chris, will need to run back to the weapons storage locker
on the second floor and get a container of serum. When you
return to the front hall of the "mansion," Chris will
automatically use the serum on Claire. Alexia will walk in
thereafter, and the game continues. When you gain control
of Claire in the study, she'll be in Danger condition.

To avoid being poisoned by Alexander, you can either hit
him from across the helipad or go for the one-shot kill with
Alfred's sniper rifle. Just zoom in on Alex's heart and fire;
it may take more than one shot, but if you manage to hit the
heart cleanly, you'll see a "hidden" cutscene where Claire
kills Alexander ("I've got you now!").

Q. Why do the winged ants attack Alexia?

A. I don't know whether they attack Alexia, land on her, or
just get really agitated. That particular cutscene could've
been clearer.

Q. Wait. Chris and Wesker are fighting in the same room where
Steve shot Alfred, aren't they? Isn't that room frozen solid?

A. Yeah, I thought so too, right up until I saw the submarine
in the background. Chris and Wesker are fighting in a docking
bay of some sort, and I'd presume that the submarine is the
one that DIJ mentions in his diary. Note that to follow Wesker,
Chris has to go through the previously locked cell door, and
two separate holes in the wall. Apparently, that cave-in in
the sorting room blocked off more of the base than we would
have previously imagined. I suppose that makes sense, really,
as we never do see the other end of the conveyor belts.

========================
9vii. RESIDENT EVIL ZERO
========================

Q. Who's that guy talking to Rebecca in the screenshots?

A. That's Billy Koen. He's mentioned briefly in one of the
RE2 EX Files, in which Rebecca says he's been dead since the
22nd of July and that his body is missing. Obviously, what
really happened is probably in RE0.

Q. If Rebecca went through such an ordeal a day before RE,
why didn't she say anything about it to Chris during RE?

A. Well, there's always the obvious answer; no one planned
for there to be an RE0 while they were making RE. Rebecca
hadn't "officially" gone through anything other than losing
her entire team to flesh-eating monsters (oh, is *that* all?).

Also, Wesker's Report suggests that Becky wasn't a player
in the "official" events of RE. She might not have said
anything to Chris because she didn't get the chance.

======================
9ix. RESIDENT EVIL 4
======================

Q. When's it coming out?

A. It's sort of in limbo right now. The rumor is that the
original design for RE4 mutated on the drawing board into
what would become Devil May Cry. The current plan is, as
far as I've heard, to release five RE games on the Gamecube
in 2002, leading up to the release of RE4, but that means
that North America may not see RE4 'til early 2003.

Q. Hey, have you seen the box art?

A. No, and neither have you. The "Umbrella Rising" box art is
a mildly clever fake.

Q. Is it true that you'll get to play an Umbrella agent?

A. No, Shinji Mikami shot that down in an interview. All we
know is that the protagonist won't be an Umbrella employee,
and the game won't take place in America.

==============
10. Say What?!
==============

"I play violent video games. I could snap at any moment!"
    -- Tycho Brahe, "Penny Arcade"

You people are crazy.

This section deals with the weirder and wilder theories, "facts,"
claims, and proclamations that I've received or seen since this
thesis made its freshly updated debut. Most of these theories,
except the ones that I clearly made up (and a lone contribution),
were sent to me by fans who presented them as though they were
the gospel truth.

Say What?! is meant strictly for fun, and isn't intended to mock
any of the people who sent me the theories in  question. This
also isn't an invitation to send me even *weirder* theories,
send me a friend's zany theories (Peter Pap told me a funny
story about a neighbor of his who's convinced Sherry was
Nemesis), or, indeed, to send me theories at all.

All theories regarding Wesker's survival predate Wesker's Report,
save #19.

============================
10i. The Weirdest of the Lot
============================

1. Wesker survived RE because there is more than one Wesker. There
is actually a *series* of Weskers, created by forces unknown, which
are sent out to perform various tasks. These Weskers are:
    1a. ...clones.
    1b. ...robots.
    1c. ...robot clones.
    1d. ...robot killer death clones. Yeah, bitch.
    1e. ...Rebecca. Yes, that's right, *all* of them are *Rebecca*.
           She's *very clever*.
    1f. ...Nemesis. Turnabout is fair play.
    1g. ...created by Dr. Mephisto for his own evil purposes. Some
           of them have as many as *five* asses! Quake in terror,
           puny mortals! The five-assed Wesker thirsts for your blood!

2. Nemesis was actually:
    2a. Wesker. The radiation from the nuke turned him human again.
        (And what about the shockwave? Survive *that*, virus boy.)
    2b. Alternatively, the original Wesker was Nemesis, and the one
        found in CV was a clone (with/without "Hunter genes,"
        depending on who's talking about this).
    2c. Jill's anonymous "boyfriend," mentioned in RE2.
    2d. Ada. She survived the end of RE2 by using the G-Virus, and
        then turned right around and became Nemesis. (...so the
        G-Virus lets you travel back in time? William Birkin was
        a friggin' *genius*!)
    2e. Rebecca. She's *very* clever.
    2f. The unidentified guy in the STARS group photo.
    2g. Regina. No, I don't know why he'd be Regina, particularly
        since if Regina even *exists* in the RE universe, she'd
        be eleven.
    2h. American "prop comic" Carrot Top, in his video game debut.
    2i. He was sculpted out of delicious tapioca pudding, and
        left in the microwave too long.
    2j. No one actually *made* him. They found him clogging up
        the floor drain in the Dead Factory.
    2k. Nemesis is Adlai Stevenson, 1952 Democratic presidential
        candidate. "STAAARRRSSSS" is really code for "Eisenhower
        beat me, so I will extract revenge on you, Jill!
        Rrraaarrggghhh!" (I always thought Adlai looked a little
        shifty.)
    2l. *Me*. *I* was Nemesis. While I was at it, I shot Kennedy
        (no, not Leon, the *other* Kennedy), and I let the dogs
        out. I did it all!

3. Wesker is "obviously" a vampire as of CV. He's fast, he's
   strong, he's arrogant... he's a vampire! Come on! Work with me!

4. Jill quit S.T.A.R.S. and the RPD because of--ahem--unwanted
   attentions from Chief Irons (according, that is, to "anonymous
   sources" inside the development staff. Why is it that everyone
   and their mom, EXCEPT ME, has "anonymous sources" inside Capcom?).

5. You can play as [Rebecca/Wesker/Akuma] in RE2.

   (No, you can't. Rebecca and Wesker are purely Internet-based rumors,
    but the Akuma rumor was printed in one of Electronic Gaming Monthly's
    April Fool's issues. To wit, it said that if you beat the game in
    under an hour and a half, using *only* the handgun and knife, Akuma
    would become playable. Vincent Merken did it, and it didn't work.)

6. Wesker works for the American government (yet another fact
   from those "anonymous sources").

7. Brad was an Umbrella spy before his death. (And not a very good
   one, either.)

8. Annette Birkin threw the rocket launcher in RE2. (It's Ada's voice
   actress (a guy on Evil-Online actually ran a spectrograph and proved
   it), it's Ada's polygon model, Leon thinks it's Ada, and Ada's
   still alive.)

9. D.I.J. is the Ashfords' butler. The T-Virus turned him into
   a mouse. Now, he uses his powers to fight evil!

10. Lara Croft threw the rocket launcher in RE2. Yeah. I know. The
    girl gets around.

11. Nemesis was a G-Virus creature, because the Resident Evil 3
    two-page magazine ad shows a broken vial of the G-Virus. (It's
    not the conclusion that I have trouble with, so much as it is
    the process by which that conclusion was reached.)

12. Ada was Rebecca in disguise, who was in turn Nemesis (who lived
    in the house that Jack built!).

13. In CV, Wesker is, and I quote, a "super stealth Tyrant."

14. Nemesis was a G-Virus creature! He was he was he was! Here's
    an incredibly unlikely series of events that would explain his
    being a G-Virus creature, none of which are so much as hinted
    at in the game! (Remember what I said about taking this too
    seriously?)

15. Resident Evil 1.5 was a better game than RE2; it had hand grenades,
    better scenery, and Elza Walker was a better protagonist than Claire.
    The only reason it was canceled was because Square lured away most
    of Capcom's design team so they could work on Parasite Eve. (...yeah.
    It's worth mentioning that I asked the guy who sent me this to produce
    a source for it, and he never replied.)

16. Nemesis escaped from the ruptured tank in RE2's double-locked room.
    (...so he escaped from his captivity and killed a soldier just
    before they calmed him down and told him to go after Jill? Even
    for RE, that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.)

17. The reason Rebecca disappears after RE is because Wesker used her
    brain to make the RE Tyrant. (Now, while Becky not having a brain
    *would* explain a lot, this is still impossible.)

18. Wesker's body was rebuilt, using the genetic material of a Hunter,
    by an Unspecified Third Party, Probably His Employer In CV (TM).
    That Unspecified Third Party (TM) has been mentioned to me so often
    that it's earned its WWWF Grudge Match (TM)-style (TM).

19. Wesker survived RE because the Tyrant threw him off of the Spencer
    mansion's balcony. (This was sent in *after* the Wesker's Report
    updates, by a charming individual who claimed he'd e-mailed
    Capcom and that was what they'd told him. Once again, I'm forced
    to wonder if any of you psychotic little darlings actually read
    this thing, or if you just scan to the end to get my e-mail
    address.)

============
11. Mistakes
============

This section is dedicated to factual mistakes to be found within
the Resident Evil series. This isn't dedicated to serious plot
holes or B-movie science errors; instead, it's sort of like the
"goofs" category on the Internet Movie Database. In this section,
we'll go over the various errors to be found within the series,
just for grins.

Mistakes in this section were provided by myself, Cal Adams,
the erstwhile "CVXFREAK," Joseph Brooks, Michael Soo, Mark Chang,
Andrew Leonard, Frank Kool, and James Middleton.

RE2.0:

When you play Kenneth's film in the visual room, you'll hear
four gunshots, but at the beginning of the game, you only hear
three.

Trevor Spencer's last diary entry is dated November 31st. There
are only thirty days in November.

RE2:
In Claire A, when Claire sees Leon on the monitor room in the
Umbrella lab, Leon isn't bandaged.

In Leon A, the gun that Leon concludes is Ada's is actually
Annette's; Ada's gun clearly fell off the walkway with her.

Leon's shotgun isn't the right model; a Winchester 1100 isn't
a pump-action. Also, 9mm rounds don't typically fit in a revolver,
such as the Colt SAA, without a moon clip.

In the N64 port, when Ada catches up to Annette in Leon A, you'll
hear Claire's voice instead of Ada's during Annette's FMV.

RE3:
Brad Vickers is killed by a tentacle through the head. This
would make his becoming a zombie, as seen in RE2, impossible.
(Quite a few readers have tried to justify this, but it's not
possible. If you defeat Nemesis and check Brad's body, it says
that his face is a "red ruin," or words to that effect. There's
no way that the wound that killed him could've done so without
inflicting brain damage.)

No one ever actually tells Jill Nicholai's name. She sort
of figures it out on her own.

As mentioned above, the area code on the Grady's Inn sign in
the introduction is for Manhattan Island. For those of you
who aren't Americans, that would place Raccoon City within
New York City.

Feel free to correct my admittedly spotty knowledge of nuclear
physics, but wouldn't the nuke that was dropped on Raccoon City
have caused an electromagnetic pulse which would have, in turn,
crashed the escape helicopter? (Update: alert reader "SiberioS"
says no. "Figuring the nuke was rather small, the EMP outburst
wouldn't be any larger then the blast radius itself, vertically
as well as horizontally (meaning that the height where the
visible blast radius ends is where the EMP field also ends).")

RE:S:
In real life, the Nanbu pistol, also known as Handgun 4, was
chambered to fire 8mm rounds. This means that Survivor's 9mm
parabellum rounds wouldn't fit in the gun.

CV:
It doesn't actually snow in Antarctica. It's far too cold.

Steve manages to run out of ammo in both guns simultaneously
after shooting his father, after he's just blown the hell out
of the wall in the last room with the gun in his right hand.

If Chris triggers the self-destruct sequence in the Antarctic, and
thus gives himself only five minutes to defeat Alexia and escape,
how is that oh-so-cinematic showdown with Wesker possible? Shouldn't
they both have been vaporized?

=====================
12. About the Authors
=====================

I'm a twenty-four-year-old college student, majoring in English,
a somewhat disgruntled American, and a freelance writer. Any more
biographical details I'm willing to part with can be found on my
personal website, at http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/.

Dan Birlew's author's information can be found in his strategy
guides. Pick up any strategy guide Brady Games has put out in
the last two year, and it's probably one of his. He's very sorry
about the FF9 guide, by the way.

==============
13. Conclusion
==============

Thanks to Dan Birlew, for starting this document and letting
me update it. Thanks also go out to Ben Plante, who's apparently
my editor, and to everyone else who's contributed to this
document. I appreciate most of the e-mail, and I've let you
know if I didn't appreciate yours.

Big thanks go to Toby Normoyle, who sent me Wesker's Report dubbed
onto videotape, along with the uncensored introduction to RE, the
new ending for CV, and some RE1.5 movies. Once again, Toby, I
appreciate it.

Those who are interested in further information on the
Resident Evil storyline are encouraged to check out Rob
MacGregor's Timeline FAQ, available at:
http://www.new-blood.com

This document can be found at many, many websites. The following
are the most likely to have the newest version:

http://www.gamefaqs.com
http://www.new-blood.com
http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/writing.html
http://www.crosswinds.net/~presidentevil
http://guitarheader.homestead.com/writingpg.html
http://www.geocities.com/peterpapau

The following typically have an older version of this document:

http://home.planetinternet.be/~twuyts
http://biohazardsurvivors.cjb.net
http://www.absolute-playstation.com
http://www.neoseeker.com
http://www.columbia.edu/~kvr10
http://www.ps2fantasy.com

You can find Nicolas Falduti's French translation of this
document at http://ritalman.thelemmings.net/story.html.

Note that www.psxcodez.com and www.gamecenter.com are currently
hosting a prehistoric copy of this document dating back to the
early Mesozoic, and they're doing it without permission.

If you're interested in placing this document on your own website,
please e-mail me for permission. Naturally, using this document
for anything other than non-profit purposes, or altering the
content of the document in any way, are both strictly forbidden.
It's also your responsibility to make sure that the copy of the
analysis that you're hosting is the most recent one.

If you want to send me questions, comments, or feedback on this
document, please note that sending me any of the following will,
at best, get you a rude response:

-- theories (this applies to *everyone*)
-- flames
-- requests for gameplay information or puzzle solutions
-- questions that have already been specifically answered in
   this document
-- copies of the %$#@ing Klez virus; would you people run some
   damn virus scanners, *please*?

With that said, please read the following before e-mailing me,
and take it to heart:

http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/writing/fiq.html
[warning: explicit language]

Thomas Wilde
twilde@gamepartisan.com
a.k.a. Wanderer
a.k.a. Storyteller on the gamefaqs.com boards
http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/
http://www.gamepartisan.com
