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The games this guide doesn't cover

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Resident Evil 0 to Code: Veronica, Outbreak, the Chronicles, both Revelations and the spin-offs: when each one happens, who stars in it, what it tells and what it sets up for the guide's games.

Spoilers: RE0, RE1 and its remake, RE2 and RE3 (originals and remakes), Outbreak and File #2, Code: Veronica, Umbrella Chronicles, Darkside Chronicles, Revelations, Revelations 2, Survivor, Survivor 2, Dead Aim, Operation Raccoon City, Umbrella Corps and Resistance; details of RE4, RE5, RE6, RE7 and Requiem

This guide covers six games: Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, Resident Evil 7, Village and Requiem. But what the games tell starts much earlier, in 1998, and between one game and the next things happen that the guide’s games take for granted: who Wesker is, why Leon works for the government, where Sherry comes from, what became of Umbrella. This page sums up those other games in story order, not release order. It has spoilers for all of them.

Each entry gives the release year, the in-universe date, the protagonists, the plot, what it sets up for the guide’s games (with links to their pages), whether it counts as canon and, when there is a remake, the differences that matter. On canon: Capcom treats the main games and the CG films as one story; the RE2 and RE3 remakes change details, and according to Fandom, the fan wiki, Requiem is the first game to merge both versions (it follows the remakes’ city). Dates come from Fandom, Wikipedia and the games’ files; where they disagree, it says so.

What the guide does cover, even as extras: Separate Ways (RE4), Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape (RE5), Not a Hero and End of Zoe (RE7) and Shadows of Rose (Village). The films are in Films and series, and everything together, dated, is in the timeline.

Resident Evil 0

Story. On the evening of 23 July, the Ecliptic Express, an Umbrella train, is overrun by leeches in the Arklay Mountains while a young man sings on a hill. Two hours later Bravo Team’s helicopter crash-lands. Rebecca finds the stalled train full of zombies and teams up with Billy, an escaped prisoner. The Umbrella troops Wesker and Birkin send to move the train are killed, and the runaway train crashes into Umbrella’s old Executive Training School. Files reveal that its director, co-founder James Marcus, created the t-Virus by combining the Progenitor virus with leech DNA and tested it on the trainees. Wesker and Birkin, watching on camera, talk about leaving Umbrella. The singer is the Queen Leech: Marcus was killed in 1988 on Spencer’s orders and dumped in the water, and the leech queen took over his body and memories to take revenge. Birkin sets the self-destruct; Rebecca and Billy kill the queen in daylight, she lists Billy as dead and walks towards the Spencer mansion.

What it sets up. Rebecca reaches the first game’s mansion; in RE5 she is a Mercenaries character (Rebecca). This is where Wesker’s decision to defect to a rival company is born, which explains everything he does later (Albert Wesker and his legacy). Marcus comes back in RE5 in his 1978 telegram and in the History of RESIDENT EVIL file. Umbrella’s origin is in Umbrella.

Canon. Yes. No remake as of September 2026. What became of Billy is unknown: he hasn’t reappeared in a canon game.

Resident Evil (1996) and the remake (2002)

Story. Alpha Team goes looking for the missing Bravo Team in the Arklay Mountains. Mutant dogs attack: Joseph Frost dies and the pilot, Brad Vickers, flees with the helicopter, so the others take shelter in the Spencer mansion. Exploring it, the player finds Bravo Team dead one by one: Kenneth eaten, Forest killed by crows, Richard by the giant snake Yawn. Enrico is shot by an unseen traitor just after saying there is a mole in S.T.A.R.S. The mansion hides Umbrella’s Arklay laboratory, where the t-Virus leaked and turned the staff and animals into zombies and bioweapons. The mole is Wesker: Umbrella ordered him to lure S.T.A.R.S. in to test its weapons against them and destroy the lab, and he blackmailed Barry by threatening his family. In the lab he releases the Tyrant (T-002), which impales him. The survivors bring it down, the self-destruct starts and Brad picks them up at the helipad; a rocket launcher finishes the Tyrant.

What it sets up. The whole Wesker thread: his “death”, his resurrection and his war with Chris, which ends in RE5. Jill stays in Raccoon City (RE3), and Barry and Rebecca go their own ways. Lost in Nightmares is a direct homage to this mansion: the piano, the spike ceiling. In Requiem, in the R.P.D.’s S.T.A.R.S. office (chapter 10), Wesker’s desk (Library Card) and Barry’s scavenger hunt (Barry’s To Do List) are still there.

Canon. Neither Chris’s nor Jill’s run on its own: according to Fandom, canon is a combination in which both explore the mansion. According to Wikipedia, all four protagonists survive and the mansion is destroyed; the RE5 file adds Brad to the survivors and says “Wesker escapes the Arklay Research Facility.”

Remake (2002). It adds the Trevor family’s story and Lisa Trevor, whom Spencer used as a Progenitor test subject in 1967 and who finally dies in 1998, and it leaves Wesker’s survival open. Umbrella Chronicles closes it later: Wesker revives in the lab and kills Lisa on his way out.

Resident Evil 2 (1998) and the remake (2019)

Story. On the night of 22–23 September, an Umbrella team led by HUNK raids William Birkin’s lab to take the G-Virus. Birkin, shot, injects himself with it, becomes “G”, kills the team, and the t-Virus ends up in the sewers, where rats carry it into the city’s water. A week later Leon and Claire arrive in a dead city, are split up by a crash and meet again at the police station, where the corrupt chief Brian Irons has been covering for Umbrella. Claire protects Sherry, the Birkins’ daughter, whom her father, now a monster, hunts to implant an embryo. Leon partners with Ada, who says she is looking for her boyfriend John (in the remake, that she is an FBI agent) but is a spy sent to steal the G-Virus. Umbrella drops in a Tyrant, “Mr. X”, to recover the virus. In the NEST underground lab, Annette Birkin tells what happened and dies at her husband’s hands after giving Claire the way to make the vaccine that saves Sherry. Ada falls after demanding the sample from Leon, but later throws him a rocket launcher. Leon, Claire and Sherry escape by train as the lab self-destructs and G dies.

What it sets up. Almost everything the guide takes for granted:

Claire has no entry in any of the guide’s six games. The city’s full story is in Raccoon City.

Canon. Each character’s A and B scenarios contradict each other: neither is fully canon, and later games take pieces of both. Wikipedia says Capcom suggested Claire A and Leon B.

Remake (2019). Ada poses as an FBI agent; Mr. X kills the journalist Ben Bertolucci; Irons dies at the Raccoon City Orphanage, where he had taken Sherry, from a G embryo; the gun-shop owner Robert Kendo and his daughter Emma appear; the files speak of experiments on the orphanage children, the thread Requiem picks up; and it is Annette, not Ada, who shoots Leon.

Resident Evil 3 (1999) and the remake (2020)

Story (1999). Jill, who stayed in Raccoon City when S.T.A.R.S. was disbanded, tries to escape the overrun city. At the police station, the Nemesis-T Type, a bioweapon Umbrella has sent to kill the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members, kills Brad Vickers. Jill joins the mercenaries Carlos, Mikhail and Nikolai, whose escape plan depends on ringing the Clock Tower bell to call a helicopter. Mikhail dies stopping Nemesis, and Nemesis shoots down the helicopter and infects Jill. Carlos gets a vaccine from the hospital on 1 October. Nikolai turns out to be a “supervisor” collecting combat data and killing the others for a bounty. Jill learns that the government will destroy the city with a missile, defeats Nemesis with a railgun at an Umbrella disposal plant and escapes with Carlos; in the ending later games follow, Barry picks them up by helicopter just as the missile levels Raccoon City at dawn.

What it sets up. Jill’s infection in 1998 leaves her with t-Virus antibodies, and that is what Wesker uses in 2006 for his Uroboros project: the reason he keeps her alive until RE5 (Albert Wesker and his legacy). Her RE5 Library entry, Jill Valentine, goes over Raccoon City with Nemesis and Carlos. The 1 October missile is at the heart of Requiem: the report on the incident and the ruins Leon walks through in chapter 9. And the Nemesis parasite has a successor, the Nemesis-γ, which Victor Gideon carries.

Canon. Only through later games: the RE5 file says Jill escaped and went to Chris’s apartment, and Fandom follows the version with Barry’s helicopter.

Remake (2020). Nemesis attacks Jill in her apartment; there is no Clock Tower bell; there is a subway evacuation; the vaccine is Dr. Nathaniel Bard’s and is made in NEST 2, under Spencer Memorial Hospital; Tyrell Patrick and Dr. Logan Carlisle’s Hunter γ appear; Nicholai destroys the vaccine that could have prevented the missile and is left behind wounded; Jill and Carlos fly out together, without Barry, and after the credits a hand picks up the broken vaccine canister. It came bundled with Resistance (see the spin-offs).

Outbreak and Outbreak File #2

Story. The outbreak reaches J’s Bar a day after G wipes out HUNK’s team, and the survivors flee over the rooftops and through the streets while the R.P.D. tries to blow up the zombie tide. On 24 September the army quarantines the city and publicly cites “radioactive waste”. The scenarios are separate escapes, in no fixed order: a burning hotel full of Lickers; Umbrella’s underground lab, where a researcher, Monica, steals a G sample and is killed by G; the hospital taken over by the Leech Man; Raccoon University, where Dr. Greg Mueller has killed Dr. Peter Jenkins to stop the “Daylight” antivirus and unleashes the Tyrant Thanatos before Nicholai assassinates him; the zoo; the subway; the police station’s last stand, where Marvin is left behind, as RE2 finds him; and a lab where the scientist Linda Baldwin holds a virus suppressant before the final escape. In File #2’s “Flashback”, Alyssa returns to the Arklay hospital, scene of an incident with a t-Virus variant in May 1993, and recovers the memories she had repressed.

What it sets up: Alyssa and Requiem. Alyssa Ashcroft is, according to Fandom, the only one of the eight whose survival is confirmed, and she is Grace’s adoptive mother in Requiem. After escaping she publishes an exposé on bioweapons (“WHAT IS BOW?”), goes freelance and interviews Spencer before his death in 2006 (the recording is in Requiem). In 2016 she writes an article on the Dulvey disappearances that appears in RE7 (Newspaper Article - Over 20 Missing). She is murdered at the Wrenwood Hotel on 19 October 2018, in front of Grace: her journal opens Requiem, and her interview notes and the letter from Patrick, Spencer’s butler, close it. More in Requiem.

Canon. Fandom counts it as canon, but which scenarios and endings each character lived is left open. Fandom adds that Yoko Suzuki and Linda Baldwin later testify against Umbrella at the trials; that isn’t confirmed in a game text.

Code: Veronica

Story. Claire raids Umbrella’s Paris facility looking for Chris, is captured by Rodrigo Juan Raval and shipped to Rockfort Island, Umbrella’s prison and training base in the Southern Ocean run by Alfred Ashford. An air and ground attack by a hostile force, Wesker’s, releases the t-Virus. Rodrigo frees Claire, who meets the teenage prisoner Steve and emails Leon for help. Alfred, who switches between himself and his “sister” Alexia, chases them, and their plane takes them on autopilot to Umbrella’s Antarctic base, also overrun. Leon’s message brings Chris to Rockfort, where he finds Wesker alive, superhuman and working for a rival organisation, hunting the T-Veronica virus. In Antarctica the dying Alfred wakes the real Alexia from a fifteen-year cryogenic sleep; she infects Steve, who mutates, saves Claire and dies. Chris and Wesker fight; Wesker leaves with Steve’s body, and Chris kills Alexia with the Linear Launcher before the siblings escape in a Harrier as the base explodes.

What it sets up. The war between Chris and Wesker, which ends in Kijuju in 2009 (Albert Wesker and his legacy). Wesker’s organisation keeps G and T-Veronica samples. T-Veronica travels: in 2002 a South American drug lord buys it (Darkside Chronicles) and, according to Fandom, its research ends up in RE6’s C-Virus (The C-Virus). Claire later joins TerraSave, an NGO that helps bioterror victims, and Chris vows to bring Umbrella down.

Canon. Yes. The 2027 remake, according to Fandom, is part of the main continuity.

Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles

Story. They are rail shooters. Umbrella Chronicles retells RE0, RE1 and RE3, and Darkside Chronicles, RE2 and Code: Veronica. What is new:

What it sets up. Jack Krauser arrives in RE4 as Wesker’s man (the 5-3 boss); the RE5 file confirms that in 2002 he fakes his death and joins Wesker’s organisation. With Umbrella’s data, Wesker partners with Excella Gionne and Tricell. Umbrella’s fall makes way for the BSAA, which Chris and Jill found with nine others (BSAA). And Spencer, hunted, hides on his European estate until 2006, when they find him in Lost in Nightmares. According to Fandom, Simmons probably got T-Veronica from Manuela for Carla Radames’s project.

Canon. Both, according to Fandom. A naming doubt: Wikipedia calls Leon’s employer in Darkside Chronicles “Special Operations Command”; Fandom calls it US Strategic Command’s Anti-Umbrella Pursuit and Investigation Team, which is what this guide uses.

Revelations

Story. In 2004 the terrorist group Il Veltro attacked Terragrigia, a floating Mediterranean city, with bioweapons, and the FBC (the US Federal Bioterrorism Commission), under Morgan Lansdale, destroyed the city with the Regia Solis satellite. In 2005 BSAA director Clive O’Brian sends Jill and Parker to the ghost cruise ship Queen Zenobia, a former Umbrella vessel, to look for Chris. There they meet the Ooze, victims of the T-Abyss virus, a marine t-Virus strain, while Chris and Jessica chase a supposed Veltro revival in Finland. That revival is a setup by O’Brian to expose Lansdale, who had armed Veltro to inflate the FBC’s budget; Jessica is an FBC mole. Veltro’s leader, Jack Norman, is still alive on the sunken Queen Dido, mutates with T-Abyss and dies; his PDA exposes Lansdale, the FBC is dissolved and O’Brian resigns. After the credits, Raymond gives Jessica a T-Abyss sample.

What it sets up. It is the first time the world sees bioweapons in public (Terragrigia) and the moment the BSAA comes under the UN, in late 2005. It ends with Chris and Jill on their way to Spencer’s estate: the start of Lost in Nightmares, in 2006. The organisations of this era are in the bioterrorism era.

Canon. Yes.

Revelations 2

Story. Armed men abduct TerraSave staff from a party. Claire and Moira wake up in a prison on Sein Island, in the Baltic, wearing bracelets that measure their fear, hunted by the Afflicted, victims of the t-Phobos virus. The Overseer is Alex Wesker, another Wesker Project child who, according to Fandom, took Spencer’s immortality research to the island, and is trying to move her mind into a new body; Neil Fisher, an ex-FBC agent, sold her the TerraSave members in exchange for Uroboros. Alex shoots herself, the tower self-destructs and Moira is left behind. Six months later, Barry comes for his daughter with Natalia, a girl who can sense bioweapons. In the canon ending Moira is alive, Claire arrives with a rocket launcher, they destroy the mutated Alex and the Burtons adopt Natalia. Epilogue (2013): Natalia is slowly taken over by Alex’s consciousness.

What it sets up. It is the other side of RE5’s Project W: Alex is number 012 in Test Subjects, signs the 1998 report that lists Albert as dead, and is the one who, in Spencer’s memoirs, disappears with the final virus (Albert Wesker and his legacy). It brings Barry back into action, with his family (Moira and Polly), and follows Claire’s TerraSave career.

Canon. Yes; the canon ending is the good one.

Spin-offs and non-canon games

Resident Evil Survivor (released 2000). Canon. 22 to 25 November 1998, after the Raccoon City missile. The private detective Ark Thompson, sent by his friend Leon, infiltrates Sheena Island, an Umbrella company town with a Tyrant factory, posing as its commander, Vincent Goldman. Vincent releases the t-Virus; Ark’s helicopter crashes and he wakes with amnesia, believing he is Vincent. He protects the children Lott and Lily, sees the Tyrant Hypnos-T kill the real Vincent, defeats it in three forms and escapes with the children as the factory explodes. It shows Leon, two months after Raccoon City, already working for the government. It is the first Gun Survivor, the light-gun series.

Resident Evil Survivor 2 – Code: Veronica (released 2001). Not canon: it retells Rockfort and turns out to be a dream Claire has after escaping Antarctica.

Resident Evil: Dead Aim (released 2003). Canon. September 2002: Morpheus D. Duvall, an ex-Umbrella executive blamed for the Arklay leak, steals the t-Virus and the experimental t+G virus from Umbrella’s Paris lab, hijacks the liner Spencer Rain and demands 5 billion dollars from the United States and China under threat of t-Virus missiles. He is stopped by Bruce McGivern, of the US anti-Umbrella team (the same one Leon works for), and Fongling, of China’s state security. It is the fourth Gun Survivor; the third, Dino Stalker, belongs to Dino Crisis.

Resident Evil Gaiden (released 2001, Game Boy Color). Not in Fandom’s canon table; no official statement was found.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (released 2012). Not canon: Wikipedia calls it a hypothetical scenario and Fandom a “what-if”. During RE2 and RE3, the Umbrella team Wolfpack destroys evidence and kills witnesses (it even hunts Leon), while the government team Echo Six looks for Umbrella data and can help Leon, Claire and Sherry escape.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Corps (released 21 June 2016). An online-only shooter for the 20th anniversary. Fandom lists it as canon; set in the mid-2010s (Fandom’s dates disagree). After Umbrella’s fall its samples and data are sold on the black market, and companies send mercenaries into sealed outbreak zones to collect samples. It hints that villagers who returned to RE4’s village were parasitised by surviving Plagas (Las Plagas) and that Tricell’s African headquarters fell to an attack.

Resident Evil: Resistance (released 2020). The RE3 remake’s multiplayer. Not canon according to Fandom. September 1998: Umbrella kidnaps civilians during the outbreak and tests the t-Virus on them in NEST 2; its masterminds include Annette Birkin, Daniel Fabron, Alex Wesker, Spencer and Nicholai. As a curiosity, according to Fandom, this game’s Spencer model was reused in Requiem; that is not confirmed.

Re:Verse and The Mercenaries 3D. Not canon either: Fandom leaves Operation Raccoon City, Mercenaries 3D, Resistance and Re:Verse out of the main story.

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