Raccoon City is the most famous city in Resident Evil, and the one that no longer exists. It was a town in the American Midwest, at the foot of the Arklay Mountains, that lived off Umbrella; in September 1998 the t-Virus turned it into a graveyard and on 1 October a missile wiped it off the map. Twenty-eight years later, Resident Evil Requiem goes back to its ruins.
The nights of 1998 are told in games this guide does not cover (Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 and the two Outbreaks), so here they are in full; each game has its entry in the other games. The company behind it all has its own page: Umbrella.
Spoilers: this page tells RE2, RE3 and Outbreak from start to finish, and all of Requiem, with its true ending.
The city and Umbrella’s grip
Raccoon City had about 100,000 inhabitants (Leon and the Raccoon City Incident, an RE6 file). On its outskirts, in the Arklay Mountains, Oswell E. Spencer had a mansion built from 1962 with a laboratory hidden beneath it, which would become Umbrella’s. In 1968 the company also opened its executive training school in the mountains. From then on, the city and the company grew together.
RE5’s chronology sums it up: in the 1960s Michael Warren brings electricity to Raccoon City, and in 1987 he becomes mayor; in 1992 Umbrella pays for the renovation of city hall and the general hospital; in 1993 the chief of police, Brian Irons, starts dealing with the company (History of RESIDENT EVIL). In 1996 the police launch an elite unit, S.T.A.R.S., with Albert Wesker as captain: an Umbrella man, as his page tells.
There was more under the city. In 1991 construction begins on NEST, the huge underground laboratory where William and Annette Birkin develop the G-Virus. And Requiem reveals another, older and more secret one: ARK, planned by Spencer in 1980, with its entrance hidden under the Raccoon City Orphanage. There, in the 1980s, cloned children were raised for a memory-transfer experiment. In February 1990 those children kill the orphanage staff; you play it in the flashback of Requiem’s chapter 11. In the RE2 remake, the files tell that at the end of 1997 orphans were still being taken to NEST for the G-Virus experiments.
The first warning (1993). In May 1993 an Umbrella drug, T-JCCC203, turns the patients of a private hospital in the Arklay Mountains into zombies. The journalist Alyssa Ashcroft was there; she lost a colleague, and an Umbrella researcher suppressed her memory of it (Outbreak File #2’s “Flashback” scenario tells it). Alyssa goes on writing for the local press: a mutilated body in the river in 1996, an animal-trafficking ring at the zoo in June 1998, according to the wiki.
Prologue: the Mansion Incident (July 1998)
In May 1998 the t-Virus leaks in the Arklay laboratory. Animals mutate, the first victims turn up in the mountains and in June a local magazine prints sightings of monstrous dogs. On 23 July the police send S.T.A.R.S.’s Bravo Team; on the 24th, Alpha Team.
What happens on those two nights is on the Umbrella page: the rookie Rebecca Chambers and the prisoner Billy Coen on a train full of the dead (Resident Evil 0); Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine and Barry Burton in the Spencer Mansion, and the laboratory hidden beneath it (Resident Evil). Wesker turns out to be the traitor: he brought them there to test the B.O.W.s against real soldiers. Chris, Jill, Barry, Rebecca and the pilot Brad Vickers escape as the mansion blows up. Wesker seems dead, but he is not.
Nobody believes them, and in August S.T.A.R.S. is disbanded. Chris leaves for Europe, Barry for Canada, and Jill stays in town. Requiem remembers those days at the police station: Barry’s to-do list, with the rookie’s training plan, shooting practice with Jill and the book the captain took out of the library (Barry’s To Do List).
The outbreak (September and October 1998)
The spark. In mid-September, William Birkin plans to defect to the US military with the G-Virus. Umbrella knows. On the night of 22–23 September, a U.S.S. team led by HUNK raids his laboratory to take the sample. Birkin, fatally wounded, injects himself with the G-Virus and becomes “G”, a monster that kills the team. In the chaos, the t-Virus spills into the sewers, and the rats carry it into the city’s water (Sherry and the Raccoon City Incident, an RE6 file, calls it “Umbrella’s assault on William Birkin”).
Outbreak (from 23 September). On the night of 23 September the outbreak reaches J’s Bar. Eight civilians who star in Resident Evil Outbreak (2003) and File #2 (2004) are there: the police officer Kevin Ryman, the security guard and Vietnam veteran Mark Wilkins, the subway worker Jim Chapman, the surgeon George Hamilton, the handyman David King, the journalist Alyssa Ashcroft, the former Umbrella researcher Yoko Suzuki and the waitress Cindy Lennox. They flee over rooftops and through the streets while the police try to blow up the zombie horde on Main Street. On 24 September the army puts the city under quarantine; officially, because of “radioactive waste”.
Their scenarios are separate escapes, with no clear order and dates that the wiki itself calls tentative: a burning hotel full of Lickers; Umbrella’s underground laboratory, where a researcher steals a G-Virus sample and “G” kills her; the hospital, taken over by a leech man; the university, where Dr. Greg Mueller murders Dr. Peter Jenkins to stop an antivirus, “Daylight”, and unleashes the Tyrant Thanatos; the zoo; the subway; the police station’s last stand; and “Flashback”, in which Alyssa returns to the 1993 hospital and recovers her memories. Which scenarios really count for each character was never settled. According to the wiki, Alyssa is the only one of the eight whose survival is official.
The police station. The R.P.D. becomes a refuge. Officer David Ford’s diary, from 25 to 27 September, tells of the crowd pressing at the doors and the twelve dead on the west side (Record of Events). Left in the office is Lieutenant Marvin Branagh’s plan for a surprise welcome party for the rookie, “young Kennedy” (Top Secret Operation). The letters in Requiem’s Deluxe Kit are from his daughter Meryl, who slips through the fence to look for her dad (From Meryl to Mommy). On 26 September Umbrella sends in its private army, the U.B.C.S.; it is torn apart on arrival.
Resident Evil 3 (28 September to 1 October). Jill tries to get out of the city. Umbrella releases the Nemesis, a Tyrant with a parasite that makes it obey orders, to kill the S.T.A.R.S. members still alive: Brad Vickers dies at its hands at the police station. Jill joins three U.B.C.S. mercenaries, Carlos Oliveira, Mikhail Victor and Nikolai Zinoviev. Their escape plan depends on ringing the clock tower bell to call a helicopter; Mikhail dies holding Nemesis back, and Nemesis shoots the helicopter down and infects Jill. Carlos brings her a vaccine from the hospital on 1 October. Nikolai turns out to be an Umbrella “supervisor” collecting combat data and killing the others for a bounty. Jill learns that the government will destroy the city with a missile, finishes Nemesis at Umbrella’s disposal plant and escapes with Carlos. In the 1999 version, the one later games follow, Barry Burton’s helicopter picks them up. In the 2020 remake a lot changes: Nemesis attacks Jill in her apartment, there is a second laboratory under the hospital, and Carlos and Jill fly out on their own.
Resident Evil 2 (night of 29–30 September). Leon S. Kennedy turns up late for his first day as a police officer (he overslept) and finds a dead city. Claire Redfield, a student, has come looking for her brother Chris. A crash splits them up and they meet again at the police station, where Irons had spent years hiding Umbrella’s work. Claire protects Sherry Birkin, the Birkins’ daughter, whom her father, now a monster, hunts to implant an embryo in her. Leon teams up with Ada Wong, who says she is looking for her boyfriend John (in the remake, that she is an FBI agent): she is really a spy for a rival company, sent to steal the G-Virus. Umbrella air-drops a Tyrant, “Mr. X”, to recover the sample.
In NEST, Annette Birkin tells what happened and dies at her husband’s hands, after giving Claire what she needs to make the vaccine that saves Sherry. Ada falls after demanding the sample from Leon, but later lends him a hand with a rocket launcher. Leon, Claire and Sherry escape by train as the laboratory self-destructs. The game has two routes that contradict each other, and neither fully counts as the official one. The 2019 remake adds details that Requiem picks up: Irons dies at the orphanage, where he had taken Sherry; the gunsmith Robert Kendo and his daughter Emma; and the files about the orphanage children.
What they take away. HUNK leaves with a G sample for Umbrella. Ada survives with another (Umbrella Chronicles shows her collecting tissue from Birkin’s body and escaping on 1 October in an Umbrella helicopter). And on the morning of 30 September the army captures Leon and Sherry.
The 1 October missile strike and the cover-up
At dawn on 1 October 1998, the United States government destroys Raccoon City with a missile. RE3 calls it thermobaric. At least 100,000 people die; the city is left a crater. The last edition of the Raccoon Times says only: “Run. Find a safe place. Survive.” (Raccoon City Incident Newspaper).
Before Requiem. According to the wiki, a congressional committee pushed for the bombing to destroy the evidence that the US military backed Umbrella’s bioweapons, with input from an adviser named Derek C. Simmons (an RE6 file, Scorched Earth, says Simmons himself ordered the destruction); the President resigned after a disastrous press conference. Within six months a fence and an exclusion zone go up around the ruins. For years the government denies that B.O.W.s exist, and survivors’ accounts are treated as conspiracy theories. Umbrella gets the blame: Spencer writes in his notebook that the Americans “will blame Umbrella for Raccoon City’s annihilation… over 100,000 of their own people” (Spencer’s Notebook). Umbrella USA loses its right to do business and years of trials begin.
Simmons returns fifteen years later, in Resident Evil 6, as National Security Adviser and head of a secret society, The Family, for which the country’s ties to Umbrella must stay buried. In 2013 he stages the Tall Oaks attack to silence President Adam Benford, who was about to tell the truth about Raccoon City (Derek C. Simmons).
Requiem spoiler: from here on, this section tells what Requiem reveals about the missile.
What Requiem tells. Requiem changes the motive. In chapter 4, Leon pulls from Victor Gideon’s files a redacted Level 9 memo to the White House about Raccoon City, “for the sake of Elpis” (Special Directive for Raccoon City). In chapter 9, Sherry looks for the official order for the strike and cannot find it. And in ARK, in chapter 14, Grace reads the minutes of the first assembly of those who control the laboratory: “The Defense” objects that there is no presidential authorization, and someone called “K.D.” answers that “the organization is involved” and that “the blame will fall solely on Spencer” (Access Log: First Assembly Minutes).
The explanation: The Connections, the bioweapons syndicate from RE7 and Village, secured ARK first and then lobbied for the city to be bombed. That way the evidence was erased, the blame fell on Spencer and they took Umbrella’s assets, ARK included. At the police station, in chapter 10, Zeno gives Grace his version: the missile was there to hide Elpis, and The Connections used their ties to The Family to push through Simmons’s “Sterilization Strategy”. Only Zeno tells of that link to The Family; no file confirms it.
What became of the survivors
- Leon. Captured by the army along with Sherry, he is questioned by Adam Benford and given a choice: silence and service in exchange for his life and Sherry’s safety. He is trained as an agent of a government team against Umbrella; by November 1998 he is already sending a friend, the detective Ark Thompson, to investigate Sheena Island. In 2004 he rescues the President’s daughter in Spain (Leon in Resident Evil 4); in 2011 he is one of the DSO’s founders, and in 2013 he is still fighting so that Raccoon City never happens again (Leon in RE6).
- Claire. She keeps looking for Chris: in December 1998 she is captured in Paris and ends up on Rockfort Island and in Antarctica (Code: Veronica). Later she works for TerraSave, an organisation that helps victims of bioterrorism, and becomes something like a mother to Sherry.
- Sherry. The government keeps her as a G-Virus research subject; the virus left her with lifelong regeneration. She grows up under the guardianship of Simmons, whose team derives the C-Virus from her blood, and is a test subject until 2009. In 2012 and 2013 she is a DSO agent (Sherry in RE6); in 2026, Leon’s contact on the radio (Sherry in Requiem).
- Jill. She escapes with Carlos and goes to Chris’s apartment, but he has already left. From 1999 they fight Umbrella together, and they are two of the BSAA’s eleven founders. In 2006 she falls off a cliff with Wesker, who uses her as a puppet until 2009: the t-Virus antibodies left by her 1998 infection help him tame Uroboros (Jill in RE5).
- Carlos. He gets out of the city alive with Jill.
- Ada. She escapes with her sample and crosses paths with Leon again in Spain in 2004 (Ada in Resident Evil 4). An RE6 file confirms it was Wesker who sent her for the G-Virus in 1998 (Ada and Raccoon City).
- Alyssa. According to the wiki, she publishes an exposé on the bioweapons, “WHAT IS BOW?”, becomes a freelance journalist and is the only one Spencer grants an interview. When he dies, in 2006, his will names her guardian of a girl, Grace, who grows up with the surname Ashcroft. In 2016 she writes about the disappearances in Dulvey, RE7’s setting. She is murdered at the Wrenwood Hotel on 19 October 2018, in front of Grace (Alyssa’s Journal, chapter 1).
- The police station’s own. Marvin Branagh and Robert Kendo never leave the city. In 2026 Leon pays his respects to them at the R.P.D. (the 1998 veterans).
Raccoon City Syndrome
Requiem spoiler: this section and the next tell Requiem’s plot.
The city is still killing 28 years later. In September 2026, 1998 survivors turn up dead one after another, all with black bruises (Investigation Report). The Report on Raccoon City Syndrome, which Leon finds in chapter 4, gives it a name: “Latent Onset T-Virus Syndrome”. The t-Virus left dormant in those who survived slowly adapts to their antibodies and wakes up:
- Stage 0: dormancy, no symptoms.
- Stage 1: black bruise-like marks, malaise and a cough.
- Stage 2: the marks spread, numbness and sometimes vomiting blood.
- Stage 3: the whole body; uncontrollable vomiting of blood and death within one or two hours.
The dead do not rise as zombies. The name was coined by Victor Gideon, who also calls it “Umbrella’s Curse”. According to the wiki, the victims include Michael Warren, the former mayor, who died at 90 in a nursing home.
Leon has it: he starts the game at stage 1, hiding it; he coughs blood at stage 2 at the end of chapter 8 and reaches stage 3 in ARK. Sherry is at stage 1, which the G-Virus inside her makes progress more slowly. Zeno has the marks on his face, which suggests he was in Raccoon City in 1998, although the game never says so. Apart from Warren, the game names no character from the earlier games among the sick, but the threat is plain: anyone who got out of the city alive (Jill, Claire, Carlos, the Outbreak survivors) could be carrying it.
The return in 2026
The ruins. The army keeps the zone walled off and under quarantine, and the lockdown has just been extended to 2040 (Note Regarding Research Results). Since 2023 the BSAA’s North American branch has used the police station as a base to watch ARK; that year one of its teams tried to take the laboratory and was wiped out. It now operates on its own, after an internal dispute. Underneath, ARK uses the city’s zombies to test a new strain of the t-Virus: it is North America’s bioweapons hub (Raccoon City Bioweapon Research - Report).
East Raccoon City (chapter 9). Leon enters the city on Victor’s trail. On arrival he receives the Report on the Raccoon City Incident, which goes over the history: the September 1998 leak, the sterilization of 1 October, Umbrella’s bankruptcy in 2004 and Spencer’s death in 2006. The streets are full of Raccoon City zombies that pick up weapons from the rubble. In the NF Building the Titan Spinner waits for him, a leftover from 1998 according to the wiki, not a new product. Leon reaches the BSAA camp, finds its soldiers dead and ends up in a motorbike chase along the elevated highway against Victor and the Garmrs, the successors of Umbrella’s dogs.
The police station (chapter 10). Leon walks back into the R.P.D., 28 years after his first day on the job (trophy “The Hero Returns”). The station is full of 1998: the scavenger hunt Barry left for the rookies, the library card for a book taken out by A. Wesker (Library Card), Rebecca Chambers’s photo (Photograph), Jill’s beret and Chris’s jacket in the S.T.A.R.S. Office. In the East Wing, Zeno has Grace.
The orphanage and ARK. Chapter 11 is the February 1990 flashback in the orphanage. In chapter 12 Leon escapes a Tyrant T-501 through the police station, finishes it off as the Super Tyrant in the street, passes through Kendo’s gun shop, goes down through the ruined orphanage and Blackthorn Station and kills Plant 43 at ARK’s entrance. From chapter 13 to 15 the story goes down into Spencer’s laboratory: crates from H.C.F., Tricell and Umbrella, The Connections’ elite guard and, at the bottom, PANDORA, the vault that holds Elpis.
The ending. In chapter 15, Grace opens Elpis with the password “Hope” and finds that it is an antiviral against the Progenitor family of viruses. She cures Leon, and Leon keeps a vial for Sherry: Raccoon City Syndrome has a cure. Victor destroys PANDORA and ARK, and dies at Leon’s hands. In the epilogue, according to Wikipedia, what comes out of ARK sparks a global scandal and new investigations into Umbrella, The Connections and the US government, and the press posthumously credits Alyssa as the journalist who broke the Spencer story. After the credits, some soldiers (most likely The Connections) stand over the dead BSAA soldiers in ARK and move on towards “the objective” before “the wolves” arrive. If Grace chooses to destroy Elpis, ARK goes down with it and Leon dies.
The whole plot, chapter by chapter, is on the Requiem page.
The Raccoon City of the 2026 film
Resident Evil (2026), Zach Cregger’s film, is also set in Raccoon City, but it is not part of the games’ story: it is a reboot with an original story. Its Raccoon City is a snowy Colorado town that falls in the present day, on a winter night, not in September 1998; neither Leon nor any other game character appears, and there is no police station, no S.T.A.R.S., no mansion and no G-Virus. Cregger describes it as a story “on the sidelines” of Resident Evil 2’s night, with “a couple of little shifts”. Umbrella is there: its serum causes the outbreak. The details are in films and series.