The Resident Evil lore you need to know before playing Requiem

If you play one Resident Evil game, you’ll probably find a story that’s easy enough to follow. Zombies, viruses, evil corporations — got it. If you play two Resident Evil games, your head will start swimming. Capcom’s survival horror series is one of the most complicated sagas in gaming. What began as a straightforward haunted house tale has morphed into a mess of characters, evil organizations, military factions, conspiracy theories, and more. Three decades of storytelling have all built up to Resident Evil Requiem, one of the series’ most complicated installments yet.

Getting fully caught on Resident Evil’s sprawling story is a tall order. You’ll need an Infinite Jest-sized lore bible to understand how every game connects, even the ones that seem like standalone stories. If you’re looking for a cheat sheet, you’ve come to the right place. Here, we’ll run down all the important stuff you need to know about the Resident Evil saga leading up to Requiem. Mind that this isn’t an exhaustive retelling that covers every multiplayer spinoff and animated movie and minor detail; it’s just enough backstory to help you understand the big events and major players.

The Spencer Mansion

Chronologically, the timeline of the mainline games begins in July 1998, though the relevant lore goes back far before that. For the purposes of keeping this coherent, let’s stick to the story as it unfolds in the games and start at Resident Evil 0.

The story begins somewhere in the American midwest. A series of cannibalistic attacks have broken out in the mountains outside of Racoon City, a fictional metropolis where the first few games of the series take place. The Special Tactics And Rescue Service of the region, also known as STARS, is called in to investigate the murders. After Bravo Team’s helicopter crashes in the mountains and everyone gets separated, field medic Rebecca Chambers discovers an abandoned train full of zombies and leeches. Spooky! She teams up with ex-marine Billy Coen to figure out what the hell is going on.

The short version? The train is owned by the Umbrella Corporation, a nefarious pharmaceutical company that has gotten into the bioweapons business. Umbrella’s co-founders, Oswell E. Spencer and James Marcus, have created a disease dubbed the T-virus. (It’s made from adding leech DNA to another disease discovered in the 1960s, the Progenitor Virus.) Lotta science stuff, but all that really matters is that it turns people into zombies. After learning about some inner-politics between Umbrella’s founders at one of the company’s facilities, Rebecca wanders off to a creepy mansion just outside of Raccoon City to search for the rest of her team.

That’s where Resident Evil begins. STARS officers are indeed at the Spencer Mansion, who are also searching for the lost Bravo Team, but it’s the Alpha Team: Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker, and Barry Burton. (Another team member gets mauled by an infected dog, but don’t worry about it.) Unfortunately, Bravo Team is dead as hell. Rebecca Chambers has made it to the mansion and survived, though, and is rescued by Chris.

So, why is this mansion filled with undead dogs, giant spiders, and zombies? Surprise: It’s another Umbrella research facility! (Spencer Mansion, as in Oswell E. Spencer.) The corporation was experimenting with the T-Virus there in a secret underground lab, which was to be used to create bioweapons. Instead, the virus has escaped, hence all the cannibal attacks nearby caused by those infected by it. To add insult to injury, STARS officer Albert Wesker turns out to be an Umbrella mole who nearly kills the team by siccing a powerful experimental creature named Tyrant on the team. STARS kills Tyrant with a rocket launcher, the mansion self-destructs, and everyone escapes. Well, almost everyone: Wesker is presumed dead in the explosion.

Image: Capcom

The Raccoon City incident

Just a few months later, the escaped T-virus makes its way to Raccoon City proper via contaminated water. Side games like Resident Evil Outbreak show locals trying to survive the zombie attack. One of those survivors is a reporter named Alyssa Ashcroft, the mother of Resident Evil Requiem’s main character, Grace.

But let’s focus on the big stuff. Two separate stories unfold at the same time over the course of a few days in September 1998. First, there’s Resident Evil 2. That begins with a new character, Leon S. Kennedy, arriving in Raccoon City just as shit is hitting the fan — which also happens to be his first day as a cop for the Raccoon City Police Department. On his way to the gig, he bumps into Claire Redfield, who is looking for her brother Chris. Yes, Alpha Team’s Chris Redfield, who has since left Raccoon City and is trying to hunt down Umbrella somewhere in Europe.

Leon and Claire eventually make their way to the police station, which is (you guessed it) overrun by zombies. The pair is split up and each one makes their own discoveries, all while being stalked by another variant of Tyrant, the trenchcoat-wearing Mr. X. As it turns out, there’s more than one zombie virus to worry about. An Umbrella scientist named William Birkin has created another strain called the G-virus, which has mutated him into a fleshy monster that the heroes must defeat while trying to escape town.

A lot of relevant tidbits happen between Leon and Claire’s story. Leon meets a femme fatale, Ada Wong, who claims to be an FBI agent, but is actually a mercenary who is in town to steal the G-virus and sell it. Claire, meanwhile, crosses paths with William Birkin’s daughter, Sherry. Sherry gets kidnapped and infected with the G-virus at an orphanage, but she’s cured with a vaccine before Claire gets her out of town. Claire and Leon slay William Birkin, Ada steals the G-virus, and our heroes (with Sherry in tow) escape town on a train.

They get out of town in the nick of time, as we learn in Resident Evil 3. That game follows Alpha Team’s Jill Valentine, who is minding her own business in Raccoon City when she’s attacked by another supersoldier. This time it’s Nemesis, a sort of Umbrella cleaner designed to kill STARS before they get too close to what Umbrella is up to. A mercenary named Carlos Oliveira helps Jill escape town.

That doesn’t go as planned, as Nemesis infects Jill with the T-virus during the chaos. Carlos takes her to the hospital and gives her a vaccine the next day. There, they also discover that Umbrella is trying to cover their tracks by wiping out anything that incriminates them, as well as a T-virus vaccine that was being developed by Dr. Nathaniel Bard. All of this has gotten so out of hand that the United States government has decided to launch a missile strike on Raccoon City. Jill escapes town just as that happens (just a day or two after Leon and Claire got out) and Raccoon City is reduced to a crater.

The end… Sike! That’s just the beginning.

Image: Capcom

A global aftermath

With Raccoon City destroyed, the gang disbands as Resident Evil enters its sidequest era. Three months after the bombing, Claire continues her search for Chris in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. She’s kidnapped by Umbrella in the process, and locked in a prison complex somewhere in the Southern Ocean. There is, of course, a T-virus outbreak happening there. She then escapes to another zombie-infested Umbrella facility in Antarctica, just as Chris arrives at the prison Claire just left. He discovers that Wesker (the traitor guy from the first game) is still alive and evil, but this time he’s trying to steal the T-Veronica virus, another variation of the Progenitor Virus that basically does the same thing as the T-virus. Chris goes to Antarctica and saves Claire, but Wesker escapes. We’ll come back to that in a second.

Resident Evil 4 is kind of a bottle episode. In 2004, Leon is now working for the government. He’s sent to a village in Spain in search of the US President’s daughter Ashley Graham. He discovers a zombie-like cult there, but they’re seemingly disconnected from Umbrella. Rather, they’re infested with a parasite known as Las Plagas. (Infectees exhibit zombie-like behaviors, except that when you pop their heads off, giant tentacles sprout out. But for all intents and purposes? Zombies.) It’s all thanks to an evil cult leader named Osmund Saddler, who has injected Ashley with Las Plagas in a convoluted plan to infect the President. Ada shows up again, this time to steal a Las Plagas sample for Wesker. You know where this is going: Leon cures Ashley, and the two escape the island as it explodes, while Ada jets off with a Las Plagas sample.

Five years later, Resident Evil 5 catches up with Chris, who is now working for the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA). He’s on a mission to stop a bioweapons deal in Africa, this time with his partner Sheva Alomar. Surprise, there’s a zombie outbreak there too! The locals are infected with a new strain of Las Plagas, because, hey, Resident Evil 4 was great. Why is all of this happening in Africa? It turns out that the Progenitor Virus, the source of all of these zombie diseases, comes from a flower that grows there: Stairway of the Sun.

There’s a lot of drama here, as it’s revealed that Jill supposedly died a few years after the Racoon City incident. Apparently her and Chris tried to track down Spencer, but found him dead by Wesker’s hand. Jill sacrificed herself to save Chris by tackling Wesker off a cliff. Damn. But Wesker, who did not die, is back and working with a different evil pharmaceutical company, Tricell. That’s who he stole the T-Veronica virus for, in fact. It’s basically Umbrella’s rival. (Umbrella is defunct at this point in the saga.) Wesker has an evil plan to infect the world with another Progenitor Virus variant called Uroboros. Also, Jill is alive and being mind-controlled by him. Chris saves Jill and kills Wesker. Another evil virus plot foiled!

Everything kind of goes off the rails a few years later in Resident Evil 6. Now there’s a bioterrorist attack (ie, a zombie outbreak) happening in a fictional Eastern European locale, the Republic of Edonia. Wesker’s son Jake is fighting it alongside a now grown-up Sherry. It turns out there’s a C-virus now (Progenitor variant, creates zombies, you get it by now), as well as a new big bad organization called Neo-Umbrella. Ada appears to be its leader, but it’s just someone who looks like her, actually. A complicated war ensues across the globe, which involves Leon, Chris, Ada, and more characters. The good guys save the day again and go their separate ways. The most important thing to note? Chris continues to work with the BSAA once all is said and done.

No, you don’t really need to know more than that. There’s a reason Resident Evil went on hiatus after Resident Evil 6.

Image: Capcom

An Ethan Winters tangent

Resident Evil 7 Biohazard appears at first glance to be a complete reboot of the series. Rather than getting lost in the bioterror warfare of it all, the story just follows a regular dude named Ethan Winters who is looking for his missing girlfriend, Mia. The search leads him to a plantation in Louisiana. He finds Mia, who has seemingly turned into some kind of monster, and then he is kidnapped by a creepy dude named Jack Baker. He’s the patriarch of a family of zombie-like creatures that Ethan has to escape from. Finally, an uncomplicated little horror movie.

Fat chance, suckers! It turns out there’s a monster named Eveline that’s the cause of all this, who is a bioweapon created by some shady corporation that Mia secretly works for. Eveline isn’t so much a zombie as she is a mold monster. In any case, Ethan saves Mia and kills Eveline. As Eveline dies, Chris Redfield swoops in to rescue Ethan with a BSAA squad in tow. But there’s a twist! The BSAA helicopters have an Umbrella logo on them! It turns out that the team is part of Blue Umbrella, a new spinoff organization formed in Umbrella’s dissolution.

Three years later, Resident Evil Village picks up from that cliffhanger in a big way. Ethan and Mia are living a peaceful life with their baby Rosemary —that is, until the BSAA, led by Chris, gun Mia down in her home and kidnap Ethan and Rosemary. The car carrying them crashes, Rosemary is nowhere to be found in the aftermath, and Ethan wanders to a village to find her.

Annnnd that village is filled with zombies and werewolves. There’s a cult leader there named Mother Miranda, and she has a small army of hench-monsters. (That includes tall vampire icon Lady Dimitrescu.) Long story short, Miranda has split Rosemary into pieces and placed her body parts into flasks. Also, there’s still evil mold.

The big twist? Mother Miranda has been alive for a very long time thanks to the black mold, an entity dubbed Megamycete. She’s so old that she was actually Spencer’s mentor. Remember? The Umbrella co-founder? With the mansion? Everything he learned about making zombie viruses came from Miranda’s teachings! And somewhere in that lore drop, we also learn about her connection to a shadowy organization called The Connections. Not much is known about them, but they sure appear to have their hands in a lot of bioweapon drama.

Rose is reconstructed into a healthy baby, but Miranda kills Ethan. Well, sort of. It turns out that Ethan actually was infected by the mold in Resident Evil 7 and has regenerative powers now. He revives in time to sacrifice himself to take down Miranda. Chris takes Rosemary to safety, but learns that someone turned his fellow soldiers into bioweapons, so you know he’s off to uncover another mission to find answers. Somewhere very deep in the future, Rosemary grows up and becomes a BSAA agent. But that’s a story for another time.

Image: Capcom

And now, Requiem…

All of this comes to a head in Resident Evil Requiem. Leon is back and he’s investigating a strange thing that’s been happening to Raccoon City survivors. Meanwhile, Grace Ashcroft (daughter of Outbreak’s Alyssa Ashcroft) is kidnapped by a creepy doctor for mysterious reasons. Those two stories intersect, as Requiem both opens a brand new chapter and closes the book on the Raccoon City saga by returning to its ruins.

Don’t worry about remembering everything mentioned here. Before you dive into Resident Evil Requiem, all you really need to know is that there are multiple pharmaceutical companies creating bioweapons, a bunch of zombie-making viruses that are functionally identical, and several heroes dedicated to unraveling the wider conspiracy behind it all. No one will blame you if you can’t remember the difference between the T-virus and the T-Veronica virus. Just nod along and splatter some zombie heads.