The Wild Story Of Resident Evil Explained

Here's what you need to know about "Resident Evil": the story is strange, convoluted, and yet seriously compelling. Over the franchise's more than twenty-year life span, over thirty games have been released on various platforms because let's face it: the series has a premise that's hard to beat. Resident Evil made zombies into bigger, better monsters, and the T-virus made us all be more mindful about washing our hands. The Capcom games invented and arguably perfected the survival horror genre and managed to frighten the heck out of players even with '90s-era graphics.

Like the zombies in the games, the "Resident Evil" franchise is practically immortal, even if the story sometimes seems to shamble and stumble here and there. Typically, players can make it through a game shooting and dodging rotten, dripping creatures without really knowing what's going on, the gameplay is powerful enough to propel players without a backstory. However, we're going to dig in and chronologically decipher the whole "Resident Evil" story thus far.

"Resident Evil" gives murder mansion a whole new meaning. The first game was released in 1996, but remade in 2002. The day after the helicopter crash, the STARS Alpha Team are searching for the Bravo Team when they are attacked by mutated dogs. The helicopter takes off without them, so they take refuge in a local mansion which turns out to be filled with more monsters. The gang splits up and Jill Valentine (or Chris Redfield if the player wants to try hard mode) discovers that there are tons of booby traps and puzzles among the terrors in the mansion, which is actually another testing facility for Umbrella. Creatures — human and animal — that were exposed to the T-virus have mutated.

In an underground lab beneath the mansion, the player discovers that it was their teammate Albert Wesker who had been working for the unscrupulous Umbrella all along. But wait! Barry has also betrayed the player! But only because the dastardly Wesker has his family held hostage. Wesker is working on unleashing the Tyrant, a horrifying monster that is part-super-soldier and all-ugly. Barry manages to snipe Wesker, but the monster is unleashed. Meeting up with the rest of the STARS, the player fills them in and hits a convenient self-destruct button. Depending on which of the four endings the player gets, the Tyrant either escapes or is blown to smithereens, after which the survivors fly away in a helicopter.

The woman who shot Leon is Annette Birkin, Sherry's mother and wife of William Birkin, creator of the G-virus. He had injected himself with it to save himself after being double-crossed by Umbrella, turning himself into a horrible creature that pursues his daughter. Annette falls off a railing in a scuffle with Ada over Sherry's pendent, which contains a sample of the virus. Ada, less steely than she seems, helps to nurse Leon after saving her life.

Claire and Sherry find out that Sherry's ethically questionable father, the monster known as "G," wants to implant a G-virus embryo in her. Which he does as they try to escape him in yet another underground Umbrella facility. However, Annette tells Claire with her dying breath that a vaccine can be made after she also spills the beans: Ada is a spy sent to steal the G-virus. Ada, wounded from a fight with G, saves Leon from the Tyrant because she has somehow fallen head over heels for him in their short time together. She dies, but Leon, Claire, and Sherry live on to self-destruct (aren't those buttons convenient?) a train that G has taken over. Sherry is orphaned but cured, Claire is still on the hunt for her brother, and Leon now has his own grudge against Umbrella, who managed to get their hands on the G-virus after all. Ada's story isn't over either; she still has the pendant with the G-virus sample.

Remember Claire? She's still determined to find her brother, Chris Redfield. In 2000's "Resident Evil: CODE Veronica," which is technically meant to be the third game in the series rather than "Nemesis," she is captured three months later by Umbrella in Paris and taken to an island prison. Naturally, there is a T-virus outbreak so she and fellow escapee Steve Burnside try to flee the island and the evil commander Alfred, who sometimes believs himself to be his twin sister Alexia.

Alfred hijacks their escape plane, diverting it to an Antarctic Umbrella facility which has also been overrun with zombies. There he unleashes his sister Alexia, who had been cryogenically frozen fifteen years prior after giving herself a dose of the T-Veronica virus. She's super smart, super pissed, and can control tentacles.  

Chris looks for Claire on the island, and runs into none other than the two-faced Wesker, who is naturally after the T-Veronica virus, this time as a free agent rather than an Umbrella henchmen. Separately, they head to Antarctica on their respective missions. Chris saves Claire, but Steve is a goner. Having been injected with the T-Veronica virus, he tries but fails to kill Claire, maybe because he loves her. That's what he confesses with his dying breath after knowing her for a hot second. Chris and Wesker take on Alexia after smacking that oh-so-convenient self-destruct button, defeating her before the facility blows. Wesker steals Steve's corpse while Claire and Chris escape the explosion.

Five years after the events of "Resident Evil 4," we catch up with a boulder-punching Chris Redfield in "Resident Evil 5," which was released in 2009. Chris is a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) and he and partner Sheva are sent to Africa in order to stop the black market sale of a bioweapon. They find locals infected with Las Plagas and that their team has been killed. Rescued by the surviving members, Chris happens upon rumors that Jill Valentine is still alive, presumed dead after having taken out traitorous Wesker. As they resume the mission, Chris is willing to go AWOL to figure out the truth behind Jill.

This leads him and Sheva to defeat the would-be weapon dealer and discover the source of the Progenitor virus, a flower called Stairway to the Sun. Exploring yet another underground lab, they find out they have been — shocker! — doubled-crossed. Tricell, the company that funds the BSAA had taken over a defunct Umbrella lab and continued human experimentation, including on Jill, who has been mind-controlled into becoming Wesker's lackey. The CEO of Tricell had been working on plans with Wesker to launch missiles containing the monstrous Uroboros virus across the globe.

Wesker has been doping up with precise doses of virus, making him super strong and super fast. Jill is freed from her mind control device and tells Sheva this, so she compromises his dose, turning him into a monster that attempts to drag them all into a volcano. Cue the rocket grenade explosion.

At long last, the franchise returns to the survival horror heart of the series with 2017's "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard." Ethan Winters is looking for his wife Mia, who disappeared three years prior. He is led to a dilapidated house in the Louisiana swamp where his wife has apparently lost her memory and become deranged, just like the rest of the creepy Baker family in the house. Trying to save his wife, he has to dodge the mutated Bakers and creatures made out of mold in order to create a serum to cure Mia.

Ethan is nearly killed by the father Jack Baker. To save himself, he uses one of the two doses of the serum on him. This leaves Ethan with a terrible decision: save Mia or Zoe, the eldest Baker sister who had helped him along the way. Whoever the player chooses, they next discover a shipwreck of a tanker. This is the ship that Mia had been working on, escorting a sentient bioweapon named Eveline. Eveline wanted a family and Mia as a mother, so she infected her and lured Ethan to the Baker house. Ethan discovers an abandoned salt mine-turned-lab that the Bakers' son, Lucas, had been using to observe and study Eveline, who can produce psychotropic mold with transformative abilities. Here Ethan makes a toxin to kill her. Backup comes in the form of the BSAA and Chris Redfield, and Ethan defeats Eveline and, depending on player's priorities, is able to save his wife.

After the traumatic events of "Resident Evil 7," Ethan and Mia finally get to settle down and have a child that they name Rose. They live happily ever after in a remote cabin in Europe — until one day, when Chris Redfield breaks into the house, kills Mia, and kidnaps Rose and Ethan. Escaping from the back of a truck, Ethan finds himself in a village full of ferocious Lycans, ruled by village priest Mother Miranda and her lords: Alcina Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau, and Karl Heisenberg. In order to save Rose, who has been horrifically pulled apart by Miranda and the lords, Ethan needs to go to each of their domains and slay them.

After finding the parts of Rose (literally) that he needs, Ethan confronts Chris and demands to know where Rose is. Chris then reveals that the Mia he "killed" in front of Ethan was actually the evil Mother Miranda in disguise, and it was she who kidnapped Rose. In a horrific confrontation, Miranda suddenly kills Ethan, seemingly ending his story. This is when we see the game's plot from Chris' perspective and get the larger picture of what is actually going on in "Resident Evil Village." 

The "Resident Evil Village" single-player DLC, "Shadows of Rose," takes place in between the final two cutscenes of the game. 15 or so years after the events of "Village," Rose Winters is now a troubled teenager who, on top of the typical teenage drama, has emerging powers to contend with. Having never met her father and being in foster care her whole life, Rose has become an outcast. Instead of trying to embrace the special part of her, though, Rose tries to get rid of her powers of her by seeking a Purifying Crystal, which can theoretically erase the powers she inherited. To do so Rose needs to connect her mind to that of a shattered piece of Megamycete, which takes her into the shadowy realm where the action of the DLC takes place. 

Here, Rose fights through various re-imaginings of locations from the Village, guided by a mysterious force that Rose calls Michael. Once she finds the Purifying Crystal, the entire premise is revealed to be a trap set by Miranda — or a fragment of her mind left over in the mold. Miranda once again attempts to use Rose to bring Eva back in a new form. At this point, Michael reveals himself to be Ethan's consciousness. He helps Rose escape and prepares her to fight Mother Miranda for the final time. After she wins, demonstrating greater abilities than ever before, Rose says her goodbyes to her father and departs back to the living world.

The final scene of "Resident Evil Village" then plays out, which sees Rose visiting her father's grave before being called away by her driver. They leave the cemetery, the scene's dialogue implying that Rose will continue the "Resident Evil" story in future games.  

Video game movie director extraordinaire Paul W.S. Anderson – who also directed 1995's "Mortal Kombat" adaptation – spearheaded an entire series of "Resident Evil" movies that starred Milla Jovovich and ran for well over a decade. Bearing little connection or resemblance to the video games outside of some cameos from major characters, these action movies did eventually develop quite a major cult fanbase despite middling critical reception. On the other hand, more recent live-action "Resident Evil" adaptations have been trying the faithful route, only to fail pretty resoundingly with critics and audiences.

Both the new live-action movie "Resident Evil: Return to Raccoon City" (based mostly on the first two games) and the cancelled-after-one-season Netflix series "Resident Evil" were certified flops. The latter, a series of eight episodes, is actually a  sort-of canonical follow up to the timeline of the games. Set in New Raccoon City in 2022 and post-apocalypse Europe in 2036, the show uses the events of the "Resident Evil" games as a backdrop to inform its own original story, but is not essential viewing for understanding the plot of the games.

The future of "Resident Evil" lore is still up in the air. Will we continue with Rose or will the next title in the chronology feature a new playable character? Only time will tell.