All spoilers for previous Resident Evil games, including Resident Evil Village and its Shadows of Rose DLC expansion, will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
"We found another body. One that exhibits the same pathology as the others we've been investigating. Now, I need a good technical analyst on this. I need your eyes on the crime scene. The Wrenwood Hotel. I know that's where your mother was murdered... Alyssa died eight years ago. Perhaps it's time for you to face the past."
β Nathan Dempsey
Resident Evil Requiem (Biohazard Requiem in Japan),note Stylized as RESIDENT EVIL RE9UIEM and BIOHAZARD RE9UIEM respectively also known as Resident Evil 9 and Resident Evil 9: Requiem, is a Survival Horror game and the thirteenth mainline entry in the Resident Evil series, released on February 27, 2026 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. Koshi Nakanishi, the creative lead on Resident Evil: Revelations and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, returns to helm this instalment.
Set in October 2026, roughly 5 years after the events of Resident Evil Village, a string of mysterious deaths has occurred across the United States, with all of the victims being survivors of the Raccoon City incident and having black bruising all over their bodies. The bruising is discovered to be a symptom of Raccoon City Syndrome, a variant of T-Virus infection where antibodies in the victimβs body managed to fight the disease into dormancy for decades until the virus adapted to counter them.
Grace Ashcroft (Angela Sant'Albano) is a timid FBI technical analyst who is dispatched to investigate the latest victim of this condition. However, the body is located inside the condemned Wrenwood Hotel in the city of Wrenwood, where Graceβs mother Alyssa (Jane Perry) was assassinated right in front of her during their stay in 2018. Though Grace is nervous, her superior Nathan Dempsey thinks it could be a good opportunity for Grace to face her past, and she heads there alone to investigate the site.
Upon arriving at the hotel, however, Grace is confronted by Victor Gideon (Antony Byrne), a former Umbrella scientist who appears to have high expectations for her. She is kidnapped and taken to the nearby Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, and upon escaping from her bindings, discovers that an outbreak of a mutated T-Virus strain has occurred on the site, filling the halls with half-sentient, rotting zombies and other monstrosities. Alone and afraid, Grace must fight for survival and discover what exactly Victor Gideon wants with her.
Meanwhile, DSO agent Leon S. Kennedy (Nick Apostolides) is investigating Victor and his ties to Umbrella, having also come down with Raccoon City Syndrome alongside his new handler Sherry Birkin (Eden Riegel) and seeking a cure for everyone dying of the disease. His search intertwines with Graceβs own quest, and eventually leads him to the ruins of Raccoon City itself, where Leon must confront his trauma one last time.
Capcom made external pre-release advertising materials to promote Requiem. A recap video titled Road to Requiem was hosted by Maggie Robertson (who previously voiced Lady Dimitrescu in Village), summarizing the franchise's lore and detailing information that may be necessary to know before playing this game. On February 2nd, 2026, a live-action short film titled Evil Has Always Had a Name was released online, starring Maika Monroe as a mother who desperately tried to survive and protect her daughter during the Raccoon City incident.
A story expansion DLC was announced on March 10, 2026, with the release date still pending.
Previews: Reveal Trailer,π Image
Creators' Message,π Image
Gamescom Gameplay Trailer,π Image
Hands-On Previewπ Image
, 2nd Trailer,π Image
Road to Requiem,π Image
Game Awards Trailerπ Image
, Resident Evil Showcase (January 15),π Image
12 Minutes Gameplay Footageπ Image
, Evil Has Always Had a Nameπ Image
, Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase 2026π Image
, 4th Trailerπ Image
, Launch Trailerπ Image
Resident Evil Requiem contains examples of:
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- 20 Minutes into the Future: The game was released in February 2026, and set eight months later in October.
- 555: Leon's phone number, 555-0175, uses this format, as revealed when he calls Grace in the "Hope" ending. Interestingly, its area code of 266 is also semi-fictional, as it's technically a valid prefix, but not one in active assignment by the real-life NANP.
- A.K.A.-47: Requiem continues the series' trend of giving fictionalized names to its firearms, with varying degrees of originality depending on the weapon. Most of the usable weapons are generally divided evenly between using slight name alterations, such as Grace's "S&S M232" (SIG-Sauer P232), or the returning "W870 Police" being a minor spin on the Remington 870, and more exotic epithets, like Leon's Ace Custom "Alligator Snapper" (SIG-Sauer P320) or the "Requiem" (RSh-12).
- Abandoned Hospital: The Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, which Victor Gideon uses to frame his schemes as "experimental treatments" for his patients. Downplayed in that the outbreak has only just begun when the player arrives at the site, but it gives the same atmosphere regardless.
- Action Commands: A button prompt appears after stunning a zombie, allowing you to perform a melee attack. Leon has varied melee attacks depending on the situation, and can set the target up for a finisher if he knocks them to their knees or into a wall. Grace, on the other hand, simply shoves or kicks the zombie to the ground, giving her time to either evade it or press the attack while the enemy lies prone, though her melee can still cause indirect damage if a zombie collides against a wall.
- Actor Allusion: Maika Monroe's appearance in the live-action short is quite appropriate, given the similarities between Grace and Monroe's character in Longlegs; both are introverted, awkward FBI agents who investigate a series of mysterious deaths to which they wind up being personally connected.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: After acquiring the artificial lungs in the care center's garage, a zombie crashes into the room riding a bulldozer, forcing Grace to shoot it dead before she gets crushed. On Insanity, it keeps going even after the driver is killed (to Grace's utter terror), requiring its now-flaming and vulnerable engine to also be shot so that it finally stops.
- And I Must Scream:
- At the end of the "Evil Has Always Had a Name" trailer, the mother is shown to have turned into a zombie, but her narration and behavior make it obvious that she still retains at least a part of her human sentience the way she continues to visit her now deceased daughter's grave while holding onto a Precious Photo of them together back in happier times, shortly before a passing soldier puts an end to her misery.
- The recently-turned zombies in Wrenwood and Rhodes Hill may sometimes beg the player to kill them, call for help, apologize for their uncontrollable aggression, or warn the protagonist to run away. It's unclear if the zombie themselves are merely mindlessly parroting their final thoughts and words before succumbing to the virus, or if a small glimmer of their former selves is still "alive" in there, powerless to do anything about their predicament.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different:
- Requiem features two playable characters in their own separate story sections with differing mechanics; one side following Grace Ashcroft in a more survival horror-focused experience similar to Biohazard and Village, and the other following Leon Kennedy in a more action horror style in the same vein as Resident Evil 4 and its remake. The Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center focuses on Grace, with Leon's segments being Breather Episodes, while Raccoon City focuses on Leon, with Grace getting short segments during the climax.
- One flashback sequence has you play as Chloe, one of the previous clone girls, in 1990 as she tries to survive during an outbreak at the Raccoon City Orphanage.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The map automatically highlights every point-of-interest (e.g. collectibles, upgrades, locks, and objectives) within an area even if you simply spot them from afar. This helps you know where to go next and remember if there are still items that you may have left behind.
- In third-person mode, Grace will repeatedly stumble while running away from monsters, to help give a more cinematic feel and compensate for the lack of "in-your-face" Jump Scares of first-person. To prevent these moments from becoming too frustrating, the monsters will also approach more slowly and less aggressively to prevent Grace from being caught too easily.
- Unlike the knives in Resident Evil 4 (Remake), Leon's hatchet can't outright break from prolonged use. While it will deal less damage and cannot parry attacks when the durability meter runs out, it can still be used as a club, and Leon can restore its durability at any time via a quick button press, without the need to visit a shop and pay for the repair.
- During the motorcycle chase sequence, Leon will have a Freya's Needle submachine gun with infinite reserve ammo to shoot at enemies. The segment itself also pretty much cannot be failed by running into random obstacles or off the road, as there are no kill barriers to drive into and the pathing is largely predefined.
- Certain keys or tools need to be reused to open multiple doors or chests. When the last of these objects is unlocked, the matching item will disappear, complete with a "consumable item ticker" dropping to zero on screen to make clear that the player is done with it. Likewise, collecting ID bracelets with a higher clearance rating as Grace will automatically discard the lower tier ones as they're no longer needed.
- When Grace ends up having to evade Lickers, there are patches of broken glass scattered across the floor in the same area. If Grace steps on the glass, it will alert nearby Lickers to her location. But when she steps on a pile of glass for the first time, she will pause to look down at the pile, but the Lickers won't hear it. This ensures that the player knows to avoid stepping on the glass, while at the same time not punishing them for doing something they could not have seen coming.
- The Challenges list has trackers for very specific Challenge Runs, like a timer for "Speed Demon", and usage counters for "Never Touch the Stuff" and "Minimalist". These help achievement hunters know if they messed up getting those Challenges for that playthrough before deciding to save their progress or load an older file.
- Arc Words:
- "Requiem," the subtitle of the game. It's the name of Leon's Hand Cannon, which he lends to Grace to help her escape the care center. Second, there was Alyssa's interview of Spencer, where he gave her a baby Grace to be adopted, becoming his "Requiem" for her. His final masterpiece, Elpis, is also his "Requiem", an antivirus he intended to use to cure every Progenitor-based disease that ever existed throughout the franchise, as his atonement for all the horrors he helped unleash.
- Hope. Grace is stated to be a Hope Bringer, as she's the one who everyone believes is the key to Elpis. And then there's the word Elpis itself, which is Greek for "hope", foreshadowing Spencer's true motives with his final masterpiece. During the finale, the password to release Elpis is also revealed to be "Hope".
- Armor Meter: The durability of Leon's body armor is indicated by a gray meter layered above his health meter.
- Art Evolution: The visuals of the RE Engine continue to improve on the already impressive foundation of prior titles using it. The shine of moisture and sweat on Grace's face, the way her hair moves as she's upside-down, her detailed expressions, along with the environmental rendering utilising the latest in path tracing technology make the game look incredibly realistic. This is especially noticeable when compared to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, where the efforts to provide realistic hair physics to the characters were criticized as making the hair look greasy and clunky.
- Artificial Brilliance: Blister Heads aren't exactly smart, per se, but they are definitely much more savvy than standard zombies. If you take aim at them when they're already aware of your presence, they will suddenly start erratically darting around to avoid your shots and rapidly close the distance between you and them.
- Artificial Human:
- The series of clones that Emily was a part of were originally created by Spencer to help further the creation of Elpis. While it isn't directly stated, one of the main goals was to create a true anti-viral agent to the Progenitor line of viruses by infecting clones and testing the effectiveness of Elpis as it was developing. By the time Emily was born and development was still underway but under Gideon's watch, the clones were then being used by Victor to try and recreate Elpis, while he himself was unaware of what it truly was for.
- Subverted with Grace herself. Despite Gideon and Zeno's belief that Spencer had her created, the truth of the matter is much more simple: Grace was an orphan that Spencer cared for in his final moments of lucidity and entrusted her to Alyssa following their interview. Even in the interview, he outright states that there's nothing inherently "different" about Grace; she's perfectly normal.
- Artificial Stupidity: If the current area has a dropped chainsaw, every zombie around will be beelining towards it, often walking past and outright ignoring Leon in their single-minded pursuit of the thing, even if he's attacking them. Hilariously, zombies doing this look like they're "queued up" in line to the chainsaw, so killing one will just make another do the same, which can be utilized against small mobs of them.
- Artistic License β Law Enforcement:
- Law enforcement officers of any kind are not assigned cases that they have a personal connection to because they're supposed to be impartial observers of evidence and the truth. Being put on a case to which someone has a personal connection β as Grace is with the Wrenwood Hotel case, in which her mother Alyssa was murdered β would all but guarantee that the assigned agent would have clouded judgment when it came to the facts. Nathan Dempsey assigns Grace to investigate the Wrenwood Hotel, with the knowledge that Alyssa died there, solely so she could face her fears. If this actually happened and the FBI higher-ups found out about it, not only would Grace be pulled off of the case immediately, but Dempsey would be fired for sure β any evidence found on the case would be all but certain to get thrown out due to a very clear conflict-of-interest within the investigation.
- Rule of Drama ensures that when Grace is sent to investigate the hotel, she does it alone with no backup. Not even Cole, the policeman guarding the site, knew Grace was coming until she showed him her FBI badge. While FBI agents are sometimes assigned to certain cases alone, a string of deaths connected to bioterrorism would almost certainly warrant more agents and specialists assigned to the case, especially since Grace was a technical analyst with limited field experience who would probably at least be paired with an investigator who had more experience with hands on investigation and interviews. The FBI would also most likely attempt to coordinate resources with the local police, so Cole should have known that Grace was the one who was showing up.
- Asshole Victim: The Umbrella and Connections scientists responsible for the cloning experiments that created Emily, Chloe, and many other doomed children. Many of them would end up being slaughtered by their own creations and/or transformed into monstrous abominations. Even the "nurse" whom Leon [infamously] idly watches get killed near the start was a part of Gideon's research team, and thus not nearly as innocent as gameplay teasers let on.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Charms for Grace. Since her sections discourage enemy confrontations as a whole, the offensive values of charms don't tend to see much use in practice. Furthermore, as Grace uses the classic inventory system, her charms are not equipped onto guns like Leon's are to free up their slots, and therefore also compete with critically needed things such as bullets, healing items, and key items for valuable bag space.
- Of the unlockable weapons roster, the Redemption pistol is a lot less impressive in Leon's hands than it was in Zeno's. While its shot damage is very high, such that most normal enemies tend to die in a single hit, it doesn't hit nearly hard enough against anything bigger than a basic zombie, meaning it's both overkill against the cannon fodder, and underkill against things it should be used on. The pistol itself also only chambers a single round of the decidedly-rarer rifle ammo, meaning it's plagued by both frequent reloads and scarcity of an ammo type that's often better off used by the guns it was meant for instead. The things the Redemption could do, many of Leon's more Boring, but Practical options could as well, if not even more efficiently.
- Grace has it a bit better with her sole unlockable firearm, the Freya's Needle; a machine pistol that packs a 30-round magazine when her other two guns hold 9 at most. While still an outright improvement over the B934 and its large magazine gives smaller windows of vulnerability, its fire rate is both a blessing (capable of dishing out damage faster than Grace's other options) and a curse; a reckless player can chew through their stockpile of handgun ammo at an alarming rate. There's hardly enough ammo in all of Grace's combined sections to maintain a healthy economy with it, and even on Insanity, which offers a more efficient way to bulk-craft ammunition, it can still take away from more important supplies like herbs. It also does pitifully low stagger to even the basic zombies, meaning a determined Blister Head can simply power through and do hideous amounts of damage to Grace instead.
- Back for the Dead: Alyssa Ashcroft is murdered at the Wrenwood Hotel, during a flashback there set in 2018. She shows up later in the game in recorded footage from years before her death as well, interviewing Oswell Spencer, who gives her Grace to adopt and raise.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- While traveling down a bustling street, Grace bumps into an imposing figure wearing a very familiar black trench coat, black fedora and black scarf... but it's not Mr. X, just a random civilian who's wearing the same outfit.
- As Alyssa and Grace are trying to escape the Wrenwood Hotel, they make it down to the barren lobby when a figure emerges from the shadows. It turns out to be the hotel's manager, who apologizes for the outage and says that the electrical system for the hotel is forty years old; thus, it doesn't need much to trip the power. He promises to have everything running again soon. Then he gets a bag thrown over his head by a hooded assailant and his throat slit shortly afterward.
- At the care center, after Grace rescues Emily from the basement and is climbing out onto the main floor, the Girl reaches through the doors and grabs her leg. A few moments later, the cable snaps and the elevator plummets, with a huge splatter of blood erupting between the elevator and the floor. The camera slowly pans down from Grace's pained expression on her face down to her legs, with the audience primed to expect that Grace just lost a foot. Fortunately for Grace, it was actually the Girl's hand that was severed; Grace herself is fine, as shown when the camera passes by Grace's uninjured feet. When Grace sees this, she promptly collapses onto the ground and engages in some Mirthless Laughter at managing to escape with all her limbs intact.
- Checking Wesker's desk drawer in the police station, after checking a note from Barry, reveals... a library card for a book he later returned. Said book contains the infamous photo of Rebecca in her basketball uniform.
- While exploring the ARK laboratory as Chloe, you can find some notes written by one of the Umbrella scientists who is shocked by all the children Spencer had cloned to use as disposable test subjects for their unethical experiments. However, the scientist isn't shocked because he's horrified, he's actually elated by the opportunity to do whatever he wants to the little girls and can't wait to have some "real fun" experimenting on them.
- The "Hope" ending has shades of this. Elpis, the final masterpiece of Oswell E. Spencer, is actually an anti-viral agent made to kill all Progenitor-based viral agents, effectively ruining most of the B.O.W. market and practically putting the Connections out of business.
- Barrier-Busting Blow: Early on, the Girl bursts through a blocked door as Grace is trying to cross a corridor, forcing her to double back and try to take it for a loop. Later, the Tyrant bursts through walls as it chases Leon through the ruined police station.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: Leon's final segment in the care center takes place inside a burning chapel, and has him fend off a Blister Borne and a small horde of zombies.
- Bilingual Bonus: If you can visually read braille writing, you'll recognize Emily's book as Village of Shadows.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: This exchange.Grace: Wh-Why did you kidnap me?
Victor: Kidnap you? I liberated you. - Blackout Basement: The care center's basement is mostly dim except for some emergency lights and a safe room. Several joint plugs can be found and used to activate power distributors that open doors and turn the brighter lights back on, but you never have enough to completely light up everything. To make things worse, the Girl takes advantage of the darkness to roam around and hunt Grace.
- Blocking Stops All Damage: Leon's parry mechanic from the 4 remake returns in this game. A perfectly timed parry will completely nullify any damage the parried attack would have dealt. This works against almost everything in the game, up to and including speeding cars and mortar shells, allowing Leon to wade through zombie encounters unscathed with careful positioning and good timing. Repeated parries against most melee attackers will eventually grant Leon an opening to bring the attacker to their knees, opening the aggressor to a One-Hit Kill melee finisher. However, parrying also depletes the hatchet's durability, forcing Leon to periodically sharpen it to keep its effectiveness.
- Bloodier and Gorier: While Resident Evil has never been a stranger to blood, gore, and Body Horror, Requiem puts particular emphasis on it compared to past games. Leon can crush zombie skulls underfoot, splattering their blood and grey matter all across the nearest surface. Zombie wounds are accurately tracked and blood soaks into the targets' clothing as they shamble toward you, with headshots chipping away at tissue until the brain is exposed. Then there is Grace's hemolytic injectors, which turn them into Ludicrous Gibs. It reaches comical territory when Grace uses infected blood as a crafting component to make anything from more hemolytic injectors to steroids and bullets.
- Blood from Every Orifice: Downplayed. If you are killed by Eileen or Selena, blood trickles from the protagonist's eyes as they die, as the zombies' Super-Scream likely ruptured their cranial blood vessels.
- Blood Magic: More like "Blood Mad Science," but the number of things blood gets used for in this game is impressive. In addition to all the various things Grace can craft with blood (medicine, bullets, injectors that make zombies explode), the bad guys have been experimenting with it for years based off of Spencer's incomplete notes trying to use it to transfer memories and control minds. And of course, the other reason this trope is in play is how highly, extravagantly immoral it all is (with a dungeon, a human-corpse-grinder and a giant People Jars system to process a small ocean's worth of blood).
- Blood-Splattered Innocents:
- Grace gets some blood on her from watching Alyssa's jugular slit apart in front of her.
- In the care center's basement, Grace ends up falling down a massive pipeline of blood and into a massive vat of the stuff, coating her from head to toe in blood for a while. It happens again when the enormous blood tank ruptures while making a run for the helicopter.
- Bookends:
- The game begins with Grace working at her desk before being called in by her boss; Grace tells Dempsey that she's still working on a report he asked for, and he tells her to hold off on it before giving her the assignment that leads to the events of the game. The first stinger of the "Hope" ending plays out the same way, but this time Dempsey specifically asks for that report, as Grace has completed her assignment. Notably, the scenes also display Grace's Character Development through the game's events: the initial scene has her intently concentrating on her work and be a stuttering mess when called, she knocks over a stack of papers while grabbing a file, and her desk comprises a single large stack of said files, indicating her Workaholic nature; however, the scene in the ending has her talking to Leon about Sherry and Emily, she confidently picks up her report when called, and her desk has pictures of herself, Alyssa, and Emily.
- For the entire story about Umbrella and its legacy: In the first game, the Big Bad was Albert Wesker and the Greater-Scope Villain was Oswell Spencer. Here, the Big Bad Duumvirate consists of an implied clone of the former and a disciple of the latter.
- Boom, Headshot!: The usual surefire way to put down a zombie aside, this trope is also in play for some key story moments.
- Leon first meets Grace by unloading a cylinder of Requiem rounds into the Girl's head, blowing a chunk of it apart.
- Several of the massacred BSAA soldiers have their heads blown apart, with Leon finding a video file that shows the POV of one of said soldiers as the killer pops a round into their head.
- This is how Zeno kills Leon in the "Destruction" ending, courtesy of their Hand Cannon.
- Boss-Altering Consequence: The final boss can attack Leon with an RPG-7 during their first phase. If you shoot it out of their hands, you can acquire the weapon for yourself and use it to one-shot either of their phases.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Infinite ammo (for both guns and the RPG-7, which is counted separately) can be bought from the Bonus Content Shop after you beat the game. But the costs to buy infinite ammo are so exorbitant (especially with the latter needing the launcher already purchased on top of it) that the only way to get the points necessary is to do high-tier challenges like completing the game under four hours, completing it without healing, completing it without using the Blood Collector, or beating the new Insanity difficulty. But a player who can do all that isn't going to need infinite ammo, anyways.
- Breakable Weapons:
- Subverted with Leon's hatchet, which replaces the breakable knives from previous games. Eventually, it becomes dull and ineffective once its durability meter is depleted, but it'll never outright break, and Leon can always restore it back to full form at no cost by using a whetstone to sharpen the blade, essentially repairing it. The only downside is that a lengthy animation plays whenever the axe is sharpened, forcing the player to think strategically on when to do so just like when reloading guns.
- Played straight with the chainsaws in some of Leon's combat encounters; after continued use, their engines will malfunction and force Leon to drop them, and they break down completely once all enemies are killed.
- Played straight with the Makeshift and Hunting Knives, defensive items Grace can pick up and use to avoid damage from zombie grabs. They have a limited number of uses as a regular melee weapon and as a defensive tool, but can also be broken down into Scrap to make other items.
- Breaking Old Trends:
- In previous Resident Evil titles, the magnum is usually obtained last, towards the middle or end-game, and their high damage output and rare ammunition mean they are reserved for tougher fights. Here, Leon starts with it, and gives the magnum to Grace as her first gun in the care center, although the apparent paucity of on-hand ammunition makes it more of an emergency "get out of trouble free" card for her, rather than license to go on a zombie-killing rampage.
- Ever since 4, Hunnigan has been Leon's Mission Control, handling his mission info back at headquarters. In this game, his handler is now Sherry Birkin.
- This is Leon's first playable appearance where he is not accompanied by Ada Wong in any capacity. She isn't even referenced beyond the Cutie Bear charm, which can be egregious as the game flashes back to a particular scene from the 2 remake.
- This is the first time in the mainline games where the player fights non-infected humans outside of a boss fight, with Leon battling against a Connections-affiliated black ops team and later dueling their leader. Going further, the Commander's attire, skills, and voice heavily imply he's HUNK.
- It has been a Running Gag since his first appearance that whenever Leon gets behind the wheel of a vehicle, it usually ends up destroyed. For the first time, however, none of the vehicles he drives are wrecked.
- The knife has been a staple of Leonβs arsenal since 4, a tradition carried over even into the 2 remake. However, Requiem marks the first time Leon goes without a knife, instead opting for a hatchet as his melee weapon of choice.
- In previous games, the special weapon used against the Final Boss was a scripted affair and forced. Here, while a rocket launcher does appear during the final battle, it's the boss that brings it in, and you need to force them to drop it by dealing enough damage to interrupt their aim if you want to use it. Even then, rather than being a scripted final blow for the final form, it can be used to one-shot either form.
- This is the first odd-numbered sequel in which Leon is playable, as he had previously been in 2, 4, and 6, while being a no show in Village.
- Unlike many past titles, Requiem doesn't assign the player a ranking grade upon completing the story. In fact, it lacks a statistics screen at all in contrast to the more recent installments, and the only metrics that are acknowledged on the post-game screen are the difficulty the story was completed on, and the time it took to do so.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Leon can find the Police W-870, a variation of his shotgun from 2 Remake, in the back room of Gun Shop Kendo. Though it's been gathering dust for almost three decades by the time of the story, when upgraded it boasts the highest damage per shot of any shotgun. Doubles as Older Is Better.
- Breather Episode: Leon's segments at Rhodes Hill are this from Grace's high-tension horror fests. Grace is new to surviving outbreaks and must use her wits to evade the monsters, but for Leon, the care center is nothing special after everything else he's been through and he mops the floor with practically everything he encounters.
- The Bus Came Back:
- After being completely absent from 7 and Village, and only appearing in the remakes of his original games and the animated films, Leon returns to the main series in an all new playable outing, while Sherry Birkin also returns as Leon's Mission Control after her participation in 6.
- After 7 and Village focused on monsters created from the Mold, this game sees the return of several monster types from the original three games.
- Leon's motorcycle ride sees the return of zombie dogs, with the specific variant featured known as Garmr.
- One of the bosses that Leon faces is a Giant Spider. The model viewer takes this further and refers to it as the Titan Spinner, indicating it's not just a T-Virus infected spider, but one of the spider B.O.W.s from the original game.
- Leon is briefly harassed by a mutated plant, with the model viewer revealing it's Plant 43.
- After infiltrating ARK, several Lickers, a well known enemy from Resident Evil 2, also make a return, with their last canonical game appearance outside of the remakes and animated films being Resident Evil 5.
- A T-501 Tyrant appears as a boss in the game. For those who arenβt aware of the lore, that was developed from the T-103 series that the T-00 AKA Mr. X was a part of. While he doesnβt have his hat, this Tyrant sports a similar trench coat and has the trademark melted wax-like skin. His Super form is also similar to that of the T-00 from the 2 remake, with his coat tattered from catastrophic damage and one of his arms mutated into giant claws.
- Victor turns out to be a host for the Nemesis parasite, with his mutated form being based on Nemesis' final form in the remake.
- A late-game boss, the Commander, is a masked soldier highly skilled in CQC and is voiced by Keith Silverstein in English and Masaki Terasoma in Japanese. He is never referred to in-game as HUNK, but make of that as you willnote The script in the game files outright calls him HUNK.
- Crimson Heads, which have not been an enemy concept in a mainline title since Resident Evil Remake, are finally reintroduced here in a main title under similar mechanics (now called Blister Heads instead) as all zombies have a mutagenic transformation that causes them to morph into a tumor-ridden red abomination that is far harder to take down if Grace or Leon do not go through measures to ensure they are Deader than Dead. Like the Lepotitsa in 6, there's an enemy type that, when damaged, can cause all nearby zombies to transform into Blister Heads that can drastically escalate a simple encounter into a fatal mosh pit without proper target prioritization.
- Bus Crash: Played With. While six people have died of Raccoon City Syndrome by the start of the game, none of them are other Outbreak survivors. The only familiar name among the victims is M. Warren, age 90, who is heavily suggested to have been the former mayor of Raccoon City.
- Bystander Syndrome: Played with. At first, nobody seems to notice when Gideon walks on a crowded sidewalk with an unconscious Grace draped over his shoulders. When a bystander actually stops and asks if Grace is okay, Gideon nonchalantly infects her and several other civilians with the T Virus, causing enough mass panic to escape.
- Call-Back: Requiem is meant to be a invokedMilestone Celebration game commemorating thirty years' worth of games from the series, and as such it is absolutely loaded with nods to prior works.
- Grace's first playable section of gameplay directly mirrors Ethan's first playable section on the Baker estate, making her way to a dilapidated building after a short, atmospheric walk that also happens to have a disgusting abandoned kitchen with a pot full of bugs that can be examined.
- One encounter at the care center has a zombie drive through the garage on a bulldozer, forcing Grace to shoot it before the vehicle pins her to the wall. A similar set piece happens in Resident Evil 4 where Leon has to snipe some cultists driving a Drill Tank before they can kill Ashley.
- Just like in 4 and its remake, Leon loses his jacket early in the game and spends the rest of it wearing a dark shirt with a harness. Also, his first shotgun is a Serbu Super Shorty similar to Ada's in Separate Ways, though with a different foregrip.
- Leon meets Grace in the same way he did for Claire in in both 2 and Degeneration: telling her to duck so he can shoot a monster closing in behind her.
- Requiem marks the third time Leon is allied with and is a protector of a younger blonde girl, following Sherry in 2 and Ashley in 4, albeit with Grace being ever-so slightly more combat ready than her predecessors.
- Grace can use (single-use) lockpicks to open simple locks around the level, a skill her mother possessed in Resident Evil: Outbreak; using a lockpick for the first time even unlocks an achievement called "Like Mother, Like Daughter".
- The care center's basement is full of holding cells containing zombies, which all open at the same as the protagonist tries to escape, like in Leon's campaign in the 2 remake. Oh, and Grace is escorting a little girl to safety while trying to reach an elevator, just like in Claire's campaign.
- The Girl's boss fight shares similarities to the Queen Leech fight from 0, like opening up the top chasm to expose sunlight and Grace using a magnum revolver, albeit to keep the Girl at bay.
- Just like in the 2 remake, one section has you play as a little girl trekking through Raccoon City Orphanage.
- One of the locations Leon visits in Raccoon City is a STAGLA gas station, which is once again caught on fire. Also, you can have a chainsaw duel with a zombie, complete with clashing weapons.
- Leon gets pursued by zombified dogs while riding a motorcycle through a ruined city's highway network, again.
- When Leon finds Zeno in Raccoon City, he casually dodges Leon's bullets before declaring that he doesn't have the time to fight him, as Albert Wesker did in Resident Evil 5.note Albeit, Zeno claims he doesn't have time to spare, while Wesker claimed he only had seven minutes.
- One of the game's boss fights is Leon fighting a Tyrant through the dilapidated ruins of the Raccoon City Police Department. Also, the game's Final Boss fight is a version of Nemesis' final form from the Resident Evil 3 remake which culminates in Leon eliminating Gideon in the same manner as Jill did with Nemesis in the original Resident Evil 3 by shooting Gideon's One-Winged Angel form multiple times with the game's resident magnum revolver and dropping a Bond One-Liner before delivering the coup de grΓ’ce.
- The T-501 can grab missiles with his bare hands and throw them at his targets, much like Wesker did in the boss battle at the hangar in Resident Evil 5.
- Zeno takes credit for President Benford's assassination in Resident Evil 6, implying the Connections are related to or The Man Behind the Man for the Family.
- The Boss fight against Plant 43 is similar to the fight against Salazar in the original Resident Evil 4.
- In Grace's after-action report, unlocked after finishing the game, she mentions Tricell, H.C.F., and The Family as competing bioweapon producers alongside Umbrella.
- The boss fight against the Commander involves him and Leon duking it out with melee weapons, just like Leon and Krauser's knife duel in the remake of 4.
- Like in the remake of 4, Leon must cross a hallway while heavily weakened by an infection, which manifests itself in the form of a blurred screen and him dragging himself along. And he gets cured of it at the last possible moment.
- Towards the end of the game, when Grace finds an extremely weakened Leon and asks if he is okay, he says that he feels "like a million bucks", the same thing he tells Ashley after being cured of Las Plagas in the original 4.
- A humorous example, but when Leon chops Zeno's right forearm during their brief scuffle, not only does Zeno's forearm heal but the clothing is immediately stitched together, similar to Ethan using a First Aid Med to reattach his hand and jacket sleeve after Lady Dimitrescu sliced both off.
- In the "Hope" ending, Zeno reluctantly removes his glasses after being weakened by Elpis, similar to Albert Wesker's reaction in Resident Evil 5 after being forcibly injected with an overdose of Progenitor Virus.
- In a file at the beginning of Resident Evil 3 (Remake), Jill speculates that the S.T.A.R.S. survivors could be infected by the T-Virus even if they weren't immediately showing symptoms. With the emergence of Raccoon City Syndrome, her suspicions turn out to be justified.
- The MO Disks from Resident Evil 1 make a return during the story, as Grace retrieves one from her mother's pouch which the latter had hidden behind a painting at the Wrenwood Hotel. Grace can finally consult it near the end of the story when she finds a computer with the appropriate terminal, and it contains key information to help Grace get the password to either destroy or release Elpis.
- Camera Perspective Switch: You have the option of using either first-person and third-person perspectives for each character, which can be toggled at any time in the settings menu. By default, Grace (and Chloe later on) uses first-person, while Leon uses third-person, in order to enhance their respective atmospheres.
- The Cameo:
- None other than the Nemesis can be seen (and heard uttering his infamous catchphrase) in the background of the live action "Evil Has Always Had a Name" trailer.
- In the RPD ruins, Tofu can be spotted peeking out from several blown out walls and broken windows.
- Cap Raiser: The Matsuoka Override Manual increases the capacity of Grace's blood collector by 50. The unlockable Matsuoka Master Manual does the same thing and stacks with the Override Manual, giving the blood collector a total capacity of 200.
- Captain Crash: Subverted. For the first time in the series, Leon doesn't get any of his vehicles obliterated.
- Cat Scare: If you open the cabinet in Room 202 of the care center, a lamp falls out and onto Grace, startling her.
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: Played with. Hound Wolf Squad and the BSAA forces under Chris' command are too late to help Leon and Grace stop the villains, but they do provide the protagonists with a means of escape when the pair are left stranded in the destroyed facility.
- Central Theme:
- Making up for past misdeeds. The heroes are those who come away hoping for a better future, while the villains are the ones giving into a cynical mindset.
- Grace and Leon both blame themselves for circumstances that were outside of their control β Alyssa's death and the demise of Raccoon City, respectively. Both characters coped with it in different ways, from Grace throwing herself into her work as an FBI Agent as penance or Leon's training as a government agent. But they're still carrying the scars from those terrible days. Where they differ is motivations, as Grace represents the hope that she can make up for her mistakes, while Leon believes that he has to push himself to prevent others from being hurt again. The Multiple Endings embody these different perspectives. Trusting Oswell posthumously and thus believing in hope causes Elpis to be released, potentially ridding the world of B.O.W.'s in the future. Choosing to instead believe in the worst situation possible causes Leon and everyone but Grace to perish.
- Victor's main motivation is to find "Elpis", a mysterious viral agent that Oswell worked on before his death. His goal is to use it to pick up where Oswell left off, fully believing that he can "cleanse the world" and unite everything under his rule for the "greater good". His reaction when Elpis turns out to be an antivirus is to cope by believing it was all part of Oswell's plan, when it's really clear that Oswell was trying to make up for some of the damage he recklessly caused.
- Furthering the above point, Oswell himself reflected on his various failures and attempted to make amends with Elpis, an anti-viral agent that would kill strains of the T-Virus on injection. Admitting in the end during one of his more lucid moments that he was wrong all along, and that true happiness cannot be achieved at the expense of others. Even admitting that he was plagued by guilt for his actions and the cost for the new world he tried to create was too great, ultimately spending the remainder of his life trying to atone in whatever way he could with his limited resources. Spencer's butler Patrick would clarify that after his interview with Alyssa Ashcroft that he began to lose his mental faculties and was having difficulties communicating, but that in one of his last lucid moments that he entrusted Grace to Alyssa as a final hope.
- The exponential power of hope. The game centers around a secret project of Spencer's named after the hope remaining in Pandora's box, and the golden ending of the game is reached by having faith and giving trust in difficult situations. Because Emily trusts Grace, she ultimately comes out of hell to be cured. Because Grace trusts Harry, she and Emily live a little longer. Because Grace trusts Spencer, a major positive shift in the bio-terror war can take place. Because Leon trusts Grace, he and Sherry are cured of the T-Virus. The nature of Elpis itself is reflective of hope as wellβit was Spencer's repentance for the plagues he unleashed and is an antiviral that can cure all strains of the Progenitor virus and restore the infected to perfect condition. When Grace has to choose whether to destroy or release Elpis before being sure what it is, the nature of the choice directly matches its outcome. Choosing to trust that Spencer was regretful brings about the greatest hope this universe has had since the first outbreak. If Grace chooses to distrust Spencer and destroy Elpis, she costs the world a major savior, leaves Gideon unaccounted for, and dooms Leon and Sherry to die, leaving basically no positive impact beyond the ARK's destruction. Having hope and seeing the best brings the best about.
- Making up for past misdeeds. The heroes are those who come away hoping for a better future, while the villains are the ones giving into a cynical mindset.
- Chainsaw Good: There are chainsaw-wielding zombies that spell major trouble for Leon if he isn't careful. On the plus side, Leon himself can pick up these chainsaws after taking down their previous wielders and make zombie mincemeat with them.
- Challenge Run: The "Never Touch the Stuff" and "Minimalist" Challenges require the player to finish an entire playthrough without using healing itemsnote Steroids are allowed despite them technically healing Grace to full and the blood collector, respectively.
- Cheated Death, Died Anyway: Raccoon City Syndrome is a variant of T-Virus infection that has begun afflicting any of the Raccoon City incident survivors that were exposed to the virus but not completely cured. Beginning as mild coughing and fatigue, the disease escalates to numbness as black bruising appears all over their body and internal organs. Once the illness reaches a terminal stage, the infected suffer from severe pain, intense fatigue, and uncontrollable vomiting of blood before passing away within two hours. By the end of the game, Leon has reached the final stage and has lost all stamina to the point that he can barely stand. While not outright stated, the symptoms seem to cross-contaminate over to those who are immune or even empowered by the T-Virus and Progenitor-based viruses like Albert Wesker, implying that they would've eventually died anyway from the side-effects, as shown by Zeno's condition, who shares many of Wesker's superhuman abilities.
- Checkpoint Starvation: The Standard (Classic) and Insanity difficulties change the save system to match the classic games, with Grace having limited autosaves and needing ink ribbons to use typewriters.
- Chekhov's Gun: While investigating the Wrenwood Hotel, Grace remembers Alyssa hid something behind a painting prior to her murder, and retrieves a leather case containing Alyssa's journal and a disc tape. While she reads the journal at the scene, Grace is kidnapped by Victor shortly afterwards and doesn't have the time or technology to watch the disc. It's only after finding a console in ARK that she's able to access the files on the tape, and finds a recording of an interview Alyssa had with Oswell E. Spencer, revealing that he was burdened with guilt and wished to atone for his hand in starting the B.O.W. market, calling Grace his "hope". By reflecting on this, Grace can come to realize that Elpis is not a weapon, but in fact an antiviral capable of curing all Progenitor-based viruses, saving Leon's life and helping to undo the damage Umbrella caused.
- Color Wash: The Film Noir screen filter from the Deluxe Edition displays the game in grayscale monochrome.
- Company Cross-References:
- Leon's "Film Noir" costume is a dark blue suit that looks startlingly similar to Dan Smith's, and to make it even clearer, its promotional pose (Leon leaning back while aiming the Requiem with one hand) is very similar to Dan's cocky aiming stance.
- A hidden locker in the RPD ruins contains an old game console with the cases of a few old Capcom games such as Mega Man 8, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, and even, bizarrely, Resident Evil 1 itself.
- Continuity Nod:
- In Grace's first gameplay segment she bumps into a male civilian that looks like a human version of Mr. X from the remake of 2, wearing a very similar trenchcoat and fedora.
- The Investigation Report file says the body of a man was found at Wrenwood Hotel on September 28.
- A collectible file in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is an article authored by Alyssa in 2016 for The Dulvey Daily regarding the disappearances in Louisiana. At the start of the 2018 flashback sequence, Grace can be seen browsing Reddit and discussing said incident.
- Grace's first encounter with a zombie is an almost one-to-one recreation of Chris and Sheva's first encounter with a Majini, with the infectee seizing and staring straight up as they begin to bleed from the eyes and nose before going limp for a moment.
- Emily's book in braille is the "Village of Shadows".
- The entrance to the Raccoon Police Department, and indeed Raccoon City itself as seen in Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and Resident Evil 3 (Remake), reappears in ruins after the thermobaric missile that destroyed the city 28 years before the events of Requiem. The trailers pan over key portions of the RPD like the entrance and the main lobby to emphasize how they've fallen into disrepair in the decades since its last appearance.
- The "Evil Has Always Had a Name" trailer is chock full of these to both Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and Resident Evil 3 (Remake); to borderline Continuity Porn degrees.
- Robert Kendo's gun store can be glimpsed in a single frame. The player not only gets to revisit whatβs left of Kendo's store, but also find his daughter's bones. Curiously, Robert's own skeleton isn't present.
- A squadron of UBCS grunts are shown deploying alongside the RPD in their Last Stand.
- The RPD Riot Officers are all wearing modified versions of Leon's Remake' 2 outfit; which was indeed said to be police riot gear.
- The police attack dogs being used by the RPD look 'exactly like living versions of the Cerberus as depicted in the remake.
- Nemesis is shown haunting the chaos filled streets; and can be heard growling his infamous "STARS!" line.
- The graphics and design of the Raccoon City Emergency Broadcast system is exactly like how it was in Remake 3.
- Leon's shown driving past the gas station from the opening of Resident Evil 2 (Remake); a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot shows that his old truck is still standing there 28 years later.
- The RPD in general is filled with callbacks.
- Leon has to reach through a broken section of the front gate to unlock it after he initially barred it shut 28 years ago upon arriving at the station.
- The beret Jill wore in her original appearance can be found left on her desk.
- Chris' "Made in Heaven" jacket can be found still hanging, with a file in its pocket.
- The old photo of the STARS unit can be found, weathered due to time.
- A rather infamous Easter Egg is given a nod. In Resident Evil 2, Wesker hid a photo of Rebecca Chambers in his desk that the player would need to search fifty times to find. Here, there's no photo, instead there's a note... which leads to a book in the library, where the photo has been relocated.
- In the remake of 2, a particular zombie was found trying to get into a soda machine. Here, another zombie can be found doing the exact same thing.
- In the western hallway, Leon can still find the skeleton of the same officer who had lost his lower jaw.Leon: The lower jaw is missing.
- The Cute Bear Charm can be found in the RPD parking lot where Leon first met Ada in 2; it looks identical to the teddy bear key chain for the jet ski keys she gave him in 4 (even reusing the model from the remake).
- Leon has to use the mechanical carjack found at the library again, this time to help open jammed shutters.
- During the T-501 escape sequence, itself one big callback to Resident Evil 2/Resident Evil 2 (Remake), one of the weapons used against Leon is the jagged tail section of the helicopter that crashed on top of the RPD in the famous Helicopter Crash Sceneπ Image
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- A bottle of Sanguis Virginis is shown in Harry's house, where it hides a puzzle piece.
- Grace can earn the achievement/challenge titled "Blood! More Blood!" for using enough infected blood as crafting material. In Resident Evil Village, Lady Alcina Dimitrescu can be heard saying "Not enough blood! More! More blood!"
- Likewise, a restaurant you pass by in the opening segment has a neon sign advertising that they serve Dulvey Beer.
- As Leon is talking to one of the Hound Wolf Squad's members following their rescue of Leon and Grace near the end of the game, a snippet of the "Descent Into The Village"π Image
soundtrack from Village can be heard, which is the de-facto Leitmotif of Chris Redfield and his HWS commandos in that game. - Spencer's office in the ARK prominently features a painting that is either by or of Mother Miranda, the ancient immortal biologist who inspired a young Spencer to pursue his own path of changing the world through forced viral evolution. In fact, the original versionπ Image
of that image was explicitly Miranda herself holding baby Eva, exactly a picture you could find in Village before a day one patch changed it to the more ambiguous painting emblazoned with "M" that only implies that it's Mother Miranda. - Grace's Report, unlocked after beating the game, is the single biggest example of this in the entire series. It summarizes, ties together and gives a nod to the event of every single mainline game that deals with Umbrella.
- Conveyor Belt o' Doom: Grace finds herself trapped on a conveyor belt full of dead bodies getting "processed" through a giant meat grinder and can't get out until it's finished. Fortunately, it's slow enough that she can simply outpace it by walking in the opposite direction. Less fortunately, some of the bodies rise up as zombies.
- Cosmic Motifs: Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center has one for its senior staff, consisting of the Sun, Star and Moon corresponding to members of the senior staff. All three of the chairman, lead researcher and security manager were associated with one of those celestial bodies and had similarly themed safes in their offices requiring a combination involving the sun, star and moon as well, and finally, containing similarly themed quartz.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: The last line of "The Shadow Ghost", "Stay in the light!" is scrawled in huge letters in blood in contrast to the neatly typed text before it, implying that the writer was a wounded victim warning those who come after them.
- Counter-Attack: When playing as Leon, the player can counter certain enemy attacks by performing various actions in anticipation of a hit coming their way.
- Most enemy attacks can be parried by readying the axe just before they connect, which deflects the hit and in many circumstances will negate all damage. An especially well-timed parry, known as a "perfect parry", usually enables a devastating riposte that either kills or heavily damages the offending enemy. Parrying incurs a durability loss for Leon's hatchet, and cannot be performed if the sharpness meter is completely empty.
- Trying to shoot a nearby enemy who's swinging an attack at Leon will have him narrowly evading the hit before blasting his assailant in the head. Similar to parrying, this move requires at least one round remaining in the gun's magazine to perform.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover shows Grace with her brown leather jacket and hoodie even though she loses both and never gets them back after the intro outside of New Game Plus. Leon's also shown wearing a jacket he loses after his first playable segment, though he's not as prominent.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Subverted. When Grace gives Emily CPR, it seems to work for a moment... but Emily regains consciousness because she's in the process of mutating into a B.O.W., not because Grace succeeded at resuscitation.
- Crowd Panic: Once he realizes Leon is on his trail, Victor Gideon casually starts an outbreak in a crowded city street so he can escape amidst the chaos. Leon tries his best to catch up, but he is stopped by a panicked stampede of civilians and freshly turned zombies.
- Curb-Stomp Cushion: Zeno overpowers Leon rather easily and it's clear Leon is in no condition to challenge him properly. However, considering this was Leon at his most catastrophically ill from the T-Virus, and he still landed a couple hits in, it makes one wonder how the fight would have gone were he fully healthy.
- Cutscene Incompetence:
- After disposing of the zombified police officer early on, Grace continues upstairs to investigate the ominous music playing from one of the rooms. In her panicked confusion, she forgets all about both her dropped personal sidearm and the dead cop's shotgun, and the player is not given back the reins to go downstairs and retrieve them before she gets captured by Victor (who apparently gathered up her pistol himself on the way out, since she can recover it later at the Care Center).
- Not long after, Leon sees Victor Gideon across the street carrying Grace over his shoulder. Instead of rushing over there as soon as possible, he just stares at him for about a minute while he stands in place, shoots multiple people with syringes to infect them, then leisurely walks away from the scene.
- When an outbreak occurs in the care center, Leon just watches a nurse get gutted by an obviously infected doctor with a chainsaw. It's only after she dies that he drops a Bond One-Liner and gameplay resumes, at which point he's just as fast and deadly as you expect. Arguably a Justified Trope, since the full game makes it clear this "nurse" is no innocent healthcare worker, but one of Dr. Gideon's researchers, and Leon was already highly suspicious of the place after tailing Gideon there and hearing her rather flippant answers about the work they're doing while several corpses are laying out in the open.
- Due to how the timings of the split sections in the Care Centre work, Leon simply stands there and watches as The Girl drags Grace back into the shadows while Grace herself doesn't even seem to notice Leon standing there watching.
- Grace in the good ending has an Elpis sample in hand, first-hand evidence that it works as an antiviral when Zeno inadvertently cures himself with it, and knows that Leon's T-virus infection has reached its terminal stage and is close to killing him. Rather than immediately injecting Leon with the sample while Zeno and Gideon are too distracted by their argument to notice, she instead does nothing but futilely try to explain what Elpis' true purpose is to a semi-conscious Leon. It's only after Gideon's killed Zeno and has stabbed Grace through her midsection with one of his tentacles that she finally gets the memo and cures Leon.
- Cutscene Power to the Max: As depicted in a cutscene, Zeno's Redemption pistol is powerful enough to blow off limbs and liquefy entire heads and torsos of armored personnel in a single shot. The unlockable version, while still powerful, doesn't pack nearly as much of a punch, even when fired at zombies.
- Cutting Off the Branches: A brief flashback Leon has when entering the RPD confirms that he was the one who met Marvin, meaning the Leon A scenario of Resident Evil 2 Remake is canon, following Leon's flashback and use of Marvin's knife in 4 Remake.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: A rare instance of this in the same game rather than two separate works. While Grace and Leon's overall control schemes are identical, there's one big exception with Leon's capability to parry enemy attacks as opposed to Grace's complete inability to do so. This can lead to trying to parry an enemy's attack as Grace, only to lose a ton of health in the process.
- Darker and Edgier: This is by far the most grim and gritty of the mainline titles, though it does end with a Surprisingly Happy Ending if you make the right choice.
- Where 7 borrowed from Hill Billy Horrors tropes and 8 pulled from classic Gothic Horror trappings, 9 takes inspiration from much grittier Neo Noir horror mysteries like Se7en and The X-Files.
- The gore here is the most intense it's ever been, with some truly horrific injuries and deaths to witness. Shooting enemies can peel back their skin or dislodge their eyeballs, to say nothing of what happens to certain bosses when they're defeated. Special note goes to the death animations, which are so grisly that they could give Dead Space a run for its money.
- Grace suffers an incredible amount of mental and physical punishment over the course of the game, and emphasis is placed on the psychological toll these events would have.
- Leon is at his most cynical, believing that he and Sherry will die from Raccoon City Syndrome with no hope of recovery. He no longer bears a knife to defend himself, instead using a hatchet to chop enemies to pieces. The story forces him to directly confront his past by returning to Raccoon City's ruins, and a late game conversation with Grace has him nearly break into tears over the trauma he carries from the Raccoon City Incident.
- The game spends more time showing the level of human experimentation that Umbrella dealt in, including engineering clones of children so they could harvest their organs. Umbrella killed so many kids that they even had a full-on crypt of child-sized coffins underneath Raccoon City orphanage.
- David Versus Goliath: Referenced by the Grace and Goliath challenge, which demands you defeat the hulking Chunk in the west wing of Rhodes Hill with the poorly armed Grace when you would normally be encouraged to outmaneuver him. This takes a lot of bullets on Standard (Classic) or Insanity difficulty. But given that there are rooms that Chunk is unable to break into, it's very doable with patience and proper resource management.
- Dead Weight: Grace and later Leon encounter a zombie variant of this type. Dubbed "Chunk", it's a hulking monster that resembles an ogre in size, strength and endurance thanks to its heavily mutated, fattened up body. There are actually two of them, and they effectively serve as boss encounters, trying to overwhelm the protagonists with their immense body mass.
- Death from Above: Atop the Cedarbrook Apartments are posted several mortars, which are unfortunately still operated by zombie B.S.A.A. soldiers. Ensues a short firefight during which Leon has to take cover from the mortar fire and use the few windows of opportunity to shoot down the mortar zombies. When he reaches a mortar, he can nonetheless give some payback to the zombies by firing shells of his own.
- Death of a Child:
- In the "Evil Has Always Had a Name" live-action trailer, the daughter is killed during the outbreak when she screams in terror before a Licker, with her mother burying the girl's remains in a makeshift grave. Even after the mother becomes a t-Virus infected zombie, she remains haunted by her daughter's death, clinging to the photo they had of each other and pacing near her daughter's grave.
- An untold number of cloned children were killed for the purpose of Elpis' creation. Born and raised inside laboratories to serve as nothing more than expendable test subjects, they were horrifically experimented on by Umbrella and the Connections' scientists throughout their short lives, and suffered the worst deaths.
- Subverted with Emily in the Golden Ending. Leon tells Grace that he didn't hit any of Emily's vital organs when she mutated into a giant monster, and hypothesizes that she could still be alive and thus get cured by Elpis. This turns out to be correct, as the epilogue reveals that Emily made a full recovery and has since been adopted by Grace.
- Decoy Protagonist: The beginning of the "Evil Has Always Had a Name" live-action trailer implies that the narrator might be the daughter, but neither she nor her mother survived, with the latter having ended up a zombie, and her narration being an Apocalyptic Log she made prior.
- Despair Event Horizon: Grace crosses it when Emily mutates into a monster and has to be put down by Leon. Blaming herself for once again failing to save an innocent life, she tosses the Requiem back to Leon and walks off, having lost the will to go on, though she gets better later.
- Destroy the Product Placement: Defied. If you try and make Leon shoot his Porsche, he'll automatically raise his gun, as he does if you try and shoot a civilian, preventing you from being able to damage it at all.
- Developer's Foresight:
- When Resident Evil Village added in a third person mode, Ethan and Chris were sped up to make it feel smoother to play, but the enemies were generally not able to keep up so well compared to their slower first person selves. In this game, you can play Grace and Leon in first or third person both on the fly, with the game actually changing certain sequences and balancing to accommodate, such as faster enemies in third person and moments like Grace tripping over herself in fear that you wouldn't be able to get in the first person perspective; playing the game in first person slows down some of the pacing to accommodate by comparison.
- When playing as Grace in third-person view and having the Dimitrescu outfit equipped, her yellow irises glow in the dark just like the eponymous Alcina Dimitrescuπ Image
β. This happens in real-time for as long as Grace's eyes are obscured, even if the player adjusts the camera near a light source that brightens the lower half of her face. - Certain cutscenes will be slightly altered to account for what outfits Leon and Grace are wearing:
- Leon has two cutscenes where he visibly takes off his gloves for one reason or another; this doesn't really work with the "Film Noir" Deluxe Edition outfit, which doesn't have gloves, so the relevant scenes are edited so that he doesn't do the motions.
- During the cutscene where Leon is being interrogated by Gideon, the latter's hand will not clip through Leon's clothing if he's wearing his RE4 jacket, his jacketed default outfit, or the Noir outfit. His animation remains the same as he touches Leon's neck, but the cloth visibly bends and moves in response.
- At the beginning of the game, the cutscene where Grace is reaching for her glasses will be edited if she's wearing an outfit that does not have it. Additionally, the Dimitrescu outfit actually has a decent amount of hat and dress physics that are depicted properly in cutscenes and third-person gameplay, such as the hat folding up on its right side whenever Grace is carrying Emily around.
- In the Golden Ending, Leon claims that he didn't shoot Emily's vital organs, meaning there is a chance she could still be alive. That scene happens in gameplay, and if you try to fire at her very exposed heart, you can see that Leon's aim will actually twitch away before he shoots.
- Didn't Think This Through: When Leon and Grace finally meet in the Rhodes Clinic, he arrives just in time to save her from The Girl dragging her into the darkened hallway, blasting the monster back with multiple shots from his Requiem before blowing off 1/3 of her head with an apparently-fatal shot. However, before he can escort her outside, Victor separates them by dropping a steel gate to lock Grace inside the central hall, additionally lowering a shutter to completely isolate her from her would-be rescuer. Thinking quickly, Leon passes his Requiem through the bars to Grave to defend herself with before they're cut off, planning on using his greater experience and skill with his less-powerful weapons to make his own way to her. However, once gameplay resumes, the game quickly reminds Grace and the player that Leon didn't reload the gun before giving it to Grace, meaning the 5-shot weapon has only a single bullet left in it (which it shouldn't have in a case of gameplay and story segregation as the revolver holds five rounds, not six as most revolvers would so it really should be empty) incentivizing Grace to use it as an Emergency Weapon as she tries to sneak through the Hospital.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Of all things, chainsaws are this for Leon. Despite the series precedence for what enemies equipped with these can do, chainsaws are unwieldy to use in Leon's hands and require a fair amount of nuance to effectively wield. Although chainsaw strikes do very high damage, swinging one around tends to be a bad idea when surrounded, as the long recovery leaves Leon vulnerable to being mobbed if he misses. Worse still, if the player ran a zombie through with the chainsaw and it didn't die, the blade will get stuck in its torso and become an instant hazard, as the zombie can turn around and do a grab attack, which impales Leon with the chainsaw and kills him instantly. That being said, if you can work around these, Leon can carve open swathes of gore; combining generous I-frames, powerful damage, insane speed, and a moveset that shreds zombies like a hot knife through butter.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- Downplayed. The three weapons available in the supply crate (the Silencer 9 pistol, the Stiri REVO3 A1 submachine gun, and the 990-TAC shotgun) during Leon's first visit to the BSAA camp are solid upgrades and can indeed last till the credit roll. However, the other guns still have advantages over them in certain stats; making it so even the older weapons are, at their very worse, Not Completely Useless, and are in fact fully viable. This system is similar to Resident Evil 4 (Remake) where weapons were more like sidegrades then straight upgrades. When you take the robust upgrade system (and the charms) into account, you can pretty much use whatever weapon the player prefers and not be punished for it.
- When given free reign to roam the care center after escaping The Girl for the first time, Grace can recover her S&S M232 sidearm which is a straight upgrade to her previously-acquired B934 gun.
- Disposable Pilot: Harry, the helicopter pilot whom Grace meets after she escapes from the care center, doesn't last long. As the helicopter's rotor starts to spin, it gets weighed down heavily by zombies trying to climb onto it, causing it crash not long after takeoff and Harry is fatally impaled by a tree branch.
- Door to Before: At several points in the Care Center and especially in the ruins of Raccoon City, there are convoluted paths to go back to places you may have thought you couldn't reach anymore that usually end with a door that was "locked from the other side", providing quick passage between areas.
- Downer Ending:
- After all she goes through, the "Evil Has Always Had a Name'' live-action trailer ends with the mother fully transformed into a zombie, wandering through the ruins of Racoon City, in a state of half-lucidity and half-lunacy; being reminded of how she failed her daughter, before she's finally gunned down by an unknown special forces team, resulting in a gut-wrenching Shoot the Shaggy Dog end to her story.
- The "Destruction" ending of the game. Refusing to trust Spencer's video confession, Grace chooses to destroy Elpis, not knowing that it was actually a cure for the T-virus. Zeno shoots Leon point-blank in the head with a Hand Cannon, killing him as the facility crumbles around Zeno, leaving Grace as the Sole Survivor. This means anyone else infected with the T-virus strain is doomed to die, the B.O.W. plague on humanity continues (with Victor Gideon presumably still around to continue his machinations), Emily is dead for sure, and nothing the heroes did ultimately mattered. At best, the bad guys' plans have been temporarily put on hold with the research facility in Raccoon City being destroyed. But humanity's greatest chance to stop the B.O.W. menace and the legacy of the Umbrella Corporation is now gone, leaving Grace feeling like more of a Failure Knight than ever.
- Dramatic Irony: There's a Hope Spot after Grace manages to elude the Collector zombie and manages to make it outside, traumatized but alive. And furthermore, there's a helicopter waiting outside, while Grace has apparently managed to rescue Emily at the same time, having brought Emily from the research facility where she was trapped all the way to the surface and outside. But since the plot threads the game has introduced thus far are nowhere close to being tied up, the audience knows full well that Grace isn't getting away that easily.
- The Dreaded: A subtle detail, but the post-credits sequence implies that the Hound-Wolf squad has become this to bio-terrorists across the globe as the Connections are comfortable taking on and wiping the floor with the BSAA troops but would rather "avoid the hounds" when the troops make priority to seize their objective over waiting to ambush them.
- Driving Question: What is Elpis, and how is Grace connected to it? It turns out, Elpis is "the bioweapon to end all bioweapons", as in a cure for all Progenitor-based viral agents. As for how Grace is connected, she is merely the only known person who has the potential to finally set Elpis free, as she is the adopted daughter of none other than Oswell E. Spencer, who created Elpis as a way to undo some of the damage he caused in his pursuit to elevate mankind.
- Dungeon Shop:
- The Rhodes Care Centre has a version of this, in the form of four lockers that can only be opened by Grace with the rare Antique Coins, found sparingly on zombies and throughout the centre. It's not clear when the lockers were designed (they're decidedly more modern than the parlor with the roulette wheel you find them in), but they provide exceedingly-valuable items like a Hip Pouch and an upgrade manual for the Blood Collector.
- Leon has the opposite β he will intermittently find electronic item boxes that allow him to access the DSO Network, which confers credits for kills made and tracking modules found, and (in a manner very similar to both Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 4 (Remake), via the Merchant) allow you to purchase items, upgrades, tune up your weapons or sell extra items. These appear even in places that they logically shouldn't appear in, such as the topmost level of the Rhodes Care Centre and the various containers left behind by the BSAA during their expedition to Raccoon City. It's a roundabout way of adding a shop and currency to environments that wouldn't plausibly have anyone left to buy items from.
E-O
- Early Game Hell: Grace's time at the Rhodes Hill Care center begins with her at a steep disadvantage. Bullets are incredibly scarce, on top of Grace needing to find an actual 9mm-chambered firearm to use them with. Zombies take roughly a full magazine to take down, and there are dozens of them wandering the halls of the center. Grace has to pick her battles carefully and use stealth just to get by, and it's not until you receive the Blood Collector and can begin crafting bullets that the resource economy begins swinging back in your favor. Even then, the game will keep you on your toes by spawning in some Elite Mooks which need to be avoided or defeated with the Requiem, of which ammo for it is even scarcer.
- Earn Your Fun: You can only start really accessing the full breadth of the game's upgrade system, bonus items, and other features such as the lightweight New Game Plus for Leon's equipment, by having already beaten the game once. Actually getting some of the most overpowered bonus items, like the Rocket Launcher or the infinite ammo unlocks, requires you to either play the game obsessively or ace a number of the harder challenges such as no healing, no Blood Collector use, speedruns or even just beating Insanity mode.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: One that requires Grace and the player to trust in their better judgment and put their faith in hope rather than destruction. In the final area, Grace is given the choice to either destroy Elpis or to release it. Many characters, including Leon, believe that Elpis is yet another one of Oswell Spencer's diabolical creations that will only bring more harm upon humanity, but Grace can find notes and clues that Spencer actually designed Elpis with benevolent intentions in mind. If Grace chooses to gamble on the latter, she's rewarded access to a powerful anti-viral vaccine that can purge Umbrella's B.O.Ws and even cure the infected. This leads to Zeno's downfall, Leon's survival, and a brighter future for innocent victims like Emily.
- Easter Egg:
- If you go back into the RPD after finishing the necessary story beats, whether it be because you forgot to grab some things or just want to explore, a couple new additions will be present. Firstly, a zombie will have spawned in, bashing the vending machine like a rather famous zombie from the remake of 2. Second, Tofu will occasionally peer into the building with comical sound effects, darting away once you look to him.
- Finishing a scavenger hunt created by Barry nets you not only a charm, but also a glimpse at a rather well-maintained collection of Capcom games and merchandise inside a locker.
- Unlocking the description of all 49 challenges unlocks a 50th challenge called 'The Final Puzzle' that has a cryptic clear condition reading "let the sweet pair hear the voice." Completing the challenge rewards 20,000 CP, but it involves a lot of clever thinking and stringing together a few disconnected actions to trigger a particular event flag which will be detailed on the Guide Dang It! entry below.
- Easy Logistics: Like in the previous games, ammo crafting only requires combinations of gunpowder with the scraps that conveniently contain brass cases, primers, and the rounds themselves without any machining involved. Grace takes it to a ridiculous level by throwing gunpowder away and using blood to make fully-functional cartridges with. Just don't think too hard about that one.
- Elevator Action Sequence: During the East Raccoon City section of the game, Leon has to climb down the Grimstone building using a derelict construction platform held by two cranes. As it slowly descends to the first floor, several zombies will fall on the platform to attack Leon, forcing him to fight them on the very narrow platform as it is being lowered.
- Elite Zombie: Due to the heavy focus on T-Virus zombies, the game has a large number of these with varying degrees of uniqueness; some of which are exclusive to the level you find them in.
- The Singers are a pair of divas turned flesh-eaters that inhabit two sections of the care facility. They have above-average health and attack power, but their truly unique trait is that they can let out a deadly Super-Scream that deals Scratch Damage, but will stun the player for a couple seconds, leaving them wide open to the large group of zombies that always surround them.
- Then there's the Butcher; a Unique Enemy whose initially found tending the kitchen area (though at certain point he'll leave it and begin patrolling the wraparound hallway outside). In the early game he's practically a Boss in Mook's Clothing; a Lightning Bruiser with high health, speed, and the ability to carve the player up with his butcher knife within seconds, but killing him makes exploring the area a lot easier, and nets the player the pantry key.
- Patient zombies are undead carrying their IV drip tools. They have a little extra health, but their true danger lies in that IV drip; they wield them like warhammers and have a unique combo attack were they rush the player with a variety of blows that, if they connect, can send you straight down to red status.
- Spear zombies start appearing during the Raccoon City level; clad in black shrouds and wielding makeshift spears. They'll charge Leon and attempt to skewer him with their weapons; once again dealing massive damage if they connect. If out of range, they'll chuck their weapons at Leon like a Javelin Thrower. They are very similar to Concrete zombies, which pretty much function the same, except for the fact they're wielding pieces of ''rebar concrete", and swing their weapons in wide arcs.
- Chainsaw zombies come in two variants; normal zombies wielding chainsaws, who - while dangerous - are a Glass Cannon that can be dealt with as readily as a normal zombie as long as you kill them first. The second are only found in the ruins of Raccoon City, and they're practically a Mini-Boss; possessing a uniquely armored and spiky appearance, huge health pools, and a devastating chainsaw moveset, which has the ability to insta-kill Leon if you let their chainsaw land a hit.
- BSAA Zombies are practically a class unto themselves. Former BSAA soldiers who were infected during their failed assault on the ARK, they start showing up midway through Racoon City, and come in several variants. The first acts in a similar way to regular zombies, except for the fact they wear bullet-proof armor, and are very resistant to anything that isn't a headshot (some also wear helmets, which means you have to destroy that before you can damage them). The second are "kamikaze" zombies; BSAA soldiers brandishing grenades, whose gimmick is self-explanatory. The third and the most dangerous are the gun zombies; BSAA soldiers who are wielding assault rifles and remember how to use them; firing at the player from a range with powerful bursts that are so damaging they can nearly take Leon down in a single barrage if they aren't wearing body-armor. Speaking of which, they are often fully armored themselves, making them extremely threatening, and should be dealt with first.
- Regular zombies can revive after being "killed" as Blister Heads, a stronger, more durable, and faster variant with fleshy tumours bulging from their heads (which are their weak point). These are capable of a ramming attack that will One-Hit Kill you. If you kill these zombies by blowing up these tumours, the red mist that spurts out will mutate any other zombies (and revive any dead zombies) in the immediate vicinity as more Blister Heads. After a long enough time, a Blister Head will mutate into the Blister Borne, an even stronger, but much slower, variant that can only be killed by bursting the four tumour-like cysts over its body. Blister Heads are a lot more common on Insanity Difficulty.
- Emergency Broadcast: In the "Evil Has Always Had a Name" short film, the zombie outbreak in Raccoon City was initially signaled by sirens, then followed by the televised Raccoon City Emergency Broadcast."Due to the city-wide outbreaks, you are advised to take shelter at the Raccoon City Police Station. Food and medical supplies will be provided to everyone in need."
- The Ending Changes Everything:
- Alyssa's interview and follow-up correspondence with Patrick clarify that Spencer had a genuine sense of guilt for his actions that started the T-Virus, and that he admitted to Alyssa that he was wrong for trying to enforce his ideal new world at the expense of others. The reason why Spencer was so maniacal in 5 was revealed to have been caused by his deteriorating mental condition. Patrick, Spencer's butler mentions to Alyssa in a letter that he became increasingly unintelligible after the interview he gave to Alyssa, but that in one of his final lucid moments he wanted Grace to be entrusted to Alyssa as her new guardian.
- On a smaller scale within the game, Spencer's dying confession in Alyssa's interviews reveal that Grace is not an artificial human at all, but a random orphan that Spencer became very fond of. Everything Grace has been told by Zeno and Gideon about being "the key" was a misunderstanding on their part.
- End of an Age: With Elpis being fully secured by the BSAA who fully intends to spread the cure throughout the world, this marks the final end to the Umbrella Corporation story and the horrors of the Progenitor based viruses. It's further emphasized if the Commander was indeed HUNK, as his death marks the end of the last remaining major member of Umbrella who was unaccounted for at this point in the series.
- Enfant Terrible: Spencer's cloning project ran into complications in 1990 when the cloned children became feral and revolted against the Raccoon City Orphanage staff, which resulted in the deaths of numerous researchers.
- Escort Mission: There's one particular section wherein a helicopter that was carrying Grace and Emily has just crashed, causing Grace and Emily to try and flee to safety when zombies swarm the downed chopper. As Leon, you have to defend the fleeing noncombatants by taking out enemies from a nearby rooftop with a sniper rifle.
- Essence Drop: Defeated zombies leave infected blood which can be collected by Grace and used as a crafting component.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- When Zeno shows Grace footage which contains the Death of a Child towards the game's climax, Zeno seems to genuinely lament the child's fate, calling it a needless waste of a young life.
- The motives of a Greater-Scope Villain are also shown this way. The destruction of Raccoon City proved to be the nail in the coffin for Oswell Spencer's growing doubts about what he created after he was ousted from control of the Umbrella Corporation. Spencer wasn't one to be squeamish about death for the sake of progress, as shown by his cruel treatment of the Trevor family, the murder of James Marcus, etc. But Spencer never was one for needless death and destruction. And when Raccoon City got wiped off the map, Spencer realized that he Must Make Amends. Thus, he was compelled to create one last "masterpiece" to rid the world of the existence of the Progenitor virus and its derivatives by creating a perfect anti-viral counter called Elpis as part of his "requiem" for humanity. What stops this from being a full HeelβFace Turn is that Spencer is still a man with an enormous God complex, and he's unrepentant about the reasons why he created the B.O.W. scourge. But Spencer is at least willing to admit that his plan didn't work and that things have Gone Horribly Wrong.
- Everyone Has Standards: While the BSAA has been spiraling into a He Who Fights Monsters scenario after Village by starting to deploy their own B.O.W.s to combat the growing spread of them, soldiers at the epicenter of Raccoon City learning the truth of why Raccoon City was nuked are horrified to learn that it was never about containment of the spiraling infestation but to cover up loose ends by the Connections when it was clear that Umbrella lost control of the situation, meaning untold hundreds of thousands, if not millions, were killed when they could have been saved simply to keep the ledger clean.
- Everything-Is-Smashable Area: During the East Racoon City section of the game, Leon has to climb the Willis Tower to reach a detonator part, and part of it has collapsed on its side into another building, forming a precarious bridge. One section of it has the "floor" made of sectioned windows and those windows can easily break if Leon shoots them, if too many people (zombies included) step on a window at the same time, or if something heavy falls on them. Depending on the player's ingenuity, the breakable windows can turn into traps for the zombies or for Leon.
- Evil Chef: Early in the game, Grace encounters a zombie cook armed with an absurdly large butcher knife, messily preparing a meal in the kitchen. After escaping him, he begins patrolling the first floor of the west wing. Defeating him requires substantial firepower and rewards players with the "Order Up" achievement, as well as a key to the freezer if playing on Casual or Standard difficulties.
- Evil Is Not Well-Lit:
- In classic Resident Evil fashion, several areas that Grace has to navigate are not well-lit, leaving her with only the use of a lighter to see where she's going. It's more prominent during the early sections of Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, which has most of its rooms completely unlit in the dead of night.
- Half of Dr. Victor Gideon's scenes have him standing in a dimly lit room; his hideous facial features halfway obscured by shadows. This is to emphasize his sinister presence as he introduces himself to Grace with an ominous and threatening air.
- Evil Versus Evil: Grace's Report at the end reveals that the series has been a long struggle between the Connections and Umbrella. Spencer and friends were amoral criminals, the report doesn't deny, but they were of a Well-Intentioned Extremist variety who wished to build a better world after witnessing the horror of World War 2 and the Cold War. The Connections, meanwhile, are motivated purely by profit. They destroyed Umbrella after the Raccoon Incident to take over their operations and profit off bioweapons. Ultimately, Spencer had the last laugh as his final masterpiece turned out to be a cure for all of his creations, meaning the Connections' entire catalogue is now useless.
- Evolving Title Screen: The title screen initially shows Grace's cubicle in the FBI, albeit with gloomy lighting and music. After getting the "Hope" ending, the screen changes to reflect the cubicle's state in the post-credits scene; sunlight now brightens the room, photos of Grace, Emily and Alyssa are prominently shown, and the ending theme song, "Through the Darkness", faintly plays in the background.
- Exact Words: According to Oswell Spencer's notes, Elpis was created to be the "bioweapon to end all bioweapons", causing Zeno, Gideon, and the rest of The Connections to assume that it's a super powerful viral agent that surpasses Progenitor and its many variants. It turns out that Elpis is actually a super powerful antiviral agent, meaning it literally ends all bioweapons with a mere injection.
- Experienced Protagonist: Leon is 49 this time around, but it's abundantly clear that age hasn't slowed him down one bit, with his fast-paced action-oriented gameplay contrasting him to the scared out of her wits desk jockey Grace.
- Exploding Barrels: Leon can shoot or throw red gas canisters to blow up enemies or obstacles. Some zombies can also throw these at him.
- Eye Scream:
- In the Wrenwood Hotel, Grace tries to fight the zombified police officer by stabbing one of his eyes with a poker.
- If she has a knife in her inventory, Grace's counter-attack when she gets grabbed is a stab in the eye of the attacker.
- However, on the receiving end, zombies carrying scissors may stab Grace in the eye as part of her death animation.
- If a shot is particularly well-placed, a zombie's eyeball can be knocked out of its socket, where it will dangle by the optic nerve.
- Facial Horror:
- By default, zombies' faces look pretty rough, what with the wide, dead eyes, frozen expressions, and bloody wounds, but it can be made exponentially worse when fighting them, as they can have their faces absolutely mangled to remove eyeballs, jaws, and even expose their brain.
- The Girl AKA Marie, Emily's former friend-turned-abomination, has a horrifically disfigured face, with a giant bulging eyeball and distended mouth.
- Blister Heads rapidly undergo a transformation that obliterates their face, turning it into a malformed, blood-red mass of tumors with a massive jaw and no eyeballs to speak of.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: In the good ending, after Leon finally kills a mutated Victor, he realizes that he is cut off from Sherry and that Grace is heavily injured. As the ARK collapses around them and finding no way out, the two resign themselves to their deaths, and Leon sits beside her as the facility's lights go out. Moments later, a flashlight shines on the two from above, with several soldiers rappelling in; one of them asks Leon to confirm his identity before saying that he has a message for him from "Captain Redfield", indicating that they are Chris's Hound Wolf Squad and ensuring his and Grace's rescue.
- Familiar Ruins: The game eventually moves the story back to Raccoon City, almost thirty years after the events of Resident Evil 2 (Remake) and Resident Evil 3 (Remake), which ended with a thermobaric strike that leveled the NEST Facility and a large part of the city before being sealed up and left to rot. While Leon moves through the parts of the blasted downtown, the trope is fully in effect when he has to revisit the decrepit Raccoon City Police Department, which has most of its floorplan mimic the prior games, save what's inaccessible due to rubble. The end result is a somber tour that lets players see the game's iconic landmarks, like the Goddess Statue, the Library, and S.T.A.R.S office, now reduced to sad shadows of themselves.
- Fan Disservice: As Gideon initiates the Wrenwood outbreak, a panicked woman tries to seek help from a nearby man, only to suddenly kiss him. At this point though, she is already turning into a zombie, and then bites a chunk off the man's face.
- Fighting from the Inside: It's very, very easy to miss, but the police officer that's infected in the Wrenwood Hotel can be heard screaming "RUN!" in between his grunts once Grace begins to make a break for the fire exit.
- Final Dungeon Preview: During the segment in which you control Chloe in the Raccoon City Orphanage, you eventually end up in ARK. Umbrella's last remaining lab and ultimately where the game ends.
- Finishing Move: Just like in 6, Leon is capable of stylishly finishing off enemies complete with special camera movements, fitting his action-oriented gameplay; this includes him dodging under a chainsaw-wielding zombie before blowing its head off, hacking another zombie's head with the hatchet, and kicking a third's head in.
- Fiery Cover-Up: Deconstructed. Dropping a single, large explosive on a city, one that is still small enough that a helicopter at the city limits is only temporarily thrown into a spin rather than being destroyed (as seen in the good ending of Resident Evil 3 (Remake)), isn't a very good way to contain an outbreak, as shown by there still being a fair number of zombies from the original outbreak left in the city a few decades later. Because of this, there have been rumours in-universe that the missile strike wasn't simply an attempt at Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice, making it a Revealing Cover-Up, with one BSAA agent remarking that their encounter with some zombies in the ruins of Raccoon City must mean the rumours are true.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- In Room 202 of the Rhodes Hill care center, Grace can find a short storybook titled "The Shadow Ghost" which talks about a female entity that hides in the dark and stays away from the light. This Shadow Ghost turns out to be an actual creature that would stalk Grace moments later.Have you seen the Shadow Ghost hiding in the dark?
Have you seen the Shadow Ghost staying from the light?
Have you seen the Shadow Ghost? Because she's been watching you.
Stay in the light! - In the care center's attic, Leon can read a medical record of two brothers (Thomas K. Jackson and Timothy B. Jackson) who both gained an abnormally increased appetite and weight. This implies the Chunk previously encountered by Grace isn't the only one of its kind, and hints at Leon's imminent encounter with the other Chunk right at the very next room.
- Soon after arriving in the ruins of Raccoon City, Leon enters an area covered in huge webs, so large that cars are dangling from them. Guess what sort of enemy he has to fight a few seconds later.
- At the ARK, while looking over the files on her mother's MO disk, Grace spots a video file with her name on it. Watching it makes Grace realize why the bad guys are after her: she's Oswell Spencer's heir.
- In Room 202 of the Rhodes Hill care center, Grace can find a short storybook titled "The Shadow Ghost" which talks about a female entity that hides in the dark and stays away from the light. This Shadow Ghost turns out to be an actual creature that would stalk Grace moments later.
- Tile-Flipping Puzzle: Grace has to solve 3D puzzles when blood specimens are analyzed under the laser microscope. All atoms must be activated, but toggling one atom also toggles the adjacent atoms.
- Floorboard Failure: Glass variety. Near the top of the collapsed Willis Tower in Raccoon City, Leon will come across a large open room that was once the building's glass window facade. Given the state of the tower, it has instead become a precarious bridge of fragile panels that will shatter when damaged, sending any hapless victim standing on them plummeting to their doom in the trench below. Complicating matters significantly is the presence of many BSAA zombies, some of whom carry guns that they fire blindly with, and others with live grenades that can threaten to demolish large patches of windows instantly.
- Foil: Grace is struggling just to survive her campaign even against the weakest enemies, which is completely fair as she's only ever worked a desk job prior. In contrast, Leon, who by this point is one if not the best monster killer on Earth, absolutely bulldozes his way through the undead hordes. This contrast is reflected throughout their interactions with each other, as Grace tends to find herself being overwhelmed by her emotions and on the brink of despair, while the calm and collected Leon does his best to reassure her that they can make it out alive together.
- Foreshadowing:
- A report discovered in the Ark reveals that the NE-Ξ± parasite has been enhanced into a new NE-Ξ³ variant. By the end of the game, Victor Gideon is revealed to be the latest Nemesis, having been implanted with this upgraded parasite.
- In an added parallel to the Nemesis T-Type, one of the weapons wielded by Gideon is a rocket launcher, albeit an RPG-7 instead of the larger variants wielded by the T-Type prior.
- "Hope" is an Arc Words repeated throughout the story. Similarly, every faction in the story is seeking Elpis. Alyssa mentions in an interview with Spencer that "Elpis" is the name for the Greek goddess of hope and the last thing in Pandora's Box. This recontextualizes the final choice of Grace's story, where she has to choose to destroy Elpis or release it. This means she has to choose between "destroying hope" and "releasing hope", hinting at which choice will lead to the good ending.
- At no point in the game is Alyssaβs marital status mentioned, nor is it explained whom she married in order to become pregnant with Grace. It is only revealed near the end of the game that Grace and Alyssa are not actually blood-related. Grace was an orphan adopted by Lord Spencer, who then entrusted her to Alyssa to raise.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- At around the 1:35 timestampπ Image
of the "Evil Has Always Had a Name" short film, you can hear the Nemesis tyrant growling "S.T.A.R.S." His hulking silhouette can also be briefly seen approaching from the thick fog just behind the police car shortly before it explodes, indicating that he's what the police force are shooting at and that Nemesis had fired his signature rocket launcher in retaliation. - In Grace's flashback, we can see her browsing Reddit and discussing the Dulvey incident. Also doubles as Continuity Nod.
- In the "Hope" ending, Leon removes his gloves and puts a ring on his finger; it briefly reflects light when he walks away. His unlockable concept art corroborates this.
- At around the 1:35 timestampπ Image
- Frozen Face: Instead of the blank emotionless faces that previous zombie strains had, the zombie variants encountered in Requiem have frozen expressions that range from perpetual looks of fear, wailing despair, snarling anger, or even disturbing grins.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Grace getting bitten by the infected Officer Cole at the start of the game does not incur any actual health loss.
- Leon's Raccoon City Syndrome is in the late stages and he's shown coughing up blood and being weakened in specific cutscenes. This doesn't affect him at all in gameplay and he'll be hale and hearty without coughing, his aim swaying, or collapsing. Subverted by endgame, where all the punishment Leon has taken throughout the journey finally catches up with him and causes his symptoms to begin affecting him in gameplay.
- When Leon first meets Grace, he unloads a full cylinder of Requiem rounds into the Girl's head and then hands it to Grace before they're separated, yet the gun still has one bullet remaining when in Grace's possession when it should be empty (it's a 5-round cylinder). In fact, using up all of the Requiem's ammo as Leon before this point will still magically add the singular bullet to the gun when it's given to Grace.
- Gasoline Lasts Forever: Despite Raccoon City having been bombed and abandoned since 1998, all the gasoline Leon can find is still useable. One could argue that some has been brought in by the BSAA expedition, such as the generators at the camps, but it seems unlikely that they refueled the abandoned gas station and the chainsaws the zombies are using.
- Genre Shift: Grace's sections are based on modern Resident Evil titles (Resident Evil 7, Village, and Resident Evil 2 Remake) revisiting the survival horror root of the series with slower-paced and methodical gameplay that focuses more on horror and survival than action, meanwhile Leon's sections are much more action-oriented like Resident Evil 4, 5, and 6 with developers noting that it will be an evolution of Resident Evil 4 Remake's combat. Grace's gameplay is intended to be tense and fear inducing, whereas Leon's are meant to allow players to unwind afterwards. This is pronounced in the hospital section's gameplay, as Grace will have to focus more on stealth to survive, but once Leon's section starts in the same area he can start a massacre against the same bio-weapons that Grace had no chance against. Even the inventory systems are different between the two, with Grace's being the very limited approach from 7 and Leon's being his signature attachΓ© case with far more space from 4.
- Genre Throwback: With the protagonist as a brilliant, but socially awkward female FBI Agent investigating what appears to her bosses to be a Serial Killer, and the first quarter of the game going for a naturalistic tone more reminiscent of a grounded murder mystery thriller than Resident Evil, the game looks to be this to the Psychological Thrillers of The '90s like The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en.
- Ghost Butler: When Grace first meets Gideon, the door of the room they are both in mysteriously locks up by itself behind Grace, allowing Gideon to easily kidnap her. While it clearly seems like Gideon orchestrated that, it's never explained how exactly he pulled that trick off (and sure enough, he doesn't appear to able to do it again when, later, Grace escapes from his office in the Care Center).
- Giant Spider: The Titan Spinner appears while Leon scours the ruins of Raccoon City, after nearly two decades of spiders proper being absent from the series.
- Glass Cannon: The Connections Elite Guards, the first completely human Mooks fought in a mainline Resident Evil game. Being regular humans, albeit highly trained soldiers, they go down in just a handful of bullets or a single well-aimed shotgun or rifle shot, but are equipped with firearms (primarily assault rifles) and can shred Leon extremely quickly.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Umbrella (and later, the Connections) seems to have had a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach to the experiments with Emily and the whole lineup of clone children. Whatever their goal was, it probably wasn't "create a horde of super-strong giggling kids snapping everyone's necks" or "make a giant ceiling-dwelling ogre biting off zombie heads" or whatever the hell Emily mutates into.
- Good-Times Montage: The "Evil Has Always Had a Name" short film begins with a mother and daughter having fun in their home before the zombie outbreak hit Raccoon City.It wasn't always like this. I used to think we were lucky. I thought we had it all; a simple house, good life, Sunday mornings, dance-offs, afternoons at the park, storytime. It was our perfect little world... then it started.
- Gorn: This game is in the running for goriest Resident Evil game, and that's saying quite a bit, considering this series has a long history of showing off some extremely graphic content. Blood flies from wounds and cakes the environment and is even a gameplay mechanic, with Grace having to collect blood to craft certain items. Enemy skin and muscle tissue can be peeled away to reveal the skeleton beneath. Eyeballs can be shot out of sockets, jaws can be shot clean off of zombies' faces, limbs can be severed, and all of that is without getting into the levels of Body Horror on display via enemy mutations.
- Grand Finale: While hidden from promotional materials, Requiem serves as the conclusive finale to the "Umbrella Saga" that has been in motion since the very first game - by the end of the game, Elpis provides a permanent solution to all Progenitor Virus derivatives, Zeno's death finishes off the legacy of the Wesker Children, and with the Commander possibly being HUNK, the various Umbrella paramilitaries have finally gone completely defunct. Despite being dead for a few decades now, Spencer himself gets a share of the spotlight highlighting his state of mind during the final years of life, as well as clarity on what type of legacy he wanted to leave behind.. Perhaps to emphasize this, the final portion of the game sees the return of a few series mainstays, such as zombie dogs, lickers, a Giant Spider, a Tyrant, Plant 43, and most shocking of all, a Nemesis parasite, as if to conclusively emphasize that this is their last hurrah.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Various documents throughout the game establish that The Connections have been around at least as long as Umbrella. They funded James Marcus in hopes he would help them take control of Umbrella from Lord Spencer, and are implied to have had influence over if not outright been The Man Behind the Man behind both TRICELL and The Family (as well as H.C.F. according to a document in Resident Evil 7), as well as responsible for influencing the U.S. government to nuke Raccoon City in addition to masterminding the legal dissolution of Umbrella and the downfall of Spencer in order to absorb Umbrella's assets for themselves.
- Guide Dang It!:
- There's a cover mechanic that is never explicitly made clear to the player. Simply crouch next to a wall, and if you're close enough to the edge and aim, Grace or Leon will peek out and take aim. In third person, this also shifts the camera to the left of the character instead of the right, ensuring you still get a good look.
- As mentioned above, completing 'The Final Puzzle' challenge net the players a whopping 20,000 CP but the steps and hints for solving it are so obscured and convoluted that it can give the puzzles from Silent Hill games a run for their money:
- The "sweet pair": This part was so convoluted that initially, it was solved first by dataminers although the game vaguely hints at the steps. The "sweet pair" refers to Emily and Marie, but since Marie is presumably dead, you need to find a stand-in for Marie and the game associates Marie heavily with dolls as one is found in her cell and she collects them in the basement. A few documents and images in game vaguely hint at the basic steps of processing 115 infected bodies in the Processor in the basement and flushing a toilet 8 times but the steps themselves are so disconnected, it says a lot that people were trying anything like getting the pair of Singer zombies to a particular location or trying anything in any visible documents, finding meaning in an 'M' on a painting, etc. to fulfill this condition.
- Adding to the strangeness of this puzzle - during the segment on the conveyer belt, Grace can not personally kill a single zombie, only allowing them to be killed by the grinders. And if a single zombie is alive after the belt stops, the puzzle will not progress and you will need to reload a previous save. This doesn't make sense even within the puzzle's strange logic.
- The "voice": The voice is the Moon Logic Puzzle portion of the puzzle that can be reasoned abut in game with some clever thinking. When Grace and Emily escape from The Girl in the basement and her hand is chopped by the elevator, you can pick up the Severed Hand. Looking around the Care Center reveals it can be scanned with the Analyzer and solving the simple puzzle gives you "Let's play." message with a collection of RNA sequences. You may also notice that one of the previous puzzle boxes where you obtained the three quartz blocks can now be interacted with again. The meaning of the codes for the RNA sequences (GACU) can actually be found throughout the game if you pay attention to interactable objects and documents, and inputting the correct sequence into the puzzle box plays a voice clip of a young girl laughing. Having the sweet pair with you will complete the challenge.
- Gun Porn: In keeping with the trend set by recent entries of the franchise, Requiem has an immaculately detailed arsenal of weapons with in-depth animations and little touches that ensure they are accurate to their real-life counterpart (despite some liberties being taken from time to time for licensing purposes). This is best shown off during Grace and Leon's weapon unload and reload animationsπ Image
. In them, there are tons of tiny details like both characters performing press checks to confirm whether or not a round is in the chamber, Leon folding the stock on the Gal and the W780, putting the Classic 70 on safe before unloading it, holding his hand over the ejection port of the shotguns to prevent a live shell from flying out, inserting a live round back into a pistol magazine after ejecting it, and so on. Every one of these animations are also unique to each firearm; no animations are reused. This is all topped off by sound design that emphasizes the tactile, weighty feel of the guns, all of which are unique like the animations (compare the metallic sound of the Alligator Snapper to the more plasticky sound of the Matilda, for instance). - Half the Man He Used to Be: Many of Leon's death animations results in him getting torn or sliced apart in the most painful and brutal way possible.
- When running from the Tyrant in the ruins of the R.P.D., it uses a busted helicopter rotor at one point to chase Leon with. If you don't get away in time, the Tyrant spears Leon and tears him in two while he's immobilized on it. It can also do this during its Boss Battle if Leon is killed by his running attack.
- If Grace doesn't stop the zombie driving a bulldozer at her in the Garage in time, it painfully skewers her against a wall. Before the Game Over menu pops up, you can see her lower half fall off her body at the point of impact.
- Hammerspace: Played much straighter with Leon than Grace, but both protagonists can still carry around a lot of things in their pants' pockets. Leon in particular starts with a huge inventory that can be expanded further, and since it's grid-based rather than slot-based like Grace's, the player can have him carrying around a small arsenal's worth of guns, ammo, and explosives with space to spare.
- Hand Cannon:
- The titular Requiem is a powerful magnum revolver that's about twice as large as a regular handgun. True to form, it blows apart any normal zombie with a single shot and can even pierce through multiple zombies if they're shambling together in a roughly straight line. Leon wields it throughout the game, lending it to Grace for Rhodes Hill.
- Beating the game once unlocks the Ghost Grudge, a pocket-sized counterpart to the Requiem that uses the same ammo type and does slightly more damage per shot, but can't be upgraded. While somewhat Overshadowed by Awesome by the Requiem itself, the Ghost Grudge provides a good alternative to it during Leon's Rhodes Hill segments after he's already loaned it to Grace.
- Redemption, a break-action pistol used by Zeno. Despite only holding a single round, it is capable of blowing straight through BSAA body armour as seen in a helmet cam recording.
- Handicapped Badass: It doesn't affect him in gameplay until the finale, but Leon's suffering from Raccoon City Syndrome. It doesn't stop him from being a One-Man Army.
- Happy Ending Override: After an article written by her in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard confirmed that she canonically survived the events of Outbreak, this game reveals that Alyssa Ashcroft is brutally murdered right in front of her daughter in 2018.
- Hard Mode Perks: As the Harder Than Hard mode, Insanity also offers a few tweaks in the player's favor.
- The R.I.P knife is exclusively found and craftable on Insanity difficulty while playing as Grace, where its main gimmick is that enemies killed by it will drop more infected blood. It's also decently more powerful and durable than the other knife options that are available to Grace at any given time, which can come in handy given the increased enemy health on Insanity.
- Unlocking the R.I.P knife recipe also lets Grace craft handgun ammo in batches of 30, which is not possible on easier modes.
- Antique Coins are generally a lot more common during Grace's Rhodes Hill levels than on Standard and Casual.
- Credit gains from kills are doubled for Leon's levels, and tracking modules can be found much earlier, with many spawning during the Rhodes Hill segment. Leon also has access to the Level 3 combat armor upgrade on this difficulty.
- An unintentional example of this is technically a detriment against the player, but can be exploited to their advantage. On Insanity difficulty, enemies also attack much more frequently, allowing players who have mastered the technique of parrying to effectively "fence" and deal high damage to said enemies extremely quickly by countering them into a vulnerable state. In particular, the boss fight against The Commander can very quickly end in Leon's favor if the player is adept at parrying, due to said boss' significantly more frequent attacks that can be countered.
- Harder Than Hard: Beating the game unlocks "Insanity" difficulty, which massively bumps up enemy stats (especially damage and speed), remixes both item placement and certain encounters (for example: pushing the cart behind the zombie chef in the kitchen is much slower in Insanity, making getting around him an entirely different encounter), and enforces Classic's typewriter save restrictions on top of it.
- Harmful to Minors: At the Wrenwood Hotel in 2018, a teenage Grace was forced to witness the hotel manager and her mother Alyssa both get their throats slit by a hooded assassin.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: Oswell E. Spencer, the Greater-Scope Villain responsible for much of the horrors of the series by creating Umbrella, actually felt guilt after the Raccoon City incident and rise of B.O.W.s in the military industry. He felt so guilty that he went on to create one final "masterpiece" in an attempt to atone. That masterpiece was Elpis, an anti-viral agent capable of instantaneously curing any and all Progenitor-related viruses. Spencer also cared for an infant Grace after she was orphaned as a result of his actions, and gave her to Alyssa when his health declined so she could be raised as a normal child and unlock Elpis when the time was right as Spencer's "requiem". What stops this from being a full HeelβFace Turn on Spencer's part is that he remains entirely unapologetic about why he started Umbrella, as shown in his last moments against Wesker in 5 β Spencer never lost his God complex and was convinced he was destined to lead humanity into a new era. It's just recontextualized here that Spencer didn't anticipate the catastrophe his actions would bring. So while Spencer admits his plan didn't work and that things got way out of hand, he doesn't regret anything; the closest he gets to repentance is using Grace and Elpis to stop things from getting any worse.
- Head Crushing: Unlike the similar kill in Resident Evil 2 Remake where it crushes the front of the player's face, the Tyrant has a kill animation on Leon where it will grab Leon by the throat and pop his entire head with its other hand. There is no discretion shot unlike Resident Evil 2 Remake, and you will see gore with Leon's headless body dropped to the ground.
- Hell Hotel: The Wrenwood Hotel is in a horrific state of disrepair since it was condemned in 2018, with boarded-up windows, decaying walls, and stagnant water pooling in the hallways.
- Hero of Another Story:
- The "Evil Has Always Had a Name" trailer focuses on an unnamed single mother as she desperately tries to save herself and her young daughter during the Raccoon City incident. She ultimately fails, and became one of the many zombies that were gunned down by the U.S. government's task forces.
- In the "Hope" ending, Leon and Sherry discuss Chrisβs absence despite the presence of the Hound Wolf Squad. Leon expresses confidence that he will reunite with their mutual friend sooner or later.
- High-Pressure Blood: If a zombie has a limb or their head shot off, blood erupts from the wound like a geyser, coating every single surface nearby in the process.
- Hijacked by Ganon: The initial Big Bad of the game is Victor Gideon, a former Umbrella scientist and devoted follower of Spencer's ideology. As the game goes on, we learn he is being funded by the Connections with his boss being none other than Zeno, an implied clone of the series' most infamous recurring villain Albert Wesker. After Gideon's apparent death in the motorcycle chase, Zeno takes over as the primary antagonist. Subverted in the "Hope" ending after Zeno accidentally depowers himself with Elpis, leading Gideon to behead his troublesome employer and reclaim the main villain title for himself.
- Hint System: The Game Over screen displays gameplay tips which can either be general or contextually specific depending on how you died. It may even be straightforward enough to tell you exactly how to get past a given enemy.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Leon can grab the weapons of staggered or killed zombies and use them against other zombies. On lower difficulties, this will almost always result in a One-Hit Kill, while on Insanity mode it will still deal huge damage and stagger the zombie for Leon to take out with a Finishing Move. If you're quick enough, you can throw a weapon at a zombie in the process of transforming into a Blister Head to kill them instantly before they can finish mutating.
- Hold the Line: Grace has to fend off a large number of zombies in the isolation ward while waiting for Emily to retrieve the Star Quartz.
- Hope Spot: Emily solves the Braille puzzle and retrieves the Star Quartz, but she's immediately abducted by The Girl, forcing Grace to follow them both in the care center's basement.
- Human Resources: The care center recycles bodies into blood using a meat grinder in the basement for Victor's experiments, and buckets of blood can be found in several rooms around the building. One file mentions a researcher being sent to "Processing" by higher-ups after finding a replacement for them.
- Hypocritical Humor: Leon says Victor "Should've worn a helmet." after defeating the latter in the motorcycle chase, yet Leon himself isn't wearing one.
- Idle Animation: Stay in one place in a safe room for a few minutes and both Grace and Leon will unload and stow the weapon they're currently holding.π Image
This is just an animation however; despite Grace not retreiving the bullet in the chamber like Leon in some cases, your ammo count will remain the same. Once you leave the safe room afterwards, a special reload animation for the weapon will play. - Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
- Zombies carrying makeshift spears can do this to Leon as part of his death animation. On the other hand, one notable instance is the T-501 Tyrant utilizing a large piece of debris as a weapon to impale Leon with it. Should it succeed, said Tyrant proceeds to brutally rip him in half.
- This will also happen to Grace if she's unable to stop the bulldozer zombie in the Garage, where it will brutally impale her against a wall.
- Improvised Weapon:
- When Grace wakes up Strapped to an Operating Table in the care center, she escapes her bindings by breaking a glass vial being used to collect her blood and using it to cut herself out of the straps.
- The makeshift knives that Grace can use to escape from grapples are a scissor blade with tape wound around the handle.
- Empty bottles can be thrown at monsters, but unsurprisingly, they'll do basically nothing. You're supposed to use them as distractions or craft them into Molotovs and acid vials.
- The new T-Virus zombies retain some of their pre-infection intelligence, and are capable of using objects they had on them, such as glass bottles or IV stands, as weapons. The zombies in Raccoon City can even dig up rebar clubs to attack Leon with.
- Leon can steal the weapons used by fallen zombies as improvised throwing weapons that can knock another down for a melee attack or even a Finishing Move, showing how experienced he is that he can effortlessly turn one armed zombie into two potential kills.
- Incurable Cough of Death: People infected with Raccoon City Syndrome will cough every now and then sometimes even cough up blood. Once they reach stage 3 of the infection, it only gets worse and the coughing becomes more uncontrollable. Leon reaches this stage when he rescues Grace from Zeno in ARK and a new gameplay mechanic is introduced in which he will periodically have hacking fits which can make combat more difficult, especially when fighting Lickers. Leon gets better though once Grace releases Elpis.
- Infinity -1 Sword:
- Certain unlockable charms offer straight upgrades to certain guns that the game practically spells out as suggested weapons of choice to end an initial playthrough before the player starts hunting down unlockable weapons.
- The Marksman 1A and the BSAA Emblem charm can be acquired in quick succession, with the former being a semi-automatic rifle with a removable scope, and the latter being a charm that increases the firepower of unscoped rifles. Pairing the two gives you an effective battle rifle to carry you through to the end of the game.
- The Power Shades charm is a flat upgrade to Requiem, granting "limitless" penetration and extra firepower for the last bullet in the cylinder β an advantage hard to ignore.
- The unlockable "Ghost Grudge" revolver. It's not quite as strong as the Requiem (nothing is) but it can regularly kill zombies in one hit and it fires, aims and reloads faster than the Requiem, making it more viable in a frenzied situation, assuming you don't have to worry about ammo.
- Certain unlockable charms offer straight upgrades to certain guns that the game practically spells out as suggested weapons of choice to end an initial playthrough before the player starts hunting down unlockable weapons.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The titular Requiem gun, a massive beast of a magnum that both main characters get to use throughout most of the game. Ammo scarcity and a slow aiming time are the only things holding it back, as it can one-shot most non-boss enemies. It's also guaranteed to blow off zombies' heads to prevent them from becoming Blister Heads later. It can even be used to stun the otherwise-indestructible "The Girl" monster in an emergency.
- In Medias Res: The story's timeline isn't exactly straightforward as it often jumps between flashbacks and the present day, on top of following two parallel perspectives between Grace and Leon.
- Interface Spoiler: The description of the body armor Leon can purchase says that it's good at protecting against bullets, despite the player having never faced any kind of enemy that uses them throughout the game so far. Sure enough, later on, enemies with guns show up in the form of both the infected BSAA agents and the Elite Guards.
- Invincible Boogeymen:
- Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center features a monster called The Girl with claws the size of dinner plates and jaws large enough to bite Grace's head clean off. There's nothing the unarmed Grace can do to fight this stalking beast off, forcing her to hide, distract it with the noise of thrown bottles, and run for dear life to escape it. Worse still, it's a persistent predator who will follow the sound of Grace's footsteps, breathing, and the glow of the lighter she needs to see in the dark. The Girl can even Wall Crawl, allowing it to stalk Grace across floors and drop down when she least expects it. The only thing that can hurt The Girl is the glow of the center's few functioning white-light lamps, which burns its skin if it gets too close. Any room with functional lamps become a much-needed source of respite.
- Subverted later, as Leon is packing more than enough firepower to not only hurt The Girl, but blow its skull to bits with repeated shots from the Requiem. And subverted again when even THAT was not enough to put it down for good as The Girl has a regenerative ability. This comes back to bite Grace in the ass HARD later.
- It Can Think:
- The monster at the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center is bestial in its mannerisms, but far from mindless as hiding in the same spot one too many times will have it find and catch Grace if the player isn't careful. It can also weaponize the environment to its advantage, such as knocking rolling tables into Grace and creating holes in the ceiling so that it can ambush her later. It also speaks one line:
"Let's... play."- The game features an advanced type of zombie that can still speak and operate equipment like chainsaws, suggesting a higher level of intelligence than past zombie strains. It's later elaborated that Requiem's particular breed of zombies retain characteristics from when they were alive, including limited speech and thought patterns. A Connections bioweapons inventory file you can find in the ARK indicates that The Connections have been experimenting on existing Raccoon City zombies by enhancing them with a second, modified strain of the T-virus, which explains their more advanced behavior. This is likely tied to the "blood memory" experiments they've been conducting.
- Item Crafting: There's a dedicated crafting menu for creating ammo and other consumable resources, provided you learn their recipes and have the necessary components. Grace has to manually acquire recipes through external means (such as analyzing blood samples or reading a file), but Leon automatically learns a resource's recipe upon picking it up for the first time.
- Jawbreaker: In yet another display of Gorn, a gunshot can completely remove a zombie's lower jaw, sometimes even revealing their still-attached tongue flopping around. Arguably worse, a gunshot can partially remove a zombie's jaw, leaving the exposed bone to dangle by some loose mangled flesh.
- Jump Scare: The Titan Spinner Giant Spider boss does this a few times. It's a Super-Persistent Predator once it catches sight of Leon, chasing him through the ruins of Raccoon City before it culminates in a boss fight. As it does, the Titan Spinner will pop out of nearby windows at certain locations with no warning that it's coming.
- Just Add Water: The crafting system for Grace's portions of the game is incredibly ludicrous as it is centered around mixing ingredients with infected blood of all things. Medicine like steroids or stabilizers hardly makes sense already, but it is quite something for Grace to make bullets out of the stuff and metal!
- Last Chance Hit Point: The Eye Spy charm gives Grace a random chance to survive regular attacks that would have otherwise been fatal, by having the hits reducing her to 1 HP instead.
- Last-Second Ending Choice: Grace is given a choice at the end of the story to enter the correct password to release Elpis or sabotage Zeno's plans by deliberately entering the wrong password to destroy Elpis.
- Releasing Elpis unlocks the good ending, where it turns out Elpis is not a viral bioweapon at all, but an antiviral created to nullify all viral bioweapons derived from the Progenitor Virus, meaning Zeno unknowingly orchestrated his own downfall. Leon is cured of his T-Virus infection by Elpis, Zeno is killed by Gideon, and then Gideon battles Leon in a Final Boss fight. Leon and Grace are then rescued by the Hound Wolf Unit, the Connections falls under investigation as their nefarious activities become public, and Emily is cured of her mutation and adopted by Grace.
- Destroying Elpis unlocks the bad ending, where Leon fights Zeno in a final stand to allow Grace to escape the ARK before it self-destructs, leaving her the only survivor. Without any hope of a cure, everyone with Raccoon City Syndrome is doomed to die very soon and the Connections can continue its villainous activities with little more than a minor setback.
- Le Parkour: Leon can easily vault over obstacles and vehicles while sprinting. During his traversal of the ruins of Raccoon City, he's also capable of leaping across gaps in the floors.
- Letters 2 Numbers: As the official title card is shown near the end of the Reveal Trailer, the letter "q" in "requiem" repeatedly turns into the number "9" for a split second, giving the game its alternate stylized title of RESIDENT EVIL re9uiemπ Image
β. This continues the trend of the previous two mainline games inserting the game's number into a word within the title, made more obvious by the number having a different font color.note The Roman numeral VII in the word "Evil" for the English version of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the number 7 in the letter "Z" for the Japanese version of Biohazard 7: Resident Evil, and the Roman numeral VIII in the word "Village" for Resident Evil Village. 9 can also be read as 'ku' in Japanese, potentially making it something of a play on that as well (the "Requiem" of the title is "Rekuiemu" when literally transcribed in Japanese). - Ludicrous Gibs:
- Grace can use limited-use items on stunned or unaware zombies called hemolytic injectors, which are vials of mutated blood that have to be inserted at close range. When a hemolytic injector is used on a zombie that's stunned or unaware, it's a One-Hit Kill; on downed enemies, the injector prevents the zombie from getting back up as a Blister Head. Either way, the zombie explodes into a shower of blood and gore, painting the nearby walls and floor with viscera.
- This is also one of Grace's most horrible potential deaths. If she doesn't stay far enough away from the processing area's grinder during its Hold the Line section, she'll be pulled in shrieking as it blends her into human mince.
- Grenades and other explosives will typically reduce zombies in the blast zone to a fine red mist and paint the ground with blood. The Requiem's shots also have a similar effect when aimed at a zombie's center mass.
- Magic Antidote: At the end of the game, choosing to release Elpis reveals it to be an antidote for all Progenitor Virus strains. Zeno injects it into himself without realizing it and inadvertently loses his powers. Grace takes the opportunity to use Elpis on Leon to cure him of his Raccoon City Syndrome which was currently in its near-terminal phase, but he also is instantly cured of all of the black bruises on his body and isn't worse for wear, despite the fact that the black bruising would've been ravaging his insides. The epilogue also reveals that Grace was able to successfully cure Emily after her horrific transformation and a photo of them together on Grace's desk at the FBI shows that it even managed to cure her blindness too.
- Master of Unlocking: Both protagonists have their own means of defeating a locked door or object.
- Grace takes after her mother's signature skill, and can use disposable pick sets to open locked drawers around Rhodes Hill for rare supplies. Doing so for the first time unlocks the achievement "Like Mother, Like Daughter".
- Leon has a more blunt approach to this, where he uses the flat head of his hatchet as a crowbar to pry open doors instead, completely bypassing the lock in the process.
- Meaningful Echo:
- When Leon sees Gideon taking Grace away in Wrenwood and starts to chase him, his Mission Control says, "Don't do anything stupid." and he replies, "Me? Never." Later, as Leon is driving to Raccoon City, Sherry says that she has been stonewalled when trying to investigate Elpis, but insists that she will go rogue to help him; Leon says, "Just don't do anything too risky, yeah?", only for her to reply, "Me? Never."
- Grace gives an unintentional one to Leon near the final act when he tries to get her to stay behind and she tells him "Whatever it takes, count me in!" There's no accompanying flashback, but it's clear from the look on Leon's face that her words struck a chord by reminding him of when he said much the same thing all those years ago, making him realize how similar the two of them actually are.
- Meaningful Name:
- Elpis, the final bioagent created by Oswell E. Spencer, is named after the final spirit that was caught in Pandora's Box. If you know your mythology well, you know that spirit's name means Hope; Elpis is a failsafe that Oswell designed when he realized Progenitor-based bioweapons were too strong to control, and it is a natural predator of the T-Virus. In the good ending, trusting that Oswell was sincere about his last-minute redemption saves Leon from a Progenitor infection and allows the BSAA to use it to finally manufacture a vaccine for the T-Virus, breaking Umbrella's Villainous Legacy.
- Requiem has different meanings for multiple people. For Grace, it's about redeeming her self perceived failure for Alyssa's death by trying to save Emily. For Leon, his anti-BOW activities and work with the DSO stemmed from witnessing the fall of Raccoon City first hand and being powerless to stop it, with Emma Kendo's death having affected him the most. Finally, for Oswell E. Spencer, after witnessing the horrors his research has wrought and the consequences of the corporate espionage causing Raccoon City's destruction, decided that his last act as a sane individual would be to complete his Elpis antiviral project and leave video evidence behind about unlocking it for Grace's sake, calling it his requiem for the lives lost because of his despicable actions.
- Mercy Mode: If you die enough times on Standard difficulty, the Game Over screen will offer the chance to lower the difficulty to Casual.
- Misconstrued Pedestal: The Reveal makes Grace into this for Zeno and Gideon. Because Grace was Spencer's daughter and she was given to a nobody reporter, Zeno and Gideon come to the conclusion that she must be important. Connecting this to her resemblance to the various clones Spencer used for test subjects, they assume she is the successful mind-transfer-for-immortality clone with Spencer's memories, including the password for Elips. The truth is that Grace is a nobody. She's an actual orphan from the orphanage that Spencer took a liking to and became his Morality Pet. She only knows the password because, as an FBI Analyst, she figures it out from various clues.
- The Misophonic: In the care center, the zombie with a Bandaged Face despises noise, constantly complaining when he hears sudden sounds (which can be caused by a broken object, the player, or other zombies). Loud sounds particularly make him aggressive enough to track the source of the noise and swing his IV stand towards it. A medical record identifies him as a patient named Martin L. Case who was diagnosed with having auditory hallucinations.
- Mistaken for Profound: Gideon is ecstatic once he learns The Reveal. When it turns out Elpis is an anti-viral, he believes it's all part of a ploy to create anarchy. By creating a world whose most dangerous weapons are based on the T-Virus, having an anti-viral that cures anything T-Virus related would make the world's weapon stockpiles defunct overnight. Really, Spencer just had a change of heart, something Gideon cannot understand.
- Molotov Cocktail: After learning the necessary item recipe, Grace can craft molotov cocktails out of empty bottles and infected blood.
- Money Is Experience Points: Antique Coins make a return from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and can be used to buy upgrades for Grace, such as a health upgrade, a pouch upgrade, and an upgrade to hold more blood. Meanwhile, Leon can buy items and upgrades by spending credits at a shop.
- Mood Whiplash:
- The "Evil Has Always Had a Name" short film begins with the child hiding in the closet while a tense music builds up, implying that she's hiding from something sinister. The closet is opened, and it turns out she was merely playing with her mom.
- The general tone of the game frequently changes depending on which of the two protagonists you are playing, with Grace's segments being more tense and horror focused and Leon's being much more action oriented.
- Musical Nod:
- When Leon opens the doors to the RPD for the first time in 28 years, a somber remix of the original Resident Evil 2's police station theme begins to play, most prominently with the recurring piano riff.
- Towards the end of the game, a remixed version of Resident Evil 2's saferoom theme plays when Leon gets emotional recalling his traumatic experience in Raccoon City.
- Mythology Gag:
- When starting a new game, the main menu screen will fade to white, leaving the subtitle "requiem" violently twitching in black. This is identical to how the remake of the original game began once you selected your player character, with their name twitching against a white background.
- Leon's license plate number is 9642, the numbers of each mainline game he has been in so far counting this one.
- The Musical Nod described above also doubles as a Mythology Gag. When Leon opens the doors to the RPD for the first time in 28 years, a somber remix of the original Resident Evil 2's police station theme begins to play, most prominently with the recurring piano riff. Also, the gameplay in this part begins with the camera panning from the ceiling and down to the ground in front of Leon, just like in the original 2.
- The Deluxe Editionπ Image
β includes alternate outfits for Leon that either make him wear his jacket from Resident Evil 4 (Remake) or his formal suit from Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. Grace also has one that makes her cosplay as Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village. Even better is that the artwork for Grace in the Lady Dimitrescu outfit matches the official artwork for Lady Dimitrescu herself. - In the original Resident Evil 4, Leon found himself bound by rope to Luis. After he escapes, he tells Hunnigan that he was "a bit tied up". Here, Leon ends up tied up during an interrogation by Victor, and after he escapes, he says the exact same line to Sherry.
- One of the BSAA containers in Raccoon City secretly has zombies inside it, just like in Resident Evil: Extinction when Alice's group approached a suspicious zombie-filled container in Las Vegas.
- Leon separates Grace from Zeno after reaching PANDORA, and the duo lands on a conveyor leading to garbarge disposal. Leon tries to reassure her with "Feel like a million bucks", the same thing he told Ashley after she asked him how he was feeling after she removed the Plagas from his body.
- Like in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, the Final Boss is a Nemesis and is finished off by being shot multiple times by a Hand Cannon, with the protagonist dropping a Pre-Mortem One-Liner before the final blow.
- Once again, Leon has to fight zombie dogs on the highway while riding a bike.
- When Leon encounters the new Tyrant, it hurls him into a wall with a single straight punch to the stomach. Leon sarcastically remarks that he βremembers that.β This is a nod to Resident Evil: Damnation, where he was attacked by a T-103 using the same move.
- Named Weapons: This game has a few weapons that are referred to by exotic nicknames to highlight their Ace Custom nature, and most of which are usable by Leon.
- Leon carries a revolver named "Requiem", a beastly Hand Cannon that can One-Hit Kill most lesser enemies at the cost of using rare ammunition. He later loans this to Grace, allowing her to use it during her Rhodes Hill levels.
- Leon's signature sidearm is the "Alligator Snapper", a highly customized SIG-Sauer P320.
- The Commander of the Connections Elite Guard carries a custom hatchet named "Mortal Edge", which can be looted off of him after his boss fight, and unlockable for purchase by beating the game.
- Zeno's "Redemption" pistol is another Hand Cannon that can blow straight through body armor to tear off limbs and turn heads into chunky salsa. It becomes an unlockable purchase available in Leon's sections after beating the game and buying it in the bonus features shop.
- Lastly, Grace gets in on the fun as well with the unlockable "Freya's Needle", otherwise only used by Leon during the Raccoon City motorcycle chase.
- Next Sunday A.D.: The game released in February 2026, but it's set in October 2026. Other than the autumn setting, there's functionally nothing different from the day of release.
- New Game Plus: A strange example for the series, in that after your first playthrough, subsequent playthroughs put in Supply Boxes and the point-based enemy kill shop system for Leon's sections from the very start, but Grace gets no substantial changes herself. Items and upgrades also do not carry over between playthroughs, as the game never asks for a save to "continue" a new playthrough from. Instead, getting unlockable items from the Bonus Content shop allows you to pull them from Grace's supply boxes or buy them from Leon's, granting an extra edge on subsequent runs (or in Leon's case, even add a third tier of upgrades for everything) and allowing players to experience the full breadth of what there is to offer. And considering Insanity Mode, you'll probably need it.
- New Eyes, New HUD: Grace and Leon both have different health gauges: Grace has the traditional "heart-rate monitor" gauge that turns redder the lower her health is, while Leon has the circular gauge similar to Resident Evil 4.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: In the years following Umbrella's public disgrace and collapse, its main competitor, The Connections, have been pouring their resources into unlocking the mysterious βElpisβ at the heart of ARKβs secure storage vault, believing it to be Spencerβs magnum opus - a bioweapon to end all others. None of them have a clue that Elpis is actually a powerful anti-viral agent that's intended to purge all Progenitor based viral agents. In the good ending, Grace releases Elpis at Zeno's demand, effectively bringing the downfall of the BOW market and The Connections' wicked plans. The irony of it all is that, in their short-sighted hubris, the Connections unintentionally gave the good guys the perfect means to cripple them, probably for good.
- Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: In Room 202 of the Rhodes Hill care center, a particular crayon drawing of two girls shows them being "swallowed" by the large mouth of a black monster implied to be the "Shadow Ghost" mentioned in a nearby storybook.
- No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Leon is usually depicted with his primary Alligator Snapper sidearm in cutscenes even if it had been sold at a supply chest and is no longer in his in-game inventory.
- No Dead Body Poops: Averted with the patient zombies in Gideon's Care Center, with these zombies having poop stains and even piss stains on their crotch, implied they soiled their pants after death. Alternatively it could be a sign that zombies don't bother with going to the bathroom (loss of cognitive function) and just poop in their pants as is. Some zombies can even be seen with vomit stains on their shirt, implying that their mutation into a zombie was painful and disorienting.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
- Zeno delivers one to Leon in the ARK; despite roughing him up, Leon is able to nearly cut off Zeno's right hand in the struggle. He delivers an even worse one to Leon in the "Destroy Elpis" ending, which unfortunately is more successful and ends in Leon's death.
- The Noisy Zombies with I.V. stands will do this to any noise source that they reach the point of. If you're killed by them, they smash Leon and Grace in the head with their stands so hard that it leaves them stunned long enough for the zombie to savagely beat them into the ground to death.
- No Range Like Point-Blank Range: One of Leon's new moves is to point blank shoot an enemy. And he can do that with the shotguns and the magnum.
- Non-Linear Sequel: Requiem takes place some time after Village's main story as a standalone sequel. However, it also takes place in between the 16 year Time Skip shown in Village's epilogue, therefore years before the Shadows of Rose DLC campaign.
- Nostalgia Level: The return to the Raccoon Police Department (or what's left of it), which has the same layout as it did in Resident Evil 2 (Remake) with the same music, as well as a few other nods to past RE games.
- Notice This:
- Just like the previous Resident Evil games made in the RE Engine, Requiem uses shades of the color yellow to highlight things that are worth checking out; breakable boxes have yellow tape, breakable vases have yellow or gold accents, a toolbox needed by Grace is found near a yellow emergency light, files that provide hints to puzzles have yellow text, and so on.
- Mr. Raccoon Memoriams constantly make a rattling sound when you're near them.
- Off with His Head!: Getting caught in the Girl's lethal embrace will end in Grace getting her head bitten off if she doesn't have enough health to survive the attack. The monster will then devour the rest of Grace's corpse off-screen.
- Oh, Crap!: Leon by this point has Seen It All and is usually unfazed by most of the horrors he encounters... but seeing a Tyrant having seized a missile from a downed helicopter and about to throw it at him like a javelin gets him immediately running for cover.Leon: Fuck me.
- Older Than They Look: While he's looking pretty grizzled by now, Leon is still in great shape for a man pushing 50. And forty year old Sherry Birkin looks to be in her late twenties at most, though that could be G-Virus related.
- One-Hit Kill:
- Grace can create "hemolytic injectors" from the blood of the infected. These syringes cause normal zombies to explode violently into a shower of blood and gore upon injection, preventing the zombies from mutating into a more dangerous form. But the inherently limited supply of these items means that they must be used sparingly and wisely.
Grace: [disgusted and horrified after making a zombie explode] That's too effective...- The Blister Heads have their own nasty headbutt charge that, if it connects, instantly kills either Grace or Leon as it knocks them down and leaves them open for the Blister Head to run in and clamp its jaws over their throat.
- In Leon's sections, he's capable of impaling zombies through the back with the chainsaw. However, this may not kill them, but instead make them absolutely lethal, because now they have a running chainsaw through their bodies that will, if they manage to grab onto Leon, instantly impale him as well, resulting in an instant kill.
- As in many Resident Evil games, the rocket launcher in this game, an RPG-7, is capable of mowing down everything in one shot, including bosses.
- One-Hit Polykill: The Requiem's bullets can penetrate zombies, letting you potentially kill two with one shot. The Power Shades charm grants "limitless" penetration and extra firepower on the last shot in the magazine, letting you hit as many zombies as you can line up in a row. The Trusted Companion charm lets any gun hit a second zombie behind the initial victim.
- One-Man Army: Being 49 years old hasn't slowed Leon in the slightest, effortlessly destroying every monster in front of him. Not even being "at death's door" can do more than momentarily halt him, though once he begins vomiting copious amounts of blood Leon does finally get brought down.
- Orphanage of Fear: The Raccoon City Orphanage proves to be a horrific place even before Birkin and Chief Irons take control. In 1990, cloned girls are subjected to cruel experiments, and an outbreak eventually occurs when they lose their sense of identity and rebel against their captors. In the basement, a there is a crypt that contains an entire row of child-sized coffins.
- Opposite-Sex Clone: Oswell Spencer had a cloning program running since 1990 if not earlier, dedicated to a kind of legacy immortality so that even long after his death, the clones would live on and inherit his memories. For some reason, all of the clones were little girls.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The zombies that Gideon unleashes are a little different than classic T-types, being more akin to C-virus zombies, in that they are just barely smart enough to hold onto a melee weapon. Some of them even speak, but it's usually something incoherent based on their most recent thoughts before being transformed.
P-Z
- Paint the Town Red: Blood absolutely coats the environments. Gunshots send blood flying all across the walls and floor, headshots and limb severs send High-Pressure Blood spurting from the wound all across the nearest surfaces, Leon's finishers typically involve tons of blood erupting from where an enemy's head used to be, and all of that is just from player actions; the aftermath of certain enemy rampage are just as, if not more bloody.
- Panacea: This is the true nature of what Elpis really is. The Connections and various organizations around the globe are led to believe that Elpis is some kind of final super-virus developed by Spencer before his death, locked away inside the ARK facility, which is why The Connections had Raccoon City bombed to ensure they would be the first to get their hands on it. In reality, Elpis was designed to be an antiviral agent that could cure every single bioweapon derived from the Progenitor Virus that all of Umbrella's work is based on. Sure enough, it not only instantly cures a terminally ill Leon from his T-Virus infection, it also removes Zeno's Wesker-like superhuman abilities and is even capable of reversing the monstrous mutation that Emily suffered from. Thanks to Elpis, Umbrella's legacy is finally ended for good and deals a crippling blow to the international bioweapon black market by making all known virus-based weapons useless.
- Panic Attack: Grace has a couple of moments where she has full-blown panic attacks, almost collapsing in terror as she's hyperventilating. The first is right after witnessing the hooded man slit the owner of the Wrenwood Hotel's throat immediately followed by Alyssa gunning him down, where she even says that she feels like she's going to vomit before Alyssa helps bring her back by holding her hands and comforting her. The second one is when she is led to believe that she's an Artificial Human, specifically a clone meant to inherit the memories of Oswell E. Spencer. While this ends up being untrue, she has no way of knowing that in the moment and exhibits many of the same signs as her panic attack during the incident at the Wrenwood Hotel.
- Parrying Bullets: Played straight but not in the way you'd think. While Leon can't parry actual gunshots, he can deflect rockets that Victor fires at him during the final boss fight. Timed correctly, he can return the rocket right back to its sender, dealing heavy damage.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password to unlock Elpis, the uncovering of which was the whole reason Grace was kidnapped, turns out to be "Hope", which is just the Greek word the virus is named after translated to English. The only reasons the villains haven't accessed it yet is because 1: the facility is rigged with a self-destruct system that would destroy the supposed virus if even one wrong password is entered, so they couldn't afford to risk it, and 2: because the concept of a world built on hope over profit is completely alien to them.
- Perpetual-Motion Monster: A handful of emaciated T-Virus zombies are still wandering around the crumbling remains of Raccoon City even 28 years later, having never simply died off from hunger or decay in the interim.
- Please Wake Up:
- Killing Grace while you're supposed to be providing cover fire for her will treat you to the tragically pathetic sight of little Emily crawling over and trying to nudge her lifeless body, as the game's way of rubbing your nose in such a shameful failure.
- Grace attempts to perform CPR on Emily in the water treatment plant beside the Care Centre, all while imploring her to wake up. Subverted β she does wake up... and is only normal for a minute or so before she mutates into a B.O.W.
- Plot Armor: A sort of weird Cerebus Retcon has occurred to this trope: all the main characters of the many Resident Evil games have never really had to worry about turning into a zombie no matter how many times they've been bit in gameplay. It turns out, that they're all just asymptomatic and it took 28 years for the effects to kick in, in the form of "Raccoon City Syndrome". Even that's rendered a non-issue in the good ending, when an antiviral is discovered that cures all diseases that originate from the Progenitor Virus, including Raccoon City Syndrome.
- Poor Communication Kills: An invoked and exploited case by none other than Oswell E. Spencer himself. The entire mystery of Elpis as Spencer's supposed last viral creation, and the genetic factors of Grace that Victor, Zeno and the Connections kept trying to recreate in a massive cloning line, are all born from misinformation about Spencer's legacy that kept all of his fake successors running in loops for years trying to uncover and release Elpis. It's to the point that the villains fully believe Grace has the password to release it, not knowing whatsoever that up to that point, their plans were All for Nothing because she had no way of knowing it until a "Eureka!" Moment. The implication that Grace wasn't even old enough to be the origin of the clones, thanks to the point where Spencer gave off Grace to Alyssa coming after the clone line had started, even infers that no one had a clue the entire time what they were actually doing this for besides little more than rumors. This ends up the undoing of the villains as Spencer's last middle finger towards those that perverted and abused his creations for their greed and power.
- "Pop!" Goes the Human: One of the items that Grace can craft using infected blood is the "hemolytic injector", which is filled with a virulent anti-viral agent that destroys infected blood cells. This can be used on corpses to prevent them mutating into "monsters", or it can be used to take down enemies either in stealth or when they have been stunned. Using one in this latter fashion has Grace jab the zombie in the neck, whereupon they explode like an overinflated water balloon full of gore, splattering blood everywhere.
- Power Outage Plot: The flashback sequence seen in the Wrenwood Hotel section where Grace tries to follow her mother out of the said hotel features the hotel's power going out, making it much more difficult for the duo to leave. In the main game, the white lamps that protect Grace from the monster in the care center can go out when the power does, turning safe rooms into areas where the monster can follow.
- Power-Up Letdown: The Trusted Companion charm grants the equipped gun "increased penetration power". What the game doesn't tell you is that this only allows a bullet to hit a second zombie directly behind the initial target. While not completely useless, there's almost no scenario where you would use this charm over another charm that offers much more reliable and useful boosts to damage output like the BSAA charm or the Power Shades charm.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
- Leon is confronted by a chainsaw-wielding zombified doctor, to which he, of course, snarks at as he draws his gun:Zombie Doctor: Calm... down...
Leon: I think I want a second opinion. - Leon also has this to say before his final battle against Victor:Leon: Time to bury Umbrella's last skeleton.
- Leon is confronted by a chainsaw-wielding zombified doctor, to which he, of course, snarks at as he draws his gun:
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Leon gives a cold and epic one to Victor at the end of the Final Boss fight against his mutated Nemesis form, finishing him off once and for all with a precise shot from the Requiem magnum.Leon: This time, you ain't getting back up.
- Product Placement:
- With Porsche as part of the collaborationπ Image
, the game features a Cool Car in the form of a custom Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT, driven by Leon S. Kennedy, used to head to Wrenwood Hotel, Rhodes Hill Care Center, and Raccoon City. - Leon and Grace's watches also sports prominent Hamilton logos.
- With Porsche as part of the collaborationπ Image
- Quaking with Fear: Grace can be seen trembling a number of times both in cutscenes and during gameplay, such as her hands nervously shaking as she struggles to aim at approaching zombies.
- RagnarΓΆk-Proofing: It has been nearly thirty years since the destruction of Raccoon City, yet much of its infrastructure and equipment (at least those not restored by the many organizations that later arrived) still have power. Even the gas station somehow retains fuel that remains usable long past its expiration date.
- Rainbow Speak: If a readable file has words or numbers highlighted in yellow, these would turn out to be hints that either reveal the location of an important item or help you solve a related puzzle.
- Rare Candy: For Grace, the returning Steroids and Stabilizers act as standard upgrades for her maximum health and gun handling, respectively. Steroids also act as improved med stims and will heal Grace to full on use, but do not void the challenges and achievements that disallow the use of healing items. One of each can be obtained from the parlor on the starting three difficulties, but more will need to be crafted using infected blood and the prohibitively-rare empty injectors. While Grace can be augmented with up to four of each stim, there are not enough materials to do so on any difficulty, which forces the player to weigh the cost and benefits of crafting and using either.
- Real Is Brown: Zigzagged. On one hand, Raccoon City is mostly rendered in shades of muted browns and greys, but it's justified by the fact it's the ruins of a city that was bombed to oblivion almost thirty years prior, and vegetation hasn't been able to take root (not counting Plant 43, at least). The rest of the game, however, is plenty colorful, with lots of different hues everywhere the player goes.
- Recurring Element:
- Grace has to navigate and escape the expansive Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, which is as large as the Spencer Mansion from just its exterior alone while monsters stalk her through the halls just like in previous Resident Evil titles such as Resident Evil 2 (Remake) or Resident Evil Village.
- Ever since Resident Evil 4 there have been chainsaw-wielding enemies, and Leon faces several of these. And, this time around, he can use it against his foes.
- For the third time in a row, there is a little girl that plays a major role in the story.
- A helicopter as a method of escape once again doesn't work out.
- A Special Content unlockable for Leon is a firearm bearing the name Matilda, just like in Resident Evil 2 (Remake), Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil 4 (Remake).
- Recursive Canon: One of the game cases found in a hidden RPD locker is that of the original Resident Evil from 1996.
- Recycled Premise: While one element was widely advertised and the similarity there was undeniable, this game ends up recycling most of the premise of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Both feature a young woman as (one of) the protagonist(s), both dealing with Clone Angst and consequently having a realization about their origins. The film and game both feature a grandiose return to the ruined Raccoon City, along with the appearance of a gigantic Umbrella laboratory left beneath it that was mostly hitherto unseen, and involve the release of a cure for the T-Virus that acts as a sort of instant viral reverser. Both even feature some significant retcons to their characters and lore. Some of the nuances are different, but the similarities are quite apparent.
- Red Herring:
- A few documents strewn throughout Rhodes Hill imply that Elpis is Oswell E. Spencer's perfected form of the T-Virus, capable of transferring memories as well as Mind Control. The Connections certainly believes in this, enough to call in the missile strike on Raccoon City so that they could try to claim it for themselves as an alternative to their E-Type B.O.Ws. Turns out Spencer abandoned that part of his plan long ago, and even if he hadn't, Elpis was already intended to be an universal anti-viral for any and all Progenitor-derived bioweapons.
- Grace is thought by many people in the game to be somehow "unique", with the implication that something about her may be linked to Elpis. The uncanny resemblance that Emily has to her, as well as the revelation that several clones were made to attempt to circumvent death by Oswell E. Spencer, all of which look like Emily and therefore like Grace all point to Grace being a clone, or some sort of Artificial Human. In the end, however, she's not. She's a completely normal person who was orphaned at a young age and taken in by Oswell as one of his ways of trying to make amends for his actions. She isn't really linked to Elpis, either; it's only through deductive reasoning (helped by her mother's dying words) that she is able to realize the password for Elpis.
- Recycled Animation: The "Garm" dog B.O.W.s that chase Leon during his motorcycle scene are pretty clearly adapted from the parasite dogs in Resident Evil 4 (Remake), with oversized jaws and huge slavering tongues. They just don't have tentacles popping out of them.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: One of Umbrella's still-functioning labs underneath Raccoon City is the ARK, and it has an AI security protocol called "No-ah".
- Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: As stated in the "Double Mutation" file, destroying a T-Virus infected's head is an alternative way to prevent it from mutating further into a Blister Head. This is one of the reasons why the Requiem magnum is so valuable, it's guaranteed to pop the heads off of any normal zombie in one hit, preventing a Blister Head.
- Ret-Canon: Upon reaching Raccoon City, flashbacks show cutscenes from Resident Evil 2 (Remake), indicating that it has taken the place of the original.
- Retcon:
- Raccoon City was more like a big town in the original games. In the remade versions of 2 and 3, it was made into a big urban city with high-rises, inspired by its depiction in the Anderson films. Raccoon City in Requiem looks like how it did in the remake games, and Leon has multiple flashbacks to 2R, indicating that the remakes have displaced the original games in the canon timeline. Although, even that is unclear, given how many works in the series still reference the original game, such as Infinite Darkness including a picture of Ashley Graham from the original Resident Evil 4. Of course, Resident Evil has always had a tenuous relationship with continuity, so it's unlikely we'll ever get clarity on which versions of the games are canon, or if maybe both of them are in some manner.
- Similarly, the ending FMV of the original Resident Evil 3 established that Racoon City was completely destroyed by the missile strike that ended its outbreak, a strike that was implied to be a singular nuclear bomb. The RPD building was also explicitly shown to be destroyed in that FMV. The city's destruction was reiterated in the final text crawl. Its destruction was also reiterated in Resident Evil 4. Outbreak was the first game to show that its destruction wasn't nuclear (even showing that it was done by multiple missiles), but it still maintained that the city was completely destroyed leaving naught but a crater in its place. This game contradicts both the original 3 and Outbreak by showing that Racoon City's ruins are still around and the entire city wasn't destroyed. Even the RPD is still (partially) standing, in direct contradiction to the third game, despite it being close to the epicenter of the blast. An interview with the original game's director also confirms he believed the city to be completely destroyed. However it is consistent with how the blast was portrayed in the third game's remake, where the blast epicenter is much smaller, the weapon being used is clearly thermal, and the potential chance for surviving ruins is much higher.
- Revisiting the Roots: Requiem returns to Raccoon City once again, or rather what's left of it after 28 years, as someone has set up shop there long past its destruction. Going with this, after the last two games focused on Mold-derived enemies, Requiem sees the return of classic zombies and other T-Virus monsters, such as Giant Spiders and even Tyrants.
- Reviving Enemy: If their heads aren't completely destroyed, zombies can sometimes revive after a bit as a Blister Head, a stronger and faster zombie variant. This will also happen immediately if another zombie (defeated or otherwise) is exposed to the red mist that bursts from the blisters of another Blister Head or a Blister Borne when they're shot.
- Rhyming with Itself: The credits song "Through the Darkness" has a verse which rhymes the word "me" with itself.Fighting the darkness holding me
Dragging me to the ground
Facing the pain that's controlling me
I won't let it keep me down - Rivers of Blood: When we said the game was Bloodier and Gorier than its predecessors... The Basement where corpses are processed contains several huge pools of blood as a byproduct of processing hundreds of corpses and extracting their blood. Later, Gideon activates the self-destruct protocol of the research facility beneath the cabin outside of the care center, the place becomes literally flooded with blood and Grace has to struggle through a flood of the stuff to reach the surface.
- Russian Reversal: Some of the game's twists involve intentionally flipping the script on a few Resident Evil traditions, which is especially cheeky when the game is already full of Call Backs as a invokedMilestone Celebration.
- Traditionally, the final boss of the game tends to be destroyed with a rocket launcher, or a railgun on some occasions. Here, Victor Gideon's first phase has him armed with an RPG, meaning the final boss is using a rocket launcher on you.
- In a series where all the trouble is the result of the outbreak of a virus, here the Golden Ending is attained by choosing to release what everyone thinks is a virus β but is in fact actually an anti-viral.
- Scare Chord: A distinct strum plays whenever Grace suddenly spots a zombie or vice-versa. This serves to increase tension because her gameplay relies more on stealth and avoiding encounters whenever possible.
- Scenery Gorn: The state of Raccoon City, nearly thirty years after it was nuked, is both haunting and surreal. The serene eeriness of the ruined city, with its crumbling buildings, would almost seem wondrous if it werenβt still crawling with the living dead. As Leon puts it, it feels like everything is frozen in time.
- Schmuck Bait:
- Zeno, an agent of the Connections and implied clone of Albert Wesker, uses Elpis on himself to test the power of Umbrellaβs ultimate bioweapon. Elpis turns out to be an anti-viral so he basically depowers himself, enabling Leon to nearly overpower him and Victor to kill him.
- This game once again uses yellow colours to denote something of importance in the area, such as yellow-painted planks nailed over doors to signal these are removable. However, one such door is located above you in the section where you're walking on the glass windows of a partly collapsed skyscraper. If you shoot out the plank to open the door, a body will drop from above and shatter the glass floor, causing Leon to immediately fall to his death. As this can only happen right after the game warns you that the glass floors are incredibly fragile and require extreme caution to traverse, you basically did this to yourself if this happens.
- Self-Harm: An infected maid can be seen repeatedly bashing her own head against a broken mirror on the upper floors of Rhodes Hill.
- Sequel Hook: A number of documents scattered throughout the game suggest that the schism between the BSAA's branches has grown in the wake of Village, something which stems from the mysterious backers of the Connections managing to seize control of the North American division while at least one other branch appears to now be under the direct jurisdiction of Chris Redfield, who sends out the Hound Wolf squad as well as other, non-corrupt BSAA operatives to rescue Grace and Leon and secure the ruins of the ARK in the "Release Elpis" ending, but they are evidently unable to make a call for help when the Connections' Elite Guard return to slaughter them and retrieve a mysterious "objective" in the post-credit scene. Leon even tells Sherry outright that he expects he will run into Chris at some point.
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook:
- It's possible to goad the noise-sensitive zombies in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center to attack other zombies by luring them to the same sound source, like throwing an empty bottle or smashing a vase. There's even a specific challenge that tasks you with doing this.
- During one battle against a squad of Elite Guards in the Connections' laboratory as Leon, you can set loose a Licker. As the Elite Guards are, uniquely, regular humans, the Licker will just as likely attack them as it will you, providing a useful distraction.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: At the end of the ''Evil Has Always Had a Name" trailer, the now zombified mother gets put down by an unseen soldier just as she shambles towards her daughter's grave, right after she finishes her somber narration about her failed attempts to save the two of them from the virus.
- Shout-Out:
- The Special Content shop includes a Matilda IMP firearm for Leon which continues the Resident Evil series' trend of referencing LΓ©on and Mathilda from The Professional.
- The "Grace and Goliath" challenge doubles as a reference to a similarly-named 2018 film, and the biblical story of David and Goliath.
- A possibly unintentional example: Raccoon City was destroyed in 1998. Requiem takes place in 2026, 28 years later.
- In Grace's flashback scene near the beginning of the game, she can be seen using Reddit on her laptop (specifically, the thread she's on is discussing theories around the events of the Dulvey Incident).
- Leon's sniper section where he must protect Grace and Emily from a horde of zombies is reminiscent of a setpiece at the end of the Summer chapter in The Last of Us, where Joel uses a sniper rifle to gun down some Infected in order to protect Ellie, Henry and Sam.
- The ruins of Raccoon City serve as a Nostalgia Level that causes its aged returning protagonist to have flashbacks, complete with musical and continuity nods, being somewhat similar in execution to Snake's return to Shadow Moses Island in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
- Speaking of Palpatine, unlike the Sith Emperor who regards his own granddaughter Rey as a future vessel to take over as his new body in The Rise of Skywalker, Spencer cares for Grace and gives away the girl to be raised by Alyssa Ashcroft while setting the Elpis facility to be accessed by her only.
- The Basement segment of the Care Center involving the terrified heroine being stalked by a gigantic mutated female Tragic Monster through dark cavernous tunnels is heavily reminiscent of the movie Barbarian. While perhaps initially unintentional, it becomes an even more apt reference with the knowledge that Barbarian's director, Zach Cregger, was also directing a Resident Evil film to be released in the same year as Resident Evil Requiem.
- While the "Film Noir" outfit for Leon, included with the Deluxe Edition, is at once a Mythology Gag to his suit in Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness and a reference to Killer7, to somebody not familiar with them it can just as easily be read as a reference to John Wick, especially given the gameplay's emphasis on Leon's advanced combat skills (including stances and animations resembling Wick's movements) making for a pretty close approximation of getting to play as Wick in a video game.
- There are a small number of setpieces that are difficult not to read as friendly nods to The Evil Within (a rival horror series from RE's original creator Shinji Mikami), the most prominent being Grace sliding down a chute and being dumped into a huge vat filled with blood and gore.
- Shown Their Work:
- Most firearms are now correctly depicted as open or closed bolt, and the latter category tracks +1 chambered rounds when performing a tactical reload (shotguns do this too, but are chamber-loaded every time by default and lack the "+1" indicator), instead of only being limited to pistols like in Resident Evil 4 (Remake). Additionally, tactically reloading revolvers no longer dumps out the whole cylinder, Grace and Leon will actually eject and replace the spent casings only, resulting in a longer process than reloading from empty, which uses a speedloader.
- When Leon freshly reloads a shotgun, he performs what's known as a "palm-load", an unorthodox method of reloading where two sets of two shells are held in one hand, then slotted in two at a time. This is a real-world method of reloading used in competition shooting.
- In a rather disturbing display of this trope, the zombies in Raccoon City show accurate signs of mummification, with dried out skin, receded facial features, and so on.
- Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration:
- A variant of T-Virus exposure explains why protagonists from previous Resident Evil games are seemingly immune to T-Virus infection from bites or other reservoirs of the virus in regular gameplay. This phenomena is revealed as the "Raccoon City Syndrome", a version of exposure to the T-Virus which ended with the infection becoming suppressed due to special anti-bodies found within specific people, resulting in survivors who appeared asymptomatic. However, while these antibodies have halted the infection, it was only temporary and so decades later people are starting to die from their exposure as the virus has begun to adapt to these antibodies. Leon himself was not immune, and is now starting to show symptoms of Raccoon City Syndrome.
- The monster stalking Grace in Rhodes Hill is burned by bright light, like the functioning lamps of the saferooms. This provides an In-Universe reason for why Grace is never followed in there.
- Grace is a Desk Jockey who rarely works in the field, much less has to shoot her compact pistol. So she's unprepared for the Requiem's recoil and has to shake out her wrist after shooting it for the first time. Her shooting animation also features her arms being thrown upward by the recoil in contrast to Leon's muted reaction to said recoil.
- Leon unloads five rounds from the Requiem into the monster while saving Grace and doesn't reload in the cutscene. When control returns to Grace, the Requiem only has a single shot left. In later playthroughs, where Leon has access to the Supply Box in every single area he's playable in, it also retains any upgrades added during his first section at Wrenwood.
- Leon and Grace's gameplay emphasize their roles. Grace is a newbie desk jockey so she has a tiny inventory (making things like charms Awesome, but Impractical) and the player has to manually combine items through guesswork. Leon's an Experienced Protagonist and it shows. His inventory is huge, he's a Walking Armory, and he automatically combines and uses needed items. Grace also starts with a smaller health total and aiming skills that can be improved via steroids and stabilizers. Leon starts out with max health and firearms skills with the latter only improving when he upgrades his guns.
- Smoke Out: The ARK facility houses numerous white canisters that can be ruptured by Leon to throw out a large smokescreen that conceals his movement. This is especially helpful when dealing with the Elite Guard, who will lose track of Leon's whereabouts and allow the player to maneuver around them. On the enemies' side, the Elite Guard's Commander can also throw down smoke grenades during his duel with Leon, which makes it harder to track him inside the already-foggy arena of his battle.
- Sole Survivor: If the Destruction route is chosen, Leon will end up getting executed by Zeno after getting Grace to safety while ARK collapses, and Zeno himself presumably gets buried by the collapsing rubble, thus leaving Grace the only survivor escaping ARK alive.
- Solve the Soup Cans: Several instances throughout the game involve particularly convoluted or overly complicated solutions to otherwise straightforward obstacles. One example of which being retrieving the level 2 ID wristband involves a series of mini puzzles (and a close encounter with a zombie-driven bulldozer) where Grace can obtain the Artificial Heart and Lungs to hook up to an inanimate zombie, so it can revive and be killed for the bracelet. It never simply occurs to Grace to just cut the gurney strap to expose the wristband, slide the zombie's arm out from underneath, orβsince the zombie itself simply yanks the strap away when it comes to lifeβsimply untie it by hand to achieve the same result.
- Speedrun: One of the game's challenges involves completing the main story and selecting a particular ending in under 4 hours, where a full playthrough of thoroughly exploring the levels can take about 10-15 hours.
- Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: Grace pulls this near the end of the game to stop Zeno from killing Leon. It works because he thinks he needs Grace to unlock the console containing Elpis.
- Stopped Numbering Sequels: Played With, as with Village before it. The official title is just Resident Evil Requiem, but when the logo is shown in the trailers, as the screen glitches out, the q in "Requiem" is replaced by the number 9, clearly indicating what number this installment would be if numbers were still being used.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Grace wakes up inside the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center strapped to an operating table upside down, visibly panicking as she struggles to remove her restraints.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: The opening cutscene (at the FBI Field Office) establishes that Grace's mother, Alyssa Ashcroft, died eight years before the present-day setting. In a playable flashback sequence soon afterwards, the player sees Alyssa get attacked and have her neck slashed by one of Gideon's infected agents as Grace looks on, horrified.
- Super-Scream: Two zombie women in the care center are constantly vocalizing, giggling or sobbing. Their banshee-like screams are strong enough to cause knockbacks and break nearby windows or crates. When they grab Grace or Leon, instead of biting, they'll unleash a scream up-close and cause the player character to take damage from the sheer, deafening volume. The patient medical records identify them as Selena Corey and Eileen Zimmerson, both diagnosed with having an "extreme vocalization".
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham:
- Despite Raccoon City Syndrome supposedly affecting everyone who survived the Raccoon City outbreak, only Leon and Sherry are investigating Gideon and Grace. Fellow Raccoon City survivors Claire, Ada, Jill, and Carlos are absent and never even mentioned. Jill's especially odd since she's confirmed to have T-Virus antibodies due to being cured in Resident Evil 3, yet there's no mention of trying to see if they can synthesize a cure from her.
- Sherry herself stays off the field despite the fact that she's a bonafide Action Girl with a very powerful Healing Factor thanks to the stabilized G-Virus. Although it's possible that her own Raccoon City Syndrome would interfere with that. Dialogue in the Golden Ending does imply Sherry is benched from fieldwork due to her Raccoon City Syndrome, and may be able to get back in the field now that Leon has found a cure.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- While she's still better trained than an average civilian, Grace's still not as well-built and experienced as veteran field agents like Chris or Leon due to her status as a young FBI Desk Jockey. As a result, firing the Requiem (an anti-materiel Hand Cannon that is based on the 12.7mm RSh-12π Image
) will leave her recoiling in shock the first time she uses it, complete with shaking her wrist in pain from the tremendous power of the revolver. - Leon has taken enough levels in badass that he can block attacks from opponents using his axe. Against the larger B.O.W. creatures that he faces, Leon can only parry the blows and still needs to move out of the way to avoid the worst of the hits. So if Leon tries the same thing on the Tyrant, he will be surprised (and pained) to see it doesn't work. The Tyrant is still superhumanly strong, and no amount of skill on Leon's part can close a gap that large.
- Guns are the main weapons of killing zombies, bioweapons and otherwise, and allow our heroes to eviscerate the foes that come their way. Then Leon encounters the Elite Guard, who also use guns to contain threats. And unlike the infected militants and insurgents who also used firearms in 5 and 6, the Elite Guards employ Special Forces-grade gears and tactics to take on their foes and as such they are one of the most dangerous enemies in the franchise by putting you on the opposite end of what you've been doing to monsters for years.
- When Leon returns to the RPD, the front gate is still standing, albeit very damaged. It is at this point in Survival Horror games where a fetch quest begins to find a way to open the gate... But Leon just reaches through the bars and opens it himself.
- Towards the end of the game, the Big Bad injects himself with a virus right before the Final Boss fight. Despite years of the opposite happening across the Resident Evil franchise, Zeno injecting himself with Elpis depowers him instead of turning him into a giant monster. Zeno's surprise quickly turns to shock, then to rage, when he finds out that he accidentally just took away the source of all of his powers.
- While she's still better trained than an average civilian, Grace's still not as well-built and experienced as veteran field agents like Chris or Leon due to her status as a young FBI Desk Jockey. As a result, firing the Requiem (an anti-materiel Hand Cannon that is based on the 12.7mm RSh-12π Image
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- The Blister Borne are a powerful Elite Zombie variant that are functionally very similar to the unrelated Regeneradors from Resident Evil 4. Namely, they are a rare and slow, but very powerful enemy that can only be killed by destroying the numerous weak points scattered across their bodies and are fought in enclosed spaces. The main difference with the Blister Borne is that destroying these weak points releases mutagenic fluids that mutate nearby zombies into Blister Heads (and also revives dead zombies).
- The Blister Heads are pretty much the same sort of zombie enemy as the Crimson Heads from the Resident Evil (Remake). Namely, they're a stronger, secondary mutation that can occur if you didn't sufficiently destroy a defeated zombie's body (typically via blowing up their heads), causing them to revive faster, stronger, and redder. Again, the main difference is that destroying their heads causes them release a red mist that turns/revives other zombies into more Blister Heads.
- Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Rhodes Hill Care Center's garage somehow has several breakable boxes containing handgun ammo, with one particular box suspiciously having 8 rounds. Grace needs all the ammo she can have at this point and act fast because an Advancing Boss of Doom against a zombie-driven bulldozer is about to ensue.
- Take Your Time: During Leon's final segment in ARK before the ending, he has reached the late stages of Raccoon City Syndrome, causing him to cough blood uncontrollably and suffer from extreme fatigue, and it's clear that he only has hours to live. He can periodically have hacking fits during combat which turn the screen blue and blur his vision for a short time, but no matter how long you take to get through, Leon will only start getting worse once he's nearly reached Elpis.
- Thundering Footsteps: The Girl, as the monster prowling the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center was designated by Victor's staff, is three meters tall with claws as wide as dinner plates and jaws wide enough to bite someone's head clean off. All that mass makes it impossible for Grace to fight, and her escape is constantly haunted by the sound of the monster's footsteps and jingling chains as it stalks her through the facility's halls.
- Time Skip: For Raccoon City itself since Requiem takes place 28 years after the city was struck by a thermobaric missile (which, per the original games' timeline, happened in 1998).
- Title Drop: Not only is "Requiem" the name of Leon's Hand Cannon, but Spencer's interview with Alyssa has him drop the word at the very end.Spencer: I've said my piece. I only hope it serves as a requiem for those who have passed.
- Title In: Various types of text are displayed when the story transitions to another scene. A large font consisting of the character's name and their current location is used for major shifts that introduce a new area, while smaller texts are often used to differentiate flashbacks from the present day, or display the date and time as the player shifts control between Grace and Leon.
- Too Awesome to Use: Requiem is bar none the most powerful weapon in your arsenal (besides the rocket launcher you can get from completing the game). Its overwhelming power allows it to blast normal zombies to giblets with a single shot and inflict heavy damage on bosses. This is balanced by its incredible recoil making landing consecutive shots difficult, the slow reloading time even with a speedloader, and the scarcity of its ammo that requires exotic materials to craft (for Grace) and can't be bought from the supply box until New Game Plus (for Leon), heavily curtailing its use.
- Too Dumb to Live: In the "Hope" ending, Zeno injects himself with Elpis, realizing only afterwards that it's an antiviral which cures Progenitor-based viruses and caused him to be Brought Down to Normal. He proceeds to angrily yell and vent at Victor Gideon, a psychotic B.O.W., despite just having established that he's currently powerless. Unsurprisingly, once Victor gets fed up with this Zeno is swiftly decapitated.
- Tongue Trauma: Parrying a Licker's tongue attack will result in Leon cutting the creature's tongue off.
- The Tooth Hurts: Cole spits out several teeth as he turns into a zombie.
- Tragic Monster: The fate of the unnamed mother by the end of the "Evil Has Always Had a Name" trailer, who succumbed to zombification despite her valiant efforts to survive Racoon City's outbreak alongside her daughter, whom she failed to save. In her last moments, she's seen shambling towards her child's grave, still holding onto what's left of her humanity before being gunned down by a task force sent to clean up the place.
- Turns Red: The new strain of T-Virus zombies can end up mutating into Blister Heads after a period of time or if exposed to a Blister Borne's blood spray, causing them to attack much more rabidly and aggressively. The only way to stop this is to either destroy the head or inject the zombie with a hemolytic injector.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The game constantly shifts between the viewpoints of Grace and Leon, but there are moments that make them run parallel to each other until the two eventually intersect. An example is during both of their first segments at Rhodes Hill, they hear a woman announcing the biological outbreak over a loudspeaker β Grace as she gets the cherub key, Leon while waiting in the rehabilitation ward β and both end with them meeting for the first time as Leon saves Grace from the Girl.
- Uncanny Valley: Invoked with the zombies more than usual in this series. The usual staples of zombies are here, but what sends these ones into the valley is their faces, which are frozen in a permanent, exaggerated version of what they were feeling when they turned. For instance, several of them wear smiles that are just a bit too wide, or scowls that are a bit too deep.
- Uncertain Doom:
- While Leon very clearly tears the Commander's throat open at the end of his boss fight, his corpse disappears shortly after. Likewise, in the "Destruction" ending, Victor Gideon is not accounted for while Zeno retains his superhuman powers as the lab platform collapses, leaving both their fates unclear.
- A retroactive example created by this game. When passing through the Kendo Gun Shop, Leon finds Emma Kendo's skeletal remains in the backroom, but not those of her father Robert. This suggests that Kendo either left at some point after euthanizing his daughter and died elsewhere, or his Ghost Survivors scenario is canonical.
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay:
- Enemies can drop items they're holding which Leon can use as weapons against them. This can include a chainsaw. However, when an enemy drops a chainsaw, the momentum of the motor will cause the chainsaw to spin in place, just like it would if you dropped an actual chainsaw onto the ground. As such, the spinning chainsaw will cause damage to anyone nearby, while also causing it to be unable to be picked up and used again until it stops. No other such weapon in the entire game behaves this way.
- Bullets throughout the series are either super high damage but highly telegraphed from armed foes so that players have a fighting chance, or Scratch Damage to be balanced for the sake of potentially wading into entire firefights depending on the game. Here, occasional BSAA zombies packing SMGs and Elite Guards with rifles both lack the flagrant telegraphs and yet are extremely high damage, capable of outright killing Leon within seconds of exposure to gunfire. Thus, Leon is incentivized to take out these particular zombies fast, and for the Elite Guards, avoid direct combat as much as possible so he can get the drop on them, as a direct engagement is asking for a world of pain if they've already got his position pinned down and ready to suppress. This same thing happens in the fight with the Commander, who will eventually start falling back and trying to pile bullets into Leon if he's got a direct line of sight, requiring the player to take cover and bait him back into melee.
- The Unfought: While there are scenes of Leon and Zeno having a brief skirmish against each other, with the latter easily gaining the upper hand, the player doesn't actually fight him as a boss at any point in the game.
- Universal Ammunition: In keeping with the series' staple, Requiem sorts its firearms into specific categories, with a unified ammo type for each of them, regardless of the actual guns' calibers in real life. Gun generally don't share ammo types across categories with the exception of the unlockable Freya's Needle for Grace, which is an SMG that uses handgun ammonote However, the BSAA zombies in Raccoon City that use the same gun drop machine gun ammo instead, suggesting this was done to suit Grace's resources.
- The Un-Reveal: In the "Hope" ending, Umber Eyes of Hound Wolf Squad relays a message from Chris Redfield to Leon, but the player doesn't get to hear what it is before a Smash to Black.
- Unseen No More: Rhodes Hill was first mentioned on a traffic sign in Outbreak as an unexplorable town near Raccoon City. In Requiem, the first half of the game takes place there; more specifically, the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center on the town's outskirts.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: After the intro, Victor (a seven-foot tall man with gray skin) openly carries an unconscious Grace down the crowded streets of Wrenwood. No one but Leon and a single woman, who ends up turned into a zombie by Victor to cause havoc as a distraction, seems to think this is odd.
- Urban Ruins: Raccoon City has been abandoned and in quarantine ever since it was destroyed by the missile strike in 1998, and a newspaper headline in the opening states that the city is not expected to open for reconstruction until 2040. While the primary target of the missile, the NEST lab, was utterly destroyed by the blast, many of the buildings beyond the initial blast radius remain standing, albeit in a horrifically dilapidated state.
- Use Your Head: Blister Heads have a One-Hit Kill attack where they charge forward to ram the player. If hit, the protagonist is knocked to their knees, leaving them open for the monster to tear their throat out.
- Utility Weapon: Leon's first combat sequence in Rhodes Hill includes a chainsaw-wielding zombie. After killing every zombie in the rehabilitation ward, Leon uses said chainsaw to break a steel bar locking the door forward.
- Victory by Endurance: After placing the artificial organs into the inanimate zombie's chest cavity, it'll spring back to life and try to attack Grace. However, since it has a bag over its head, it can only attack by ineffectually swiping at you, and will collapse and die again after a little while due to its new organs quickly failing. This means you don't have to use any bullets or hemolytic injectors on it β just stay out of its range until it dies and then scavenge the ID wristband off it.
- Video Game Caring Potential: During Leon's section in Wrenwood, you can save several fleeing civilians who are being grappled by zombies. You aren't penalized if anyone gets eaten and there is no other reward for doing so, but you still have the option to do so, and they will even call out "Thank you!" on occasion.
- Video Game Vista: An unusual example. During the motorcycle chase sequence, Leon drives up a collapsed skyscraper like a ramp and sails through the air onto the next building, giving a high-up view of the ruins of Raccoon City.
- Villain Takes an Interest: Victor Gideon has a keen interest in Grace, calling her "unique" and keeping pictures of her on the night her mother was murdered within the remains of the Wrenwood Hotel. He later tells her that, "There's no escaping your destiny." It is because he believes she holds the key to unlock the Elpis facility left behind by Oswell E. Spencer and he wants her to open it.
- Voodoo Shark: The revelations around Grace and the clones make less sense the more they are looked into. If one ignores the fact that the clones existed between 14 and 20 years before Grace was even conceived, the fact that they looks so similar to her is never explained, nor what was being done with them or the orphanage that was seemingly entirely populated by identical children. If Spencer just happened to have a girl who he adopted and conveniently looked like them, why was that the case? If she is one of the clones, who is the source, and why use clones at all?
- Weakened by the Light: The Girl is unable to withstand exposure to bright light, its skin burning whenever it tries to enter an area that isn't pitch black such as safe rooms. Grace later weaponizes this weakness to kill it by opening the roof hatch in the water treatment plant.
- Wham Line: After defeating the first phase of the Final Boss, Leon discovers something about their true nature.Leon: A Nemesis, no wonder you're so damn relentless.
- Wham Shot:
- After dispatching the zombie outbreak in Wrenwood, Leon removes his glove to show black bruising across his hand, while Sherry tells him that they're running out of time. Sherry is also seen removing a glove to show the same bruising on her hand later in the game.
- The reveal of Victor's benefactor: Zeno, a Connections operative who greatly resembles the late Albert Wesker.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The "Destruction" ending doesn't address or confirm the fate of Victor Gideon after the motorcycle chase with Leon, leaving their fate up in the air. Averted in the "Hope" ending, which firmly resolves this thread.
- Where It All Began: The story of the game focuses on the investigation of a series of murders that lead to the ruins of Raccoon City. To say that time and the missile strike that wiped it out have not been kind to it is a massive understatement.
- With This Herring: Downplayed. After escaping the Girl, Leon loans Requiem to her so she has a gun β shortly after unloading it into said monster's skull and with no immediate reload check on his part prior, leaving Grace with only one round. With nothing else but at best a spare empty glass bottle or two to her name, Grace has no choice but to spare the ammo or make that last shot count as she now has to scrounge for proper resources and weapons herself.
- The Worf Effect:
- Despite Sherry's stabilized G-Virus capable of healing her from almost anything, it can only slow down Raccoon City Syndrome; as opposed to Leon who has bruising all over his body, Sherry only has it on her left arm. This demonstrates just how lethal the infection is.
- The Girl is effortlessly put down when Leon destroys its head with a few shots from his Hand Cannon, as if to demonstrate that, unlike the panicked Desk Jockey Grace, Leon is a veteran badass who's done this many times before and isn't fazed by any of it. While this could be excused as Leon having a high-caliber assault revolver while Grace is unarmed, when she uses Requiem, it can only stun the Girl for a few seconds.
- A T-103 Tyrant used to be a dreaded Implacable Man that hounded the rookie Leon for most of his brief stint in Raccoon City, shrugging off everything he threw at it and forcing him on the run. Now, Leon has enough experience and combat prowess to trade blows with an upgraded T-501 Tyrant and kill it without use of an anti-tank launcher.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- Emily, a young girl Grace meets in Rhodes Hill, who was being used in experiments at the care center and has gone blind from being drugged. There used to be another girl named Marie until she mutated into the Girl, and notes around the facility suggest they are far from the first child test subjects.
- The Umbrella personnel running the Raccoon City Orphanage and the ARK research facility underneath it, in spades. You can even find a note from a scientist gleefully looking forward to experimenting on the children at the orphanage.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: The plans of Dr. Gideon and Zeno are predicated on the idea that the clones being made in ARK are using Grace as their template. However, the video Zeno shows to Grace is from 1990, where records indicate there is no apparent use of accelerated or decelerated aging on the clones given their death dates. On the other hand, the first records available for Grace would be from 2004, around when she was born and handed to Alyssa Ashcroft. Nobody in the story ever mentions how it would be impossible to use genetic material from someone who did not even exist for another fourteen years in the cloning process, with the closest being Gideon saying there is no connection at the end (implicitly because he only recently figured that out, given he was fully on board before) before killing Zeno. Even if we were to believe Spencer lied about Grace being completely normal and that she actually is old enough to produce the clones, that idea goes against the rest of the game pointing the player to take everything said about him in the interview at face value.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Oh, boy, Victor is fonder of this trope than anything. He casually starts zombie outbreaks just to cover his escapes, even in his own hospital full of scientists who are completely harmless and working for him. He sets numerous facilities to self-destruct if he even thinks he's achieved his goal and, in the "Hope" ending, offs a depowered Zeno as soon as he's lost his leverage and become a liability to his grand plan. Victor Gideon may be the most needlessly destructive guy in the series, and that's saying a lot.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Raccoon City Syndrome causes anyone who's been tangentially exposed to the T-Virus to be infected with a secondary mutation that has taken decades to manifest and gradually rots the person away over time. Leon and Sherry are both infected, and six people have already died of it, with one of Leon's primary motivators being to find a cure and save anyone else from dying of the disease. However, since it's a secondary mutation of a Progenitor virus, Elpis can completely cure it in seconds, as shown in the "Hope" ending when Grace injects Leon with it.
- Your Head A-Splode:
- Leon is capable of crushing zombie skulls into a fine paste by kicking and stomping on them, splattering blood and grey matter all over the walls.
- The Girl is stopped cold by Leon using his Hand Cannon to blow half the monster's skull into paste. Unfortunately, unlike most examples, the B.O.W. actually survives and manages to regenerate the damage.
- Grace can occasionally get a "critical headshot" when shooting a zombie in the head, blowing their head apart and killing them instantly.
- In Raccoon City, Leon finds a BSAA squad dead in the street, and upon reviewing the headcam footage from one body, sees they were on a mission to infiltrate ARK and retrieve Elpis before being ambushed by Zeno, who picked them off one by one with Redemption. The shots are shown tearing straight through their body armour and capable of severing limbs.
- If the Tyrant manages to kill you before you make it to the second floor of the R.P.D., he picks Leon up and squeezes his head until it bursts.
- I'll make it through to the other side...
Scarred hands hard and worn...
Warmth of a new dawn on my face...
I'll never let it go again!