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The Prime universe (tentative) is the universe where Capcom's official canon takes place. It encompasses all console games bar Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D, Resident Evil: Resistance and Resident Evil Re:Verse and the CGI films other than BIOHAZARD 4D EXECUTER. There are some fifty entries in the canon franchise, including guidebooks that contain in-universe documents written just for those books.
The main canon follows a concept known as Bio-real, when compared to other adaptations such as "King's" comics which includes "fantasy" elements.
Media[]
| Name | Type | Original release | Canon notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resident Evil | Console video game | 1996 | Ports such as Resident Evil: Director's Cut (1997); Resident Evil (2002) and Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (2006) contain additional canon elements. Neither Chris or Jill is the canonical scenario; the canon is an unseen third scenario where Chris and Jill both investigate the mansion. Later series entries acknowledge certain aspects (e.g. Rebecca and Barry's survival is confirmed) |
| Inside of BIO-HAZARD | Guidebook | 1997 | Contains in-universe documents. Due to predating Resident Evil 2 and the remake of Resident Evil, facts within the documents may have since been retconned. |
| Resident Evil 2 | Console video game | 1998 | Like the above, neither the Leon A/Claire B or Claire A/Leon B paths are fully canon, though later games acknowledge certain aspects (e.g. Sherry being infected; Ada injured by the Tyrant). |
| Resident Evil 3: Nemesis | Console video game | 1999 | Again, the canon path can only be suggested through later descriptions, with RE5 suggesting Barry rescued Jill in the end. |
| Resident Evil Survivor | Console video game | 2000 | |
| Resident Evil CODE:Veronica | Console video game | 2000 | Updated port Resident Evil CODE:Veronica X (2001) contains additional cutscenes |
| BIOHAZARD CODE:Veronica ORIGINAL STORY | Benny Matsuyama novelization | 2001 | |
| Wesker's Report | In-universe report | 2000 | |
| Resident Evil Survivor 2 CODE:Veronica | Console video game | 2001 | Note that this story takes place within a dream, though the files themselves have some validity in the 'real world'. |
| Wesker's Report Ⅱ | Supplement literature | 2002 | Diary released online to advertise the 2002 remake. |
| biohazard | Benny Matsuyama, novalization | 2002 | Novelization of the remake by Benny Matsuyama, found in the biohazard kaitaishinsho guide. |
| "Emergency report" | Supplement literature | in-universe report set after the events of the 2002 remake, found in the biohazard kaitaishinsho guide. | |
| Resident Evil: Dead Aim | Console video game | 2002 | |
| Resident Evil Zero | Console video game | 2002 | |
| biohazard 0 | Benny Matsuyama novelization | found in the biohazard 0 KAITAISHINSHO guide | |
| Resident Evil Outbreak | Console video game | 2003 | |
| Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 | Console video game | 2004 | |
| Resident Evil 4 | Console video game | 2005 | |
| biohazard 4 Incubate | Supplement literature | 2005 | A "diary" explaining the backstory to the village in Resident Evil 4. |
| biohazard 4 | Benny Matsuyama novelization | 2005 | Benny Matsuyama novelization in the biohazard 4 kaitaishinsho guide. |
| Report about Ada | Benny Matsuyama novelization | 2005 | Extra short in the biohazard 4 kaitaishinsho guide. |
| Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles | Console video game | 2007 | Only the scenarios which are new and not retellings are canonical. |
| Wesker's Extra Report | Supplement literature | 2007 | |
| BIOHAZARD UMBRELLA CHRONICLES: Prelude to the Fall | Manga | 2007 | Two-part manga prequel to the "Umbrella's End" and "Dark Legacy" scenarios of Umbrella Chronicles. |
| Resident Evil: Degeneration | CGI movie | 2008 | |
| Angela's Diary | In-universe report | 2008 | |
| BSAA Remote Desktop & Adam's Blog | Alternate reality game | 2008 | Alternate reality game |
| Resident Evil 5 | Console video game | 2009 | |
| BIOHAZARD 5 | Benny Matsuyama novelization | 2009 | Benny Matsuyama novelization |
| Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles | Console video game | 2010 | |
| Resident Evil: The Marhawa Desire | Manga | 2011-2013 | |
| Resident Evil: Revelations - Extended Trailer | Video game trailer | 2011 | A trailer for Revelations. Shows Raymond, and Rachel Foley's actions on board the ship up till Rachel's "death". |
| Resident Evil: Revelations | Console video game | 2012 | |
| Jessica's Report | In-universe report | 2012 | |
| Resident Evil: Damnation | CGI movie | 2012 | |
| Las Plagas: Organisms of War | In-universe report | 2012 | |
| Resident Evil 6 | Console video game | 2012 | |
| Sentinel Nine Thorough Elucidation | Tokyo Marui article | ||
| Samurai Edge History | Tokyo Marui article | ||
| Resident Evil: Revelations 2 | Console video game | 2015 | |
| Special Archives | Tokyo Marui article | ||
| BIOHAZARD heavenly island | Manga | 2015-2017 | |
| BIOHAZARD THE STAGE | Play | 2015 | |
| Resident Evil: Umbrella Corps | Console video game | 2016 | |
| Resident Evil 7: Biohazard | Console video game | 2017 | |
| Samurai Edge AWM01 Archives | Tokyo Marui article | 2017 | |
| Resident Evil: Vendetta | CGI movie | 2017 | |
| Survive Magazine #15 Jan 2018 | Tokyo Marui article | 2017 | |
| Umbrella Arsenal system | Tokyo Marui article | 2017 | |
| Survive Magazine #16 Sep. 2018 | Tokyo Marui article | 2017 | |
| BIOHAZARD THE EXPERIENCE | Play | 2017 | |
| Resident Evil 2 | Console video game | 2019 | Remake of Resident Evil 2.
Canonical elements of remake are hard to place as while expanding on certain elements, other elements of the remake conflict with known canon. |
| Survive Magazine #17 Mar. 2019 | Tokyo Marui article | 2019 | |
| Resident Evil 3 | Console video game | 2020 | Remake of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Like with 2 remake canon elements are hard to place as the game greatly conflicts with established canon. This includes removal of key location, events, weapons, endings and changing of location's names and places. |
| Resident Evil: Resistance | Console video game | 2020 | Overall game's events/characters fate considered non-canon due to conflicts in timeline. Canon of characters existing however is possible. |
| Resident Evil Village | Console video game | 2021 | |
| Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness | CGI Series | 2021 | |
| Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness - The Beginning | Comic Miniseries | 2022-2023 | |
| Resident Evil 4 | Console Video Game | 2023 | |
| Survive Magazine #18
March 2023 |
Tokyo Marui article | 2023 | |
| Resident Evil: Death Island | CGI Movie | 2023 | |
| BIOHAZARD DEATH ISLAND (manga) | Web Manga | 2023 | Manga adaptation and tie-in to Death Island. |
| Resident Evil Requiem | Console Video Game | 2026 |
Narrative[]
Rather than having an overarching plot, the stories of each major game installment are mostly self-contained and generally conclude the newly introduced ideas while being open-ended enough to allow new events and concepts to potentially be follow up on. Later installments conclude with retaining the status-quo of "bio-terrorism" always being a potential threat.
Initial installments[]
The original Resident Evil takes place in 1998 in the Arklay Mountains region where cannibalistic homicides have been reported to be occurring by citizens of the nearby Raccoon City. The Raccoon Police Department's Special Tactics And Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) unit is commissioned to investigate which starts with their Bravo team being dispatched, failing to report back, and their Alpha team going on a rescue mission for them. While investigating Bravo team's abandoned helicopter, they are attacked by what appears to be rabid dogs which prompts their own pilot Brad Vickers, to retreat without the rest of his team. The Alpha team Captain, Albert Wesker, leads the remaining on foot to take refuge in seemingly abandoned mansion.
The player as either Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield of Alpha team, are tasked with escaping but presented the possibility of a fowl play by someone through Barry Burton acting suspiciously and Rebecca Chambers theorizing the Bravo team helicopter was tampered with respectively. They also encounter Zombies, other creatures, and "File" items implying shady activity took place in the mansion. By the end, an injured Bravo team member states someone among S.T.A.R.S is a traitor and is then murdered by an unseen assailant, a laboratory owned by the Umbrella Corporation is discovered housing illegal Bio Organic Weapon (B.O.W.s) development through use of the t-Virus, and that captain Wesker is affiliated with said company. In a confrontation between the survivors and Wesker, he formally reveals this fact and how these events were orchestrated by them, and his additional plans to betray the company and take the combat data collected and the B.O.W. called "Tyrant" housed in the lab.
The following game, Resident Evil 2, takes place two months after the events of the original game in Raccoon City itself. With S.T.A.R.S. unable to convict Umbrella for their wrongdoings and its subsequent abolishment (thanks to Raccoon Police Chief Brian Irons who was on Umbrella's payroll), the company continues their experiments within an underground facility. However, a botched attempt to steal a former scientist's (Dr. William Birkin) work results in the t-Virus being leaked into the city's sewage. This results in most of the city's population being turned into zombies, leaving only a few survivors trying to find a way to escape the city alive. The game's focus is on Leon S. Kennedy, a rookie cop with the RPD, and Claire Redfield, a civilian who came to Raccoon to find her missing brother Chris.
The third game, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, takes place around this same time period, and features a similar premise. Also, a powerful monster known as the Nemesis chases Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira, a mercenary hired by Umbrella, around the city, which gives the game its name. The game concludes its story by depicting the city's ultimate destruction by a massive air strike.
The prequel Resident Evil 0 explores the cause of the viral outbreak and Bravo Team's ordeal prior to the events of the Mansion incident, following a S.T.A.R.S. member named Rebecca Chambers and her unlikely ally, a convicted murderer named Billy Coen who escaped from police custody and found himself in the thick of a viral nightmare.
Resident Evil Outbreak and its expansion pack depicts the attempts of normal officers, firefighters, and civilians trying to escape Raccoon City.
Pre-Wesker's death[]
Resident Evil CODE:Veronica depicts the previous games' survivors attempt to expose the Umbrella Corporation and sabotage their operations. CODE:Veronica reveals the existence of a rival corporation, who employs Albert Wesker, the crooked leader of the Raccoon City S.T.A.R.S. team, also developing their own bio-weapons.
A scenario in Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, set in 2003, details the efforts of Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine on aiding the dissolution of the Umbrella Corporation.
A scenario in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, details Operation: Javier, when Leon Scott Kennedy, partnered up with Jack Krauser, are sent to investigate a region in the Amazon Jungle, where teenage girls have been missing, and are investigating the involvement of drug lord Javier Hidalgo, and his connections to the late Umbrella Corporation.
Set six years after the events of the previous games, Resident Evil 4 begins with the dissolving of Umbrella Corporation. When Ashley Graham, the president's daughter is kidnapped, the United States government sends in Leon Kennedy to rescue her. The focus is on a religious cult known as Los Iluminados that uses a breed of ancient parasites known as Plaga to turn victims into mind-controlled psychopaths known as "Los Ganados". The same Organization seen in Code: Veronica also plays a role in Resident Evil 4, by having two of their agents attempt to steal a master sample of the parasite for their disposal.
Resident Evil: Degeneration is a CGI movie that takes place within the canon Resident Evil storyline. As it begins, an airport is overrun by t-Virus zombies, Claire Redfield, reunited with Leon Scott Kennedy, must stop the threats from a new terrorist organization.
Resident Evil: Revelations takes place in the year of 2005, one year after an incident known as the Terragrigia Panic, Jill Valentine and her new partner, Parker Luciani, are sent to a ship called the Queen Zenobia, under orders from the BSAA (an organization dedicated to hunting down bioweapons and preventing their use in terrorism) director, Clive R. O'Brian, to look for Chris and his new partner, Jessica Sherawat, who have been reported missing, and have been traced to the ship, there, Jill and Parker are met with a new infection, brought upon by the seemingly-dead bioterrorist group called Il Veltro, using a new type of mutagen known as the T-Abyss.
Five years after the Los Iluminados incident, Resident Evil 5 catches up with Chris Redfield, now a member of the BSAA, an organization dedicated to hunting down bioweapons and preventing their use in terrorism. When attempting to meet a contact in the African settlement of Kijuju, Redfield and his new partner, Sheva Alomar, discover that forces unknown have infested the local populace with Las Plagas, rendering them all Majini. Redfield and Alomar work together to discover the true plan at the heart of this madness, and stop Albert Wesker from attempting to take over the world with his newly made Uroboros virus.
Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness - The Beginning is an comic prequel miniseries that takes place before the events of the White House which places Leon Scott Kennedy to investigate an potential bioterror attack after an bombing incident which occurs at Carnagie Museum of Art located in Pittsburgh which results the death of an security guard. Leon joins the investigation alongside Joseph Pascazzi, the detective of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police that is assigned. His investigation leading ties to his past assignment case.
Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is a CGI series that takes place within the canon Resident Evil storyline. It takes place in the year of 2006, where an unauthorized access incident occurs to a confidential file in the White House, agent Leon Kennedy were summoned for the investigation to find out the cause. Meanwhile, Claire Redfield helping refugees in Penamstan where she comes across a strange painting that leads her to pursue her own investigation. Together, they uncovers the truth of the incident that originated in Penamstan
Post-Wesker's death[]
Resident Evil: Damnation, a CGI movie sequel taking place after Resident Evil 5, takes place within the canon Resident Evil storyline like Degeneration before it. It deals with an ongoing civil war in the Eastern Slav Republic, with the usage of various Bioweapons, including Plaga Parasites. Leon S. Kennedy has to prevent the war from escalating.
BIOHAZARD THE STAGE takes place in the year of 2010 and a flashback set in 2005 and involve Chris Redfield and Rebecca Chambers, who is now an adviser to the BSAA, she goes undercover in the Philosophy University as a professor to investigate about Tyler Howard and his father who is linked to bio weapon experiments while an incident takes place.
Some time after the events of Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 took place when the NGO Claire Redfield is working with, TerraSave, is attacked by an unknown bioterrorist and his men. The bioterrorist took Claire and a young TerraSave member named Moira Burton to an island, when he used the two as test subjects against his B.O.W.s.
Resident Evil: The Marhawa Desire takes place in the year of 2012 and involves Chris and his new partner, Piers Nivans investigate the high school called Marhawa School, discovering the truth about the outbreak.
15 years after the Raccoon City Incident, Resident Evil 6 catches up with four protagonists; Leon S. Kennedy, who seeks to chase after a terrorist who turned tens of thousands citizens of Tall Oaks city into zombies, including president Adam Benford; Chris Redfield, who battles new species of B.O.W.s around the world; Jake Muller, a mercenary from eastern Europe who is revealed to be the son of Albert Wesker; and Ada Wong, who discovers that she has an evil doppelganger named Carla Radames, the woman who started a global outbreak in 2012–2013.
Resident Evil: Heavenly Island (2015) takes place in 2014 after the global bio-terrorist attacks. Claire Redfield investigates reports of a biohazard outbreak at Sonido de Tortuga Island while a TV Show is simultaneously being prepared to be shot at the same location. As people on the set are infected one after another, a subordinate of Alex Wesker is revealed to be responsible for the events. Meanwhile, Chris Redfield orders Parker Luciani to aid Claire in her journey, who discovers that the island is linked to the founder of Umbrella Corporation, Earl Spencer.
Resident Evil: Umbrella Corps (2016) is set in 2015 and explains a background story about the multiple organizations that became interested in leftovers of Umbrella Corporation and Tricell. These companies send mercenaries, known as Zombie Hunters, to gather bio-organic weapons research data, viral samples and tissues from the infected. At the same time, they must fight off other Hunters - who have the exact same goal they do.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard takes place in Dulvey, Louisiana, in 2017. After receiving an email from his wife Mia, who had vanished for three years and was presumed dead, Ethan Winters tracks her to a seemingly abandoned house. He is soon captured by the Baker family, who have turned mad from a new bioweapon called the Mold. Throughout the game, Ethan works to escape the horrors around him and find Mia, while unveiling the secrets behind a mysterious figure simply known as Eveline.
Resident Evil: Vendetta (2017) involves Chris Redfield, who is trying to catch a black market bioweaponry merchant named Glenn Arias. Chris gets a little help from Leon to catch him, and from Rebecca Chambers to produce a vaccine.
Resident Evil Village (2021) takes place three and a half years after the tragic events of Dulvey. Ethan Winters has started over with his wife Mia, finally living in peace and putting the past behind them. However, Chris Redfield, making a familiar appearance, suddenly disrupts their life, throwing a devastated Ethan into a new and twisted nightmare in search of answers, his wife, and his new daughter - Rosemary Winters.
Resident Evil: Death Island (2023) is a direct sequel to the events that occurred in Vendetta. Set in 2015, the movie starts with DSO agent Leon Scott Kennedy on a mission to rescue Dr. Antonio Taylor before an mysterious individual thwarts his attempt. At the same time, BSAA agent Chris Redfield investigates an outbreak that occurred in San Francisco, where the cause of infection remained unclear except one link: that all of the infected went to Alcatraz Island. Following the trail, Chris leads his team into investigating the island, where both Chris and Leon's stories collide with a horror unlike any before.
Timeline[]
Go back to: Continuities
1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s |
Sources[]
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