Resident Evil Story Explained: the Mansion Incident (1996 and the Remake)

Resident Evil came out on the PlayStation in March 1996, and Capcom remade it for the GameCube in 2002, with an HD Remaster following in 2015. It's the game that started the series. Set on 24 and 25 July 1998, a night after Resident Evil 0, it sends S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team into the Arklay Mountains, where a mansion in the woods hides the laboratory behind every horror that follows. You play as either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, and the two stories differ. This page covers both, every ending and what the remake changes, so it has full spoilers. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil (2002))

Before the story begins#

From May 1998, hikers and families in the Arklay Mountains outside Raccoon City were being found dead, some of them partly eaten. The police handed the case to S.T.A.R.S., the Raccoon police's special tactics unit. On the night of 23 July its Bravo Team flew out to search the woods and lost contact. What happened to them that night is the plot of Resident Evil 0. The original game only shows the aftermath. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil 0)

Alpha Team and the mansion#

On the evening of 24 July, Alpha Team went looking for Bravo. In the forest they found Bravo's crashed helicopter and the pilot's severed hand still holding a gun. Then the dogs came. They tore Joseph Frost apart, and when the others ran for their own helicopter, the pilot, Brad Vickers, panicked and took off without them. Chris, Jill, Barry Burton and Captain Albert Wesker ran for the only building in sight. (Resident Evil)

That building was the Spencer Mansion. Here the two stories split. In Chris's version he reaches the mansion with Jill and Wesker while Barry vanishes in the chaos. In Jill's version she gets in with Barry and Wesker while Chris is lost. Either way, a gunshot rang out from the west wing. Whoever went to check found a pool of blood and, in the next room, a zombie feeding on Bravo Team's Kenneth Sullivan. When they got back to the entrance hall, it was empty. (Resident Evil)

The house was built like a puzzle box, full of locked doors, crests and traps. Its staff had been dead for weeks and were walking again. Files left behind told the story: something had leaked in a laboratory below, and the staff had grown sick, itchy and violent before they turned. More of Bravo turned up. Forest Speyer lay dead on a balcony, pecked by crows. Richard Aiken had been bitten by a giant snake and died soon after he was found. (Resident Evil)

Chris's story#

Chris found Bravo's rookie medic, Rebecca Chambers, alive and hiding. She had no business being in a place like that and knew it, but she knew medicine and chemistry, and the two of them worked through the house together. She played the piano to open a hidden room, mixed the herbicide that killed the giant mutant plant in the guardhouse, and treated Chris when the snake poisoned him. If he left her alone for too long, a Hunter could kill her. (Resident Evil)

Every so often Wesker would reappear, tell Chris that Jill had gone missing and send him back into the house alone. (Resident Evil)

Jill's story#

Jill had Barry, which was both a comfort and a worry. He pulled her out of a crushing ceiling trap and other scrapes, but he kept disappearing and turning up where he shouldn't be, and it was never clear who he'd been talking to. (Resident Evil)

The traitor#

In the tunnels below the house, the player character found Bravo's captain, Enrico Marini, wounded. He said S.T.A.R.S. had been set up and that one of their own was a traitor, but before he could say who, a shot came out of the dark and killed him. (Resident Evil)

Beyond the courtyard and its guardhouse, a fountain hid the entrance to the Arklay Laboratory, Umbrella's research centre under the estate. The truth was laid out in its files. Umbrella had been developing biological weapons here in breach of international law. The latest t-Virus had leaked, the staff had been infected, and the experiments had broken out into the forest: the dogs, the snake, the Hunters, all of it. (Resident Evil)

The traitor was Wesker. He had been one of Umbrella's researchers before he ever led S.T.A.R.S., and he'd brought his own team to the mansion on Umbrella's orders, to see how well its creatures killed trained soldiers and to recover the research before destroying the lab. He also had plans of his own. Later games reveal he was already preparing to leave Umbrella for a rival. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

In Jill's story, Barry had been working for him all along. Wesker told him his wife and daughters would be killed unless he cooperated. Depending on how Jill had treated Barry, he either turned on Wesker or died before he got the chance. In Chris's story, Wesker shot Rebecca in front of him, though her vest saved her. Both stories end in the same room. The missing partner was locked in a cell nearby, and in the culture tank room Wesker showed off Umbrella's prize, the Tyrant, and let it out. It killed him on the spot, impaling him on its claws, then turned on the player. (Resident Evil)

The ending explained#

Once the Tyrant went down, the self-destruct started counting, Brad came on the radio, and the survivors fired a flare from the roof. The Tyrant came back once more on the helipad. Brad dropped a rocket launcher, the Tyrant died, the helicopter got everyone out and the mansion and laboratory blew up behind them. (Resident Evil)

The 1996 game has several endings, decided by who is still alive. As Chris, he can escape with Jill and Rebecca, with only one of them or alone. As Jill, she can escape with Chris and Barry, with only one of them or alone. Later games treat the fullest outcome as what happened: Chris, Jill, Barry, Rebecca and Brad all escaped. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

What it means is simple and grim. The cannibal killings were an Umbrella accident, the S.T.A.R.S. operation was a weapons test, and the man in charge was Umbrella's own. The survivors had seen everything, and the lab was gone. That's the setup for the rest of the series: a handful of people who know the truth, a company big enough to bury it and a city that's next. (Resident Evil; Resident Evil 2)

The game leaves one question it later answers. Wesker didn't stay dead. Resident Evil Code: Veronica reveals he had taken a virus from his colleague William Birkin before the confrontation, revived after the Tyrant's attack and walked out before the explosion. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

How the 2002 remake changes the story#

The remake keeps the same night, the same cast and the same two scenarios, but it adds a lot. (Resident Evil (2002))

• Lisa Trevor. The biggest addition. The remake tells the story of George Trevor, the architect who built the mansion for Oswell E. Spencer in the 1960s, and his family. Spencer had his wife Jessica and young daughter Lisa abducted and injected with strains of the Progenitor virus. Jessica died. Lisa survived and spent around thirty years as a test subject, her body warped and her mind gone, collecting the faces of women in search of her mother. In 1998 she roams the grounds in chains and can't be killed. The final meeting happens at a stone coffin deep underground holding her mother's body. Lisa takes the skull, holds it and throws herself into the chasm. (Resident Evil (2002))
• Crimson Heads. Zombies you put down don't always stay down. Unless the body is burned or its head destroyed, it can rise again as a Crimson Head, red-skinned, faster and clawed. Files explain this as a side effect of the strain that leaked, and why the staff had started burning their dead. (Resident Evil (2002))
• Richard and Forest. Richard Aiken can be saved from the snake bite and lives a little longer, until he dies saving the hero, either from the giant snake or from a giant shark depending on the scenario. Forest Speyer, dead on the balcony, gets up as a zombie when he's found. (Resident Evil (2002))
• New places and files. A graveyard, a crypt, Lisa's cabin and the caves under the estate are new, and the George Trevor documents fill in how he was imprisoned and died inside his own house. (Resident Evil (2002))
• Same ending. The endings still depend on who survives, and the canon outcome is unchanged. (Resident Evil (2002))

What it sets up#

Two months later, the virus reaches Raccoon City itself. Resident Evil 2 follows a rookie cop, Leon S. Kennedy, and Chris's sister, Claire Redfield, through the outbreak, while Resident Evil 3 brings Jill back for the city's last days. The film Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City retells this night and the outbreak together, with big changes. For the full chronology, see the Resident Evil timeline. (Resident Evil 2; Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City)