Resident Evil 3 Story Explained: Nemesis, Raccoon City's End and the 2020 Remake

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis came out on the PlayStation in September 1999, and Capcom remade it as Resident Evil 3 in April 2020. It's the story of Raccoon City's last days, told through Jill Valentine, one of the S.T.A.R.S. survivors of the Mansion Incident, as she tries to get out of the city while a bioweapon hunts her through the streets. It wraps around Resident Evil 2: it begins the day before and ends the morning the city is destroyed. This page covers the whole plot of both versions and the ending, so it has full spoilers. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil 3 (2020))

Before the story begins#

After the mansion, Jill and the other S.T.A.R.S. survivors tried to warn Raccoon City about Umbrella. The police department, bought by the company, buried their reports. By late September the t-Virus had broken out in the city anyway, and the S.T.A.R.S. who knew the truth were the people Umbrella most wanted dead. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil 3 (2020))

Umbrella had also sent in its own mercenaries, the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service, officially to rescue civilians. They were being slaughtered. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

Jill's escape and the Nemesis#

On 28 September Jill decided she'd waited long enough for a rescue that wasn't coming. In a warehouse she met a frightened survivor, Dario Rosso. He refused to leave and shut himself inside a shipping container. In a bar she ran into Brad Vickers, the Alpha Team pilot, terrified. Something was after S.T.A.R.S., he said, and there was no escape. They met again outside the police station, and it caught him there. The Nemesis, a huge scarred Tyrant in a black coat, drove a tentacle through his head, said "S.T.A.R.S." and came for Jill. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The Nemesis was Umbrella's newest weapon. Under its skin was a parasite that let it think, take orders and use weapons, including a rocket launcher, and its orders were to kill the remaining S.T.A.R.S. It kept finding her. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

Downtown she met Carlos Oliveira, a young corporal in the mercenaries. She didn't want help from Umbrella, but he saved her life and she came round to him. Carlos took her to his captain, Mikhail Victor, who was badly wounded, and the third survivor of their platoon, Sergeant Nikolai Zinoviev. They had a plan: an evacuation helicopter would come for anyone who rang the bell of the Saint Michael Clock Tower. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The clock tower#

The quickest way there was a tram. Jill and Carlos found the parts to get it running while Nikolai went missing, believed dead. On the ride, the Nemesis caught up. Mikhail stayed behind with an explosive and blew it out of the carriage, killing himself, and the tram crashed into the clock tower. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

Jill and Carlos rang the bell, and the helicopter came. The Nemesis shot it down with its rocket launcher. In the fight that followed, Jill beat it, but it got a tentacle into her, and the t-Virus with it. She collapsed. Carlos carried her into the tower chapel. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

While Jill slept#

Jill lay unconscious for days, and Resident Evil 2 happens in that gap. Across town, on the night of 29 September, Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield reached the station, where Brad's zombie can turn up at the entrance. They escaped the city before Jill woke up. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis; Resident Evil 2)

Before she woke, Carlos went to the city hospital to find a cure. There he found a dying comrade, Tyrell Patrick, who told him Nikolai had shot him. Nikolai, Carlos learned, was one of Umbrella's supervisors, planted among the mercenaries to watch how they and the bioweapons performed, and he was murdering the other supervisors so he'd be the only one left to sell the data. Carlos made a vaccine from the hospital's equipment and got out just before the building was blown up. The vaccine put the virus in Jill's blood to sleep. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The last day#

There was no more time. In a caretaker's cabin in Raccoon Park, Jill ran into Nikolai, who admitted he was one of Umbrella's supervisors before slipping away. A giant worm, the Grave Digger, came for her next. She killed it and found her way to an abandoned Umbrella plant on the edge of town, where Carlos told her the government was about to destroy the city with a missile. There she trapped the Nemesis in a waste-processing room and dropped it into acid. It still wasn't dead. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The plant had a helicopter. What happened to Nikolai depends on the route. On one path he tries to shoot it out with Jill and the Nemesis kills him. On another he steals the helicopter, boasts that he's killed the other supervisors and will collect a bounty on Jill, and she can either let him fly off or shoot the helicopter down. Either way, it wasn't going to take her and Carlos out. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The ending explained#

With the missile on its way, Jill met the Nemesis one last time. What came out of the acid was a shapeless, swollen mass of flesh, barely a Tyrant at all. She brought it down with an experimental railgun, and if she chose to, finished it off where it lay. Jill and Carlos made it to the helipad as the sun came up. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

Then a helicopter appeared. In the ending where Nikolai took the plant's helicopter, its pilot is Barry Burton, Jill's teammate from the mansion, who had come back for her. They flew out, and minutes later the missile hit and Raccoon City was gone. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

The meaning is the end of an era. Raccoon City, Umbrella's company town, was erased with everyone left in it, and most of the evidence went with it. Umbrella's toys, the Tyrants, the Nemesis and the rest, were destroyed, but the company survived. Jill and Carlos were two more witnesses who'd got away. Nikolai's fate depends on the route, and the epilogue files available after the credits hint at where the survivors went next. (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)

How the 2020 remake changes the story#

The 2020 remake keeps the shape (Jill, Carlos, the Nemesis, the missile) but changes many scenes and cuts others. (Resident Evil 3 (2020))

• Jill's apartment. The game opens on 28 September in Jill's flat, with a nightmare of turning into a zombie. Brad calls to warn her, and the Nemesis smashes through the wall. (Resident Evil 3 (2020))
• Brad dies differently. He's bitten holding off zombies so Jill can get away, rather than killed by the Nemesis. He still turns up as a zombie at the police station. (Resident Evil 3 (2020))
• The clock tower and Grave Digger. The tram ride becomes a subway train full of civilians, which the Nemesis tears apart after Nikolai locks Jill and Mikhail out. Mikhail dies setting off an explosive that derails the train. The giant worm and the park are gone, and the clock tower plaza is where the Nemesis, now a beast on all fours, infects Jill. (Resident Evil 3 (2020))
• Carlos at the police station. Carlos and Tyrell go to the station in the early hours of 29 September looking for Umbrella researcher Nathaniel Bard, and Carlos sees Lieutenant Marvin Branagh bitten by zombie Brad, which ties straight into Marvin's wound in the Resident Evil 2 remake. (Resident Evil 3 (2020); Resident Evil 2)
• Tyrell and the vaccine. Carlos's teammate Tyrell Patrick gets a bigger role and dies to the Nemesis. The vaccine comes from Bard, shot dead by Nikolai at the hospital. Jill then synthesises more of it in an Umbrella lab under the hospital, because Tyrell hears the missile strike could be called off if a vaccine is recovered. (Resident Evil 3 (2020))
• Nikolai's end. Nikolai destroys the vaccine and admits he was hired by an unnamed client to sabotage Umbrella. After Carlos grabs him, Jill shoots him, and they leave him behind on the rooftop. (Resident Evil 3 (2020))
• No Barry. Jill and Carlos fly out in the helicopter waiting on the roof. The missile's shockwave hits as they leave, and Jill resolves to take Umbrella down. (Resident Evil 3 (2020))

What it sets up#

Raccoon City's destruction is the event the rest of the series lives in the shadow of. The next chapter, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, follows Claire Redfield's search for her brother three months later. For the full chronology, see the Resident Evil timeline, and for the city itself, our guide to Raccoon City. (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)