Chronological order of the Resident Evil games
This is the in universe order first, with release year included so you can see how Capcom’s horror history bends time. Each card stays practical, what happens, why fans remember it, who matters, what it changed, and how it connects to the next domino.
Note on versions: remakes mostly retell the same in universe events, but they often adjust character beats, motivations, and how cleanly details line up across later entries. The cards below focus on the story events those games represent, and flag the few differences that genuinely matter for continuity.
Official introduction
PlayStation’s Resident Evil introduction provides Capcom-approved background and tone before diving into canon nuance.
3 nights plan
If you only have three sessions, start with Resident Evil 2, then Resident Evil 4, then Resident Evil 7. That gives you the classic outbreak, the action pivot, and the modern reboot of tone, without homework.
Continuity cheat
Think in eras: Raccoon City, post Umbrella global bioterror, then the mold saga. The dots on each card mark the vibe so you can pick what you feel like playing.
How to use this page
Read top to bottom if you want the canon flow. Jump by era if you want a mood. Open the expandable sections when you want lore and connective tissue.
Resident Evil 0
Plot synopsis
Bravo Team’s investigation into the Arklay murders goes sideways before it even begins. Rebecca Chambers teams with fugitive Billy Coen, and together they stumble across the ugly origin story of Umbrella’s culture: brilliant science, petty revenge, and founders who treat human beings like lab rats with paperwork.
Why it matters in the timeline
This is the final warning sign before the mansion incident turns Umbrella from a secret into a disaster. It also explains why the outbreak feels engineered rather than accidental, and why the people inside Umbrella often look like believers, not just employees.
Key characters
Rebecca Chambers, Billy Coen, Dr. James Marcus, Albert Wesker, William Birkin (background), Oswell E. Spencer (background).
Big fan moments
- Partner switching as tension, not empowerment, you are always one mistake away from being alone.
- The training facility reveal, where Umbrella’s "family business" becomes literal and grotesque.
- The leech body horror, a monster concept that feels like rot given legs.
Play tip
If you bounce off the inventory friction, treat it like part of the horror. The discomfort is the point, you are not supposed to feel stocked or confident.
Remake vs original notes that matter
Continuity note
As a prequel, it retrofits motivations and causes that the 1996 game only hinted at. When a later entry references founders, Marcus, or early research culture, this is the texture it is borrowing.
Resident Evil
Plot synopsis
Alpha Team enters the Spencer Mansion and finds an elaborate deathtrap built over a buried lab. Zombies are the headline, but betrayal is the real infection. Umbrella is gathering field data, S.T.A.R.S. is the test subject, and the mansion is a velvet curtain hiding industrial scale cruelty.
Why fans remember it
Because it teaches the series’ central language: doors that do not want to open, puzzles that mock panic, and the feeling that the building itself is alive. It is gothic horror turned into level design.
Key characters
Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Albert Wesker, Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers.
Big fan moments
- The mansion loop, keys, crests, shortcuts, fear as geography.
- Tyrant as the Umbrella signature: we built a weapon, then we lost control of it.
- Wesker’s turn, the blueprint for the human villain who thinks he is the future.
Legacy
Everything later games remix comes from here: corporate evil, haunted science, and survival horror as puzzle logic under pressure.
Remake vs original differences that matter
Continuity note
The remake deepens Umbrella’s internal structure and the mansion’s ecological horror, and it becomes the reference point for how later entries “remember” this incident.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Plot synopsis
Jill tries to escape an unraveling city while Umbrella runs an active field test: Nemesis, a hunter killer weapon built to erase S.T.A.R.S. evidence, starting with her. The outbreak is background noise, the real story is a corporation cleaning up witnesses while the city burns.
What it adds to the mythology
It makes Umbrella feel tactical and cruel in real time. This is not a lab accident anymore, it is a live operation with assets, handlers, and objectives.
Key characters
Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliveira, Nicholai Ginovaef, Mikhail Victor, Nemesis.
Big fan moments
- “STARS” and the footstep panic, predator design at its purest.
- Jill’s infection and the desperate sprint for a cure.
- The final showdown, a boss fight that feels like a city screaming its last.
Legacy
It turns the outbreak into a chase film you play, and it cements Jill as the series’ most resilient survivor, the one who keeps standing up.
Resident Evil 2
Plot synopsis
Leon and Claire arrive in Raccoon City at the worst moment in modern horror history. They survive the police station labyrinth, then descend into Umbrella’s NEST facility where the G virus story turns a family tragedy into an extinction level bio accident.
Why it hits
Because it balances scale with intimacy. A city dies, but the emotional core is a kid who needs protecting and two strangers learning how to be brave on zero notice.
Key characters
Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, Sherry Birkin, William Birkin, Annette Birkin.
Big fan moments
- RPD as a puzzle box cathedral, fear built into architecture.
- Pursuer pressure, the lesson that safety is temporary and loud.
- Sherry’s rescue, the rare soft heart inside a cruel outbreak.
Legacy
Leon and Ada become a long running spy thriller thread. Claire becomes the civilian survivor who never asked for hero status, then earned it anyway.
Remake vs original differences that matter
Continuity note
The remake clarifies character motivation and modernizes the facility lore. The broad beats stay the same, but the tone becomes more grounded, and that tone spills into how fans interpret later references.
Resident Evil Outbreak
Plot synopsis
Eight ordinary residents fight through bite sized nightmares as the city collapses. This is a street level view of Raccoon City, where the horror is not “save the world,” it is “find a door that opens” and keep the people beside you alive long enough to see morning.
Why it matters
It proves the setting is bigger than the main cast. It also shows the outbreak’s social physics, the way systems fail, trust collapses, and small decisions decide who gets out.
Key characters
Alyssa Ashcroft, Kevin Ryman, Mark Wilkins, Cindy Lennox, Jim Chapman, George Hamilton, David King, Yoko Suzuki.
Big fan moments
- Scenario storytelling, the city as an anthology that keeps getting worse.
- Limited supplies and cooperation, panic becomes a resource management problem.
- Alyssa’s truth seeking thread amid government clean up and corporate silence.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Plot synopsis
Claire’s search for Chris drags her into an Umbrella prison island ruled by the Ashford legacy. Chris enters mid crisis, and Wesker returns with superhuman power, turning family dynasties and virus aristocracy into the series’ next big arc.
What it changes
It moves Resident Evil from “city disaster” to “global empire,” and it turns Wesker from a twist villain into a long term threat who feels like a genre in himself.
Key characters
Claire Redfield, Chris Redfield, Albert Wesker, Alfred Ashford, Alexia Ashford, Steve Burnside.
Big fan moments
- Wesker’s comeback, the “impossible villain” era begins.
- Alexia as bio royalty, a final boss built from obsession and pedigree.
- Claire and Chris converging after the Raccoon chaos, family as anchor.
Legacy
It expands scope without losing melodrama. Umbrella becomes a world spanning machine, and the Redfields become the series’ moral counterweight.
Resident Evil 4
Plot synopsis
Leon is sent to rescue the President’s daughter and finds a parasite cult instead of zombies. Las Plagas shifts the biothreat from lab virus to living control system, and Ada’s shadow war for samples continues in broad daylight.
Why it matters
It widens the threat model. Now it is not only infection, it is control. It also redefines how the series is played and how it feels in your hands, with a camera and combat language that influences a decade of games.
Key characters
Leon S. Kennedy, Ashley Graham, Ada Wong, Osmund Saddler, Luis Sera, Jack Krauser.
Big fan moments
- The village assault, the moment the action horror template crystallizes.
- Krauser rivalry, agent versus soldier, ideology versus survival.
- Ada taking the sample, because of course she does, and because it always matters later.
Legacy
One of gaming’s most influential pivots. It keeps horror structure, then dresses it in velocity. Leon becomes a genre icon, and the series’ tone becomes more elastic from here on.
Resident Evil: Revelations
Plot synopsis
Chris and Jill investigate a bioterror plot at sea. The BSAA era takes shape, with organizations, cover ups, and “the war on bioterror” becoming the new normal after Umbrella’s collapse.
Why it matters
It makes the post Umbrella world feel structured. When later games talk about jurisdiction, task forces, and the politics of containment, this is the bridge that makes it believable.
Key characters
Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Parker Luciani, Jessica Sherawat, Raymond Vester, Morgan Lansdale.
Big fan moments
- Jill back in survival mode, scanning, conserving, enduring.
- The ship as a floating mansion, classic design remixed with modern pacing.
- BSAA foundations, the backbone of the action era explained from the inside.
Legacy
It proves you can do “modern Resident Evil” without losing atmosphere, and it strengthens the connective tissue between classic and blockbuster eras.
Resident Evil 5
Plot synopsis
Chris and Sheva chase bioweapon trafficking and uncover a corporate successor to Umbrella’s sins. Wesker’s endgame pushes the series into blockbuster territory, with partnered combat, global stakes, and a villain who refuses to die until he really does.
What it resolves
It closes the Wesker chapter that began in the mansion. It also recasts the series as an ongoing war, where outbreaks are weapons, and the front line is everywhere.
Key characters
Chris Redfield, Sheva Alomar, Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker, Excella Gionne, Ricardo Irving.
Big fan moments
- Jill’s “lost and weaponized” twist, identity turned into a tool.
- The volcano finale, peak series excess, thrilling and ridiculous at once.
- Wesker’s final defeat, long delayed closure for the original saga spine.
Mini timeline inside the timeline
Lost in Nightmares (in universe Aug 2006) is the key “how Jill vanished” incident. It also explains why Chris shows up later carrying anger like a second weapon.
What this era does to the tone
Series shift
For many fans this is the turning point where horror yields to spectacle. That is not automatically bad, but it changes the emotional contract. Later games react to this by shrinking spaces again.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2
Plot synopsis
Claire and Moira are abducted and forced through a sadistic experiment built around fear responses. Barry’s search and the Wesker Project shadow connect mid era games to long running Umbrella ideology, even after Umbrella is gone.
Why it works
It is intimate again. Experiments, cruelty, and claustrophobia. The story asks what survivors pass down to the next generation, and what it costs to keep going.
Key characters
Claire Redfield, Moira Burton, Barry Burton, Natalia Korda, Alex Wesker.
Big fan moments
- Claire back in the spotlight, competent, exhausted, stubborn.
- Barry as a late series dad hero, warm and surprisingly moving.
- Fear as mechanics, light, stealth, and panic made literal.
Legacy
It keeps the “experiments on people” theme sharp, and it proves smaller scale stories still land in a post RE5 world.
Resident Evil 6
Plot synopsis
Multiple campaigns collide across a worldwide bioterror cascade. Leon deals with political truth, Chris spirals through soldier trauma, Ada’s identity fractures into conspiracy, and Jake Muller becomes a genetic key nobody can ignore.
Why it matters
This is the peak of the “Resident Evil as globe spanning action saga” idea. It establishes how bad things can get when the technology spreads, and why later games need to reboot the feeling of fear.
Key characters
Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Ada Wong, Jake Muller, Sherry Birkin, Piers Nivans, Derek Simmons.
Big fan moments
- Sherry returning, one of the cleanest “the past is alive” payoffs.
- Leon’s campaign carrying the most classic tone inside a huge machine.
- Piers’ sacrifice, Chris’ grief finally given a face.
Legacy
Messy but consequential. It sets a global baseline that later games deliberately pull away from, because horror needs tighter spaces.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Plot synopsis
Ethan Winters searches for Mia and walks into a mold infected family tragedy engineered by a bioweapon child. The horror is intimate, bodily, and sticky. The series reinvents itself by shrinking the frame and making every hallway personal.
What it introduces
The mold and The Connections become the new myth engine. It also brings back the feeling that information is a weapon, and every document you read is a clue to what kind of evil you are dealing with.
Key characters
Ethan Winters, Mia Winters, Eveline, Jack Baker, Marguerite Baker, Lucas Baker, Zoe Baker, Chris Redfield.
Big fan moments
- The dinner scene, disgust and dread welded together.
- Jack as relentless pursuer, humor and horror sharing the same heartbeat.
- The Umbrella shock and what it implies about brand versus reality.
Legacy
It puts survival horror back in the driver’s seat, and it sets up the modern era’s family tragedy angle, where the monster is also a person who got used.
Resident Evil Village
Plot synopsis
Ethan is dragged into a folkloric nightmare where the mold lineage expands into Miranda’s cult and the four lords. The story connects modern horror back to old Umbrella symbols by showing how academic obsession becomes corporate apocalypse.
Why it matters
It ties the new saga to the franchise’s oldest iconography, and it proves Resident Evil can wear different horror masks, gothic, folk, body, while still being itself.
Key characters
Ethan Winters, Mia Winters, Rose Winters, Chris Redfield, Mother Miranda, Alcina Dimitrescu, Karl Heisenberg, Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau.
Big fan moments
- Castle Dimitrescu as a cultural moment that escaped the game.
- Beneviento’s house, weaponized anxiety, a dread clinic.
- Ethan’s sacrifice, a rare clean tragedy in the franchise.
Legacy
It turns the Umbrella logo into a retroactive echo of Miranda’s world, then closes Ethan’s arc with real weight, not just lore.
Resident Evil Village: Shadows of Rose
Plot synopsis
Teenage Rose enters a molded consciousness space built from absorbed memories. It is a psychological sequel that treats the Megamycete like a library of trauma, and it lets Ethan’s presence linger in a way the main game only implied.
What it does differently
Instead of escalation, it goes inward. The set pieces are memories, and the monsters feel like emotional logic given a body. It is Resident Evil as a haunted mind.
Key characters
Rose Winters, Ethan Winters (echo), Mother Miranda (echo), Chris Redfield (off screen influence).
Big fan moments
- Rose claiming agency over her “gift” instead of being defined by it.
- Ethan’s goodbye as emotional closure, not just a lore button.
- The question it leaves hanging, what does the next era even look like?
Legacy
It is the furthest jump forward on the canon timeline so far, and it functions like an epilogue door left slightly open.
Resident Evil Requiem
Plot synopsis
FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft investigates new deaths tied to the condemned Wrenwood Hotel in the remains of Raccoon City. Leon S. Kennedy returns as a second playable lead, pulling the series back toward its origin point, with a new case that treats the RPD legacy like a haunted landmark, not nostalgia wallpaper.
What to watch for
This premise is all about pressure. Can the series return to the ruins without being trapped by them. Grace is positioned as a modern viewpoint character, and Leon is the living witness to what Raccoon City really meant.
Key characters
Grace Ashcroft, Leon S. Kennedy, Alyssa Ashcroft (legacy connection).
Big fan moments to watch for
- Raccoon City mythos with modern rot, new scars on old ground.
- Dual protagonist pacing, survival tension versus trained competence.
- Grace as a reset without a reboot, if the writing earns it.
Why this could matter long term
Returning to the disaster site can do two things: it can clarify the franchise’s moral thesis, or it can expose how much damage is still unpaid. If Requiem leans into consequences, not souvenirs, it could set a new decade of stories.
Quick catch up before release: IGN complete timeline recap video.
Status note
Scope caution
This card reflects officially shared info and previews. Full plot details, timeline placement nuance, and any continuity retcons will only be clear once the game is out.
