Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

"S.T.A.R.S.!"

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is the third game in Capcom's Survival Horror franchise. Chronologically, Resident Evil 3 is more of a sidestory than an true sequel. One half of the game takes place hours before Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield arrive in Raccoon City, while the other half occurs roughly two days after the events of Resident Evil 2.

Jill Valentine, who survived the Mansion Incident, chose to remain in Raccoon City after resigning from S.T.A.R.S. (unlike former teammates and fellow survivors Barry Burton, Chris Redfield, and Rebecca Chambers). She consequently found herself staring at Hell's gates when Raccoon City's T-Virus outbreak began. Having experience with this sort of thing, Jill tries her best to save as many people as possible, but eventually becomes a lone survivor who decides to escape Raccoon City before becoming another victim of Umbrella's heinous actions.

Jill's mission is endangered when she discovers a new biohazard: a new type of Tyrant (codenamed "Nemesis") has been inserted into Raccoon City, and it's programmed to seek out and slay any surviving S.T.A.R.S. members. Carlos Oliveira -- who leads a band of mercenaries hired for (and set up by) the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service -- finds and helps Jill during an encounter with Nemesis, then tries to aid Jill in finding a way to defeat Nemesis and escape Raccoon City before the U.S. Government tries a last-ditch effort to contain the outbreak: a tactical nuclear strike.

This game has a Shout Out page.

Tropes used in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis include:

• Action Girl: Jill seems to have gotten even better at surviving since the Mansion Incident, managing to survive outnumbered against tens of thousands of zombies.
• Actionized Sequel: This was the first Resident Evil where a button press wasn't necessary to navigate stairs, plus Jill could craft her own ammunition using a kit in her inventory, and she had a dedicated dodging move. And of course, there's the fact that the Nemesis could follow her from room to room.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The most bonus outfits of the series to date.
• Antagonist Title: Nemesis, of course, is the foe chasing Jill through the whole game.
• Awesome but Impractical: The portable railgun. Sounds cool, right? Wrong. The U.S. Army had to set up a room for this and lost many people luring Tyrants in front of the railgun to destroy. It takes minutes for it to charge and a while to fire. And by portable, we mean "would need a forklift to transport".
• Badass Normal: Both of the main characters, and the surviving members of the U.B.C.S. How many times should Nicholai have died, but didn't?
  • Badass Spaniard/Portuguese/Mexican: Carlos, though his tendency to lose his accent makes one wonder if he's really Hispanic.
• Blind Idiot Translation:
  • "He's after S.T.A.R.S. members! There's no escape!"
  • "It is not enough to make the device to work."
  • "They're coming! Fire! Fire! Stick together!"
  • "A dried pumpkins is placed here."
  • The official spelling of Nicholai's last name, "Ginoveaf", is actually a mistransliteration of the Russian surname "Zinoviev".
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Barry Burton he shows up at the end with no warning to airlift you to safety before Raccoon City is bombed.
  • Carlos gets a minor one in an optional cutscene should you jump off a bridge instead of shoving the Nemesis off. Jill gets surrounded by zombies, in waist deep sewage water, and then Carlos blows them all to hell without hitting Jill.
• Brick Joke: The first actual survivor Jill meets in the warehouse rants about how he lost his daughter in the outbreak. The player later finds the corpses of a mercenary holding a girl, with a prompt describing how "he looks as if he was trying to protect someone's daughter" at the Clock Tower.
• Body Horror: Nemesis.
• Casanova: Carlos is a firm believer. "All the foxy ladies love the accent"... which he seems to lose every third line.
• Clown Car Grave
• Combat Tentacles: Nemesis, particularly after its Badass Longcoat gets burned off.
• Continuity Snarl: The RPD precinct from Resident Evil 2 have a few doors in the main hall that were barricaded in order to prevent the player from exploring areas that they don't need to visit. Funnily enough, the barricaded doors were electronically locked in Resident Evil 2, meaning that the barricades were not necessary in the first place. Oops!
• Department of Redundancy Department: "There are numerous numbers of medical cards."
• Dumb Muscle: As strong and tough as he is, Nemesis doesn't seem to be very smart.
• Dummied Out: Tofu of "The Tofu Survivor" fame is technically in this game too, but he can't be accessed without a GameShark.
• Easy Mode Mockery: Playing on easy starts Jill off with an assault rifle, an ink ribbon with unlimited use, and a box with 3 first aid sprays inside. However, you won't have access to the items Nemesis drops when you knock him out and you won't get some of the unlockable content.
• Genre Savvy: Jill tries to make it a point to stick to back alleys and other less populated areas in her scramble out of the city, and whenever she does get surrounded by a large group of zombies she hightails it via cutscene rather than risk taking them on.
• Handicapped Badass: Mikhail was pretty hurt, but he fought like he wasn't.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Mikhail against Nemesis by way of Taking You with Me.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The three Mercenaries in the "Operation: Mad Jackal" minigame due to their arsenal.
  • Mikhail is the easiest, since he wields a shotgun, a magnum revolver and a rocket launcher.
  • Carlos is only moderately difficulty, wielding a sub-machine gun and a custom handgun.
  • Nicholai is the hardest, since he wields only a standard handgun (which can use enhanced bullets, if you're lucky enough to get them) and a knife.
• Implacable Man: Nemesis. Even more so than his "cousin" Mr. X, he just will. Not. Stop.
• Impossible Item Drop: There are seven encounters with Nemesis throughout the course of the game where you have the choice to either fight or evade him. If you opt to take him out on Hard Mode, he drops a special item case, which contains a different item based on how many times you've knocked him out over the course of that specific run through the game. The rewards include the parts for the Eagle 6.0 handgun, a scoped 9mm with a high chance to deliver a critical hit, and the Western Custom lever-action shotgun, which fires faster than the standard Benelli and lets Jill do the one-handed flip-cock reload from Terminator 2. There is no other way to get either gun, although Carlos uses the Eagle if you play as him in Mercenaries mode.
• It's the Only Way to Be Sure: The United States government decides to obliterate Raccoon City to stop the infection.
• Jossed: Resident Evil 3 almost seemed written specifically to negate a lot of plot elements S.D. Perry tried to introduce to the series in her Novelizations.
• Karma Houdini: Nicholai can survive the events of the game, depending on which path the player takes.
• Legion of Lost Souls: Due to the hazardous quality of its duties and its high death toll, the U.B.C.S. is comprised entirely of the most ruthless mercenaries and convicted war criminals from around the world, all hired with the offer of relief from whatever capital punishments (usually execution) they may have been facing for their sins.
  • Which makes you wonder what Carlos pulled to get in their ranks.
• Lightning Bruiser: Nemesis is always able to run faster than you. He gets faster. His last form doesn't run.
• Made of Iron: A minor case with Nemesis. Has an added healing factor to make up for it.
• Mini-Dress of Power: Although Jill just incidentally wears one.
• Mini Game: Operation Mad Jackal (also known as the first iteration of "The Mercenaries" minigame, although it's much closer to the Extreme Battle mode from the previous game than anything else).
• Mission Pack Sequel: The game was made on a modified version of the Resident Evil 2 engine and even some of the areas from the Police Station are recycled.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Subverted in the main game with Mikhail. who feels deeply guilty over the fact his men have all died and who tries his hardest to help the remaining survivors get out of the city, to the point of making a suicide attack on Nemesis to save Jill and Carlos. Played straight with Nicholai.
  • Fighting a swarm of zombies and winning while heavily injured. Oh yeah, he's strong.
  • In the Mercenaries minigame, both are stronger than Carlos.
• No One Could Survive That: Nicholai is in the same room as a gas station explosion that levels a city block and consumes it in fire, but shows up later unscathed and offering no explanations.
• Non-Linear Sequel: The game takes place both before and after Resident Evil 2.
• Nuke'Em: How the military decides to solve the problem.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Carlos is Hispanic, except when he isn't.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Right before making Nemesis see stars:

Jill: "You want S.T.A.R.S.? I'll give you S.T.A.R.S.!"

• Press X to Not Die: Not exactly, but certain points in the game prompt the player to choose between two options, they majorly involve deciding whether to fight Nemesis or flee. Or you can let the timer run out and gamble on a much more advantegous position.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: In 3, Jill finds herself having to work alongside three U.B.C.S. members -- Nicholai, Mikhail, and Carlos. Guess which one doesn't end up dead.
  • Nicholai does survive, depending on the route taken.
• Tank Controls
• Title Drop: In Japan, the game is subtitled Last Escape, the two words Jill ends her opening monologue with.
• Too Dumb to Live: Dario, in the midst of telling Jill to screw off, says he'd rather starve than be eaten by the zombies before locking himself into a shipping crate. Upon returning to the warehouse after going to the police station, guess who got eaten by zombies?
• Turn in Your Badge: At some point after the first game, Jill leaves the RPD, likely because of Brian Irons.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Jill is dressed like a streetwalker (miniskirt, tube top, sweater around her waist) and later on gets a harness which adds inventory space. Yet she can somehow carry more than Carlos, her erstwhile ally who is dressed in military fatigues loaded with pockets.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Carlos is completely MIA since the end of Resident Evil 3.
  • Nicholai was mentioned in the original Gun Survivor and makes a short appearance in Outbreak which occurs chronologically before the end of 3, but has since failed to reappear.
    • He's back in Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City... which also occurs before the end of 3.
• Zombie Apocalypse