Resident Evil Code: Veronica

Someone's been sleeping through the apocalypse...

Resident Evil Code: Veronica is the fourth Resident Evil game released and the fifth game chronologically.

The game takes place three months after the destruction of Raccoon City; although a setback to Umbrella, they have yet to be toppled and are still producing their bioweapons. Having lost contact with her brother Chris, Claire Redfield attempts to infiltrate an Umbrella facility located in Paris. She is discovered and attempts to escape, only to run out of ammo in the resultant shootout and be captured by a lucky mook. She is promptly flown out to Rockfort Island, an Umbrella prison complex on a small island somewhere in the South Seas.

While she is confined to a solitary cell, however, an attack is made on the island, causing a T-Virus outbreak. Claire becomes aware of this only when an injured guard, by sheer coincidence the same man who managed to capture her in Paris, stumbles down into the solitary cell to seek shelter. In an attack of conscience, the man releases her and tells her that the island is finished, so she's free to go.

Stumbling up the stairs, she finds herself in a small cemetery, and quickly realizes what the disaster is as decaying bodies rip through the sodden earth and start shambling towards her. Fleeing for the comparative shelter of the nearby walled-off yard, she is not pleased when someone in the guard tower opens fire on her. Waiting for a lull in the shooting, she fires back with a recovered pistol and destroys the spotlight, intimidating her assailant into surrender. Said assailant turns out to be a teenaged boy of about Claire's age named Steve Burnside, who explains he's also a prisoner on Rockfort. Claire immediately suggests they team up, well aware of the danger that must be present if the T-Virus has gotten loose, but Steve declares she'll simply slow him down and wanders off alone.

Fortunately for him, he and Claire continually run into each other, and wind up having to help each other against the sole remaining survivor -- the demented Alfred Ashford, former commander of the island. After numerous escapes from the psychotic aristocrat, they finally manage to board a seaplane and escape, just as Alfred detonates the self-destruct system. Unfortunately for them, Alfred also escaped the blaze and seizes control of their plane by remote control, crashing them into a derelict Umbrella facility somewhere in Antarctica.

Meanwhile, Chris Redfield, having been alerted to Claire's location early after she escaped by an email she sent from a computer in a guard station, arrives at Rockfort Island to find it in ruins. Narrowly escaping a confrontation with Albert Wesker, presumed dead in the Mansion Incident, he finally manages to track Claire and Steve's location and sets off to rescue them from Alfred's even crazier sister, Alexia Ashford...

Check out the Shout Out page.

Tropes used in Resident Evil Code: Veronica include:
  • Action Girl: Claire Redfield.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Averted in the main game, but the Battle Game mode has an alternate version of Claire who wears a tank top, hot pants and go-go boots.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: Alfred and Alexia Ashford are of noble birth and completely out of their minds.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Gulp Worm and Giant Black Widow.
  • Ax Crazy: Oh, good Lord, Alfred. Such is what happens when one forms bonds with someone that remained frozen for over a decade.
  • Back from the Dead: Wesker, having returned from his death in the original game.
  • Badass:
  • Bare Your Midriff: Claire.
  • Big Bad: Alexia.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Chris goes all the way to Antarctica to rescue his sister.
  • Body Horror: Alexia's transformations.
    • Nosferatu, the product of a failed experiment on the twins' father. Sports bondage, Eyeless Face, razor-tipped Combat Tentacles, exposed beating heart, poisonous breath, etc.
    • Also, Steve, who's later subjected to the same experiment, but he goes back to human form before dying
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: Subverted. While Alfred does subject Claire and Steve to an overly elaberate death trap (and gives up on it fairly quickly), he does try to shoot and kill them both before and after. He fails several times.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: The very first Bandersnatch. The best weapon the player can use on it is either their pair of M100Ps or their much more valuable explosive-tipped arrows (which a prudent gamer will probably rather save for Tyrant later on). Yes, the player can try to run to its left side where it has no arm, but it can still slap them with its one elastic arm.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Averted with the Calico M100-P pistols. They have a percentage-based ammo count but still have a factually accurate 100 rounds each.
  • Brother-Sister Incest/Twincest: Between Alfred and Alexia.
  • Colon Cancer: Averted. The official title of the game is Resident Evil Code: Veronica, and the X is merely tacked onto the end with no colon.
  • Creepy Twins: The Ashford twins.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: When Steve's father, now a zombie, tries to munch on Claire, she apparently forgets all about the weapons she's been carrying around the whole game. Let alone Steve doing nothing for a while, saying how he can't help her. Justified in that he just found out that his dad is dead the hard way. The kid's still human.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: Steve vs. Bandersnatch.
  • Disc One Final Boss: Alfred.
  • Emergency Weapon: This is the first game in the series where the knife is actually useful since it registers multiple hits as the blade slices through enemies instead of one measly stab.
  • Evil Brit: The Ashford twins.
  • Evil Is Hammy
  • Evil Laugh: About half of Alexia's dialogue, some of which she will turn to a camera that she cannot possibly know anyone is looking at, laugh, and turn it off.
      • The novel explains it by giving Alexia psychic powers (to the point that the narration from her point of view really gives the impression of her being omnipotent). The fact that she could project herself in an island half around the globe (or the fact that she knows that an agent of Umbrella is there) scares the shit out of Wesker (the novel is based on the original version where Wesker is utterly dominated by Alexia unlike in X).
    • Alfred does it too, but it's closer to a Noblewoman's Laugh.
    • Wesker gets one at the end of X.
  • Exposed to the Elements:
    • Umbrella's Antarctic facility is clearly no longer heated, but lightly dressed Claire and Steve barely seem to notice. Claire even has an outdoor boss battle in a snowstorm. Oddly, Capcom didn't even get this right as the game is set in December, during the Southern Hemisphere's summer, and Antarctica could be survivable. But the game goes out of its way to show how cold it is.
    • Claire and Steve crashed at Latitude 82 degrees 17 minutes South and Longitude about 136 degrees East, which puts them in the vicinity of Antarctica's Southeast coast, but they're a good ways inland, so even in the summer we're still talking temperatures of at most -10 degrees C. Exposure is definitely still fatal.
  • Face Monster Turn: Steve is infected with T-Veronica and attacks Claire until The Power of Love stops him from killing her. He then returns to (almost) normal after being mortally wounded.
  • Fixed Camera
  • Gas Chamber: The Torture Cellar and part of the Training Facility basement.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: The Gulp Worm.
  • Giggling Villain: The Ashford twins.
  • Glamour Failure: The reason why Wesker wears his sunglasses everywhere is to not show off his gold/red cat eyes.
  • A God Am I: Alexia.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Wesker's eyes sometimes flash red Terminator style, and a few of the zombies even have them for some reason.
    • Goggles.
  • Guide Dang It: You know the fire extinguisher, the one the you used way back at the very beginning of the game and then left in the security terminal? Well you better take it with you to Antarctica or you're not getting the magnum, which makes the final boss much easier to handle.
  • Guns Akimbo: The gold lugers, submachine guns, and calico pistols are all paired and are each able to target two different enemies at once.
  • Gun Fu: Claire went to John Woo's school in between games. Steve must have gone to the same school.
  • The Heavy: Alfred's the one who drives the plot.
  • Karma Houdini: Suffice to say, Wesker went on to star in more Resident Evil games...
  • Late Arrival Spoiler: In the original Dreamcast release, Wesker's return was a big twist that isn't revealed until the player reaches the second disc. In the later Code: Veronica X release, not only is Wesker's face visible on the cover, but he shows up a lot earlier as well. If that wasn't enough, the X version was even sold with a bonus DVD known as Wesker's Report, which was offered as a pre-order bonus.
  • Late to the Party: Chris only makes it to Rockfort Island after Claire and Steve have already left and the self-destruct has already occurred.
  • Lethal Joke Item: The knife, for the first time in the series, proves to be a viable weapon against individual zombies or even small groups.
  • Let's Split Up, Gang!: Claire is Genre Savvy enough now to try and avoid this, but Steve is so moody and confused that he keeps running off on his own anyway.
  • Lonely Piano Piece: When the Ashford Lullaby was played on the piano.
  • Lost Forever: You know that fire extinguisher you used early in the game, and then might have left in the metal detector bin? Well you better go get it before the island's self destruct sequence starts, otherwise, you're not going to get the magnum.
  • Mini Game: The Battle Game available upon completing the main story mode.
  • Naked on Arrival: Alexia, upon awakening as an adult from her cryogenic tube.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Steve's haircut was altered to lessen his likeness to Leonardo DiCaprio. The irony is that Steve's hair is likened to Leon's now, to the point that some people thought that Steve was Leon.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Wesker brutally mahandles Claire in their first encounter. He later gives Chris an impressive beating in the ending of Code: Veronica X. Both times, he's interrupted before he can finish them off.
  • Oh Crap: Wesker gets one of these moments in the original version when Alexia mutates in front of him. She follows it up by slapping him down the stairs.
  • Outrun the Fireball: Chris's escape in both versions.
  • The Password Is Always Swordfish: The final puzzle of the game is to enter a password which is Veronica. Acts as a Title Drop too.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Wesker, Alexia and Steve.
  • Sauna of Death: The trap room in the Palace.
  • Sequel Number Snarl: Code: Veronica was going to be Resident Evil 3. However, since it was originally developed as a Dreamcast exclusive at a time the franchise was still tied to the PlayStation, it was treated more like a side story than a true sequel.
  • So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: Don't take any big guns when you switch back to Claire, or you won't be able to get them back as Chris.
  • Staking the Loved One: Steve is forced to kill his father after the latter becomes a zombie.
  • Still Wearing the Old Colors: Chris is in a S.T.A.R.S. uniform, despite them being disbanded for months.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: In the original version, Chris kills Alexia, triggering the self-destruct which he barely escapes. X includes a long extra scene while that clock is ticking. Somehow, Chris still barely escapes.
  • Tank Controls
  • Too Awesome to Use:
    • You'd best get used to the pistol and the bowgun, and get used to running out of ammo for both, because you won't start finding enough ammunition for bigger guns to actually stockpile until about the last third of the game.
    • The Magnum is a one-hit kill against any normal enemy and tears through bosses, but there are only eighteen bullets for it in the entire game. Six of them are inside a Duralumin Case, which means the player can quite easily overlook them.
  • Tragic Monster: Nosferatu and Mutant Steve.
  • Updated Rerelease: Code: Veronica X for the Dreamcast (in Japan only), PlayStation 2 and GameCube. Further explored in Code: Veronica X HD for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
  • Villainous Crossdresser: Alfred. Justified in the fact that he has a split personality disorder.
  • Wave Motion Gun/BFG: The Linear Launcher.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Finding D.I.J.'s Diary in the minigame Battle Game tells the player exactly what the mouse was up to. Fittingly, the mouse is the only peripheral character to get any closure.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Subverted. This time, the zombies don't get the great spotlight.
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