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Resident Evil 5 is the seventh (main) game in Capcom's Resident Evil franchise. Gameplay is similar to Resident Evil 4's, although Resident Evil 5 also introduced a two-player cooperative mode (with players controlling either returning character Chris Redfield or series newcomer Sheva Alomar).
Chris and Sheva—who work for BSAA, an international group dedicated to dealing with bioterrorist threats—have traveled to Africa to deal an outbreak of what appears to be an altered version of Las Plagas. Their fight against this new outbreak is complicated when they discover who's involved with it: global pharmaceutical corporation TriCell, former Umbrella Corporation mastermind Albert Wesker, and former S.T.A.R.S. team member Jill Valentine.
This game has a Shout Out page.
Your future hiiiiinges on these tropes![]
- Actionized Sequel: Though with the same base gameplay as Resident Evil 4, there is a bigger emphasis on melee attacks, and your knife does less damage to make you more likely to use them.
- Already Undone for You: The entirety of Chapters 4-1 and 4-2.
- America Saves the Day: Lampshaded—it's pointed out that Chris would be getting a hostile welcome no matter where he went in the country, due to attitudes towards the supposed "gung-ho" nature of American forces.
- Ammunition Backpack: The Gatling Gun comes with a HUGE backpack-o-ammo, whether it's being used by an enemy or Chris. It's actually somewhat problematic when you use it, since the huge backpack blocks off so much of your vision that large parts of the screen becomes obstructed while in aim-mode. The backpack itself, however, protects Chris from gunshots to his back.
- An Axe to Grind: The Executioner Majini carries a two-handed greataxe that towers over himself, in which he uses it to execute Reynard Fisher, a BSAA agent who helped Chris and Sheva at the beginning.
- And I Must Scream: Poor Jill follows the classic state of Brainwashed and Crazy self-awareness.
- Apocalypse How: Either type 3 or type 4, depending on how selective Uroboros is.
- Armor Is Useless: You can purchase armor that lessens the damage of melee attacks and gunfire. On Professional, though, one or two attacks will kill you, even with it, thus making them redundant.
- It's not completely useless on Professional. With the bulletproof vest you can still withstand a few bullets and roughly three crossbow bolts, and the melee armor still blocks a good portion of dog attacks, and lets you survive a thrown weapon without going into danger. For everything else though, still useless.
- Awesome but Impractical: The Gatling Gun one can unlock for Chris is very inaccurate. The ammo reserve also blocks part of the camera view. On the other hand, each bullet fired packs a huge punch for an automatic weapon.
- The ammo backpack is also completely bullet-proof.
- The Rocket Launcher, in most situations aside from bosses. Though it's a One-Hit Kill for most of the enemies, you need to be quite distant from your target to use it, else you blow up too. And if someone gets in close range while you shoot...
- Awesome Yet Practical: Unlike 4 you can purchase infinite ammo for any and every weapon.
- Back for the Dead: Jill, it seems, in the game's opening cinematic. Ha ha, yeah right. Of course She's Just Hiding; in plain sight, as it turns out.
- Beating a Dead Player: Should you die in Chapter 1-1, you're treated to a less-than-subtle cinematic of this.
- Bilingual Bonus: If you know Swahili, that is. For instance, Majini means roughly "wicked" or "supernatural." Some of the things the Loudspeaker Majini says include "Uroboros is a gift" and "no one shall find out what happened here!"
- Black Dude Dies First: Notably Averted. Josh is actually the only BSAA soldier aside from the main characters (one of whom is black) to survive.
- Though the first Type 2 Plaga victim (the "target practice" mook) was black. Then again, this is Africa.
- Body Horror: It's Resident Evil with hi-def graphics.
- Bonus Boss: The Red Executioner fought in the final Mercenaries map. It's larger, tougher, faster, and hits harder than the regular one, and also carries a flaming axe.
- Book Ends: "More and more I find myself wondering if it's all worth fighting for."
- Boss Arena Idiocy: The flamethrower you use to kill the second Uroburos. Justified, since it's there on purpose as a safety measure, making this more of a planning error on the part of Excella.
- To an extent, the second boss battle against Wesker. It's oddly convenient that he can't see you in the dark, and you just so happen to be fighting him in an arena with easily-located light switches!
- He'd probably see you if he took of his sunglasses.
- To an extent, the second boss battle against Wesker. It's oddly convenient that he can't see you in the dark, and you just so happen to be fighting him in an arena with easily-located light switches!
- Bottomless Magazines: A purchasable bonus for every weapon, though you need to beat the game and buy it with a limited type of currency. It replaces the ammo count with an infinity symbol.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Jill.
- Bulungi: The game's setting. .
- Combat Tentacles: Uroboros. Period. If it rejects a person, the person turns into a writhing tentacle monster. If it doesn't, the person still gets tentacles. Wesker suffers from the latter.
- Though it's probable that Wesker only gets the tentacles because he's on some kind of drug cocktail. After all, Irving, while he does have tentacles, doesn't have the writhing, seemingly uncontrolled ones that Wesker has.
- Irving's "failure contingency plan" is a different beast. It's an artificially advanced version of the parasite plague fought in Resident Evil 4.
- Though it's probable that Wesker only gets the tentacles because he's on some kind of drug cocktail. After all, Irving, while he does have tentacles, doesn't have the writhing, seemingly uncontrolled ones that Wesker has.
- Controllable Helplessness: Any time a player (or even AI partner) enters Dying status, they have a brief period where they can still limp around slowly and beg for help (or revive themselves in solo Mercenaries mode), but any further damage at all in this period is fatal. The brief period of controllable helplessness can last anywhere from half a minute (Amateur difficulty) to two seconds (Professional difficulty).
- Also caused by the sole attack of Bui Kichwas, which wrap around a character's torso while slowly draining their health and leaving them vulnerable to other enemies.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Most. Guilty. Ever. The final battle takes place in a lava flow. Not on the lip of a volcano or a catwalk several dozen feet above lava or even on top of a levitation barge skimming a dozen feet above lava. On the actual lava flow, just a few feet from the lava itself. Remember, kids, it's safe as long as you don't touch it!
- Cross Cultural Kerfluffle: A lot of people felt that the imagery used in the trailers hearkened back to the more openly racist days when depictions of Africans as animalistic and barely human were rather common and accepted. Most importantly, they felt the concept of a white American male shooting shambling, black Africans to be more than a bit distasteful. Controversy ensued.
- Curb Stomp Battle: In a flashback, but still...
- Cutscene Incompetence: Inverted. Wesker will beat the crap out of you in the cutscenes, but you can actually knock him on his ass and beat the hell out of him when you fight him.
- Played straight with far too many confrontations. Chris and Sheva will have various villains at gunpoint... and then not actually shoot them when they start pulling ominous levers, shoot up with a monster virus, or simply leave the room. Reviewer and webcomic artist Shamus Young counted eight separate instances of this.
- Cutscene Power to the Max: In cutscenes, Chris's Beretta is amazing. He delivers the (almost) killing blow to the second boss (a gigantic, heavily armored bat) and in Chapter 3-3 he pulls off a headshot on a gunner while on a moving motorboat.
- Otherwise, the use of Action Commands avert this trope by letting the player pulls some great moves... provided you Press X to Not Die.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
- Even though the controls are technically the same, if you decide to play as Sheva it will take you some getting used to for orientating the camera with her on the right during aiming.
- People who played lots of Resident Evil 4 might find some of the changes to the button mapping (particularly with regard to the Run and Fire buttons) to be jarring.
- Darkest Africa: The middle levels, where you fight off an infected tribe. One log you find indicates that, ordinarily, the tribesmen wouldn't be painting themselves and brandishing spears; the plagas is making them feral.
- Daylight Horror: Many levels are set during the day.
- Difficult but Awesome: Sheva's longbow. It requires a lot of practice to consistently hit moving targets at a distance, but it has a high amount of power(rivals magnums without upgrades) and has infinite ammo by default.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The entire fight against Jill, best portrayed here.
- Do Not Run with a Gun
- Double Unlock: Unlocking infinite ammo for a given weapon requires you to upgrade that weapon completely... at which point you are permitted to purchase the unlock with points.
- Downloadable Content: "Versus" mode, extra costumes, new characters in The Mercenaries Reunion, and a pair of bonus chapters.
- Fighting Your Friend: Jill ends up being a boss near the end of the game that Chris and Sheva must fight.
- Evil Smells Bad: In the DLC story, Lost in Nightmares, Jill and Chris enter an area where there is a really bad smell. Chris states that he hopes that they don't run into whatever's making it. They do. A monster with a bloated back wielding an ax and a horrible stench.
- Feed It a Bomb: U-8 can be defeated more quickly by chucking grenades into its open mouth.
- Final Boss Preview: Halfway through Chapter 5, you fight against Wesker and Jill in a 2v2 battle. Unless you're playing on easy, knew what was coming, or you are Crazy Prepared, it's very unlikely that you'll be able to win and you'll have to resort to avoiding them until the seven minutes are up.
- Gatling Good:
- In Chapter 2-3, Sheva operates a mounted minigun on the Gambit armored vehicle to fend off the Majinis during the vehicle section.
- Mounted minigun turrets operated by the Majinis can also be found in some stages, which can be used by the players.
- The Gatling Gun Majini carries a handheld minigun as his main weapon of choice, with a bulletproof ammo backpack on his back.
- The handheld minigun can also be unlocked as a usable weapon for Chris by fully upgrading the VZ61 and completing the game in any difficulty.
- Giant Enemy Crab: U-8 is some sort of genetically engineered spider-crab designed to guard the huge storage shaft of the underground lab.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Decapitation deaths cut to just below the character's neckline. Careful examination will show that the head wasn't actually removed.
- Guide Dang It: The BSAA Emblems. Special mention must go to the last one, which you literally cannot see. You just have to know which box to throw a grenade into.
- It's visible in a cutscene, which can be skipped if you shoot the enemy before it triggers. In fact the entire emblem can become impossible to get if you skip the cutscene!
- Gun Fu: Wesker vs. Chris and Sheva.
- Half the Man He Used To Be: Given the chance, a Duvalia will bite off everything above your waist.
- Harder Than Hard: Professional mode. Every attack does 10x damage, while you do about 15% less damage, and the Dying status is extremely short.
- On the plus side, most of the enemies will basically ignore your partner. You can load them up with machine guns, magnums, rocket launchers, and the like and have them go to work.
- Hilarious Outtakes: Not in the game itself, but online, there's a video of Wesker's voice actor (D. C. Douglas) hamming it up even more than "normal".
Albert Wesker: I don't NEED anyone else. I have... BIG BALLS! In less than five minutes, we will reach Vader's Death Star. GEORGE BUSH will be released into the atmosphere, ensuring Complete. Global. |
- Hope you have good lungs.
- Wesker, the new Spice Man.
- Wesker's voice mail.
- Hollywood Darkness: Averted in one level where you must navigate a pitch-black cave using a bulky electric lantern.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Chris and Sheva. While Chris isn't overwhelmingly taller than Sheva, he's got over a hundred pounds on her slender athletic frame. And it's all muscle.
- Hybrid Monster: Some sort of twisted, armored caterpillar-bat thing (named Popokarimu; "caring bat") is unleashed upon you about a quarter of the way in.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Rather literally, in the boss battle with Jill. You even have to yell encouragement and everything.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Amateur, Normal, Veteran, and Professional.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: In one level, Sheva and Chris must turn on a conveyor belt with half-dead test subjects on it in order to move a box. But the only thing preventing them from just walking around the box is a waist-high handrail. Not even a fence. A handrail.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: Each character has 9 item slots, guns take up 1 slot each, ammo takes up 1 slot each, and even non-key items like grenades, herbs, and eggs take up a slot. Needless to say, each character will likely have to carry a variety of weapons to retain having the ability to shoot.
- Involuntary Group Split: Chapter 4-1 has a (thankfully) brief example of this.
- Invulnerable Knuckles: Chris somehow manages to punch a boulder during the final boss fight and move it, all without injuring himself.
- The boulder punching part later on gets referenced by Karl Heisenberg in the English version of Resident Evil Village during his fight.
- Humorously enough, one of the fights with Wesker can involve a sequence which can result in Chris punching Wesker several times in the face... and briefly shaking off his hand after knocking him down. It can be seen here, so evidently, Wesker's face is harder than a boulder.
- Kaizo Trap: Occasionally, the Chainsaw Majini will rise up after you defeat him and swing his blade around like a maniac, in a state where he can't flinch. Given that he often drops keys that you have to grab...
- Killed Off for Real: Wesker, in a spectacular No One Could Survive That fashion to drive the point home. About time, too.
- Kill Him Already: Go ahead, Chris. (spoilers)
- Kill Sat: Used to kill the Godzilla-sized Uroboros creature formerly known as Excella Gionne. You even get to lock it onto the target!
- Kill It with Fire: Uroboros, a virus that turns those infected with it into a writhing mass of infinitely-regenerating black oozing tentacles. Fortunately for every Uroboros fight, there is a source of fire nearby. At least one of these is properly justified, too; it's in a test lab, and they had better be packing flamethrowers to take care of any out-of-control experiments.
- Knife Nut: Sheva. One way of defeating the final boss is for her to get more stabby than Wolverine.
- Lampshade Hanging:
- "I just got an extreme makeover!" After a Ricardo Irving goes One-Winged Angel.
- "Do you get all your ideas from comic book supervillains?" Chris, to Wesker, after the latter explains his Evil Plan.
- "Why do I always feel like I'm trapped in a monster movie?" Chris, when not player-controlled, is about to fight the biggest boss in all of RE history. The thing is Godzilla-sized.
- "Great. I feel more crazy talk coming." Chris, getting fed up with Wesker's constant monologues.
- "A chain saw? Are you kidding me?" Chris, again when not player-controlled, sees the first Chainsaw Majini.
- "What is with this guy and cranks!?"
- "He's a man of refined tastes."
- "He's obsessed, that's what he is."
- Large and In Charge: Subverted and toyed with in the case of Wesker, who seems to get a lot of low-angle shots or otherwise has the camera at chest height.
- Large Ham: Ricardo Irving.
- Last Chance Hit Point: See Controllable Helplessness above.
- Late to the Party: The "Lost In Nightmares" game starts out this way, with Spencer's bodyguards already slaughtered by the time you got there.
- Lower Deck Episode: The two DLC campaigns, Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape, respectively follow Chris and Jill as they go after Wesker, and Jill and Josh as they escape from the Tricell facility.
- Male Gaze: We're introduced to Sheva via a shot of Chris from around her ass. The camera will also focus on Sheva's chest in the cutscene after first getting the pistols.
- Meaningful Name: "Uroboros"—or "ouroboros"—means "tail-eating" in ancient Greek, and is often depicted as a snake eating its own tail. It represents the ever-continuing cycle of life and death, or, better yet, the cyclic nature of beginning and end.
- Menu Time Lockout: While having a very typical inventory, the game averts the usual pause while in the inventory and thus averts this trope, to give the player the sense of fearful scrambling to do something quickly in the middle of a fight or to plan ahead well. The actual reason for this is because the game can be played online with someone controlling your partner, so obviously having paused menu screens would be inconvenient to your counterpart but it definitely goes a long way to upping the panic factor.
- Mind Screw: The battle music in the underground ruins. It includes effects that sound exactly like the sound effects produced by cephalo (the tentacles that sprout out of majini heads occasionally). Rarely do cephalo appear in that area though.
- Mighty Glacier: The Executioner.
- Money Spider: Almost literally, the spider-like bui kichwa enemies have a habit of dropping money when killed.
- Murder by Cremation: To kill the first Uroboros, the player needs to lure it into a walk in furnace and have their partner power it up. The first player runs out before the doors close, leaving the Uroboros to fry. Problematically, it can grab one of the players just as the doors close, leaving them to fry with it.
- Never Smile At a Crocodile: There are huge crocodiles in the swamp level. They can easly kill you in one bite. Even scarier, they aren't even mutated. Nile crocodiles really can grow that large.
- Never Trust a Trailer: Part of the viral marketing campaign focused on Chris working on a mission post-Kijuju with his sister Claire. She doesn't reappear until the non-canon Mercenaries 3D.
- New Game+: Gives access to infinite ammo and bonus weapons.
- No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Alternate costumes will show up, just not in the opening cutscenes/sections, and the characters only use the basic handgun in cutscenes, whether you have it or not.
- No-Gear Level: Lost in Nightmares does this, complete with a reskinned version of the Executioner Majini.
- No OSHA Compliance: Very very much. Especially the lack of railings and necessity to walk on conveyor belts filled with exploding barrels (which also seem to be manufactured, only to be sent on a long conveyor belt into an incinerator).
- Averted annoyingly in the same facility. See Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence.
- Nostalgia Level: The Lost in Nightmares DLC, which is significantly based upon the mansion from Resident Evil. The characters even comment on the striking similarity.
- Bonus content. If the player tries to trigger an optional cutscene from the first game, the camera will switch to the same view from the first game.
- Not a Zombie: Occurs with the very first enemy, though slightly different. Chris remarks afterward that it doesn't move like any zombie he's ever seen.
- One-Hit Kill:
- The rocket launcher will 1-shot just about any monster in the game, up to and including the final boss, provided you hit their weak spots. Can become a Game Breaker once you unlock the infinite version. However, be careful not to stand too close to the blast.
- Flash grenades can instantly kill most enemies with the Las Plaga parasites exposed.
- One-Hit Polykill: Magnums (particularly the
Desert EagleLightning Hawk) are quite proficient at this; the rifles are too, but to a lesser extent. - One-Winged Angel: And, honestly, what would a Resident Evil game be without this trope? Ricardo Irving becomes a sea monster, Excella Gionne becomes some big mutant monster (she didn't decide to, it was forced on her), and yes, oh yes, Wesker and his mutated right arm (then left arm).
- One-Woman Wail: Used in the opener.
- Overheating: The mounted guns in Chapters 2-3, 3-3, 6-3, and Desperate Escape.
- Phlebotinum Overload: The duo tries to do this to Wesker at the end of the game, but it's either subverted or averted, depending on how you look at it. Injecting him with too much serum doesn't do much more than make Wesker really angry. The final battle with him isn't the end result of him destabilizing, but rather unleashing the full power of the Uroboros on himself, which is inconsequential to injecting him with the serum from earlier.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
Chris: "Suck on this, Wesker." |
- What Could Have Been: Sheva's original pre-mortem one-liner: "Take it all, you bastard!"
- Pressure Plate: The marsh and underground chapters have these.
- Press X to Not Die: Even worse than Resident Evil 4. If you press the wrong button combination, you can't correct yourself if you have enough time, though there is some leniency on lower difficulties. Thankfully, they're much rarer than in Resident Evil 4, only appearing in a few key cutscenes rather than one every 10 minutes or so.
- Unfortunately that can also mean that it can lure you into a false sense of security then spring one on you when you aren't ready for it.
- Punched Across the Room: Chris can punch a guy hard enough to send them flying a couple dozen feet.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
Albert Wesker: Uroboros will be released into the atmosphere. Ensuring complete. Global. Saturation. |
- Rated "M" for Manly: Chris, this time around.
- Revenue Enhancing Devices: Capcom decided to sell the Versus mode as DLC. Also two bucks for extra costumes.
- Rewarding Vandalism: How much is one ancient African urn worth? Probably more than the 5 handgun rounds you found in it.
- Although it's much less useful.
- Good luck fending off a horde of crazed Majini with the urn.
- Rogue Protagonist: Jill.
- Rule of Sexy: Chris and Sheva's default outfits, and the slinky dress that Excella wears.
- Say My Name: CHRIIISSSSS!!! SHEEEVVVAAA!!! JIIIIILLLLL!!! WESKEERRRRRRR!!!
- Schmuck Bait
- Shapeshifter Baggage: Played straight most of the time. Uroboros, in addition to all its biological properties, also gleefully flips off the laws of physics and is more than capable of turning your average human being into a hulking monstrosity the size of a in a matter of seconds. It's that kind of series, though. Averted/Played with once in 6-2: Excella absorbs a pile of corpses while transforming. While this is the first time Resident Evil has ever tried to explain where the extra mass comes from, Capcom failed to realized 50-ish humans doesn't quite add up to a 100 foot monstrosity half the size of a battleship...
- Shirtless Scene: Wesker during one of the last cutscenes in the game.
- Smashing Survival: The grab attacks of the executioner, adjule (dogs) with split heads, kipepeo(flying things), and Wesker himself if you're not careful.
- Tank Controls: Similarly to Resident Evil 4, the game uses slightly modified tank controls. The camera is always following Chris over the shoulder, and as a result, going "back" doesn't make him run towards the camera as in many three-dimensional games. Instead, he backs up. His movement feels clunky and he has a hard time turning while going any direction. Particularly notable considering this is a current-gen title—and most players expect controls like these to have died way back in the PS 1 era. Capcom seems hell-bent on keeping them going.
- Technically Living Zombie: The Majini, just like the Ganados before them.
- Tempting Fate
Chris: "That's the last of them." |
- Theme Song Reveal: A reprisal of Shadows of the Past shows up when the plague doctor shows up to talk to Wesker. Shadows of the Past was originally played when Wesker and Jill are in the same room. Guess who's in the outfit.
- Title Drop: In the final chapter, but with the Japanese name of Biohazard instead of Resident Evil. "Resident Evil" is a bit hard to fit into a normal conversation, and the Japanese version also uses the English voice track, so it's an unqualified title drop in Japan.
- Took a Level In Badass: Anyone from the previous games. To whit, in the first game, Rebecca was running from Hunters. Here, Lickers are running from her.
- Trailers Always Spoil
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: But then, who'd want to trade their rocket launcher for Wesker's Samurai Edge? The Samurai Edge is only usable when playing as Wesker in the Mercenaries mode or Barry in the Mercenaries Reunion mode.
- Updated Rerelease: Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition.
- Up to Eleven: After all the other crazy shit the series has done, this involves setting a level in the crater of an active volcano.
- Useless Useful Spell: Averted/Inverted—Flash grenades are actually one of the most useful items, stunning every type of enemy except for Lickers and Wesker, and instantly killing the light-sensitive Elite Mooks.
- Violation of Common Sense: Here we go...
- Melee attacks are very powerful, some are even instant kills. Yet you can't use them willy-nilly, you've got to shoot enemies first.
- The secret method of defeating the final boss has Chris run up behind Uroboros-abusing Wesker and hold his betentacled arms while Sheva runs up and start stabbing him in theglowing weak spot. Common sense dictates that you don't fight a monster that assimilates every lifeform it touches by jumping on its back. However, this method quickly drains your health while you're in physical contact with Wesker, such that even on normal you need almost full health to pull it off before dying midway through the cutscene. You can forget about trying it on Professional.
- Trying to exploit the bizarre Weaksauce Weakness Uroboros has to knives means you are Too Dumb to Live. Seriously, it's a giant tentacle monster and your name isn't Heracles.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Sheva will berate you if you shoot Jill when trying to save her. Kind of a Player Punch too because there would be no reason Chris would want to do that, you're just making him.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Kijuju is supposed to be somewhere in Northwest Africa, but the official language is Swahili.
- Confusingly, the in-game currency is also the Naira, the currency of Nigeria... a nation where Swahili isn't a major language.
- Wrestler in All of Us: For the "Desperate Escape" DLC and in The Mercenaries mode, a wide assortment of Josh's melee attacks are wrestling moves (such as German suplexes, choke slams, and elbow drops).
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Wesker, after having flashstepped his way past every bullet Chris fires, has his gun pressed up against his nemesis' forehead. He could have shot him dead on the spot and very likely succeeded in his master plan in the process, but what does he do? Spend at leastfive seconds indulging in Evil Gloating!