Video Game / Resident Evil 2

You have once again entered the world of survival horror. Good luck!

"This is just the beginning."

— Leon S. Kennedy

Resident Evil 2 is the second game in the Resident Evil franchise. It was originally released for the PlayStation in 1998. After the unexpected success of the original Resident Evil, Capcom immediately set up a team to work on a sequel and turn Resident Evil into an annual franchise. The company initially scheduled the sequel for a Spring 1997 release, but the original version of the game, dubbed Resident Evil 1.5, disappointed the developers. Rather than release a game that didn't satisfy their expectations, the team went back to the drawing board and delayed the game's release by a whole year. The gamble paid off, as Resident Evil 2 would go on to become one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed Capcom games in history. True to its nature, Capcom re-released the game across various other platforms: The PS1, a DualShock support re-release months after the original release, the PC, the Nintendo 64, the Sega Dreamcast, and even the Nintendo GameCube.

This time around, players control two newcomers to Raccoon City: Leon S. Kennedy, a rookie R.P.D. officer late for work; and Claire Redfield, the sister of Chris Redfield (one of the survivors of the Mansion Incident) who went AWOL while investigating the Umbrella Corporation. Two months later, the T-Virus somehow leaked into Raccoon City's water supply, causing it to spread quickly and create an even bigger outbreak than the one around the Spencer Mansion. Leon and Claire arrive in town together, and while they're forced to split up by circumstance, they still cross paths now and again while shooting zombies and looking for the root of the outbreak (and a way out). But Umbrella wants to make sure no one can blow the whistle, so they send in an improved Tyrant, the featureless "Mr. X", to find the evidence first. And as if that wasn't enough, T-Virus mastermind William Birkin seems to have infected himself with a rather nasty strain of the virus...

Whereas Resident Evil segregated its branching paths, Resident Evil 2 allows the player to replay both routes from either Leon or Claire's perspective, creating a total of four possible scenarios. Under this premise, actions performed by the first character affect the environment of the second (e.g. an uncovered passage in Claire's playthrough likely won't need re-clearing in Leon's chapter). Players can unlock a mini scenario titled "The 4th Survivor" after finishing both characters' scenarios, as well as a harder version of the same called "The Tofu Survivor". Later releases of the game, excluding the Nintendo 64 version, added the "Extreme Battle" mode, a three-stage minigame.

A remake of Resident Evil 2 was released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 25, 2019. For details, please see Resident Evil 2 (Remake). It also has a fan-made prequel in the form of Resident Evil: During the Storm. Along with the first entry in the series, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City uses this game as partial source material.

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Resident Evil 2 contains the following tropes:

• Ability Required to Proceed:
  • Like in the first game, you have to find specific keys, crests/plugs, and other items in order to gain access to other areas.
  • Like with the Tyrant fight in the first game, the rocket launcher is a required weapon for the final Mr. X fight. Since the rocket launcher requires two slots to fit in your inventory, you're forced to pick up two plugs before the fight in order to get power to the gate controls so that you'll have room for the weapon later. There's an item box near the plugs so that you can make room for them should your pockets be full.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Some of the corridors in the cavernous sewers are larger than the ones in the police station.
• Action Prologue: The first leg of the game is best described as a mad panic. You're in danger the second you begin playing, as a zombie is standing mere feet away from you, and if you don't start moving immediately, you'll likely get chomped. It doesn't slow down from there; everywhere you go pits you against an overwhelming number of zombies, and all you can do is shoot, run, and stab as best you can to get past them all. It's not until you get into the police station where things slow down and become more methodical.
• Actionized Sequel:
  • Compared to the first game, there's a lot of ammo laying around. A lot. How much? If you played aggressively, and killed nearly everything you came across, you'd end Leon's game with over 150 handgun bullets left over, 40-50 shotgun shells,^infoAnd that's only because it will likely see the most use. and 60 magnum rounds burning a hole in your pocket.^infoEach of which is a One-Hit Kill on anything short of a boss. For comparison's sake, there's only 30 or so magnum bullets in the original game, and 18 total in Code: Veronica.
  • This is the first game in the series that has automatic weapons in its arsenal (a Gatling gun and an MAC-11, to be specific), but only one character in either scenario can obtain the MAC-11 before the endgame and you need to beat the game in a certain period of time in order to get the Gatling gun at all.^infoBeat either "B" scenario in under 3 hours with an A or B rank for an infinite-ammo MAC-11 for both characters; do the same thing for the gatling gun, except in under 2 and a half hours. There are also customized shotgun and handgun models.^infoIn the first game, only three kinds of guns are available: a Beretta handgun, a Remington shotgun, and a Colt Python magnum. There's also Chris' flamethrower, which is pretty useless, and Jill's grenade launcher whose ammo was very rare, with only two sets of acid rounds available in the whole game.
  • The puzzles are noticeably toned down compared to the first game. Here, the majority of the puzzles can be summed up as "find key or object to progress". The number of "push" puzzles are also toned down, with what few there are being incredibly simple to solve. There's also more emphasis on boss fights with Birkin being a Recurring Boss in both scenarios, while Mr. X is one in Scenario B only.
• Adjustable Censorship: This is featured in the Nintendo 64 version. You can not only choose the amount of gore present, but also whether it appears as red, blue, or green.
• Air-Vent Passageway:
  • How Sherry gets around, most notably in the finale. Also averts Offscreen Teleportation. If you look closely at the areas she's seen disappearing into or out of, there's usually a vent or opening that Claire will note is too small for an adult.
  • Ada does it once with Leon's help.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The official name of William Birkin's monster form is "G", but nobody in the game actually calls him that.
  • The reason why Leon overslept before his first day on the job was explained by the designers of Resident Evil 3: he apparently had a bad falling out with an old flame and spent most of the night drinking. To avoid doing anything he'd regret later, he slept in a hotel, and he happened to oversleep on the day he would've began working for the RPD. That's right: Leon survived a zombie apocalypse while he was probably hungover.
  • The Biohazard 2 Official Guide Book contains a lot of information on Plant 43's biology, including that they use hydraulic systems to move (which is why they're so slow), they feed on ambient moisture, and they're hermaphroditic, with the flower-bud "arm" containing the pistil.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Leon is the only remaining officer in the city who's not dead or infected; the police headquarters couldn't hold up to a sustained siege and quickly fell to zombies, as the barricaded doors and windows indicate. The Chief himself is holed up in his office and only comes out to hunt down survivors. We later learn in memos that the company was worried after the Mansion Incident that the t-Virus was bound to spread into the water table and spent the last two months frantically destroying evidence. Chief Irons was ordered to keep a lid on the outbreak, who went out of his way to make the siege as difficult as possible and cost the lives of all his officers.
• Aloof Ally: Ada, due to her not being an ordinary civilian caught up in the madness but is actually a double agent working for the government from the inside.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: You temporarily take control of the player character's partner at certain points in the game. For Leon, you get to play as Ada Wong and for Claire, you get to play as Sherry Birkin. Ada carries a pistol and a first aid spray, while Sherry only carries a first aid spray. Sherry also runs slower than the adult characters, making it difficult to outrun the zombie dogs, but her shortness make it easier to dodge the zombies; they can't grab her, only puke, which is easy to avoid. Sherry also doesn't limp when severely injured, which makes her more likely to make a last ditch escape. However, it is up to the player to manually check her health in the inventory screen because she doesn't limp.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Unlike other games in the series, there's no need to finish the game first in order to change clothes. A zombified Brad Vickers shows up just outside the police station if the player reaches it without picking up any items on the way there, and he takes a lot more ammo to kill than most. Once he's dead, Brad will drop a Special Key one can use on the locker in the Dark Room save point that has two costumes for Leon (a tank top, fatigues/cargos, and an RPD ball cap, and a leather jacket and jeans set) and one for Claire (a flame-patterned denim suit). The Nintendo 64 version changed the costumes to a biker gang outfit and an alternate S.T.A.R.S. uniform for Leon and a purple leather jacket and pants for Claire. They also come with some slight extras as well. When Leon's wearing any of his alternates, barring S.T.A.R.S. outfit on the Nintendo 64 version, his pistol aiming stance changes so he holds his pistol with one hand, Gangsta Style, which slightly speeds up his pistol firing rate. Claire's has no built-in effect but comes with a Colt SAA gun for her which fires faster at the expense of a smaller ammo capacity, leading to more frequent reloading.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Sherry doesn't carry weapons when you play as her and she runs slower than the adult characters, but she makes up for it by having almost double the health of the main characters and lacking a limping animation if she's injured.
  • Tofu in the 4th Survivor mini-game is only armed with a knife, but has triple the amount of health compared to Hunk, allowing him to soak up a lot of damage before needing to heal.
  • Extreme Battle mode is ridiculously stingy with blue herbs (everyone but Chris gets one in their starting gear, and you can maybe find one or two more with diligent exploration) but all three stages are chock-full of Ivy and Giant Spider enemies that can easily inflict Poison status on you. Mercifully, each stage also has at least one infinite-use blue herb growing tray somewhere (usually around its central "hub"), just so that getting poisoned one time too many won't completely and utterly screw you. You also don't need to keep all four Antiviral Bombs in your inventory to win, and are free to dump them off in an item box as you find them.
• An Arm and a Leg: It's possible, but rare, for a non-lethal shot to a zombie from the side - or even successfully pushing one back after it grabs you - to cause one of the zombie's arms to fall off. With the Custom Shotgun, an upwards-aimed shot tends to blow off off one arm by vaporizing the shoulder along with the head.
• Arrange Mode:
  • "The Tofu Survivor" is a variant of the already Nintendo Hard "The 4th Survivor" mode, where you play as a piece of tofu who, unlike HUNK, who at least has guns and ammo, has nothing but herbs and combat knives. To compensate, the tofu can take more damage than HUNK can.
  • The Nintendo 64 port has an exclusive randomizer mode that randomizes ammo and herb types every playthrough.
• Art Evolution: Compare the above PS1-era art and graphics to the RE Engine graphics. The characters look outright stunning, including the zombies. Even before that, the RPD had gotten a graphical overhaul twice, first in the Outbreak games, then in The Darkside Chronicles.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Police Chief Brian Irons is a murderer, torturer, and probable rapist. He is killed when G implants a creature which soon bursts out of his chest (Scenario A, canonical death) or when G himself cuts him in two (Scenario B).
  • William Birkin is a Mad Scientist of the highest order. He is shot repeatedly and injects himself with his own creation which turns him into a horrific monster which is eventually blown to hell.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • An alligator about the size of a bus waits in the sewers.
  • There are spiders that are as big as cars.
• Attack of the Town Festival: Played with. The entire precinct was planning a party for the Leon joining the force and party hats and soda bottles are still visible in some of the deserted offices.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Colt SAA's weakness isn't in its power, but in the fact that it can only hold six bullets (just less than half of the 13 from Claire's starting handgun) and takes quite a bit more time to reload than a mag-loaded handgun. However, those six bullets fire much faster than any other weapon short of the sub-machine gun, meaning that it's excellent against single to dual enemies. Anything more than that, though, and you're screwed.
• Back for the Dead: Brad Vickers, Alpha Team's helicopter pilot, shows up as a zombie, though it's easy to miss him. Resident Evil 3 explains how he became a zombie.
• Backing Away Slowly: Leon and Claire both back away from Mr. X whenever he drops down in front of them. It's also how Sherry's introduced, backing away from a zombie before fleeing. All characters also do this when in close proximity to other kinds of enemy, which can help prevent nasty surprises from any that might be hiding just outside the camera angle's view.
• Badass and Child Duo: Claire Redfield and Sherry Birkin. While not the typical gender or age layout, as the badass in question is a nineteen year old girl, they still fit the trope well.
• Badass Boast: Leon does this in his ending:
  Leon: It's up to us to take out Umbrella!
• Badass Normal: Leon, a rookie police officer, and Claire, who can handle firearms just as well as he can despite being a college student. Later works attempts to Hand Wave this by saying that Chris taught his sister some skills for self-defense.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: The naked zombies, which lack any noticeable genitalia.
• Berserk Board Barricade: This was the game that introduced it to the series, and someone had fun while do it (the words redrum can be seen on a few of the boards).
• Big Bad Ensemble: The antagonist of Scenario A (and indeed the overarching storyline) is William Birkin, an Umbrella scientist whose half-baked corporate espionage wound up backfiring on him. After being shot, Birkin hastily injects himself with the G-Virus and turns into a seven-foot tall monster, who kills the assassins sent to kill him and smashes the T-Virus vials into the sewer, allowing rats to feed on it and start the outbreak. As "G", he mindlessly shambles after his daughter in the hope of propagating more spawn. In Scenario B, "Mr. X", a new type of Tyrant, is deployed by the company to retrieve Birkin's lost vial. Within moments, he spots Claire/Leon and begins hounding them everywhere. Both monsters are fought numerous times in-between the police headquarters and the laboratory.
• Bittersweet Ending: Leon, Claire, and Sherry escape from the city, but both of Sherry's parents are dead, meaning she's an orphan, and Ada's fate is uncertain. Until she returns in Resident Evil 4, working for Wesker. The Umbrella Chronicles reveals that she was only knocked out by Mr. X and also escaped, albeit badly injured. Additionally, The Darkside Chronicles reveals that Leon and Sherry were both taken into government custody after Claire left to find Chris; The G-Virus vaccine didn't cure Sherry, but merely suppressed the virus's negative effects, and they use Sherry's safety to coerce Leon into working for them. And if that weren't enough, other samples of the G-Virus still made it out of the city thanks to Ada and HUNK.
• Bizarrchitecture:
  • Where are the toilets? Apparently Nobody Poops, so they obviously didn't bother to build any restrooms. This is noticeably averted in the remake where there are now toilets.
  • A cable car platform, behind the sewer, which you have to wade through sludge to get to? Check. A moving bridge that costs as much as, or more than, two separate stationary bridges? Check. An overhang in a cavern under the city's precinct, built there for no reason other than linking the chief's personal dungeon to the sewers? Check. A main fuse set in the middle of an access hallway? Check.
  • An easily-missed example; there is a clear incline between the entrance to the west lobby and the entrance to the room where you meet Marvin in the main hall. Yet if you start at the former and make your way to the latter through the back way, there are no slopes. When your police station defies the laws of physics, zombies suddenly become the least confusing thing you'll find.
  • Another one: When Leon uses a vent to shortcut his way to the cells, you'll notice something off... Leon has to go to the west section of the station to load in a cog to activate the clock's mechanism. The cells are on the eastern side. Note that to get there, you have to go through two rooms, go straight to the left to another door that leads to a hallway, and a left to the stairs, then a right that leads to the garage, then finally the cells. The clock tower's vent? It's located on the right where it logically shouldn't be.
  • If you line up the City Area, R.P.D., and sewer maps, it puts the Sewage Treatment Plant right behind the police station... which makes no sense, since it means it would occupy the same space as the street where the game started.
  • The sewers have one too; from where you enter the sewers to where you use the two medallions to exit is flat and level. However, going through the Waste Pool and through the ventilation fan to go back that way includes a rather tall ladder from where you meet the gator that the architecture of the rest of the sewer doesn't account for.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: The Umbrella Corporation is straight up evil, with their Mengele-esque human experimentation and destruction of an entire city. But The Government is no saint either. Sherry is sequestered away as a top secret test subject due to her G-Virus infection and spends all of her teens to her early 20's in government facilities.
• Bland-Name Product: Tons, one of which (the "Cool Soda" vending machines) got replaced in later versions for being a bit too close to infringing on Coca-Cola's likeness. Ironically, the cancelled 1.5 version had actual Pepsi machines in the station.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: In a cutscene in the middle of Leon's scenarios, Ada crosses the way of Annette Birkin. Annette disarms her with one clear shot to tell her about William Birkin's fate.
• Blatant Item Placement: Like all Resident Evil games, ammunition and other supplies are strewn about the environment in a seemingly careless fashion. However, this is explained in-game. A file reveals that Chief Irons ordered RPD's ammo be scattered throughout the entire station, possibly to make it harder for the officers to fight against the zombies.
• Blob Monster: What William Birkin mutates into in his final form as the G-virus tries to hold him together from all the hundreds of rounds of ammo Claire and Leon have been shooting him with.
• Body Horror:
  • William Birkin goes through five different forms, each one more horrific than the last.
  • G-Imago, or "Baby", the horrible pseudo-G form that erupts from a doomed NPC Alien-style courtesy of a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong from Birkin.
  • Marvin's quick degeneration into a zombie.
• Bottomless Magazines: An unadvertised extra feature in the Dual Shock re-release is a button code to enable infinite ammo for all weapons, which also has no effect on your ending rank. In a game like this one, it's practically God Mode.
• Bows and Errors: In the original version, the crossbow fires a spreading "burst" of three bolts at once, and at one point the gun store owner Robert Kendo cocks it like a shotgun.
• Broad Strokes: Leon and Claire are running around the same police station, sewers and research facility at ostensibly the same time, yet only run into each other a couple of times before the ending. On top of that, they both have to explore the entire precinct, unlock every door and solve all of its puzzles, some of which are identical yet yield different items, while others are completely different. The remake makes even less of an effort to reconcile conflicting events, but all scenarios conclude with the key events from Claire A/Leon B (the accepted "canon" sequence here) still in place.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • After completing the game with a high ranking, players can unlock the 4th Survivor scenario. This level shows how a single Umbrella operative, HUNK, escaped the city with the G-Virus. HUNK starts in the sewers and has to make it to the helipad. He begins with a sizable arsenal and two mixed herbs, but nearly every room is full of enemies. There are no saves and no item pickups, so every bullet counts. Even though it's extremely short, taking anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes to beat, it packs in a huge amount of difficulty. To take things to the extreme, the player can later unlock a different version of the same scenario where the character is a giant block of tofu named Tofu – armed only with a knife.
  • The third level of difficulty in Extreme Battle mode veers into this. The first and second aren't too tough, but the third ramps things up by replacing some rooms that were previously filled with regular enemies with more Mr. X appearances, a G-Spawn or two, and a few rooms now even contain Birkin's quadrupedal form, who's both hard to kill and hard to run past.
• Camera Abuse:
  • As a carry over from the previous game, certain locations within the game will allow you to shoot bullet holes into the camera. What type of hole depends on what gun you used.
  • Starting with this game, having your throat torn out by zombies will splatter the screen with blood.
  • For one that doesn't break the 4th wall, if you check the monitor after grabbing the key to raise the platform that brings you to the labs in the B scenario, Mr. X shows up to smash the camera connected to the monitor station.
• Cassandra Truth: Marvin, the police officer you meet in the beginning of the "A" scenario, tells Leon/Claire that the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members from the Mansion Incident tried to tell everyone about what happened over there, but no one listened to them. Part of the reason no one listened was due to Chief Irons dismissing the case and purposely blocking the Umbrella investigation that the S.T.A.R.S. tried to conduct since he was taking bribes from the company, but it was mostly just pure disbelief on the part of the RPD.
• Chekhov's Gun: Sherry's pendant. It turns out to be concealing a G-Virus sample Annette put in there for safekeeping, fearing William's plans to betray Umbrella would be exposed. She was right.
• Chest Burster: Victims implanted with G-virus embryos (but only if they don't share blood ties to the original host — Birkin, in this case) have this happen to them moments after implantation.
• Chewing the Scenery: Irons in his last scene. In the A scenario it's justified, as he has gone from paranoid thinking he's infected, to full on very definitely infected and thus sees no reason to hold back anymore.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Birkin's fourth form is a Lightning Bruiser capable of outrunning the player and killing them in about three bites if he's in the right mood. His fifth form is a gigantic blob that moves very slowly and can only attack at melee range.
• Clown-Car Grave: And like the previous game, it'll sometimes be the resident demonic spider doing the replacement.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: Leon tries persuading Ben Bertolucci, who has locked himself in a jail cell, with, "Look, if you wanna live, then you're gonna have to leave with me," when Ben thinks he's safe from monsters, unaware that Leon is "the only cop left alive" in the police department.
• Continuity Cameo: Rebecca appears in a photo in Wesker's table in the RPD. Apparently, she's not just smart, but also enjoys (or used to enjoy) playing basketball. Chris is also playable in the Extreme Battle mode that comes with the Dual Shock version of the game.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In the first Resident Evil, the player can find a file written by an Umbrella researcher named John who uses his girlfriend's name as the password of a nearby computer (Ada). In 2, Ada tells Leon that she's looking for her boyfriend John.
  • In the N64 version of this game, the player can find a report by Rebecca Chambers loosely describing the "death" of Billy Coen. This was years before Zero was released, which was still under development for the N64 before switching platforms to the GameCube.
  • One of the extra files in the N64 version mentions HUNK's boss "Christine Henri", who is actually an antagonist from a Japanese-only Biohazard audio drama starring Ada (Ada the Spy Lives). Since none of the drama CDs were ever released outside Japan, many players had no idea who Henri was supposed to be and thought it was just foreshadowing for a sequel.
• Creepy Cockroach: Your supporting character in both A scenarios has to deal with a sewer tunnel filled with T-Virus infected cockroaches. They're huge, they can fly, and they will instantly kill Ada or Sherry if they aren't shaken off.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Elliot is cornered and mauled by two zombies, and accidentally shot the rescue chopper pilot in panic, causing the helicopter to crash right onto him.
  • Ben either dies via chest-bursting G-embryo or (canonically) is eviscerated by Birkin's claws and bleeds to death.
  • Katherine was hunted down by Irons, murdered, and about to be stuffed to preserve her beauty but Irons was interrupted.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The Darkside Chronicles and Resident Evil 6 establish that Sherry was injected with the G-Virus vaccine and gained superhuman healing as a result, something that only happens in the Claire A/Leon B storyline, although previous Resident Evil side-products had made references to events that happens in the other storyline (such as Ada's fall from the catwalk). In addition, The Darkside Chronicles shows Ada being attacked by Mr. X and her scenario's intro in The Umbrella Chronicles clearly shows her "death" from being hurled into the self-destruct system of the laboratory, something that only happens in Leon's B scenario.
• Darker and Edgier: Much more horrifying than its predecessor. The box art, official artwork and gruesome Game Over sequences speak for themselves. And by the looks of it, the Remake is going to be even more edgier than the original.
• Dead Foot Leadfoot: The truck driver dies behind the wheel of his big rig and turns into a zombie. The truck keeps going until it crashes.
• Deadline News: Ben greedily keeps the G-Virus scoop to himself, but gets nabbed by Birkin before he can publish. So close, and yet so far. Furious at Irons for what he's done, Ben turns his evidence over to Leon and uses his last breaths to implicate the Chief, telling Leon to "make him pay". In an unusually positive outcome for a "Shaggy Dog" Story, shortly after Ben dies, the Chief does indeed pay.
• Death by Genre Savviness: Ben locking himself in a jail cell and refusing to come out should have been a good idea in a Zombie Apocalypse... Too bad there's more than just zombies lurking around.
• Demoted to Extra: Done preemptively to Marvin Branagh and John Kendo, who were both intended to be important supporting characters in Resident Evil 1.5, but were reduced to bit roles in the final version.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Claire's grenade launcher can fire normal, acid and fire rounds; acid grenades are more effective against "living" creatures, meaning they can drop Lickers almost instantly, whilst the fire grenades are instant kills against the Ivies, with the added bonus of having a better range than Leon's flamethrower.
• Determinator: Mr. X for most of the game.
• Developer's Foresight: If you complete the "A" scenario with an alternate costume, the "B" scenario will reflect that character's clothing change. Sadly, this doesn't affect the CGI scenes since the characters are rendered with their default outfits.
• Difficulty by Region: The overseas versions were slightly harder than the Japanese version: auto-aiming is turned off by default, the item and enemy placement is a bit different and the enemies themselves have increased strength and durability. As a result, the Japanese release of the Dual Shock Edition added a "U.S.A. Version" mode which sets the difficulty to the same level as the export versions. In the PC and Dreamcast version, the default Normal mode is based on the Japanese version's difficulty, while Expert mode is based on the North American version.
• Disney Death: Ada seemingly suffers one, though she does return to give Leon the rocket launcher.
• Doom Doors: The sliding doors in the laboratory facility.
• Dying Declaration of Love: In Leon's B scenario, after getting thrown into a console, Ada tells Leon she fell in love with him and kisses him before succumbing to her injuries. Subverted as it turns out she's Not Quite Dead.
• Early Game Hell: Right off the bat in either character's A scenario, you are thrown into the infested streets of Raccoon, and have to navigate around and through a half dozen zombies. It gets even harder if you try to go for the secret key, as it requires you not to pick anything up until you get to the police station, meaning you have only the ammo that came in your pistol and will most likely have to take a few hits in the process unless you're really good.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Leon's portrayed with red or light brown hair. In later appearances, he has dirty blond hair.
  • This remains the only game in the entire franchise in which Ada wears flat shoes instead of heels.
  • Weapons that take up two inventory slots were first introduced here (the Submachine Gun, Spark Shot, Gatling Gun, and Rocket Launcher, respectively). The two slot gimmick has zigzagged since Resident Evil 3 ditched it, while Code: Veronica brought it back and Resident Evil 4 took it a step further by having all items take up different amount of blocks in your inventory. All games after that went back to single slot items until Resident Evil 7: Biohazard reintroduced it again.
  • Though this time around auto aim was included from the very beginning (though you still have to switch to the control scheme that has it), movement is still rather clunky compared to later games, as RE2 lacks 180 degree turns (being introduced in the next game) and requiring a button press to go up and down stairs.
• Easier Than Easy: The Rookie mode introduced in later versions, which starts the player off with all the special weapons already in his or her disposal.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Mildly; none of the content unlocked by completing the game with a good score (the Infinite Ammo weapons, Hunk & Tofu) or the Special Key to access the Extra Costumes is available on Rookie Difficulty. Unlike Rookie mode, all Easy does is start you off with 120 extra handgun bullets, so it's really quite a disincentive (you'll find more than enough on Normal mode just through diligent searching).
• Easter Egg:
  • Wesker's desk seems to have nothing but clutter, but if you search it fifty times, you'll find a roll of film. Develop it to get a photograph of Rebecca in a basketball uniform.
  • Brad's appearance requires you have to ignore all item pickups on the way to the police department to encounter him. Killing him nets you the Special Key to change your outfit later.
• Eldritch Abomination: What William Birkin eventually becomes after injecting himself with the G-Virus. The first three forms are Humanoid in their appearance. The fourth mutation is more Animalistic as it moves like a wolf or dog. His final form is a mess. After suffering multiple wounds and going though several rapid aggressive mutations, his body has become a huge amorphous blob.
• End-Game Results Screen:
  • Leon returns to being an ordinary cop and Claire goes on a road trip with Sherry. Both are rather implausible scenarios, given what actually happened after the events of RE2 according to the sequels.
  • The Dual Shock Version added result screens to the HUNK and Tofu minigames when they originally didn't have any in the initial release.
• Equipment Upgrade: Leon can find gun part kits to upgrade his handgun (a stock which allows for 3 round burst), shotgun (somehow upgrading it from a Remington 870 to a Remington Model 1100), and magnum (replaces the nickel-plated 6 inch barrel and slide with a blued 10 inch barrel and slide).
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: William Birkin was a ruthless scientist who casually performed experiments on human beings in perfecting viral weaponry and the engineering of Bio-Organic Weapons. A later-released prequel would even reveal he took part in assassinating his former mentor to steal his research and his position in Umbrella. Despite this, he genuinely loved his wife, Annette, and their daughter, Sherry, who loved him back.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Aside from Leon, Claire, Ada and Sherry, everybody in Raccoon City is dead. The small group of survivors met outside that quartet end up gruesomely dead as the game progresses.
• Evil Is Hammy: Every single antagonist except for Mr. X.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: One characteristic of the G-Virus is the eruption of tumor-like eyeballs all over the host's body. Birkin sprouts one on his shoulder in his first form, and gains more as he continues to mutate.
• Eye Scream: Basically the only practical way to defeat G-Virus mutants is to inflict this onto them.
• Eye Take: Birkin, despite being a blob monster at this point, still recognizes what that counter on the train means.
• Fade to Black: When William/G implants an embryo within Irons or Ben, you get to see the embryo force itself through the victims' mouths as they choke on it before passing out. During the Claire A scenario, the same event happens to Sherry, but because she's just a young girl, the game cuts to black and you hear only the wet sounds of the embryo embedding itself within Sherry's body.
• Failsafe Failure: The lab's self-destruct system is not activated deliberately, it was accidental when Mr. X smashed a reactor console (either because he threw Ada at it in Leon's B scenario or he tried to hit Sherry and missed in Claire's B scenario). The resulting short-circuiting knocked out one system after another, triggering the denotation sequence, with no option to abort.
• Fan Disservice: All the female zombie models are the same, a short brown haired woman with a shredded tank top showing their rotting stomachs.
• First Day from Hell: Leon's first day with the RPD is the day of another T-Virus outbreak.
• Floorboard Failure: The library's second floor has a balcony whose floorboards will give way when walked over. You have to do this to initiate a puzzle.
• For Want Of A Nail: In the intro, Leon and Claire are attacked from the backseat of the police car they're driving. Depending on whether Leon crashes head-on or spins around and crashes in reverse (read: whose disc you put in first), the plot of the game takes some significant deviations.
• Four Is Death: The main character of the 4th Survivor is HUNK, who's later revealed to have the nickname "Mr. Death".
• Game-Favored Gender: In contrast to Resident Evil, here, it's the male character, Leon, who is the easier gender to play as. Both characters have equal inventory space this time, with the option to upgrade one character with an extra two spaces. This means that Leon's greater health pool, and his access to the shotgun^note weaker than the Grenade Launcher, but ammo is more plentiful and the unique Custom Parts, which allow him to upgrade his pistol, shotgun and magnum, makes Leon the series easiest playthrough. Claire's unique access to the grenade launcher and its Depleted Phlebotinum Shells, the Bowgun with it's specialized ability to kill lickers, and the Sparkshot just doesn't compare.
• Gangsta Style: One of Leon's alternate outfits is a gangster outfit, complete with sideways hat. He also holds any pistol-type weapon in this fashion, and it even affects the gun's firing rate.
• Gas Mask Mooks: HUNK's hit team.
• Going for the Big Scoop: Ben is your typical muckraker, but perceptive. He knew the RPD was taking bribes from Umbrella, and willingly had himself arrested to get close to the conspiracy.
• Gorn: The death of Brian Irons (in either scenario with Claire) and Ben (in Leon's A scenario). This was also the game that saw zombies get blown in half with the shotgun.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Birkin's slaughter of the Umbrella Special Forces Alpha team.
• Graffiti Town: Raccoon City's streets at the very beginning of the game resemble this, with the trademark brick walls, graffiti, basketball courts, and chain-link fences.
• Gratuitous Greek: For no apparent reason, the underground Umbrella lab has signs with Greek letters substituted for some of the Latin ones. For example, ΔEΣK instead of DESK and ΛOΧKEΡ instead of LOCKER.
• Greaser Delinquents: One of Leon's alternate outfits seems to have this theme, with the black leather jacket, blue jeans, and T-shirt with cigarette pack in the front pocket. Oddly enough, he still holds his gun Gangsta Style in this costume as well.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Raccoon City is, according to later games, under military quarantine but, somehow, both Leon and Claire manage to drive right into town without even learning what's happening. Also, helicopters come and go with impunity.
• Guest Fighter: Unlocking Level 3 in the Extreme Battle minigame also unlocks Chris Redfield as a playable character who basically serves as the "Easy" mode: He starts out with a Rocket Launcher, his stainless Beretta can randomly blow off zombie heads just like in the Director's Cut of the previous game, and his increased strength allows him to fire the M1100 shotgun at twice the rate Leon can.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: Many of the guns either don't hold the right ammo, hold too much, or just flat out wouldn't work that way in real life— turning a pump action shotgun into a gas powered semi-auto is the biggest offender. Right behind that is Claire's S.A.A. revolver, which is able to rapidly dump all empty brass and reload as if with a speed loader, even though the Single Action Army has a fixed cylinder and each round has to be loaded and unloaded one at a time in real life (an obvious concession to convenience, albeit a very blatantly unrealistic one).
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • Brian Irons in Claire's B scenario, courtesy of Birkin.
  • Ben in Leon's A scenario gets a makeover symmetrical to Irons'
  • A zombie shot in the torso with the shotgun, but not killed, may be blown in half at the waist, leaving the upper torso crawling along on the ground after Leon.
• Happy Ending Override: To the original Resident Evil. The good endings in Resident Evil end with the mansion blowing up, implying that this will prevent the T-Virus from spreading. Additionally, the ending screen for Chris◊ shows that Umbrella has been successfully exposed and that the case was solved completely. Thanks to Birkin, the virus reaches Raccoon City anyway.
• Hard Mode Perks: Several perks exist for the harder difficulty, even though the notification that they exist doesn't appear.
• Harder Than Hard: The Nightmare setting in the Dreamcast version.
• Hell Is That Noise:
  • G Birkin's growling can be heard at certain points in the story. His growls are loud enough that it can be heard in Chief Irons' art room.
  • In a similar style to Day Of The Dead, the zombies' collective moans can be heard when you go outside where the stairs with two herbs are.
• Hide Your Children: Averted with Sherry, who can be killed. Played straight with the fact that no zombified children can be found.
• Hub Level: The police headquarters is located on the city's main thoroughfare, with branching paths leading to other areas. It serves as the hub for both Resident Evil 2 and Jill Valentine's exploits in Resident Evil 3. In that respect, it is very similar to the Arklay Mansion, and indeed the building plays host to the same traps (i.e. a multistory great hall, ambush-prone windows, and a library).
• Implacable Man: Birkin and Mr. X.
• Impossible Item Drop: Mr. X will always drop ammunition when defeated in his encounters. It's never explained why he's carrying bullets to begin with.
• Improbable Weapon User: In the S.T.A.R.S. office, there's a photograph of the entire team next to Wesker's desk. At the lower left corner is an unidentified character who is, for no apparent reason, packing a mortar. He does not appear in any of the games and was even removed in later games using the picture.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: Just like in the previous game, you can't pick up everything you see due to having limited amount of space on your person. New to the series are weapons that take up two inventory slots (the sub-machine gun, spark shot, flamethrower, Gatling gun, and rocket launcher), which means most players will put them away somewhere until they really need them since their ammo can't be refilled.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Dying may result in a brutal animation of your character getting graphically killed by whatever baddie did you in, spiders being a notable exception. This is only true for the original PlayStation and PC version.
• It's the Only Way to Be Sure: First, the secret underground research facility, then the train used to evacuate it, explode to contain hazardous material.
• Joke Character: You can play through HUNK's 4th Survivor minigame as a giant, knife-wielding block of Tofu that wears Jill's beret.
• Joke Item: The knife in the game is completely useless, doing pitiful damage, even to the weaker enemies in the game. It can upwards of 20+ swipes just to kill one zombie.
• Jump Scare: Ordinarily redundant, though the game has one example that is notable. All the Resident Evil games have mandatory door animations. Nothing special, it merely allows you to catch your breath, or brace yourself for whatever lies within the next room. The door to the outdoor parking lot, only accessible in the B scenario, will spring two zombies at you if you try to go back out This is notable as being the only time in the classic games that an enemy of any kind is in the same room as a typewriter.
• Just Between You and Me: For someone who is highly suspicious of everyone, and is trying to safeguard the virus, Annette feels the need to explain to everybody what the G-Virus is.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • The flame grenades are the second most powerful gun ammo Claire finds in the game. Naturally, they kill Ivies with one shot.
  • Leon can acquire a flamethrower that can kill two Ivies with the tap of a button.
• Last Kiss: In the Leon B scenario, after dispatching Mr. X and getting mortally wounded herself, Ada shares one last kiss with Leon before she (apparently) dies in his arms. She gets better a little later without any explanation, though.
• Late to the Tragedy: Both Leon and Claire are lucky enough to roll into Raccoon City when the Zombie Apocalypse has been raging for over a week, but several days before the city is vaporized with a nuclear missile. Leon is officially a case of Slept Through the Apocalypse, as the designers ultimately revealed that he had gotten really drunk the night before and overslept, whilst in S.D. Perry's novelization, he was delayed by a really bad traffic jam as he was leaving New York to head to Raccoon City.
• Leitmotif: G's theme — more specifically, three notes of it, which make some sort of appearance in no less than half of the game's music.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!:
  • Unlike the original game, where the characters stupidly part ways on purpose, the protagonists are separated when an out-of-control tanker truck crashes into an intersection at a perpendicular angle, generating a wall of flames between Leon and Claire. The game still plays this straight, however, since they run into each other again in each scenario and decide to split up so they can search for Sherry.
  • When Claire first meets with the police chief, he declines to leave the cushy confines of his office. Likewise, Ben turns down an offer to escape and tells Leon to get lost, believing that he'll be safer in a jail cell. Both characters are caught by G (who can shatter walls) and impregnated with a larva (A scenarios) or cut/mortally wounded (B scenarios).
• Lonely Piano Piece: The game has one thanks to its Save Room theme, "Secure Place".
• Made of Iron: Leon takes a bullet through the chest/shoulder; five minutes later, he's back on his feet and running at full speed as if nothing had happened.
• The Many Deaths of You: Capcom created the most elaborate Game Over screens in the series for this game. See for yourself.
• Man-Eating Plant: The Ivy B.O.W., a humanoid plant-thing that sprays corrosive sap and lashes victims to death with its vine arms, can bite your character's heads off. Its official name is "Plant 43", as Umbrella created it as a derivative of the original game's Plant 42. If you turn on the anti-B.O.W gas sprinklers in scenario A, they metabolize the toxin in Scenario B, changing to a deep red color and making their spittle poisonous as well as corrosive.
• Mauve Shirt:
  • Marvin (Leon's superior officer) and Brad (S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team's helicopter pilot) both appear as enemy zombies. Brad takes more punishment than any other zombie in the game.
  • Depending on who you're playing as, the first target of G's wrath is either Chief Irons or Ben. Their body soon rejects the embryo and is torn in half, spitting out a larva which must be hunted down before it can infect others.
• Meet the New Boss:
  • There's a rat on the force and he has a formidable 'stache. Yes, it's the Chief of Police, filling in for the absentee Albert Wesker (still presumed dead as of this installment). Instead of being impaled by Tyrant, Chief Irons is impregnated by G. He blusters a bit before turning his gun on Claire, whereupon he's torn in two as the larva erupts from his chest cavity (Claire A). Or cut in two by G himself (Claire B).
  • In terms of bioweapons, the Giant Alligator takes the place of Yawn, and the underground lab is overrun with cousins of Plant 42.
• Mighty Glacier: Mr. X in his first form and Birkin in his first and final forms come off as this.
• Minigame:
  • RE2 has one in The 4th Survivor, where you play as an Umbrella agent trying to escape from Raccoon City. This game also has a much harder Tofu Survivor variant which stars a living block of tofu named Tofu.
  • The Extreme Battle mode, introduced in the Dual Shock Edition, has you return to the police station from the underground lab in order to retrieve four time bombs while fighting hordes of monsters throughout each room. The player can choose to play as either Leon, Claire, Ada, or Chris Redfield.
• Mole in Charge: "Police Chief" Irons is this to the core, as well as a psychotic lunatic with several known cases of Domestic Abuse and was charged with rape in his college days. Not only is he taking regular bribes for Umbrella and working to cover their hides, but when the outbreak finally occurs, he goes mad and deliberately screws up the efforts of the R.P.D. to try and save people to the extent of murdering some survivors himself. And when the mayor sent his daughter to the police station, believing it would be safe, Irons uses the cover-up of the outbreak to kidnap, possibly rape, and murder her.
• Monster Delay: William Birkin, especially in the A scenario. The game shows what he looked like as a human readily enough, but you only ever see glimpses of him, usually his mutated arm, after he injected himself with the G-Virus, until you fight him properly.
• Moth Menace: The Giant Moth is a poisonous enemy moth that is the result of failed experiments.
• Multiple Endings: The game has four endings, one for each scenario. Technically, in-game, nothing you do in the game changes the outcome aside from which character you use first.
• Nerf: While using the knife in the first Resident Evil is far from ideal, it did a decent amount of damage, with one slash being roughly equal to a handgun round. This game, on the other hand, turns it into a full-blown Joke Weapon, requiring between 20-30 stabs just to knock a single zombie down, and ten or so more to stop it from getting back up.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Or in this case, a giant, virus-mutated alligator.
• Next Sunday A.D.: Almost literally too, as the game was set in late September 1998, but was released in January 1998.
• Nice Girl: Claire, looking after Sherry in the absence of her parents proves this.
• Nice Guy: Leon, he tries his best to help anyone he comes across, even though he isn't always successful.
• Nightmare Face: When poor Marvin finally succumbs to the T-Virus, he turns into a flesh-eating monster right in front of you.
• Non-Standard Game Over: During the sequences where Sherry/Ada are accompanying you in the sewers and the vacant factory, it is possible for them to die if you let them keep getting hurt by the zombies or spiders.
• Not Completely Useless:
  • Weapons considered too weak or inefficient to use for killing zombies end up tossed in the Item Box by players to forget — but these weapons prove effective against other specific creatures: Leon's Flamethrower does excellent damage to Ivy monsters, the MAC 11 does a great job of taking out Lickers (and keeps them from counterattacking), and Claire's Spark Shot does nearly as much damage to boss enemies as Leon's Upgraded Magnum.
  • Claire's Bow Gun is a fairly weak substitute for Leon's Shotgun, and usually gets stowed as soon as the player starts finding ammo for the Grenade Launcher. Two advantages the Bow Gun has, though, are that its bolts [somehow] have a limited homing ability, and that it's quiet, so you can take out enemies in front of you without alerting the rest right away— a nice feature to have when dealing with noise-sensitive Lickers.
• Not a Zombie: Claire encounters her first zombie at a diner, slowly backing away thinking that the zombie is a deranged person. Likewise, Leon is approached by a gang of zombies and he orders them to freeze while he has his weapon drawn. Both characters quickly wise up and flee once they realize that the zombies aren't people. In Leon's scenario, Ada pulls an inverted version of the trope by shooting at Leon because she thought he was a zombie due to his police uniform.
• Notice This: Zigzagged. Aside from the usual glinting on visible items, there are a number of ammo pickups that are invisible hidden around the various parts of the game. Some are concealed on ordinary-seeming dead bodies, but others (typically hidden behind pieces of scenery) have no clue as to their presence, unless you get lucky or use a guide to find them.
• One Cast Member per Cover: The game has Leon's model on disc 1 while Claire's model is on disc 2, and the order you play the discs determines which routes you play. Playing disc 1 first plays Leon's A route and Claire's B route while playing disc 2 first plays Claire's A route and Leon's B route.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Even after a full healing, first-form Birkin can instantly kill Leon or Claire with a charged-up one-hit power attack.
  • If the cockroaches are allowed to swarm up on the player without being shaken off, they'll eat you alive.
• Parental Abandonment: By the end of the game, Sherry has lost both of her parents.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Leon and Claire are blue and red, respectively.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • If you miss any items before you get to the police station, you won't get it until the next time you play, as once you enter the gate there will be a text that reads "It's too dangerous to go back outside." if you try to go back out.
  • After you head to the Umbrella underground lab, any items you missed before then will be gone forever.
• Police Are Useless:
  • You have to feel for the RPD, getting slaughtered by their own extraction choppers and blindly shooting each other instead of the zombies, but it really doesn't help when the extraction pilot is wearing sunglasses.
  • Played with. In-game documents indicate that the RPD were reasonably competent and responded as well to the situation as they could given their limited resources and manpower, taking notes of the opposition they faced and planning to regroup and rescue survivors. Unfortunately for them, Chief Irons had other plans.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Leon and Claire have these against Mr. X:
  Leon: Game over.
  Claire: You lose, big guy.
• Pinned to the Wall: The bow gun bolts can do this to crows.
• Psychosexual Horror: Claire will find a fax at the police station from the FBI that Police Chief Brian Irons was once implicated in the rape of a classmate in college, and his secretary mentions how creepy it is that Irons was drooling over a fresco of a naked dead woman. He is later found with the body of the Mayor's daughter, talking about how beautiful her skin is, but then lamenting that she will soon putrefy and turn into a zombie, then mentions how taxidermy used to be a hobby of his. Later you see he has a dungeon where he was planning on mounting her as well.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Played with in regards Claire's bonus Colt SAA. It's a good upgrade from her original Browning in terms of firepower, but the 6-round cylinder and faster firing rate means you burn through ammo faster, and it has the lowest critical hit chance of all the handguns available.
• Road Cone: Future games make it clear that the Claire A/Leon B route is effectively the canon route, compared to the Leon A/Claire B route, which only the novelization and CD dramas took. The 2019 remake adjusted for this by taking most of the key events of Claire A/Leon B and integrating them into all possible scenarios (i.e. Leon always fights and dispatches Mr. X and Claire always has to cure an infected Sherry).
• Room Full of Zombies:
  • You open an unassuming door (in a save room, no less) and several zombies shamble in.
  • The 4th Survivor has an especially lethal example near the end. Doing anything other than immediately running to the empty space in the middle will get you killed.
• Rule of Cool: The shotgun upgrade is implausible, to put it mildly^note The Remington 1100 is not a pump-action shotgun, and it is theoretically possible to turn a pump-action Remington 870 into a semi-auto, but it would require very extensive gunsmithing and metalwork, not just snapping on a different foreend. It'd also be a pretty pointless modification, since you could buy a small collection of quality semi-auto shotguns for what you'd likely pay a professional gunsmith to make one such conversion., but that doesn't stop the Custom M1100 from being one of the coolest damn weapons in the game.
• Rule of Funny: The Tofu Survivor, as stated elsewhere, is a sentient block of tofu.
• Rule of Scary: The police headquarters was once an art museum, hence the Gothic architecture and over-reliance on ornate keys. Chief Brian Irons, who is something of an art buff, continues to stockpile fine art in sections of the building. His relationship with Umbrella Corp. suggests that the eccentric owner of Arklay Mansion, Ozwell E. Spencer, may have had a hand in the precinct's design as well.
• Same Story, Different Names: RE2 generally sticks to the plot of the original, replacing the "Mansion > Residence > Lab" format with "RPD > Sewers > Lab". At times, the police headquarters looks like a reskinned mansion with exposed pipes and girder work.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Claire/Leon take the slots occupied by Chris/Jill; Claire and Chris both wear vests with an attached knife sheath and have a less useful partner, while Leon and Jill both wear blue shoulder armor and can skip a boss via their partner. The characters of Barry (helpful teammate of questionable loyalty clad in red & black) and Rebecca (plucky girl sidekick who depends on the player for protection) are collapsed into Ada and Sherry.
  • Claire receives the Lockpick and Grenade Launcher, two items that were exclusive to Jill in the first game.
• Saw It in a Movie Once: Sherry says the line word-for-word when Leon congratulates her for stopping the train in Claire's B scenario ending.
• Say My Name: Leon and Claire just love to shout other people's names.
  • "ADA, WAIT!"
  • "Sherry! Sherry!"
  • "ADAAAAAAAA!"
  • "Leon!"
  • "Claire!"
• Scare Chord: Used if you didn't use the camera to see Mr. X coming. His theme shoots up when you leave after picking up a necessary key.
• Secret Final Campaign: Completing both scenarios (i.e. as both Leon and Claire) unlocks a mode where you play as an Umbrella operative named HUNK. It's effectively a challenge mode where the player must complete a portion of the game with limited ammunition and healing items, and no save points.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: This pops up in the Umbrella lab and on the train at the end.
• Sequel Escalation: The original game was confined to a single mansion and was basically about a zombie outbreak. The sequel took things to an entire city, in the form of a full-blown Zombie Apocalypse!^note Although to be honest, you never go back out into the city after you reach the police station, so it wasn't as big as it looked. There were more enemy types, more weapons, and bigger and nastier monsters, particularly the iconic William Birkin Type-G monster.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The Leon B and Claire B endings:
    Leon: (in Leon B) Hey! It's up to us to take out Umbrella!
    Claire: (in Claire B) Chris... I have to find you.
  • The Nintendo 64 version of the game has multiple extra files that allude to events in future games. Among them are some files from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
    • Two in particular allude to the beginning of the sequel, one of which is the opening monologue of Jill and another is from Brad before he becomes a zombie being chased by a monster in black clothes.
    • One of the files mentions how Ozwell E. Spencer discovered the mother virus and research into it was passed on to James Marcus before he was terminated (in every sense of the word) and it was passed onto William Birkin instead.
    • A report written by Rebecca Chambers mentions the death of former marine Billy Coen and the two MP soldiers transporting him after being attacked by Zombie dogs and becoming Zombies themselves. In this case however, it's more of a prequel hook since it was meant to foreshadow Resident Evil Zero back when it was still planned to be a Nintendo 64 game.
    • A file detailing HUNK's orders for the mission to take the G-Virus from Birkin explained that after he retrieved the sample, he was to deliver it to Loire Village in France to the head of Umbrella's French division Christine Henry. This file originally was meant to lead into the radio drama released after the game where Ada Wong had to retrieve Sherry's pendant with the G-virus after HUNK came into possession of it and ended up killing him and his men as well as Christine Henry before the radio drama was made non-canon due to later game's events.
    • One of the files mentions the future development of the "Hunter-R", one of the monsters that are later encountered in "Resident Evil Outbreak".
    • A file made by the vice president of Umbrella's USA branch mentions that the Umbrella base in the South Pole is responsible for the depletion of a certain chemical as well as the fact that the Ashford's reputation was ruined by that point.
• Sewer Gator: A gigantic alligator mutated by the T-Virus appears as a boss battle when the player traverses the Raccoon City sewers in the A scenario. If not killed, it can reappear again in the B scenario.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Birkin abuses this, with him rapidly and suddenly gaining size right in front of everyone.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Shows Damage: As Tofu is attacked, he gradually turns from white to a deep red. Similarly, he turns purple when poisoned.
• Silliness Switch: Tofu is a freaking walking block of tofu, wearing a beret, that speaks in high pitched Japanese and wields a knife with disembodied hands. In the middle of a zombie infested Survival Horror game.
• Skippable Boss: The game has three. If either character uses the fuel tank to kill the alligator in the sewers in the A scenario, then the character in the B scenario doesn't have to fight it. You can use the same trick if it's still alive in the B scenario too. Mr. X can be run away from in every one of his encounters except for the last. Leon gets an additional encounter with Birkin on the tram ride to the warehouse, where he smashes his claws through the ceiling. You can shoot him until he gives up, or you can just let Ada take care of it while dodging his attacks.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Leon overslept at a distant motel before making his way to Raccoon City — and that most likely saved his life.
• Small Girl, Big Gun:
  • Claire, the younger sister of a former USAF pilot and member of a SWAT analog in S.T.A.R.S., gets a lightning-throwing spark gun and a grenade launcher, and can also pick up a submachine gun and a rocket launcher (as well as a secret Gatling gun).
  • You can use a GameShark to give Sherry guns.
• Smurfette Principle: The human cast inverts this; among the four principal characters (Claire, Leon, Ada, and Sherry), only one is a man. The zombies play this straight, however, as you'll find only one female type compared to the numerous males.
• The Sociopath: Brian Irons definitely shows signs of this. In college, he was accused of sexual assault twice, but got off largely due to his high grades. This implies that he is dangerously intelligent and charismatic, traits that would also allow him to rise to the rank of chief of police. While chief, he keeps a Torture Cellar and regularly takes bribes from the nefarious Umbrella Corporation. Once the zombie outbreak hits, he knows that he will die, so he shows extreme selfishness by trying to take his fellow officers down with him. This is, of course in addition to murdering and possibly stuffing the mayor's daughter.
• Solve the Soup Cans: Three examples — the fountain in the main hall, the chess-themed lock on the Raccoon sewers and the faux-Aztec stone lock in Irons's office — show up in this game.
• Special Effects Evolution: This game shows a lot of budget and polish compared to the first game. Moving backgrounds, higher enemy variety and onscreen numbers, more and better quality FMV's, onscreen transformations, even Claire's ponytail show off the much better graphics.
• Taking You with Me: In Claire A, after being infected by G-Birkin, Irons holds Claire at gunpoint and uses this trope almost word for word — but before Irons can pull the trigger, the Chest Burster that Birkin implanted does its work. He tries to do the same thing in Claire B (although he's not infected, this time), but before he shoots, Birkin catches him from beyond the trap door and cuts him in half instead.
• Timed Mission: The game gives you one right at the end: as part of the final fight with Birkin, you have to escape Raccoon City via a train set to detonate (and kill you) if you don't escape fast enough.
• The Load: Sherry. Her constant need of rescuing by Claire and Leon aside, she only ever does anything remotely useful in the ending when she stops the train.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Elliot is mauled by two zombies which leads to a helicopter crashing into him and exploding on impact.
• Too Dumb to Live: Ben's best plan for surviving the Zombie Apocalypse was locking himself in a jail cell, which left him at risk of dying of starvation and ultimately failed to protect him from death at Birkin's claws.
• Turns Red:
  • After spending the entire game as an Arnie clone, Mr. X grows Tyrant-like claws and appendages for his last battle. This adds the standard Tyrant claw swipe to his repertoire.
  • Birkin's fourth form moves faster than the player, jumps all over the place, climbs on the walls, takes a hell of a beating, and kills you in two or three bites.
• Undying Loyalty: Annette remains loyal to William even after he becomes a mutant killing machine. She even threatens to shoot Claire for "killing" him. Capcom dropped this trait for The Darkside Chronicles, in which Annette wants to stop her mutated husband's rampage.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Players can't pick up the MP5s carried by the remains of Umbrella's soldiers. By that point, they'd have been full of dank sewer water for a week, so this trope's somewhat justified as none of the protagonists would likely know the gun could survive such conditions (note that Capcom intended to make the MP5 a usable weapon at one point).
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In both of her scenarios, Claire and Sherry go past Chief Irons, who is Half the Man He Used to Be. While Claire witnessed how he got that way, Sherry should realistically be horrified.
• Updated Re-release:
  • The Dual Shock Version, an updated version of the original PlayStation version, added support for the analog sticks, vibration feedback, the unlockable Extreme Battle mode, and a Rookie difficulty that allows players to start the game with powerful weapons loaded with infinite ammo.^note It also added a cheat code for applying infinite ammo to any difficulty. In Japan, Dual Shock Version includes a "USA Mode" based on the Western release's difficulty.
  • While the N64 port didn't have the same features of the DualShock Version (such as the Extreme Battle mode), it did add "first person" controls where the player's character moves towards the direction the d-pad/stick is being pushed (in addition to the standard "third person" Tank Controls) and featured new documents ("EX Files") with new information on the series' lore that helped bridge the connection of RE2 with other installments of the series. Because Capcom made the entire game fit a single cartridge, the player could choose both Leon's and Claire's games from the get-go.
  • The Dreamcast port of the game featured many of the additions of the 1999 PC release as well as a real-time health monitor (courtesy of the VMU peripheral).
  • The GameCube version has better models for the playable characters, the option to skip not only FMV cutscenes but in-game cutscenes as well (only the final boss' cutscenes in the B scenario, the ending cutscenes and the credits can't be skipped) and everything introduced with the Dual Shock Version in a single minidisk.
  • The 1999 PC port of the game received an updated re-release in 2006, but it never ended up ported outside of Japan. The PC port by SourceNext, which came on a single DVD (as opposed to two CD-ROMs), combined both Leon's and Claire's games into one (like the Nintendo 64 and GameCube ports), fixed many of the compatibility issues that Windows XP or higher had with the original PC release, and showed all of the CG cutscenes at full uncompressed quality.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Sherry gives us the first and most memorable example of this in the Resident Evil series.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: This game is the closest the series comes to averting it (until this game's remake, which averts the trope), and it's still not great. The flamethrower's main use is for the Ivies which populate the labs, as they are otherwise extremely resilient to even the upgraded magnum, and it can take them down with one hit. However, its range is just outside their striking distance, and well within their acid spit range, a projectile attack which is also poisonous if you gassed the labs as Claire. It also only has 9 seconds of fuel, meaning you better be sure you are going to hit what you are aiming at. It also has much less damage against anything other than Ivies as well.
• Video Game Remake: A remake of the game was announced in 2015, with the official gameplay trailer appearing at E3 2018. Unlike the REmake, the Resident Evil 2 remake's gameplay will be completely updated to be an over-the-shoulder third person game in the style of Resident Evil 4.
• Villainous Breakdown: The irrational and paranoid Irons really starts to lose what few marbles he has left when the outbreak begins. Thinking he's been infected, he threatens to prevent anyone else from leaving his town alive.
• Villainous Rescue: In Claire's B scenario, Chief Irons has her at gunpoint, seconds from pulling the trigger... only to be grabbed and pulled under a trap door by Birkin.
• Villain Protagonist: HUNK serves as this in The 4th Survivor. His team holds partial responsibility for the outbreak — and HUNK himself makes sure to escape Raccoon City with a sample of the G-Virus. The ending text for his 4th Survivor path even says, "End of one nightmare, prelude to another".
• Visual Pun: The train that is used to evacuate Raccoon City is a GALAXIE-5000 AKA a "G-train". The G is bright red to make it more clear.
• Wacky Sound Effect: Tofu "walks" with a high-pitched squeaky noise.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: During the intro, a sign for "Grady's Inn" shows a phone number with a 212 area code. 212 is exclusive to New York City. Capcom didn't model Raccoon City after New York (obviously) and the games place Raccoon City somewhere in the Midwest. The Sewer Manager fax mentions William Birkin using the facilities to conduct training seminars for Umbrella's Chicago branch (implying that Raccoon City is somewhere in Illinois), the S.D. Perry novelizations placed it in Pennsylvania, while fanon typically also places it there, West Virginia, or Colorado. Raccoon City certainly doesn't look Midwestern with its mountains and forests, but Capcom never reveals where it is other than the "Midwest".
• What Happened to Mommy?:
  • William Birkin's fate is initially unknown to Sherry, and it's not clear that she ever directly learns about his transformation into the monstrous G-mutant during the course of the gameplay.
  • Subverted with Sherry's actual mother, at least in Claire B, where Claire and Sherry encounter the dying Annette in the underground lab and she apologizes to Sherry for being such a lousy mother.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Sherry receives a few mentions in other games after RE2 (namely in the epilogues in RE3 and in Wesker's Report), but doesn't actually show up in the series again until Resident Evil 6.
  • HUNK is a weird case. The character has been revisited often as a fan favorite, but only in non-canon settings, such as The Mercenaries minigames or spinoffs like Outbreak (dummied out, at that) and Operation Raccoon City. In terms of actual plot relevance, he just has his RE3 epilogue and a file in Code: Veronica.
• White Gangbangers: Leon's other alternate outfit is this in spades.
• Wolverine Claws: Birkin grows a rather large set of these.
• Worst Aid: When Leon is injured, Ada dresses the wound by wrapping the bandages outside his clothes. After she pulled the bullet out. In a sewer. During a Zombie Apocalypse.
• You All Look Familiar: While there are much more variance of models used for zombies compared to the first game (which only had at three models: green jacket, white lab coat, and naked), there's only a handful of zombie models that will repeat very quickly, with female zombies only having the one model.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Defied with the hidden Weapon Box Key. One could easily assume that the lighter —which Claire has to carry in her inventory— is necessary to set off the flare gun and make the key appear, but all that does is make it visible. If you know the key is there, you can just collect it and move on without bothering with the flare.
• Your Head A-Splode: You can save a ton of ammo by tricking the alligator into eating a gas can, then shooting it, blowing up its head.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The giant alligator in the sewer. You pop a gas canister out of the wall, and once the gator gets it in its mouth, a single shot from the handgun is all it takes to finish it off.
• Zombie Apocalypse: This fits better here than in the original Resident Evil. The mansion had maybe a hundred or so people in it, but Raccoon City had a population of over 100,000 — and practically all of them became zombies.
• Zombie Puke Attack: This is the only way the zombies can attack Sherry, who's significantly shorter than them. They also use this on the other characters if they're on a different elevation and thus can't use the grabbing attack.
  End of one nightmare, prelude to another...

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