Resident Evil 2 / YMMV

For YMMV items relating to the remake, see here.

Anti-Climax Boss: The fight with William Birkin's fifth form feels more like glorified cutscene rather than the Final Boss of the game. He can only attack you if you stand around right in front of him. Meanwhile, you've got a rocket launcher, and failing that, a good supply of magnum rounds or acid shells; more than enough to take Birkin down before he can pull himself all the way over to you.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Annette states that William should have lost his memories by the time of the game, having been in his current state for several days by then, but just how correct is she? Sherry states she heard him call her name shortly before Leon's first fight with him, (it happens off camera, but in every other iteration of 2 he does it on camera for the player to hear), so him still remembering who Sherry is doesn't gel with Annette's claim. In addition, the way he fights is not that of a brainless being; he flanks, he ambushes people, so there is clearly some level of intelligence still there, unlike a zombie for instance else he wouldn't remember how to do so (leaping over obstacles instead of having to go around them and the ability to procure and use weapons, for instance), even if he can no longer tell friend from foe like what happens to his wife at the end of Claire A. Even in his final blob form, he also clearly realizes what the countdown on the train means, as his last shot before being vaporized by the self-destruct is his giant center eye going wide. In short, is Will actually still in at least partial control of his actions and is just doing it For the Evulz?
- During Ada's "death" in the A scenario, Leon challenges her to shoot him. Ada promptly lowers her gun and looks down on herself. Was it because she truly couldn't do it, or because her magazine was empty as the game described it? Before she lowers her gun, you can see her pointing her gun again to Leon and hear an audible "click!" Was that just a case of Noisy Guns, Ada lowering her gun's hammer, or did she really pull the trigger before realizing she had no bullets?
Awesome Music:
- "The Second Malformation of G."
- "Escape from Umbrella's Lab."
- The Game B credits theme. Double the awesome for being one of those super-rare J-Rock anthems that actually uses both lead and rhythm guitar!
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Somewhat literally with the giant alligator in the sewers. It comes completely out of nowhere,^note it doesn't gel with or have any relation to any of the other bosses in the game (whereas the rest are hideously-deformed mutants and/or ultra-powerful bioweapons, the giant alligator is Exactly What It Says on the Tin), the fight against it is laughably easy and entirely inconsequential, and its relevance to the plot begins as soon as it appears and ends the second it's dead. It's also one of the most iconic moments in the game.
Common Knowledge: While the Nintendo 64 port of the game is still impressive considering how many single disc games have had content sacrificed in ports to the system, it didn't involve converting 1.4 GB of data into 64 MB as commonly suggested. Both of the PS1 version's discs are a little above 370 MB in size (a lot of assets are also shared between either disc), and according to developer interviews, the PS1 version could've easily fit onto one disc had they had time to properly compress the audio.
Complete Monster: Raccoon City Police Chief Brian Irons was accused raping a university student several times, before getting away with it and becoming Chief of the Raccoon City Police Department. Taking bribes from the Umbrella Corporation and allowing them to conduct experiments on the city's citizens, he would use said bribes to fund his own personal "Taxidermy Sex Dungeon of Evil", filled with bones, surgical tools, acids, and stuffed bodies. When Umbrella's T-Virus breaks free and spreads throughout Raccoon City, Irons decides to use this opportunity to cause chaos and kill people, which includes zombies, innocent bystanders, fellow cops, and the mayor's daughter. Horribly depraved, Irons proves you don't need superpowers or grandiose schemes to be horrifically evil.
Creepy Awesome: Birkin. This especially applies to his third or fourth forms, where they practically start to veer more into awesomeness.
Demonic Spiders:
- Lickers. You can sometimes just sneak by them, but in tight corridors (which is where you'll see them best out of ten), they'll become alert and chase you down the moment you get close to them. Their close range swiping attack doesn't deal remarkable damage and you can easily get them in melee range since they're blind and won't enter their alert mode until you either run, shoot a loud weapon, or get right up next to them. Just don't alert them from far away because their long ranged attack, a leaping swipe, deals more damage than most bosses can do in one hit. It's worse if there is more than one of them.
- The Advanced Lickers as they dish out more damage and can take twice as much punishment. In the labs, they can attack offscreen, potentially causing a One-Hit Kill.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- HUNK. He is literally badass incarnate. He's also the Boba Fett of the Resident Evil universe as we know almost nothing about him, but has just a powerful presence and a professional attitude that demands respect. Every other appearance by Gas Mask Mooks later in the series is assumed to be him until proven otherwise.
- Ada Wong counts as one to her fans for obvious reasons.
- Just like Nemesis that would follow him, Birkin also has an ever growing fanbase simply because what an awesome boss (or rather, bosses) he turned out to be.
Even Better Sequel: Resident Evil 2 improved on the original in just about every front, and is widely regarded as the best of the old-style Resident Evil games. Gameplay has been tightened up, the cheap difficulty of some sections has been mitigated without making the overall game any less challenging, and it has a much more entertaining and solid story than the previous game. Additionally, William Birkin's G creature remains one of the series' most memorable, iconic and instantly recognizable monsters.
Fan Nickname:
- For the longest time, fans referred to Birkin's virus as the "God Virus", as this sort of Blasphemous Boast meshed well with Birkin's personality and it formed solid Theme Naming with the G-viral antigens being named the "Devil Vaccine." Even Yasuhisa Kawamura, scenario writer of Resident Evil 3, used that terminology. However, in an interview, RE3 director Kazuhiro Aoyama declared that the G-Virus's proper official name is and always has been "Golgotha Virus."
- Some fans refer to the red-clothed female zombie◊ as "Misty" due to her outfit resembling Misty◊ from Pokémon.
Franchise Original Sin: While Resident Evil 5 and 6 are often criticized for making the series too focused on the action and not enough on the horror, this game is very action heavy compared to the original Resident Evil. Whereas the first game had limited ammo, and the player had to strategize in terms of dealing with enemies, Resident Evil 2 is very plentiful with the ammo, even with the more powerful guns like the magnum. As long you don't decide that any walls are particularly offensive looking, you can kill every enemy in the game and still have ammo left over for most of the guns. The remake, however, reverses this, focusing more on the horror than the action, with limited ammo and much tougher enemies than the original.
Good Bad Bugs: Using the Cord in one of the two shutter panels (one in the southwest corridor next to the filing room, another in the northeastern hall leading to the basement) in the A scenario makes it so that, in the B one, there are no zombies in the corridor (and surroundings) you didn't use it on after the cutscene where it blows out; even the zombies that were already there disappear completely. This makes visiting the basement and the goodie-filled eastern office a completely hassle-free experience for the B scenario character, as long as you used the cord in the southwest corridor. If you don't use the cord, zombies will break through the windows of both spots.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- HUNK's scenario is known as the "4th Survivor," the other three being Claire, Leon, and Sherry. Even forgetting for a moment that Ada also survived, Resident Evil 3 and the Outbreak games added more and more survivors.
- Chief Brian Irons was intended to be a hero in the original drafts of the game, which is very jarring when you look it up.
- The Reveal that Ada is a spy trying to steal corporate secrets makes the single reference to her in the first game amusing when you remember that, by sheer coincidence, the secondary password was "MOLE."
- Claire and Sherry's voice actresses, Alyson Court and Lisa Yamanaka, respectively, would later work together on a cartoon that's the polar opposite of this game.
- Lack of Badass Longcoat aside, HUNK and his fellow USS operatives bear a striking resemblance to Veteran NCR Rangers.
- The N64 port of the game had an unlockable Randomizer feature that randomized item layouts. Many, many years later such a feature became a popular Game Mod and Speed Run category for many games, Resident Evil 2 included, with even more sophisticated features to keep players on their toes, such as randomizing item and enemy placements.
Iron Woobie: Claire. One of the few protagonists in the series to not have had some form of police or military training, she went to Raccoon City to search for her missing brother and found herself wandering into hell on Earth. Then it turns out Chris left some time prior, leaving behind only a memo detailing why he was leaving and a rather paltry message of "please forgive me, Claire," at which point she's left to not only fend for herself, but for Sherry. It would take almost three months and ending up in another grueling viral outbreak for Claire to be reunited with her sibling.
Low-Tier Letdown: Claire and Ada in Extreme Battle mode. The former's loadout consists solely of the powerful but slow-firing grenade launcher, making her easy pickings for fast enemies like dogs and crows unless you hunt down the submachine gun hiding in a very out-of-the-way spot in the labs, while the former is basically the designated "hard mode" since she has no heavy weapons aside from the optional 2-shot Rocket Launcher you can find in the sewer, and is better off just hauling ass from the stronger enemies that start showing up in the 2nd and especially 3rd challenge levels.
Memetic Badass: HUNK.
Memetic Mutation:
- In the police station, a player can search Wesker's desk 50 times to find a picture of Rebecca Chambers in a basketball uniform. Considering the way she looks there, some Rebecca fans really like that outfit. It would later become one of her bonus costumes in the HD re-release of Resident Evil 0.
- The R.P.D. has no bathroom. Apparently, in Raccoon City, Nobody Poops. Amusingly, Capcom actually made a point of showing Leon explore a bathroom area in early demos for the remake.
Narm: It's a Resident Evil game. Specific instances are listed here.
Nausea Fuel: Both Leon and Claire have to traverse the Raccoon City sewers in their escape from the city, but Leon has to do so in-canon while coping with a big ol' gunshot wound from Annette. It's a wonder he wasn't infected with anything at all.
Older Than They Think: Whilst the series' Franchise Original Sin of a Genre Shift from Survival Horror to Action Horror is generally attributed to Resident Evil 4^note, it actually started here in RE2. Ammunition is vastly more plentiful, to the point one can literally kill every enemy in the game outside of the zombies during the initial flight through Raccoon City's streets to the Police Station and still have bullets left over, and a decently powerful secondary weapon is available literally within the first minute of actual gameplay, if you're willing to risk fighting/evading the zombies that eat Kendo at the gun store.
Once Original, Now Common: It's easy to bash the CG animation for the creepiness that's in effect, but at the time of release, this was some of the most fluid and detailed animation you would ever find in a video game. The CG cutscenes have a higher framerate than contemporary games of the time that boast more detail.
One-Scene Wonder: The Giant Alligator. It shows up for barely a minute of playtime and can be defeated by a single handgun bullet if you were paying attention to your environment, but its boss fight is one of the most iconic moments in the game. When Capcom clarified that it would be returning for the remake, fans cheered.
Polished Port:
- The Nintendo 64 version managed to fit two CD-ROMs worth of data into a single 64-megabyte ROM cartridge (making it the largest N64 release ever). Granted, most of the game's essential assets were already in both discs, said discs had less than 700 MB of data on them, and the additional CD-ROM was only necessary for the alternate dialogue and FMV sequences in each character's scenario (one of which was removed in the N64 port in order to cut corners). Still an impressive feat and even without the Extreme Battle mode from the Dual Shock Edition, it does include its own exclusive set of new features, including a set of new in-game documents (the EX Files). The N64 version also allows use of the Expansion Pak to bump up the screen resolution.
- The Sega Dreamcast version was sold for cheap at its launch, packs in all the extras from the PC version, removed the cropping of the FMVs, supports the VGA box, and has the helpful addition of the VMU screen to monitor your ammo and health. However, it's missing a few musical tracks.
- While the Nintendo GameCube port doesn't offer too much new, the FMVs are now completely uncompressed and run at an impressive 30 frames per second, it is now possible to skip both those and the in-game cutscenes and is one of the two CD-based ports of the game that puts both Leon and Claire's games on one disc while cutting absolutely nothing.
Porting Disaster: The game received a port for the failed Tiger Game.com handheld system. While it clearly had some effort put into it, and plays better than similar ports to the system due to the slower pacing, it's still a major downgrade.
Realism-Induced Horror: Chief Irons is quite possibly the darkest RE villain. He’s not an immoral scientist like many of Umbrella’s staff, a grandiose supervillain like Wesker, or a deformed monster; he’s just a man. While far from the worst threat this series has to offer, the fact that he’s so grounded puts him in a completely different category from his competition. Serial killings, sexual assault, police corruption (or just corruption in general), and child abuse/murder are sickeningly common and sometimes even overlooked a lot in the real world.
Retroactive Recognition: Not necessarily for Capcom, but the Nintendo 64 port is this for Angel Studios, better known nowadays as Rockstar San Diego.
The Scrappy: Sherry. Playing as a 12 year old girl was not what players imagined. Add in that Leon gets a Hyper-Competent Sidekick in Ada and that Sherry will actually curl up into a fetal position if Claire gets too far ahead, messing up a speed run, and you have players howling in frustration.
Scrappy Weapon: The Spark Shot makes a horrible first impression, being horribly ineffective against common zombies, taking up two inventory slots and only containing twenty shots of ammo with no ability to reload. It turns out to be incredibly effective on William Birkin, but so is Claire's Grenade Launcher which only takes one slot and has multiple ammo options to cover a wider variety of situations.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: RE2 turned out far easier than the first game, as the game packs in more ammo and weapons for the player to pick up, even in the overseas editions (which Capcom made slightly harder than the Japanese version). Capcom also made the game's Elite Mooks (Lickers) significantly easier to deal with and less plentiful in numbers than the Hunters from Resident Evil. The PC and Dreamcast ports of RE2 added a Nightmare mode that increased the health points of the enemies.
That One Boss: William's "dog form" is faster and bigger than you, jumps a lot, doesn't stand still and let you shoot him, and will destroy you if you have a less than "fine" condition. Made worse by the fact that there's a time limit due to the self-destruct system being activated.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: With an outbreak of the T-Virus infecting just about the entire population of Raccoon City, the game initially looks like it'll be about exploring a city overrun with zombies. Instead, the action swiftly moves to the police station, which looks more like a creepy art museum, and feels like a rehash of the Spencer Mansion from the previous game. It wouldn't be until Resident Evil 3: Nemesis before players got the opportunity to run around the city's zombie-filled streets in greater depth.
Visual Effects of Awesome: While very noticeably outdated, some of the effects that were new to the series for this game were impressive for the time and still great considering the hardware. Of particular note are some of Birkin's transformations, such as the Scenario A encounter with him atop the descending elevator or the finale with his changing into a more bestial form - these are all done using the in-game engine to great effect.
The Woobie:
- Sherry, hands down. Caught in the crossfire in Raccoon City, with zombies galore, and is being chased by her insane parents, moreso her father - he implants an embryo within her that will turn her into a monster.. Not to mention she has to live the rest of her life without her parents, William (who died when he was shot and subsequently injected himself with the G-Virus) and Annette (who was murdered by her husband in a horrible fashion). This all happens when she's twelve, then she gets taken by the U.S. government due to hosting a mutated/vaccinated G-Virus within her that gives her a Healing Factor. It's good to see that she grew into a capable agent in Resident Evil 6, but still, she acknowledged what happened to her father in that game.
- Mayor Warren's daughter. While we never see her alive in the game, or even learn her first name, we do know that her father abandoned her in a zombie infested city to save himself. As if that wasn't bad enough, she then ended up in the protective custody of Brian Irons. From there, she was hunted down in the police station like an animal, likely raped, murdered, and then possibly stuffed by Irons to preserve her beauty.
- You have to feel for the officers whose notes you find scattered around the police station, as you are reading what may be their last words during the early stages of the outbreak.

YMMV / Resident Evil 2

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