01
Characters
Protagonists, antagonists, allies, victims — indexed with affiliation, first appearance, status by timeline end, and the actor or motion-capture performer where applicable.
Open the shelf →The Lore Vault: A Free, Cited Wiki of Every Resident Evil Continuity Since 1996.
Twenty-nine years of canon, remastered re-releases, side novels, and spin-off timelines — indexed, sourced, and cross-referenced by the desk that broke 14 of the last 22 major RE leaks. Every entry cites its primary source, flags canonical-vs-spin-off status, and is maintained by editors with prior Capcom localization experience.
Join the Survivor Network →
1,400
Pages of cited reference
7,200
Cross-referenced entries
12
Top-level categories
1996→
Coverage from the original PS1 release forward
EDITORIAL PREFACE
How to Read the Vault
The Vault is a reference work, not a feed. Treat it like a print encyclopedia you happen to be holding open on a second monitor — read what you came for, then leave. The conventions below govern every entry in the index.
Sourcing hierarchy
Every claim is footnoted against a four-tier source ladder: Tier 1 — primary canon (the in-game script, official Capcom manuals, director-credited interviews); Tier 2 — published spin-off (S.D. Perry novels, Famitsu feature coverage, Capcom-Unity dev blogs); Tier 3 — verified leak (asset dumps, internal codenames first surfaced by Resident Evil News and later confirmed); Tier 4 — community reconstruction (fan timelines, model sheets, prototype builds). Tier is printed at the foot of every entry so a reader can weigh the claim without leaving the page.
Spoiler-tier gating
Each entry opens with a collapsible banner marking its reveal scope — Pre-1998, Through RE4, Through RE7, or Full-series. The banner is a navigation aid, not a content wall; the entry itself is intact beneath it. Spoilers are part of the job in a reference work.
Canonical vs. spin-off
We do not pretend the timelines agree. Entries are labeled [CANON], [SPIN-OFF], [PARALLEL], or [REIMAGINED] — the latter flag applied to the remakes where continuity was intentionally re-cut. Where two continuities contradict (the Spencer Mansion's east wing, the Raccoon City casualty count), both readings are presented side by side with the disambiguation note citing the source for each.
Citing a Vault entry externally
Every page carries a stable permalink, an entry ID, and a one-click citation block formatted for Chicago, MLA, and BibTeX. The vault has been cited by IGN, Kotaku, and multiple Capcom-sponsored retrospectives — please cite us the same way you would cite any research-grade wiki. If you spot an error, the editorial desk responds to corrections at [email protected]; verified corrections are rolled into the revision log visible at the foot of every entry.
THE INDEX
Twelve Categories. Twenty-Nine Years. One Shelf.
The Vault is organized the way a research library is organized — by subject, then by chronology within the subject. Pick the shelf that matches your question; every entry links outward to the next.
02
Viruses & Parasites
The T-Virus, G-Virus, Progenitor, Uroboros, Las Plagas, Mold, and the lesser strains — with infection vectors, mutation trees, and canonical extinction dates.
Open the shelf →
03
Locations
Raccoon City, the Spencer Mansion, the village, the Dulvey estate, the Baker house — every setting mapped against its in-game geography and its real-world architectural references.
Open the shelf →
04
Organizations
Umbrella, the Connections, H.C.F., TerraSave, the Blue Umbrella split — and the dissolved subsidiaries, shell companies, and black-ops fronts that funded them.
Open the shelf →External Citations & References
Cited by the Outlets That Set the Horror Calendar
The Resident Evil Lore Vault has been referenced, linked, and footnoted by the publications readers already trust. We don't pay for placement — these citations were earned across five consecutive years of editorial coverage.
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IGN
Cited across deep-dive features on Umbrella Corporation history and the T-Virus timeline. Referenced for primary-source chronology on the Arklay Mountains incident and the Raccoon City containment report.
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Kotaku
Cited in longform retrospectives on the Spencer Estate and the Wesker lineage. Used as a cross-reference for family-tree continuity between the mainline entries and the Wesker-adjacent side cast.
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Famitsu Weekly
Featured as a source in three issues between 2021 and 2024. Cited during anniversary coverage and the post-launch lore review cycle that followed the Village expansion.
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Capcom-Sponsored Retrospectives
Referenced in officially commissioned anniversary and remake retrospectives on several occasions as the Western fan-first vault kept alongside official press materials.
Featured on GamesRadar's "Best Horror Sites" list for five consecutive years (2020–2024) and the 2023 FearHQ Horror Site of the Year in the gaming vertical.
The vault exists because a 2009 wiki page on the Arklay outbreak was wrong in three places and nobody had corrected it in seven years. We built the resource we wished existed — free, footnoted, and fan-independent. Every entry is a receipt, not a take.
The Survivor Network
The wiki stays free. Membership unlocks what runs alongside it.
The Lore Vault remains open to every reader, journalist, and Capcom-side researcher. Joining the Survivor Network funds the editors who keep it current — and adds the tools members actually came for: leak alerts before they hit the wire, edit submissions to the vault itself, and a 310,000-member Discord where the Raccoon City Files crew files nightly.
- Vault Edit Submissions Members can flag, source, and submit corrections — vetted by our 7 former Capcom localization and QA veterans.
- Leak Alerts Push-first notifications on verified asset drops and Capcom shadow releases — the channel that broke 14 of the last 22 major RE leaks.
- Members-Only Discord 310K members, 9 full-time editors in the room, and live episode watch-parties for the Raccoon City Files podcast (312 episodes, 4.8/5).
Independent since 2010. Fan-first, not Capcom-authorized. We turned down three acquisition offers to stay that way.