Resident Evil/Narm

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Resident Evil: a perfect storm of action, horror, and B-movie cheese (charm?)

  • The very first Resident Evil game had a bunch of these, no thanks to the terrible English voice acting. Jill sandwich, anyone?
    • Barry would also like you to know that weapons are powerful, especially against living things.
    • And Barry sure hopes this isn't Chris's blood.
    • Barry would like to know "WHAT IS THIS"!?
    • Oh, god. Jill Sandwiches are only the tip of the iceberg when looking at Barry Burton's original dialogue. "Just take - a - look - at - THIS! It's Forest. Ohh my COD!"
      • Also ruining that particular scene is that though it's made clear exactly what they're talking about in RE Make; in the original, Forest's body is somewhat obscured from sight. This troper knows of a few people who wondered exactly what was so mortifying about the forest below the balcony.
      • Don't forget "I'm going to find out what caused Forrest's death.", followed seconds later by "It looks like he was killed by a CROW or something!"
    • Richard reminds you that there are terrible demons. OUCH!! Haha, who yells "Ouch"?
    • "It's not just a poisonous snake... it's a MONSTAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
    • And let us not forget that Jill is, apparently, the Master of Unlocking.
    • In the live-action opening to the first game, as the team watches the helicopter fly away, Chris screams in hilarious despair, "NO! DON'T GOOOO!"
    • Barry doesn't think a huge snake is interesting. He's also bad with ropes.
    • Throughout that entire game, they were calling the zombies and other Umbrella experiments "demons" and "monsters". It was really annoyingly inconsistent.
    • When Rebecca says "OH NO!" after spraying Chris with bug spray in the medical room by mistake, it sounded a lot like my 4 year cousin when he says it.
    • Wesker's "Don't come this way! *gets stabbed* NO...!"
    • The scene between Wesker and the player character just before the first Tyrant fight is funny both ways, but Chris' version doubly so. Chris starts laughing, and Wesker tells him "Chris?...stop it!" in an uncharacteristically whiny voice.
  • Jill Valentine's "Barry! It's a monster!" in the RE Make had a certain cheesy appeal to it.
  • Future Resident Evil games have been considered quite campy even with improved voice acting. It has surely evolved into self-parody in Resident Evil 4, with Leon howling in soul-wrenching woe at the deaths of the Mexican cop from Spain and the helicopter pilot who he knew for all of 10 minutes.
    • In Leon's defense, Mike is probably the longest living helicopter pilot in the entire RE series, so that's something to mourn for.
      • Not to mention he saved Leon's ass (at least on the first playthrough).
      • Was. Resident Evil 5's Kirk managed to last several chapters before being ridiculously brought down by bat-like creatures.
      • Kirk has now appeared in RE Revelations, in which he introduced himself to Chris and Jill over the radio before picking them up in his chopper.. Poor bastard has no idea what he's getting into.
      • Sorry guys, Brad had them beat a long time ago, he lasted through Resident Evil 1, into Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and topped it all off with a postmortem cameo in Resident Evil 2.
      • No, no, no. Mike, if you'll recall, was about to tell Leon the location of a good bar. Leon is sad because he doesn't know any good bars, and now it looks like he never will.
    • On the subject of Leon... His little death rattle... Did anyone besides me just stand there and let Ganados or whatnot kill them on occasion just to hear that "UUUUUUWAAAAAAAHHHH". What was that?
      • It plays even if you die by, say, zombies eating your head off, which just makes it even more absurd.
    • And then there's how Leon simply cannot call Luis by his actual name. No, Leon always calls him "Lewis." What?
      • I guess that pronouncing it correctly would make it sound... "girly"? Not that pronouncing it "Lewis" stopped the Yaoi Fangirls anyway.
    • Going along with that, there's also the matter of Salazar's incapability of pronouncing "Mister" in a non-silly manner. Isn't that right, Meeeeester Kennedy?
    • Let's not even get started on Ashley's parasite removal scene.
      • "I have the antidote! If I give it to her..." What? WHAT?! WHAT'LL HAPPEN YOU STUPID-!
    • When Leon finds a deep freeze room full of corpses infected with parasites, his reaction: "Sucks to be them."
      • Well, unless you're implying that it doesn't suck to be them...
    • No mention of the Merchant's inexplicable (and very Hitcher-like) accent, stranjuh?
      • What're ya buyin'?
    • Got dat right, we'll FIND a cure!
    • Giant. Robotic. Salazar. Really now? The fact that it had absolutely no thematic connection to either the previous areas or the key needed to enter the room was silly enough. The fact that the hands moved up and down to be used as lifts (which enemies could barely maneuver) was silly enough. Hell, the idea of Salazar spending money on a giant robotic statue of himself is enough narm for the entire series. But the chase at the end with falling pillars... Just what? Here's the scene, but sped up and set to a familiar piece of music.
    • The Wayne's World reference.
    • When you get to the Island, you have to go through a kitchen-like area in the medical facility. When you walk past the oven, a mook bursts out of it and attacks you, on fire. What he was doing in there in the first place, I have no idea.
    • "I've sent my right hand to dispose of you." "You're right hand comes off?" (Yes, the in-game text says "you're".)
    • This exchange:

Saddler: Perhaps you are disillusioned with overconfidence just because you killed my small-time subordinate?
Leon: Saddler you're small-time.

  • In Resident Evil 2, the voice acting was just cheese all the way. The worst may have been Sherry's line, "He must have been caught by the monsters! I have to help him." The punctuation is not a mistake. She goes from panic in the first sentence, to flat in the second.
    • Pretty much all of Sherry's lines. She's supposed to be 12, but sounds like a 5-year-old.
    • The second worst was Ada's fake death, if Leon is the second scenario. It's not so bad if Leon is the first scenario, but this one has Ada suddenly become the love interest.

"Tell Sherry, I'm sorry I wasn't a better mother! *dies*"

    • How could you forget "Get... that... scum! Make... him... pay!"
      • Bitter irony!
    • Leon says "Someone tried to kill me", when actually Annette was trying to shoot Ada, and Leon jumped into the line of fire.
    • He had lost a lot of blood; misremembering is far from unlikely.
    • And how about when Ada heals Leon by placing the bandage on the outside of his uniform?
    • The voice-acting was part of the B-movie charm for many gamers.
    • Claire's monotone "There's a gun inside."
    • When William Birkin is gunned down by Umbrella Special Forces in Annette's flashback, she stops him to take care of the "bullet wound." Wound? he got shot, like, fifteen times!
    • Oh my god, as great a game it is, the narm could get bloody ridiculous at times. There is a diary you pick up in the police station that starts with "The police station was unexpectedly attacked by zombies. Many have been injured, more have been killed." What kind of a fucked up place do you live in where you can write this like it's an everyday occurrence? This would have been better: "This city's going to hell. Last month, we busted a crackhouse. Last week, we were informed of an illegal pornography ring. Just now, the undead are coming to kill us. It's like these people are coming up with new ways to fucking spite us."
    • The bonus EX Files in the Nintendo 64 port of the game are alright aside from one being a transcript of Jill's monologue from the opening of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and some of them being lifted wholesale from that game, but two of them, Brad's Note and Chris' Report to the Chief take the cake. Brad's Note is humourous for him actually writing down stuff that would be more suited to a voiced inner monologue like "No!! It's that monster in the black suit again! Why does that thing keep chasing me?! What did I do? This must be someone's sick idea of a joke." even if he was in a panic with Nemesis chasing him, but Chris' Report is funnier since he's relating the Mansion Incident to the Chief but not only does he forget that Enrico Marini was shot dead by Wesker and not killed by the monsters (Moreso if you played as Chris and got to Enrico since Chris would be there to witness it) but he looks especially silly with the line about the zombie dogs with him saying "We later discovered that these dogs were actually zombie dogs as they did not even feel our gunfire." How does he expect Chief Irons to take him seriously if he's writing insane stuff like that? Also Rebecca's Report on Billy Coen's "death" which misspells his surname as "Koen".
  • Nemesis: "He's after STARS members! There's no escape!"
    • Speaking of Nemesis: his final form. After a whole game's worth of running away/blowing the crap out of him, to the point that his HEAD falls off, he's still alive. Just as you put the first battery in, Nemesis drops in, eats part of one of the tyrants, and mutates one last time. All very scary and frustrating, until you see what part of the tyrant he's feeding on.
  • There's pretty much everything Steve says in Code Veronica.

SHUT UP! I DON'T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT! (Uzis the living hell out of a wall)

    • Is no one worried about ammo in that freaking game?
      • That's a good point, considering that getting the damn ammo for Steve gets its own cutscene.
      • Considering how much you get in that game, not really.
    • Steve's infamous "FATHERRRRRRRRRRR!" Including wasting all of his ammo, his amazement that he did not shoot Claire by accident once, and his equally narmful cries afterwards.
    • The way Claire has a tendency to emphasize words oddly is quite narmy, too.

I need those! Give them to me.

    • All the above Code Veronica moments were parodied in this Lets Play.
    • Speaking of Code Veronica, this troper actually finds Alfred Ashford's Nobleman's Laughs truly creepy in their own strange way - but has to admit his goddamn girlish giggle ruins it.
  • Resident Evil 5 has a moment in the middle of the final boss battle where Chris Redfield literally punches a boulder out of his way. If this doesn't qualify as narm, nothing does.
    • This troper saw that one first on YouTube while it was muted, and instantly wondered how anyone could think that would actually help. Or not break his knuckles either.
      • He clearly hurts himself when punching Wesker, just to add further confusion.
    • One line from Resident Evil 5, delivered in an over the top manner: "A new Genesis is at hand, and I will be the creator!"
    • "I JUST GOT AN EXTREME MAKEOVER!" This was the point where I stopped taking the game seriously.
    • Then, after he dies, he tries to give a serious dying monologue about how the world's changing.
    • "The Human race requires JUDGEMENT!" "And you're going to judge us? Do you get all your ideas from comic book villains!?" Considering Wesker's plan, though, that question actually makes sense.
    • Complete... global... saturation... SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
    • CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!
    • Everything Wesker says and does in the entire game is Narm Unleaded. He is, after all, a cat-eyed Johnny Bravo lookalike (right down to the permanent sunglasses) clad in a leather trenchcoat and armed with all the physics-bending strength and speed of Agent Smith, not to mention a god complex on par with only the best cartoon supervillains. This troper could go on, but it would require the Resident Evil series to get its very own page. If all of this does not seem Narmful enough for you, perhaps this[1] will do the trick.
    • Sheva's shouting, "This guy's lost it!" after "this guy" has mauled both her and her partner and thrown them off a balcony. Well-spotted, Sheva. Well-spotted.
    • She makes this comment when Wesker proclaims himself god. Sheva, like most sane people, would make the jump from him being a bio terrorist to a genocidal humanphobic self proclaimed messiah.
    • Oh, and if you're playing as Sheva, she grunts just like Chris when Wesker kicks her through the doorway.
    • Relish? Good ol' Wesker? Nah. But that's why we love him.
    • The fact that Irving ("Let's go get this eeeeeerrrving") sounds like one of the cartoon weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? does not assist in taking him in any way seriously.
    • During the quick time event scene during the final battle with Wesker on the plane, if Sheva manages to miss one of her button presses, Wesker does a back flip over Chris and snaps his neck in mid air. Easily the most hilarious thing in the franchise.
    • Let's not forget Wesker's constant "There's no point in hiding!" and "Found you!" if you try to hide from him during a battle. Especially when you walk around the pillow you're hiding behind, shoot him in the back and beat the shit out of him. Bonus points because you can pull this little trick off several times and Wesker never gets smarter.
    • During the second battle, you can turn off the light. Wesker will then stand around and just rant about how he's going to kill all unworthy humans, at which point you can just sneak up on him, shoot him in the face, and punch him out. When he gets up again, he will just stand there again and continue his rant. Villain Ball, anyone?
    • This troper gets delight in shooting Wesker in the ass just to get him to shut up.
    • Kirk, one of the longest-surviving helicopter pilots in the series (next to Brad, of course), dies when he is attacked by flying B.O.Ws, which causes his helicopter to crash. This is silly for two reasons: 1) The B.O.Ws in question are big enough to hurt individuals, but they shouldn't be able to knock a helicopter out of its flight pattern and cause it to crash, especially if you have a support gunner who should be able to suppress them with small arms fire (in-game, it only takes a few bursts from a machine gun or one blast from a shotgun to take them down). 2) Kirk's reaction to the B.O.Ws and the crashing of the helicopter is downright hilarious, even though it is supposed to be a serious situation.
  • Resident Evil Zero has James Marcus. He's a guy with hippie hair, who's 80 going on 20, who runs around in a bathrobe that looks like something out of Final Fantasy, who sees leeches as his children, and sings opera that controls aforementioned leeches.
    • Actually, it's not James Marcus, it's a bunch of leeches that think they're James Marcus!
      • Oh, well that explains everything!
    • Enrico. Let's just say that the voice you get over the radio is not altered because he's shouting into a radio.
    • Less funny than most of these examples: the part where Rebecca briefly reunited with one of her team members stood out because after he left the room, she narrated, "I never saw him again". She did never see him again, but it always seemed like some pretty lazy storytelling...
      • Especially because it's the only other narration she does after the intro, long after you'd forgotten she was even narrating in the first place.
    • How about Rebecca's annoyed tone when she demands to know "WHO triggered the self-destruct mechanism?!" From the sound of it, whoever did is in for such a timeout.
    • Marcus' joyous line of "...and the world will BURN in an INFERNO OF HATE! AHAHAHAHAH!" was so cheesy I made like The Dark Id and shat pepperjack. It didn't help that his old man form looked a lot like Peter Cushing
  • Umbrella Chronicles has Chris's amazing ability to state the obvious. After Plant42 has thrown acid at Chris and Jill and attacked them with its vines...

Chris: "Be careful, I'm sure it's dangerous." NO SHIT DUDE.

    • This exchange from the Talos fight:

Chris: He changed forms?!

Jill: Is this his true form.

    • YEAH
    • The last part of the second level and almost all of the third level of Raccoon's Destruction thanks to weird dialogue and programming errors. The last part of the second level is running from a group of Hunters in a dark corridor, and during it, Carlos proclaims he won't let anything bad happen to Jill. When the level ends he suddenly shoouts "We're screwed!" as it fades out. But depending on how well you do, he can shout "We're screwed!" practically a few seconds after he heroically proclaims to protect Jill.
    • As for the third level? Well first off, when Carlos and Jill hide from Nemesis inside the morgue (And summarily gun down an army of zombies thanks to making the stupid decision to hide in a frigging morgue during a Zombie Apocalypse), they both step out to an empty corridor, leading to Jill randomly saying "I think so too." And no, Carlos says absolutely nothing to indicate that the coast was clear (He didn't need to) yet Jill just randomly spouts that out with no context whatsoever.
    • THEN when Carlos and Jill are running around the Front Hall's balcony, they see Nemesis down below, holding a rocket launcher. Resulting dialogue:

Jill: It looks that way.

Carlos: AGAIN?! Now what?!

    • This would be a fairly standard dialogue piece on its own but a programming error leads to Jill's line coming first and as a result, lacks context and makes her look a bit schizophrenic, almost as if she says this to every big monster she comes across that doesn't go down in one bullet. And THEN it pops up in the last Nemesis encounter before the boss fight, with Jill saying the exact same line (The exact same vocal, too) with the exact same lack of context and programming error.

Jill: It looks that way.

Carlos: He survived that?!

    • Carlos' line is hilarious too considering that you blow up Nemesis' rocket launcher while he's holding it. Carlos, when you accomplish that, triumphantly claims "Even he couldn't have survived THAT!"...except you can clearly see Nemesis is merely kneeling in the classic weary pose with only the mild smoke being any indicator, and Nemesis is still clearly moving a little, therefore clearly survived THAT. I think you overestimate your chances, Carlos.
  • Darkside Chronicles gives us a real gem during the Resident Evil 2 segment. You run into Sherry, of course, and she runs away, which confuses Claire. However, since the game likes Rewarding Vandalism, you're bound to get a downright hilarious amount of...

Leon: "Why is she running away from us!?" *said while blasting the shit out of the entire room*

  • Resident Evil: Survivor. Oh my god, Survivor. Probably the moment that takes the absolute cake is Vincent's phone call from his mother which Lily is listening to on a computer terminal. What makes this better is that it's immediately followed by an equally hilarious moment: Lily seeing Ark approaching from behind, calmly turning her chair around and standing up, and then shrieking and trying to run away from him.
  • As a whole for the series, it's a little hard to take a horror game seriously when it takes place in a town called Raccoon City.
    • It makes more sense when you think about it: Which animal is it again that's infamous for spreading, via bite, a disease that makes its victims become crazy, violent, and bitey?
  • And as pointed out in one Let's Play: Martin Crackhorn. That poor sumbitch's name was Martin Crackhorn! One can only imagine the amazing restraint Capcom showed in not making his first name Jimmy.
  • While not quite as bad as earlier games, the first Outbreak definitely had some Narm. The scene where you could attempt to make a call over a dead firefighter's radio in the "Hellfire" scenario was outstanding in its stupidity. Why? They used some of the random voice clips that you would get when you spammed the adlib button in-game for that scene. I don't think they did that for any of the other cutscenes in the game. One of the downer endings for the final scenario, "Decisions, Decisions", with Kevin and Jim stranded at the Umbrella University, was pretty cheesy too.
    • Also, in File # 2, there was a weird thing about the good endings where you save Linda the scientist. Earlier on in the final scenario, Linda got shot in the leg by a sniper. But at the end, she appears to be standing and walking just fine on her own without being supported by anything or anyone else. What the f-?
    • "Mass Production? RIDICULOUS!!!" Notably, this was in the opening cutscene for the level, a few seconds in. It was an unspoken rule of the game that you didn't vote to skip the cutscene until after that line.
  • When playing the Revelations demo, make sure the people around you understand that you're playing a game demo that is going to have a guy being strangled (if you have the sound on and don't have headphones on). Otherwise, the random grunting sounds rather... questionable.
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