Rebecca Chambers (character)


Rebecca Chambers is a fictional character in the Resident Evil horror franchise by Capcom. She has been introduced as a supporting character in the original Resident Evil video game in 1996 and became the protagonist of the prequel game Resident Evil Zero in 2002. In the first Resident Evil, Rebecca is a young officer with the fictitious Special Tactics And Rescue Service police unit and is trapped in a zombie-infested mansion. Zero depicts the events before that ordeal, during which she is separated from her team and forced to partner with escaped convict Billy Coen to survive similar circumstances.
Both of these stories were revisited and expanded upon in ' with a scenario set in between. Rebecca appears in several other games and is one of the heroes of the Resident Evil novel series, that includes novelizations of earlier series materials as well as original stories, and of the games' stage play sequel. She is also one of the three protagonists of the animated film ', alongside Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield.

Appearances

Video games

Rebecca Chambers makes her first appearance in the original 1996 Resident Evil as a supporting character for Chris Redfield, a fellow officer in the U.S. special police force Special Tactics And Rescue Service. She is an 18-year-old rookie member of the unit's Bravo Team and serves as a field medic additionally in charge of rear security. Before she joined the force, she was a child prodigy and graduated from college at only 18 years old. Rebecca arrives at the Arklay Research Facility to investigate a series of cannibalistic murders with her comrades lost and scattered across the Arklay Mountains. Her introduction and other appearances throughout the first game vary depending on the path the player chooses and she can be controlled during portions of the story. She may die an off-screen death as well. Canonically, Rebecca is ultimately rescued by Chris and the Alpha Team and she emerges as Bravo Team's sole survivor of the incident in the canon version of the story.
In Resident Evil Zero, a prequel to Resident Evil, Rebecca is one of two protagonists. Shortly after Bravo Team had been dispatched to the Arklay Mountains to investigate the murders, she enters a seemingly abandoned train. Coming under attack by zombies and mutated animals, Rebecca encounters escaped death-row military prisoner Billy Coen and cooperates with him. The two discover that the viral zombie outbreak has been masterminded by James Marcus who had been one of the Umbrella Corporation's top scientists but was assassinated on behalf of the company, only to be revived by the monsters created by him. Rebecca and Billy escape from the train and find themselves in an old underground facility of Umbrella Corporation that was overtaken by Marcus in his lust for revenge. In the end, they manage to destroy both Marcus and the facility. Rebecca allows Billy to escape, falsely reporting his death to the authorities.
Rebecca appears in ' which summarizes the events of Resident Evil Zero and details her later experiences leading up to Resident Evil. The game pairs her with fellow STARS Bravo team member Richard Aiken as they work together to fend off hordes of undead creatures.
She has survived the events of Resident Evil 2, in which the character makes an easter egg type cameo appearance in an undeveloped film on Wesker's desk. Rebecca is also a playable character in Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition in its minigame mode Mercenaries Reunion, as well as in '.

Design and gameplay

In the original Resident Evil, Rebecca was portrayed in the game's live-action cut-scenes by an unknown actress simply credited as "Linda", and voiced by an uncredited Lynn Harris, who also worked as the voice-over director of the game. The game's director Shinji Mikami said in 2014: "If I had to name the woman character I most disliked in my games it would be Rebecca Chambers. She’s submissive, she’s not independent. I didn’t want to include her but the staff wanted that kind of character in the game, for whatever reason. I’m sure it made sense to them. And in Japan, that character is pretty popular." For Resident Evil 0, Rebecca's character was modeled after the J-pop star Ayumi Hamasaki, who also served as Capcom's official spokeswoman for the game in Japan. While her standard outfit is rather androgynous, Rebecca's alternate costumes in the games "expose her midriff and voluptuous shape". In the remake of RE0, Rebecca's face was remodeled and pre-order bonuses included a nurse costume for her.
In Zero, where she is a starting character, Rebecca is weaker than Billy and as such can absorb much less damage and cannot push heavier objects. Her unique skill is her ability to mix various chemicals. In the Mercenaries mode of RE5, Rebecca is armed with an MP5 submachine gun, and her melee moves include flame spray, tear gas and taser attacks, but most of them do not instantly kill. To compensate that, she is the only character that starts with two first-aid sprays and extra ammo. In The Mercenaries 3D, Rebecca is an unlockable character with the highest recovery but with the lowest armor. She carries five healing herbs, an MP5 and a grenade launcher, and her high-damage flame spray attack is replaced by a push out move.

Other media

Rebecca plays a central role in S. D. Perry's Resident Evil novels written in 1998-2004, namely in the original stories ' and ', as well as in the novelizations of the games in which she appears. In Caliban Cove, Rebecca, declared outlaw and aided by members of the Exeter, Maine branch of STARS, attempts to stop a rogue scientist from spreading a new strain of the T-virus. In Underworld, Rebecca, Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, and an original character David Trapp embark to find the Umbrella Corporation's new facility hidden beneath the desert in the American Southwest, which was taken over by another rogue Umbrella scientist.
Rebecca makes a minor appearance in the Resident Evil comic book S.T.A.R.S. Files. In George A. Romero's rejected Resident Evil film screenplay from the late 1990s, Rebecca filled the same role as she did in the first game.
In the 2015 stage play Biohazard: The Stage, Rebecca has become a professor teaching at a university in western Australia. The place becomes a scene of a bio-terrorist incident, which reunites her with Chris Redfield as they once again work together.
A computer-animated film starring Rebecca was released in 2017, titled . In the film, Rebecca, long retired as a police officer, now works in university as a professor, using her knowledge of medicine to develop possible cures for viruses. When her laboratory is attacked by bio-terrorists, Rebecca is exposed to the new A-Virus but uses her newly-researched vaccine to save herself. She is rescued by Chris and the BSAA, together enlisting Leon to help them against the surviving members of Los Illuminados. Rebecca is later captured by Chris' enemy Glenn Arias, who reveals that he desires to marry her because she resembles his late lover, Sara. Eventually, she is saved and cured just in time after being exposed to a stronger strain of his virus.

Other appearances

In 2001, toymaker Moby Dick produced an action figure of Rebecca in the related series even as she does not actually appear in this game. A diorama-type figure of Rebecca and the monster Hunter was released by Organic in 2009 and a 1/6 scale resin garage kit of Rebecca in her alternate costume from Zero was released by Vanilla Chop. Capcom's theme restaurant Biohazard Cafe & Grill S.T.A.R.S. opened with "Rebecca-Style Dessert" in the menu.

Reception

The character of Rebecca Chambers has been mostly positively received. According to PlayStation Official Magazine, "her starring role in Resident Evil Zero made her a fan favourite." GameDaily featured her as its "Babe of the Week" as "a true American hero"; she was included among the 112 most important female characters in games by PC Games Hardware in 2008, and was ranked as the 93rd best looking game girl by GameHall's Portal PlayGame in 2014. IGN included Rebecca among the characters they would like to return in Resident Evil 6, and Brazilian website Legião dos Heróis proposed a continuation of the story of Rebecca and Billy for a plot of the next Resident Evil CG-animated film by Capcom. Joystiq praised her inclusion in Resident Evil 5s downloadable content, similarly stating "we're all for bringing back."
In 1997, Edge used a picture of Rebecca as an illustration for "positive females who don't parade around in their underwear." Six years later in 2003, Edge listed both Jill Valentine and Rebecca Chambers, as well as some other survival horror genre female protagonists including Claire Redfield, as "strong, non-exploitative female leads" who are "undeniably attractive, but they don't ponce about in leather cat suits." Spanish magazine PlanetStation ranked her as second top "pair of neurons" in their 1999 listings of the best PlayStation characters. While evaluating which of the Resident Evil heroes is best dressed to survive a real-life zombie apocalypse, GamesRadar found Rebecca to be "more practically attired than Ada Wong or Jill Valentine" and remarked on her looks of a "pre-pubescent tom boy." One essay in Unraveling Resident Evil commented on a "traditional trope" of "a virgin or tomboy, Rebecca and Claire," contrasting them with Ada.