Nemesis (Resident Evil)

Nemesis was one of Umbrella's more successful creations, Nemesis was a towering figure wearing a black trenchcoat who was sent into Raccoon City in September of 1998 to hunt down any and all remaining STARS members. Armed with deadly tentacles that were hidden beneath his coat and wielding a powerful rocket launcher, Nemesis first encountered the Alpha Team's Brad Vickers, who he killed outside of the RPD before turning his malevolent attention to Jill Valentine.

He pursued Jill relentlessly throughout Raccoon City, both before and after she met up with UBCS members Carlos Oliveria, Nicholai Ginovaef, and Mikhail Victor. When the group sought to make it to the St. Michael Clocktower, Nemesis hitched a ride aboard the cable car they were using, only to be blown right back out by a grenade detonated by Mikhail Victor. Although the blast killed Mikhail, Nemesis survived and turned up at the clocktower a short time later, shooting down the UBCS extraction chopper before cornering Jill and forcing her to fight him.

With some help from Carlos, Jill succeeded in wounding Nemesis, who staggered away into the flaming wreckage of the crashed helicopter, but not before he'd used one of his tentacles to infect Jill with the T-Virus. After Carlos retrieved the vaccine from the neighboring hospital, Nemesis, sans coat (which was burned off in the fire), reappeared and chased them to the dead factory. There, he was defeated a second time by Jill in the facility's waste disposal room.

After being dropped into the biohazard waste bin by an automated dumping unit, Nemesis would return a third and final time as Jill was getting ready to leave the factory in order to escape from Raccoon City before it was obliterated by a nuclear warhead. Contact with all the chemicals and viruses in the waste bin caused Nemesis to mutate, but he was nonetheless destroyed by a powerful rail gun that the U.S. Army had left behind when Jill started it up and shot him twice with it.

Novels

Mostly identical to the games version, except that it is hinted at that this version of Nemesis is a cyborg.

Films

Formerly Matthew Addison, who was put into Umbrella's Nemesis Program and turned into the ultimate living fighting machine by Umbrella's lead scientist Dr. Isaacs. Armed with a rocket launcher and modified chain gun, Nemesis was released into Raccoon City by Major Cain for the purposes of testing his abilities. Initially, he was programmed to hunt and kill members of STARS.

Nemesis wiped out the majority of STARS, including Captain Henderson, at the Mostly Colt gun store. After he'd also slain Peyton Wells, Cain changed Nemesis' instructions before he could also kill Jill Valentine and had him go after Umbrella's other bioengineered killing machine and the other half of the Nemesis Program (although she was unaware of it), Alice.

However, once Alice realized that Nemesis had been her friend Matt once, she could not bring herself to kill him. This, in turn, allowed Nemesis to remember his former identity as Matt, and he turned on Umbrella's troops. Unfortunately, he was killed shortly thereafter when a helicopter he'd shot with his rocket launcher landed on him, crushing him.

Comments

Although Nemesis' origins were never delved into in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, it was later revealed that he was created as the result of an ordinary human being infected with a deadly tentacular parasite.

References

• Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
• Nemesis by S.D. Perry
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (film)
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (novel) by Keith R.A. DeCandido