#HEADCANON. ㅤ ㅤ — ㅤ ㅤ FACT SHEET.
useless headcanon no one asked for: jill keeps two small pet food dishes and a bag of cat food in her apartment for a feral cat that habitually ventures onto her fire escape, and will set out food and water for her. she refers to her simply as ‘cat’, not feeling that it’s her place to give the cat a name.
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raccoon city was the first proper ‘home’ jill ever had.
her mother died when she was young and dick valentine took good care of her and legitimately loves his daughter, but his career as a thief doesn’t offer much stability for the long-term. a good score could keep them sustained for months, and the longest they ever stayed in one spot was a year and a half at most; more commonly, they’d move around every six to nine months, sticking to larger cities over smaller communities. it’s easier to blend in with the crowd if there is a crowd to begin with, and depending on the area, police are more concerned with solving violent crimes and getting those perpetrators off the streets than figuring out where thousands of dollars worth of insured art or jewelry disappeared to.
dick had gifted jill her first lock pick when she was eight years old, starting her on simple locks and teaching her the basics of breaking and entering; by nine, she had honed her skills on more complicated locks and by ten, she was accompanying her father on smaller jobs, learning applicable skills in the field, most notably: casing a target, all while drawing as little attention as possible.
by the time she reached her teenage years, jill was regularly going on jobs with her father, having a perfectly delicate touch when it came to picking the most complex of locks and the ability to squeeze into small spaces and navigate them with ease. throw in being light on her feet and agile as well as keenly observant, perceptive and having a sharp eye for detail, and she was a natural apprentice to her father’s legacy. while other kids were going to soccer practice and being tutored for the S.A.T.S., jill was spending her afternoons taking note of optimal entries and exits into a building, what security protocols were in place, and when there was an adequate window of time to slip in and back out, undetected.
she was seventeen years old when dick had finally gotten caught. they had gotten too comfortable in sticking around the same metropolitan area for one last, good score, and detectives came knocking with a pile of incriminating evidence and a warrant. taking full responsibility, his last conversations with jill before the indictment consisted of him apologizing for the way he raised her, and urging her to do something good with her life. resistant at first, she eventually made a promise that she’d live a normal life.
six months later, she enlisted in the united states army and after passing basic training with flying colors, was recruited to serve active duty in the field. despite her background in crime, she showed great discipline and grace under pressure when put in tense situations and was recommended for delta force training, pending passing the selection process and training. she excelled, naturally, at lock picking, and surprised recruits with the ease with which she could assemble and disassemble explosives.
after three years of serving in the delta forces, jill was honorably discharged. after twenty-two years of moving from place to place with no promise of where she’d be in six months and the entire world at her disposal, jill found herself at a loss of where to go next.
enter, albert wesker and the special tactics and rescue service (S.T.A.R.S.) within the raccoon police department, raccoon city, pennsylvania.
while jill had never had a great desire to follow a career in law enforcement, the fact that S.T.A.R.S. didn’t have to deal with nearly as much red tape as uniformed officers on the force did held great appeal to her. her talents in lock picking and bomb disposal would have applicable use for something good; something helpful to a greater cause. with no other options lined up and the promise of good benefits, a steady paycheck, and a chance to really experience life, jill took the offer and found herself a spot in rear security on the alpha team.
the apartment she settled down in on the corner of crescent and central street was small, quaint, and the first place she was really able to call her own. she had never been a sentimental person, but the prospect of something as normal as setting down roots in a place that she could call and make her own was truly exhilarating. this was her home, her city, her life to make what she wanted it to be. that excitement carried her through her first year on the team, where she connected and made friends with many of her fellow operatives, and found the rush of each case more potent than the previous.
people around the city were recognizing her more and more, as well. she tried to brew her own coffee at home whenever she could but more often than not, the convenience of sigourney’s would win out and it wasn’t long before the morning barista had her order memorized and started by the time she walked through the door. librarians were always helpful when she needed to pull newspaper articles to cross-reference with case files, and her favorite place to spend warm, sunny afternoons was under the oak trees at raccoon park with a novel of her choosing.
in her building, she was friendly with her neighbors, and connected most with becky and priscilla mcgee from down the hall after helping them find their lost dog one afternoon. she became a regular babysitter for the girls whenever their parents needed a night out and would graciously put the scraggly bouquets of flowers they would bring her after school on display in her apartment. the mundanities most people took for granted were jill’s favorite things about living in raccoon city.
seeing it all come crashing down around her in a full-scale biological disaster is a special kind of devastation she can’t process at the time. even after the city is wiped out by the missile strike, it takes a solid week to solidify that raccoon city is gone: an entire city with a rich history and tens of thousands of people, obliterated in seconds, all because of the hubris and negligence of umbrella. it’s why jill feels such a strong sense of obligation to hold them accountable for their greed: the cost of it wasn’t just her first home, but also countless innocent lives that deserve justice.
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as much as jill wants to jump back into the fight against umbrella post-raccoon city, she needs at least two months before she can be in proper fighting shape again, and even then, it takes closer to four to six to really get back to where she was before nemesis showed up. the final two encounters with nemesis were ones she escaped by the skin of her teeth, fueled entirely by adrenaline after suffering a number of bruised ribs and surface scrapes, bruising and lesions, t-virus infection and recovery notwithstanding.
following raccoon city, she spends her time recovering in cheap motels, never staying in them for longer than a week at a time. to make ends meet, she falls back on her former thieving skills, only taking what she absolutely needs in order to make it to the next day, week, etc. she avoids going out as much as possible; for all umbrella knows, she died in the missile strike on raccoon city, and she doesn’t want to raise suspicion or end up on their radar when she’s still recovering and trying to get back in her former physical shape. she also falls back on the field medic knowledge she has from both her army days and working with rebecca chambers for two years; it’s not the most optimal decision but she can’t risk going to a hospital and leaving a paper trail.
one of the first things she buys is a journal; she immediately documents everything she encountered during the outbreak and makes notes of the files and information she learned during her attempt to escape raccoon city. it helps her avoid gaps in her memory as well as have a thorough reference on hand, given that the bulk of her research was destroyed in the missile strike.
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CUTSCENE META SERIES: JILL’S NIGHTMARE
following the opening cinematic that introduces RE3R, jill valentine awakes in her downtown apartment to crashing thunder and steady rain pattering down outside. her apartment, though small, is tidy; some paper cups sit next to a small travel pot of coffee on her nightstand; along one of the walls is a board full of papers, photographs and notes she’s made over the duration of her investigation into umbrella. her modest kitchen is void of any clutter; the most she has out on the table is another travel pot of coffee, a mug and an untouched piece of toast, all settled next to that day’s paper. her sink is empty, all her dishes are cleaned and put away.
there’s a distinct lack of clutter as you roam around her apartment, contrasting tremendously with the mess you’re greeted with when you wake up from her nightmare — most notably, half-filled boxes piled on every available surface, a half-eaten pizza box sitting open on the table next to an untouched bowl of soup that’s been sitting out, and various empty beer bottles and half-drunk wine bottles strewn about. jill wakes up from her nightmare at her desk, pouring over paperwork; there’s a sizable stack of files next to her on the desk, and even more information pinned to her investigation board, with two readable files on the board profiling the T-VIRUS and accurately suspecting that umbrella controls the city through the mayor’s office as well as the police force.
it’s important to immediately keep in mind this contrast between neat vs. messy, clean vs. dirty; in jill’s reality, her apartment is a near-filth of a mess because of the fact that she’s been so focused on investigating umbrella that she’s let everything else fall off. there are various medications on her bedside table, along with a travel pot of coffee, which isn’t a good combination when half the pills she’s taking is for insomnia. regardless, jill has let care for her apartment and even care for herself be pushed to the side because she’s so hell bent on trying to crack into the secret on where umbrella’s secret base of operations within raccoon city is. she can’t afford to sacrifice the hour it would take to clean up around her, and all of her energy is being spent on the investigation. in her nightmare, everything is orderly and neat because she’s not putting enough time into the investigation, and every minute she’s not spending looking into umbrella is another minute they’re slipping through her fingers. decidedly, a clean home means that she’s not doing enough, and umbrella is going to get away with their crimes.
further into jill’s nightmare, she’s drawn into her bathroom by a running faucet, and turns it off, but not before blood starts to drip into the sink — harmless on its own, but paired with the sudden haze in her vision and shortness of breath, it’s a cause for panic.
what appears to be a nose bleed quickly escalates into deterioration of the flesh on the left side of her face; eye becomes sunken into socket, glazing over to a glassy milk-white. she collapses momentarily as the infection spreads at a rapid rate, flesh rotting around her hands, her chest, her shoulder — veins become much more pronounced as her skin rots and stretches thin over them; this is most pronounced in her arms and her face. this is the sight she’s greeted with in the mirror as she pulls herself back up to her feet; in less than a minute, the t-virus she encountered weeks prior in the arklay mountains has overtaken her body, ravaging her physicality into that of a walking corpse. with the little grip on her humanity that she still has, she looks down at the sink and sees it — the samurai edge, custom made with a smaller slide to reduce catching when drawing, courtesy of robert kendo.
it doesn’t matter much; there’s no hesitation as she grabs it, holds it tight in her grip, staring at herself in the mirror as she raises the barrel to press against her temple.
there’s nothing but darkness as one singular shot rings out.
what happened in the arklay mountains in july of 1998 is something that jill is never going to forget. she remembers every moment of the spencer mansion incident in vivid detail; the first person fully infected with the t-virus she encountered was S.T.A.R.S. bravo team member ken sullivan, and had it not been for barry being a quick shot, she very well might have met the same fate then. night after night, where she’s able to drift off to sleep, she sees ken’s decayed and sullen features, or enrico’s pained face as he desperately tries to warn her about a traitor in S.T.A.R.S. before being fatally wounded, or the horrific, towering tyrant with his lipless, sharp-toothed grin and massive clawed hand. over time, they develop past mere memories she has and into something worse. sometimes chris or barry or rebecca are infected; sometimes they don’t kill the tyrant in time on the helipad and are all blown to bits with the mansion and umbrella’s secret laboratory.
in the weeks leading up to september 28, there’s a shift away from the mansion and into jill’s apartment, but she’s taken the t-virus with her. after a long incubation from prolonged exposure, she’s succumbing to something hideous, messy, and deadly in her neat and tidy apartment, a place that hasn’t felt safe to her since the mansion and certainly doesn’t now. it’s all because of umbrella, but it’s also all because she’s been too slow to crack the case, too slow to find the location of the NEST, and it doesn’t help that she’s been stalled thanks to house arrest and irons being in umbrella’s pocket.
this nightmare, in all accounts, is a representation of failure. while jill knows the events of the mansion are not her fault, survivor’s guilt still weighs heavily on her shoulders. the reality of the situation is that she, somehow, against all odds, survived a situation that was meant to kill her and the rest of the alpha team. while she’s thankful that chris, barry and rebecca survived it alongside her, it pains her knowing that ken, forrest and kevin’s last moments were spent succumbing to the infection or being ravaged by a cerberus pack, and that enrico could have potentially survived had wesker not pulled the trigger on him.
because she survived, she takes it as her personal responsibility to do something with it. after losing so many people because of umbrella’s oversight and hubris, it’s clear to her that she has to do everything she can to bring umbrella down, but in every nightmare, she succumbs to the t-virus, and the only thing she can do at that point is eliminate herself before she becomes a puppet for umbrella.
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i think jill’s subdued exposure to the t-virus in the mansion, along with the other surviving S.T.A.R.S. members, helped her build a slight immunity against the infection overall and is why she didn’t succumb to it during the raccoon city incident, coupled with the fact that carlos was able to procure and administer the vaccine. had she not received the vaccine, i think it would have very slowly taken over, if not slowly weakened her to where she would have been more of a hinderance than a help, were she to wake up.
with the vaccine, it not only cured her of the virus, but boosted her immunity to it; while it’s not a perfect shield by itself, coupling the vaccine with her prior “shield” against the virus due to light exposure during the mansion incident, it definitely makes her more apt to handle the hordes of the undead tailing her in the hospital and the NEST 2 facility as she works to get a cure to the higher ups in washington.
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jill is actually indifferent to sandwiches. she likes wraps, though.
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jill isn’t upset with any of her fellow S.T.A.R.S. officers ( namely brad ) who stayed loyal to RPD in the wake of irons disbanding the S.T.A.R.S. program and suspending jill for looking further into the mansion incident and umbrella’s involvement. the culture at RPD had always been a tense one under irons’ rule and she recognizes that many of them who kept their heads down were doing so because of greater immediate factors, namely family. she’s not going to ask someone to sacrifice a steady paycheck they need to support themselves and other people who are depending on them, and she’s especially not going to come down hard on someone who’s processing trauma in their own way.
the whole ordeal in arklay with the mansion incident was incredibly traumatic for jill. it’s evident how badly the whole situation is affecting her in the nightmare we see her go through at the beginning of the resident evil 3 remake ( first 45 seconds ); for her, the best way for her to process her trauma is by finding answers ( she realizes this is not the best process for everyone, and she wouldn’t push that on any of her fellow S.T.A.R.S. members ). she knows that umbrella has heavy involvement in what happened at arklay, and she ( correctly ) suspects that umbrella corporation is a front for creating and manufacturing bioweapons and selling them off. we see briefly through the evidence she’s gathered that she already knows about the t-virus and what it does to the body, and she has a very good understanding of how infection can work with the t-virus and that she could potentially be infected. when she’s forced out of her apartment and into the streets of downtown raccoon city by nemesis, she sees firsthand that her worst fears are becoming a reality: the t-virus has spread throughout raccoon city and so many citizens have turned. these are people she’s seen on her way to work, whenever she stops in at her favorite cafe for a drink or restaurant for a meal, who have hung out at the bars she goes to after a long and tiring work week, who she’s interacted with in small and large capacities.
umbrella is at fault, which she’s well aware of at this point. after watching brad get bitten and infected, and being chased down by nemesis, her saving grace is her sworn enemy ( or so she thinks ); it’s clear the anger and hostility she holds toward umbrella when carlos introduces himself as U.B.C.S. and she immediately points out that umbrella is responsible for everything that’s going on. as she works to help survivors flee the city and continues to get hunted down by nemesis, her focus shifts toward finding more answers — carlos and tyrell are unlikely, but welcome allies as she tries to find a solution to the mess umbrella created. the vaccine is a beacon of hope when everything seems decidedly hopeless. the core of jill’s mission has always been to help the people around her. raccoon city is her home: she’s met her closest friends here, found a meaningful career path, made memories, and it’s not something she can just give up on and turn her back on, especially when she knows that the reason the city is falling apart is because of umbrella’s carelessness and hubris. someone needs to be held ��accountable, yes, but more importantly, the people need to be saved. the fact that the impossible is now suddenly possible is a strong motivator. even when nikolai destroys the only vaccine for the t-virus, effectively sealing raccoon city’s doomed fate, jill isn’t done. she boards the last helicopter to leave NEST 2, cooly telling nikolai over her shoulder as she boards that she “doesn’t mind a little detective work” while he tells her that if she lets him die, she’ll never find answers.
cue one of my favorite lines: all this death wasn’t caused by a monster-making virus. it was greed. human greed. I decided then and there that the ashes of raccoon city would be umbrella’s ashes, too. I would end them, once and for all.
jill has one enemy and one enemy only, and she’s not going to rest until umbrella pays for the destruction and carnage it caused in raccoon city. umbrella, and everyone who assisted umbrella in carrying out the operations that opened the door for this to happen, are responsible and she’s going to hold them responsible.
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during her time infiltrating umbrella’s secret underground facility beneath spencer memorial hospital, NEST 2, jill took care to keep hold of some of the official umbrella files she came across, most notably: isaac graves’ diary, expression of concern, and scientist’s dying message. the files in question sustained some damage while fighting her way out of NEST 2, but are still verifiable to a strong degree. chris redfield and carlos oliveira are the only people who know about the files.
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