Resident Evil, known as Biohazard (バイオハザード, Baiohazādo^?) in Japan, is a media franchise owned by the video game company Capcom. It was created by Shinji Mikami as a survival horror game series that was initiated with the eponymous PlayStation title Resident Evil in 1996. Since then, the game series has branched out to include action games, and has sold 49 million units as of March 2012.

The Resident Evil media franchise has been expanded to comic books, novels and novelizations, sound dramas, live-action and computer-generated feature films, and a variety of collectibles, such as action figures and strategy guides.

The survival horror video game Resident Evil made its debut on the PlayStation in 1996, and was later ported to the Sega Saturn. It was a critical and commercial success, leading to the production of two sequels, Resident Evil 2 in 1998 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in 1999, both for the PlayStation. A port of Resident Evil 2 was released for the Nintendo 64. In addition, ports of all three were released for Windows. The fourth game in the series, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, was developed for the Sega Dreamcast and released in 2000, followed by ports of 2 and 3. Resident Evil Code: Veronica was later re-released for Dreamcast in Japan in an updated form as Code: Veronica Complete, which included slight changes, many of which revolved around story cutscenes. This updated version was later ported to PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube under the title Code: Veronica X.