- "Let the government know we will not stand for their systematic neglect of the infected! We must take drastic action now!"
- —Stacey, on zombie rights
Stacey Forsythe is a character in Dead Rising: Road to Fortune, the deuteragonist of Dead Rising 2 and the secondary antagonist of Dead Rising 2: Off the Record.
Description[]
Stacey is the head of the Nevada branch of a controversial zombie rights group with an abbreviated name of CURE (Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality). Stacey believes that the entertainment show Terror Is Reality is cruel and demeaning to infected survivors everywhere, and leads protests with the aim of getting it taken off the air, and making Zombrex available and afford for all.[1]
She is an ally to Chuck Greene, offering to protect Chuck's daughter while he seeks out Rebecca Chang to clear his name. She watches the monitors in the Shelter like Jessica McCarney in the first game, taking on a role similar to Otis Washington, telling Chuck the locations of survivors throughout the city. Over the course of the story, Stacey gains a strong admiration for the bond shared between Chuck and Katey.
In Dead Rising: Road to Fortune, she can be seen with another CURE member outside of Coyote Springs, protesting against Captain Kilduff's clean-up operation of the town.
In Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, Stacey is the hidden secondary antagonist as she is now a member of the Phenotrans Corporation, responsible for starting the outbreak in Fortune City. Here, she goes by the codename of Agent S and works undercover in CURE as its leader so as to avoid needlessly exposing her true identity to the outside world.
Backstory[]
While Chuck administers Zombrex to Katey, Stacey mentions that she had a sister, who was infected with the zombie disease and had to take Zombrex everyday like Katey. However, due to the constant usage of the drug and the stress it put on her, she decided to let herself turn. This may be why Stacey became such a passionate and prominent member of CURE.
Dead Rising 2[]
As head of the Nevada branch of CURE, she strongly opposes the TV show Terror is Reality, and she believes that instead of slaughtering zombies, the government should make Zombrex, a possible cure for the zombie epidemic, readily available worldwide. She and several other CURE activists are holding protests in Fortune City and are interviewed by a local TV station.
Later that night, once the outbreak has begun, she is able to evacuate to the emergency bunker before its doors are sealed. She comes across Chuck and his daughter, Katey, in the security office and overhears Chuck mention his lack of Zombrex. Stacey promises to not tell Raymond Sullivan about it, and agrees to watch over Katey while Chuck goes out to fetch Zombrex from a pharmacy in the Royal Flush Plaza. Before Chuck leaves, she urges him to rescue any survivors found in the city.
At the climax of the story, Chuck uncovers the truth behind the outbreak, it was all a setup devised by the Phenotrans Corporation, and he now had the evidence to prove it. In addition to releasing the zombies from their holding cells in the arena, Phenotrans also paid Tyrone King, the host of TIR, a handsome sum of money to get his full cooperation in their scheme, and to frame Chuck as the alleged perpetrator of the outbreak. The result: public attention was ultimately focused on Chuck while Phenotrans secretly moved their agents into the city in order to carry out a massive harvesting operation for collecting queens (the most essential ingredient in Zombrex manufacturing).
Chuck returns to the safe house and presents the evidence to Stacey, news reporter Rebecca, and Sullivan. After Rebecca thoroughly looks over the evidence and concludes that it was indeed the work of Phenotrans, Sullivan suddenly whips out his handgun and shoots her in the head. At first Chuck and Stacey are speechless, but after Sullivan makes a few snide remarks towards Rebecca’s lifeless body, Chuck quickly accuses him of being on Phenotrans’ payroll.
Sullivan confirms this, then goes on to state that he never expected Chuck to get this far, because Phenotrans had intended to kill everyone in the outbreak including Chuck and Stacey. Still holding everyone in the room at gunpoint, Sullivan grabs the evidence and prepares to shoot both Chuck and Katey when an enraged Stacey suddenly intervenes by attacking him with a baseball bat and knocking the gun out of his hand. Sullivan fights back by disarming Stacey and hitting her in the stomach with the back end of the bat. Then he bolts from the safe house once Chuck picks up his gun and tries to shoot him. Still clutching her chest, Stacey tells Chuck to go after Sullivan while she looks after Katey and the other survivors.
Overtime Mode[]
After Chuck returns from defeating Sullivan on the rooftop of the Yucatan Casino, Stacey and Katey are nowhere to be found as none of the survivors have seen them. Turns out, TK had kidnapped them while Chuck was away, and is now holding them hostage at the Fortune City Arena. Enraged, Chuck reluctantly agrees to TK's demands and is eventually forced to meet the madman at the arena if he wishes to see his daughter alive.
Luckily for Chuck, TK already took the liberty of giving Katey her Zombrex for the day, stating that he wouldn't want her to miss the show. When Chuck arrives, TK sneaks up behind him and then stuns him with a taser pole before knocking him out. Chuck is then tied up over a pit of zombies and forced by TK to watch as Stacey and Katey are lowered into the pit via cable wire.
Determined to save them, Chuck manages to free himself, but this does not escape TK's notice, who immediately rushes to intercept him. After an intense fight, Chuck defeats TK and throws him off the catwalks into the hordes of zombies below. Stacey and Katey are then rescued and they walk off with Chuck, hand in hand.
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record[]
In this alternate reality, Stacey appears with a somewhat more serious attitude along with some new facial features, and plays the same role as she did in Dead Rising 2, giving Frank West case reports over radio via a wireless earpiece.
As in Dead Rising 2, she is the head of the Nevada branch of CURE. She is in Fortune City with other protesters displaying opposition to the Terror Is Reality event. After the outbreak, she successfully escapes into the emergency bunker. At 8:00 am Frank and Stacey watch a news broadcast in which Rebecca shows security camera footage of Brandon Whittaker placing a bomb, previously given to him by TK onto one of the zombie security pens. CURE is instantly blamed for the entire fiasco, and Stacey's picture is even shown during the broadcast. Frank accuses Stacey of causing the outbreak, but Stacey responds, "I don't know who that is! He's a new recruit, I've never seen him before the protest......Of course. TK must have planted him inside to do his dirty work."[2]
While Frank doesn't entirely believe Stacey, he agrees to help prove that she is innocent due to the fact that his career went "down the drain" in recent years and he was desperately searching for an opportunity to "get back in the game." He meets up with Rebecca Chang at the Fortune City Hotel. Together, the two reporters agree to team up and discover the truth behind the outbreak.
At the climax of the story, after Frank acquires the evidence, Stacey is revealed to be the traitor instead of Sullivan. When Frank and Rebecca are about to expose Phenotrans' role in the outbreak, Stacey steals Sullivan's gun and shoots Rebecca (her aim is not as good as Sullivan's was in Dead Rising 2, as she merely wounds her). Sullivan saves Frank before Stacey can shoot him, but is killed in the process. As Stacey escapes from the bunker, Frank manages to grab her ponytail, revealing it to be part of a wig.
As Frank pursues Stacey into Fortune Park, he is stopped short in his tracks as several Phenotrans helicopters appear in the sky and start deploying teams of security guards all over the city. Under Stacey's orders, the guards quickly set up a total of eight, sinister-looking machines called harvesters throughout the length of Fortune Park. Armed with merc assault rifles and blast frequency guns, they immediately begin trying to collect as many queens as possible before the military firebombing to make up for Phenotrans' losses in the Underground Tunnels.
Having lost sight of Stacey when the guards arrived, Frank instead proceeds to destroy the harvesters. After accomplishing this, he hears Stacey's voice coming from a radio on the ground. She demands an update on the harvesting process from the guards, but instead gets a humorously, criticizing remark from Frank about how her plans have gone up in "smoke". Stacey sneers at Frank and brushes off his remark before inviting him to a final confrontation with her in Uranus Zone. Stacey orders what remains of her security force to set up a large military perimeter inside Uranus Zone, and await Frank's arrival.
When Frank finally confronts Stacey, she reveals her true identity to Frank as "Agent S", Phenotrans operative and mastermind behind the "Fortune City Incident". After this, she ridicules Frank for nearly ruining the harvest and destroying so many lives. She explains that she was a mole, planted into CURE by Phenotrans to radicalize the protest group. From there she had encouraged members of CURE to secretly start zombie outbreaks across the country. This would ultimately provide Phenotrans with the amount of queens necessary to make and mass-produce Zombrex. Not just for profit, but also to save the lives of all those living with an existing infected condition in the nation.
Stacey goes on to reveal that her original plan was to keep CURE's involvement in the outbreaks a secret. She admits that TK's leaking of the video footage incriminating CURE as the perpetrators, as well as his attempt to loot the city were acts of betrayal to Phenotrans, and had caused a major setback to their plan to harvest the city. Stacey further remarks that TK was completely unaware of her true identity, and aside from trying to maintain her cover as the head of CURE, she also considered him too much of an "asshole" to deal with directly. Without much warning she suddenly attacks him using a giant, crab/octopus-like, mechanized robot, which has 3 life bars (similar to Harjit Singh in Dead Rising 2: Case West).
After Frank disables the machine, leaps into the cockpit, and engages Stacey in a brief hand-to-hand fight (played as a series of quick time events), he manages to overpower her and throws her out of the machine. Thinking she fell to her death on the cement below, Frank leans over the side of the robot to get a better look when Stacey suddenly pops up from underneath him, grabs his camera, and uses it as leverage to pull them both completely out of the robot. After falling to the ground, she then utilizes some of her combat skills to temporarily incapacitate Frank, before kicking him in the chest. While Frank lies beaten on the ground, Stacey pulls a gun on him, and calls for an extraction using her satellite phone.
Stacey meets her end beneath a smoking heap of twisted metal and wires. Before using her phone to contact Channel 6 Action News, Frank quips that he always knew she "had a crush" on him, but unfortunately, he doesn't "dig flat chicks."
Dead Rising 3[]
Although she does not make an appearance in the game, Stacey is mentioned by Chuck during the final mission of Dead Rising 3, while he and Nick Ramos are chasing General Hemlock in a muscle car.
Chuck mentions that he and Stacey began a romantic relationship after the Fortune City outbreak, but it's implied the two eventually broke up due to Chuck's personality problems, something which Katey never forgave him for.
It's also unknown if Stacey is still the leader of CURE, or if the organisation does still exist. But it's possible that CURE was shut down because the members began to realize what zombies really are.
Trivia[]
- Stacey was named "Claire" and was blonde during the beta stages of Dead Rising 2.[3] Her beta name is shared with Claire Redfield, a character from the Resident Evil series, which is also made by Capcom. They both have auburn hair which is worn in a ponytail. Another similarity between Stacey and Claire is that both are human rights activists and both are members of activist groups, CURE for Stacey and Terrasave for Claire. The main difference is that Terrasave is still canonically an active organization in the Resident Evil Universe, whereas it's unknown whether or not CURE is still a functioning organization in the Dead Rising Universe.
- Stacey also manages the official website for CURE.
- She was seen leading a CURE protest at the Dead Rising 2 booth at the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo.[4]
- The text for Stacey's calls to Frank in Off the Record were in the game files for Dead Rising 2, but they were never used.
- "Forsythe" is the name of a street in Atlanta on which some of the early events in AMC's undead-themed series The Walking Dead take place.
- Stacey apparently knows the truth behind the original zombie outbreak in Willamette, including the involvement of Frank West, Isabela, and Carlito Keyes, along with the government's involvement in Santa Cabeza. She also mentions that with Frank's help, Isabela was able to develop the first anti-zombie vaccine (Zombrex prototype), and when last heard of, she was looking into discovering a permanent cure to the zombie epidemic. How she has obtained this information is unknown, as it is revealed in Dead Rising 3 that the government had managed to cover up their involvement in Willamette and Santa Cabeza completely, despite Frank's evidence.
- Stacey's Shirt is a most likely a reference to 'Ocean Wise' an ocean conservation organization that was started in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1951.
- Stacey's slightly different appearance in Off the Record is mentioned in the Achievement/Trophy True Colors given for defeating her, which remarks "the shifty eyes should have given it away."
- There are subtle hints to her being the antagonist; with her CURE group and herself being blamed, her change of attitude being more serious than kind.
- In Off the Record, after Frank defeats Stacey, the notebook still lists her as "safe", even though there is no doubt that she is dead.
- Stacey is mentioned in one of the newspaper collectibles in Dead Rising 4 as the keynote speaker who replaced Frank West for the SurviviCon event held in Willamette. Stacey still seems to be an activist of sorts, as her panel featured the topic of political accountability.
- A glitch can occur while Stacey is in the safe house. She can spawn into a random room and be seen crying like the other survivors would do.[Verification needed]
- A Steam Trading Card tying in to Dead Rising 2 renders Stacey's name with a slight misspelling as "Stacey Forsythel".
- In Off the Record Stacey shares similarities to the Marvel Comic character Black Widow/ Natasha Romanova (AkA Romanoff).
- Both are trained assassins.
- Both wear black jumpsuits and have red hair. Natasha usually has long red hair but in early comics she did have shorter hair like Stacey at the climax. The Marvel Cinematic Universe version (played by Scarlett Johansson) started off with long hair in Iron Man 2 and cut it short in later appearances which she had until her final appearance in Avengers: End Game.
- Black Widow was a villain in her early comic appearances, but later evolved into an anti-hero. While Stacey in Off the Record is a villain while her Dead Rising 2 counterpart is heroic.
Gallery[]
- Further information: Stacey Forsythe/Gallery
References[]
- ↑ Characters, Dead Rising 2.
- ↑ Case 2-2: A Familiar Face
- ↑ Dead Rising 2 Artbook
- ↑ Stacey appears at the E3 event.