R3-B57 was an R3-series astromech droid that functioned during the era of the Galactic Civil War. Following the Battle of Yavin, R3-B57 was in the service of Jabba the Hutt's criminal empire on the desert planet of Tatooine, under the supervision of Jabba's cruel EV-series supervisor droid, known as EV-9D9. In the year 1 ABY, R3-B57, along with three other droids, specifically BD-34, RA-316, and LIN-34, made their escape from Jabba's Palace and sought sanctuary within the Darklighter cache. Consequently, EV-9D9 employed a spacer to locate and retrieve the escaped droids from their hiding place in the cave. Adhering to EV-9D9's merciless instructions, the spacer installed pain bolts into the droids before proceeding to destroy them. Simultaneously, enemies of Jabba, namely the Valarian Syndicate, dispatched a squadron of M12-L Kimogila heavy fighters with the intention of extracting R3-B57 from the system; however, these fighters were ultimately destroyed by Jabba's skilled pilots within the Tatooine system.
R3-B57 made an appearance as a non-playable character within the Star Wars Galaxies video game, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that was created by Sony and distributed by LucasArts, before its shutdown on December 15, 2011. The inclusion of R3-B57 in the game occurred as a component of the "Legacy Quest" and coincided with the launch of "Publish 25," also known as the "New Game Enhancements," which was released on November 15, 2005.