Red vs. Blue

"Our website isn't about large groups of people who hate themselves. It's more about small groups of people, that are able to hate on a much more personal level"

- Church, Indigestion 2004.

Red vs Blue is a popular machinima series portraying the never-ending war between the Red Team and the Blue Team. The episodic sitcom uses footage taken from Halo 1 and Halo 2 multiplayer, with Blood Gulch as the main setting. Season 3's time travel subplot used Marathon to represent the past, and Halo 2 for the future. Part of Season 4 and all of Season 5 takes place Coagulation (the future Blood Gulch), Zanzibar, and Waterworks.

The show is published by Rooster Teeth Productions, originally available for download per episode at their site and later released on DVD. Praised for its originality, the series has won four awards from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. Although mainly a satirical and absurdist comedy, the show often touches on deeper philosophy about the meaning of war when it comes down to individual soldiers. The characters occasionally question the validity of their mission and whether or not it accomplishes anything, a common theme in commentary about the ethics of war.

Main Characters
Main Article: List of Characters in Red vs. Blue

The show's cast divides into three segments: The Red Team, the Blue Team, and unaffiliated parties that interact with the core cast. Despite the enmity the Red and Blue Team members are supposed to harbor for one another, this usually does not apply personally to the enemy soldiers, who often engage in one-on-one conversation.

Red Team
The Red Team is led by Sarge, a tough-as-nails fighter who is supported by the sycophantic Simmons. Sarge despises Grif, the wisecracking scapegoat of the team. However, Donut is even lower than Grif in the pecking order, being the eternal rookie of the team. Lopez was originally a service robot assigned to serve the Red Team, but after a disembodied Church possessed him, Lopez was eventually repainted blue and physically joined the Blue team, although the spirit controlling him always had this affiliation.
 * Sarge
 * Private Dick Simmons
 * Private Dexter Grif
 * Private Franklin Delano Donut
 * Lopez The Heavy

Blue Team
The leadership of the Blue Team is more ambiguous and indefinite to their Red Team rivals. Technically, the quintessentially average Tucker holds the highest rank, but the capable, cynical, and occasionally disembodied Church is the de facto leader. The Blue Team, despite having capable leaders with good logic, is hindered by the stupidity of Caboose and the dangerous loose cannon behavior of freelancer Tex. Grif's younger sister, who suffers from color-blindness and originally reported for duty with the Reds, later joined them. The Blue Team is supported by Sheila, a Battle Tank.
 * Private Leonard L. Church
 * Private Lavernius Tucker
 * Private Michael J. Caboose
 * Freelancer Tex (Alison) a.k.a Agent Nevada
 * Sister
 * Sheila (M808B Main Battle Tank AI)
 * Junior the Alien
 * Cpt Butch Flowers (Deceased)

Season 1
Main Article: Red vs. Blue (Season 1) The delicate balance of indifference in Blood Gulch is disrupted when a new Red recruit named Donut manages to capture the Blue flag on his first day. The Blues receive a rookie named Caboose and a battle tank named Sheila, and they manage to accidentally kill Church on their first day. In response, Blue Command hires a mercenary named Tex to recapture the Blue flag. Church briefly returns as a ghost to warn his teammates about Tex, who soon arrives and attacks the Reds. After severely injuring Donut, Tex recaptures the Blue flag, but is captured as a result. Church appears to explain that Tex is actually his former girlfriend, whose mind is partially under the control of a psychotic AI. Church organizes a successful rescue mission, but not without its problems, and spends the rest of the season attempting to remove the AI from Tex's head. His attempt to warn the Reds of Tex's pending attack fails and, much to his horror, she is killed by Donut with a Plasma Grenade. Tex's AI manages to escape her body and possesses Caboose.

Season 2
Main Article: Red vs. Blue (Season 2) Doc, a medic sent by both Red and Blue Commands to tend to the medical needs of both teams, arrives three months later and proves completely unhelpful. The Reds attack the Blues and manage to take Doc as a hostage, but soon tire of his personality and ditch him in the middle of the canyon. Church is still trying to get used to his new, stolen robot body, which he eventually loses when Lopez regains control and resists further attempts to possess him. Donut is captured by the Blues, who force the Reds to build two new robot bodies in exchange for his return. Meanwhile, both teams are menaced by Tex's evil AI, O'Malley, despite the best efforts of Tex's ghost and the Blue team to stop him. This culminates in a Mexican standoff between the Reds and Blues, following the revelation that both teams are in fact secretly controlled by the same army. O'Malley resurfaces in Doc's body and sets out to conquer the universe, kidnapping Lopez and escaping through a teleporter. The Red and Blue teams call a truce and form several two-man teams to pursue O'Malley, but something goes wrong with the teleporter, and the teams are separated and sent to different worlds outside Blood Gulch.

Season 3
''Main Article: Red vs. Blue (Season 3) After regrouping on Sidewinder, following a brief encounter in Battle Creek, with two groups of immortal, respawning, flag-obsessed Reds and Blues referred to as "grunts", the Reds and Blues join forces again to confront and defeat O'Malley, only to have a reality-shattering bomb destroy the present and propel everyone except for Church into the future (Halo 2). Church is thrown into the past (Marathon). While the others continue to battle O'Malley in the future, Church goes on a time-traveling odyssey, where a computer named Gary tells him of a prophecy that a blue being known as the "Great Destroyer" will use the "Great Weapon" to bring the "Great Doom" to billions of people at the point in the future where everyone else has ended up. Church decides to time-travel to Blood Gulch and alter the past in order to prevent the "Great Doom" along with most of the other negative events that have occurred in the storyline. However, in a classic causality loop, Church realizes that his interference is what caused most or all of the problems in Blood Gulch in the first place. Giving up on trying to change the past, he travels back to Sidewinder and rejoins the main group just as the bomb goes off, so that he can be blown into the future along with them. Shortly after the teams are reunited, O'Malley lays siege to the captured fortress (Zanzibar) with an army of deadly robots, only to have them obliterated by an unknown being, before he himself is seemingly killed. The Red team leaves mid-battle in search of a mysterious distress call, without informing the Blues. They then arrive back at Blood Gulch, much to Grif's dismay. The season ends on a cliffhanger as an Elite is seen creeping up on an unsuspecting Church.

Season 4
Main Article: Red vs. Blue (Season 4) As the Red Team re-explores Blood Gulch, Simmons' insistence that Sheila still roams the canyon leads to his exile from the group. Painting himself mostly blue and taking command of the empty Blue Base and Sheila, he takes Grif hostage, later confessing to him that he believes that Sheila might be hiding something. Back at the fortress, the Blue Team attempts to confront the new Alien, only to experience a series of humiliating defeats until Caboose manages to befriend him. The Alien reveals that he has been on a sacred quest to save his people, and has come to the fortress to retrieve the Great Weapon, an Energy Sword, which only Tucker can now activate, since he accidentally discovered it first. Threatening to kill everyone otherwise, the Alien forces Tucker, Andy, and Caboose to partake of his quest, with Tex trailing and then joining them. Arriving at their final destination, the team finds a temple occupied by the Grunts from Battle Creek. As Tex defeats them, Tucker uses the sword to open a gate to a flying ship, of which the Alien quickly takes command. Wyoming suddenly re-appears, however, and shoots the ship down before fleeing with Tex in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Church returns to the Blue Base in Blood Gulch and encounters the blue Simmons, whom he pretends not to recognize, and comes into contact with a distant descendant of Vic, who scoffs at Church's mention of Blue Command. Tucker, Caboose, and Andy return to the gulch, and inform Church of the events at the temple. Simmons returns to the Red Base, and attempts to relay information learned from Vic Jr. about the war. At the Blue Base, Tucker becomes ill for an unknown reason, and Church is forced to call Doc for help. On his arrival, O'Malley negotiates a deal to exchange Doc's aid for something to be named later. The Reds find Lopez, who had returned to the canyon with O'Malley, and discover that the instructions that Red Command had planted inside his head can only be played in Spanish. While Church is confirming Doc's diagnosis that Tucker is pregnant, Sarge distracts Caboose and steals Andy to translate the plans. Tucker regains alertness and complains of stomach pains. Church, upon hearing of Andy’s disappearance, becomes enraged at the whole situation. As he confronts the Reds with Sheila, Sarge radios Command for reinforcements, despite having heard the translation of the uninformative instructions. Andy reveals that the Alien had the ability to impregnate others with parasitic embryos, and Caboose radios Church to tell him that Tucker has given birth (a higher-pitched alien language is heard off-screen); and that O'Malley had left Doc after Sarge had contacted Command. As Church runs back to the Blue Base, a ship crashes into the gulch right on top of Donut, marking the end of the season at Episode 77.

Out of Mind
Out of Mind is a mini-series that took place in-between Season 4 and Season 5. It is a narrative from Tex's point of view, told in a much more serious tone, when she chases after Wyoming. Out of Mind first takes place in the Freezing Plains, at a different base, owned by Wyoming. Two Australian guards are the first obstacle between Tex and Wyoming. While trying to get past a locked door after killing the two guards, Wyoming charges out of it in a warthog, delivering his usual brand of humor while addressing the situation of Omega (O'Malley) vaguely. He drives off, but Tex attaches a tracking device to his vehicle.

Tex has a flashback talking to Church about rumors of an AI program. She explains to the viewer the background of Omega, and how he affected her. Afterwards, Tex seeks after an ex-special ops infiltration recruit named York. He is shown as out of job by attempting to rob a small shop. While Tex tries to recruit York for a mission against Omega, his AI, Delta appears. This surprises Tex, as most AIs were removed from spec-ops recruits. The AI was very responsive to Tex, as he was afraid that Omega might have still been Tex's AI. York eventually agrees to help Tex, with his motive being revenge. He had gotten his eye damaged in some way by Omega, and has trouble seeing out of that eye.

Tex and York are next seen at Wyoming's/Omega's base. All three analyze the situation, when eventually deciding to try and get into the base. Delta was still very wary about Tex, saying that her emotions may become erratic when seeing Omega. York replies by saying that it makes them humans, a theme in Out of Mind. Eventually, the two make it into the main portion of the base, instantly under fire by various Zealots. They successfully take them out, when Wyoming enters the battle. Tex tries to fire on him, but has a gun jam. York covers her, but gets shot on his bad side. He says he is okay, but quickly becomes unconscious. Delta says he will not survive, so Tex offers to take Delta with her. But in a surge of human emotion, he stays with York until his death, even though it will destroy himself as well. Delta creates a hologram of Tex that distracts Wyoming, allowing Tex to sneak up behind him. Tex interrogates Wyoming about Omega, in which he says that he has jumped into someone else. She figures that the information will be stored in his communication logs, so she decides to beat him unconscious to take the information, despite his offer to tell her.

Out of Mind features the first episodes to remove letter boxing.

Season 5
Main Article: Red vs. Blue (Season 5) The Reds discuss how to rescue Donut from underneath the ship, unaware that he has fallen into an underground cave from the force of the craft's weight. Grif's sibling, Sister, emerges from the ship, though it is revealed she is meant to fill an empty position on the Blue Team after the death of Captain Butch Flowers, who was accidentally killed by the time-traveling Church. Grif gives Sister to the Blues, reasoning that, because of the Red Team's incompetence, she would be safest there. The Reds soon discover the underground cavern and find Donut alive; Simmons and Grif, however, are kidnapped by off-screen enemies. Once the Reds are reunited, Grif reveals he had been interrogated by his captors, who used Andy to translate. They soon discover an underground surveillance system spying on Blood Gulch.

Meanwhile, the Blues are in a strange state as Sister joins, with Sheila beginning to malfunction, and Tucker's alien child, Junior. Tex returns, and after learning that Wyoming was able to teleport to safety before she could interrogate him, Church deduces from his own experience that Gary is Wyoming's AI, as O'Malley was to Tex. The Blues decide to relocate Sheila's AI into the crashed ship in order to keep her alive. In the meantime, Vic contacts the Blues, urging them to attack the Red Base via the caves, and then hanging up. Instead, Doc, Junior, and Sister go through the caves alone, finding Lopez there, while Church, Tucker and Tex attack the base head on. Caboose looks after Sheila, who upon awakening, reveals "the Blue leader" to be O'Malley's new host. This in turn is revealed to be a revived Captain Flowers, accompanied by a new Alien. The Reds, seeing the invasion of their base using the surveillance system, decide to capture the empty Blue Base in retaliation.

Recovery One
Recovery One is the newest Red vs Blue Xbox Live mini-series. Its plot revolves around Agent Washington, also known as Recovery One, who is a Freelancer like Tex, Wyoming and York. Washington's job is to recover all Freelancer AI constructs, if the Freelancer is killed in action.

Recovery One opens with Washington at Wyoming's base, there are the bodies of three guards and York lying on the ground. Washington was sent to retrieve Delta, York's AI. He reactivates Delta, who asks why he was not destroyed like protocol says will happen. Washington reveals that was cover story, in truth the AI are simply locked so Recovery agents can retrieve them later.

Delta asks if he could be transported in the Freelancer's armor AI slot but Washington says no. Delta asks if he is Agent Washington, the Freelancer confirms and Delta requests to be destroyed due to an unknown incident between Washington and the AI program.

Washington asks Delta to start a self-destruct countdown. Afterwards one of the guards wakes up and attacks the two. Before Washington can defeat him, he flees, knowing that the armor is about to explode. Washington runs and grabs Delta's Data Crystal Chip and jumps over the edge of the base, barely escaping the explosion.

Recovery Command contacts Washington and orders him to go to another Freelancer KIA site. Upon arrival, Washington sees two Freelancers, one is dead the other is standing over his body. The Freelancers are referred to as North and South, and are twin brother and sister. Their state codename is presumably Dakota, as the Carolina agent that was killed was a female, the dead Freelancer here (North) is a male.

Washington asks South if she saw anything, she states that she heard North scream and that she ran over to him, then blacked out, waking up just minutes after Washington's arrival. Washington asks if North had an AI with him, she tells him that North still had his AI, Theta, and when Washington asks where her AI is, she states that she didn't because she was in the group "after Washington." Apparently all of the people in the freelancer program who were scheduled to receive an AI after Washington never got theirs. As of now Roosterteeth hasn't explained why, however earlier in the meta series Tex mentioned of the AIs being purged by the company. This would have affected the next group, who would not receive their AIs.

South asks if she can have some time alone with North, Washington allows and uses this time to contact Recovery Command. Recovery Command asks where the AI is, to which Washington responds he didn't have one. Command tells him that the situation is now a level zero. He walks over to South, who says that the only reason she was partnered with North is because they are twins. She always wanted to be a lone freelancer, and now that her brother is dead, she wonders how she will survive without him.

Washington, following his orders, "kills" South.

In the 3rd and 4th installments, we learn that Washington isn't following orders, and South is still alive. Washington has Delta register North AND South as KIA. They then move on, and in the map Headlong, we learn about Washington's history and his plan to kill whatever has been killing off the freelancers. Washington is injured while fighting it, covering for South as Delta enters her AI slot. South joins Washington when she is ready, and hears about his injury. Washington tells South to head for a Banshee located on the broken highway, when they get ready to go, South shoots him in the back of the head, and convinces "it" to go for Washington's armor, and not kill them. As she is running to the Banshee, command calls and she is identified as "Recovery Two" and we find out that South was using Washington, on command's orders, to expose the freelancer killer. In exchange, she would get an AI. South, having Delta and worrying that the killer could track her, says that she will not return to base, instead opting to go into hiding, even after command threatens her. Recovery One ends here, and this is believed to be Rooster Teeth's last Halo 2 machinima.

Reconstruction
On April 4, 2008, Burnie Burns announced a new series, Red vs Blue: Reconstruction. A trailer released alongside the announcement portrayed two agents investigating an incident at a military outpost, which had resulted in the annihilation of the forces stationed there. The agents find a cryptic message in the base that read "We are the meta," and are later attacked by an unseen or invisible foe. It should be noted that this series will be the first of RoosterTeeth's that will be filmed on the Halo 3 engine.

The credits state that the new series will star voices from the original Blood Gulch Chronicles, including Burnie Burns, Rebecca Frasier, Yomary Cruz, Dan Godwin, Joel Heyman, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gustavo Sorola, Nathan Zellner, and Kathleen Zuelch.

The message left of the 9 symbols just before the words 'Recovery One' show up in the trailer, are all Greek letters translated to the AI in the freelancer operation. For example, the second to last Greek letter is Omega (Texs AI). This may hint that there are going to be many new characters in the series. However, North's AI (Theta) does not show so we could presume it is a message to show that the AIs according to the Greek letters are active (Although Epsilon is commented on by Washington in Recovery One and its history suggests that it has been deactivated).

Production


The writing process for the series has changed over time. Early in season 1, Burns wrote the episode scripts from week to week, with minimal planning in advance; major plot events were conceived shortly before they were filmed. For the second season, Matt Hullum became a main writer. A rough plot outline is now written before a season begins, although the actual content of an individual episode is still decided on a more short-term basis. Because Red vs. Blue is loosely based on the Halo universe, Rooster Teeth encountered some difficulties when trying to synchronize events in the series with the release of Halo 2.

Aside from a few scenes created using Marathon Infinity, Marathon 2, and the PC version of Halo, Red vs. Blue is mostly filmed with interconnected Xbox consoles. As the series title suggests, the videos are largely set in the Halo map Blood Gulch and its Halo 2 counterpart, Coagulation. However, some episodes have been filmed on other maps, including Sidewinder from Halo and Zanzibar from Halo 2. Within a multiplayer game session, the people controlling the avatars "puppet" their characters, moving them around, firing weapons, and performing other actions as dictated by the script, and in synchronization with the episode's dialogue, which is recorded ahead of time.

The "camera" is simply another player, whose first-person perspective is recorded raw to a computer. As the recording occurs within the game, a few different bugs and post-production techniques have been exploited in order to achieve desired visual effects. In particular, Adobe Premiere Pro is used to edit the audio and video together, impose letterboxing to hide the camera player's head-up display, add the titles and fade-to-black screens, and create some visual effects that cannot be accomplished in-game.

Impact on Machinima
Red vs. Blue is widely credited with attracting public attention to machinima. Although examples had existed since the 1990s, Clive Thompson credits Red vs. Blue as "the first to break out of the underground". Tavares, Gil, and Roque call it machinima's "first big success". Thompson notes that "Microsoft has been so strangely solicitous that when it was developing the sequel to Halo last year, the designers actually inserted a special command — a joystick button that makes a soldier lower his weapon — designed solely to make it easier for Rooster Teeth to do dialogue." The series has inspired other machinima productions, including The Codex, Fire Team Charlie, and This Spartan Life.

100th Episode
On April 1st 2007, four years since episode one, it was announced by Burnie on the forums that episode 100 is the last one of the Blood Gulch Chronicles. This will be the episode that finishes off season 5. It will tie up all the "loose ends". It is unknown if there will be another series based in another location. This was what was posted on the forums:

Click here for the page.

The episode was successfully released with 3 alternate endings depending on which link was pushed, one which resulted in the death of every member in a comical means all of them saying the common phrase for the show "son of a bitch" before dying. The second showing ending with a post-game lobby in which the 8 main characters depicted are talking about how "strange" the game was, stating some of their grievances (e.g. Donut's armor), and finally declaring "new map." Many have speculated a continuation of the series for Halo 3 due to this. The third ending was a repeat of the first episode with reversed roles of the reds watching the blues "just standing there and just talking." The episode ends with Sarge building a Mongoose and getting Grif and Simmons to name it. The theme song then plays.

Even though bein released with only 3 endings there are actually seven alternate endings.  

Tex's Death
It has been speculated that Tex did not die in episode 100, since: 4. In the Reconstruction trailer, a crashed Pelican was part the plotline. A pelican is what Tex apparently died in. The two recovery agents are also wiped out by a mysterious figure that apparently snuck up on them invisibly.
 * 1) It is stated and shown that Wyoming's helmet was hooked up to the ship.
 * 2) The ship flashed out before the explosion. Possibly indicating a time warp.
 * 3) Moreover, Tex has already died on multiple occasions and was actually a ghost at the moment of the explosion. This is the least likely, because Omega (O'Malley) was able to jump between people as well, and Tex built Andy in such a way that Omega couldn't escape his destruction. Nobody knows exactly what this means, but it is more likely that Tex would have been destroyed along with the robot body that Sarge built before the Omega left the Blood Gulch, prompting everyone else (except Sheila) to leave to try to find him and Lopez.
 * 1) When zoomed in and slowed down to half speed, the Pelican appears to have used what can only be described as hyper-drive and accelerate into space. It is assumed then that the speed of acceleration jostled Andy the Bomb from the ship leaving him in freefall. Since he was in the last second of countdown there was no time to stop the detonation and he exploded. It is then assumed that Tex, O'Malley, the Alien,and Junior all escaped the blast. The crashed Pelican on 17B-Valhalla is assumed to be Tex's because the Recovery program believes that the Meta has add the Omega AI, O'Malley. The mysterious figure could not be Tex because of two distinct differences, armor coloration and armor variant. Tex has the Special Ops Black armor of the Mark VI, the mysterious character in the Reconstruction trailer has White armor with the EVA variant.

If this is so, the series could be continued with some of or all of the original characters.

Trivia

 * As a running gag, whenever a character dies (excluding some of the Grunts in Episodes 39-40, and the alternate ending of episode 100 where everyone dies) the last words they say are "Hurk! Blahh..." or "son of a bitch"
 * Red vs. Blue was originally intended to last only six episodes, but its popularity led to the production of 100.
 * Even though there have been officially 100 episodes of red vs Blue, it can be argued that all of the special episodes plus some episodes of the Blood Gulch Chronicles that were split into parts add up to make the total number of episodes well over 100 [exact figure needed].
 * In Season 3, Sarge exclaims "Great Gustavo!". This is a reference to Gus Sorola, the voice of Simmons.
 * Some of the voice actors from Red vs Blue were featured in the level Crow's Nest in Halo 3, as two Marines arguing over a password. The voices vary depending on difficulty. On Easy and Normal it's Jason Saldaña (Tucker) and Matt Hullum (Sarge, Doc) ([[Media:Tucker Doc password.ogg|listen]]); On Heroic it's Geoff Ramsey (Grif) and Gus Sorola (Simmons); On Legendary, it is Burnie Burns (Church) and Joel Heyman (Caboose) ([[Media:Church Caboose password.ogg|listen]]).
 * On Bungie.net, look at someone's service record. If they have killed with a flag, scroll over the flag symbol in the list of kills.  It will say "It's right next to the headlight fluid."  This is a reference to Red vs. Blue's first few episodes where Donut is ordered to "the store".
 * The unknown assailant of the Recovery Agents in the Reconstruction trailer is speculated to be the same person who attacked Agent Washington in Out of Mind. This is because both assailants had overshields and used the brute shot.
 * Caboose hates babies, and for what reason, we don't know. Caboose-'My name is Michael J. Caboose, and I, hate, babies.' (Quote from Caboose during an RvB episode.) - Later explained by the voice actor "Because they are too needy."
 * Tucker's favorite phrase is 'Bow Chicka Bow Wow!'.
 * After Tucker gave his "advice" to Jr., Jr says 'Bow Chicka Honk Honk.'
 * Red vs. blue has a video explaining Halo 3's Heroic Map Pack.
 * Red vs. Blue was featured on Discovery Science Channel's documentary, Rise of the Video Games, with an interview of the creator of Red vs. Blue creator and original cast.
 * In the last Episode of Season 5, when Tex takes off in the Pelican, on the underside of the Pelican the word "Marathon" is partially obscured. This is an obvious reference to Bungie's previous game series, Marathon, in appreciation from the creators of Red vs Blue and Rooster Teeth.

Internal

 * Rooster Teeth
 * List of Characters in Red vs. Blue
 * Grifball

External

 * Red vs Blue - Official site
 * The Unofficial Red vs Blue Resource Site
 * The Cult of Red vs Blue - News article
 * Wikipedia Article
 * Fan Art