Red vs Blue

Red vs Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, also known as RvB, is a machinima video webcomic series created by Rooster Teeth Productions. The series is a parody of multiplayer first-person shooter video games and the various missions in which the players participate, such as capture the flag, which typically divides the players into red and blue teams. The source of RvB's humor is its clever scripting, a cast of characters who are eccentric in many diverse ways, and the occasional sight gag. Later episodes of the series have specifically spoofed the Back to the Future movie series, with time-travelling events retconning and re-retconning previous events over and over.

Red vs Blue was created using the Xbox games Halo: Combat Evolved and (since Episode 43) Halo 2, both of which were made by Bungie Studios. Since the scenes were "filmed" from the point-of-view of a character used as a "cameraman," an aiming reticle is visible in most scenes, save for recent episodes using the Halo 2 engine. This is due to a small glitch that allows a character to hold no weapon, thus removing the reticle. The videos are mostly "filmed" on the map Blood Gulch, hence the name, though the series has been filmed on other Halo maps such as Sidewinder and Battle Creek, and several episodes include scenes from Marathon, an Apple Macintosh game that was also made by Bungie. The environments of Halo 2 are typically used when dealing with events chronologically after the standard Red vs Blue timeline, and Marathon's enviroments are typically used when dealing with events that happen chronologically before the Red vs Blue timeline.

So far, the Blood Gulch Chronicles is in its third nineteen-episode season. A few self-referential "public service announcement" episodes have also been produced for the site and video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly, as well as several shots filmed for Xbox demo kiosks found in game stores. Their main machinima rivals using Halo include the Canadian group Fire Team Charlie and the action/drama series The Codex, though they have never actually competed against each other.

Story

Red vs Blue tells the story of two opposing forces, the Red Army and the Blue Army, occupying small bases in a box canyon known as Blood Gulch. While both armies have standing orders to defeat the other team and capture their flag, the soldiers in the army are not very motivated to actually fight each other, and often wonder what they're doing there in the first place.

Red's base is named "Blood Gulch Outpost Number 1." Blue's base is named "Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha." Each team built its base because the other team was building a base.

In Season 1, the delicate balance of indifference in Blood Gulch is disrupted with the introduction of new players in the "conflict": on the Red side, an overly enthusiastic rookie named Donut who (through sheer dumb luck) manages to accidentally capture the Blue flag on his first day. On the Blue side, a homicidal freelancer named Tex sent in to massacre the Reds and take back the Blue flag, as well as another clueless rookie named Caboose and his "girlfriend", a massive battle tank named Sheila whose targeting system has problems telling friend from foe. Church is quickly accidentally killed by Caboose and Sheila, and hilarity ensues as his rather irate ghost spends the rest of the season attempting to stop Tex from killing the Reds so he can save her from herself and the psychopathic A.I. that controls her thoughts.

In Season 2, the Red and Blue teams actually start attacking each other in response to the events of Season 1. Absolutely unhelpful in all this is Doc, a medic sent in by Red and Blue Command to tend to the medical needs of both teams (due to budget cuts). Church attempts to get used to his new (and very poorly built) robot body, while the Red team tries to figure out just what the heck is going on. Meanwhile, both Red and Blue teams are plagued by Tex's evil A.I., O'Malley, who moves from body to body despite the best efforts of Tex's ghost and the Blue team to stop him.

In Season 3, O'Malley sets out to conquer the universe, and the Red and Blue teams call a truce to team up and go after him, propelling them into different worlds outside Blood Gulch, and even into the future (Halo 2) and past (Marathon).

Characters

Red Army

Private Dexter Grif (Orange Armor)

Grif is often picked on and degraded by Sarge and, therefore, Simmons. Sarge often blames him for when things go wrong, and more often than not he genuinely is responsible for the Red Team's latest failure (generally through laziness or a failure to pay attention to something important). Grif and Simmons spend almost all of their time bickering or chatting with each other.

Personality-wise, Grif is a brash loudmouth with a flair for melodrama, and tends to speak before he thinks. He's quick to make silly theories or insults, even towards people who clearly could easily kill him. He's also a bit of a coward, panicking and fleeing as soon as things start to get dangerous. He's not a total fool, however, and is often the first one to point out the flaws or stupidities in Sarge's latest plans (largely because Simmons never criticizes Sarge, no matter what). Despite his constant flippant disregard for Sarge's authority, Grif seems to care at least a little about Sarge, and was quite upset when Sarge almost died after being shot in the head by Caboose.

Physically, a lifetime of scarfing down cigarettes and snack-cakes has left Grif wildly out of shape for a soldier in the military, and he is barely able to run 300 feet without running out of breath. After accidentally being run over by Sheila the tank, most of Grif's body is now made of donor organs from Simmons, and Grif is having a great time ruining his new parts with his snacking and smoking just like his old ones.
Voiced by Geoff Fink (aka 'Gfunk')

Private Dick Simmons(2.0) (Maroon Armor)

Simmons is a sycophant who agrees with Sarge on almost every occasion. Grif frequently calls him "Kissass." The Red Team seems to consider him their "unofficial science officer", although he's not actually as super-smart as he claims (he states 32 x 56 is 31,452).

Aside from Tex, Simmons is still probably the sanest and most level-headed character in the Gulch, although that really isn't saying much. He never really says anything silly or dumb (except when he's kissing up to Sarge's flawed schemes), he frequently has the most common sense, and he often manages to come up with battle plans that actually work (he's the only one among the Gulch crew who has, by proxy, triumphed over O'Malley).

While he's not really lazy or cowardly like Grif (or Blue's Tucker), Simmons seems to have serious doubts about the war, and thus seldom participates in the hostilities unless absolutely necessary (such as when being shot at). However, when forced into combat, Simmons puts all his effort into fighting, and when he wades into the heat of battle he's given to launching into long, unbroken spouts of extremely enthusiastic trash-talk. After the Reds lose Lopez, Sarge turns Simmons into a cyborg so they will have someone with a repair sequence again.
Voiced by Gustavo 'Gus' Sorola

Sarge (Red Armor)

Sarge is the leader of the Blood Gulch Red team. He's a grizzled veteran with a Southern accent. A serious, military-minded leader, he's probably the most disciplined character, never slacking off or wasting time like the other soldiers. Unfortunately, his battle plans tend to be seriously flawed (he once built a bomb that he wouldn't be able to defuse once activated, in case he got brainwashed into helping the other side), and he favors plans that involve heavy casualties in his own forces, especially Grif (sometimes when there isn't even a problem to solve).

Despite his flaws as a leader, Sarge seems to be a pretty good fighter, having managed to get the drop on Tex as well as fight off the attacking hordes of Reds and Blues on Battle Creek. He's got above average levels of anger and violence, and is probably the only Blood Gulch soldier on either team that's actually serious about pursuing the war.

Sarge hates Grif as much as he likes Simmons, and often praises Simmons and criticizes Grif when the two of them perform the exact same action. He's also got good technical skills, being able to assemble robots from scratch and cybernetically augment his men. Often given to using ridiculous exclamations; for instance:

• "What in buttery goodness?!"
• "Sweet Jibbly Giblets!"
• "Samson's Back Hair!"
• "frkn drglrs..."
• "Great Caesar's Toast!"(A play on the phrase: "Great Caesar's Ghost!" by Superman character Perry White).

His full name has never been mentioned.
Voiced by Matt Hullum

Private Franklin Delano Donut (Pink (Or Lightish Red) Armor)

Donut is a rookie who can't quite figure out what's going on. He's over-energetic, over-eager, and very chatty, which makes the rest of Red Team find him extremely annoying. He's not thickheaded or insane like Caboose, but he is rather naive and clueless (e.g., when he first came to Blood Gulch, he thought the Blue Army's base was a hardware store).

After his old, standard-issue Red armor was ruined absorbing the blast of a plasma grenade stuck to his head by Tex, Red Command was so pleased that he had captured the Blues' flag that they gave him his own color armor. He's quite sensitive about his armor, which he insists is light red, even though it's clearly pink to everyone else.

As the series progresses, the "light red" armor seems to take its toll on Donut's mind, as his speech begins taking on increasingly effeminate and homosexual connotations as time progresses. He also appears to be becoming increasingly childish, pretending to be a Secret Agent in the middle of a mission, and sticking his hand in machinery even after repeatedly being told not to.
Voiced by Dan Godwin

Lopez (Brown Armor)

Lopez is a robot built by Sarge. Static electricity damaged his voice card because Sarge neglected to ground himself when installing it, therefore Lopez can speak only Spanish in his monotone voice. (Subtitles are provided for viewers who cannot speak Spanish.) His three prime directives are 1) Fix everything, 2) Hate the orange one, and 3) Call Mom more often. Like Sarge, he seems to dislike Grif (because Sarge programmed him to), and often tries to attack Grif (under Sarge's orders). After he gets his voice card, Lopez begins to call himself "Lopez the Heavy," and demonstrates a stoic and tough personality.

Lopez was eventually possessed by Church, who had the body painted blue to match Church's old body armor. After being temporarily freed from Church's control, Lopez defects to the Blue team after the Reds tries to kill him (mistakenly believing he's a blue soldier), where he repairs and falls in love with Sheila, the AI inside the Blue Army's Scorpion tank. He eventually develops a resistance to being posessed. Later, his old color was restored.

In Season 3, Lopez is captured and reprogrammed by O'Malley, who tries to use him to conquer the universe. Sarge installed (aside from a time and temperature program) most of a weather control system capable of wiping out both Armies in Lopez, which is what prompted O'Malley to steal him. There is also top-secret strategic information straight from Red Command embedded in Lopez's head, so the Reds were forced to cooperate with the Blues in order to recover Lopez.

Unfortunately, due to a bizarre series of amazing coincidences, Lopez is eventually reduced to nothing more than a disembodied head (although he can still apparently hold conversations and fire a machine gun (he is very determined)).
Voiced (in Spanish) by Mike 'Burnie' Burns

Blue Army

Private Lavernius Tucker (Teal Armor)

Tucker is the most "average" member of Blue, not as hardened as Church but not as clueless as Caboose. He's very much an everyman in terms of Red vs Blue: a sarcastic, smart-aleck man-child who dislikes combat and doing work (even more than Red Army's Grif) – so much so that he always complains and tries very hard to stall whenever someone orders him into battle. Tucker is also a wee bit obsessed with women and very frustrated that the only "females" in the canyon are a tank, a special ops mercenary (who'd just as soon kill him as look at him and doesn't even wear form-fitting armor), and a man on the other team in pink.

Although he seems lacking in prudence and common sense, and often jumps to conclusions without careful thinking (he assumes he's teleported into the past for no good reason the first time he uses the teleporter, in ignorance of Occam's Razor), he's reasonably smart and conceives a couple decent plans.

Due to the firearm's sparse availability along with the faster snatching reflexes of the other soldiers, Tucker hasn't yet been able to use a sniper rifle, a fact which infuriates him throughout the entire series and leads to much profanity.

Vic, O'Malley, and Wyoming all want him dead because he accidentally discovered Vic's secret in Episode 38. Unfortunately for Tucker, everybody else either doesn't believe him or just doesn't care.

Tucker was recently able to aqcuire an Energy Sword during the attack on O'Malley's base. In a rare (for him) moment of decisive action, he soon used the weapon to lethal effect against the Red Zealot. Realizing its extreme effectiveness, he actually turned down an offer by Tex to trade it for her sniper rifle.
Voiced by Jason Saldaña

Private Leonard L. Church (Light Blue Armor)

Church is the Blue team's bitter and sarcastic de facto leader. Killed early in the series, he returns as a ghost to help his teammates. He often takes control of other characters' armor. For most of series 2, he possesses Lopez. After being expelled from Lopez, Church convinces Sarge to build him another robot body by using Donut as a hostage. On several occasions throughout the series, Church is shown to have incredibly bad aim, particularly with the sniper rifle.

Other than his harsh, cynical outlook on life, Church is actually, like Simmons, reasonbly intelligent and emotionally stable. As leaders go, he's quite a bit more competent that Sarge. His plans are usually pretty solid (and, unlike Sarge's plans, don't involve pointlessly sacrificing his own men), but unfortunately fate often conspires (along with the incredible incompetence of Caboose) to bring him failure and death.

Church is also as anti-social as it gets; he has a strong dislike of both Tucker and Caboose, and once stated that the only person he really needs is himself, and that knowing other people just waters down the experience of being Church. In spite of this, he does have something of a love-hate relationship going with Tex, though she may or may not be aware of it.

During Season 3, Church is sent back in time, and takes advantage of this by trying to prevent everything that goes wrong in Blood Gulch. Unfortunately for Church, in a classic self-fulfilling prophecy scenario, it becomes evident that HE is the cause of everything that ever went wrong.
Voiced by Mike 'Burnie' Burns

Private Michael J. Caboose (Blue Armor)

Caboose is the Blue Army's rookie. He's well-meaning and probably the least spiteful character on the show, but unfortunately for him he's also clueless, childlike, and somewhat insane. He occasionally asks questions about things the others take for granted (like why a flag is so important). He's also pretty slow on the uptake, and often fails to understand even basic concepts (such as the meaning of "A.I.").

Caboose desperately wants to obtain the friendship and approval of Church (probably to make up for killing him), but his attempts to help often only make things worse, and he has accidentally teamkilled Church on three occasions and inadvertantly called his girlfriend a slut (as a result, Church despises him greatly). Caboose is also infatuated with Sheila the tank, and gets insanely jealous when she elopes with Lopez.

Despite his eccentricities, Caboose's mind might actually be stronger than it appears, as he was able to successfully contain the evil O'Malley for several episodes without any of the formal training Tex had(whereas Doc was completely taken over almost immedietely). However, being briefly inhabited by O'Malley apparently has damaged Caboose's brain even further and altered his personality. He used to be reasonably clever and sarcastic, but now his grasp on reality has become more than a little bit tenuous, causing him to utter some of the show's most bizarre and humorous lines, and he can no longer even spell his own name correctly.

He is also physically the strongest soldier in both the Red and Blue teams (apparently the powered armor everyone wears doesn't contribute anything in the way of hydraulic muscle assists); Church and Tucker think that it is "God's way of compensating." He is prophesied to be the destroyer of an alien race. Caboose also has extremely skewed mental images of everyone (such as Sarge having a pirate accent, Donut being a girl and Church being his best friend).
Voiced by Joel Heyman

Tex [Real Name:Allison] {Code Name:Nevada} (Black Armor)

Tex is a freelancer (a special ops soldier working for the highest bidder) and Church's former girlfriend. She sticks with the Blues because, to repay a favor, she decided to help them out until they beat the Reds. As the Blues and Reds are cooperating right now, Tex has diverted her energies towards eliminating the scourge of O'Malley from the universe once and for all.

Tex was part of an elite unit in which each member was named after one of the United States. Her code name is "Nevada", but her name "Tex" indicates that she's from Texas. Her real name, as indicated from Wyoming, is Allison. Each member was controlled by an experimental AI to make him strong and aggressive. Tex's AI was O'Malley, who jumped from her body to Caboose after she was killed by Donut (in retaliation for the plasma grenade incident) at the end of Season 1. She ends up as a ghost like Church, and Church eventually gets Sarge to build her a robot body to possess, so she'll stop stealing the one he has.

Tex's special ops training makes her the most competently lethal member of the Blood Gulch cast (with the possible exception of Sheila the tank); she slaughtered Church's entire old squad on Sidewinder. She's also equipped with active camouflage that allows her to become invisible.

Even though Church states that she's always been moody and violent even without the AI, and she does often insult Church, she's actually pretty tolerant of the rest of the Blood Gulch cast and their various eccentricities. However, as a freelancer, she's jumps at killing at the drop of a hat if the price is right. She's one of the only ones of the Gulch crew with repair skills. The Reds owe her one favor to be named later.
Voiced by Kathleen Zuelch

Sheila (Tank)

Originally named Phyllis, Sheila is the AI of the Blue army's M808B Main Battle Tank. She seems friendly enough, but, being a tank, she's got a habit of blowing people up (including her own teammate Church, thanks to the poor piloting skills of Caboose and the indiscriminate nature of her auto-targeting system). Sheila gets bombed to death by Sarge's dropship early on, but is repaired by Tex a few episodes later.

She seems to despise Tucker, and calls him a retard over and over when he tries to drive her. She also seems to like Caboose at least a little (she's the only person in the canyon who does), however, she ends up falling in love with the robot Lopez, and the two of them elope. She appears to understand Spanish, and thus is the only "person" in the canyon who can comprehend Lopez.

At one point, she and Lopez attempt to lead a robot revolution against the humans in response to the perceived abuse suffered by the Gulch's robots: being constantly blown up or possessed by ghosts (even though the others also suffer same), but after Lopez is kidnapped by O'Malley, she puts her differences aside to help retrieve him.

Because Sheila cannot fit through the teleporter (due to being built by the lowest bidder, her A.I. is hardwired into her body), she remains behind on Blood Gulch while the Red and Blue teams go through to pursue O'Malley. After a brief encounter with a time-traveling Church, Sheila goes to sleep and presumably remains alone as the sole inhabitant of Blood Gulch for the next several millenia.
Voiced by Yomary Cruz

Unaffiliated

Vic (Pillar of Autumn Comm Officer)

Vic is the contact for both armies at Red Command and Blue Command, which are actually the same Command, though the respective armies do not know this (except for Tucker, whom no one believes). Vic didn't even know it until a misunderstanding between him and back-from-the-future Church re-retconned the entire series.

Vic behaves like an annoying, ineffective tech support guy, constantly calling his men "dude" and often offering obtuse and unhelpful advice coupled with biting insults. He also is quite inappropriate, at one point forcing Doc into a lengthy conversation about Vic's sterility.

Vic is apparently working with O'Malley to some degree (although he seems to regard O'Malley as more of a necessary annoyance than a partner), and O'Malley arranges for an assassin to hunt down Tucker in order to preserve Vic's secret.
Voiced by Randall Glass in Season One, voiced by Burnie Burns in Season Two and Three

Medical Officer Frank Dufresne, or Doc (Purple Armor)

Doc is sent to Blood Gulch to treat injuries on both armies. He's actually a pretty unskilled medic, for example treating Caboose's bullet wound to the toe by rubbing his neck with aloe vera. He is also a pacifist of the most extreme kind. He tries to avoid doing or saying anything that would seem aggressive or competitive.

Because of his extreme pacificism in the middle of a war, he quickly earns the ire of both the Blue and Red teams and is eventually exiled into a cavern equidistant from both bases. There, Doc ends up getting possessed by O'Malley, and has various split-personality Gollum/Smeagol conversations with him. The difference between Doc and O'Malley is even greater than it is for the former pair, however. Doc is also constantly apologizing for O'Malley's trash-talk and conduct.
Voiced by Matt Hullum

O'Malley

O'Malley is an AI (like Cortana in the original Halo game) put into Tex's armor during training in order to make her more aggressive and dangerous. When Tex is killed, O'Malley leaps via radio into the body of Caboose, where he causes Caboose to periodically make threatening statements in "a scary voice", but fails to actually take control of his body. After being forced from Caboose by Church and Tex, O'Malley possesses Medical Officer Dufresne, who he is immedietely able to take total control of and embark upon his own agenda.

O'Malley's real name may be Omega. Wyoming called him this at one point, and it would seem the AI had picked the name O'Malley as it sounded similar. His personality is extremely evil and aggressive. Your basic over-the-top, megalomaniacal screwball, Vic calls him "Doctor Baron von Evil Satan", and he pretty much wants to destroy both the Red and Blue Armies and either destroy or take over the universe and "crush every living soul into dust."

O'Malley is also prone to very long, silly, and utterly unnecessary monologues, usually accompanied by extreme close-ups of his face. O'Malley frequently forgets words and must be reminded of them by Lopez.
O'Malley has been voiced by two people during the series; while possesing Caboose he is voiced by Joel Heyman (Caboose's VA), and while possesing Doc he is voiced by Matt Hullum (Doc's VA)

Guest characters

Wyoming (white armor) is a ruthless mercenary with a (very poor) British accent who has been hired by O'Malley to kill Tucker. Like Tex, he was trained in a secret project, in which all the participants were paired with an AI and code-named after one of the 49 American states that still exist at the time.† During his search for Tucker, he single-handedly wipes out the entire Sidewinder-based Red team (the Blues there were already killed by Tex earlier in the series). He is also responsible for shooting the SPNKR out of Tucker's hands at a critical moment, keeping Tucker from destroying Church before the bomb inside the latter exploded, which, when combined with the power of the weather matrix in Lopez, destroyed the present and caused Tucker, Donut, Sarge, Grif, Tex, Simmons, and Caboose to be blown into the future and Church to be blown into the past. Wyoming was off to the side, so it's possible that he's "currently" elliptically orbiting the void that the present once occupied.
Voiced by Matt Hullum
† "Poor, poor Florida." – Tucker

The Red Zealot (red armor) is one of the immortal, respawning Red team members from the Battle Creek map (seen in Season 3). A hyperactive, frantic, melodramatic fellow with a high-pitched voice, his fast-paced speech consists entirely of Biblical-type quotes and religious dogma, and in battle he often goes off about crusades and promised lands. He's hooked up with O'Malley, having been convinced the rogue A.I. is in fact the Guardian of the Promised Land. His teammates (O'Malley, Doc, and Lopez) find him extremely annoying, but keep him around because he performs menial tasks without complaint and even with a degree of enjoyance. Recently, the Red Zealot was felled by Tucker and his Energy Sword.
Voiced by Mike 'Burnie' Burns and Helium

Gary is the computer (similar to Marathon's Durandal) that Church meets when he is propelled 1,856 years into the past. Gary is the keeper of the GREAT WEAPON, and tells from the GREAT PROPHECY that a Blue being who will be the stupidest life form in the universe (an apparent reference to Caboose) will obtain the GREAT WEAPON, become the GREAT DESTROYER, and bring about the GREAT DOOM to billions of people. Church convinces Gary to build a teleporter that will transport him to Blood Gulch, so he can hopefully prevent everything that has happened. At full processing power, it took Gary slightly over 1,000 years to build one, so he and Church passed the time by telling jokes. The race that programed Gary call humans Shisno (The feces of the feces of the smelliest animal on the planet. And no, that is not a typo).
Voiced by a computer voice-synthesis program

Captain Butch Flowers was the Blue Army's previous commanding officer at Blood Gulch, who died well before the series started. His character is introduced to us when Church travels forward in time to the his own past. Flowers appears to be a very mellow person, with a very odd, informal style of leadership and personality, and he speaks very softly. He tends to be very 'affectionate' with the troops under his command. He insists that his troops call him "Captain" or "Cappy." Besides the Red Team, he believes that the Blue Army's greatest threats are things like apathy and indifference. Before his death, Flowers was planning to lead a Blue offensive to destroy the Red Army in Blood Gulch, and knew the key to the Blue Army's victory. However, he died from an apparent heart attack in his sleep before he could lead the attack, reveal his plans, or put in an order for Tucker's sniper rifle. Church tries to prevent his death by traveling back in time and injecting Flowers with medication, but it turned out that Flowers was allergic to the aspirin in it, and Church's injection was the real cause of his death all along. Flowers lives on after a fashion, however, as his teal armor is taken by Tucker, who wore standared Blue armor (like Caboose later does) at the time.
Voiced by Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies

Not much is known about poor Phil. He was a Red soldier stationed at Sidewinder as a guard. He was pretty negative about everything, asserting repeatedly that this and that "suck." He was on duty when Wyoming found him, possibly mistook him for Lopez, and started to interrogate him. Soon Wyoming found out that he was wrong, got a call for another gig, and, despite Phil's claims to being a single parent, just shot him in the face.
Voiced by Mike 'Burnie' Burns

Andy is the Bomb that Caboose carried into Gary's complex. He has a short temper, and is somewhat rude. He and Gary rarely converse, as they are "not on speaking terms." Andy tells Caboose about the Red's secret meeting, but his cohorts don't believe him at first, as Andy is silent when they approach. However, he has an outburst when Gary insists that Andy is the jerk.

See also

• Red vs Blue episode guide
• The Strangerhood, Rooster Teeth's The Sims 2-based production.

External links

• Red vs Blue
• Sponsors vs Freeloaders A parody series made by redvsblue.com forum members.
• Red vs Blue Transcripts The unofficial Red vs Blue resource site, containing transcripts, Spanish analysis, downloads, and much more.
• Trocadero The band responsible for all the music in Red vs Blue