Franklin Delano Donut

From Red vs Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles

Donut
Statistics
Name:	Donut
Full Name:	Franklin Delano Donut
Affiliations:	Red Team
First Appearance:	Episode 3
Armor Color(s):	Pink w/Lavender Detail, Red in the first few episodes)
Occupation(s):	Red Team rookie
Weapon(s):	Pistol,Battle Rifle
Voice Actor:	Dan Godwin

"It's not pink, its light-ish red!"

—Donut referring to the color of his armor.

Private Franklin Delano Donut was a main character in the science fiction machinima comic series Red vs. Blue, created by Rooster Teeth Productions. Voiced by Dan Godwin, Donut first appears in Episode 3 of Season 1 as a new recruit, whose garrulous personality tends to annoy other members of the Blood Gulch Red Team, a group of soldiers engaged in a futuristic civil war against the Blue Team.

Rooster Teeth had a plan for the character from the outset. In the multiplayer games of the Halo video game series, which was used to film Red vs. Blue, human characters wear futuristic MJOLNIR battle armor. In changing Donut's armor to pink in the latter part of Season 1, the producers made his armor color, gender, and sexual orientation a running gag, and fully developed his personality during Season 2. Godwin ad-libbed some of Donut's lines, to the approval of other Rooster Teeth personnel. In some scenes, the filming was adapted to complement Godwin's interpretation of the script. Early in season 1, fans reacted well to Donut; as a result, Burnie Burns, the main writer for Red vs. Blue, focused the storyline on Donut and Caboose (Joel Heyman), the Blue Team's rookie.

[edit] Character History

[edit] Life At Blood Gulch

Donut is alluded to indirectly in Episode 2, when Sarge (Matt Hullum), the leader of the Red Team, tells his subordinates that a "new recruit will be here within the week." The next episode introduces Donut, who appears wearing "standard-issue" red armor. Grif (Geoff Ramsey) and Simmons (Gustavo Sorola), his new teammates, immediately send him on a fool's errand for elbow grease and "headlight fluid."^[1] According to Nick Werner, who noted the contrast between Donut and the other characters in his review of this episode, "seeing such a serious and cocky young recruit being thrown in with the cynical, lazy, and pretty much bored pair of Simmons and Grif was wonderful."^[2] On his way, Donut mistakes the Blue Base for the Store and takes the Blue flag in order to avoid returning empty-handed. In response, the Blues go on a search and destroy mission to retrieve the flag from Donut (who at the time was thought to be Sarge) but Simmons and Grif save him, which results in the Battle of Blood Gulch. Thus causing Church to die and cause Tex to be called in, who throws a "spider" later determined to be a grenade on Donuts head and gets him rushed to Command. When Donut returns from Red Command in Episode 16, he appears in pink armor, which he insists is 'lightish red', as well as bring Lopez's new voice card. The change in armor color attracts attention from both teams. When Tex attacks the Red Base a second time, in Episode 19, Donut miraculously manages to kill her with a plasma grenade, in revenge for her previous attack.^[1] According to Wilma Jandoc, who reviewed Red vs. Blue for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Donut's personality is developed more thoroughly as season 2 progresses, and he begins to act less sane.^[3] Donut eventually does call his armor "pink" in Episode 30. Later, in Episode 36, he pretends to be a secret agent named "Double-O Donut". At the end of Season 2, each team leaves one member behind to keep guard while the others pursue their common enemy, O'Malley (Joel Heyman, Matt Hullum). In what he considers an imbalance, Donut is left with Sheila (Yomary Cruz), the Blue Team's tank. After most of the other Reds and Blues teleport out of Blood Gulch, Tex, who, after returning as a ghost, had suddenly disappeared at the end of Episode 33, returns to the gulch and recognizes Donut as her killer, thus ending the season with a cliffhanger.^[4]

In Season 3, Donut eventually joins everyone on Sidewinder to confront O'Malley. However, a bomb blasts most of the characters forward in time. In Episode 53, Donut distracts the Blues with a convoluted story so that the Reds can discreetly investigate a distress signal. When they leave Donut behind in pursuit of this signal, Donut manages to steal a hovercraft dubbed "The Motorcycle" from O'Malley and rejoin them.^[5] In Season 4, Donut replaces Simmons as Sarge's right-hand man when Sarge declares Simmons insane for insisting that Sheila still roams the gulch in the future. In a cliffhanger at the end of the season, Episode 77, a large ship drops into the gulch and lands on top of Donut.^[6] Donut plays only a minor role in Season 5. He does not appear until Episode 81 where it is revealed that the impact forces him into a previously unseen underground cavern, where he finds two suits of armor, one cobalt and the other black, and decides to wait. In Episode 88, he finds Sarge in the cavern and helps him find Simmons after Sarge makes contact with him. Later, he gives Sarge the idea to take over the Blue Base after witnessing the Blues infiltrating their own base. Sarge announces a plan involving Donut as a grenadier.

In the first ending of Episode 100, Donut kills Sister by hitting her with the hovercraft. He is then killed when Caboose shoots the hovercraft with the rockets, but the hovercraft lands on Caboose leaving no one left. In the second ending, Donut, along with the rest of the characters is revealed as an anonymous player in a Halo multiplayer lobby, and openly regrets his decision for choosing pink armor. Donut is not featured prominently in the third ending and is only shown standing next to Sarge as he reveals his new ATV. Donut was never seen in Reconstruction, and the only mention of him was Sarge commenting in Reconstruction episode 9 that he "can't get Donut".

[edit] Redeployment

""Others good, I like other!" -Donut, to the Councilor

After his tour at Blood Gulch, Donut was interviewed by the Counselor and he was asked a routine group of questions and then shortly after he was redeployed and he found a distress beacon from Tucker that was to give a message to Church.

[edit] Comatose State

He reappears in Relocated Chapter 4, where he gave Grif a cryptic warning to help Tucker at "the sand", and shortly after he fell unconscious. In the RvB recreation trailer Grif declared that Donut has been in a comatose state for 3 days. However, Grif also said "How can I tell how long a day is? The sun never sets around here" which means his timeline is questionable. In Recreation Chapter 2, Donut's coma ended.

Private Donut shortly before his coma.

Donut has been in a coma for three days.

Donut revived at last.

[edit] Current State

"How long was I asleep?" -Donut, after hearing the events of Reconstruction

In Recreation Chapter 2, Donut appeared in a comatose state and then Grif and Sarge went down to the holo-room with Simmons for approximately five minutes and when they came back up they had a small staff meeting and then they noticed Donut was gone. Donut then appeared in the blue base with Caboose, where Caboose was talking about what happened at Blood Gulch.

In Recreation Chapter 3, Donut tells Caboose that he needs to deliver a message to Church and he asks Caboose "where is Church?." In response Caboose tried to explain the events of reconstruction. Donut was surprised by this so he wondered how long he was out. He then tells Caboose that Tucker needs help and that it is "in the sand", before he passes out. He awakens after Caboose's conversation with the Red team and after Caboose steps on his hand by accident.

In Recreation Chapter 4, Donut explains his entire situation to Caboose, including his redeployment, and then he asks if Agent Washington can help him with his situation just like how Washington helped Caboose. After Epsilon talks to Caboose, then Reds catch him in the holo-room and he tells them he wants to find Tucker. Grif and Sarge decide to go with him to help find Tucker and Donut stay's behind with Simmons and Lopez.

Later, Donut gives Grif the coordinates to the sand.Since Sarge is gone, Simmons decides to blow-up Blue Base and when Simmons takes to long trying to blow-up Blue Base, Donut decides to go check on him.

Donut finds Simmons, in blue base, staring at the items Caboose collected. When Simmons is about to blow-up Blue Base, Donut tells him that Caboose has Epsilon, which causes Simmons to become frantic, since Caboose was supposed to turn it in. When Simmons can't contact Sarge by radio, he decides he has to go find them, leaving Donut at Blue Base. Lopez builds Simmons mongooses for transportation, and before he goes, Simmons goes to Donut.

Donut is cleaning the Blue Base, when The Meta walks in. Donut mistakes him for a new "Blue Team" soldier. Agent Maine tries several times to kill Donut, but Donut avoids his attacks by luck, and thinks Maine is trying to help him. When Simmons drives to blue base, Donut tells him the "the blues have a new soldier." When asking how that is possible, Simmons see's The Meta and yells as he runs away, leaving Donut alone with Meta.

Donut talking to the Consular.

Donut with Tuckers beacon.

After the Meta chases Simmons back to red base, Donut reappears in the base acting casually, saying that he didn't know who he was and thought that the Meta was just a friend of Simmons. After being told everything about the Meta, Donut, Simmons, and Lopez plans to escape with a vehicle, assuming that there is one. The gang then make a run across Valhalla headed to blue base. When the Reds find the Meta's vehicle, they find out it doesn't work. Then the Meta see's them and begins to attack, only for Agent Washington to tell him to stand down. Washington asks the Reds were Epsilon is, and when they don't answer, he shoots Lopez in the head, and then Donut in the chest. Simmons then frantically yells at Donut to wake-up.

[edit] Kills

Donut managed to kill Agent Tex (referring to her as a dirty whore) with an amazing grenade shot during episode 19, the season one finale. He also said he ran over someone on The Motorcycle, but Donut may have been lying.

Tex

[edit] Themes

[edit] Armor color and gender

A recurring theme involving Donut centers on his armor color and gender. In Halo: Combat Evolved, the video game used to film Season 1, there is a multiplayer capture the flag game available. However, in this mode, the game allows only teams of red- and blue-armored soldiers, not the per-character colors that Rooster Teeth normally uses. As such, even though the producers had a plan from the outset to put Donut in pink armor, he initially appears in red so that they could use him in scenes involving the Blue flag, which only appears when playing capture the flag. Initially, they slotted the joke involving pink armor for the last episode of a six- to eight-part series, but Red vs. Blue fleshed out more than expected, and the joke was consequently delayed.^[7] Although the delay was unexpected, Werner thought that the early Episode 3 reference to the gag made the eventual punchline "all the sweeter" when it arrives later.^[2]

When the armor change does occur, it sparks some gender confusion.^[3] The Reds immediately prod Donut with jokes about his sexuality; when Donut incredulously asks why he would be given pink armor, Grif responds, "Don't ask, don't tell.,"^[8]a saying Marines use when talking about homosexuality. Except for Church, the entire Blue Team — Tucker, Caboose, and Tex — assumes that the pink-armored Donut is female.^[9] Originally, Rooster Teeth was going to create a love triangle in which Donut and a mistaken Caboose were two of three participants. However, the armor color change was delayed so much that the creators forgot about this development.^[10] Nevertheless, the series still shows Caboose's confusion about Donut. Rooster Teeth has Church (Burnie Burns), the de facto leader of the Blue Team, and Tex explore Caboose's mind as ghosts in episodes 31–33. There, Donut is portrayed as a female and voiced by Burns' wife, Jordan Burns.^[11] In Episode 100, when possessed by O'Malley, Donut talks about topics like the wage difference and how "men automatically assume they know everything". In second ending of the final episode, Donut or the player that named Donut shows his true feelings toward his armor color with disgust.

Burns mentioned that they tried to exercise some restraint with the armor color jokes when the gag first appeared.^[12] In season 2, however, Matt Hullum became more involved as a writer for the series, and, as Godwin noted in an August 2005 interview: "Matt loves a joke, so he definitely ran with it from there but it worked out really well... as Caboose got dumber... they have the two rookies, so the teams mirror each other, but having the character developments go the same direction would be kinda dumb... and to balance it out Donut has to have something.^[13]"

The armor color gag also appears outside the series proper. In an audio and video test on the Red vs. Blue season 2 DVD, Donut advises the viewer to adjust the color until his armor appears "perfectly light red".^[14] Acting in-character during an interview segment with Godwin that aired on G4techTV, Donut warns, "If your cameras are messed up, and you show my armor as pink to all your viewers, I'm gonna sue."^[15] Another reference occurs in the Red vs. Blue public service announcement "Real Life vs. the Internet", in which Donut is a male pretending to be female over the Internet. In "4th of July Safety Tips", Church berates Donut for wearing pink armor instead of his "old red armor so that [Donut, Church, and Caboose] can be red, white, and blue." Donut responds, "I'm being patriotic in my own way." The armor color confusion has also been featured on Red vs. Blue merchandise; a T-shirt sold by Rooster Teeth reads, "It's not pink. It's lightish red."^[16] Outside Red vs. Blue, Burns and Hullum joked about red and light red in extra material created for the season 1 DVD of The Strangerhood, another Machinima series created by Rooster Teeth.^[17]

[edit] Sense of direction and annoyance of others

According to Burns, another running gag involving Donut is that he "never knows where he's going".^[18] The first instance of this occurs when Donut leaves on his fool's errand in episode 3; he initially heads away from the exit of the base, and Grif has to correct him. On his way back from the Blue Base in episode 6, Grif tells Donut to head to the base and wait. Donut begins to head the wrong way again, and an annoyed Grif yells, "Back to our base, dumbass!"^[1] In episode 36, the Blues capture Donut briefly when he mistakenly heads toward the Blue Base during his reconnaissance mission. Watching Donut from a distance, Grif closes the episode with the line, "Oh crap. I knew I should have just shot him."^[4]

The other characters are also often annoyed by Donut's tendency to talk incessantly about non-consequential matters. For example, during a repair job in Episode 42, he annoys Tucker by remarking, "I never knew a Phillips screwdriver was the X one. Do you think it's named after a guy named Phillip? That guy Phillip must have a fucked-up-shaped head!" When Grif and Simmons call shotgun for their Warthog in Episode 57, Donut instead calls for "shotgun's lap".^[5] As Sarge's right-hand man during Season 4, Donut annoys his leader with various proposals, which include the incorporation of more positive reinforcement and the redecoration of the Red Base.^[6]. In Season 5 when Sarge finds Donut in the cavern, Sarge believes he has died and gone to Hell. In Recreation, while Simmons & Lopez are trying to hold off the Meta, Donut walks in & Lopez pointing out the Meta can change color, suggests they shoot him. Though as Donut begins to irritiate Simmons, Lopez says they can still just shoot him & bury him outback & no one would have to know about it. It seems he got his wish.

Despite this, it his hinted that Donut may be the most liked member of either teams. Caboose and Donut share each others childlike personalities and enjoy each others presence. Also when it appeared a ship landed on Donut, both Sage and Simmon expressed great sorrow, which confuses Grif. Even Church was sad when he learned of Donuts apparent death, as he was his favorite Red. This causes Grif to exclaim "What's up with everyone loving Donut!"

[edit] Skills

Donut is shown to have at least some skills in battle when he ran over the Lopez robot soldier that was chasing him with the ghost.

[edit] Grenades

His Most impressive feat by far was his amazing plasma grenade throw in Season 1, when he hurled a plasma grenade halfway across blood gulch with exceptional accuracy to hit sheila (more specificly Tex) and killed her. In season 5, when Grif asks Sarge why Donut gets to stay far away from the battle, Sarge says it is because he is the best grenadier on red team, and probably all of Blood Gulch. He also appears to be somewhat of a connoisseur with grenades, asking each Red team member what grenade type, frag or sticky, they would like him to bring in case they are captured and need to kill themselves.

Donut claims his amazing skills with grenades come from "Years of tossing"

[edit] Spanish

He tells Simmons and Lopez that he took High School Spanish and can understand everything Lopez is saying. This fact is quickly proven false, as Donut can't translate anything Lopez says. In Chapter 19 as Simmons tries to fire the warthog chaingun, Lopez says "[Sarcastic] Maybe you could ask him to stand in front of it" and when Simmons asks what he says, Donut repeats it, but without the sarcasm, so he apparently only has a very small Spanish vocabulary.

[edit] Voice acting

Godwin, who recorded his lines alone in his home instead of in the Rooster Teeth studio,^[13] contributed to some of the jokes involving Donut's personality by ad-libbing. For example, when Donut accidentally injures himself in Episode 35, he exclaims, "Simmons, I need your ovaries!" The initial script mentioned "bones" instead of "ovaries"; Godwin improvised the change, with positive feedback from the staff.^[19] When Donut pretends to be a secret agent in the next episode, Godwin ad-libbed sound effects while recording dialogue involving a "super-spy jet pack".^[20]

The Episode 37 plot requires Church to possess Donut; during production, it was decided that Burns, the voice actor for Church, would voice Donut during the possession. Burns recalled in audio commentary that he made sure to retain an element of Donut's stupidity by confusing pronouns.^[10] Later, he stated that Godwin made a unique voice effect to mark the end of Church's possession. As such, Burns used a different visual effect to indicate this transition. Instead of visually dissolving the two characters, as was the normal practice, he flashed Church and Donut back and forth quickly.^[10] Another example of Godwin's improvisation occurs near the end of Episode 56. According to Burns, "In the script, all it said was, 'Donut screams like a woman.'… Dan just turned it into the funny thing… that we turned into… Donut running in the background."^[21]

[edit] Reception

Donut has been well-received by both Rooster Teeth personnel and viewers. Gustavo Sorola, who voices the character Simmons, noted that Godwin's voice acting "began to pick up" around episode 32 and that "Donut was probably [his] favorite character for season 2.… Dan did a great job."^[22] Season 2 co-writer Hullum agreed that episode 32 contained "some of Dan's best acting". In a February 2006 interview, Burnie Burns noted that, early in season 1, fans responded so well to Caboose and Donut that he decided to abandon the idea of an extra character, who would have acted as a journalist, in favor of more storyline involving the rookies.^[23] In light of the focus on the personalities of Donut and Caboose in season 2, Jandoc noted that "by season's end the rookies talk and act more like lunatic-asylum escapees than army soldiers. (Perhaps that says something?)"^[3] Godwin stated that much of the intended humor involving Donut derives from "gay jokes",^[15] but that Rooster Teeth has never received complaints about the theme of homosexuality.^[13]

On the other hand, Werner found that Donut's development throughout the series slightly impeded enjoyment of older, rewatched episodes. He stated:

If there’s one problem with [episode 3],… it is that the characters feel so different from what they will become, especially the titular rookies. The Donut of Episode 57… is completely different from the Donut of Episode 3…. [T]he writers and actors really haven’t found a tone for a character that they can really sink their teeth into. I think that these characters weren't natural for the voice-actors, and as they started to do their own thing, the writing followed them, until, eventually, utterly different characters emerged.^[2]

[edit] Trivia

• On Bungie.net, if you go to a Halo 3 Gamertag, look up the kill/weapon ratio, and scroll over the description of the flag, it reads, "It's next to the headlight fluid." This is a reference to the season one episode when Simmons and Grif send Donut on a trip to go pick up "two quarts of elbow grease" and some "headlight fluid for the Puma".
• Along with Tex and Tucker, Donut is one of the main characters from the original Red vs. Blue series that did not appear in Reconstruction.
• According to "The Where Are They Now?" ending, he married an Exotic Dancer named Tiffany, and they have 12 children
• The name Franklin Delano Donut is obviously a reference to the former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

[edit] References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Burns, et al., 2003.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} Werner, 2.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2} Jandoc.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} Burns, et al., 2004.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Burns, et al., 2005.
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} Burns, et al., Red vs. Blue Season Four.
7. ↑ Burns, et al., 2003, Audio Commentary, episode 4.
8. ↑ Burns, et al., 2003, episode 16.
9. ↑ Burns, et al., 2003, episode 18.
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1 10.2} Burns, et al., 2004, Audio Commentary, episode 37.
11. ↑ Burns, et al., 2004, Audio Commentary, episode 33.
12. ↑ Burns, et al., 2003, Audio Commentary, episode 16.
13. ↑ ^{13.0 13.1 13.2} Marks, Dan Godwin and Jason Saldaña.
14. ↑ Burns, et al., 2004, Audio/Video Setup.
15. ↑ ^{15.0 15.1} Pereira.
16. ↑ "It's Not Pink", Red vs. Blue Store.
17. ↑ Burns, et al., 2006, The Strangerhood, Cast & Crew, Burnie Burns & Matt Hullum.
18. ↑ Burns, et al., 2003, Audio Commentary, episode 3.
19. ↑ Burns, et al., 2004, Audio Commentary, episode 35.
20. ↑ Marks, Burnie Burns and Gus Sorola.
21. ↑ Burns, et al., 2005, Audio Commentary, episode 56.
22. ↑ Burns, et al., 2004, Audio Commentary, episode 32.
23. ↑ Smith.

Red Team
Sarge · Dick Simmons · Dexter Grif · Franklin Delano Donut · Lopez the Heavy · Chupathingy · The Motorcycle