Red vs. Blue

Red vs. Blue
Filmed using
Genre	science fiction; comedy
Running time	5 to 6 minutes (average)
Created by	Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Gustavo Sorola, Jason Saldaña
Voices	Mark Bellman Jen Brown Burnie Burns Yomary Cruz Sean Duggan John Erler Brandon Farmahini Rebecca Frasier Gavin Free Dan Godwin Joel Heyman Samantha Ireland Matt Hullum Michael Joplin Jack Lee Shannon McCormick Shana Merlin Geoff Ramsey John Marshall Reed Ed Robertson Asaf Ronen Jason Saldaña Gustavo Sorola Nathan Zellner Kathleen Zuelch
Production company	Rooster Teeth
Release(s)	April 1, 2003 - Present
No. of episodes	The Blood Gulch Chronicles: 105 Recollections: 66 (+2 trailers) Project Freelancer: 51 Fourth Saga: 19+ (+2 trailers)
http://www.roosterteeth.com

Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a popular sci-fi action, comedy machinima series created by Rooster Teeth Productions. Originally using the Halo: Combat Evolved engine, it has since been filmed using three sequels and one prequel of the popular game: Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 4, and Halo: Reach, as well as utilized Computer Generated Imagery. Praised for its originality, the series has won four awards from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences and won the award for "Best Animated Web Series" in the International Academy of Web Television in 2012 and 2013.

Main Characters

Main Article: List of Characters

Main Article: List of Appearances

Red Team

• Staff Sergeant "Sarge" (Seasons 1-Present)
• Captain Richard "Dick" Simmons (Seasons 1-8, 10-Present; Active)
• Captain Dexter Grif (Seasons 1-Present; Active)
• Private Franklin Delano Donut (Seasons 1-5, 7-8, 10-Present; Active)
• Lopez the Heavy (Seasons 1-7, 10-Present; Active)

Blue Team

• Private Leonard L. Church (Seasons 1-7, 9-10; KIA, memory in Epsilon)
• Captain Lavernius Tucker (Seasons 1-8, 10-Present; Active)
• Captain Michael J. Caboose (Seasons 1-Present; Active)
• Freelancer Texas (Seasons 1-7, 9-10; KIA)
• Freelancer Washington (Recovery One-Present; Active)
• Epsilon A.I. (Recovery One-Present; Active)
• Sheila (Seasons 1-Relocated; Inactive)
• Captain Butch Flowers (Seasons 3, 5, 9-10; KIA)

Project Freelancer

• Dr. Leonard Church (Season 6, 8-10; KIA)
• Freelancer Carolina (Seasons 9-Present; Active)
• Freelancer Maine/The Meta (Recovery One-Season 10; KIA)
• Freelancer Wyoming (Seasons 3-Recovery One, Seasons 9-10; KIA)
• Freelancer New York (Out of Mind, Recovery One, Seasons 9-10; KIA)
• Freelancer South Dakota (Recovery One-Season 6, 9-10; KIA)
• Freelancer North Dakota (Recovery One, Seasons 9-10; KIA)

Artificial Intelligence

• Omega A.I. (Seasons 1-6, 10; KIA, memory in Epsilon)
• Gamma A.I. (Seasons 3-6, 10; KIA, memory in Epsilon)
• Delta A.I. (Out of Mind-Season 6, 9-10; KIA, memory in Epsilon)
• Sigma A.I. (Seasons 6, 10; KIA, memory in Epsilon)
• F.I.L.S.S. (Seasons 8-10; KIA)

Other

• Medical Officer Super Private First Class Frank "Doc" DuFresne (Seasons 2-6, 8, 10-11; MIA)
• Andrew D. "Andy" Kaboom (Seasons 3-6, 11; MIA)
• Vic/Vic Jr. (Seasons 1-5; MIA)
• Oversight Sub-Committee Chairman Malcom Hargrove (Seasons 6-7, 10; Active)
• Insurrectionist Leader (Seasons 7-10; KIA)
• C.T. (Seasons 9-10; KIA)
• Locus (Seasons 11-Present; Active)
• Felix (Seasons 11-Present; Active)

Production

The Red vs. Blue cast reading their lines.

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.

Red vs. Blue: Season 10 Production

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.

An example of the blend between gameplay and CGI as seen in Revelation

In 2009, Monty Oum was hired to work on minor special effects in Recreation, most notably Epsilon's laser beam in Think You Know Someone. During the production of Revelation, Monty began working on animating the Red vs. Blue characters in Computer Generated Imagery, which was blended within Halo 3 by Nathan Zellner and Matt Hullum. Since then, Rooster Teeth has moved to a new office building with a whole empty storage room, used for motion capture. Rooster Teeth also currently have a full team of animators working on Red vs. Blue's animation, alongside Monty Oum. They have produced the CGI for Season 9 and Season 10.

During the production of the third saga, Rooster Teeth Productions decided to employ a new writer to the series. Around 2012, Miles Luna became the writer of Red vs. Blue, who has written for the Where There's a Will, There's a Wall mini-series and Season 10. Currently, Miles Luna is the main writer and director of the fourth unnamed saga and co-writer for Rooster Teeth's animated series, RWBY.

The Blood Gulch Chronicles

The Blood Gulch Chronicles is the first main saga in the Red vs. Blue series, spanning 5 seasons, 100 episodes, and a 5-part mini-series, Out of Mind. The main characters include Church, Tucker, Caboose, Sarge, Grif, Simmons, Donut, Tex, and Doc. Major recurring characters include Lopez, Sheila, and Andy. The primary antagonists are O'Malley and Wyoming.

The first season of The Blood Gulch Chronicles begins with the introduction of two rookies on the Red and Blue teams, also getting a jeep and a tank respectively. The Red recruit, Donut, is sent on a fool's errand by his fellow soldiers, only to accidentally steal the enemy flag when he believed it to be the store (and the Blue rookie believing Donut to be the General foretold in the fool's errand of his own). The weeks of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering breaks down into chaos and [poorly] constructed offenses.

The second season begins several months after the first season. A medical officer arrives to check on a wounded soldier Blue team reported. He had come months afterward, so by the time he got there, the wounded soldier (Tex) had already died. Almost immediately after his arrival the Red team attacks. Red team salvages their failed attack by getting Doc as an exchange for Blue team's surrender (although he was ordered to go to Red team anyway). Doc's added involvement in the canyon, combined with a rampant A.I. infecting Caboose, will force the two opposing teams to do the unthinkable.

The third season begins with the Red and Blue teams fighting Doc/O'Malley and soon finding themselves in the "future", with Church traveling back in time, reliving events from the previous two seasons in order to fix past events. When Church, however, is unable to fix past problems, he travels into the future and rejoins the others. Suddenly, the soldiers stumble upon a prophecy that states a blue being destroying everything. Soon afterwards, the Reds and Blues try to defend themselves from an attack by O'Malley when the "Great Destroyer" arrives.

The fourth season begins with the Red Team following a distress signal back to Blood Gulch, and experience a falling out with one of their soldiers. Meanwhile, Tucker, Tex, Caboose, Andy, and the Alien go on quest to save the alien's race. When their quest comes to an end, Tex ventures off for Wyoming and does not return to Blood Gulch with the rest of Blue team. In the aftermath, when Tucker becomes seriously ill, the Blue team, having no other choice, invite Doc and O'Malley to their base in order to help him.

Out of Mind is a mini-series that takes place in between Seasons 4 and 5, being a narrative from Tex's point of view as she pursues bounty hunter Wyoming, told in a much more serious tone. The events precede both Season 5 and Recovery One (see below) and features the first Red vs. Blue episodes to remove letterboxing.

The fifth season begins with a ship from Earth crash-landing in the middle of the canyon, containing a new soldier. Red team experiences a major crisis in their chain of command and Blue team welcomes a new addition to the family. Church also tries to stop O'Malley once and for all.

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. It was the series finale that tied up all the "loose ends". Click here for the page.

April 1st is a special day for us here at RoosterTeeth, as it marks the anniversary of the first Red vs Blue episode we ever posted, way back in 2003. We always want to pause on occasions such as this to thank all of you for supporting RvB over the years. We try to say it as often as we can; the people of this community do so much for us by keeping us inspired and motivated to create every day. And the sponsors especially deserve our gratitude by supporting us in (if I may borrow a phrase) "a rent and food" kind of way. It's hard to believe that today marks four years of producing the series and with this week's release, we are 6 episodes from Episode 100. It seems like just yesterday that we started working on what we thought was going to be a mini-series that was intended to run six episodes in total. Producing RvB and getting to know the people who watch it have been two of the greatest joys of my life. That's why we wanted to let you all know first that Episode 100 is going to be the last installment of The Blood Gulch Chronicles. One hundred is a great number, and it seems like the perfect place to call it a show. I am sure you have some questions about our plans for the series and beyond. We will be talking about all of that in the weeks and months to come, but I want to use this time to thank all of you for nearly half a decade of support. For now, it's back to work. From the recent developments in the storyline, you may have noticed some loose ends coming together and we have a lot to wrap up in the last seven videos. We hope you will love them as much as the first seven or the middle seven or whatever it was that initially drew you to the world of Red vs Blue.

The episode was released with three alternate endings, with more on the DVD release. The canon ending is a repeat of the first episode with reversed roles of the reds watching the blues "just standing there and just talking."

Recollections

The Recollections Trilogy is the second saga in the main series that includes the sequel series: Reconstruction, Recreation, and Revelation. It also includes two mini-series: Recovery One and Relocated. The main characters in the saga include Sarge, Grif, Simmons, Donut, Church, Tucker, Caboose, Lopez, Doc, Washington, Epsilon-Tex, and Epsilon. Major recurring characters include the Director, the Chairman, and Delta. The primary antagonists are the Meta and C.T.

Recovery One is a Red vs. Blue miniseries distributed via Xbox Live and the internet that takes place after the events of Out of Mind, as well as before and during Season 5. 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 of freelancers killed in action by an unknown being.

The sixth season, Reconstruction , is a direct sequel to The Blood Gulch Chronicles, exploring the causality of events from both The Blood Gulch Chronicles and Recovery One. The story continues to follow Recovery Agent Washington's journey, tracking down a mysterious enemy called the Meta who is killing Freelancers and taking their armor enhancements and AIs. In need of assistance, Wash has to find the soldiers with the knowledge and experience to help him; namely Caboose and Church.

Relocated is a direct sequel to Reconstruction, following the Red Team, now in Valhalla, struggling to do the usual nothing, and Caboose's strange actions at Blue Base, drawing further attention to himself.

The seventh season, Recreation, is a direct sequel to Relocated and Reconstruction. As the Reds continue to try and figure out what Caboose is up to and wake up a comatose Donut, Caboose continues trying to make a new best friend out of the Epsilon Unit. He finds the Reds' Holo-Room, with help from Donut, when Epsilon tells him about Tucker and a mysterious energy reading at a desert. When Grif and Sarge agree to come, in an attempt to put the Blues back in Command's database, the three meet a strange man at the desert. Meanwhile in Valhalla, Simmons, Lopez, and Donut fend for themselves as they battle against the elusive Meta.

The eigth season, Revelation, is a direct sequel to Recreation and the last of the Recollections Trilogy. In Sandtrap, Epsilon seems to have no memory as to what happened to him, but he begins to have flashbacks. In one of his power failures, a memory of the Delta AI tells Caboose that the Epsilon is looking for a specific memory. When Epsilon awakens, he and Caboose head off to a secret facility, run by F.I.L.S.S., in order to find it, with the Reds trailing behind them. Epsilon finds the secret in a mysterious bunker and unlocks something terrible: Tex. Meanwhle, Washington and the Meta hunt for Epsilon and have taken Doc hostage.

Project Freelancer

The Project Freelancer Saga is the third main saga of the series, spanning two seasons and two mini-series. Unlike the previous two sagas, however, the Project Freelancer saga focuses on prequel events taking place before The Blood Gulch Chronicles, as well as present day events. The main characters include Epsilon, Tucker, Caboose, Sarge, Grif, Simmons, Washington, Carolina, Tex, South Dakota, North Dakota, York, C.T., and Maine. Major recurring characters include the Epsilon-Doubles, Delta, and the Counselor. The primary antagonists of the saga are Sigma, the Insurrection, and the Director.

The ninth season, which begins the Project Freelancer saga, continues directly after the events of n+1, with Epsilon reliving the events from The Blood Gulch Chronicles with his memories of: Tex, Tucker, Caboose, Sarge, Grif, Simmons, Donut and Lopez. Along with this, a new Freelancer backstory is also shown, detailing the history of Project Freelancer and its agents.

MIA is a mini-series taking place sometime in between the beginning and end of Season 9. It chronicles the misadventures of the Red and Blue teams searching for Grif while inside the Epsilon Unit.

Where There's a Will, There's a Wall is a mini-series, taking place inside the Epsilon Unit, that follows the Red Team discovering a huge wall behind their base. Meanwhile, the Blues rejoice over their newly arrived Falcon and argue to see who gets control over it.

The tenth season continues after the events of Season 9, following Carolina's journey to kill the Director with the Reds and Blues, as well as wrapping up the events of the Freelancer backstory, first introduced in Season 9. This season also elaborates more on the Freelancer A.I. fragments.

Fourth Saga

Although unnamed, Rooster Teeth stated that a new saga would begin after Season 10. The story focuses on the Reds and Blues crash landing on a long forgotten planet and unexpectedly becoming involved in the planet's civil war. Currently, the main characters include Sarge, Simmons, Grif, Washington, Tucker, Caboose, Donut, Lopez, and Doc. Major recurring characters include Freckles, Kimball, and the New Republic. The primary antagonists include Locus, Felix, and Lopez 2.0.

The eleventh season takes place sometime after the present-day events of Season 10 and follows the adventures of the Reds and Blues as they are being transported home after being pardoned for helping bring down Project Freelancer. Unfortunately, after their ship crash lands in an unknown location, the Reds and Blues attempt to find a way out of the area, but obtain the unwanted attention of two groups who may have the wrong idea about them.

The twelfth season takes place after the events of Season 11. With their friends captured by the Federal Army, Tucker, Grif, Simmons, and Caboose train with the New Republic in order to not only rescue them, but save the planet of Chorus in the process. However, they soon learn that there is more to the war and its combatants then they initially thought.

Reception

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.

Impact on Video Games

Due to the series' large and growing popularity, many within the video game industry have made reference to the web-series numerous times. For example, the Halo franchise has referenced the series' characters and recurring jokes in many of its games, as well as hiring Rooster Teeth Productions to promote their products through the web-series. Critics have even stated Red vs. Blue to have amazing character development which other media should take an example of.

Trivia

• Burnie Burns got the idea for making The Blood Gulch Chronicles while playing Halo: CE in Blood Gulch. He had gotten the inspiration by asking his fellow teammate "Why do they call it a Warthog? Can't they call it a Puma?"
• Red vs. Blue was originally intended to last only six episodes, but its popularity led to the production of over two-hundred, with seperate seasons.
• The first four seasons were eventually re-shot, or "remastered", using the Halo: Combat Evolved Custom Edition PC game. The remastered seasons presented freedom of the constraints Rooster Teeth experienced in the original production, including removing the target reticle, improving the size of the aspect ratio and removing the camera from the controlled camera character. The remastered seasons were originally released over Xbox Live, but were later released on DVD as a 5-season box set.
• Currently, only seven characters have appeared in 100 or more episodes in the series, which are: Caboose, Simmons, Grif, Sarge, Tucker, Donut, and Church. These are also the only characters to obtain a RVB-ism poster.
• Sarge, Caboose, and Grif are currently the only characters in the series that have made an appearance in every season (Note: Grif makes a vocal appearance in Season 9, rather than a physical one).
  • Coincidentally, they are also the only characters featured in the PSA Sleeper.
• Simmons and Grif are currently the only characters in the series to appear in all types of animation forms used in Red vs. Blue (machinima, 2D animation, and CGI). They also currently have the longest series lifespan than any other character, with both being first introduced in the Red vs. Blue Trailer.
• All main human antagonists have a relation to the color white, as Wyoming's armor is entirely white, the Meta's primary armor color is white, the Insurrectionist Leader has white trim when using C.T.'s armor, the Director has white hair and is in command of Project Freelancer (its signature color is white), and Locus is in command of many white-armored soldiers.
• Every season finale has a plot twist, except for saga-ending seasons (Season 5, Revelation, & Season 10).

1. Season 1: Omega escapes death by infecting Caboose.
2. Season 2: Doc/Omega kidnaps Lopez and the Reds and Blues work together to stop him before being sent across the galaxy.
3. Season 3: The Reds re-discover Blood Gulch and the Alien is seen.
4. Season 4: Junior is born and a Pelican lands on Donut.
5. Reconstruction: Church is revealed to be based on Director Leonard Church.
6. Recreation: Washington teams up with Meta and shoots Donut and Lopez.
7. Season 9: Carolina is revealed to be alive after her supposed death.
8. Season 11: Carolina is revealed to be in contact with Locus.

• 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: Jason Saldaña (Tucker) and Matt Hullum (Doc) on Easy and Normal; Geoff Ramsey (Grif) and Gus Sorola (Simmons) on Heroic; Burnie Burns (Church) and Joel Heyman (Caboose) on Legendary. Sarge cameos on the level Tsavo Highway as the radio operator's voice, just before the tunnel prior to where the Pelican drops off the Warthogs.
  • Several Red vs. Blue actors also appear throughout the Halo: Reach campaign as marines, with Geoff Ramsey on Sword Base, and Burnie Burns on The Package, among others.
• In both Halo 3 and Halo: Reach, "Puma" can be read on the wheels of a Warthog.
• In the expansion pack for the video game Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, there is an achievement called "Chupathingy," when a player kills a Chupacabra, a reference to Red Gets a Delivery.
• In the game The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, there is an achievement called "Bleep Bloop", in reference to Caboose's self-created achievements in the Small Rewards PSA.
• In the game Gears of War, there is an achievement entitled "Is it a Spider?", awarded for sticking 100 enemies with a grenade in multiplayer, a reference to the episode Knock, knock. Who's there? Pain.
• The series inspired the creation of the Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4 gametype Grifball, based off the statement made by Sarge in Episode 59.
• In Halo 4, several characters make voice-only, cameo appearances as Easter Eggs in the Spartan Ops campaign when finding hidden boxes. When shot, the boxes play a segment of Blood Gulch Blues and cause different audio segments to be heard than in the normal campaign.

External Links

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