Red vs. Blue

Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a popular sci-fi, 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. 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.

Main Characters

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

Red Team

 * Staff Sergeant Sarge (Season 1-Present, Active)
 * Minor Junior Private Negative First Class Dexter Grif (Season 1-Present, Active)
 * Private First Class Richard Dick Simmons (Season 1-8, 10-Present, Active)
 * Private Franklin Delano Donut (Seasons 1-5, 7-8, 10-Present, Active)
 * Lopez the Heavy (Seasons 1-7, 10, Inactive)

Blue Team

 * Private Leonard L. Church (Seasons 1-7, 9-10, KIA)
 * Private First Class Lavernius Tucker (Seasons 1-8, 10-Present, Active)
 * Private Michael J. Caboose (Seasons 1-Present, Active)
 * Freelancer Texas (Seasons 1-7, 9-10, KIA)
 * Freelancer Washington (Recovery One-Present, Active)
 * Kaikaina Grif (Season 5-6, KIA)
 * Junior (Seasons 4-5, MIA)
 * Andy (Seasons 3-6, MIA)
 * Captain Butch Flowers (Seasons 3, 5, 9-10, KIA)

Project Freelancer

 * Dr. Leonard Church (Season 6, 8-10, KIA)
 * Counselor (Recovery One-Seasons 6, 9-10, Active)
 * Freelancer Carolina (Season 9-Present, Active)
 * Freelancer Maine (Recovery One-Season 10, KIA)
 * Freelancer Wyoming (Seasons 3-5, Recovery One, Seasons 9-10, KIA)
 * Freelancer South Dakota (Recovery One-Seasons 6, 9, 10, KIA)
 * Freelancer New York (Out of Mind, Seasons 9-10, KIA)
 * Freelancer North Dakota (Recovery One, Seasons 9-10, KIA)
 * Four Seven Niner (Seasons 9-10, Active)

Artificial Intelligence

 * Sheila (Seasons 1-6, Active, working at minimum capacity)
 * Epsilon AI (Recovery One-Present, Active)
 * Omega AI (Seasons 1-6, 10, KIA, Memory in Epsilon)
 * Gamma AI (Seasons 3-6, 10, KIA, Memory in Epsilon)
 * Delta AI (Out of Mind-Seasons 6, 9-10, KIA, Memory in Epsilon)
 * Sigma AI (Seasons 6, 10, KIA, Memory in Epsilon)
 * Theta AI (Seasons 6, 10, KIA, Memory in Epsilon)
 * F.I.L.S.S. (Seasons 8-Present, Active)
 * Epsilon-Tex (Seasons 8-9, Inactive)

Other

 * Medical Super Private First Class Frank DuFresne (Season 2-6, 8, 10-Present, Active)
 * Vic (Seasons 1-3, KIA)
 * Vic Jr. (Seasons 4-5, MIA)
 * Oversight Sub-Committee Chairman Malcom Hargrove (Seasons 6-7, 10, Active)
 * Insurrectionist Leader (Seasons 7, 9-10, KIA)
 * C.T. (Seasons 9-10, KIA)
 * Alien (Seasons 3-4, KIA)

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.

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 are currently working on Season 10.

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 Sister. The primary antagonists are O'Malley, Gary, 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 AI infecting Caboose will force the two opposing teams to do the unthinkable.



The third season begins with the Red and Blue teams having found 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.



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, Tex, and Epsilon. 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, currently 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, the Director, the Counselor, Tex, Epsilon-Tex, South Dakota, North Dakota, York, C.T., Maine, Wyoming, Delta, Alpha and Four Seven Niner. The primary antagonists are Sigma and a group called the Insurrection.



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.

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.

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?"
 * 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, where they yelled "son of a bitch!") the last words they say are "Herk, ble-ag!"
 * 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.
 * Sarge, Grif, and Caboose 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.)
 * 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, animated, and CGI).
 * 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 (Doc); On Heroic it's Geoff Ramsey (Grif) and Gus Sorola (Simmons); On Legendary, it is Burnie Burns (Church) and Joel Heyman (Caboose). Sarge cameos on the level Tsavo Highway as the radio operators voice just before the tunnel before the Pelican drops off the Warthogs.
 * 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.
 * 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 "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.