Michael J. Caboose

Private Michael J. Caboose is a main character in Rooster Teeth Productions' machinima series Red vs. Blue. Voiced by Joel Heyman, Caboose first appears in Episode 3 of Season 1 as a new recruit for the Blood Gulch Blue Team, a group of soldiers engaged in a futuristic civil war against the Red Team.

Caboose is portrayed as one of the most eccentric characters in the series. Consistently shown to be mentally abnormal, his behavior varies from merely somewhat dim-witted in Season 1 to almost completely divorced from reality in Season 3. His unusual behavior frequently earns him the scorn and disrespect of the series' other characters.

In part due to positive early fan reaction, Burnie Burns, the main writer for the series, focused the storyline on Caboose and Donut (Dan Godwin), the Red Team's rookie.

Role in the Plot
Prior to the series, Caboose was born and raised in a colony on the moon with 17 siblings. He joined the army after mistaking a recruiting centre for college. Caboose first appears in Episode 3. Arriving with a tank named Sheila, he soon annoys the Blue Team's self-appointed leader, Church by calling his girlfiend a slut, and is consequently tasked with guarding the flag inside the team's base and waiting for a nonexistent general. Meanwhile, Simmons and Grif have sent their team's rookie, Donut, on a fool's errand for nonexistent supplies. In a mutual misunderstanding, Donut mistakes Caboose for a shopkeeper, and Caboose mistakes Donut for the "general" and allows him to take the flag. In the ensuing conflict, Caboose accidentally kills Church while using Sheila and narrowly escapes a bombing run that disables the tank. Caboose begins to show affection towards Sheila. Near the end of season 1, Caboose becomes possessed by O'Malley, an evil artificial intelligence (AI) who transmits himself to Caboose via radio before his original host, a mercenary named Tex, is killed.

Season 2 continues Caboose's character development. Episode 33 takes place inside Caboose's mind, which Church and Tex explore as ghosts in an attempt to kill O'Malley. There, they encounter Caboose's incorrect mental images of other characters. At the end of the season, Caboose becomes stranded with Sarge in an unknown location when a teleporter malfunctions. Caboose and Sarge escape from the Grunts, another set of respawning Red and Blue teams constantly fighting each other. After a bomb blasts most of the characters into the future, but Church into the past, Church learns of The Great Destroyer from Gary, a computer, who says that The Great Destroyer "will be known as the stupidest life form in the universe". Church assumes that this description refers to Caboose, but later events and the introduction of a new character, the Alien, cause the characters to suspect that the Great Destroyer is not Caboose. After the Blues encounter the Alien and learn of its quest, Caboose is sent along with Tucker; after the quest fails, they return to Blood Gulch. Caboose is later injured by 'donating' some blood to Tucker's Alien baby.

In Episode 89, Caboose is picked by his team to distract Sheila, while Tex shuts her down. They succeed, but Sheila is shut down just before she reveals the location of O'Malley to Caboose. He convinces his team of this, and they decided to place Sheila's AI into the newly arrived ship. Caboose stays behind to ensure the success of the transfer, and informs Tex by radio of the location of O'Malley, which was the leader of the blue team.

Lack Of Intelligence
Rooster Teeth notes that originally, there was no plan for Caboose as a character; he started out simply as the Blue rookie counter to Donut. Geoff Ramsey states on the DVD Commentary that Caboose was initially "smarmy" and "a very different character", albeit rather dim-witted. After fans reacted well to his moments of stupidity, however, the crew later orchestrated a long decline in Caboose's intelligence, starting when Sheila is disabled for the first time in Episode 9. His mentality is again dealt a blow after O'Malley is forcibly ejected from his system, and he becomes fairly divorced from reality and prone to frequent non sequiturs, going as far as to load his rifle with crayons and spelling his own name wrong. He has also forgotten how to use the sniper rifle. Shown in the first series to have the accuracy to get a headshot on a Church-possesed Sarge, he is quoted in saying he has no idea how to use the gun in Episode 82. Sarge notes in Episode 39 that it "sounds like O'Malley took some of the furniture when he left".

He occasionally asks questions about things the others take for granted, such as why a flag is so important, and often fails to grasp even basic concepts, such as the meaning of AI. The only human initially able to lift Andy, he is physically one of the strongest soldiers on either team; Church and Tucker think that it is "God's way of compensating" for his glaring mental deficiencies.

Relationship With Other Characters
Caboose's relationships with the other characters is unique in that a few episodes depicted the interior of his mind, where the incorrect mental projections of the other characters appeared (with the exceptions of Tex, Lopez, Doc and Sheila). In his mind, Caboose believes himself to be intelligent, Church his foul-mouthed best friend, Tucker stupid, Grif yellow-armored, Donut female, and that Sarge speaks in what is actually a pirate accent. Additionally, in Episode 54, he refers to Simmons as "Simmon", Grif as "Gruf", and the Warthog as the "Boss Hogg" - though in Episode 82 he is able correctly name both Grif and Simmons. He still suffers from incorrect mental images with at least Church and Tucker, as in Episode 97, he refers to Tucker as his sidekick whom he dislikes, and believes Church to be calling to ask Caboose to be his best friend.

Caboose's most prominent relationship is his remarkable admiration of Church. After dealing him several initial misfortunes, Caboose was eager to make amends and become Church's friend; his attempts to do so inevitably failed. The issue was complicated when O'Malley shot and killed Caboose's mental image of Church, immediately causing Caboose not to recognize the real Church, and all his memories of him were lost. However, by the end of season 2, Caboose resumes communication with Church as before, and references the events he had previously forgotten. The Rooster Teeth crew notes that it was just too complicated to keep up. As late as Episode 77, Caboose has referred to Church as his best friend. For his part, Church puts up with Caboose, but often loses his temper at him. However, in Episode 76, Caboose implied that he didn't know how pregnancy occurred, and Church promised to read a book with him.

Caboose is also infatuated with Sheila. He expresses much grief when Sheila is bombed out of commission in Episode 9, calling Sheila his "friend". He later refers to her as his "girlfriend". When she expresses interest in Lopez in Episode 30, what Tucker calls "a weird, horribly disgusting love triangle" begins to form. In Episodes 89-90, the relationship is touched on again, when Caboose is enlisted to reboot Sheila after she begins acting aggresively, though he seems hesitant to talk to her because they have a 'history' and could have an argument much like Tex and Church.

Reception
Caboose has become one of the more popular characters in the series, and in 2005, Caboose was selected as the Best Male Performance in the 3rd Annual Rockets on Prisoner Awards, which are intended to recognize exemplary work in Halo machinima. In his acceptance speech, Joel Heyman acted in-character.

Quotes

 * "I am Caboose, the vehicle destroyer!" - mistakenly thinking that he is invincible
 * "My name is Michael J. Caboose, and I hate babies!!" - just before he goes on a homocidal killing spree against the Red army of Battle Creek
 * "That's not a target. That's Church." - shortly before Caboose kills Church with Sheila
 * "That was you?! I thought the tooth fairy was mad at me!" - Caboose upon discovering that Tex is the one who had been punching him in the head while he was asleep
 * " I like me" - After Tucker says that nobody likes him.