Talk:List of characters in Red vs. Blue/Main characters

Red vs Blue has a fairly complex and (at times) ambiguous plot, especially for a series that is primarily a comedy. I've decided to create a list of things that have tripped up editors (including me) in the past. Please refer to this before making changes. This information is current as of episode 73, and might change if other information is revealed in later episodes.


 * 1) Donut's armor is "pink", not "light(ish) red". Even Donut calls it pink by episode 30.
 * 2) O'Malley possesses Caboose before Tex dies; it's when he radios Church to inform him of Tex's impending attack on the Reds.
 * 3) Not every one of the Battle Creek guys is a "zealot". Only the Red Zealot has that much fervor. Rooster Teeth has called the collective group "Grunts" in the season 3 DVD commentary.
 * 4) The Alien has no other established name, other than the generic "Alien" (we use uppercase to denote that we are talking specifically about the Alien who is on the sacred quest). Only Caboose ever uses "Crunch-Bite", and it has never been estabilished whether "Honk-Honk" is the Alien's actual name, so consensus has been just to call him the Alien.
 * 5) Tucker's armor is cyan or aqua (both colors are mentioned in canonical sources, and are actually the same color, unless "aqua" is short for aquamarine). Likewise, Church is cobalt, even though Halo's version thereof is probably too light for a true cobalt.
 * 6) It is never established whether Tucker is or is not Black. His only answer to Church's question is, "Does it matter?" See episode 54.
 * 7) It has not yet been established whether Red and Blue Commands are actually the same in the future. There are signs that they might be, but Rooster Teeth is intentionally ambiguous at times. As a corollary, Vic Jr.'s affiliation has not been established.
 * 8) Note that The Great Destroyer is not necessarily "the stupidest life form in the universe", only "known as the stupidest life form in the universe". There is a difference.
 * 9) It has been established that Tex can lift Andy (see the end of episode 63); it is unknown whether she can actually carry him. She says that she cannot, but characters are capable of lying.

&mdash; TKD (Talk) 10:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Quotes from Red vs Blue?
One of the things I've noticed over time is that a lot of users wish to keep adding in new quotes from Sarge and Caboose particularly. It's nice that they want to add these quotes, but the problem is, if allowed, we would probably have about 10 - 15 quotes for each character, taking up a lot of space. Should we create a seperate quotes page for Red vs Blue or just keep things as they are? I'm fine either way, I'm just not too gamed to have to maintain such a large page with nothing but quotes and no direct references. --LifeStar 15:17, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * That's what Wikiquote is for. We could do something similar to what was done in the MythBusters article, and add an invisible (to non-editors) comment suggesting that if people want to add more quotes, that they do it on the Wikiquote page. That said, however, the Red vs Blue wikiquote page is getting out of hand somewhat. I gave it a good trim recently, but it's creeping back up.--Drat (Talk) 15:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
 * See, I love Red vs Blue, but honestly, adding quotes from the show won't make much sense to the non-fan in my opinion. So I'm not a big fan of quoting the show unless it can be used in a non-red vs. blue context.  Maybe I'll edit and take out the quotes from Sarge, Caboose, and O'Malley.  They're not necessary and makes them more special than the other characters since they're the only ones who have quotes on their bios currently.--LifeStar 16:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Simmons armor
Depite what his armor may look like, I think that we have to list simmons armor as maroon up untill he paints it. In episode 70, Church refers to Simmons as some other guy in maroon armor. So no matter what his armor may actually look like, I think it has to be maroon.
 * I agree. Maroon is still canon. Changed. -- TKD 10:21, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

what does it mean by
predestination paradox?

Pece Kocovski 03:49, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Read the page on it. It provides several fictional examples, including RvB.--Drat (Talk) 01:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Zealots
shouldn't we also have the blue and red zealots as a character(s) in the guest characters?

Pece Kocovski 03:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Let's wait for the next episode. And please use proper topic titles, instead of the first few words of the question.--Drat (Talk) 03:59, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Should they be referred as the red and blue zealots or the battle creek players? There seems to be a debate on their exact identity.  --LifeStar 19:53, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * There is only one Zealot: The Red Zealot. The others want the flag, but don't show behaviour to that level.--Drat (Talk) 01:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with Drat here. Remember that, when Caboose and Sarge stole their flags in Battle Creek, the others didn't particularly relate to the RZ's quasi-religious dogma. TKD 05:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Okay, good points guys. The question then is should we continue to reference them as the "Battle Creek' soldiers?  Tucker and the others haven't given them an official name, which is sorta annoying.  All we know is that they were some sort of undying soldiers who constantly were resurrected after the end of each CTF game.--LifeStar 19:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Official vs. apparent armor color
While I was happy to eliminate crimson as am armor color for Simmons (see above), I was going through the DVDs again, and Church's armor is consistently (both in the Season 1 commentary and the Season 3 bio) referred to as cobalt, but as Wikipedia and other pages show, cobalt is generally a darker hue. Burnie refers to Tucker as aqua in the Season 1 commentary, and the Season 3 bio lists his armor as cyan, when it's probably a darker shade of aquamarine. On one hand, sticking to what's canon is safe, but, it might also be slightly confusing to people unfamiliar with the series. Ideas on how to handle this? -- TKD 06:57, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, has images from the original trailer. The text "CHURCH" is cobalt, but he's lighter; the text "TUCKER" is cyan, but his armor has more of a greenish tint than cyan does. -- TKD 07:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I decided to be bold and change colors to what they are in canonical sources. -- TKD 11:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Changes, January 14 2006
I just reworked some of the material for this page. Some explanations might be in order:


 * I consolidated all information about the GREAT DESTROYER in the GREAT DESTROYER section, instead of mentioning under Tucker, Caboose, etc., that they were at one point possibly implied to be the GREAT DESTROYER.
 * Reading the bio of Vic on the season 3 DVD, it clearly states that he is the Blue Command contact, so it was somewhat misleading to flat-out state in the opening sentence that he was the contact at both Commands. Instead, until we get more some information, I only state that Church's conversation with Vic that Red and Blue are the same retcons things, and Tucker intercepts a communication between Sarge and Vic.
 * Sarge's rank as staff sergeant also comes from the season 3 DVD.

-- TKD 12:25, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Reworking of changes, January 17 2006
Here's the rationale for reverting some of the changes that 60.230.235.8 made:


 * Not every Battle Creek Red is the Red Zealot. The RZ has very specific attributes as described in the article, and, as far as we know, Tucker killed him for good back in season 3.
 * The quote for Wyoming was to explain the existence of only 49 states. Changing it to the "game" that Caboose thought that they were playing doesn't fit the context.
 * The additions to Church were, in my opinion, better explained under Sheila (since that whole spiel with the three vehicles really was most about Sheila's reaction, so I moved that info to Sheila) or was basically already there under Vic.

-- TKD 08:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Doc's Name
I can't for the life of me find where Doc's first name is said. I even remember Burnie of Rooster Teeth saying that they never said what Doc's first name is. I've asked others and they can't find it. The only place I know where is says Doc's name is Frank is on DiMono's fan site and he even says that all of his stuff on characters is made up. Why is it still saying Doc's first name is Frank here if it's never said anywhere? TomTThomson


 * Good catch. I've checked PUMA (the searchable transcript program) and the season 3 DVD. Doc's full name on the season 3 DVD is just "Dufresne". I've taken the liberty of removing the apparently non-canonical first name. If anyone finds a canonical reference to it, cite it and re-add it. -- TKD 06:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

it's dufrense, i think doc actually said dufrane?

Pece Kocovski 01:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It's a French name, and it does appear as Dufresne in one video, IIRC.--Drat (Talk) 02:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Andy's Weight
"Being the only human other than Tex who can lift Andy..."

When did Tex lift Andy? I thought the whole joke was that Tex couldn't life the bomb because she was a woman, and woman are stereotyped as weak (when in actuality Tex is the most competent soldier in the entire series). As far as I know, only Caboose and the *alien* can lift Andy.
 * Check towards the end of episode 63.--Drat (Talk) 00:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * And here we were worried about retconning the length of the series... --Raveled

Sarge lifts Andy too in episode 66 when he swaps him with Lopez. Andy claims to have "Lost weight" so more characters can probably lift him now, but only Caboose, Tex and Sarge have so far.

rvbchar
In case someone sees this before they see it on the main Red vs Blue talk page, I've just created a template, &#123;{rvbchar}}, to make linking to individual Red vs Blue characters easier. See my recent edit and Template talk:rvbchar for usage. It cuts the keystrokes, reduces the chance for error, and doesn't take up half a line in the edit box (making editig a paragraph with character links easier to manage). -- TKD 12:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The Florida footnote
To 68.191.134.114, who's been trying to revise the footnote about Florida: The &lt;ref name="x"&gt; footnote only takes its content from the first occurrence of "x". &lt;ref "x"&gt; on the other hand creates a new footnote each time. What are you trying to change about it? -- TKD 04:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Rewording
Maybe I'm a little overly concerned, but, to the extent that it's possible, I'd like to try to avoid blanket statements (e.g., Caboose is "psychotic"), especially in the body of the character descriptions. It's better if specific examples are cited; this keeps the information more verifiable and wards off possible claims of original research and/or POV.

By the way, I know LifeStar likes it, but I'm not sure that the Cassandra/Donut comparison is clear enough to mention without its being original research. It's not an "obvious" reference as some of the jokes are. I've left it in for now, but I'm leaning toward wanting to remove it.

I also removed the bit about Sarge being a civilian livestock judge. It didn't seem to "fit" with the rest of the material, being a one-off comment. — TKD::Talk 01:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, you gotta admit the Rooster Teeth people know their mythos and movies. One note, I'm not sure what to do with the Caboose section of the article.  It doesn't feel complete as it starts off stating that Caboose is insane, but initially he wasn't.  We kept the description of how Donut eventually de-evoled into his effeminate, child-like state after his head injury by Tex, what happened to the Caboose's de-evolution?  I know that near the end there are notes about what the production team had originally thought he would be and then their plan to make him more insane, but we should detail out how he was a normal soldier at first, until Sheila was blown to pieces and O'Malley messing with his mind.  I'd like to revise it, but I'm not sure where to start.  It seems I might have to re-write this section unless anyone else has some objections or suggestions.  --LifeStar 14:34, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Throw in how he was probably psychologically damaged from killing Church, and it sounds good. -- Viewdrix 20:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's partially my fault for not structuring it well. It could definitely use a good reorganization. Not sure that I'll have time to get to it tonight, but anyone who wants to take a crack at it is certainly welcome. — TKD::Talk 01:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Rewrite attempted. I tried to make things flow a little more logically. It could still use some more expansion, as could some of the other characters. I found it best for writing flow to keep the out-of-universe stuff at the end of the section, rather than trying to fit it in chronologically. — TKD::Talk 19:45, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Edits, April 8 2006
A more thorough explanation for my latest reworking/reversion:


 * Yes, Sarge does save Grif's life; however, there is no evidence that he consciously does this to "repay" the favor.
 * There is no evidence that Church actually believes that Grif is smart. He is messing with Simmons' mind at that point. This has been reverted a few times this week, and not just by myself.
 * I'm almost positive that the season 3 DVD character profiles do not explain that viewers confused Lopez for Tex. The season 1 DVD commentary probably does mention it, but that needs to be verified.
 * The Purple Hearts bit is at best tangential even for Caboose's section.
 * In episode 52, Church's quote is: "Nope. No matter how bad they seem, they can't be any better, and they can't be any worse, because that's the way things fucking are, and you better get used to it, Nancy. Quit your bitching." That basically applies to his attempts to change the past, and doesn't seem to extrapolate itself to situations that are still unfolding (because those haven't finished occurring yet), as happensin episode 77. — TKD::Talk 07:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Simmon's cyborg operation
Simmons stated during Season Two that in his cyborg operation Sarge implanted his negative emotion centre into Grif - so, is the fact that he bursts into tears during Season Four a sign that he has more or less 'recovered'? Sarge doesn't refer to him as Simmons 2.0 anymore either... Dac 12:57, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That's a bit of (lack of) continuity that has not yet been explained. The only thing that we can reasonably do is to state what happens, factually. To speculate would be to indulge in original research. Maybe the RT crew will have some commentary on it on the season 4 DVD. — TKD::Talk 20:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Church/sniper rifle paragraph
Basically, I added episode numbers, kept the paragraph in present tense, and avoided the questionable conclusion that Church is the only one who has trouble with the sniper rifle. If only two of the however many characters are ever seen using the sniper rifle, then extrapolating from those two is a bit of a stretch. We can say that Caboose was able to use it accurately, but not that the other characters have or have not, simply because there's no evidence to suggest either conclusion. — TKD::Talk 09:47, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I guess that was a bit of a generalisation...but seeing as he managed to successfully hit Caboose at long-range with a pistol (!) I thought it was his own fault - Dac 12:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, and it's true that Caboose was the only other main character that fired it in earnest, but our recurring friend Wyoming also used it. In Season Three was he aiming to shoot the rocket out of Tucker's hand?  Because if he wasn't he covered up pretty well. - Dac 12:15, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

We've hit the size "warning"
I just want to reopen discussion on this issue pre-emptively, to avoid any confusion. This page is currently 31 KB, and there is still a fair amount of out-of-universe information that still could be added in various places; I've just been too busy/lazy (pick one) to add it. I don't think that a split is necessary yet; however, I do think that one will be beneficial down the road, and I want to open a discussion to ensure that we have some consensus on the general direction here. The most obvious split would be Red Team and Blue Team, which would give us two 15-KB pages, roughly. This I could live with, if consensus is that we should do it now. Otherwise, I would say that waiting until the page reaches 35–40 KB before taking action would be best. Whether we have a 31 KB single article or two 15.5 KB articles is not that important to me, but I wanted to see whether anyone else had stronger feelings. Both are decent sizes for an article, in my estimation.

By the way, ultimately, when all is said and done, I predict that separate articles for each of the eight main characters will be the final layout. All main characters have at least 5 paragraphs written about them, some significantly more. Season 4 DVD information and season 5 will certainly not diminish this length. However, I would not want to split out separate character articles until we have 6–8 KB of existing material per character (currently, there is a little under 4 KB on average). An eight-way split should, in my opinion, definitely not occur now, unless someone wants to add and source a lot of excellent out-of-universe information to increase this article by 50% overnight.

Other people's thoughts? — TKD::Talk 03:32, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems best enough to wait until we hit the 40kb mark and then turn it into a Red Team and a Blue Team pair of pages. Makes a bit more sense.  Then we can wait that one out.  Dac 13:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Season Four DVD addition.
There is some good stuff in the profiles, but the main addition I've noticed is that the DVD is being credited for revealing the foreshadowing of O'Malley possibly taking residence in Donut. There's no mention of this in the commentary, however, even though I saw the aimed-at-Sarge's-head incident that's referenced. Can someone explain? -- Viewdrix 00:04, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't have the DVD myself yet (iapparently the package got lost somewhere along the process), so I was going on blind faith of another editor who cited it. Remove it if it's not there. — TKD::Talk 03:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Originally, I put in a Citation Needed notice, but I went back to the DVD and figured it out. I must have missed it: Burnie quickly says "Little bit of foreshadowing here," and that's it. However, he says it during Sarge's rambling about a ship of immense size and magnitude travelling from Earth. Donut does appear and aim at Sarge's head during the time Burnie says this. As such, it's easy to see where an excited fan (or even forum talk that grew popular beyond rationality, I havn't looked at the forums lately) mistook Burnie's comment and thought he was implying Donut to be O'Malley's new host. But it just looks like Burnie was commenting on the ship. It's possible that a time delay between what was on screen when the comments were recorded and what's on screen when the audio commentary plays could have obstructed this from being clear, but it definitely seems as if it was the ship being foreshadowed. -- Viewdrix 00:36, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

character pics
um, i took time trying to get screenshots of the characters and something was wrong with them apparently, can I please get an idea? --Jonah-the-Whale 19:38, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * There were already group shots, which took up less space. Furthermore, they're copyrighted, as they're taken from the videos, so they need to be justified for Fair Use. Group shots of the teams are justified so that we know who everyone is, and Tucker alone is justified because it shows his sword, which is an important point of plot development. Just pictures of Sarge, Grif, and Donut alone weren't justifiable. Thanks for the effort, though. -- Viewdrix 22:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Alternate Tucker voice actor?
I just noticed something under "Bit Characters" at the bottom of this page on the unofficial resource site: "Tucker in Episode 16: Nick Saldaña". Can anyone confirm this?--Drat (Talk) 16:03, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, they mentioned something like that on the commentary...Jason was out of town so they got his brother to fill in for him, a one-off thing Dac 23:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * As a second confirmation, the commentary does mention that, but I don't believe that they mention the specific episode. — TKD::Talk 23:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Jason was in New York and got caught in the 2003 North America blackout. The episode, I believe, has been said on the forums as the one his brother voiced Tucker in because of the date it was released (though no one knows the specifics, just veterans remembering) coinciding production with the blackout, as well as Tucker having few lines. What's said in the commentary is that he was in New York, the phones were down and the power out, and his little brother voiced it for him. Beyond there, it's all unverifiable but connecting the dots (it must have been that specific blackout, because of Rooster Teeth guessing the episode was later in season 1, which was around August, and if it was a small blackout instead of a major one, they could've gotten him to do the voice after it was over, etc.). I say we leave it out for the unverifiable reasons. -- Viewdrix 15:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Small Nitpicks
Just to clarify one thing, the comment with Griff about a bakers dozen being 48 isnt him being stupid, its him being a smart aleck. The comment that is made is that he ate a bakers dozen and when asked if he even knows what a bakers dozen is, he responds "by my count? 48." To which Simmons begins to berate him. Misfit119 15:03, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, but do you have insight into Grif's mind? Granted, I don't have the DVD's (yet), so I don't know if there is any commentary about it.--Drat (Talk) 03:35, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't recall anything like that on the commentary. It could easily be he's just being smart-assed, but it's equally possible he had no idea and so made up his own definition. Dac 04:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Split
See Talk:Red vs Blue for recent discussion. One thing that I would ask is that, since this doesn't need to be done right away, please take the time to source things correctly and clean up any original research. See Donut (Red vs Blue) for an example character article. — TKD::Talk 19:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I should also note that, once all character articles here are split, this page really has little reason to exist on its own and should be redirected back to List of characters in Red vs Blue. — TKD::Talk 22:55, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Alright, I have finished the articles of Church and Tucker. Leader Vladimir

I agree with the split. It'd allow for more description of each character, and possibly allow a face(helmet?) pic for each. --ShallaSerpent 18:56, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Move proposal
Please see Talk:Red vs Blue for discussion. — TKD::Talk 16:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Tex's codename
The confusion being made is over whether Tex is codenamed Nevada or Texas. Here's the argument that the first editor to change it to "Texas" had: York called Tex "Agent Texas" multiple times in Out of Mind, implying that Tex's episode 41 statement of being codenamed "Nevada" was sarcastic. Ideally, if her codename was Texas, Tucker asking Tex what her codename was would've seemed a very stupid question, so she may have said Nevada sarcastically. After thinking about it, I'm fence-sitting. It's very possible we misinterpreted her sarcasm in episode 41. Anyway, this is just to try and explain the argument, it's not like the people changing it to "texas" simply havn't seen episode 41. -- Viewdrix 13:48, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * So for now we'e leaving it as is? Dac 23:39, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Best solution might be to remove it altogether, as it's fairly trivial. — TKD::Talk 00:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Removed per lack of objections. Please let me know if I've misjudged consensus on thiis matter. — TKD::Talk 18:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Tex as a separate article
I definitely agree that, eventually, Tex should have her article, but the first attempt was nothing more than the infobox and the current list entry, which provided the reader with insufficient context as a standalone article. (It didn't even identify Tex as a fictional character.) As such, I've reverted for now. If anyone wants to make an attempt that's closer to what we have for Donut, or even Church, be my guest. — TKD::Talk 18:47, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Consider it done ;). Cleanup is most likely required, but I did it the same way I did Grif and Caboose.  Dac 04:04, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Tucker and Sarge
While we're on the topic of individual character pages, I think Tucker and Sarge need some work. Donut and Church are good, and the other three seem OK (to me personally) but Tucker and Sarge's are really little more than expansions on what we had on this page. I think they need to be set out more like the others. Dac 04:04, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Split off Simmons
I couldn't see much point in Simmons being the only one left on this page so I made his a split article. So what do we do with this page now that it's just a bunch of links? Dac 14:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I redirected this back to List of characters in Red vs. Blue. — TKD::Talk 07:46, 10 October 2006 (UTC)