List of main characters in Red vs. Blue

This is a list of main characters in the machinima series Red vs Blue. The eight main characters, four on each team, are those as presented in the introductions of the three Red vs Blue season DVDs. For the list of all characters in the series, see List of characters in Red vs Blue. Template:Spoiler

Red Team

File:RvB Reds main.jpg

The Red Team main characters, from left to right: Sarge, Donut, Simmons, and Grif.

The Red Team occupies Template:Halomap Outpost Number One.

Sarge

• Full name: Unknown
• Armor color: Red
• Voice actor: Matt Hullum

Sarge is the staff sergeant and leader of the Blood Gulch Red Team. A military man with a Southern American accent, Sarge exhibits more discipline than the other Reds (and most of the Blues, for that matter), but is also somewhat psychopathic, bloodthirsty, and the only Blood Gulch soldier on either team actually serious about the war.

His battle plans tend to be delusionally grandiose and seriously flawed, and he favors overly complicated plans that involve heavy casualties in his own forces, especially Grif, sometimes even when there is no actual problem to solve. He is also rather paranoid, and often concocts implausible theories to explain simple events. He sometimes also makes incompetent blunders in his plans, which will sometimes earn criticism even from Simmons or Donut.

Despite his flaws as a leader, Sarge seems to be a rather skilled fighter, having managed to capture Tex as well as fight off, with the assistance of Caboose, the attacking hordes of soldiers in Template:Halomap. He also exhibits reasonably good technical skills, able to assemble robots from scratch and perform surgery on his men. However, he cannot repair the Warthog, and Simmons 2.0 suffers from a few glitches.

Sarge hates Grif as much as he likes Simmons, and has criticized the former and praised the latter for the same action. When Grif saves Sarge's life by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in season 1, Sarge initially praises Simmons. However, upon learning who had actually resuscitated him, Sarge proceeds to berate Grif at length for the illogicality of using CPR "for a bullet wound in the head". Rooster Teeth had initially considered making this event a turning point in Sarge's relationship with Grif, but decided in the end that friendship would be too farfetched. However, he does repay the favour in Season 2, after Grif is run over by Sheila and Sarge saves his life by implanting Simmons' organs inside him.

Rooster Teeth has also noted that they initially modeled Sarge after Full Metal Jacket's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, but, by the middle of season 2, the character had evolved into, in the words of voice actor Matt Hullum, "every '50s stereotype character... melted down into one", exhibiting characteristics of a mad scientist, used car salesman, and "grumpy old dad".

Simmons

• Full name: Private First Class Dick Simmons
• Armor color: Maroon, blue with maroon trim (episodes 64-73)
• Voice actor: Gustavo "Gus" Sorola

Reasonably smart and rational, Simmons is the level-headed straight man of the Red Team. His main quirk is that he is a compulsive sycophant towards Sarge, despite the latter's psychopathic and frequently delusional leadership; in episode 40, Simmons states that he relies on Sarge "for love and support". As a result, Grif frequently calls Simmons a "kiss-ass". Simmons and Grif have a love-hate relationship, and spend much of their time bickering and chatting with each other, with Simmons reacting to the various outrageous statements that Grif makes. In season 4, Simmons is shown to be very self-conscious, running in tears back to the Blue Base when Church expresses a negative opinion of him.

Aside from supporting Sarge's flawed schemes, Simmons usually avoids foolish statements. Often exhibiting common sense, he has managed to devise battle plans that actually work. He is a brave enough warrior when necessary, but, unlike Sarge, is not a fanatic, and he has expressed an unwillingness to die for foolish reasons. Since Grif is generally the one whose death is part of Sarge's plans, Simmons has less to worry about than he thinks.

After the Reds lose Lopez, Sarge turns Simmons into a cyborg so that they will have someone with better capability to repair things; for a while, Sarge calls him "Simmons 2.0", though in recent episodes of season 4, Sarge has reverted to calling him just "Simmons" again. Simmons' leftover body parts — except for his spleen, which Sarge decides to inflate and use for "general recreation and esprit de corps" — are used to save Grif's life when he is run over by Sheila, driven by Tucker

At one point in the series, Grif comes to believe that Simmons is "of a Latino persuasion", presumably because he thinks that Simmons is a Hispanic name. Simmons is, in fact, Dutch-Irish; the whole issue is an in-joke based on the Mexican ethnicity of Simmons' voice actor, Gustavo Sorola. This running gag still appears as recently as episode 63, in which Donut, pretending to be an automatic telephone response system, says to Simmons, "For unconfirmed Dutch-Irish, press one too, as in also."

In season 4, Simmons runs afoul of Sarge's fickle nature: When he insists that Sheila is still roaming the gulch, Sarge declares him insane and demotes him. Having lost his purpose in life, Simmons suffers a breakdown, exiles himself from the Red Team, paints his armor mostly blue, and, assisted by Sheila, begins to wage a one-man war against his former teammates. Simmons actually suceeds in "capturing" Grif, forcing Sarge and Donut to launch a rescue operation. But the two are foiled by Church, who suddenly returns to Blood Gulch. Although Simmons attempts to hide his true identity from Church, Church reveals to Sheila that he has recognized Simmons all along. After apparently hearing Church's conversation with Vic Jr., Simmons returns to the Red Base to relay information. With the rest of the Reds reluctant to accept him back, Simmons changes into maroon armor. Nevertheless, after a quick trial, Sarge imposes a hefty fine for treason and insubordination. Going forward, Sarge frequently calls Simmons a traitor.

Grif

• Full name: Private Dexter Grif
• Armor color: Orange
• Voice actor: Geoff "gfunk" Ramsey

The wisecracking loudmouth of the Reds, Grif is self-centered, acerbic, lazy, and somewhat cowardly. Despised by his teammates Sarge and Simmons, he has the lowest social and military rank on the Red Team. Simmons and he often bicker or chat with each other about the various situations that the Reds encounter. Although Grif's laziness does create problems for the Reds, Sarge always blames him when things go wrong, regardless of Grif's actual guilt in the matter.

With respect to personality, Grif is fairly brash and has a flair for melodrama. He is quick to make silly theories or insults, even towards people who could clearly kill him without hesitation. He is also a coward, panicking and fleeing at the first sign of danger. Not completely clueless, however, he is often the first one to point out the flaws in Sarge's plans; largely because Simmons never criticizes Sarge, and many of these plans involve Grif's demise. Although Sarge and Simmons regard Grif as unintelligent, the likelihood is that Grif simply has a bad habit of speaking or acting before thinking. Church, who looks a bit deeper, can see that Grif is intelligent, and claims he is in fact the smartest member of the Red Team. In fact Grif is capable of being more responsible than he lets on; when Simmons defected and began to wage a one-man war against his former teammates, Grif was the only member of Red Team who tried to actually solve the problem. Despite his constant flippant disregard for Sarge's authority, Grif seems to care at least a little about Sarge, as he was quite upset when Caboose almost killed Sarge. He also tries to cheer him up late in Season Four, after Sarge enters a depressed state upon hearing the useless instructions in Lopez; Grif's method of cheering Sarge up was by suggesting Sarge insult him.

Physically, a lifetime of smoking and eating processed snacks has left Grif badly out of shape for a soldier in the military, and he is barely able to run 300 feet without running out of breath. After being accidentally run over by Sheila, driven by Tucker, Grif had to have most of his body parts replaced with donor organs left over from Simmons' cyborg operation. Even this event, however, has not compelled him to quit his bad habits.

Grif's presence on the Red Team is actually not by choice. When it was determined that the Blues had one more recruit than the Reds, the first universal draft was held, and the unlucky draftee was none other than Grif. As evidenced by his hesitantly optimistic guess as to why Sarge gathered Simmons and him outside the base, Grif would love to call the whole thing good and go home. As also evidenced by his response to Sarge's less-than-friendly answer, he is familiar with being the object of sarcasm.

Donut

• Full name: Private Franklin Delano Donut
• Armor color: Red, pink (episode 16 and onward)
• Voice actor: Dan Godwin

Donut, whose full name is a reference to former United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is the Red Team's over-eager rookie, who, at least initially, is unable to grasp the current situation. Upon arriving in Blood Gulch, he immediately falls for a fool's errand, mistakes the Blue Base for the "store", and loses his way several times. His general naïveté, garrulousness, and cheerfulness tend to annoy his teammates.

Injured when Tex attacks the Red Base, Donut is consequently airlifted out of the gulch for medical treatment. Pleased that he captured the Blues' flag, Red Command gives him his own armor color, which becomes a sensitive issue for him: He insists that his new armor is "lightish red", even though it is clearly pink to everyone else. He does eventually accept it as pink. As the series progresses, the armor color and the trauma he received from Tex seem to take their toll on Donut's mind; his speech and personality become increasingly effeminate. He also becomes more childish, pretending to be a secret agent during a reconnaissance operation, and later sticking his hand in machinery despite repeated warnings.

Donut is also prone to long conversations or convoluted narratives. In season 2, he twice attempts to engage another Red in idle chatter, to little success. When blasted forward into the future, he attempts to organize a play to explain events. He also concocts an implausible tale to distract the Blues in episode 53 and, in episode 70, falsely portrays himself as a hero, supposedly rescuing the other Reds from the Blue Base.

Despite these flaws, Donut sometimes demonstrates alertness or knowledge beyond that of his teammates. For example, in season 2, he is the only one to suggest correctly that Church is a ghost (and hence why Sarge went mad, and Lopez ran away). Initially unable, as with the other Reds, to understand Lopez, he later demonstrates the ability both to understand and speak some Spanish. (However, in episode 75, it becomes clear that this ability is limited, as his Spanish is poor, and he cannot understand the instructions in Spanish from Red Command.) Left to his own devices when the other Reds leave him behind in search of a distress signal, Donut manages to steal O'Malley's hovercraft and catch up to his team. In addition, he is the only one who supports Simmons' assertion that Sheila is still roaming Blood Gulch in the future. In episode 75, Donut reveals his awareness of Vic's vasectomy, but it is unknown how he learns of this information; his stealth encounter with Doc and O'Malley in season 2 did not include the conversation in which Vic revealed his sterility. Nevertheless, his insights are ignored by his team.

After Simmons' exile from the Red Team, Donut replaces him as Sarge's right-hand man, a move that Sarge quickly comes to regret. Much to Sarge's displeasure, Donut suggests various changes, including the incorporation of more positive reinforcement and the redecoration of the Red Base.

Blue Team

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The Blue Team main characters, from left to right: Caboose, Tucker, Tex, and Church.

The Blue Team occupies Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha.

Church

• Full name: Private Leonard L. Church
• Armor color: Cobalt, white (as a ghost), yellow (episode 52)
• Voice actor: Mike "Burnie" Burns

Church is the Blue Team's bitter, sarcastic, battle-hardened de facto leader. He serves as both the straight man and fall guy. Often focused on actually confronting and solving the various crises encountered, he ends up taking their brunt, leaving him increasingly disillusioned and anti-social. He dislikes both Tucker and Caboose for their eccentricities, and once claimed that "knowing other people just waters down the experience [of being Church]". Prior to the Blood Gulch era, Church had a romantic relationship with Tex. Though he still has feelings for her, he denies this to anyone who asks and has an ongoing love-hate relationship with her, continuing to refer to Tex as his girlfriend.

Other than his harsh, cynical outlook on life, Church is actually reasonably intelligent and emotionally stable. He is a more competent leader than Sarge, as his plans are usually solid and avoid needless sacrifice of his own men. However, fate and Caboose's incompetence often conspire to bring him failure and suffering.

Killed early in the first season, he soon returns as a ghost to help his teammates. In this form, he can possess and control other characters. He possesses Lopez at the end of season 1. After losing his control over him in the middle of season 2, Church convinces Sarge to build Tex and him new, permanent robot bodies. When sent back in time in season 3, he attempts to prevent everything that goes wrong in Blood Gulch, including his and Tex's deaths. However, in a classic predestination paradox, it becomes evident that he is actually the cause of the teams' problems. With this knowledge, his attitude towards his teammates mellows slightly, and he eventually rejoins the rest of the crew in the future.

The only Blue Team member not to join the Alien on its quest, Church instead returns to Blue Base in Blood Gulch, just in time to save a mostly blue-armored Simmons, whom he pretends not to recognize, from execution by Sarge. Church assumes leadership over Simmons and, during an orientation focusing on the Reds, offers a scathing opinion of him.

Although Church frequently expresses his dislike of both Tucker and Caboose, he does seem to care about his team, even before his time travels. When Tucker is supposedly shot by O'Malley, Church insists on retrieving Doc to heal Tucker. This concern is again shown when Tucker falls ill in season 4. When Caboose voices a bizarre perspective of Tucker's sword, Church states that he "would love to live in [Caboose's] world for 10 minutes". When Caboose indicates, in episode 76, that he does not understand how pregnancy occurs, Church initially scolds him, but later promises to teach him through a book of his.

Tucker

• Full name: Private First Class Lavernius Tucker
• Armor color: Cyan/aqua, blue (episode 50)
• Voice actor: Jason Saldaña

Smart-aleck, sarcastic, rude, prone to juvenile humor, and obsessed with women, Tucker has many charactersistics of an unruly teenager. Like Grif, he has an extreme aversion to combat and work, and always complains and tries to stall when ordered into battle. Although he sometimes lacks prudence and common sense, which leads him to jump to conclusions, Tucker has become somewhat smarter as the series has progressed. He has conceived a few decent plans and enjoyed a couple of heroic moments.

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Tucker holding the sword.

Tucker has also been the focus of a few running gags throughout the series. Due to the scarcity of the sniper rifle and the faster reflexes of the other soldiers, Tucker has never been able to use one, a fact that infuriates him until he accidentally discovers a sword during the attack on O'Malley's base. In a rare moment of decisive action, he uses the weapon to kill the Red Zealot. Realizing the effectiveness of the sword, his desire for the sniper rifle consequently wanes; shortly afterwards he declines an offer from Tex to trade his sword for her sniper rifle.

Another running gag is that, whenever Tucker goes through a teleporter, he always emerges with his armor covered in "black stuff", which appears to be soot. Apparently the experience is also painful. Barring a single occurrence involving Caboose in Season 1, this has never occurred to any of the other characters.

Another complication for Tucker is that Vic, O'Malley, and Wyoming have all wanted him dead because he accidentally discovers that Red and Blue are apparently both controlled by the same Command, a revelation that everyone else ignores or dismisses as untrue. Tucker maintains this belief even after Church informs everyone that it was he who falsely told Vic that Red and Blue are the same.

In season 3, when Tucker reveals his first name as Lavernius, Church asks whether Tucker is African American. Although Tucker never answers the question, Caboose later refers to Tucker as "the other black one", the first being the black-armored Tex. This parallels the racial musings on the Red Team, where Grif insists that Simmons is "of a Latino persuasion", despite Simmons' Dutch-Irish heritage.

In episode 64, the Alien informs them that only the original user of Tucker's sword can activate it. This is somewhat similar to legend that only King Arthur could use the sword Excalibur. Even though the Alien had originally come to claim the sword for itself, it now concludes that Tucker is the hero who must partake of its sacred quest. In a parody of Kingdom Hearts, it is later revealed that the sword is actually a key that opens a gate to the Alien's spaceship.

In episode 73, Tucker falls ill for an unknown reason. Caboose thinks that Tucker might have contracted the disease from the swamp, while Church hypothesizes that it might have come from the sword, and Andy suggests poor personal hygiene. Doc's diagnosis says that Tucker is pregnant, which Church does not believe. In the final episode of season 4, it is revealed the Tucker had been implanted with an egg by The Alien, and he gives birth to it near the end of the episode.

Caboose

• Full name: Private Michael J. Caboose
• Armor color: Blue
• Voice actor: Joel Heyman

Caboose is the Blue Team's rookie. Despite being well-meaning, he is clueless, childlike, and somewhat insane. 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 other than Tex who can 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.

Caboose desperately wants to obtain the friendship and approval of Church, but his incompetent attempts to help often only make Church despise him more. He has accidentally called Church's girlfriend a slut, team killed Church twice, paralyzed him from the waist down, and activated a bomb that destroys the present, propelling Church into the past. Caboose is also infatuated with Sheila, and a bizarre love triangle forms when she expresses interest in Lopez.

Despite his eccentricities, Caboose is able to successfully contain O'Malley for several episodes after the AI infects him, only making the occasional outburst. Doc, on the other hand, is almost immediately taken over by O'Malley when the latter jumps from Caboose to Doc. Nevertheless, O'Malley's possession has apparently affected Caboose adversely. In season 1, Caboose is merely somewhat dim-witted. However, the presence of the AI takes its toll, and Caboose becomes fairly divorced from reality and prone to frequent non sequiturs, even after Church and Tex chase O'Malley out of Caboose's mind. Sarge notes in episode 39 that it "sounds like [O'Malley] took some of the furniture when he left". However, in season 4, Caboose appears to think somewhat more coherently and displays some signs of wit, making, for example, a joke about Republicans in episode 73.

When Tex and Church possess Caboose in order to kill O'Malley, they witness Caboose's mostly incorrect mental images of the other characters, including the Red Team. In his mind, Caboose believes that he is intelligent, Church his best friend, Tucker stupid, Grif yellow-armored, Donut female, and Sarge speaking in what is actually a pirate accent.

Originally, Rooster Teeth did not plan Caboose to be completely stupid; in fact, Burns noted that there was no real initial plan for the character, and that Caboose was merely supposed to be the Blue Team's rookie counterpart to Donut. Additionally, Ramsey recalled that, in the first few episodes, Caboose was "smarmy" and "a very different character". However, the crew later orchestrated a long decline in Caboose's intelligence, starting when Sheila was disabled for the first time in episode 9.

The first child in his family of 18 to attend high school, Caboose had joined the Army by mistaking a recruiting center for college. He mistook boot camp for fraternity initiation, and currently believes that he an exchange student in southern France.

Tex

• Full name: Tex (real name: Allison; code name: Nevada)
• Armor color: Black
• Voice actor: Kathleen Zuelch, Mike "Burnie" Burns (episode 11 and part of episode 12)

Tex is a freelance mercenary and Church's former girlfriend. Although she lacks the more eccentric personality traits of the other Blood Gulch characters, her pronounced propensity for massive, disproportionate violence makes her anything but normal. With her Special Operations training, she is the most competently lethal member of the Blood Gulch cast, with the possible exception of Sheila. Despite her freelancer status, Tex sticks with the Blues to repay a favor, agreeing to help them until they beat the Reds. Later, when she realizes that O'Malley has infected Caboose, she diverts her energies towards eliminating the rogue AI once and for all.

Tex had been part of an elite unit in which each member was named after one of the 49 then-remaining United States. Her code name in the program was "Nevada", but her common nickname is "Tex", as she comes from Texas. Each member of the unit was paired with an experimental AI to make him or her stronger and more aggressive. Even though Church states that she has always been moody and violent even without O'Malley's influence, and she does often insult Church, Tex is somewhat tolerant of the rest of the Blood Gulch cast and their various eccentricities, although one episode suggests that she has a habit of punching them in the head while they sleep.

Towards the end of season 1, Tex's AI, O'Malley, jumps from Tex to Caboose upon assessing that she has little chance of surviving her second attack on the Red Base. After being killed in the attack, Tex later returns as a ghost in the middle of season 2 in order to eliminate O'Malley, but disappears suddenly after forcing O'Malley out of Caboose. She returns at the very end of the season, possessing one of the robot bodies that Church had Sarge build.

As a freelancer, she will jump at any task if the price is right. This is seen when she abruptly decides to join Tucker on the Alien's quest once Church informs her that quests usually involve some sort of treasure as a reward. In episode 71, she becomes vengeful upon discovering that Tucker's sword is primarily a key. When Wyoming destroys the alien ship, which she had considered her reward, she runs off to pursue him.

In an interview in January 2005, Michael Burns stated that there were some mistaken early sightings of Tex before episode 10, the episode in which the character actually first appeared in the series proper. This was due to Tex's appearance and use of a cloaking device in the episode 0 introductory video. Some viewers saw what they thought to be a cloaked character in some scenes in the early episodes; they were really seeing compression artifacts in the videos.

External links

• Red vs Blue official site
• The Unofficial Red vs Blue Resource Site