< Red vs. Blue

Red vs. Blue/Characters


The cast of Red vs. Blue, divided by affiliation, as is appropriate. Warning, there be spoilers below:

Red Team

Sarge

"Continue with Operation Meatshield. Remember, just 'cause your bones are broken doesn't mean it won't stop bullets from hitting me."

The staff sergeant leading Red Team, and the only one in the canyon who's actually enthusiastic about the Red/Blue conflict, due to his intense and unexplained hatred of all things Blue. His real name remains a mystery, and it is implied he answers as "Sarge" even on Red Army official documents (there was one instance where we might have heard his name but Donut cut him off). Sarge is incredibly loyal to the Red Army, and goes out of his way to excuse the nonsensical answers and directives Command sends his way. He is also fiercely supportive of the chain of command, especially if this allows him to punish Grif. Sarge wields a shotgun, which he uses as a cudgel more often than actually shooting it, and speaks with a Southern US (vaguely Texan) accent. He's the only Red Team member to actually wear red armor (except for Donut, but see below).

Besides being Drill Sergeant Nasty and The Neidermeyer, Sarge is best described as "essentially every '50s stereotype character melted down into one." He exhibits characteristics of a Mad Scientist with regards to his tinkering with robotics and cybernetics, a used car salesman's flair for presentation and hype, and a "grumpy old dad" in his dealings with Simmons and Donut. Sarge is fond of overly-complicated plans, especially if they could result in Grif's death - his plan to attack the windmill power plant involved jamming the device with Grif's corpse, while his attempt to get Donut out from under a spaceship was to subject Grif to bites from irradiated insects in an attempt to give him superpowers. Personal quirks aside, Sarge is probably Red Team's most effective fighter - he was able to subdue Tex, cut down the Zealots of Battle Creek with relative ease, get the drop on Agent Washington, and is brutally effective in close combat.

Played by Matt Hullum

Sargeisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Anti-Hero: Type V, though he evolves into a Type III in Revelation.
  • Ax Crazy Among the many, many, many examples that could be used here, one of the best ones to sum it all up is how he claims that back in Blood Gulch, he used to spend some nights going to the top of Red base and singing "When you wish that Grif was Dead...", which is his altered version of Disney's "When You Wish Upon a Star".
  • Badass: Sarge is in charge for a reason, after all. He even took down the Meta, albeit not in full out combat, but it's still an impressive feat.
  • Berserk Button: His character bio on one of the DVDs states that when presented with any Blue object, he either tries to bite it or shoot it.
  • Blood Knight: The only member of the Blood Gulch crew passionate about warfare. Also, in Revelation, he seems more than happy to challenge The Meta.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: "I love blood and violence! I've got a boner for murder!"
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Despite his quirks and lackluster leadership skills, he is a capable combatant, has built multiple robots, and turned Simmons into a Cyborg.
    • In fact, part of his combat capability is in his ability as a strategist. If given leave to sit around and think of a plan in safe conditions, it will inevitably be an overcomplicated mess (usually involving getting Grif killed one or twelve times). In actual combat situations he becomes a quick-thinking Chessmaster.
  • Character Development: As of Chapter 18 of Revelation, he seems to have left behind his hatred of the Blues and now treats his fellow Reds as equals, due to learning that the entire Red vs. Blue "war" was not only a simulation, but that the Red and Blue armies were culled from the "worst of the worst" soldiers.
  • Colonel Kilgore/General Ripper/Knight Templar: All parodied. With gusto.
  • Cool Old Guy: A sociopathic and Cloudcuckoolander version of this. Also crosses into Boisterous Bruiser at times.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Completely delusional and utterly insane, but also probably the most competent fighter in Blood Gulch aside from Tex (at the very least he's the best Red soldier).
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: Naturally; it's in his name.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Is only ever referred to as "Sarge"; if he has a real name, no one seems to know what it is.
    • In Revelation 17, his real name is revealed: Sarge. Or S-Dog.
  • Flat What: During one of the outtake reels, Sarge's voice actor says that Sarge has precisely four ways of exclaiming "What?!" Two of them qualify as this.
  • Freudian Trio: Probably works like this. Simmons is Superego, the mediator between Sarge the Id and Grif the Ego.
  • The Hero: Becomes this in Revelation, after significant Character Development.
  • Heroic Comedic Sociopath: "I LOVE BLOOD AND VIOLENCE!!"
  • Image Song: "Sarge's Blues".
  • Insane Troll Logic: The basis of most of his plans. During Reconstruction, he orders Simmons to delete all command files on the Blue army, claiming that it'd be instant victory for the Reds because the Blues would never have existed.
  • Kick the Dog: When he orders Andy to blow up he pelican that Tex, Junior and Omega were in. Granted, he's technically saving the day, but his tone implies that he actually does that out of spite and anti-blue sentiment rather than a desire to thwart Omega's plan. In fact, he might not even be aware that there was an evil plot for him to thwart.
  • The Kirk: Arguably, a parody.
  • Large Ham Big time. Once during a speech, a red flag appeared waving behind him, and someone sang "Glory Glory Hallelujah!" with "Red Team" replacing Hallelujah! lyrics (in HIS voice, WHILE he was talking)!
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Six words. "I'VE GOT A BONER FOR MURDER!"
  • Mad Scientist: Sarge is capable of creating robots and turning some of his own soldiers into cyborgs. You'd think he could be able to use his impressive technical prowess for profit. Maybe then they could afford something to eat at Red Base.
  • Made of Iron: The Reds and Blues can easily be considered this, given the abuse they frequently go through.
  • The Neidermeyer: In spades. Grif finally calls him out on it as well.
  • Pet the Dog: On at least three, four occasions Sarge has shown a peculiar fondness for Caboose, possibly owing to the latter's childlike naïveté. And not to mention the few times where he hasn't insulted Grif and even complimented him (even if it was a little backhanded). By Revelation, he's pretty much become Team Dad to both the Reds and the Blues.
  • Reason You Suck Speech He's constantly dishing these out to Grif and the Blues. And Grif... And Grif again!
  • Shell Shocked Senior: Has been hinted frequently to be this.
    • At one point he expresses disbelief at the concept of, among other things, something you can wear on your head that isn't a combat helmet with HUD and comms. This prompts one of the others to observe that Sarge has clearly been in the military a really long time.
  • Talking to Himself: Matt Hullum also voices Doc.
  • Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Sarge claims that he's never hit a girl in his life (he did once knock Tex out, but he thought she was a man at the time). This attitude caused a brief stalemate at Blood Gulch when Sister was the only Blue left.
    • Comes up again in the fight against Tex in season 8.

Sarge: I've never hit a girl in my life!
Simmons: Yeah, I noticed. Try harder!

Private First Class Richard "Dick" Simmons

"You're both an excellent leader and an attractive man, sir!"

Sarge's right-hand man and suck-up extraordinaire, though an incident involving Sarge being incorrectly declared dead showed how quickly this loyalty evaporates once an opportunity for promotion arises. Simmons attempts to be the voice of reason with regard to Sarge's (frequently insane) plans, with little success. For one, Sarge is too out there, for two, Simmons is too sycophantic to truly qualify as "sane".

Simmons forms a comic duo with Grif, though has expressed a disturbing eagerness to sacrifice his friend (even literally) in an effort to gain favor with Sarge. After Lopez defected and Grif needed an organ donor, Simmons was upgraded to a cyborg by Sarge and will occasionally answer to "Simmons 2.0."

Simmons isn't much use in combat, as his main skills are computer programming, memorization of tedious Red Team procedures and regulations, and kissing Sarge's ass. During Reconstruction, he attempts to stall for time during he and Grif's execution by forcing his teammates to look up an obscure subsection, while at Command he hacks into the Blue Army records and deletes them at Sarge's order, resulting in a "victory" for the Reds. However he does have a tendency to be the gunner any time Grif drives the Warthog. He wears dark red/maroon armor.

Played by Gus Sorola

Simmonsisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Character Development: As of Season 4, he's no longer instantly sucks up to Sarge. He'll still usually go along with it, but he'll grumble if the plan is particularly insane, even when it doesn't directly threaten his life.
    • Then comes Recreation, where he's more openly critical of Sarge's leadership.
  • Foil: To Grif.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Inverted. Simmons might seem like the nicest, sanest, and most dedicated soldier on the surface... but he's actually a cruel, sadistic soul that would probably be a Complete Monster if he were given enough power.
  • Like an Old Married Couple: His arguments with Grif, according to Tucker.
  • Named After Somebody Famous: Take a wild guess.
  • Ow, My Body Part: One of his running character gags is that he does this whenever he's injured.
  • Professional Butt-Kisser Initially, he agrees with anything Sarge says, but overtime he becomes less of one. He doesn't lose it too much though.
  • The Smart Guy: Arguably the most rational member of Red Team, next to Lopez, he also possesses astute knowledge of computer technology and physics. But to a fault, it's made him more than a little arrogant, which does tend to blind his rationality. When they find out the reason why they were assigned to project Freelancer since they were low-level officers and rejects from actual military service, Grif wondered why Simmons was there if he was supposed to be smart. Simmons reveals he wasn't good with pressure and timed exercises so he failed because he never finished the tests on time.
    • He's also not nearly as smart as he thinks he is or leads others to believe. He does, however, seem to have become very good at faking it and fobbing the work off on more competent people (like Lopez).
  • The Spock: Simmons would love to be this. But his own emotional, psychological hang ups get in the way.
  • The Starscream: After Sister declared that "Red" Team's leader was dead, Simmons was quick in burying Sarge and assuming command, at which point he promptly turns into Drill Sergeant Nasty.
  • Stepford Smiler: He constantly tries to put on a face of order and discipline, along with a satisfaction with his surroundings, but is very depressed about his life deep down.
  • Straight Man: To Sarge. Ironically, Grif is the Straight Man to him.
  • TV Genius \ Bunny Ears Lawyer: He isn't as smart at he likes to think he is, but he is capable of reprogramming a teleporter and hacking Command.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: With Grif.
    • According to Rooster Teeth, they're more than just Vitriolic Best Buds. No. Seriously. There was a question at a panel with RT where they got asked what Grif and Simmons were doing in the shade for two hours. Apparently, they'd read a slash fanfic earlier. And they called back a reference to that. So.. take that how you will.

Minor Junior Private Dexter Grif Negative First Class

"Finally, an order I want to follow: run away and live."

Lazy, out-of-shape, and Sarge's personal Butt Monkey. Just about every one of Sarge's plans involves Grif being killed in some way, and most of Red Team's official emergency protocols begin by shooting Grif. Grif is suggested to be fairly intelligent, at least in the eyes of Church, but he's too much of a slacker to contribute much. A conscript, Grif sleeps through official meetings and tries to quit the army whenever he can. He's Red Team's designated snarker and their Only Sane Man, though his apathy towards the war everything somewhat cancels that out. He spends much of his time bickering with his "friend" Simmons, when he isn't stealing the latter's identity and running up huge bills at pawn shops and peep shows.

In Reconstruction Grif was briefly promoted to Sergeant of the Rat's Nest outpost once Sarge went AWOL, but was quickly subject to a mutiny and near-execution after he sold Red Team's ammunition to the area's Blues. Sarge agreed to work with Agent Washington (see below) in exchange for Grif's particularly humiliating demotion. (This humiliating demotion might not be official however, considering Agent Washington later still referred to Grif as "Sergeant Grif".) His orange armor was commonly mistaken for yellow, at least while the series was still being shot in Halo 1 (later games have a much more orange-y "Orange").

He began the series as the Red's Sniper, opposite Church, but as the series went on, he gradually found himself driving and piloting vehicles, culminating in driving a Pelican, untrained, with reasonably effective results.

Played by Geoff Lazer Ramsey

Grifisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Badass Driver: While he has shown considerable motor skills in seasons one to five and is the Red Team's designated driver, by Revelation, he has completely owned and adopted this trope. He just has trouble stopping driving sometimes.
  • Big Brother Instinct One of the few reasons he ever gets off his lazy butt for someone else (when he isn't being ordered to do something), is his Sister. He is very protective of her.
    • Captain Crash: Specifically, he's a little fuzzy on the whole concept of "landing":

Grif: "Sure! That just means 'stop flying', right?"

  • Brilliant but Lazy: Church claims he is this... though Church may have been mistaken, exaggerating, or only comparing Grif to the other Reds.
    • On the other hand, he did quickly earn several promotions once he was assigned to a new unit that apparently didn't let him slack off as much. Of course, once put back with the other Reds, he quickly degenerated into his old habits and was demoted by Sarge. (Sarge might not have actually had the authority to do this... but Grif's too lazy to care.)
  • Butt Monkey Of the Red team when Lopez isn't around.
  • The Chew Toy Sarge, Simmons, the Blues, Tex, everyone pretty much rags on him all the time. Course he does the same to them.
  • The Lancer: Fills this role for the Reds, until in Revelation when he becomes The Heart.
  • Butt Monkey: Pretty much every Red Team plan involves sacrificing him in one way or another.
  • Genius Ditz: Described as "crafty" by Church, Grif is certainly unbeatable when it comes to inventing methods of avoiding work.
    • One of the PSAs has Grif scoff at how easy it is to get into Columbia University, adding "I'm a Harvard man."
  • Genre Savvy: At the end of Relocated he thinks to himself, "Sounds like something that'll keep us busy for a few months," when Donut passes out after uttering "It's in the sand." He turns out to be right.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: A sign of Grif's terrible health (he does it inside his helmet). He even smokes after having most of his organs being replaced by Simmons' after being crushed by Sheila. In fact, he might have started smoking more just to piss off Simmons.
  • Like an Old Married Couple: With Simmons, naturally.

Tucker: "I've only been listening for ten minutes and I can already tell they're really in love. Why can't they see it?"

  • The McCoy: Definitely a parody. Again, although the more emotional of the trio, Grif is way too lazy to act on his conscience or change the status quo.
  • Non-Action Guy: ---> Action Survivor in Revelation.
  • Sanity Ball: The role of Only Sane Man on Red Team is either Grif, Simmons or Lopez, depending on the circumstances.
  • Universal Drivers Licence: In Revelation, Grif flies a Pelican and a Hornet with no training whatsoever. He crashes the Pelican, but it's still quite an accomplishment.

Sarge: There they are! Land right next to 'em!"
Grif: "Right... Land..."
Sarge: "You do know how to land this thing, right?"
Grif: "Sure! That just means stop flying, right?"
Sarge: "Brace for impact!"
Tucker: "Aw, shit! This is gonna SUCK!"
Caboose "I still haven't gotten my peanuts."

Private Franklin Delano Donut

"Who wants to hold my ankles while I stretch out my hammies?"

Red Team's rookie member with some major issues, acting as the team's Ditz. He kicks off the series' Red/Blue conflict after Simmons and Grif send him to "the store" to get some "headlight fluid." Donut accidentally wanders into Blue Base and ends up capturing their flag, prompting the Blues to call in a Freelancer and start the main plot. Originally wearing standard red armor, Donut took one of Tex's grenades to the face and had to be sent away for medical help, returning with his own pink lightish-red armor out of recognition for his flag capture.

This, combined with a flair for calligraphy, appreciation of interior decorating, and the "Officer Hot Pants" surprise at Sarge's birthday party helps solidify Donut's status as Stereotype Gay by Season Three. Although he has a surprisingly good arm when it comes to throwing grenades, as proven when he killed Tex with a precision throw from across the canyon, in most combat situations he is expected (and ordered) to run around and scream like a girl, a role he takes to with gusto.

He returns after Reconstruction during an experiment by Sarge to test the capabilities of a new plasma weapon. He's mistaken at first for a holographic Grif clone, but the others soon realize its him and he passes out, exclaiming that he needs water. At the end of Recreation, he was shot by Washington. In the opening to Revelation; Doc confirms that Donut was dead. However in the sponsors-only ending of Chapter 13 shutting down the armor lock on all armors ends up bringing him back to life, which has been confirmed to be canon via Word of God.

Played by Dan Godwin

Donutisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Adult Child: Less so when he made his debut in actual red armor.
  • Ambiguously Gay: A subject of debate amongst fans, and in-universe.
  • Camp Straight: One of the alternate endings to The Blood Gulch Chronicles mentions he married a stripper and had a litter of kids.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite his rather... unusual behavior, he managed to grenade Tex from halfway across the canyon. In fact, he's actually appointed to Red team as their official grenadier officer.
    • The fact that he was working with Tucker as an infiltration specialist implies he received some special training to perform his new job.
      • Infiltration specialist?
        • Well, he did say he was good at penetrating rear entrances. Make of that what you will.
  • Large Ham He acts like his life is a daytime sitcom.
  • The Ditz: Is usually too busy bubbling happily to notice the assorted weird and dangerous crap going on around him.
  • The European Carry All: Insists his armor is lightish-red.
  • The Heart: As one of the few truly Nice Guys in the series.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: Just ask Donut if he wants to be pinched.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: From walking into the enemy base assuming it's a general store, to chatting with the The Meta under the misguided assumption it's a new recruit (and completely oblivious to the fact it's trying to kill him).
  • Image Song: "Donut: the Musical"
  • Innocent Innuendo / Double Entendre: Pretty much everything he says.
  • Insistent Terminology: "It's not pink, it's lightish-red!"
  • In Touch with His Feminine Side Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig time.
  • Macho Camp: His Season 9 incarnation combines his usual Innocent Innuendo with Sarge's gung-ho attitude.
  • Not Quite Dead: He survives Tex sticking a Plasma Grenade to his head, but has to be airlifted out of the canyon, returning with the aforementioned lightish-red armor.
    • And a sponsor's-only episode ending reveals that he survived being shot in the chest by Wash.
  • OOC Is Serious Business: For Church, it's a sign there's something wrong with his constructed reality in the Epsilon Unit.
  • Screams Like a Little Girl: On orders from Sarge, he proceeds to run around screaming like a woman.
  • Shout-Out: One of two characters (the other being Caboose) named after one of the randomly generated names assigned to temporary multiplayer profiles in Halo: Combat Evolved.
  • Stereotype Gay: Though at times it comes off as Innocent Innuendo taken to extremes. Still doesn't explain Officer Hotpants, though.
  • Took a Level in Badass: In Church's artificial reality, Donut somehow becomes the Red Team leader, and leads a rocket assault against the Blues.
  • Trans Equals Gay: Though the main joke is that he's gay, sometimes he acts like he's actually a girl, such as with his Straw Feminist rant after being possessed by O'Malley.

Lopez la Pesado ("the Heavy")

(subtitled Spanish) "I am going to erase every memory of you the second you are gone. Just like I did for [FILE DELETED] and [FILE DELETED]."

Sarge's pet project and team mechanic, a robot who only speaks bad Spanish (and occasionally takes advantage of the fact he's the only one fluent in the language). Lopez seems to view his teammates with cold resentment, either due to their reliance on him for mechanical help, constant damage to the team Warthog that Lopez ends up repairing, for programming him to speak Spanish instead of English, or all of the above.

As a result, Lopez spends the series hopping from team to team. Church possesses him in search of a body, then Lopez is mistaken for a Blue and attacked by his former owners, causing him to formally surrender to the Blues. Via a time loop, Church accidentally suggests that Lopez and Sheila form their own robot army, and Lopez defects away from humans altogether, but he is quickly captured and reprogrammed by O'Malley while the AI is possessing Doc. His head is blown off during the transition between Halo 1 and 2, and he becomes the bitingly sarcastic sidekick to O'Malley until he is finally recovered by the Red Team at the end of The Blood Gulch Chronicles. As of Reconstruction he's been rebuilt and is back at Red Base, and has deleted the memories of his departed teammates.

He has recently rejoined the Red Team because he was bored (and because Sarge knew the commands codes that would make him do it anyway), and assisted Sarge in developing an EMP-powered Gauss Gun and installing it on the Warthog. To this end, and for any future research, he created an underground holographic test facility, which Sarge uses mostly to kill Grif avatars over and over again.

At the end of Recreation, he was shot by Washington. However, since he mentioned leaving copies of himself at the base, he is unlikely to be "dead".

Lopezisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Beleaguered Assistant
  • Butt Monkey Since his teammates can't fully understand what he says, they tend to treat him poorly.
  • Conflicting Loyalties Zigzagged big time, many times. He started out loyal to the Red team, especially Sarge. He is later taken by the Blues, but tried to get back to the Reds who mistakenly tried to kill him, forcing him to abandon them for the Blues. He later defects with Sheila to form his own robot army, but is later taken away by Doc/O'Malley who forces him to work on his Doomsday devices and such until much later when the Reds steal him back. From that point on, he stays in Blood Gulch until one day he strangles Sister and leaves (she survived). He reunites with the Reds in Valhalla, but gets shot by Washington and left for dead. Later, Doc and Donut take over and use his disabled body as a scarecrow until he is brought to Crash Site Bravo by Donut and Doc on Chorus. There, he is taken by the Reds to work with Dos.O on their machines and weapons, but by then he no longer cared one way or another. Eventually, Dos.O defects and even Lopez turns on him, but his body is once again disabled in the battle and he's thrown in the trash by the Federal Army of Chorus until Sarge, Donut, and Washington reactivate him and he rejoins the group.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Has understandably evolved into this, especially in the Recollections trilogy, after chafing under the frankly insane leadership of Sarge and later O'Malley.
  • A Father to His Men: Viewed Sarge as this early on, both figuratively and (since Sarge built him) literally. This faded once he realized what an idiot Sarge is.
  • Only Sane Man: Views himself as this. It's not too far from the truth.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: His view of his situation vis-a-vis the entire cast, and the Red Team in particular.
  • My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Since no one on the Rooster Teeth team actually speaks Spanish, Lopez's dialogue is mainly generated mechanically via the online computer translator Babelfish. This leads to some... interesting... results for anyone who does speak the language. It's always played for laughs.
    • "OK, hombre! Au revoir."
      • The sheer inanity of Vic's orders bent language itself.
    • Lopez called Sarge "hombre stupido." How sweet.
    • In the commentary for earlier seasons, Burnie mentioned that Gus would coach him on his accent. Of course, that they still needed the translator brings Gus' credentials into question.
    • The translation was, in all probability, meant to be awful. Considering that Rooster Teeth is based in Texas and two members of the team are Hispanic or at least have Hispanic names (Jason Saldaña and Gustavo Sorola), I'm pretty sure they could've found someone to translate properly.
    • Besides, he was programed by Sarge
  • Mr. Exposition For someone nobody understands, he tends to figure things out for the others, long before they do. He tries to warn them, but usually they insult him when he does so he stops caring.
  • Obviously Evil: Or probably would be, if anyone could understand all his threats and plottings. He did, after all, work for the Big Bad of one season for quite awhile.
  • Running Gag He speaks only Spanish, can understand anything everyone else says, but nobody understands him. There's also his tendency to get his head blown off and losing his body.
  • Robo Speak: Always speaks in a flat, mechanical voice. In Spanish. Made even funnier by the fact his actual Spanish dialogue is largely nonsense (see above).
  • The Smart Guy: The other Smart Guy of Red Team. Also The Big Guy.
  • We Have Reserves: At least according to him he has many copies of his mind and goes through several bodies.

Blue Team

Private Leonard L. Church

"There's a very fine line between not listening and not caring. I like to think I walk that line everyday."

The closest the series has to a proper protagonist, Blue Team's de facto leader (though if Sister's story about promotion is applied to the Blues it should have been delivered to, it's possible Church is now on record as Captain, making him the actual leader), Only Sane Man, Deadpan Snarker, and world champion Jerkass, although he has a a nicer side. Church is a neurotic and almost perpetually angry individual who barely gets along with his teammates. He's killed in a friendly fire incident very early in the series, but quickly returns as a ghost, and later possesses a robotic body. Despite wielding the sniper and acting as the team's designated marksman, he is an awful shot, often emptying an entire clip without hitting anything. He wears light blue/cobalt armor, though in "ghost" form his armor is white (and transparent).

Reconstruction offered some surprising character development that explained Church's ability to survive death and possess people: he is actually the remains of the Alpha AI, and the Alpha was based on the mind of Freelancer's Director. Church vehemently insists he's a ghost, not an AI, but was nonetheless willing to work with Agent Washington to fight the Meta, culminating in his erasure by an EMP at the end of the season.

In Recreation and Revelation, Church is "resurrected" in the form of Epsilon. At first a mere shell of his former self, he slowly begins to reassemble his personality, as he tries to reunite with Tex. In the process, he mellows out considerably before trapping himself inside a broken memory unit to try and save Tex. Inside, he begins to relive the Alpha's memories of Blood Gulch, reconciling with his past, and realizing that despite the low points, his life was pretty good.

In Season 9, he attempts to reconcile his relationship with Tex before the memory unit fails and both he and the simulation are destroyed. In the end, he succeeds in resolving his issues with Tex by letting himself let go of her memory, and resigns himself to death...just in time to be rescued from the memory unit by the united Reds, Blues, and Agent Carolina.

Played by Burnie Burns

Churchisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Anti-Hero: On the Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes, he starts as a Type I and later develops into a Type III.
  • Asshole Victim Sometimes it's hard to feel sorry for him when bad things happen, considering how poorly he sees and treats others. At the same time though, the trope is inverted since some of the things he's been through are seriously cruel.
  • Badass Boast:
    • "I am not a thing! My name is Leonard Church, and YOU WILL FEAR MY LASERFACE!!!"
    • Alternatively, there's his simple "Hi there!" to the Meta. And "When it goes off, I'll be fine. It only affects computers, remember? And I am a motherfuckin' ghost."
  • Berserk Button: Of which he has many.
  • Body Surf
  • Butt Monkey Of the Blue team, a lot of bad things happen to him. In both comedic and dramatically serious ways.
  • Cosmic Plaything: The universe rarely gives him a break. When given an opportunity to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, he winds up responsible for killing himself, Sheila and Lopez staging a robot revolution and shooting Tucker with the rocket launcher. And that's not even getting into the fact he's the broken remains of a once-powerful AI, he's lost his girlfriend more than once, gets trapped in the capture unit, and isn't released until he lets go of said girlfriend, losing her quite possibly forever. Dude, Church's life sucks.
    • It is very possible that his time travel adventure was just Gamma's deception to make him suffer. According to Tex, both Gamma and Omega had taken to torturing Alpha in the past.
      • In fact, Church literally only exists to be tortured and hurt. The original Director Church created the Alpha AI from his own mind specifically to torture it into breaking into multiple AIs. It's implied that since no AI can ever truly escape its purpose, Church will therefore live a life of suffering and pain no matter what he does.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Well he is a fragment of a super intelligent AI.
    • And to be fair, he's not really a moron. Just incompetent and neurotic.
  • The Determinator: As inept as he can be, you have to give Church credit for trying sometimes.
  • Dogged Nice Guy: While Alpha is rude to Tex, Epsilon is very nice to her, even when she betrays him multiple times.
  • The Fatalist: After failing to alter the timeline, he decides that everything is set in stone, but that one should make the best of it. "So quit your bitchin', Nancy."
  • A God Am I: After Epsilon is uploaded into a Monitor body, he starts acting like this, though in a comedic way.
  • The Hero: Desperately wants to be this. The universe thwarts his attempts at every corner, but in Reconstruction, he's finally able to pull off one genuine, heroic Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • Image Song: "I Am the Best"
  • Jerkass: In Revelation, he turns out to have been a Jerkass Woobie all along.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Very cynical. Nevertheless, push comes to shove, he'll try to do the right thing.
  • Killed Off for Real: Alpha-Church is gone. Given that Epsilon contains memories of all the AI Fragments within him, however, a case could be made for Church's "resurrection", and creator and voice actor Burnie Burns has said that Epsilon becomes more like Alpha the more he spends time with the Blood Gulch Crew, though he still technically is not the same being.
    • Epsilon and Alpha-Church very briefly met shortly before Alpha-Church's death, and fan theories often suggest that Epsilon was able to "update" his memories of the Alpha to that point.
  • MacGuffin Guy: Both Alpha and Epsilon.
  • Nice Guy: Epsilon-Church.
    • Season nine shows, however, that he's developed Alpha's anger issues.
  • Only Sane Man: Well, he's the only one of the Blues that seems competent enough to get shit done.
  • Other Me Annoys Me: Both his complaints in "Reconstruction" about how annoying the AI fragments are, and when Epsilon comments that both the Alpha and the Director are "kind of a dick".
  • Reality Warper: The Blood Gulf simulation is his creation, he can do what he likes to it in the memory unit. Although that doesn't necessarily mean it does precisely what he wants...
  • Slap Slap Kiss: Alpha-Church has this with Tex. Epsilon is much more polite to her but ultimately decides to move on.
  • Supporting Leader: While he's definitely the main protagonist, whenever the situation calls for it, expect Church to be the one to unite both teams against the Big Bad. However, don't expect him to do much to the Big Bad, since...
  • That Man Is Dead: Subverted. Epsilon-Church clearly distinguishes between himself and "Alpha", but seems to fully identify himself as "Church".
  • Tomato in the Mirror
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: With Tucker.
    • Epsilon-Church is considerably friendlier with Tucker AND Caboose. Shocking, isn't it?
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Or, "non-ghost," but either way this is called into question by the end of Reconstruction. Recreation and Revelation seem to infer that Epsilon-Church regards himself as equally human as his teammates.

Private First Class Lavernius Tucker

"Women are like Voltron. The more you hook up, the better it gets."

Second-in-command (it was either him or Caboose) and often clueless Bumbling Sidekick to Church, Tucker is the longest-serving of the surviving Blues at Blood Gulch. As disinclined towards work or combat as Grif (he's actually the highest-ranking Blue as a Private First Class, but is happy to let Church take the reins), he repeatedly claims to be a "lover, not a fighter," and utters his Catch Phrase at the first sign of a Double Entendre. He's somewhat juvenile in personality, offering lame pick-up lines to any females he isn't terrified of. He called dibs on Capt. Flowers' blue-green armor when the former died of an aspirin overdose. Tucker may or may not be black, and is quick to point out this shouldn't matter. Despite his reluctance to fight, Tucker's a great shot due to his keen eyesight (which developed because Church always hogs the sniper rifle).

Tucker's role in the plot is increased after he accidentally learns the secret about Red and Blue Command, prompting the hiring of Wyoming to assassinate Tucker before he can spread the news. After the "time travel" incident, Tucker stumbles upon an alien sword that can then only be wielded by him, supposedly proving he is "the chosen one" destined to save an alien race. This results in a failed quest, a dead alien, and Tucker's "impregnation" which culminates in Junior (see below). Though Tucker had a Crowning Moment of Awesome when he somehow figured out Wyoming's temporal loop ability, he left the Blue Team sometime between the main series and Reconstruction, though an intercepted radio transmission at Command revealed that he's evidently out recovering something buried under some sand.

He makes his triumphant return in Recreation, cementing his role as the series' default Lancer (and Season 7's temporary Hero) by taking out a group of heavily armed Marines, Elites and a Freelancer by himself.

Played by Jason Saldaña

Tuckerisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Ambiguously Brown Maybe... There's debate about him being black or not. We've never actually seen his skin, much less his face, so there's no way of fully confirming it.
  • A Man Is Not a Virgin: According to him, he really isn't anymore, courtesy of Sister, but this is Tucker we're talking about.
  • Badass Normal: Compared to the nigh-superhuman Freelancers, Tucker's relatively weak, despite the training he received after The Blood Gulch Chronicles. But he's still leagues above the Blood Gulch veterans and even UNSC Marines. After all, this was a guy who managed to take out a combined team of Elites and human mercs, led by a Freelancer, by himself.
    • It should be noted that Tucker has taken on at least 4 freelancers in the course of the series.
      • At the end of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he's the only one able to see through Wyoming's time loops. And takes out a large amount of Wyoming's with a sniper.
      • In Recreation, he's able to single-handedly fend off CT's group from reaching the temple, and then manages to hold his own until Epsilon Church saves him.
      • In Revelation, he's the only one who puts up a remotely decent fight against Tex in the Freelancer base, even managing to make jokes while he's getting beaten to death. And in the finale, he's able to stick the energy sword in The Meta which would have killed anyone else not imbued with multiple AI enhancements.
    • Badass Bystander: More or less the "normal" guy on the Blue Team in Blood Gulch. Has killed 2 Freelancers and helped kill a third.
  • Calling Your Attacks: When using his sword in Revelation, he calls out his "swishes" and his "stabs". Doesn't work with Tex, does work when he stabs the Meta.
  • Casanova Wannabe: His onscreen success rate with women is very low, though not for lack of effort.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass He wasn't much of a soldier at the start (none of them were, to be honest), but by the later seasons, he becomes one of the best fighters of the original Reds and Blues.
  • Double Entendre: He's made of these.
  • Image Song: "Bow Chicka Wow Wow Wow".
  • The Lancer: To Church's Hero. Starting from his take-down of Wyoming, Tucker gradually develops into the series' default Lancer by virtue of being the most badass non-Freelancer in the entire show.
  • Pet the Dog: Tucker's actually very affectionate toward his son.
  • Mama Bear: He shows traits of this after Junior is kidnapped.
  • Mister Seahorse: Courtesy of Crunchbite's parasitic embryo.
  • Running Gag: Tucker can't go through a teleporter without getting covered in black stuff.
    • Even if no one else going through the same teleporter does. Though, whether or not other characters are affected seems to be dependent on its usefulness to the plot.
  • Spanner in the Works: The source of why he's badass. Figures out how to counter Wyoming's time-looping ability, prevents C.T. from breaking into the Sandtrap temple, wipes out half of C.T.'s army single-handed and destroys C.T.'s jeep during a chase scene.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: Tucker claims to be a pacifist during his quest, even outright stating he didn't want to kill a monster. This doesn't, however, stop him from killing Wyoming and attacking Tex and Meta with potentially lethal strikes.
  • Token Minority: After revealing his first name to be Lavernius, he's asked by Church if he's black. Fanon picked up on this, with a lot of fan art making Tucker a black guy when out of his armor.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Before the reintroduction of Tex, he was the most badass member of the series. As said above, he remains the most badass non-Freelancer.
    • He stabs The Meta with his sword in close combat. The Meta, of course, is powerful enough to fight Tex one on one without any AI support, and yet Tucker still manages to land a solid hit on him. (Although, in fairness, the Meta had taken quite a few hits by that point. Still impressive.)
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: With Church, and arguably, Caboose and the Reds (particularly Grif).
  • The Worf Effect: After kicking the asses of C.T.'s crew, he meets Tex to have his ass utterly spanked.
    • Though he still did better than the rest. And his plan with Simmons to ambush Tex would've worked if Caboose hadn't acted as a Spanner in the Works.

Private Michael J. Caboose

"The last time I was shot I got a purple heart. Yeah, I hope this time I get a purple lung. You see, eventually I hope to build an entire purple person. And we will be best friends."

Caboose, who accidentally enlisted in the Blue Army after mistaking a recruitment center for a college, was introduced as The Fool, but devolves into a complete idiot. As his name suggests, he is the last to arrive at any train of thought's destination. Occasional journeys into his mind have revealed that Caboose's view of the world is at drastic odds with reality - he has mental constructs representing the rest of the cast running around inside of his head, ranging from a Church who vehemently insists that Caboose is his best friend, to a Sarge that talks like a pirate. Caboose is a bigger danger to his teammates than to his enemies, to the extent that the surest way to get him to shoot someone is to tell him they're on his team, and Command has a keyboard shortcut to report his teamkills (Ctrl+F+U).

Caboose primarily serves as a comic relief character and gets some of the series' best lines, but he has occasional impact on the plot. After Tex's death he was briefly possessed by O'Malley (and the resulting mental trauma may explain his lowered IQ afterwards), and when the Red and Blue Teams had to work together to track down the rogue AI, he helped Sarge combat the Zealots of Battle Creek thanks in part to his superhuman strength ("God's way of compensating"). Caboose gets along (marginally) better with machines than humans, hence his "relationship" with Sheila and his friendship of sorts with Andy the bomb. And once in a great while, he has a useful idea, such as the plan that got Washington and both teams into Command near the finale of Reconstruction. He wears dark blue armor, and in episodes created using Halo 3 is easy distinguishable due to his Mark V helmet, as the rest of the cast have upgraded to Mark VIs. In Recreation He used various bits and pieces to try and rebuild Church. Hence, Epsilon's memories are based on Caboose's view of the Red and Blue teams... Though exposure to slightly more in-touch individuals seems to have alleviated this.

Played by Joel Heyman

Cabooseisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Adorkable
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Far from being just plain stupid, Caboose is almost completely divorced from reality and utters many bizarre yet occasionally insightful non-sequiturs.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite his many mental quirks, Caboose has been shown to possess superhuman strength and, when sufficiently angry, was able to single-handedly wipe out both the Red and Blue Battle Creek Zealots.
    • He's also easily the best shot on the Blue Team. It just happens that he's usually shooting at the Blue Team.
  • The Ditz: Easily the dumbest member of the cast. And the fans love him for that.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: Occasionally has a good idea.
    • Genius Ditz: These moments have become more frequent in Season 9 as Caboose is reverted to his personality pre-Flanderization.
    • It should be pointed out that he was more productive than any member of either team when he was working by himself in Valhalla. Sure, there was a fire, but he was still getting stuff done.
  • Dumb Muscle
  • Flanderization: He killed Church twice, once while in a malfunctioning tank, the other while he was possessing the enemy commander. And yet in later series, being called his ally is the fastest way to get him to shoot you.
    • Technically non-canon, but in one of the alternate endings, he shoots Church a third time. Again with the tank.
      • Command even has a keyboard shortcut for reporting his teamkills, Ctrl+F+U
  • Hipster: Worshiped Church before it was cool.
  • Image Song: "Your Best Friend"
  • Lethal Klutz: He has a history of team-killing people he tries to help. So much so that, not only does the Blue Team tell Caboose to help someone they want shot, Command has their own keyboard shortcut for his T Ks (Control+F+U).
  • Shout-Out: One of two characters (the other being Donut) named after one of the randomly generated names assigned to temporary multiplayer profiles in Halo: Combat Evolved.
  • Took a Level In Dumbass: Was originally written as merely somewhat foolish early in Season 1, but quickly became outright insane by Season 2 and 3. This has been attributed to Sheila's initial destruction, and later O'Malley's forced ejection from his mind.
  • Undying Loyalty: For all his teamkilling tendencies (that were nobody's fault!), he's also twice gone to the ends of the Earth to resurrect/rescue Church.

M808V Main Battle Tank "Sheila"

"Firing main cannon."

Blue Team's support vehicle, a battle tank with an artificial intelligence that answers to Sheila (her original name was Phyllis, but time travel is involved). The Blues expressed bewilderment that Command decided to supply them with a tank no one knew how to operate, but Caboose nonetheless attempted to rescue Church using Sheila, killing him in the process and apparently falling in love with the "nice tank lady." If Sheila paid much attention to Caboose, this would form a Love Triangle, given her attraction to Lopez. After Caboose's attempt, the Blues seem to decide that Sheila works best driving herself. Throughout the series, Sheila is a major asset for Blue Team...when she isn't feeling moody and oppositional or running off with Lopez to form an all-robot faction.

In Revelation it is revealed that Sheila's original name, pronounced Phyllis but spelt as F.I.L.S.S, stands for Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System. F.I.L.S.S is currently running a secret facility owned by the Director, but it is unknown if she is the same AI or if Sheila is some kind of duplicate. F.I.L.S.S., at least, has no memory of the Blood Gulch crew.

Played by Yomary Cruz

Andy

"Hey. You can't make an omelet without blowing up a few eggs."

Andy is a bomb (the same bomb used in Halo multiplayer) that was built by Tex from parts from a protocol unit and "some other personal items" (according to him) to blow up and kill O'Malley. Due to O'Malley's base locking down after his placement inside, he was about to blow up most of the Blood Gulch crew, but Church asked Gary/Gamma to deactivate it, saving their lives. It was then revealed that the bomb could talk and was named Andy. Andy has a short fuse (literally and figuratively), likes to insult people, and finds humor in the misfortunes of others. He also likes to blow stuff up, when Tex threatens to detonate him, he reacts with fear (though it may be because he wouldn't do much damage if detonated at that particular time.)

Originally Andy was very heavy and only Caboose could carry him. However in later episodes when O'Malley refers to him as a bowling ball Andy asks Caboose if he is fat, and then states that he has been working out. Sarge confirms this since he (and several others) can carry Andy with ease.

Andy gains a new role when it is revealed that he is the only one who can understand the alien language. Later, Sarge kidnaps Andy and has him translate the orders from Vic stored in Lopez (which could only be played back in Spanish). Andy was last seen with Tex on board the Pelican as she left at the end of the series, in which he exploded, but instead of leaving debris it just produced a white flash.

In an extended, sponsor-only episode of Reconstruction he is heard in the background during the Pelican recording expressing his disappointment with how small his explosion was. This indicates that he can explode multiple times without killing himself.

Played by Nathan Zellner

  • Mad Bomber He implies that when he gets excited, he'll go off. When he gets mad, he'll go off. When he gets happy, he'll go off. Except that he never does.
  • Made of Explodium He's a talking bomb, so of course. Oddly enough though, he was built with parts from a translator robot, hence how/why he can talk.
  • What an Idiot! He's a bomb. He only has 1 actual function, and yet he fails at it when the time finally comes for him to actually blow himself up.

Private Kaikaina Grif, a.k.a. "Sister"

"Yeah, sorry, doesn't sound like I have the skills you need. Unless you want to see my ping-pong ball trick."

Grif's little sister, who joined the army in order to reunite with him, since she was lonely and scared after he left. Being colorblind and more than a little stupid, she joined Blue Team by mistake. She tagged along with the Reds upon arriving (and landing on Donut), in the process convincing them that Sarge was dead and Simmons should be promoted, until her true affiliation was revealed and Grif handed her off to the Blues before Sarge shot her. Roughly as lazy and useless as her brother, Sister's main purpose seems to be to embarrass Grif, whether through off-hand references to her promiscuous personal life, revealing the family's freak-show roots, or unintentionally televising her routine physical. As of Reconstruction, she is the only Blue remaining at Blood Gulch, where she uses the base to host raves for five bucks a head (in one memorable night, making ten dollars). She wears yellow armor.

Lopez claims to have killed her. However, Grif doesn't believe this, claiming she's Made of Iron. The credibility of Grif's assertion is much stronger considering he makes it right after he survives an eight hundred foot drop with seemingly no ill effects.

Played by Rebecca Frasier

Sisterisms (Associated Tropes):

Sister: I thought about having a kid once.
Tucker: Oh, really? It's a lot of work.
Sister: Yeah, it seems like it would be hard. But, I thought, y'know, who wants to be known as the girl who's had seven abortions?
Tucker: Heh, yeah... Wait, what?

Captain Butch Flowers

"Men, your delightful tomfoolery puts a spring in my step, and a bounce in my britches. If I weren't your commanding officer I'd pick you both up, give you a giant Bear Hug, and make you call me Daddy."

Blue Team's actual leader, who died before the series began, leaving Church in charge (and Tucker in his armor). Unlike everyone else in the canyon, he was quite relaxed, soft-spoken, and even-tempered. The captain was very informal with his teammates, had a Casa Lane Parenting attitude towards his subordinates (maybe a little too much, actually), and called the opposing army "those rascals." Time travel reveals that he'd been accidentally killed by Church in a Stable Time Loop. He was raised from the dead somehow by aliens in season five, only to be possessed by Omega, and then re-killed shortly after regaining his freedom.

Played by Ed Robertson

  • Dropped a Bridge on Him How he kills the Gatling gun twins: by dropping a massive crate on them. Unfortunately, it also kind of happens to him during season 5 when he is killed by a bullet fired by persons unknown.
  • Walking Spoiler He appears throughout the Freelancer flashbacks, but never speaks until the very end of them where it is revealed that he is actually Agent Florida.
  • Weak but Skilled He's never shown to be all that strong on his own, but he's skilled and very clever.

Freelancers

Agent Texas (Allison)

"I wouldn't say I'm mean. I just get paid to do mean things."

A black-armored mercenary and former agent of Project Freelancer, the biggest Badass in all of Blood Gulch, an infiltration expert thanks to a cloaking device, and a better fighter than both teams combined. Her real name is Allison, and her Freelancer handle is Agent Texas. Tex is contracted to support the Blues after Church's death and proceeds to terrify Tucker and Caboose while leading a one-(wo)man assault on Red Base to recover the Blue flag. Unfortunately, a prodigious grenade toss by Donut eventually kills her, but she returns as a ghost some time later, inhabiting a robot body in a manner similar to Church. This experience mellows Tex out somewhat, as it frees her from the influence of her AI partner O'Malley (see below) - though by no means is she someone you should make angry. Tex hangs out with the Blues when she isn't off on her own, usually attempting to foil O'Malley or Wyoming's plans, but as the series progresses she gets more and more entangled in the plots surrounding the dupes at Blood Gulch. In the finale, she voluntarily reunites with O'Malley in an attempt to manipulate Junior and the alien race into helping humanity win the war, and is killed when Sarge sets off a bomb in the spaceship she hijacked.

Plenty of unanswered questions surround Tex, and Reconstruction has only added to them. She does not return during that series, despite overcoming death previously, though Caboose was seen doing something with her robot body during the Epilogue. Her relationship with Church was also unresolved: according to Church they were very nearly married, but Tex had a habit of stealing from him and sleeping with other men, so they parted less than amicably. As to her eventual fate, it should be noted that as with Vic, one of the A.I. seen with The Meta strongly resembles her.

Revelation has since revealed that, as many suspected, she is also an AI based on the memories of Director Leonard Church. Created from his memories of Allison, a woman he loved and who died, she apparently came into existence around the same time Alpha was created. Presumable as a result of the Director's feelings for the original Allison, she was not subjected to the same tortures as Alpha. Following her return in Revelation she apparently does remember some of her origins and hates Church for forcing her back into existence. She claimed that she came into existence to be strong when Church couldn't be, but Church also realizes that, like her original self, she's always doomed to failure.

Played by Kathleen Zuelch

Texisms (Associated Tropes):

"Agent Tex is a bit of a badass."

    • The Meta gives her a run for her money though. While Tex is more agile and has more finesse, the Meta is The Juggernaut, and shrugs off most of her attacks. Tex's skill and speed and the Meta's strength and durability make them an even match.
    • Took a Level in Badass: Think she was badass in Blood Gulch Chronicles? Wait 'till you see what she does in Revelation.
  • Berserk Button: While she's never exactly calm, she's shown to be much more brutal when an opponent gains an upper hand. This is shown during her sparring match with York, Wyoming, and Maine, after York knocks her gun out of her hand, and when Wyoming hits her with a live round.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Throughout The Blood Gulch Chronicles, she repeatedly betrays the Blues, though it's Played for Laughs. At the end of season five, her last betrayal, albeit done with good intentions, is played dead straight for drama. She also shoots Church and leaves him as bait for Wash and the Meta in Revelation.
  • Combat Pragmatist
  • Crazy Prepared
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Deconstruction: Of the Mary Sue archetype. She's a straight-up God Mode Sue, but....
    • Note, the original Tex is not a true Mary Sue but the second Tex is.
  • The Dragon: As season nine seems to be hinting at...
  • Do Artificial Intelligences Dream: After her now famous asskicking of the Blood Gulch crew, this is her primary motivation. To find out who she is, what she is, and what purpose she has in this world.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: According to Epsilon, this is her defining character trait. Cross HSQ and Tear Jerker.
  • Hot Amazon: Fanon depicts her as such in fanart.
  • Killed Off for Real: Both the original Tex, and Epsilon-Tex (the one that beat down the Reds). The first died along with Alpha when the EMP surged. Epsilon allows himself to 'forget' the second Tex, erasing her from existence.
    • Though there is some ambiguity on the death of the original Tex, given that shortly after forgetting the second Tex, Epsilon asks Caboose about "The real Tex".
    • He may have been referring to the actual Allison, though this would be less likely.
  • Lightning Bruiser
  • Positive Discrimination: Some fans have pointed out, and it could be true, given how to compensate for being the token female (until Sister) in Red Vs. Blue they had to turn her into the ultimate Badass.
    • And by "ultimate", we mean "hands-down the best fighter in the entire series", taking on two other more or less impossible-to-defeat characters at the same time and not doing half-bad!
    • Please note that the above was the result of poor teamwork in the fight against York, Maine, and Wyoming and the only reason Wash and Meta didn't curb stomp her in Revelation was because they had just survived a car bombing and she had rigged the battlefield to her advantage.
  • Power Creep, Power Seep: In season one, Sarge knocked out Tex in a single hit, in season 8, Sarge can't even manage to land a hit.
    • Possibly justified by the varying quality of the robot bodies she inhabits.
      • Fridge Brilliance: Remember how it was revealed that Blood Gulch was where they sent freelancers for training? Seems like, for Tex, the training worked...
      • Epsilon also explains this later as Tex always fails; but only just barely.
  • Made of Iron Figuratively and literally, by the time the story takes place.
  • One Woman Army Figuratively and later literally when Carolina and the Reds and Blues try to reach the Director of Project Freelancer, they are forced to fight dozens of robotic copies of her.
  • Only Sane Woman: Somewhat. Tex would be this on the Blue Team if she weren't obsessively greedy and uncontrollably violent. She punches the guys in their sleep, and once knocked out Tucker to steal his sword.
  • Pet the Dog: In one of the non-canon Halo 2 promotion vids, she inclines to stay behind with Caboose (because he's too afraid of waiting for the guys by himself). In-canon, though, she refers to Tucker as a friend and works to prevent his assassination at Wyoming's hands. Plus, makes it clear to Sister that the Blues are "her" idiots. Guess there really is a heart of gold somewhere deep inside.
  • Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: "Okay, so who's first?" Cue a total Curb Stomp Battle for the next episode.
  • Ridiculously Human Robot
  • Samus Is a Girl
  • Slap Slap Kiss: Her relationship with Church.
  • Stealth Hi Bye: One of her specialties.
  • Super Soldier
  • Tomato in the Mirror: She's an AI, like Church, who Alpha inadventantly made based off of memories of a dead loved one of the Director's. However, since his last memories of said loved one were her death, Tex is cursed to ultimately fail at everything she does.
  • Worf Had the Flu: Tex is supremely badass, but because she was based on the memories of someone who died in action, she is forever doomed to fail where it counts. So when nothing is on the line, she'll kick the crap out of them with ease, but when doing some sort of mission, she'll mess up at the last moment.

Agent Washington (David)

"You really are an odd group of people."

A Freelancer and Recovery Agent, and the main character of Recovery One and the past segments during season nine. Washington's job is to find dead or dying Freelancers and recover their AIs and special equipment. He is trusted with this position due to his view of AIs--he had an AI partner, Epsilon, until the fragment went insane and committed suicide while in his head, and is therefore the person least likely to try and steal another one (the experience had absolutely no impact on his sanity, by the way). Wash works with Agent South and Delta during Recovery One to hunt down the Meta, and though he is seemingly killed during that series, he survives (due to York's regeneration unit) to continue his mission during Reconstruction, and enlists Church and Caboose to help. He has another, self-appointed goal: Epsilon held the Alpha's memory, meaning that Wash knows everything the Director of Project Freelancer did to it and is trying to bring the Director down. Washington serves as a Straight Man or the Only Sane Man when exposed to the two teams' weirdness, but has a latent snarkiness that comes into play whenever he lampshades the implausible things they've done. His armor is gray with yellow markings on the shoulders.

After being held prisoner by the UNSC for inadvertently destroying the evidence of Project Freelancer's misdeeds, Washington was released, and is now working with the Meta to track down Epsilon. When he finally did, he managed to hold his own fighting Tex, and even tried to help Epsilon save her. At the end of the series, he joins the Blue team so that he won't get thrown in jail.

Played by Shannon McCormick

Washingtonisms (Associated Tropes):

Washington: The Director? He's given us everything. He's helping us.

  • Butt Monkey Of the Freelancers, he was said to be the worst shot, and was known for once having a grappling hook pull him in by his crotch. After his experience with Epsilon, he is seen as much more serious and effective agent. Later on, after siding with the Reds and Blues, he is basically the most competent among them until Carolina shows up.
  • Byronic Hero: Particularly in Recovery One.
  • Catch Phrase: "This is the worst <x> ever! Of all time."
  • Character Development: All those betrayals do take a toll on one's psyche. Having someone you betrayed forgive you and welcome you back with open arms does too, but in a much nicer way.
  • The Comically Serious: Even amongst the Freelancers, he's more or less the Straight Man.
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Deuteragonist: The Recollection trilogy revolves around Church (Alpha, and later Epsilon), but Washington's story is of almost-equal importance, particularly in Reconstruction.
    • Season 9 continued this to a degree, though it did focus on the known Freelancers in general (aside from Wyoming).
  • Face Heel Turn: At the end of Recreation.
  • Faking the Dead
  • Foregone Conclusion: See Break the Cutie, above.
  • Jade-Colored Glasses: The contrast between his Season 9 persona and Revelation persona really shows this. He starts out idealistic and friendly and ends cynical and jaded.
    • Characterized by this exchange with Doc during Revelation.

Wash:(Talking to Meta) I agree, we should just kill most of them, the last alive will talk.
Doc: Wash, you can't go killing everyone you meet.
Wash: Why not?
Doc: Umm...well now that you put me on the spot, I don't really have an answer, just seems like a bad idea.

  • Kick the Dog: When he shot Lopez and Donut at the very end of Recreation. Neither had posed anything near a threat to him, neither were responsible for imprisoning him, and he just shot them. While Lopez is a robot, Washington probably didn't know that, and even if he did... for Donut, there was no excuse.
  • Knife Nut: He showed a good deal of proficiency in wounding the Meta with a combat knife... and throwing it hitting him while the Meta is Cloaked.
  • Knight in Sour Armor
  • Knight of Cerebus: Only appears in a few scenes in Recreation, including the final scene of the season, where he seemingly kills both Donut and Lopez. What follows in Revelation is, while not overtly dramatic, much more action-based and plot oriented than the previous season.
  • Master of None: Doesn't seem to have a specialty, and of all the known Freelancers, only CT and Maine (surprisingly) are not above him, according to the Director's ranking board. This is relative, however - he is still a Freelancer, and is very much The Mario compared to standard soldiers.
    • Judging from season 9, his specialty would likely be marksmanship. His icon on the ranking board is a battle rifle, and his accuracy in the face of extreme circumstances (such as shooting the pilot of a moving Hornet while falling from a building) is quite impressive.
    • He's most definitely a master of mid-range combat. That's what his specialty is. Sure, everyone has a battle rifle, but no one can put one to use quite like Wash. Plus, I'd say after the Epsilon incident, he likely became quite the chess master.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His actions in Revelation lead to the Meta regaining all his abilities by capturing Tex in the Capture Unit instead of Epsilon. This nearly turns out very badly for all involved.
    • Though chances are that he never intended to let The Meta use the capture unit, only ordering it because it was knocked out of his own hands.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Suffering from this too often is one of the sources of a lot of Wash's bitterness and anger.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: When he was first introduced, he seemed like a supreme badass compared to the zany Blood Gulch crew. Later seasons show that he's very much Weak but Skilled, at least relative to most of the other Freelancers.
    • Actually, he's far from normal. When one looks at his performance through Season 9 they seem to forget that he's in the top six of a project that has likely 47 other agents. On top of this, he is the only freelancer to be on the board all season and never drop down a rank.
  • Odd Friendship: Wash is an uptight, regulations guy who freaked out when North mentioned he used equipment without telling Command. Maine is a brutish dirty fighting soldier who tried to kill Tex during a sparring match because she was beating him.
  • Only Sane Man
  • Precision F-Strike:

Washington: Emp?? You have got to be fucking kidding m-

  • Replacement Goldfish: Season 10 reveals that not only did he start wearing Church's armor and take over as leader of the Blue team, but the characters started referring to him as Church.

Caboose: I wouldn't really use the word "replace"... but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better immediately.

Counselor: So you would say that you have overwhelming feelings of anger and a need for revenge?
Washington: More than you know.

Agent South: Oh come on, Wash. What are you gonna do, shoo--

Boom! Headshot!

Agent Washington: Yes.

Agent York

A tan and white-armored former Freelancer who turned to petty burglary after the project collapsed. York has one bad eye, due to a past incident involving him and Tex. He agrees to help Tex track down Wyoming in the Out Of Mind mini-series. Doesn't make it. His special suit ability was rapid regeneration, and his AI partner was Delta.

In Season Nine, he shows off his ability at picking locks and is often The Lancer to Agent Carolina, and is the only Freelancer she seems to treat as an equal and friend instead of a subordinate or a burden.

Played by Sean Duggan

Yorkisms (Associated Tropes):

York: Maine! Look, I'm gonna move left, you g- (Maine rushes out and is promptly shot) ...or you just run out and do whatever you want and then get killed. Ready? Break. Good job everybody.

    • This trope particularly shows up in his partnership with Delta, almost to the point of being a Type 2 Vitriolic Best Buds.

Delta: Once we encounter the target her emotions may make her actions erratic.
York: What can I tell ya? Just one of the things that makes us human, D.
Delta: Excellent point, York. I was not looking at it from a flawed perspective. I will try to do so in the future.
York: Well, it sure would make these conversations easier. Thanks for coming down to my level, D.

  • Good-Looking Privates: He's the first full-on face we see (besides a few other minor characters), and he's not bad-looking.
    • Apparently, he agrees.

York: You didn't bring me along for my good looks, did you?

"So the first face we made for Red vs. Blue this year was York. And we really just made him from scratch. We were just kinda like, 'What does a good-looking guy look like?' And I guess this is what we think a good-looking guy looks like."

  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: He gets a nice scar across his face and it apparently made him lose vision partially in one of his eyes.
  • Handicapped Badass: Has very bad vision in one eye, but is still surprisingly competent all around in Freelancer missions, enough to join them.
  • Healing Factor: His armor ability, not that it helps him survive in the end, though it does help Wash later on.
  • Herding Cats: His true skill seems to be as a leader and group strategist... and he's assigned to a project populated by highly individualistic and strong-willed operatives.
  • Informed Ability: According to Season 9, he's one of the best Freelancers. In canon he hasn't really displayed that yet, apart from being very wary.
    • He did put up one of the better showings against Omega Texas, including an awesome close-range gunfight. Was the only one to knock Tex's gun out of her hand too.
    • No mention of the fist fight? He actually tries to get his Leeroy Jenkins teammates to work together with him, not to mention that he is shown to have fairly good close range abilities, but is not as fast as Tex.
  • Killed Off for Real: Shot and killed by Wyoming.
  • The Lancer: Very much this to Carolina's hero. He plays Number 2 to her, seems to be the only one she sees as a friend, and serves as the laid-back snarker to her straight-laced 'get the job done' attitude. Burnie has said that York was written to be the Han Solo of the Freelancers, and it shows.
  • Master of Unlocking: In the Out Of Mind miniseries, Tex gets York's help to break into Omega's base. She finds him trying to break into a store, and in Recovery One Wash makes a comment about how his equipment's condition wasn't "bad for an old locksmith."
    • In Season 9, his icon on the ranking board is, appropriately enough, a lock.
  • Nice Guy: In addition to being a bad liar, compared to most of the other Freelancers we've seen he's genuinely quite friendly and laid-back, tries to encourage teamwork in a group that's usually made of lone wolves, and seems to have a sense of fair play/decency in a group that's often opportunistic. He also seems be the only one who had an actual healthy partner/friendship with his AI.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He tries to switch sides during a training exercise when his partners Wyoming and Maine start using lethal force. He gets berated by Tex for "abandoning his team" in return and got in the blast range of a frag grenade thrown by Maine, potentially causing him to go blind in one eye.
  • Only Sane Man: Amongst the rest of the Freelancers, he seems to function as this along with Washington, but while Wash is very uptight, York is really relaxed.
  • Team Dad: Along with Carolina, he seems to be among the most capable and experienced Freelancers in the field. In adition to his Only Sane Man tendencies, he fits the bill.
  • Token Good Teammate: Trumps even Wash on his best day as the nicest member of the Freelancers. Friendly, calm, intentionally humourous, and actually has moral standards. Which gets him beaten to a pulp by Tex while trying to stop a rapidly-becoming-deadly fight, then hit point blank with a grenade from his own teammate after having a stone pillar hurled at him. In a simulation fight that had no substantial meaning.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds He and Delta especially, but also North Dakota and Wash.

Agent Wyoming (Reginald)

"Looks like it's your lucky day, mate. I don't have time to torture you, so I'm just going to have to kill you."

Another agent of Project Freelancer, hired by O'Malley to kill Tucker after the latter discovers the secret of Red and Blue Command. Tucker survives his assassination attempt, and Wyoming and Tex end up chasing each other around during the main series, as well as the Out of Mind side series. He eventually eludes her and returns to Blood Gulch alongside O'Malley for the series' explosive finale. Known for uttering insincere apologies to his victims, and being perpetually cool-headed, Wyoming's special equipment is a temporal distorter that allows him to manipulate time, slowing it down, or looping it. As shown during the finale, the latter produces a backlog of "spare" Wyomings, making him a literal One-Man Army. Presumed dead during Reconstruction, though the Meta was kind enough to loot his special equipment. Wyoming wears white armor, his real name is Reginald, and he talks with something approaching an imitation of a muddled British/Australian accent.

Played by Matt Hullum

Wyomingisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Arch Enemy: To Tex, arguably, since he was contracted to specifically hunt her down.
  • Asshole Victim Once he's killed off, he's almost never mentioned or seen again. When he DOES show up again in the flashbacks, we learn a bit more about the things he did during those days and... We feel even less sympathy for him than before.
  • The Brute: Not as much as Maine, but still present in Season 9.
    • Ironically, he's the weakest Freelancer, skill-wise. He's not shown to be as good a fighter as Tex or Carolina, and he isn't even as great a marksman as Wash. In season nine, he's curb stomped by Tex and is shot by law enforcement and security during The Caper. He does make up for this with his time mastery... and fighting dirty.
  • Demoted to Extra: Despite playing a fairly important role in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, his only main contributing factor to Season 9 is participating in the sparring session with Tex and two lines of dialogue. Word of God says that this was due to his nature contrasting with the more serious Prequel segments.
  • The Dragon: For O'Malley, but given that he is a Freelancer....
    • Dragon with an Agenda: Wyoming had been given a contract to kill anyone who knew that Command is Mission Control for both the Reds and Blues (i.e. Tucker). Explaining that he had purposely misled Omega to go search for Tex at Blood Gulch in the Out Of Mind miniseries, Wyoming hoped that Omega would do the work for him. Naturally, it didn't work out, so he figured that he had to get more hands-on to get the work done.
  • Evil Brit: Sounds like one; a British/Australian accent was the best they could do for him in the auditioning.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Tends to say an insincere "sorry" whenever he shoots someone.
  • Killed Off for Real: By Tucker, which solidified the latter into a Badass Normal.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Along with Maine during the three-on-one fight with Tex.
  • Light Is Not Good: The only character to wear white armour (aside from Church), and suffice it to say, he's kind of a dick.
  • Time Master: Can loop time frames infinitely if he loses; think of it as pressing the restart button for a video game console every time something goes wrong for you.
  • Weak but Skilled: By Freelancer standards. He's more an assassin than a straight-up combatant.

The Meta / Agent Maine

(A low, menacing hiss)

The former Freelancer Agent Maine, who snapped and started tracking down and murdering other agents, then stripping them of their combat AIs and special equipment, growing in power with each victory. The Big Bad of the Recovery One and Reconstruction series, the Meta refers to itself as a collective entity due to the number of consciousnesses running around inside its head, and seems to be set on recovering all of the Freelancer AIs in order to reconstruct the Alpha from which they were derived. A formidable opponent - Church compares the Meta to the one woman army Tex, but says "this thing's like...eight of her." Its white armor (though it can change color due to a chameleon circuit) is a hodgepodge of parts from a number of designs, and the Meta's voice varies from a Creepy Child hissing whisper to a susurrus of voices talking at once to animalistic snarls, though the former two are likely the voices of the AIs in its head.

Shows up well into Recreation, finding Donut at the Blue base, who mistakes him for a new blue soldier. Simmons is unpleasantly surprised. It turns out it's working with Washington to track down the Epsilon A.I.

After being Washington's comedic partner for most of Revelation, the Meta betrays him and stabs Tex's robot body in the face with the Capture Unit, trapping her inside it. Washington tries to fight him and is nearly killed. Luckily, the Blood Gulch crew team up to take him down, hooking him to a wrecked warthog's tow cable and sending him off the side of a cliff, into the ocean.]

According to the PAX East Season Nine trailer, some of the questions surrounding him may well be answered soon. The trailer itself explains the reason he speaks in growls and grunts: while on a mission with Agent Washington, the then-sane Freelancer Agent Maine was shot in the throat and thrown off a cliff- by Red and Blue "simulation troopers," no less.

Metaisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Alas, Poor Villain How evil he is/was is hard to gauge. Before receiving Sigma, he was a tough, but loyal agent. After, Sigma started manipulating his mind and taking over his body until he becomes "the Meta" which leads to killing many people (including former friends and allies) in an effort to become "human". Then, after he loses Sigma and the other AI, Agent Maine's mind began to deteriorate even more on its own which led to him trying to acquire anymore freelance equipment or power that he could until the Reds, Blues, and Washington finally kill him.
  • Asshole Victim How much you sympathize for him depends on how you view him as either the Meta or as Agent Maine.
  • Ax Crazy: Due to having so many A.I. jammed into his head.
  • Badass: Do NOT mess with the Meta. You will regret it. As Washington finds out much later. See Evil Is Not a Toy, below.
  • Big Bad: Definitely for Reconstruction, providing a much more threatening presence than O'Malley ever did in the first five seasons. Rather unusual for a Big Bad, the Meta provides a nice variation in that he's a lot more hands-on than what you might expect.
    • Big Bad Ensemble: With C.T. in Recreation. In particular, the Meta repeatedly hunts down and tries to kill Donut, Simmons and Lopez in Valhalla, while C.T. tries to salvage a dig site for individual profit and comes into trouble with Tucker, Sarge, Caboose and Grif in a desert.
    • Big Bad Duumvirate: Allies with Washington for the finale of Recreation and the majority of Revelation.
  • The Brute: It seems even during his time as a Freelancer, he was this. Turns out the AI didn't really change him much at all.
    • While he was certainly amoral and borderline sociopathic to outsiders (including the new "recruit" Tex), he was loyal to the point of self-sacrifice to those he viewed as comrades.
  • The Corruptible: Maine isn't really the Meta, or at least wasn't the one in charge of what happened as the Meta until the end of Reconstruction. Sigma is.
  • The Determinator: As shown in the Season 9 flashbacks, he's the only Freelancer able to take a punch from Tex or even land a good hit on her... he still gets curbstomped, though.
  • Disney Villain Death: His final fate.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Wash orders the Meta around for most of Revelation, using him a lot like a weapon. He seems to have forgotten how dangerous the Meta is. This really bites him in the ass later on.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Charges Tex during their sparring, ramming a cement pillar that Wyoming has been slammed into and sending it flying right at York.
  • Genius Bruiser: Despite its size, The Meta is shown to be a VERY cunning adversary
  • Implacable Man: He shrugs off most attacks non-chalantly. Even getting stabbed in the chest with an energy sword barely slows him down.
    • Doesn't like heights; even so he doesn't let it phase him much.
  • Ineffectual Loner: Inverted. As part of a group, Maine is just the Big Guy, but when on it's own, The Meta becomes absolutely TERRIFYING
  • Irony: Maine is scared of heights. Guess how he dies at the end of Revelation.
  • The Juggernaut: Over the course of the series, he's shrugged off nearly everything imaginable, up to and including several combat knife wounds, multiple Battle Rifle shots, energy sword through the chest, and at least half a dozen shotgun rounds, in the finale alone.
    • In season 9, episode 17 he takes a sniper round to the chest, several point blank pistol rounds straight to the throat, gets thrown off a warthog that's moving probably well over 75 mph, bounces into an oncoming semi and falls off a bridge. This is without any AI or armor enhancements like he had in previous seasons.
  • The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort: Averted surprisingly, regardless of his ability to take an attack without slowing down he always tries to defend himself. Whenever he takes a severe blow there is always good reason (Wash snuck up on him, blindsided by Lopez, his brute shot is stolen by Grif allowing Tucker and Sarge to hit him.)
  • Lightning Bruiser: A key difference between Season 9 era Agent Maine and The Meta is speed. While Agent Maine is comparatively sluggish next to other Freelancers, The Meta is shown to be much more agile and mobile, which, added to his phenomenal strength, considerably affects his fight with Epsilon-Tex as compared to Alpha-Tex.
  • Mighty Glacier: In Season 9. It shows when he tangos with Tex.
    • He's the only one to technically get an upper hand on her during their sparring match, but only because York tried to help her.
    • And he's heavy enough to serve as a counterweight to the Sarcophagus.
  • Not So Harmless: Predictably, after spending most of Revelation as a comedic sidekick to Wash, the Meta betrays him and installs Tex into himself to get his own armor, restoring his powers.
  • Oh Crap: The Meta is the living personification of this trope, just about. Every. Single. Scene he is in will involve someone saying or thinking this, his theme music doesn't hurt the Oh Crap mood either
    • In one of the three trailers for Season 10, he recieves his AI, Sigma, and it seems that he "aids" in this whole mood.
      • "Agent Maine, isn't that the soldier from the freeway? The one that shot you in the throat?"
  • Phrase Catcher: Any time someone finds out Maine will be doing battle with someone else, you'll hear "I almost feel sorry for them" as a response.
  • Power Parasite: A more mundane variant. The AIs are designed with corresponding abilities, which they share with whomsoever their Freelancer hosts happen to be. The Meta killed those Freelancers, stole their AIs, jammed them into his head and uses those same abilities whenever he desires.
  • The Quiet One: Even during season 9, where he had the ability to talk until midway through episode 17, he only ever says six words in his decent amount of screen time.
  • Start of Darkness: Season 9 begins it, although he was vicious to begin with.
    • While vicious, he still had considerable redeeming qualities before becoming the Meta. Such as risking his life to save Carolina's. See Taking the Bullet below.
  • The Stoic: Usually speaks in guttural growls that have been digitally augmented.
  • Suddenly Voiced: Pay veeeery close attention to him in the background of episode 11 in season 9.
    • In case you missed it, it's at around :35 and he says "Get off me!"
    • And in Episode 15, he says "Too high."
    • Episode 17, he says "Thanks."
  • Taking the Bullet: Takes a sniper round to the chest in episode 17 of Season 9 for Carolina
  • Took a Level in Badass: While he was always a Badass, after becoming the Meta he arguably becomes the deadliest of the Freelancers. Pre-Meta, Maine was ranked lower than Washington in terms of ability. By the time Reconstruction rolls around, he's killed four Freelancers, all of whom had higher combat ratings than Washington. Church describes him as being like "eight of" Tex. Despite being depowered at the end of Reconstruction, his fight with Tex at the end of Revelation is vastly different from the Curb Stomp Battle she dealt him at the beginning of Season 9, and he proves capable of holding his own against her. While Tex was more skillful, agile, and possessed more finesse, the Meta could take out whatever damage she dealt, using brute force and endurance to eventually outlast her.
  • Voice of the Legion: His growls and other miscellaneous noises are made out of multiple noises at once, perhaps to reflect the numerous AIs in his mind.
    • Before he gets the A Is he has a single, if very gruff, voice in addition to his animalistic noises. Yes he still growls and snarls in fights.
  • Why Did It Have To Be Heights?

Agent Carolina

A member of Project Freelancer. She shows up in Season 9. According to the ranking board, she's the best Freelancer at the time the series starts.

She is often placed in command of the other Freelancers on missions, or is used to bail out her less experienced compatriots. She only seems to treat Agent York as an equal and even speaks to him with some twinges of affection, as opposed to the coldly professional dynamic between her and the other members.

Carolinaisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Action Girl
    • Dark Action Girl: If the ending of season nine is any indication, she's gone down a darker road.
  • The Ace: She's known as Number One and is the absolute best Freelancer in the project... at least until Tex shows up.
  • Ambiguously Evil: Unlike villains up to Season 9 (O'Malley, Wash, the Meta), she isn't working for the Director and in fact wants to kill him. However, she's also hinted to be Ax Crazy too.
  • An Axe to Grind: If the hints of her becoming Ax Crazy weren't enough, she uses an actual axe weapon during the second episode of season 10, with tremendous efficacity. Also, one has to wonder if her way to engage the combat, by throwing her axe from above, isn't a Shout-Out to Fang's Limit Break Highwind.
  • Art Shift: Her armor's been modified for season 10 allowing her to be depicted in the Halo 3 engine with the rest of the cast.
  • Badass: She's a freelancer, it is to be expected.
  • Bait and Switch: Her first appearance plays up her resemblance to Tex before The Reveal
  • Chameleon Camouflage: Her armor ability, where she can instantly change her armor's color to anything she needs.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: She tosses a gravity hammer with one hand. Which hits an Elite Mook. From across a huge room. In the face.
  • Cool Big Sis: Shows noticeable shades of this to Wash. She keeps him focused during missions and acted out violently to protect him when an Insurrectionist warthog had pinned him down.
  • Dance Battler
  • The Day the Music Lied: Chases down an Elite Mook with an important package and beats him down. It almost worked; then she hit a wall and Tex stole the package.
  • Determinator: The sheer force she puts into trying to beat Tex to the briefcase is astonishing and impressive. This makes it all the more tragic when she fails at the very last second.
  • Doomed by Canon: She'll ultimately get two AI implanted and go pretty much insane. She's recovered at the end of season 9. How much has yet to be seen, but if Church's reaction means anything, not a whole lot.
  • Drop the Hammer: She uses a Gravity Hammer to take out an Elite Mook in Season 9. She returns in Season 10 with one as part of her regular arsenal.
  • Exact Words: Delta said that she functioned for a short period of time after getting her AI. Not that she died.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones She's never evil, but she wasn't necessarily good for wanting to force the Reds and Blues to help her achieve her own selfish goals. She gets better though, and even comes to see them as her new family.
  • Fiery Redhead Like parents, like daughter.
  • The Gunslinger: In Season 9, the only weapon she is seen using is a pistol.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: Uses nothing but her own environment and fists.
  • Green Eyed Red Head
  • Guns Akimbo: She's seen using a twin set of Plasma Rifles in Season 10 trailers.
  • The Leader: Of the Freelancer Five-Man Band.
  • Leitmotif: Morte ai nostri nemici...
  • Lightning Bruiser
  • Ninja: Specialist in close combat and stealth.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero A lot of the events of the story stem back to her own mistakes, such as giving Sigma to Agent Maine. It was a nice gesture, but Sigma managed to brainwash him into becoming the Meta.
  • Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Church and Washington are just as surprised as the audience that she's alive.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge
  • Super Speed: Unclear if it's from her armor or from sheer Charles Atlas Superpower, but she can run fast enough to keep up with a jetpack.
  • Team Mom: Often in command in the field, and is the number One ranked Freelancer.
  • The Rival: Definitely setting herself up to be this to Tex. Episode 17 all but confirms it.
  • Wham! Line: "You're gonna help me kill the Director".
  • Well Done Daughter Girl Some hints point to her reason for wanting to stay at the top of the leaderboard for the Freelancers was because she was trying to impress the Director Aka her actual father.
  • What the Hell Hero Some of her actions in the later seasons... In fact, some of her actions in general are pretty questionable. Such as trying to use the Reds and Blues as decoys so she could kill the director, and even threatening to force them to do it at gunpoint.

Agent Connecticut, AKA C.T.

"I can't tell you, which is convenient, because I don't want to tell you."

Another member of the Freelancer project and a close friend of Wash's. She is suspicious of the Director and despises his ranking system technique.

First shows up in Recreation disguised as a man who seems to be in charge of a dig site in the desert. As it turns out, "his" alien sidekick "Smith," and his men took over the operation, killing the other men (and aliens) working there. They are evidently after a pyramid-shaped superweapon, which Tucker theorizes they intend to sell to the highest bidder. He is very unwilling to tell Sarge, Grif, and Caboose anything about what he's doing in the desert, leading them to get suspicious, and rightfully so.

Was killed by Epsilon-Church at the end of Recreation.

Played by Samantha Ireland. And by Michael Joplin in Season 7

CT-isms (Associated Tropes):

  • Alas, Poor Villain ZigZagged. She defected from the Insurrection to expose the crimes the Director of Project Freelancer had done. This ends up costing her her life at the hands of one of the people she was trying to save and perceived as a friend: Tex. It gets even sadder when you later find out that the Insurrection was working for Charon Industries and that that organization was delving in things just as bad, if not WORSE than Project Freelancer.
  • Anime Hair: Just how is her hair supposed to work? Is it a mohawk? Or a weird sideways ponytail? Or half a shaved head?
  • Arch Enemy: Considers Tucker as one, since he did screw up C.T.'s entire operation in the dig site. C.T. himself gets noticeably panicked (and pissed) once it turned out that Tucker was released from the dig sites' structure, and repeatedly said that he really wanted to kill him when they meet both times on-screen.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: With the Meta for Recreation, since the Meta was mostly trying to find and kill Donut, Simmons and Lopez, whole C.T. himself was mostly trying to get into that desert temple and kill off Tucker.
  • The Cassandra: Her warnings about the Director go unheeded or even outright contradicted by fellow Freelancers, despite being completely true.
  • Commander Contrarian: Her dialogue in Season 9 is coated with bitterness towards The Director and the ranking system.
  • Do Not Call Me Paul: She doesn't like being called 'Connie' because it makes her sound like a little kid.
  • The Dragon: Smith, a Ranger-type Elite, serves as her main lieutenant, until C.T. ordered Jones (one of his men) to disable Epsilon-Church, who happens to be inside one of those Forerunner monitors.
  • Failure Hero: Has issues because her skills aren't up to snuff with the rest of the Freelancer Elite, and hates the ranking process.
  • Foregone Conclusion: See Late Arrival Spoiler.
  • Genre Savvy: When confronting Tucker, who he has cornered, he answers Tucker asking him who it was that sent him here in the first place with "Sorry. You'll never know."
  • Kick the Dog: When she was being chased by a pissed off Smith and another Elite in a Prowler, she rammed her Warthog into their vehicle, running over their bodies for good measure. Before that, she took over the operation in the desert temple by killing off every other Elite and Marine that was sent there beforehand and threw their corpses into a pile to keep them hidden.
  • Killed Off for Real: By Epsilon at the end of Recreation.
  • Late Arrival Spoiler: C.T. is a Freelancer, dies at the end of Recreation, and is a girl.
  • Made of Iron: After being chased down, her Warthog gets sliced by an energy sword, destroying it seconds later and propelling her body chest-first onto the ground, before she gets up and runs away almost immediately thereafter, completely unscathed.
  • Only Sane Man: Gives off vibes of this during the first meeting with Sarge, Grif and Caboose.
  • Properly Paranoid: She's rightfully suspicious of the Director and Project Freelancer's ranking system.
  • Samus Is a Girl: Washington says that C.T., who was supposedly male beforehand, was actually female when he salvages her corpse. Not the first time that happened.
  • Secret Keeper: Of her own plans, identity and motives, to the bitter end.
  • Ship Tease: With Agent Washington, of all people. Just one more thing to add to the tragedy that is Wash's life.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Completely panics when the operation in Sandtrap doesn't go as planned. Apparently this is a problem she always had.

Agent South Dakota

Another member of the Freelancer project, though she never got an AI due to Wash's breakdown, a fact she still harbored some resentment for him. She was rescued from the Meta by Washington in Recovery One, but was in fact working as "Recovery Two" the entire time. She later betrayed him to obtain Delta and escape the Meta, leaving Washington for dead. A sufferer of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, according to Delta, she betrayed her twin brother North in a similar manner to escape the Meta the first time. It bit her in the ass when Washington shot her in the head for revenge. Her armor is purple with green trim.

Played by Shana Merlin

Southisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Action Girl: As shown in the prequels.
  • Asshole Victim She sold out her allies and her brother to get her own AI, and even then she intended to sell him out too when the Meta came after her for it. Later on, Washington shoots her in the face at point blank, and then blows up and burns her corpse away.
  • Badass: Well, in Season 9 she shows that Tex isn't the only girl from Red vs. Blue to be feared. She makes a fine team with her brother North (though, when it comes to follow a plan...).
  • Barrier Warrior: Her and her brother both have Beehive Barriers as their armor ability.
  • Cain and Abel: The Cain to North's Abel.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Typical of Freelancers, she was really only in it for herself. She did get into trouble with the Meta, twice on-screen (Recovery One and Reconstruction), and a third time off-screen with North (Recovery One again), but she betrayed both Washington and North in order to escape the Meta's onslaught.
  • Dumb Muscle: She's constantly having to have things explained to her, but she is one of the best Freelancers.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: South and her twin brother North, were part of an experiment to see how one agent who did not receive an AI would react to being partnered to another soldier who did have an A.I. On top of her relative distaste at being partnered together with her brother purely because they were twins, South grew jealous that North received an A.I. instead of her, and harbored some resentment towards Washington, as he indirectly caused her to miss out on the construct implantation part of the program.
  • Killed Off for Real: By Washington, via Boom! Headshot!.
    • Kick the Bitch: Not many tears to be shed for her, considering she killed her own brother (who, to all indications, was a pretty nice guy for a Freelancer).
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Exhibits some tendencies.
  • Military Maverick
  • Peek-a-Bangs
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to North's Blue.
  • What an Idiot! Her obsession with getting her own AI implanted leads her to doing some pretty evil things such as sacrificing her own brother North to escape the Meta. However, the stupid part comes later on when she seizes Delta, betrays Washington and Project Freelancer and leaves... KNOWING that the Meta was looking for people with AI and equipment, thus she made herself a target of not only the Meta, but Wash, AND Project Freelancer, so it's NO surprise this leads to her demise.

Agent North Dakota

A member of the Freelancer program and South's twin brother. He shows up in the prequels in Seasons 9 and 10 and as a dead body in "Recovery One" after South sacrifices him to save herself from the Meta. His AI was Theta.

Played by John Erler

Northisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Badass: Along with his sister when they're fighting together, though it seems that all Freelancers are badasses in one way or another.
  • Barrier Warrior: He and his sister both have Beehive Barriers as their armor ability.
  • Big Brother Instinct: He cares deeply for his little sister South. It's also why he was assigned Theta.

North: Stay safe, Kiddo.

  • Born Lucky Compared to his sister who sees him as this and was incredibly jealous of him. His cases of bad luck in the series tends to involve her pretty much EVERY TIME actually.
  • By the Book Soldier
    • Not so much by episode 4, when he used the dome shield. We learn later in episode 9 that using equipment in the field is against the rules.
  • Cool Big Bro: Which makes what happens before Recovery One even sadder, as North and South in Season 9 so far seem to get along fairly well.
    • He has a pretty good relationship with Wash too.
  • Deadpan Snarker

North: Well, so much for keeping quiet.

  • Doomed by Canon: South wounds him to leave as bait to escape the Meta.
  • Friendly Sniper: While he's a by-the-book, stoic, consummate professional during missions, he's pretty open and cheery off-duty.
  • The Mario: Doesn't have a specialty; instead he and South both trade weapons frequently and often.
  • Nice Guy: Forms kind of a trio with Wash and York in this regard. He's less snarky than York, and less uptight/dorky than Wash.
  • Real Men Get Shot: He gets riddled with bullets in Season 9 Episode 3, but is still badass enough to balance on top of a speeding spaceship and activate his dome shield in Episode 4.
    • To be fair, his boots sounded like they were magnetized to the top of the Pelican.
  • Standard Bleeding Spots: He gets a nice bloody cut across the cheek in Season 9 Episode 4.
  • The Stoic: During battle, though he seems to loosen up more off-duty.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to South's Red.

Pilot 479 / Freelancer Command

An Ace Pilot who works for Freelancer Command during Season 9. She's also Washington's communications operator during Recovery One and Reconstruction.

Pilot 479isms (Associated Tropes):

  • Ace Pilot
  • Deadpan Snarker: Possibly the best example in the series and that's saying something.
  • Grounded By Canon: Given that she's not flying by the time the series proper starts, something happens to her at some point. Also after the events of Reconstruction she was probably arrested along with all of the other Freelancer personnel.
  • Everyone Calls Her "Barkeep" Her agent name is even less distinct than the freelancers, except that she's the only agent of the organization without a state-named alias.
  • No Name Given: So far she's only been identified in series by her callsigns "Four-seven-niner" and "Freelancer Command"
  • What Happened To The Mouse? She only appears in flashbacks, and MAYBE as a voice of High Command for project freelancer, but that's not confirmed, so we never know what became of her.

Other Freelancers

There are 49 total Freelancers. Most of them apparently did not appear in Season 9, and have only received minor mentions. They are named after the 49 states of the US. The lack of a 50th Freelancer has a bit of an explanation behind it, listed [1] out of convenience.

  • Agent Utah was apparently killed in training by using weapons tech without proper controls.
    • A deleted scene on the season 9 DVD showed his accident; A bubble shield formed around his head and he passed out from lack of air.
  • Agent Georgia died when he overused his jetpack on a space op and was never found.
  • Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia are women.
  • D.C. and Puerto Rico are also Freelancers.
  • Iowa, New Mexico, Arizona, and Wisconsin are the only known states not represented amongst the Freelancers as of yet.
  • Florida has no Freelancer because... poor Florida.


Artificial Intelligences

O'Malley/Omega

"I will devour their hearts and crap out their souls! They will all taste oblivion! Which tastes just like Red Bull...which is disgusting."

"Blood Gulch Chronicles'" Big Bad, Omega was the AI partner assigned to Tex as part of the Freelancer program ("O'Malley" is a portmanteau of their names, Omega and Allison). While Tex was already, according to Church, "a rotten bitch," the addition of Omega turned her into "a rotten bitch with cybernetic enhancements." After the Freelancer program was shut down following Agent Washington's breakdown (see below), Omega possessed Tex and fled the facility before he could be removed. A bloodthirsty and malevolent AI, O'Malley was capable of possessing soldiers via their helmet radios like a virus. Once Tex was killed, O'Malley briefly possessed Caboose (and may have contributed towards his drop in intelligence), then seized the medic Frank DuFresne (see below) up until the finale. Though a real danger, O'Malley's dialogue frequently dips into cartoonish levels of villainy.

Reconstruction revealed that Omega was actually a fragment of the Alpha, the AI given to Project Freelancer which was subsequently tortured into fragmenting. Omega inherited the Alpha's anger, which explains O'Malley's ability to inspire fury in those it possessed, as well as the Alpha's ability to travel via radio transmissions. Omega was recovered by the Meta (see below) and was destroyed at the end of the series.

Voiced by Burnie Burns (Default voice and while possessing Tex), Joel Heyman (while possessing Caboose), Matt Hullum (while possessing Doc)

Because Omega was introduced in the BG chronicles, long before the Freelancer aspect of the story was well fleshed out, he wasn't the last AI split from Alpha. Epsilon was, because his mental breakdown in Washington's head was what convinced the Director to stop splitting the Alpha. Despite the Alpha being first, Omega wasn't last. Go figure.

Omalley/Omegaisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Affectionate Parody: During his time possessing Doc, he basically becomes a Captain Ersatz of every single Card-Carrying Villain from old cartoons, with heavy overtones of Cobra Commander and a bit of Ming the Merciless thrown in for kicks.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot
  • Ax Crazy
  • The Berserker He embodies hate, anger, and rage.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: Was effectively the main antagonist for the first five seasons, but O'Malley was portrayed more along the lines of a Large Ham parody of the Big Bad archetype.
    • In the beginning of Reconstruction, a shell-shocked Red soldier named Walter explained to Command over what went down after the Blues at Valhalla scavenged Tex's crashed pelican (see the ending to the Blood Gulch Chronicles). Walter's rather detailed description of an ominous 'infection' to the Blues and Reds, on top of how the Blues massacred one another, made Omega seem much more threatening as an antagonist than his previous incarnation ever did.
      • Gives a bit more malice to Tex, too, as the massacre was likely caused by the two possessing others and using their bodies to fight one another.
  • Body Surf: Omega can switch from host to host through inhabiting their minds if their built-in helmet radios are on.
  • The Corrupter: Whenever Omega possesses someone, he changes their behaviors into something that's somewhat more in line with his own personality, along with essentially amplifying their own negative traits ten-fold. Inside Tex, he gave no indication of presence or even sentience, and merely made her more bitter. Inside Caboose, he was more of a random psychopath. It isn't until he possesses Doc that he gets any aspirations towards omnicide.
    • From Walter's description at the first episode of Reconstruction, Omega's sting at possessing the Blues stationed at Valhalla was more... brutal, to put it mildly.
    • He also seems to have a corrupting influence on Doc to some degree. Even after Omega is gone, Doc actually starts cursing, speaking more offensively, and is more lenient about violence. Though this might also be attributable to hanging out with the Reds and Blues.
  • Demonic Possession: Kind of, more like Evil AI Possession.
  • Evil Is Hammy: In spades!
  • Laughably Evil: Omega, in Doc's body, is too ineffectual and hammy to be taken seriously. In the Reconstruction series, however, he crosses into more horrifying territory with the description of his encounter with another group of soldiers and Tex's revelation that Omega ruthlessly tortured the Alpha.
  • Large Ham: Very, very much so.
  • Not So Harmless/Evil Is Not a Toy: In the final two episodes of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, it's revealed that the UNSC/Freelancer Command's ultimate plan to win the war with the Aliens was to have Omega possess Junior (their Chosen One) and use him to take over their religion and subvert it from the inside. Let me reinterate this. Their plan to bring about peace was to hand over an entire alien army to the guy who was literally made of hatred. Church even points out what an incredibly stupid plan this is.
  • Take Over the World: A hilarious parody of this type of villain. Works especially well when he's in the body of a pacifist.

Gary/Gamma

"Knock-knock."

Encountered by the Red and Blue Teams in the form of an ancient computer built by the aliens as an expert on humans, who then proceeds to warn them about a vague prophecy. They eventually figure out that Gary is really Gamma, Wyoming's AI (the name "Gary" might appear to be a portmanteau of "Gamma" and "Reginald", but Burnie Burns has revealed the name to be that of his late cat). Gamma was evidently the personification of the Alpha AI's deceit, and is described as having removed itself from Wyoming, with potentially harmful results. In the end, they reunite during their attempt to kidnap Junior. Gamma was another one of those AIs recovered by the Meta during Reconstruction. It had a strange fondness for knock-knock jokes, and speaks in the voice of Stephen Hawking's computer.

Gamma/Garyisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Catch Phrase: "Knock-knock."
  • Evil All Along: Same with Vic, more or less.
  • Evil Genius: For O'Malley, Wyoming and Vic, arguably.
  • Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The second type, though his jokes are just corny instead of being twisted.
  • Foreshadowing: In "Out of Mind", York refers to the fact that "Reginald" always told stupid knock knock jokes in reference to the merger between A.I.s and their partners. Astute viewers will take this, the fact that York says "Speak of the Devil" after Wyoming is mentioned, and the fact that "O'Malley" is a portmanteau of Tex's real name (Allison) and Omega, in order to realize that the time bending, knock-knock joke spouting A.I. Gary is actually Wyoming's partner.
  • Laughably Evil: Yes. Even the supercomputer.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Personification of deceit, after all.
  • Robotic Psychopath He, Sigma, and Omega were used to further break the Alpha AI's mind and create other fragments.
  • What Happened To The Mouse? After Tex's crash, we only know that he was stolen by the Meta and later lost in the destruction of Project Freelancer.

The Alpha

The original Artificial Intelligence acquired by Project Freelancer. Since they needed more, they subjected it to enough stress and mental torture to cause it to fracture, and harvested the fragments as partners for their special agents. What remained of the original was sequestered away at a backwater outpost, where it convinced itself that it was human based on the memory fragments remaining from the human intelligence it was based off of. In another major twist, Reconstruction's epilogue revealed not only was Church the Alpha, but the Alpha itself was based off the mind of Doctor Leonard Church, the Director of Project Freelancer himself.

The whole and complete Alpha himself shows up in Season 9. He's more or less exactly as flippant and cocky as Church, with the addition of being a genius. Poor bastard.

Anyone else find it interesting that the two guys in Tex's life are Alpha and Omega?

  • It's almost certainly a coincidence, but still.

Delta

"Hello. How may I be of assistance?"

An AI formed from the Alpha's logic centers, and as a result has a cool and calculating personality, calmly informing his partner of attackers' locations and running the numbers to predict their behavior. He starts out as York's AI, but after the Out of Mind side arc, he ends up working with Agents South Dakota and Washington during the Recovery One series, and is introduced to the Blues during Reconstruction. Of all the Freelancer AIs, Delta is the most fervent believer in the existence of the Alpha, and leaves clues that inspire Washington to try to unlock it. Presumed destroyed after being captured by the Meta, who in turn was hit by the E.M.P. His holographic avatar is bright green.

Recreation reveals that Epsilon houses memories of all the Alpha fragments. Delta appears to give advice and information on their behalf to Caboose. He also was transferred into the Forerunner Monitor along with Epsilon. Whether he is still exists as a separate consciousness or has been fully assimilated into Epsilon has yet to be revealed.

Played by Mark Bellman

Deltaisms (Associated Tropes):

Sigma

"We are the Meta, and we will find you. Very soon."

Little was known about Sigma except that it was the Alpha's creativity until PAX East 2012, when two new things were revealed: That it was the first AI that Maine had, his original AI partner. Second is that it will be played by Elijah Wood (yes, that Elijah Wood) in season 10.

Sigmaisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Alas, Poor Villain His reason for driving Maine crazy and forcing him to kill lots of people and steal their AI fragments and equipment? He never wanted to become a perfect weapon. He wanted to become human.
  • Bald of Evil
  • Celebrity Voice Actor Elijah Woods!
  • The Corrupter: He's the reason behind Maine becoming The Meta.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Can be seen in Reconstruction along with all of the other AIs that the Meta had, and is mentioned offhand by Washington as Alpha's "creativity" earlier.
  • Obvious Judas It doesn't take long to figure out he is always scheming something.
  • Obviously Evil He looks like he's on fire, and he talks with a semi-demonic sounding voice. WHAT MORE OF A CLUE DID THEY NEED?
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning
  • Wham! Line: Combined with a Call Back to the trailer for Reconstruction, in the first trailer for the tenth season.

Sigma: We are the Meta. And we will find you, very soon.

Other

Medical Super Private First Class Frank "Doc" DuFresne

"[...] a doctor cures people. A medic just helps people feel more comfortable... while they die."

In response to increased injuries and deaths at Blood Gulch, purple-armored medic DuFresne was sent to the backwater outpost to aid both teams. His pacifism, political correctness, and incompetence quickly made him unwelcome in either base, leaving him to wander the gulch, forgotten... until Caboose's "exorcism" left the AI O'Malley without a host. The Omega was able to possess him completely, leaving Doc a passenger within his own skull, only able to talk or shout apologies for O'Malley's actions. O'Malley eventually comes to regret choosing Doc as a host, as the two end up having Gollum/Smeagol style arguments over whether or not to kill people, if their nefarious secret lair needs an answering machine, etc. When Doc is called back to Blood Gulch to deal with Tucker's "illness," O'Malley jumps ship, freeing Doc once and for all.

Doc, who earned his nickname after Church declared DuFresne too hard to pronounce, hardly deserves his title. He attended (but did not pass) medical school at Jamaica State, doesn't know how his healing doodad works, and treats Caboose's foot injury by rubbing his neck with aloe vera. He earned his unique rank by sending Command a letter every day for four years asking for it. His whereabouts during Reconstruction are unknown, though when Washington asks the Reds if they know a medic, they violently answer in the negative. In the extended version, they do call him, but forget (or didn't care enough) to tell him they didn't need him anymore. He arrives to find no one there, and says to no one in particular: "You guys suck".

In Revelation he is called to Valhalla by Simmons; who was coerced into calling him by Wash and the Meta. He became a hostage of Washington, but due to the Stockholm Syndrome, they develop a bit of a rapport. He denies this strongly, however.

Played by Matt Hullum

Docisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Actual Pacifist: Calls himself one, and is one, even while possessed by Omega, but he does manage to shoot The Meta at point-blank range.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Technically, it was Omega that controlled his body, but Doc still loudly apologizes for what Omega does in his body on a regular basis.
  • Butt Monkey: Nobody likes him, everybody insults him.
  • Demonic Possession: More like A.I. Possession; Omega took over Doc's body for the majority of his screen time in the first five seasons.
  • Dude in Distress: He was kidnapped by a jeep, held "prisoner" by the reds, taken over by an AI, and then captured by a couple of freelancers so far. Granted the only time he was physically held captive was while in the wall, arguably the jeep and while with red team.
  • The Heart: Well, really more of an over-the-top parody of one, compared to Donut's more sincere version.
  • Made of Iron: To Nigh Invulnerability. See season 8 and season 9 episode two on how normal soldiers react by being beat up by Freelancers, especially Dakota. He instead was punched so hard into a reinforced wall that he was permanently immersed in 5 tons of it, to the point that not even Super Strength or the warthog crane could liberate him. And didn't even get a headache for crying out loud.
    • He also was caught in an explosion that left Washington visibly injured and shaken while he is totally fine with no injuries whatsoever.
  • Only Sane Man: Was this originally, until his character got Flanderized into being as competent as the other characters.
  • Split Personality: Doesn't have one, but he gets vibes of these when he argues with O'Malley. He later DOES gain one based on O'Malley after Grif teleports him to only he knows where for who knows how long.
  • Stockholm Syndrome: During his time as a prisoner of Wash and the Meta, he mentions he doesn't have it as an insult. Later events suggest otherwise.
    • He certainly seemed to have it for Omega, considering that he wound up acting like the evil AI's sidekick as much as his prisoner.
  • Talking to Himself: Matt Hullum also voices Sarge.
  • The Medic: Obviously. He isn't very good at it though.
  • What Could Have Been: According to the season 2 commentary Doc was going to be a Reporter/Journalist when he was first conceived but because of where his character was going (eg. Kidnappings) it was hitting too close to home for the real wars happening at the time.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: He suddenly disappeared at the end of ep 20 Season 8, for no apparent reason. Probably to continue being a terrible doctor to space and beyond.
    • Word of God says that he went back to Valhalla with the Reds and Blues.
  • Worst Aid: He's very bad at medical advice, but somehow manages to keep both the Reds and the Blues alive.

Doc: I haven't had a killing spree since my last residency!

The Alien

"Blarg? Honk!"

Also known as "Crunchbite", "Crouchasaurus", "Fluffy, the Alien Who Only Loves", and "Honk-Honk" (which may be his real name, but probably not). An alien who gets off on the wrong foot with Blue Team by beating scaring Church right out of his robot body, and then pounding Tucker into the ground after the latter recovers an alien-built sword, binding it to him. The Alien then proceeds to browbeat the Blues into helping him on his quest to save his people, which apparently involved using the sword to unlock a spaceship. The next step is unknown, as Wyoming proceeded to blow the Alien out of the sky. Besides complaining about the Alien's odor or inability to speak English, Tucker commented that the creature was always standing over him when he woke up, which leads us to...

"Junior"

"Bow-chicka honk-honk!"

It turns out the Alien's species reproduces via parasitic embryos, and Tucker's mysterious illness near the end of the series is a case of Mister Seahorse. Junior seems to have inherited his "mother's" catchphrase, and serves to awaken some glimmers of a (dysfunctional) paternal instinct in Tucker, as well as a strong desire in Church to euthanize the "abomination." Junior turns out to be the destined savior of the Alien's race, a fact that O'Malley and Wyoming became very interested in - they planned to infect Junior with Omega, then use him to control the alien race, winning the war for humanity, and then probably taking over humanity for themselves. When Tex and Omega tried to airlift him out of the canyon, Andy the Bomb blew up the craft. His fate after that is only hinted at during a black box recording playback of the ship's crash landing in Reconstruction, Chapter 5.

As of Chapter 13 of Recreation, he has been confirmed alive, although he has yet to actually appear again.

The Director

"I would like to remind the sub-comittee members...That anything is possible. Some things are probable. This is what is. And my agency as it always has will continue to deal with what is...until it is no more."

The ruthless and secretive Director of Project Freelancer, and one of the narrators of the Reconstruction series. In an effort to improve the combat effectiveness of soldiers during the war, the "good doctor" had the idea to implant Artificial Intelligences into the minds of special agents. As can be seen from the examples above, the results were unstable at best and the project collapsed. Once the Meta starts collecting AIs, a UNSC oversight sub-committee begins inquiries into the Director's actions and the results of Project Freelancer. The Director resents such intrusions, as he maintains that he only did what had to be done for humanity to win the war (even though it was a complete failure). At the very end of Reconstruction, in Red vs Blue's greatest Wham! Episode, it is revealed that the Director's name is Leonard Church, and he is the template for the Alpha AI. Voiced by John Reed.

Played by John Reed

Associated Tropes:

  • Bad Boss: Allowed his soldiers to use live ammunition in a training exercise, and praised the guys that did so, regardless of the obvious risks involved. No wonder CT hates him so much.
  • Beard of Evil: The trailer for season 9 clearly shows him to have a goatee. Luke McKay's drawings of Church (the AI counterpart), the closest thing to a canon image of what he actually looks like, depict Church with facial hair, but it is more stubble than an actual beard. The trailer version of the Director is fairly close to what McKay's drawing looks like other than being older and having a goatee, so this might also be a borderline version of Evil Twin.
    • It could be an Actor Allusion, seeing as John Reed has a goatee himself.
  • Bigger Bad: Plenty of antagonists are working for him (e.g. Omega persuading Vic to hire a Freelancer to kill Tucker; the Meta receiving orders to kill Wash at the end of Reconstruction), and the ones that aren't were undergoing objectives that are fundamentally opposed to him (the Insurrection fights against his Freelancers; CT seems to work for the Insurrection; Washington stroke a deal with the Chairman, who wanted to investigate the Director; and the Meta went rogue following the EMP surge in Reconstruction). .
  • Diabolical Mastermind: Washington sees him as this.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: How he views his unethical experiments.

Director: I don't give a damn about your committee or its opinions on my work. Have you forgotten, Sir, that we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species? I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say a fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable.

  • Ink Suit Actor
  • Jerkass: Imagine a Deadpan Snarker without the humor. From time to time, he even acts like a slightly less abrasive Drill Sergeant Nasty.
  • Karma Houdini: Not at all phased at the prospect of karma finding him, and even when karma finally catches up (e.g. the investigation), nothing apparently comes out of it. Carolina's looking to change that.
  • Loophole Abuse: Quite rightfully notes that while his experiment would be a war crime in any other instance, he only tortured a clone of himself, and there are no laws against that. This inspires them to actually make laws prohibiting that.
    • Under the assumption that they use the United States law as a base for it, they still could not put The Director away as the laws were made after the fact.
      • And in fact, The Director seems to be a free man anyway, either because of the legal situation or of his own personal clout.
  • Mad Scientist
  • The Man Behind the Man: The one that headed Project Freelancer, and possibly the Big Bad for the entire series. He was also giving orders to The Meta at the end of Reconstruction.
  • Mysterious Backer: C.T. even mistrusts him for it.
  • Scary Shiny Glasses
  • Wham! Line: "Sincerely yours, the former Director of Project Freelancer, Doctor Leonard Church.

The Chairman of the Oversight Sub-Committee

"We can all understand that a shift from autonomy to oversight can be a difficult adjustment for anyone, but especially someone of your standing. In that spirit we have attempted to accommodate your brief explanations to our serious inquires. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to inform you that even our trust has its limits."

Although he does not appear in the series itself, the Chairman serves as the counterpart to the Director during Reconstruction, where they alternate reading memos directed at each other during the start of each episode. The Chairman leads a committee to review what has occurred with the Freelancer Project, mostly to find out how it can have multiple AI's when they were only given one. Although he starts off calm and friendly in his dealings with the Director, he soon becomes hostile when he realizes that the Director is stalling for time and avoiding answering his questions. In the end he informs the Director that he is under arrest and that entire moral codes for dealing with AIs are being re-written due to the Director's actions. In Recreation, he returns, and has made a deal with Agent Washington to ensure the latter's freedom in exchange for finally getting the evidence necessary to put the Director away.

Played by Jack Lee

Chairmanisms (Associated Tropes):

  • All There in the Manual: His real name (Malcolm Hargrove) was made known only through some sponsors-only content on the forums.
  • Big Good: Very little is known about him, but he seems to be this. Though abrasive, his goal is to take down the Director for committing war crimes.
  • Big Bad It turns out that HE was the CEO of Charon industries, sponsored the Insurrection faction, and was employing space pirates to play both sides of a civil war on Chorus.
  • Tranquil Fury: The letters between the Chairman and the Director in Reconstruction gradually build in intensity until the Chairman's final letter, which is delivered very calmly, but sternly, telling the Director that officers have been dispatched to arrest him.

Vickory/"Vic"

"Chill dude, take a chill pill. If you don't have a chill pill, take a chill strip - put it on your tongue, it dissolves. Chill."

Serving as Mission Control for both Red and Blue teams (a secret he tries to have Tucker assassinated to protect), Vic is more like an unhelpful tech support guy than an actual asset. Vic's intelligence reports provide helpful information like the location of the enemy team's base (the other side of the canyon), the number of enemies (3 or 4), and the location of the team's own base. His directives usually run along the lines of "try to win extra hard," and he mostly provides just enough help to keep the hijinks in Blood Gulch continuing. When Doc contacts him for assistance, Vic goes off on a long tangent about his vasectomy, and has a habit of being unavailable just when his help would be most useful.

Duplicity and secrets surround Vic - though supposedly sterile, after the "time jump" the two teams meet "Vic Jr.," a "descendant" of Vic's with a suspiciously identical personality and appearance, as well as the same post. During the end of the series, Vic also attempts to get both teams underground so they'll be captured and O'Malley's scheme will succeed - and in one of the endings, expresses great anger that the Reds and Blues ruined "the plan." His fate during Reconstruction is unknown, though some fans have pointed out that one of the Meta's AIs appears as an unarmored human that bears a compelling resemblance to Vic...

It is implied - through Simmons interrupting Sarge's and Vic's conversation in the caves, and through the alternate ending of Episode 100 in which Sarge destroys the computer and damages Vic's heat sink - that the computer console in the cave system is Vic. It seems likely that Vic is some sort of VI - a Virtual Intelligence Computer, as it says at the bottom of the display - designed to watch over the training simulation and generate scenarios and give resources and intel when necessary.

Played by Randall Glass, who's best known to longtime Halo fans as "the Warthog Jump guy", in his first appearance, and by Burnie Burns thereafter.

Vic-isms (Associated Tropes):

  • The Dragon: For O'Malley, Wyoming and Gary/Gamma.
  • Evil Genius: Seems like he'd be this for O'Malley, given his profession, but it's actually not so much in reality.
  • He Knows Too Much: The reason why he kept trying to get Tucker assassinated once he found out that Vic is a VI and that he acts as Mission Control for both teams. Naturally, Vic always failed at it, while Tucker always got harmed in some form anyway.
  • Identical Grandson: Allegedly has a "descendant", despite supposedly being sterile. Absolutely nothing is different between Vic Junior and Vic Senior, right down to the voice, appearance and post, so chances are that it was the same guy trying to maintain credibility to both teams by disguising himself as a relative. Dude seems as genuinely incompetent as any other Red or Blue simulation soldier out there.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Only not really. Although he's presumably a VI designed to oversee the training simulation on Blood Gulch, generate combat scenarios, and selectively give out resources, supplies and Intel for the crews, his selective competence and willful demeanor make him seem like he's just another rather ineffective cohort for O'Malley, and that he joined likely because he found it fun to work with a rogue AI.
  • Manipulative Bastard: His apparent job seems solely to drag out the simulation training for as long as possible, hence at least part of the reason why he never helps when needed (the other being his rather willful persona). Being the tech assistant to both teams, Vic attempts to get the protagonists underground so they'll be captured, allowing O'Malley's scheme to succeed. Didn't work out as accurately as they planned.
  • Mission Control: He serves as one for both the Red and Blue teams, which is kept secret from them both.
  • Mysterious Backer: Even more so than the Director, since we still don't have solid facts about him - just presumptions based on conjecture.
  • What Happened To The Mouse? After the end of Season 5, he is never seen nor heard from again.

The Insurrection

The Insurection is a military force made up of soldiers who have broken off from the UNSC. They serve as the main antagonists for the Freelancers. They are possibly a nod to Halo canon, in which prior to the war with the Covenant, Earth (and human-controlled space) was undergoing a civil war between the UNSC and a coalition of rebel groups, for the control of human colonies. Incidentally, it was during this civil war the SPARTAN-II program was initiated, as a countermeasure against the rebellion.

Insurrectionisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Big Bad Ensemble: Alongside the Director in season nine.
    • Big Bad Duumvirate: They seem to have CT as an ally, so her excavation on the desert might've been on their orders.
  • The Brute: The sleeveless guy fought Maine and won!
    • Granted, Maine was currently nursing a sniper wound to the chest...
  • Dark Action Girl: The female jetpack mook.
  • Faceless Goons
  • Fan Nickname: For the Pyromaniac, some fans have taken to calling him "Sharkface."
  • Filler Villain: Subverted. At first glance, the Insurrection merely exist to throw down with the Freelancers in some awesome fight scenes. However, the missions involving these guys leads to the Freelancers getting ranked based on their performances against the Insurrection (i.e. Carolina, South and Connecticut were far from happy when they were outshined, outmatched and outranked by the other Freelancers), and it ends up generating more conflict as a result (South betraying North and Wash to escape the Meta; Carolina becoming The Rival to Tex; Maine permanently losing his voice thanks to a Giant Mook; and Connecticut apparently allying with the Insurrection).
  • Mooks: They come in quite a variety!
  • Five Man Band Their elite agents consist of:
  • Hero Antagonist: A possible interpretation, given how much controversy the Freelancer project was mired in. These are people with legitimate beefs dealing with a government whose activities to put down the various rebellions has been questionable at times at best. One of the Freelancers at one point asked "we're the good guys, right?" after a particularly brutal mission.
    • Gray and Gray Morality: Delta himself brings this up. Project Freelancer and the Insurrection aren't evil or good, they're just two groups trying to achieve different goals.
  • Not Quite Dead: The lead mook, sleeveless guy, female mook, and sniper all seem to have survived the events of Season 9 to make a return in the Season 10 trailer. For the lead mook, this is quite a feat, considering he appeared to take a direct hit from an orbital cannon.
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Elite Mooks would've counted, if they actually said anything.

The Counselor

The apparent head psychologist of Project Freelancer, who seems to serve as the Director's right-hand man of sorts, and as a liaison between the Director and both the Freelancers and especially non-Freelancer soldiers.

Played by Asaf Ronen

Counselorisms (Associated Tropes):

  • Alas, Poor Villain He didn't exactly choose to become one, but due to his involvement with Project Freelancer and given how closely he worked with the Director. He is arrested and imprisoned after Project Freelancer's collapse. After that, he tries to escape imprisonment by siding with the Space Pirates on Chorus, but when that too seems to be going south, he tries to abandon them, but instead his ship winds up being pulled down to Chorus where it crashes into the "Purge" temple. Likely killing him.
  • Armchair Psychology: Talks like this pretty much all the time. It seems to irritate the Director and creep out everyone else.
  • Conflicting Loyalties Starts out loyal to Project Freelancer, but after its collapse, he gets imprisoned and was fully prepared to sell out the former agents (and a whole planet's population) to secure his own freedom. When the mission starts to go south, he kills one of the Space Pirates and tries to force the pilot to fly the ship for him to escape.
  • Creepy Monotone
  • Danger Deadpan His tone and expression hardly ever change. He only ever expresses emotion once or twice.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him Inverted. He and the ship he was in at the time were pulled down to Chorus and forced to crash into the "Purge" temple which kills him. Also, it's funnier in a more literal sense of this trope since there WAS a bridge that led to the temple that his ship destroyed when it crashed.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain His comments inadvertently helped contribute to Locus' Face Heel Turn.
  • The Shrink: Of the "Harmful" variety.
  • There Are No Therapists: Inverted. There is a therapist, but he's there to study and manipulate the Freelancers and AIs into doing what the Director wants, not to make them feel better.
  1. ↑ Tucker very briefly said "Poor Florida" when Tex mentioned that Freelancers were named after the 49 states of the Union; however this was also prior to the Freelancers taking plot importance, and seemingly was a one-off joke. What is known is that there is only one Carolina (with two A Is), seemingly representing a unified North and South Carolina, but D.C. and Puerto Rico are also known to be Freelancers, meaning that is not the only explanation. The only currently known states that are not Freelancers are Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Arizona, and Wisconsin, and at least two of them no longer are states in order to make the numbers equal 49.
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