Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is an American web series created by Burnie Burns with his production company Rooster Teeth. The show is based on the setting of the military science fiction first-person shooter series and media franchise Halo. The series centers on two opposite teams fighting in an ostensible civil war—shown to actually be a live fire exercise for elite soldiers—in the middle of Blood Gulch, a desolate box canyon, in a parody of first-person shooter video games, military life, and science fiction films.
Red vs. Blue emerged from Burns' voice-over gameplay videos of Bungie's First-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved. The series is primarily produced using the machinima technique of synchronizing video footage from a game to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio. Footage is mostly from the multiplayer modes of Halo: Combat Evolved and its followups on the Xbox consoles. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its premiere on April 1, 2003. The series consists of twenty seasons and six mini-series. The series concluded with the final season, Red vs. Blue: Restoration, which was originally released as a feature-length movie on May 7, 2024, with an episodic version later released on December 16, 2025.
The series has been generally well-received. Praised for its originality, the series has won four awards at film festivals held by the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. It has also won the award for "Best Animated Web Series" from the International Academy of Web Television. It also won a 2013 Webby Award for Animation, as well as nominated in 2014. It has been credited with popularizing machinima and gaining the medium mainstream exposure. Graham Leggat, former director of communications for Lincoln Center's film society, described Red vs. Blue as "truly as sophisticated as Samuel Beckett". Rooster Teeth created episodes, some under commission from Microsoft, for special events. The voice actors from Red vs. Blue appear in cameos for Halo 3 and Halo 4. The series is also referenced in Halo: Reach and Halo Infinite.
Overview
The Red vs. Blue storyline spans twenty full-length seasons and six mini-series. Rooster Teeth periodically released self-referential public service announcements and holiday-themed videos, which are generally unrelated to the main storyline and not considered canon. In these videos, the members of both teams are actors who claim to be from Red vs. Blue.Although the visual background of Red vs. Blue was primarily taken from the Halo series, Rooster Teeth consciously limited connections to the Halo fictional universe. A special video made for E3 2003 portrays Master Chief, Halo's protagonist, as a larger-than-life member of the army, and the Red vs. Blue trailer and first episode establish that the series is set between the events of the first two games. Beyond these references, the storyline is independent, a decision that, according to Burns, was intended to increase accessibility to those unfamiliar with the games. For example, even though the cast of the fourth and fifth seasons include characters from the Covenant Elite alien race, Rooster Teeth never portrayed those characters in their original Halo context. Beginning with the sixth season, titled Reconstruction, the series begins to follow Halo more closely. It is established that Reconstruction onwards takes place one year after Halo 3 and several characters indirectly reference Smart AI, the Human-Covenant War, and Forerunners. Also at several points it is noted that Project Freelancer is under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Space Command.
During its first seventeen seasons, Red vs. Blue centered on the Red and Blue Teams, two groups of soldiers engaged in a supposed civil war. Originally, each team occupies a small base in a box canyon known as Blood Gulch. According to, one of the Red Team soldiers, each team's base exists only in response to the other team's base. It was later revealed that there is no actual civil war; both the Red and Blue armies are under the same command, Project Freelancer, and only exist as training simulations for Freelancer Agents. Although both teams generally dislike each other and have standing orders to defeat their opponents and capture their flag, neither team is usually motivated to fight the other, with the exception of Sarge, the leader of Red Team.
The eighteenth season, referred to as Zero, centers on an elite team of special operations soldiers, known as Shatter Squad, as they try to stop another group of soldiers, known as Viper, from getting the keys to a powerful suit of armor known as the Ultimate Power. Unlike the original series, Zero instead parodies action movies. While certain character, vehicle, and weapon models are carried over from Halo 5: Guardians, the series tries to distance itself from the Halo universe, instead introducing a new military force known as the Alliance of Defense in place of the UNSC. Rather than being a machinima produced in the Halo engine, the series was now fully animated in Unreal Engine 4 and used assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace that are unrelated to the Halo franchise, although there are moments that scenes are animated to mimic machinima limitations. Family Shatters originally acted as a non-canonical spinoff involving the characters introduced in Zero but was retroactively made the nineteenth season of Red vs. Blue after the release of Restoration.
The twentieth and final season, Restoration, centers once again on the Reds and Blues and acts as a sendoff to both the characters and the web series. It recontextualizes the events of seasons 14–19 to be simulations run by Epsilon to prepare the Reds and Blues against the final attack on Chorus. The Reds and Blues have to face their biggest challenge yet, as the Meta returns in a terrifying new form. The season was shot in Halo Infinite with animation done in Unreal Engine 4.
Cast and characters
During its original run, Red vs. Blue featured characters whose personalities are skewed in different ways and to varying degrees. Character interaction and dialogue, instead of action, would drive the story. The original series centered on eleven main characters. Other characters, both team-affiliated and unaffiliated, human and non-human, have played significant roles throughout the story. Notable later additions to the cast include The Director and The Chairman, as well as the Freelancers, which are named after U.S. states. AIs are also important characters, and are named after Greek letters. As is a common habit in most forms of military, the soldiers usually refer to each other by their last names.Throughout the original series, the Red Team primarily consists of their hotheaded leader Super Colonel Sarge, his attentive second-in-command Captain Richard "Dick" Simmons, the lazy Captain Dexter Grif, the oblivious/effeminate Private Franklin Delano Donut, and their apathetic Spanish-speaking robot mechanic Lopez the Heavy.
For the majority of the series, the Blue Team consisted of their sardonic de facto leader Private Leonard L. Church, the self-described ladies man Captain Lavernius Tucker, the dimwitted Captain Michael J. Caboose, and the no-nonsense Freelancer Agent Texas/"Tex". They were later joined by Private Kaikaina "Sister" Grif, Grif's promiscuous sister, in Season 5.
However, Blue Team's roster became mixed with every passing season after the deaths of the original Church and Tex at the end of Reconstruction, being joined by Epsilon, who would go on to take Church's identity and Tex II during Recreation and Revelation respectively until their deaths in Season 13 and Season 9. The team was later joined by the emotionally scarred Freelancer Agent Washington/"Wash" at the end of Revelation after first meeting the Reds and Blues during Reconstruction. Blue Team currently consists of Tucker, Caboose, Wash, and Sister, the latter of whom rejoined the team during The Shisno Paradox.
Also part of the Reds and Blues are the somewhat incompetent Medical Officer Frank "Doc" DuFresne, who first appeared in Season 2, and the impatient and competitive Freelancer Agent Carolina, who first appeared in Season 9, both of whom are unaffiliated with a specific team and instead just act as members of both groups.
Over the years, Red vs. Blue has attracted numerous notable guest stars, namely Ed Robertson, Elijah Wood, Christopher Sabat, The Zellner Brothers, Amber Benson, Dan Avidan, Arin Hanson, SungWon Cho, Ricco Fajardo, Daman Mills, Anthony Padilla, and Ian Hecox.
Episodes
Production
Development
Red vs. Blue emerged from Burnie Burns's voiceover-enhanced gameplay videos that he created for a website called drunkgamers.com, which was run by Geoff Fink and Gustavo Sorola. Having played Halo: Combat Evolved extensively, the drunkgamers crew discussed one day whether the Warthog, an automobile in the game, looks like a puma. This discussion, re-created in, was "the spark for the whole series". Seeing potential for a full story, Burns created a which was released September 5, 2002, on the Drunkgamers website, but it was largely ignored, and, for unrelated reasons, drunkgamers soon closed. Four months later, Computer Gaming World contacted Ramsey for permission to include a different drunkgamers video in a CD to be distributed with the magazine. Ramsey granted permission, but he and Burns felt that they needed a website to take advantage of the exposure from Computer Gaming World. They therefore resurrected Red vs. Blue and re-released the trailer to coincide with the Computer Gaming World issue. The was released on April 1, 2003.Rooster Teeth was initially unaware of the broader machinima movement. In 2004, Co-producer Matt Hullum stated in an interview with GameSpy, "When we first started Red vs. Blue we thought we were completely original. We never imagined that there were other people out there using video games to make movies, much less that it was a new art form with a hard to pronounce name and an official organization."
The nature of Red vs. Blue was different from Burns's initial expectation. A partial character introduction released between the original trailer and the first episode featured extensive action and violence, set to Limp Bizkit's song "Break Stuff". However, as work continued, the focus shifted to situation comedy rather than the heavy action initially implied. Although the series parodies video games, Ramsey noted, "We try not to make it too much of an inside joke. And I think we use more bureaucracy and military humor than anything else, which everybody working in an office can identify with." Rooster Teeth has stated that Red vs. Blue was influenced by Homestar Runner, Penny Arcade, and possibly Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Rooster Teeth initially envisioned Red vs. Blue to be short, but the series grew beyond their expectations. Burns and Ramsey had preconceived a list of jokes for which they allocated six to eight episodes. By, however, they realized that the series had fleshed out more than expected; they had covered only about one third of their original list. Later in, Burns estimated a series of 22 episodes; however, driven by the series' popularity, he realized that there was more potential story than could be covered in that length, and was able to conceive an extension of the season 1 plot. The whole production team eventually quit their jobs and began to work full-time on the series; to generate revenue they created an online store to sell T-shirts.
On June 16, 2006, Burns announced a five-part mini-series, Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind, which chronicles the adventures of the mercenary Tex after her disappearance in. The mini-series premiered exclusively on the Xbox Live Marketplace, but Rooster Teeth later made it available on their official site.
The original series, The Blood Gulch Chronicles, ended on June 28, 2007, with the release of episode 100. On April 4, 2008, Burns announced a new series, Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction, the group's first Halo 3 series and the beginning of the new Recollection story arc. Several voice actors returned in Reconstruction, which ran from April 5 to October 30, 2008. Rooster Teeth announced plans for a sequel Red vs. Blue series, each separated by a few weeks' break. The mini-series Red vs. Blue: Relocated bridged the gap between Red vs. Blue: Recreation and the previous season. During a Late Nite Jenga Jam podcast, Burnie Burns officially confirmed that the working title of the eighth Red vs. Blue series was "Red vs. Blue: Resolution". The title was later finalized as "Red vs. Blue: Revelation". The first four episodes were previewed at PAX East in March. After five seasons, Rooster Teeth expanded the scope and animation of the show, hiring renowned animator Monty Oum for action scenes, starting with season 8. On April 1, 2010, the premiere of Revelation attracted such a large audience that both roosterteeth.com and Blip.tv crashed.
On March 28, 2011, Rooster Teeth presented the first trailer for Season 9 of Red vs Blue which aired on June 14, 2011, during which time Miles Luna officially joined the company. Season 9 acted as a semi-prequel, fleshing out the event surrounding Project Freelancer, one of the key elements of the plot in previous seasons, while continuing the events left off in Revelation. Season 10, which continued Season 9's pattern of showing both stories simultaneously, began on May 28, 2012, and ended on November 5, 2012. The season concluded the Freelancer backstory while setting up the events of Season 11. The first RWBY trailer was shown following the conclusion of the season's credits.
On September 7, 2012, Burnie Burns appeared on What's Trending and confirmed that there would be a Season 11, which premiered on June 14, 2013, and started the Chorus Trilogy. The trilogy picked up where Season 10 left off and returned to a format similar to that of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, having no pre-rendered CGI. The season ended on November 11, 2013. On February 3, 2014, Miles Luna announced Season 12 on Rooster Teeth's website. The season premiered on April 28, 2014, and concluded on September 29, 2014. The final season of the Chorus Trilogy, Season 13, was announced on March 4, 2015, with a release date of April 1, 2015. The season brought back a handful of characters from the series, including Sharkface, the Counselor, Junior, and Sister, and ended with a cliffhanger on September 7, 2015.
On April 1, 2016, a trailer for Season 14 was released, with its first episode airing on May 8, 2016. Breaking from the format of the previous seasons, Season 14 was instead an anthology season, featuring various backstories, such as the trilogy of episodes starring Locus and Felix, and/or non-canon "PSA-type" episodes, such as the third Sarge movie trailer. The season ended on October 16, 2016.
On February 24, 2017, it was announced that Joe Nicolosi, writer and director of the Season 14 episode "The Brick Gulch Chronicles" would be writing and directing Season 15. Its trailer was released on March 30, 2017, and the season itself premiered on April 2, 2017.
Nicolosi returned for Season 16, Red vs. Blue: The Shisno Paradox, where he also had the help of writer Jason Weight. The season premiered on April 15, 2018. While Nicolosi could not return for the seventeenth season due to other commitments within Rooster Teeth, he co-wrote the story with Weight, who was promoted to head writer, and Miles Luna, who penned one of the season's episodes. Machinima animators Josh Ornelas and Austin Clark took over as directors of Red vs. Blue: Singularity, which premiered on March 9, 2019.
On January 15, 2020, Season 18, Red vs. Blue: Zero, was confirmed to be in development with a brief 3-second clip being shown in a promo trailer for upcoming Rooster Teeth releases. It was initially scheduled to premiere on October 19, 2020, but was delayed to November 9, 2020. Director Torrian Crawford referred to the season as a "restart" for the series, as it follows a mostly new cast, has cleaner humor, and is more action-focused than previous iterations.
On July 7, 2023, at Rooster Teeth's annual convention RTX, it was announced that the series would return for a nineteenth and final season subtitled Restoration. Hullum was announced to return to direct while Burns, who had since left the company, was confirmed to return as the lead writer. The reveal trailer retcons the events of the Shisno Trilogy and Zero as simulations created by Epsilon-Church. On March 28, 2024, it was announced that the initial plan of an episodic release for the twentieth season had changed due to the shutdown of Rooster Teeth and the season would instead be released as a feature-length movie, which premiered on May 7, 2024. Following its release, Family Shatters, which was originally a non-canonical spinoff of Zero, retroactively took the place of a nineteenth season. In February 2025, Burnie Burns acquired numerous former Rooster Teeth intellectual properties following the company's shutdown, including Red vs. Blue. On December 16, 2025, the episodic version of Restoration was officially released.