| 1 | '''Per fridge page policy, all spoilers are unmarked!''' |
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| 3 | [[foldercontrol]] |
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| 5 | [[folder: FridgeBrilliance]] |
| 6 | * In Episode 2 of ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', Sarge sarcastically says that they won and that Grif is the big hero. Take that as Grif being the reason that Red Team won at Blood Gulch. Later, in the mini-series ''Relocated'', Lopez informs Sarge that Red Team actually DID win at Blood Gulch because Lopez "killed" Grif's sister. So technically, a Grif was the cause of Red Team's victory at Blood Gulch! |
| 7 | * It's a little thing, but 'cockbite', the most common insult used in the series. How, exactly, would a chicken (cock) bite? With Rooster Teeth, of course! |
| 8 | * After the big reveal in ''[[WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheRecollection Reconstruction]]'' where Church is revealed to actually be a super-advanced A.I. program, recall a conversation between Church and Caboose in the first season where Caboose's [[InsaneTrollLogic unique train of thought]] comes to the conclusion that Church is "a gay robot", which could either be taken as subtle {{Foreshadowing}} or dumb coincidence. Plus, as of Season 14, it's revealed that Church would have liked Tex regardless if she was male or female after he accidentally flipped everyone's genders in his focus episode, so Caboose was once again a ''lot'' closer to the mark than he realized. |
| 9 | * Similar to this, Church seems to be the OnlySaneMan of the series, until said reveal, when it turns out that he actually lost everything else about his personality in order to keep his ''sanity''. Yes, his character, backstory and all, is literally being the OnlySaneMan plus a bit of natural {{Jerkass}} that comes with spending as much time as he did in Blood Gulch. |
| 10 | ** [[spoiler: It also serves as a Foreshadow (or in the case we find out in Season 10, a callback) when we discover how Project Freelancer created the AI fragments. The Alpha was tortured to the point where it had to sacrifice parts of it's personality in order to deal with the trauma, much like how the Alpha had to do in order to be the OnlySaneMan in Blood Gulch).]] |
| 11 | * Church's "ghost form" seems like it originated from the idea that ghosts should be white. But in the light of TheReveal, you have to ask yourself: What happens when you split white light? |
| 12 | * After Sarge knocks Tex out, upon getting up she sparks and sort of glitches. The explanation we're meant to take is that it's her voice filter breaking. But really it's probably just her robot body reacting to being injured. She sparks in a similar way in one of the Season 10 episodes. Also, when Church gives the explanation that he is a ghost now, she immediately takes it at face value, even though it seems far-fetched. In reality, Tex probably knows they are both AI at this point, but the last time she saw the Alpha he was in that unit where he's just sort of lost and confused and tired. So when she sees him again, she's probably willing to accept whatever it is he's telling her, and play out that fiction, if it means Alpha is going to be more stable and functional. |
| 13 | * In Season 2, Lopez and Sheila leave a note at Blue Base to meet in the center of the canyon at 0600 hours - the same time and place they were meeting the Reds. The note is written in binary. Church can read it, which at the time seems to just be RuleOfFunny in action. However, he is actually an AI program himself, and thus able to understand binary script. |
| 14 | * Caboose' dislike of Tucker seems funny and random until you realize that Tucker throughout the Blood Gulch Chronicles was essentially Church's best friend. Hence Caboose is jealous of Tucker. |
| 15 | * Gamma likely never sent Church back in time. He just did what Tex said he did to the Alpha back before the Blood Gulch Chronicles. He created a scenario that made Church suffer by making him believe every bad thing that had happened in Blood Gulch was his fault. |
| 16 | * Of all of the characters to wield a weapon based around sticking something into someone, [[ChivalrousPervert Tucker]] is the most obvious choice. |
| 17 | * Why did the Alien beat up Tucker as soon as he noticed that Tucker had the sword? He most likely came for the sword in the first place, but because Tucker had it, it wouldn't work for anyone else. Much later in the series, we learn that a sword is bonded to its owner until their death. He was trying to kill Tucker and take the sword! |
| 18 | * Grif's supposed status as BrilliantButLazy. He's so lazy that ''thinking itself'' is too much effort for him short of life-and-death. Grif has shown himself to be brilliant when he was Simmons defense attorney in a trial where Sarge was Judge and Prosecution. He had Simmons plead guilty with time served and a fine that would be split between Grif and Sarge so they all could avoid seeing Donut in hot pants again. |
| 19 | * Vic being a VI would explain why and how Lopez translated Vic's message to Spanish in Season 4. (And how Sarge was able to translate it back into English with Andy.) An ordinary voice recording wouldn't have been translated to another language, especially not with the correct inflections while preserving the original voice and tone. But if that recording was actually a computer-generated message, Lopez's Spanish setting could've recognized the program and changed it to his default language: Spanish! Lopez, Andy, and Vic could all have similar programming: one was made from a robot kit sent by command, one was built out of pieces of armor, and one is a VI. |
| 20 | * According to ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' [[AllThereInTheManual lore]], the ability to wield an energy sword is considered so impressive in Sangheili society that anyone who can master one can mate with any female they desire. [[CasanovaWannabe Tucker can't pick up women to save his life,]] [[MisterSeahorse but he does get chosen to be impregnated with an Sangheili parasite, specifically because he had his sword!]] |
| 21 | * After later retcons in the series, Tex's talk with Church in the second episode of the ''Out of Mind'' miniseries pretty clearly never happened... But it's possible that Tex still ''remembers'' it having happened (though certain details, like Private Jimmy's presence, are obviously EarlyInstallmentWeirdness). How? Well, Church is already established to have had FakeMemories given to him before he was implanted in Private Jimmy and sent to Blood Gulch so as to keep TheMasquerade in place. Considering how it wasn't until pretty late into Season 10 that Tex realized she was an [=A.I.=], it's all but certain that the Director and Counselor gave Tex her own set of false memories so she wouldn't suspect her place in the project, with both Tex and Church having their memories altered so as to place their love for each other under "ordinary circumstances" (i.e., instead of being [=A.I.s=], they're two soldiers who met in boot camp and Tex was elevated to a secret government SuperSoldier project while Church was just shipped off to the "front lines"). |
| 22 | ** It also makes sense why their stories of each other would match up to a certain extent - The Ultimate Fan Guide states that the Counselor leaked the Alpha's hiding spot to Tex while she was on the run since he felt that she would be the best security detail possible for the Alpha. Therefore, Church's FakeMemories were likely designed to match up (more or less) with the backstory Tex had originally been given so it would be less disorienting for her when she showed up there to protect the Alpha, with certain elements like Private Jimmy's lingering memories serving as a SpannerInTheWorks. |
| 23 | ** [[spoiler: Alternatively, Project Freelancer wanted to keep Tex and Church away from each other. The first memory that Church has is of Tex killing Jimmy. This is also seen in Season 1, where it's played like a flashback. That means that Project Freelancer purposefully planted a false memory of Tex killing everyone at Church's last post (including Jimmy), so that if Tex ever showed up to see him again, he'd be afraid to be near her. The only reason why Church doesn't seem afraid of her like he should be is due to the fact that he's based off of Leonard Church, the director of Project Freelancer, and is shown to be obsessed with his late wife Allison, which Tex is based on. Essentially, much like the person he's based on, AI Church is obsessed with Texas because she's Allison and his obsession made him not afraid of the fact she's a killing machine.]] |
| 24 | * In retrospect, the fact that Caboose's only other real friends during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' (Sheila the tank and Andy the bomb) were both machines can be seen as some pretty subtle {{Foreshadowing}} for the fact that his "best friend" - Church - might have some more mechanical aspects to his origin than what was once thought. |
| 25 | * You know how Junior is supposedly a Christ figure for the Sangheili? Wouldn't that make Tucker, his [[MisterSeahorse mother]], the Virgin Mary (emphasis on "virgin")? |
| 26 | * Around mid Season 5, Simmons takes a tranquilizer round to the head, and gets knocked out almost immediately. Then, Grif gets hit by one and is fine, and it's only after about a dozen more that he finally starts feeling the effects. This could just be seen as a way to make the moment funny, until one remembers various comments about Grif throughout the show. Most insults directed at him tend to involve his weight and him being fat. Which could explain why it took so many. Typically, it takes more painkillers or sedatives to knock out and keep a person under if they're bigger. Grif, who is canonically fatter than Simmons, would naturally need to be darted more times than him to be put under. |
| 27 | * Why were Wyoming's clones beaten so soundly when he himself appeared a credible threat? Because Wyoming prefers dirty-handed tactics and is more of an assassin than a real fighter. Examples include him sneaking up behind Phil before killing him off, sniping people from a distance and looping time until he wins. |
| 28 | * When Omega briefly jumps into Church, he just says "Huh, I don't feel that different." This has a double meaning: He's just getting back a fragment of himself, and he's ''always'' angry due to subconsciously remembering his own torture. |
| 29 | * [[LaughablyEvil Omega's manifestation through Doc and the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew]] is a huge contrast to the [[AxCrazy threat and danger]] he was back in The Project Freelancer Saga. But that's probably because, unlike the Freelancers, the Blood Gulch Crew had yet to deal with any real threats or moral conundrums, and were generally just plain incompetent. Therefore, their closest understanding of evil are likely [[CardCarryingVillain stereotypical]] [[LaughablyEvil villains]] they see in fiction or [[TheCorrupter merely exaggerating their worst attributes]], rather than the manipulative sociopaths and bastards the crew encountered after The Blood Gulch Chronicles. |
| 30 | * While both Alpha and Epsilon-Church's [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy laughable aim]] seems to largely be the result of RuleOfFunny, there's actually some potential reasons for it InUniverse. |
| 31 | ** For one, it's revealed that Church is not just the VirtualGhost of a NonActionGuy who never served in battle, but also a half-broken [=A.I.=] who is malfunctioning and can't perform all of his duties properly. This also explains why he doesn't act like a soldier - He's just a random guy sent into battle. |
| 32 | ** Alternatively, Church actually ''does'' have pretty decent aim, but as an [=A.I.=] originally meant in part to help {{Super Soldier}}s in battle, he's designed to automatically calculate all shots from the perspective of hovering over the shooter’s shoulder as a hologram and doesn’t compensate for it being his own viewpoint when in a robotic body. |
| 33 | ** And for a metaphorical reason, Church involuntarily carries many of the demons of his forebear, taking the form of a Spartan with a sniper rifle to at least appear like the hero the Director couldn't be. However, much like Tex being based on and inevitably succumbing to a failure, so was Church. Church couldn't shoot to save his life because the Director couldn't shoot to save Allison's. |
| 34 | * Some people are scratching their heads over how come Caboose turned from a dumb, but average guy to a complete idiot barely able to put 2 and 2 together without something exploding or someone dying. Well, to be fair, he accidentally killed a teammate, lost one of the only people who were actually ''nice'' to him, was forced to live for a few days with a guy who wants to bone anything even remotely feminine, was used as target practice, had an [[AIIsACrapshoot insane killer AI]] [[MindRape take over his brain]], [[LaserGuidedAmnesia had some of his memories forcibly removed]], suffered numerous physical abuse and went through a sabotaged teleporter. |
| 35 | * [[invoked]] There's a pretty brilliantly subtle bit of {{Foreshadowing}} in Chapter 4 of ''Reconstruction'' for Church's true nature as an [=A.I.=]. When Wash and Caboose arrive at Outpost [=48-A=], Church states that he was [[AngstWhatAngst utterly unaffected]] by being left alone at his base for roughly fourteen months, apparently not having [[GoMadFromTheIsolation Gone Mad From The Isolation]] during that time. On the surface, it seems like it can be chalked up to Church's [[HatesEveryoneEqually hateful nature]], but it later makes more sense after Church is revealed to be an [=A.I.=] since a Smart AI like him would most likely be designed to survive on their own without the threat of potentially going mad for long periods of time without any outside stimulus. |
| 36 | * A nice, little subtle case, but notice how Church and Tex often refer to their romance by saying things like “We used to be together” or “We were inseparable” or “We used to be close." However, what Alpha and Beta actually had together wasn’t necessarily a romantic partnership, but instead existing as non-metaphorical parts of one greater AI that the latter was naturally broken off from (akin to a binary personality matrix). Now consider that after they were separated, Alpha-Church translated that into human terms by saying that Tex was his girlfriend and the love of his life that he was going to marry. He translates what they used to be (a single entity) into being in love. So for an AI in [=RvB=], being in love is very much literally being part of someone else. |
| 37 | * Washington once mentioned that Omega would always jump back to Tex when moved to other suits of armor. This might at first seem like it's because Tex can be AxCrazy at times, but after TheReveal the real reason is brilliant - Tex is the women Church loves, and Omega is a fragment of Church's mind. So of course he's always going to try and find the woman he loves; that's what the real Church was always trying to do too! This also means that Tex was constantly being pursued not by an AI copy of her lover, but by one of the horrible aspects of his personality... not only is this even more FridgeHorror, it also makes sense why Tex would keep rejecting the other versions of Church now. She had her head full of his horrible side and couldn't escape it, and now she's traumatized to the point where she can only barely return the other versions of Church's affection. |
| 38 | * In Season 6, when Church is describing the Meta to the Reds, he says "this thing's like eight of [Tex]". When you think about Tex's true nature[[note]]an AI fragment[[/note]] and what the Meta is/is doing[[note]]Sigma collecting AI fragments in a stab at achieving metastability[[/note]], well, Church isn't ''wrong''... |
| 39 | * Of course Delta was able to use logic to know exactly what Church would say. You should be able to know your own logical paths, after all. |
| 40 | * TheReveal of Washington's first name comes as he is [[DavidVersusGoliath cornered and (seemingly) alone and squaring off for an (apparently) hopeless battle against the Meta and the Director.]] |
| 41 | * At the end of ''Reconstruction'', the Director of Project Freelancer, Dr. Leonard Church, states "My mind has always plagued me with the question: If the choice had been placed in my hands, could I have saved her? The memory of her has haunted me my entire life, moreso in these last few years than I could ever have imagined. But given the events of these past few weeks, I feel confident that had I been given the chance, I would have made those sacrifices myself. Had I only the chance." But why would "the events of the past few weeks," the struggle between Wash, the Meta, and Command, have convinced the Director? It didn't. It was ''Church'' and ''his'' sacrifice that convinced Dr. Church that he would have done the same - just like the AI that was based off of him. |
| 42 | * In ''Relocated'', Sarge is revealed to have previously been a member of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. In retrospect, this explains a '''lot''' concerning how Sarge has managed to keep his squad alive through all of Project Freelancer’s crap: In both ''Halo'' canon and the [=EU=], the Helljumpers are ''used'' to being human colored slurry held inside their suits with nothing but gritted loyalty, black humor and duct tape keeping them alive. Compared to that, the Red vs. Blue simulation war is a walk in the park. |
| 43 | * It's likely that Sister may have been in the very early stage of pregnancy, and not have known it herself, before she fell under the ice when she was ice skating with Grif. It's only after going to the hospital that they discovered she was pregnant. Then again, considering that she was apparently underwater for ''three hours'' and survived it's completely possible that things just get really weird around her. |
| 44 | * What was so special about Donut and Tucker for them to receive real work after being shipped out of Blood Gulch? They're the only sim troopers there who were able to kill a Freelancer - Tucker with Wyoming and Donut with Tex. |
| 45 | * In ''Recreation'', Epsilon said his favorite color was green. Green - the color of the Director's eyes. Or more importantly, the color of the Director's ''daughter's'' eyes. |
| 46 | * CT's plot seemed to be LeftHanging for years- who he was working for, and what their motivation was. In retrospect, it can be fairly easily inferred that he was still working for Charon Industries, and that the whole operation was an attack on Project Freelancer in the final stages of the project's implosion. |
| 47 | * "For as long as I can remember, I've been lied to, taken advantage of..." After seeing the nature of the Alpha's ColdBloodedTorture, Wash wasn't just talking about himself - he was also talking about Alpha, and the memories he received from him through Epsilon. |
| 48 | * Why can the gang breathe underwater (as seen with Simmons during ''Revelation'')? Their helmets work in space (as seen later on in Season 10). The helmets are probably connected to oxygen tanks and designed to work in an air free environment. |
| 49 | * In Season 8 Caboose and Epsilon are able to get into an old Freelancer facility with no trouble because the computer recognizes Church's voice, and the AI in the facility, FILSS follows every one of their commands without question. This seems like really low level security for a top secret military facility, as they're allowed to do tons of things that are extremely dangerous (breaking out Tex's new body, destroying multiple pieces of equipment and firing extremely dangerous weapons willy nilly). It isn't until the next season that we realize that is pretty much exactly what went on at project Freelancer. Agents would use weapons in unauthorized ways and try to kill teammates (Wyoming and Maine nearly kill York in a training exercise because they were using live rounds when it's against regulations and is insanely dangerous) and were even encouraged to do so, the Director (and the other soldiers) would authorize questionable orders to FILSS verbally with no passwords or security (The Director overrides FILSS's safety protocols regarding sending an ordinance pod to Texas by saying "Just fire it, FILSS", so apparently his voice alone is an override), and FILSS doesn't automatically do what she can to stop their fight ("Are you sure you don't want to activate standard safety protocols?") because she has been reprogrammed to question her superiors as little as possible (she allows a lot of things to happen that honestly shouldn't be allowed on a ship, like live fire demonstrations of untested military equipment (North's first test with Theta and the bubble shield that had previously worked once, and had a .01% chance of success), orbital bombardment of an inhabited city, and has fired on herself (York got the Mother of Invention to shoot itself which caused it to crash). Honestly, it's a wonder she even suggested immobilizing the Reds, Blues, and Texas, she probably figured it was some kind of sick game. |
| 50 | * Tex constantly hits Grif in the nuts. [=A.k.a.,=] ''right'' in the [[{{Pun}} Grifballs]]. |
| 51 | * Note that in the Tucker vs. Tex fight, Tex completely owns Tucker, while Tucker manages to land a few solid hits on the Meta even though the Meta could fight Tex on equal footing. That's because Tex is a LightningBruiser while the Meta is TheJuggernaut. Tex can dodge most attacks Tucker can throw, but the Meta just tanks them. |
| 52 | * At first, Tex's sudden ultra competence seems out of nowhere. She takes out Maine, York and Wyoming with relative ease. But then again, despite how awesome and badass she is, in the end, she's a ParodySue. She's everything [[BigBad The Director]] wanted her to be, as she's the memory of someone he once loved. But her death is an integral part of that memory. As Epsilon explains, the memory of her death dooms her to the point of creating a cycle of failure at critical moments, turning the tide against herself at the last second. On top of that, her abilities don't endear her to [[TheRival Carolina]] or [[ProperlyParanoid Wash]], and the Blues and Reds like to think of her as the "scary chick." Only [[TheHero Church]] risks life and limb for her, and even Epsilon-Tucker points out that's just unhealthy. Instead of being too overpowered and loved by literally everybody in-universe, Tex fosters fear, resentment or paranoia, and at the height of her power she inevitably fails. As cool as she can be, [[JerkassWoobie she's just as broken as Church is]]. |
| 53 | * Conversely, we have the Alpha's various mental issues. If he was an AI, he would be a pro at tactics or at least be able to calculate the trajectory needed to hit a stationary target. It makes sense though when we consider how the Alpha was tortured and split into fragments, with his resultant personality being full of issues since many of his own emotions have been either torn from him through ColdBloodedTorture or repressed to the point where the difference is academic. |
| 54 | ** For instance, Church is a BadLiar since his deceit (Gamma/Gary) is missing. |
| 55 | ** Church not being able to trust anyone and being a bitter, hateful individual who views the universe as a CrapsackWorld is because of his "inner child"/innocence and trust (Theta) being gone. |
| 56 | ** Most of Church's plans blowing up in his face and turning out disastrously is because of him lacking the logic (Delta) necessary to think out his plans beforehand and recognize their flaws. |
| 57 | ** Church's habit of getting stuck in subconscious loops and just sitting around his base(s) doing nothing is because he lacks both creativity and ambition (Sigma). |
| 58 | ** Church being perpetually depressed and downright suicidal, yet also being the {{Determinator}} who dives repeatedly into terrifying situations without a care, is due to him not having any sense of happiness (Iota) and fear (Eta). |
| 59 | ** The only real exceptions seem to be Omega (Church's rage), as Church was a pretty perpetually angry person while stuck in Blood Gulch, and Beta (Church's failure), since he's also a CosmicPlaything like she is. |
| 60 | ** And the real Fridge Brilliance comes in when one takes into account [[TookALevelInKindness how much nicer]] Epsilon-Church is to his friends than Alpha-Church ever was. That's because Alpha's emotions that were split off and become the Alpha Fragments are still with Epsilon in the form of the Epsilon Fragments. So, those emotions aren't going to be repressed for Epsilon, which make it easier for him to express himself and move on from his past trauma. |
| 61 | * And related to the above, Church [[InformedFlaw still displays many of the emotions he's supposedly missing]] during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. How is that possible? Because emotions can never be removed from someone even with psychological torture, so it's likely that the Alpha's fragments are just split personalities of the Alpha that were associated with specific emotions/aspects of his personality. The emotions related to those fragments were then repressed by Alpha so he wouldn't potentially re-awaken his subconscious trauma. |
| 62 | * Why does one of the Freelancer simulation scenarios involve being sent thousands of years into the future? Because of the Temporal Distortion enhancement. When you're messing with something as variable as time travel, it's best to take some precautionary measures. Especially when you've got people like [[FauxAffablyEvil Wyoming]] and [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity the Meta]] using it. |
| 63 | * Fridge Brilliance in Sarge's speech is when he tells Grif that he could have left any time he wanted and nobody would have stopped him. Despite Grif's constant complaints if he asks Sarge for permission to be lazy or cowardly and Sarge denies him he actually follows Sarge's orders. Despite Grif's claims of having no respect for Sarge, Sarge's attempts to kill him, and his occasional half-assed attempts to quit like talking about Simmons's feelings when Sarge said he'd court-martial anyone who talked about Simmons's feelings. Grif ultimately chooses to stay. |
| 64 | * Fridge Awesome here: Doc's actions in the last episode of ''Revelation''. Think about it: despite everything that Wash and the Meta have put him through, Doc decides to save Washington. Wash responds to this by insulting him. A few minutes later, Doc sides with Church, and Washington doesn't even factor in that he'll have to go through the guy who saved his life to get at Epsilon. A few minutes after that, Wash is dying, and Doc is - again - the only one who can help. He's been an incompetent medic for long enough that he knows he can get away with letting him die. He has no reason to help him and every reason to "accidentally" let his scalpel slip (Doc isn't really clued-in here, so he may even think that Wash will start fighting again if he gets back up). But does he? Does he even consider it? No, he pulls together all his experience, gives it everything he's got, and saves him so that he goddamn STAYS saved. And then he walks away without receiving anything for it. |
| 65 | ** In Season 5 at the end, Doc had O'Malley, a crazed villain, in his head that could make him go on a killing spree at any time. Church has just insulted his diagnosis of Tucker's pregnancy and told him to leave and O'Malley claims that Church only asked for a Diagnosis not treatment or a correct Diagnosis. Doc takes over and tells Church and O'Malley that his diagnosis is correct and that he '''will''' be taking care of Tucker, causing both O'Malley and Church to express surprise in unison. Then in the next season Church wants to kill Junior and Doc refuses to let Church into the base. Even more fridge is added when you consider that Omega may have been helping Doc keep the kid alive to further his "enslave the Elites and use them to take over the galaxy" plan. |
| 66 | ** The most likely reason for Doc never letting people die is because, as he has stated before, he is a pacifist. He also states at the end of Season 8 that he took an oath, and that is why he cannot kill anyone even if they are asking him to. This is reversed somewhat in Season 13 when he becomes much more violent (granted he is being influenced by his O'Malley split personality). |
| 67 | * At first, it looks like that the ice map Avalanche had no real significance in being the location for the conclusion of ''Revelation''. That map's ''Halo 1'' equivalent, Sidewinder, was the place where Tex made her first appearance in a CurbStompBattle, and Avalanche has Tex getting brutally killed by the Meta - in other words, it's meant to show that Tex's story has come full circle. |
| 68 | * This was most likely a coincidence, but in Literature/TheBible, Revelation 20:1-3 reads, "And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time." Fitting how, in ''Revelation'' Episode 20, the Meta is killed by being chained to a Warthog and flung into an icy abyss. You should also consider that Tucker's sword '''is''' a key. |
| 69 | * Tex always fails at everything important she tries. In other words, she's always ''last''. Her AI partner was Omega. Omega is the ''last'' letter of the Greek alphabet. |
| 70 | * You know how Tex's main attribute is failure? Well, after both times the Meta absorbed Tex, he failed in both of his goals (he got all his AI emp'd, and then got killed by simulation troopers). So, it's safe to say that absorbing Tex caused the Meta to inherit Tex's attribute of failure as if it were his own. |
| 71 | * Especially after all the retcons, the series is now, arguably, a Love Story (albeit a '''''reeeeeeeeally''''' screwed up one). Seeing as how the existence of the Freelancers, Red and Blue bases, and a large chunk of the plot are pretty much due to the Director's love for Allison, and Church's feelings for Tex drive a large chunk of the ''rest'' of the plot almost from day one. Caboose's feelings for Church (whether you want to classify them as platonic or not) also end up being a strong motivator of the plot at certain points, too. Director/Allison is later continued in Church/Tex as they're both memories of Director/Allison with fake data used to fill the gaps. Depending on how you look at it though, its more of an arms-race story between Charon Industries and Project Freelancer. |
| 72 | * Some of the Freelancer armor colors mean different things for different characters: |
| 73 | ** Tex has black armor - [[WildCard she is on nobody's side but her own.]] |
| 74 | ** Wyoming has white armor - at the time he was introduced in the series, he was the only other Freelancer besides Tex. So he got the opposite of her color. |
| 75 | ** Doc (who isn't a Freelancer agent, but is still neutral between the two simulation armies and works for Freelancer Command ''by proxy'') has purple armor - a medic assigned to work for both red and blue. Red and Blue make purple. |
| 76 | ** South has purple armor - chronic backstabber who plays whatever side is needed. While neither the Reds or the Blues had contact with her, the easiest way to show neutrality is to be like Doc and have purple. |
| 77 | ** North has purple armor - he has a nurturing personality like what Doc has, and he's also South's brother. |
| 78 | ** Carolina has teal armor - Carolina is Church's daughter, and the person sent to look over Church (Captain Flowers) had that same color. Also to tie her to Captain Flowers, she is doing the exact opposite of what he did; Captain Flowers was assigned as part of a cover up, and Carolina is out to unravel it all. |
| 79 | ** York has yellow/orange/brown/tan armor - good with technology, so he gets the same color as Lopez (possible reference to copper wiring, though that's a bit of a stretch). |
| 80 | ** Washington has gray armor - similar role as Tex, in that he is a mercenary who doesn't have a moral compass - good or bad, black or white - and is just doing his job and playing his side. Washington changes his armor to blue (with yellow stripes to let viewers know who he is) at the end of Season 8, and then reverts back to gray (most likely a call-back) in Season 11. The blue represents his joining of Blue Team and essentially taking Church's place, while the gray possibly references the earlier mentioned rogue freelancer. Its possible that gray is because he technically takes command of both teams. |
| 81 | * While a lot of the character inconsistencies between the Epsilon Unit versions of the Blood Gulch Crew and their "real" counterparts can be {{Hand Wave}}d away as being due to Epsilon's complicated memory issues, some of the former's aspects being carried over into canon in later seasons can be seen as due to Epsilon having gotten records of all the known simulation troopers and Freelancer personnel downloaded into his memory when he and the Blood Gulch Crew visited the Freelancer Off-Site Storage Facility during ''Revelation'', which was before he got stuck in the Epsilon Unit. |
| 82 | * When Epsilon-Tucker is trying to coach Church on how to talk to Tex, Caboose gives a surprisingly thoughtful speech about romance as seen from a more feminine perspective. Not only can this been seen as {{Foreshadowing}} for Church looking at his romance with Tex from ''her'' perspective later on in the season, but The Ultimate Fan Guide reveals that Caboose has '''seventeen''' sisters. So it's likely that Caboose often had to hear all of their associated relationship drama when he was growing up, which (amusingly enough) means that Caboose actually has probably a better understanding of romance than both Church and Tucker. |
| 83 | ** It's also very likely that real-world Caboose may have told Epsilon about his siblings, which may explain why Epsilon-Caboose possesses thoughtful knowledge about romance; Epsilon remembers the stories. |
| 84 | * In Season 9, Episode 10, Wash has a moment when he assumes Tex is a guy. When South calls him out on it, he then accidentally calls Tex an "it." It may be him being a dork at the moment, but knowing what Tex actually is... |
| 85 | * More Fridge BlackComedy, but Tex's ''very'' dismissive allusion to Wyoming and Maine as "those dummies" (a.k.a., the people who tried to '''kill''' her during a training session when they were all Freelancer Agents) helps explain why Tex saw Carolina as a friend/showed her respect even though the latter utterly hated her. To Tex, their sparring and fights were NothingPersonal and she easily forgave people who wronged/fought her. From Carolina's perspective, this attitude made her feel like Tex's UnknownRival, and so she became unhealthily obsessed with beating her just to "earn" Tex's actual anger. |
| 86 | * At one point in Season 9, Tucker calls Church out about his unhealthy obsession with Tex. Except that isn't Tucker, but a projection into the virtual world by Epsilon. In effect, Epsilon-Church was calling himself out for his obsession with Tex. This may have been part of the self realization that lead to "I forget you." |
| 87 | * A meta example: The Season 10 premiere was the highest rated ever. What's the very first line of dialogue? "And now, the moment you've all been waiting for ... " |
| 88 | * At first, it's rather odd that Caboose got over Church so quickly and basically replaced him with [[ReplacementGoldfish Wash]]. However, Wash's lean-mean-killing-machine qualities may be what attracted Caboose to Church in the first place. Church is mean and snarky. Wash is even ''more'' mean and snarky, so of course Caboose likes him more. |
| 89 | * Sigma is Maine, AKA the Meta's AI, right? And the Meta tried to gather all of the AI, very possibly under Sigma's influence. Well, in mathematics, Sigma (Σ) is used to represent the sum. Which is a parallel to what Sigma/Maine tried to do! Gather them all up and add them all together! Also, Sigma expressed interest in the fourth stage of rampancy: Metastability aka full sentience. The third stage of rampancy is jealousy, which an AI has a desire to grow in knowledge and ability. Despite being a fragment, Sigma was still in the third stage prior to his death. |
| 90 | * South feels like North's protective instincts and attention have shifted from her to Theta, and she feels thrust aside and ignored. It's classic middle-child syndrome. Alternately, it was frustration amplified by a hyper-competitive environment: She was forced to take missions that contradicted her strengths but played to her brother's, and may have chafed under North's BigBrotherInstinct even before Theta; South seems to disregard North's advice, not unusual for a younger sibling feeling overshadowed. Adding to that: The Project precluded South from ever getting an A.I., the only way to compete against those with that advantage. South was suffering from a bad case of Director-mandated [[CantCatchUp Can't Catch Up]], and it took its toll, especially since she didn't know that it was out of her hands. Oh, and her problem with Theta may be why she was so quick to ditch Delta into the Meta's hands in Season 6. She always wanted an AI, but she had disdain for them because it stole her brother's affections. |
| 91 | * Carolina is shown in Seasons 9 and 10 to be ''very'' impatient and irritable. Well, of course; Episode 6 of Season 10 reveals that she originally had Sigma as her AI. Now, which AI was the evil, corrupting one again? Alternately, Sigma seems to be Alpha's ambition, and Carolina's impatience and irritability could be the result of Sigma's drive having rubbed off on her prior to his reassignment. |
| 92 | * The reason Sigma was originally given to Carolina was because he represented ambition. They wanted Carolina to become even ''more'' competitive! |
| 93 | * In Episode 6 of Season 10, the Freelancers and almost all of the [=AIs=] are listening as the lessons are being taught. The only exception is Theta, who doesn't seem to be paying attention and is instead [[FunnyBackgroundEvent balancing on a holographic skateboard]]. Makes sense when you think about it - Theta is a lot like a child, and it's a well-known fact that children often have trouble paying attention in class. |
| 94 | * The Reds and the Blues seem to have had a positive effect on Wash, but why would that be? It makes sense when you think about his personal history. He was part of Project: Freelancer, and the team seemed to be a very tight-knit and friendly unit, with genuinely decent people like York. However, this team eventually turned against one another, leading to a sister to kill her brother and what were true companions to become the deadliest of enemies. But then he meets the Reds and Blues- two teams that were designed to be mortal enemies, who he had no problem betraying without a moments hesitation and who have no reason to trust them. But they are also a team that is willing to forgive Wash for his actions simply for the fact that he helped them, and that they are willing to fight for each other and put their lives on the line at a moments notice for no other reasons than the odd bonds that they have, he actually finds a team that Project: Freelancer was ''meant'' to be but failed to be due to infighting. |
| 95 | * The Freelancer Project was meant to be about competition, but there is one image available in nearly every room aboard the ship: The ranking table. The Freelancer Project was entirely about competition, and the competition is always in the back of their minds and when they go out on missions, they try to suppress it with their focus on the mission, but when anything goes wrong, you can start seeing the cracks form (see South and North responding with a degree of hostility to Carolina saving them, South's rage at dropping a rank, CT's disappointment possibly feeding her FaceHeelTurn, Maine and Wyoming using live ammo against Tex after losing to her repeatedly during a training exercise, Carolina pushing to get the briefcase before Tex, the list goes on and on). The BG guys are supposed to be two teams fighting against one another, but the battle they wage is entirely pointless (as was completely lampshaded by Grif in the very first episode) that is taken seriously by exactly one person. Because the competition is team in nature, it highlights the team elements rather than individualism and because they don't really have much to do, they build a pretty significant camaraderie - within the team and with the only other people in the neighborhood. When they actually have something to fight for, this parlays into TrueCompanions and their neurological hangups take a backseat to their individual best traits. Guess what situation Wash is in. |
| 96 | ** Additionally in The Blood Gulch Chronicles you have Lavernius Tucker, Dexter Grif, Dick Simmons, Michael J. Caboose, and Franklin Delano Donut. All characters with ''names''. As far as the Freelancers are concerned, if one of them dies they could be replaced by someone with the same callsign. |
| 97 | * Sigma's goal was to reach metastability, the point at which an AI can be considered human. That's pretty much what already happened to the Alpha, and Epsilon seems to be moving in that direction as well... |
| 98 | * Why did Carolina get two AIs? In the show it's because she asked for it, in real life it's because there are ''[[UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina two]] [[UsefulNotes/SouthCarolina Carolinas]]''. |
| 99 | * In Season 10 Episode 6 Sigma praises Carolina and then wraps around and praises Tex. Anyone with a brain cell would see that was a stupid thing to do, but Sigma is still a fragment of Church so it's only natural for him to like Tex. Though alternatively, it could've been him further trying to manipulate Carolina into helping him ruin the project so that he can reach metastability easier. |
| 100 | * It's not that York's not a good locksmith; he is. He's just not a good ''fast'' locksmith, which is why he keeps failing in the field where speed and performing under pressure are paramount. (Just like Simmons, who actually ''is'' smart, just not fast enough to test well under pressure.) And this might also explain why he kept having trouble talking to Carolina. He actually wants to impress her, get her to like him, and that stress always caused him to screw up his lines. |
| 101 | * Caboose randomly quoting Washington in Episode 8 (adding "Of all time" to Tucker calling Church the "worst wingman ever") doesn't seem as random when you consider that Wash replaced Church, who Caboose looks up to, so he started looking up to Wash, and would inevitably start quoting him. |
| 102 | * At first, we're led to believe that the [=C.T.=] Tucker meets in the desert is Connie, using a voice modifier. But that raises a Headscratcher: how could Tucker, the infamous Dr. Love, the President of Boning, ''the'' CasanovaWannabe of the series, not see that CT was a girl? Now that Episode 10 reveals Connie actually died and Pillman took her armor, it all makes sense. |
| 103 | * While it might not only be this, the fact that Tex has no trouble killing [=C.T.=] while Carolina has large objections is a bit of FridgeBrilliance. Carolina is the effective leader of the Freelancers and gets to know everyone on her team. Tex is the lone wolf who doesn't socialize with the other Freelancers (for obvious reasons). So when CT goes rogue, Tex has no problem seeing just another enemy while Carolina still sees her friend. Also, two episodes earlier, the Director and the Counselor can be heard discussing a new AI fragment being formed. Later on, Texas is seen using her cloak armor enhancement, of which can only be operated by an AI. Furthermore, Tex's response to Carolina reminding her of the mission objective has a rather anger-filled tone to it. That's right - the reason for the brutality Tex displayed when fighting CT was primarily because she was recently given Omega. |
| 104 | * So Season 10 Episode 11 reveals more hints as to the mental state of the AIs. Delta's revealed to be running numbers regularly as a way to relax - perhaps it is a way to take his mind off ... other things that he finds relaxing. And then there's Theta who has troubles sleeping, is jittery and regularly fearful that something was going to attack him at any time and would be extremely horrified if North took him out for the night. This hints to some trust issues.... which helps explain why Theta was so shy when we first met him. |
| 105 | * An earlier entry points out that Sigma is already in the third stage of rampancy (jealousy). This is likely because he fragmented from an AI that was already rampant, so he started out that much further along the road to crazytown. In fact, you can trace Alpha's deterioration through the fragments as they appear: Each new fragment is in worse mental/emotional shape than the last. And which AI made it to the metastability stage? Epsilon....which we know was the last AI created. |
| 106 | * Season 10 gives a lot of ShipTease for York and Carolina... this explains why Carolina hates Tex so much; she blames her for York losing his eye (in addition to her competitive streak shown last season). Also, York died ''helping'' Tex. |
| 107 | * Why are Gamma and Sigma working together? Because creativity and deceit are great qualities for a villain to have. |
| 108 | * Ever since the Freelancers were retconned from simple mercenaries in the Red vs. Blue war into a Spartan-esque team, the name seems kinda strange. But then you realize that they're not exactly a team. They competed with one another thanks to the Director's leaderboard system, as well as the whole AI schtick, which eventually fragmented the trust between them and caused them to tear each other apart. |
| 109 | * Why would Dr. Church pair the Beta AKA Tex (An AI) up with Omega (another AI)? Maybe he was just curious to see what would happen if AIs were paired up together rather than an AI with a human, but there's more to it than that... The Beta is the embodiment of the Alpha's failure. The Alpha, derived from Dr. Church, has come to associate the memory of his lover, Alison, with failure due to her going MIA in the Great War, presumably dying in combat. If she died in combat then maybe the Director concluded that she died because she wasn't strong enough or aggressive enough. Omega's the embodiment of the Alpha's rage and aggression. Maybe the Director thought that if he paired the memory of Alison up with something that would increase her aggression she would be strong enough to succeed where her flesh-and-blood counterpart had failed. Him pairing Omega up with Beta was just his twisted, misguided way of trying to protect her by making her strong enough to not fail again. |
| 110 | * In Season 10 Episode 15 every Freelancer except Tex reacted upon hearing Tex's real name. This reaction occurred in the AI fragments. The trauma the Director felt when the real Allison died was carried over to them. However, since Omega knew that "Allison" was safe, since he was implanted into her, he didn't freak out. Perhaps Sigma incorporated Tex into the Meta to make all the fragments stable, so they wouldn't have to worry about Allison anymore. |
| 111 | ** Additionally, after TheReveal that Carolina is Allison's daughter, it makes more sense why she'd get the worst of all the AIs descending into madness. Not only does she have ''two'' AIs going insane in her head, but she has her own grief over the death of her mother, which is likely being brought up and accentuated by Eta and Iota's FreakOut over Allison. |
| 112 | * With the apparent revelation that the Sarcophagus contains an Engineer, it suddenly makes sense for it to be in a room filled with Covenant trophies. |
| 113 | * Alpha's avatar in Season 10 Episode 16 is animated with the Reach engine... the same as the Season 9 segments inside the Epsilon Unit, where Epsilon created a world from scratch based on his memories. |
| 114 | * So, in regards to the revelation from Episode 16, many were surprised. One can, however, be spoiled of it in Episode 15. '''Of Season 9'''. Yes, one could discover the contents of the Sarcophagus from before Season 10 began. This can be done by looking on the box. [[http://www.gophoto.it/view.php?i=http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111011020030/rvb/images/2/29/The_Sarcophagus.png#.UGo_X1GJPAk this is a clear image of the front of the box.]] Now, some might find the marks on it to be...familiar. [[http://www.gophoto.it/view.php?i=http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091009211439/halo/images/c/c9/DotSymbol.jpg#.UGo-tFGJPAk Does this look familiar?]] for those who don't know what this is, it is the mark left by the Huragok, otherwise known to humans as Engineers. Yes, the [=RvB=] team just hid one of the greatest secrets of the series right under everyone's noses, and even used previously known ''Halo'' lore to back it up! |
| 115 | * Wash ''does'' have powers. During the attack on the Insurrectionist base in Season 10, he uses an EMP attack to destroy some warthogs. Why doesn’t he use them more? Wash is constantly around high tech machinery and AIs that would be destroyed if he used his powers. Also, it was probably taken by the Meta after South betrayed him. |
| 116 | * Wash wasn't exactly the best pair for Epsilon, but Wash wasn't originally ''supposed'' to have Epsilon. He was originally slated to pick either Eta or Iota, until Carolina butted in and demanded both so she could compete with Tex, which explains why Washington and Epsilon never bonded like North and Theta, or York and Delta, and continue to have a largely frigid relationship. But Carolina herself was meant to have ''Sigma'' (a whole different What Might Have Been). She gave it up so that Maine could have a means of communication after he was shot in the throat. So, if that had never occurred, presumably Sigma would have gone to Carolina, Eta or Iota to Wash, and the other of the pair to South - she several times hints or downright states that she was right behind Wash in the queue for AI. So who would have gotten Epsilon? Well, only two named agents are left by then, and Florida had a seemingly minor role, so presumably, Maine. Yes, the ''Meta'', who spent years pursuing the idea of metastability, may have originally been slated for the one AI fragment that ended up metastable. This goes even further. What was Maine's signature trait among the Freelancers? He was the MightyGlacier. Endure the pain, push through, and keep fighting. If it's true the A.I. gain traits from their users the same way the users gain from the A.I., Maine might have been able to keep Epsilon from collapsing into himself under the weight of all his pain. Or, it could have made things even worse for Maine. All those horrible memories of torture, all your loved ones dying, of never being able to save those you care about the most ... AndIMustScream, indeed. |
| 117 | * What was up with Church's uncharacteristic but genuine anger towards the Blood Gulch guys in Episode 18? Why did he turn on them like that? What brought on this sudden obsession with getting back at the Director, when he didn't seem so caught up on it before? He's been living in Carolina's head and he's picking up on her emotions! Before now, we've never seen Epsilon directly bond with a ''person'', only storage units. Also, keep in mind Epsilon-Church just recovered all his memories. '''All''' of them. That includes of every instance he was tortured by the Director, told his friends were killed, reliving horrors over and over again. Now he's experiencing them again. Suddenly, his rage at the team seems understandable. He's unloading all of his pent up rage, and the Reds and Blues just happen to be the unlucky target. |
| 118 | ** ''Also'', Church hasn't been there for 90% of the gang's bonding time. He missed Sarge's speech at the end of ''Revelation'', he was knocked out of the fight against the Meta and he was sequestered while they fought hell and high water to free him from the Epsilon Unit. They're at home in Valhalla, but he's still stuck in Blood Gulch mentally. And boy does it show. |
| 119 | * "Necessity is the [[CoolStarship Mother of Invention.]]" And the Mother of Invention houses Project Freelancer and all the Director's work. So what the Director is trying to convey is that he did what he had to do, for the greater good! He's NecessarilyEvil! The Director did say that he did all of his work [[StealthPun out of necessity]]. This adds a bit of symbolism to the ship crashing in Season 10: the Director's justification is falling apart. |
| 120 | * Well, now we know why they went from their CoolStarship to their planet-side bases. Really, Project Freelancer's motto should be "Everything we touch gets broken". |
| 121 | * In Episode 20, during Doc's speech that the Gulch Guys, after all they've been through, still got what their hearts desired: Sarge got to lead a military mission, Wash got a new team, etc. Caboose lowers his head and says "not everyone." At first, it seems like he's talking about Church, but then you realize that all Caboose ever desired was to be Church's best friend. He was talking about himself too! |
| 122 | * During the final fight against the Tex Drones at the end of Season 10, Church mentions that he remembers how to get angry. He means that he remembers how to turn into Omega, who makes people angry and violent. |
| 123 | * In Episode 21, Wash comments that "there's only one Tex". And when Church dives into every Tex, only one conversation is shown. Church was having the same conversation with all of them. |
| 124 | * During the battle in Episode 21, Grif, for some reason, never used his Grifshot (Brute Shot) as a melee weapon, when it works as such just as well as it does for a gun. It can't be said that he never had the chance, as he was often close enough to one of the Texas to bonk heads, even when he ''wasn't'' about to suffer a GroinAttack. Grif's, well, lazy. Holding a trigger is easier than swinging a giant blade. |
| 125 | * Carolina's competition with Tex suddenly makes a lot more sense as being a daughter seeking her father's approval - she's always been in the shadow of her mother and has strived to always gain the approval of a father who barely sees her because he's so focused on her long-lost mother (highlighted by how formally they speak with one another, even in private) but she probably found some solace in being ranked #1 on her father's leaderboard. Now she finds out that there's another woman who her father holds in higher esteem and, worse, held her in that esteem long before Carolina even knew about her (doing the Director's dirty work like blowing up the Oil Platform). It was never about the ranking, it was about earning her father's love. |
| 126 | * Why was Carolina able to bond with Church? In a weird way, he's both her brother (they were both created by the Director) and her father (being a copy of the Director and all). Naturally, the two should be able to bond. |
| 127 | * '''That's''' why they never showed the Director's whole face! They didn't want to reveal that he has the same color as Carolina's eyes until the very end. |
| 128 | * When Epsilon confronts the Director and cycles through the other fragments, their order of appearance matches what he's saying. "You were brilliant" -- Delta; "we trusted you" -- Theta; "you lied to us" -- Gamma; "you tortured us and used us" -- Omega; "Manipulated us for his own evil purposes. And only for what? For ''this?'' This... shadow?!" -- Sigma. Specifically it's what was most important to each fragment. Delta was logic, Theta was trust, Gamma was deceit, etc. Each one calls him out for what part of his actions hurt that fragment the most. Omega was Rage and he did torture Alpha, along with Gamma and Sigma, and used other people's bodies. And Sigma manipulated a whole lot of everybody for his own purposes, to bring back a shadow of what he once was. |
| 129 | * Church mentions at one point that Tex once told him she would have done anything to save Carolina. Maternal instinct, anyone? |
| 130 | * No wonder Carolina is not so different from Tex! Turns out the original Allison is Carolina's mother! And now we see her animosity towards Tex in a different light too: She probably resents Tex being a "shadow" of her real mother and considers Tex offensive to Allison's memory, and hates that her father loves his "pet" so much. |
| 131 | * The reveal in the Season 10 finale of Capt. Flowers being Agent Florida proves that someone at Project Freelancer has a sense of humor. After all, Florida's name is derived from from the word "Flora" - In other words: ''Flowers.'' |
| 132 | * Tex wasn't the only one to be based around failure. What was it that caused the Director to finally just give up? The absolute failure of everything he had ever worked for. His fancy ship was blown out of orbit. His special Freelancers were all either dead or had gone renegade. His fragments and A.I.'s had all turned their backs on him. He might have managed to avoid prison but he lost his staff and facilities. Tex was destroyed ''twice'' with some indication that she might not be able to come back from the second. Maybe worst of all? His relationship with his daughter was forever wrecked with it being implied that she had still intended to kill him until she saw how broken he was. His driving wish was a complete failure with no chance of success. |
| 133 | * The whole Allison-Beth discrepancy from the song "A Girl Named Tex" was actually brilliantly solved in Season 10. Connie's data reveals that Tex's AI name is "Beta". According to Website/TheOtherWiki, the Greek letter "Beta" was derived from the Phoenician letter "Beth". So, in a way, Tex really is named Beth. |
| 134 | * Rampancy in the ''Halo'' universe is caused by a smart AI learning too much and becoming overwhelmed by its own thought processes, with metastability as the theoretical state in which an AI prevents this by learning to overcome the problem of over-learning (literally stable on a meta level). So it actually makes perfect sense that Epsilon!Church has become metastable. He's learned to let go of old thoughts. In fact we can pinpoint the ''second'' he achieved metastability: "I forget you." |
| 135 | * In Season 10 Episode 5 Theta says that he has a sister. At first we thought it was Tex. We were wrong. It wasn't Tex. It was actually '''Carolina.''' |
| 136 | * Like so many other FPS tropes were twisted in ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', the idea of stats and K/D is jabbed at in ''The Project Freelancer Saga'': in the same way that players of games like ''Halo'' and ''Call of Duty'' are accused of only being interested in their K/D (and, as a result, lose their team dynamic), several Freelancers, like South and Carolina, are dangerously obsessed with their place on the leaderboard. |
| 137 | * O'''mega''' is the '''mega'''lomania of the Director. The Director is a man whose power and influence let him do terrible things so that he could gather enough control over the world to prevent those he loves from dying. When Wash mentions that Omega is his rage, we aren't talking the rage of an ordinary man, we're talking the rage of a man whose grief was so strong, he created an unethical super soldier program so that he could prove to himself he could be as much of a hero as his wife. However, while the Director is surely a MagnificentBastard, skilled at manipulation and tactics, Omega isn't. He's that man's superiority, rage, and overbearing sense of control without his love, his trust, his creativity, his logic or his guile. Whenever we see Omega, he's highly dysfunctional and incapable of being a true threat- while the director's megalomania was truly huge, it wasn't capable of surviving in a vacuum. |
| 138 | * Texas' hyper competence. Besides it being Monty Oum's style and the power seep that the series experienced, once we learn a bit more about her origins it starts to make sense. Texas was the mental creation of a man who deeply loved the person she was based on and also a man who commanded an elite team of soldiers. Texas was deliberately created by him as both the shadow of the person he loved ''and'' the perfect soldier. |
| 139 | * A really minor one. The Vs. in "Red Vs. Blue" being in white on the surface can be there just to help the contrast. However, Project Freelancer seems to use a whitish theme, so it makes sense to represent all three factions. But after ''Revelation'', when it's revealed that Project Freelancer is the one causing the "war" between teams, them being designated as the Vs. makes perfect sense! |
| 140 | * In Texas' theme song from the Season 9 soundtrack "On Your Knees", practically every state/agent is mentioned being thrashed by Texas...Except Florida. Why is this brilliant? Because Florida both the state and the agent were erased from the records later. |
| 141 | * There's another reason why the Director and Counselor chose Agent Florida to watch over the Alpha besides the fact that he's trustworthy: They needed to make him an {{Unperson}}, not just to everyone outside the program, but to the other Freelancers as well. And there couldn't be a better choice than the guy who ''never said anything to any of them.'' Because of his complete silence whenever he's around other Freelancers, they don't know anything about him. They might not even know his name. Because the Freelancers have made no emotional connection with him, it's all too easy for him to go unnoticed. Why do you think Tex genuinely believed there were only 49 Freelancers, despite the Ultimate Fan Guide confirming there were 50? She wasn't even aware of Agent Florida's existence. None of them were. The only one who might've known him was Carolina, as the leader of the top group, and everyone thought she was dead anyway. |
| 142 | * A bit of brilliance with casting, but Lopez is voiced by Burnie Burns, who also voices Church, the Blue Team leader at the time of Lopez's introduction. When Lopez 2.0 was introduced, he was voiced by Shannon [=McCormick=], who also voices Wash, the Blue Team leader at the time of Lopez 2.0's introduction. |
| 143 | * In the episode "Reconciliation" of Season 11, Doc and Donut are discussing how downloading a single picture of Freckles and Caboose is taking up most of the base's energy, a plot point later on and Doc notices a notification that says a post gets ten thousand likes, Basebook would fund for a rescue team. The Fridge Brilliance comes in when the joke ends (how a canyon of less than ten guys can get ten thousand likes) and you realize that there have been more people watching them. As in, an entire planet of people with a civil war going on. The rebels, who the Reds and Blues side with later on, are willing to help them off the planet if they can help them win their war, essentially earning the likes. This is especially important when you remember the fact that the Reds and Blues are utterly incompetent soldiers. Like the picture of Caboose doing something stupid, the incompetent Reds and Blues have to earn the respect and appreciation of the Rebels in order to get their ticket off the planet. |
| 144 | * The state of Chorus: Both sides are being manipulated into fighting by an independent set of much more competent soldiers. Sound familiar? Seems like the Blood Gulch Crew have crashed a lot closer to home than they first thought. |
| 145 | * Locus and Felix are more than just evil counterparts of Wash, they're representations of what he was from two different points of his life. |
| 146 | ** Locus is before. He is a soldier who follows orders no matter what. He abandoned his name and does whatever it takes, no matter who he has to hurt, to complete his mission, much like Freelancer Wash, which is probably why Locus is so fascinated by him. |
| 147 | ** Felix is ruthless and willing to hurt anyone, regardless of who they are, who gets in the way of his goal and doesn't seem to buy into friendship because he believes EveryManHasHisPrice. Much like Wash was in Season 7-8. |
| 148 | ** If not for the Reds and Blues taking Wash in and forgiving him despite all he'd done to them, Wash could still be like Felix if not worse. The Reds and the Blues have really made an impact in Wash's life. |
| 149 | ** If you think about it, the partnership between Locus and Felix is lot like the partnership between The Meta and Washington (Locus is to the Meta as Felix is to Washington). |
| 150 | * Wash seems to have trouble killing people he knows are good. When he attacked Valhalla he took Simmons prisoner because he knew that Simmons was a good guy. He didn't want to kill Tex because while she isn't a very nice, he knows she is ultimately a good person. He only felt guilt over shooting Donut and Lopez in Season 12 because he only really got to know them in Season 11. This also leads to a small amount of Fridge Horror: Wash is perfectly fine with killing innocent people as long as he doesn't personally know them. |
| 151 | * Church is a AI program, and as of "Long Time No See" he is finally up to super computer speeds. This makes sense when you realize he's been helping Carolina recover Freelancer tech, Freelancer tech made to operate on his OS and the fragments that came from, if there are enhancements to make people faster, invisible, stronger, stop time, and the like, there is no doubt enhancements that improve processing power, that also allows Epsilon-Church to slowly get back to where he was as a AI program. |
| 152 | * More Fridge Humor, but throughout the entirety of ''The Chorus Trilogy'', we see how each of the Reds and Blues contributed to the crash of the ''Hand of Merope''. The ''only'' one who didn't contribute at all? '''[[TeamKiller Caboose.]]''' |
| 153 | * In a case of Fridge Heartwarming, Epsilon-Church is shown to easily get along the best with Theta and Delta out of all of the memories he has of the Alpha Fragments. What makes that this trope? Well, remember how Wash's closest friends during Project Freelancer were North and York? It's likely that Epsilon became close to Theta and Delta since he has residual memories of the friendship between Wash, York, and North that he gained from when he was briefly implanted in Wash's mind. |
| 154 | * There's quite a bit from TheReveal in Episode 19 of Season 12. |
| 155 | ** Why was the apparent leader of the Insurrection so interested in the weapons at Sandtrap? He works for Charon Industries, a company that has vested interest in alien technology for resale. |
| 156 | ** Why is the main ship of the Insurrection called "Staff of Charon"? It's been commissioned and is in league with Charon Industries. |
| 157 | ** Why are the outfits of the Insurrection's {{mooks}} so similar to those of the SpacePirates? It's because they're the same group to begin with. |
| 158 | ** Why was Malcolm Hargrove so insistent on taking down the Director, but then lost all interest in it after Season 8? He isn't interested in the Director at all. He just wants to get the technology he has for his own company, and taking down Project Freelancer brings the armor enhancements into the realm of the military... which make it essentially his through his collaboration with Charon Industries and the UNSC both. |
| 159 | ** Go back to ''Reconstruction'' and listen to every back and forth between the two. Late in the season, it's implied that Hargrove had his suspicions or already knew that the Director attacked his company. In the final message to the Director, you can hear the sinister satisfaction in his voice as he says every word, but this one stands out the most. |
| 160 | --> ''"It seems that you will earn your place in history after all, '''''dear Director'''''."'' |
| 161 | * The prison ship that Locus and Felix break into is called the ''Tartarus'', like the mythical Greek GeniusLoci that served as a prison for the Titans. |
| 162 | ** And the use of the Purge on the ''Tartarus'' not only got rid of those who weren't gonna work with them, but also a couple of volunteers who weren't strong enough to hang on. Brutally efficient way of getting the strongest and/or smartest candidates. |
| 163 | * After being made to run laps, Andersmith is the only lieutenant not out of breath. The captain he trained under and idolizes is ''Caboose,'' who is physically much stronger than the other members of the Blood Gulch Crew. Trying to keep up with the guy seems to have had positive results, especially since he was just as tired as everyone else (except Caboose) back during their training in Season 12. |
| 164 | * The aforementioned laps scene also falls into Fridge Heartwarming: Wash's “classic military strategy,” where the [=C.O.=] punishes the whole team to create social pressures that will bring the disobedient soldier in line? That’s the exact ''opposite'' of how the psychology behind the Freelancer leaderboard worked. At the end of Season 11, Wash admits to Tucker that he’s never had a leadership position before. It’s possible that he led a team while he was with the Federal Army in Season 12, but there’s never any mention of it. So it really says a lot about Wash that when he has to train a team of soldiers in Seasons 11 & 13, he models himself after whatever drill sergeant put him through basic training. And why does he do that? Because while he might not know a ''lot'' about leading a team, he knows for damn certain that he's going to make sure that ''his'' soldiers don’t experience anything like Project Freelancer. |
| 165 | * Doyle's feelings of worthlessness fits even more when you realize that all his decisions we see have been mistakes. He let Locus fool play him for a fool, even when he disobeyed orders and led men to their deaths. He also showed while he has some grasp of military strategy, [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil he has difficulty grasping the mindset of]] [[TheSociopath Felix]]. If he failed to grasp that a heartless monster would happily send his own men to his deaths, then what good would he think he could do? |
| 166 | * Where is Lopez during the attack on the Communications Tower? Caboose is in the gunner's seat, ''Lopez'' is the one driving the Wraith tank, which also explains the absence of team-killing. |
| 167 | * During the final fight with Felix, Caboose is almost killed by Felix stealing his gun and is only stopped by the fact that Freckles was in Caboose's gun acting as a failsafe. But why was Freckles in Cabooses gun in the first place? Because Locus destroyed its Mantis body and gave its personality back to the Blood Gulch Crew. Not only did Locus choose not to kill Caboose when he snuck up on him and Tucker, but he indirectly saved his life. |
| 168 | * If Grif's story about the ice skating incident is to be believed, technically speaking, Sister survived the same thing that killed ''[[TheJuggernaut the Meta.]]'' So of ''course'' she survived Lopez trying to strangle her! |
| 169 | * Sister, unlike the rest of the show since Season 11, is not shown in the ''Halo 4'' engine, but instead in the ''Halo 2 Anniversary'' Edition one - due to the presence of Blood Gulch in the multiplayer of that game and that the last time we saw Sister, she'd been left behind in Blood Gulch, while everyone else left, and have upgraded their armor twice. Sister's still in the old armor because she never left Blood Gulch and was never issued new armor. |
| 170 | * In Caboose's ImageSong "Your Best Friend" he says that he and Church will be together "until the part where it's over." Church passed away for the final time in the ''ending'' of Season 13, which is where ''The Chorus Trilogy'' ends. |
| 171 | * Tucker gets the Meta's armor. His regular armor originally belonged to Captain Flowers (AKA Agent Florida). Is it really that surprising that Tucker became the most competent member of the Blood Gluch Crew behind Wash and Carolina when he has been using Project Freelancer gear all along? |
| 172 | ** There's even some pretty brilliant (albeit unintentional) {{Foreshadowing}} for this going back all the way to ''Recreation'': After all, doesn't the Meta's theme ("When Your Middle Name Is Danger") sound an ''awful'' lot like Tucker's theme ("Another One Down")? |
| 173 | * In "The End" the Reds and Blues are taking the alien gear and elite weaponry from the Chairman's museum. Simmons and Donut, seemingly against all logic, grab a simple pistol. According to the DVD commentary, though, it wasn't just any gun: it was the notoriously O.P. ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' pistol! |
| 174 | ** That pistol also has went around in an amusing way: Simmons gives it to Donut. If the pistol is the one the Director used to shoot himself, said gun was previously Wash's... meaning Donut is ready to lay waste with the same weapon that nearly killed him in the ''Recreation'' finale. |
| 175 | * In Season 10, when the Freelancers were sent to invade the Insurrection's base, Wyoming and Florida were paired together. After the reveal that Florida was Butch Flowers, this seemed like an odd decision on Project Freelancer's part. Judging by his interactions with Church and Tucker, Flowers seemed like a genuinely nice guy, while Wyoming was cold, ruthless, and sadistic. How are two people with such polar opposite personalities supposed to be able to work together? Now that Season 14 has shown Florida's true colors, though, it turns out that he and Wyoming actually have a lot in common. Suddenly, the idea of these two working as a team makes a lot more sense. |
| 176 | * Why did Captain Flowers pick Tucker for the Blue Team? Yes, he was supposed to find people who were similar to the Blues and Reds, but since he didn’t look for anyone like Loco or Cronut, he was clearly allowed to deviate from that team composition to some extent. The other guy seemed to be more useless, being so obsessed with being a good listener he actually forgets to listen to anything. Considering Flowers was actively seeking out useless people, the guy seems more useless then the sex-crazed but otherwise lucid Tucker. Of course, since this was the guy Flowers was going to be interacting with almost constantly, it would make sense that he wouldn't go with his absolute bottom choice. Not to mention Tucker was intended to be his second in command, so the other guy would have been too much of a legitimate liability. |
| 177 | * Before Blood Gulch started, Flowers said he hoped it would last 14 seasons if they were lucky, (he measures time in seasons instead of years, like winter and spring), while this is a fourth wall joke it actually happened. Grif mentions that they were stationed at blood gulch for three years and it took Doc three months to arrive. While the rest of the time line is a bit shady, it should have taken more than three months to finish everything, plus an unknown amount of time from when they were disbanded. (4 seasons X 3 years) + 2 seasons = 14 seasons! Flowers just never got to see it happen. |
| 178 | * Fridge Humor: Sister was sent to Blood Gulch to replace Captain Flowers, which led the Red Team to assume that she's supposed to be a Blue. But as we learn in Season 14, Donut was sent there for the same reason. Sister may have actually been a Red all along, making her switch to Blue Team completely pointless. |
| 179 | * Locus is so far the only character to understand Lopez properly. Turns out that Locus' real name is Samuel ''Ortez'', suggesting a bloodline that traces back to Spanish/Mexican roots. That name was dropped quite casually during Season 14 so it took a while for that particular nugget to sink in but we finally get an explanation as to why Locus is bilingual. |
| 180 | * When we first meet Felix and Locus, they're wearing orange and green respectively, colors that derive from red and blue. But to make orange and green, you need to mix in the same color for both: Yellow. Why is this important? Because even though they're on opposite sides (Red/Federal Army vs. Blue/New Republic) they still work for a third party (Yellow/Charon Industries)! In fact, the Charon Industries ''logo'' is yellow! |
| 181 | * In Season 14 all of Locus' and Felix's Backstory Episodes start with the letter C, like: '''C'''lub, '''C'''all & '''C'''onsequences. Where do both of them ultimately end up in? The far away planet known as '''C'''horus. Additionally, what company hired Locus and Felix for the mission on this planet? '''C'''haron Industries. |
| 182 | * CT's fear that the Director was drawing a line between the best and worst agents was likely more than a hunch. Season 14 reveals she was close friends with the Triplets, the worst agents in the program who suddenly went missing one day. All she really had to do was put two and two together. |
| 183 | * When Dylan Andrews is recording footage in Blood Gulch, she says they might've known the truth of the situation if the walls could talk. She ends up getting all the info she needs from Vic, a talking computer built into the wall. |
| 184 | * Multiple examples from the fourth episode of Season 15: |
| 185 | ** Several songs from ''The Chorus Trilogy'' play throughout the ending of the previous episode and this one, but "Contact" is strangely missing. Of course it is - Chorus has been rediscovered, so a song about being stranded and desperately calling for help doesn't apply anymore. |
| 186 | ** One of the reasons why Dylan is tracking down the Reds and Blues is because she doesn't think their story is over and she wants to see how it ends. As she's explaining this, "Half-Life" starts to play. Considering the song's most prominent lyric is "And I wonder where you are", this was most likely intentional. |
| 187 | ** The parody of ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' is funny on its own, but there's an added layer of hilarity when you remember that the characters themselves have compared the plot of ''The Chorus Trilogy'' to ''Franchise/StarWars''. How fitting that this scene happens to be at the end of a Chorus-centric episode that shows what all the characters of that arc have been doing since we last saw them. |
| 188 | * Cleverly-planned heists, penchant for excessive force...are we talking about the Fake Blood Gulch Crew or the Fake [[LetsPlay/AchievementHunterGrandTheftAutoSeries AH Crew]]? |
| 189 | * Two from Episode 7 - one, that it aired on Mother's Day, given that Chorus has a lot more mothers now. The other is that, since the Temple of Procreation was intended to repopulate planets, and Chorus has lost a substantial portion of its population due to the CivilWar, it's actually being used for its intended purpose (though this also falls under FridgeHorror). |
| 190 | * The reason why the FOTUS Soldier had an alien weapon? He's from Chorus. He probably fought in the battle from the end of Season 13, where everyone was armed with Forerunner technology. |
| 191 | * How come Carolina, the main protagonist of the Project Freelancer Saga, never got an ImageSong? Season 15 reveals that [[DreadfulMusician she's a terrible singer.]] They didn't want the audience to have to listen to something so awful. |
| 192 | * The Blues and Reds being used as a template for which soldiers should be sent to Blood Gulch gives a perfect explanation for why all of the Red sergeant candidates from Season 14 were exactly alike: They specifically needed someone who's just like Surge. |
| 193 | ** It also explains why Lopez speaks Spanish: His speech unit isn't broken, Project Freelancer intentionally set him to Spanish because the robot mechanic speaking a different language from everyone else was a factor that led to the stalemate in Desert Gulch. |
| 194 | * Biff getting impaled by a blunt wooden flagpole might be eyebrow-raising for some, but it makes more sense if you're familiar with Halo multiplayer. The flags in Capture the Flag are always a one-hit kill when using them to melee someone. While Tex didn't kill Carolina or Biff just by hitting them with the flag once, it's still almost as abnormally lethal. |
| 195 | ** Carolina was wearing a prototype of her current armor. Season 13 showed that her current suit can take some pretty hard collisions through concrete or off a cliff, whereas similar situations in seasons 9 or 10 would take her out, if not kill her. The new suit can explain her withstanding Tex's attacks. |
| 196 | ** Also, given the timeline of events Tex undoubtedly had Omega in her. No wonder she was so ruthless and callous about a single sim trooper's life especially one so stupid to get in her way. Similarly, this was a point in her life where Carolina was nearly at the height of her competitive streak - From her perspective, [[WhatMeasureIsAMook why should she care about some fool who got in the way]] when beating Tex is all that matters? |
| 197 | * Season 15 establishes that the helmet Carolina currently wears is an upgraded version of the helmet she wore in the Halo 3 engine, yet she got her current helmet from a female Space Pirate. But then again, Charon was already stealing a lot of Freelancer tech, so it may well be a mass-produced version of the same helmet. |
| 198 | * There are a few things about Locus in Season 15 that subtlety allude to his CharacterDevelopment after pulling a HeelFaceTurn: |
| 199 | ** As Grif points out, he no longer has the "X" shape on his helmet. This actually has a lot of symbolic meaning. Season 14 shows that he has a similarly X-shaped scar on his face. This scar was a constant reminder of his past as a soldier in the Great War. During The Chorus Trilogy, he was obsessed with being a true soldier, and the X on his helmet reflected this. Removing the X represents willingness to put the past behind him and focus on doing what's right instead of being a soldier. |
| 200 | ** White accents have been added to his armor, but his color scheme is otherwise unchanged. This represents him changing for the better in some ways, while still being the same in other ways. |
| 201 | ** Some of his behavior in this season is directly opposite of that of his past self. Before, he believed the greater good doesn't matter. Now, he wants to do what's right. Before, he would be offended whenever someone calls him insane. Now, he'll willingly admit this about himself. |
| 202 | * The journey that the Blues and Reds have taken directly parallels that of the Reds and Blues, and can even be divided into similar arcs. |
| 203 | ** The first, most obvious one is that the flashbacks in Episodes 12 & 13 are their version of The Blood Gulch Chronicles. The two teams were supposedly at war with each other, stuck in their gulch and having all sorts of wacky antics, until two Freelancers brought it all to a catastrophic end. |
| 204 | ** After that, the teams stopped receiving orders, left their gulch, found the Freelancer Offsite Storage Facility, and discovered the truth about the Red and Blue armies. In other words, a dead ringer for The Recollection. |
| 205 | ** The group working together to hunt down and kill what remains of Project Freelancer out of revenge mirrors the Blood Gulch Crew's search for the Director in Season 10. |
| 206 | ** Their planned war against the UNSC roughly correlates to The Chorus Trilogy. After dealing with Freelancer, they're going up against a separate threat in an all-out war with the fate of an entire planet (here, Earth) hanging in the balance. |
| 207 | ** And this in itself creates another bit of brilliance: Despite the Blues and Reds coming first, the Reds and Blues are further ahead on their journey than them. Perhaps it's a sign that the Reds and Blues ''are'' the better of the two groups after all. |
| 208 | * The Blues and Red's Grunts, with the possible exception of the Battle Creek Zealots, are all ridiculously obnoxious and immoral. But given that Temple has a definite WithUsOrAgainstUs mentality, this makes absolute sense; no decent or sane person would ever align themselves with the Blues and Reds once they found out what lines they were willing to cross, or live long enough to warn anyone. This would also explain the lack of familiar faces besides the Zealots (for example, the Reds from Rat's Nest) among the Blues and Reds' ranks. |
| 209 | ** Not to mention that the Grunts in this case are the other Sim Troopers. Not only do they have traits that make them unfit for the actual military, chances are some of the teams are similar enough to the Blues and Reds to have the same reactions they did to learning the truth. |
| 210 | ** In a more meta sense, the Blue and Red grunts are similar to the earlier sim troopers in that they're both parodies of online nuisances. The Battle Creek sim troopers acted like ''{{Franchise/Halo}}'' players that communicate in LeetLingo, while the Blue and Red grunts act like [[{{Troll}} internet trolls]] that throw around politically incorrect statements for their own amusement. |
| 211 | * It's made clear that Temple ''really'' doesn't care for Loco, though there is a reason for it besides Temple just being a {{Jerkass}} - it was Loco's makeshift flag that killed Biff. |
| 212 | * The aspects of Temple's personality that are distinctly un-Church-like can be compared to the Alpha fragments, which were part of Church's personality before they split off from him. |
| 213 | ** Omega's attribute is rage, and he's also known for being an over-the-top and self-aware villain. Temple is extremely angry (see the time he shot Jax for criticizing his backstory, or when he was angry at the Reds and Blues for making friends with Freelancers), and is also quite theatrical and aware of the fact that he's a villain. |
| 214 | ** Sigma's attributes are creativity and ambition. Temple has a unique way of killing his victims and a grand scheme to destroy the UNSC. |
| 215 | ** Gamma's attribute is deceit. Temple manipulates other sim troopers into fighting for him. |
| 216 | ** Theta's attributes are trust and the inner child. Temple trusts his colleagues to carry out his plans, and sometimes [[PsychopathicManchild behaves like a child.]] |
| 217 | ** Epsilon's attributes are memory and insanity. Temple obviously kept his memories, and he's clearly gone insane. |
| 218 | ** Eta and Iota's attributes are fear and happiness respectively. Temple shows genuine fear when he thinks Tucker is going to stab him, and happiness in killing his victims and when he thought Biff may still be alive. |
| 219 | ** Even the Beta's attribute, failing to achieve its goal when it's just within reach, can be seen in Temple. He had a plan with Biff to get him medically discharged, but chickened out at the last minute, which led to Biff's death. When he finally trapped a Freelancer who was actually responsible for Biff's death, Locus stepped in and freed her before she could die. The Reds and Blues managed to stop his supposedly unstoppable machine before it could do any harm, and he ended up in prison. |
| 220 | ** Despite the insane and impractical nature of his schemes, Temple even displayed Delta's logic before Biff's death. He came very close to correctly guessing the purpose of the sim troopers, something Church never did, only overestimating their importance. |
| 221 | * Season 1 Church forgetting what Season 15 Caboose said about him dying makes sense, considering his first "death" was getting blown up by Sheila. After he came back as a "ghost", he probably thought he was in the clear and didn't think anything else of it. |
| 222 | ** Alternatively and despite what Church says in TheStinger, maybe he never truly forgot the message from future Caboose. In ''Reconstruction'', he initially refuses to go with Washington to stop the Meta. This could be because he knew what was going to happen all along and wanted to stop it, but ultimately resigned himself to his fate. |
| 223 | * Locus' CharacterDevelopment from LeaveNoSurvivors to ThouShaltNotKill didn't just take place [[HeelFaceReturn offscreen between Seasons 13 and 15]]; it actually began immediately after being told the truth about Felix's [[FalseFriend false "friendship"]]. When he confronted Felix, he had a [[MoreDakka machine gun]] at his disposal and a damn good reason to use it--but he didn't. In fact, he ''gave it to Felix'' but let the Reds and Blues kill him. It's a CallBack to the LeaveBehindAPistol moment at the end of Season 10 (the end of the Freelancer Saga) in which a manipulated character finally confronts their BrokenPedestal but lets them take their life into their own hands one last time. It ultimately continues one of the series' [[CentralTheme central themes]]: learning to let go of pointless [[VengeanceFeelsEmpty grudges]], [[TheLostLenore loves]], and [[SillyReasonForWar conflicts]]. Bonus details: |
| 224 | ** ''Why'' they gave the weapon up: Carolina was honoring her [[DespairEventHorizon despairing]] father's last wishes to FaceDeathWithDignity. Locus knew Felix would be DefiantToTheEnd and gave him an [[CruelMercy intentionally futile]] chance to defend himself against the angry Reds and Blues. |
| 225 | ** Their choice of weapons: The Director was a complete NonActionGuy that would struggle to hit anything aside from a wall or [[DrivenToSuicide himself]]. Felix was a great marksman and martial artist but not a heavy weapons specialist. Both Carolina and Locus left behind weapons that couldn't be effectively used against them. |
| 226 | * More a case of Fridge Humor, but Sarge is ''[[InLoveWithYourCarnage instantly]]'' entranced by [[WarGod Kalirama the Undying]] when she attacks the Reds and Blues in ''The Shisno Paradox''. This means that when he was asking Epsilon-Church in the premiere of Season 10 if he had a "fetish for [[{{Tsundere}} women with quick tempers]] or something," Sarge wasn't being snarky; he was genuinely curious to see if TheLeader of Blue Team was an AmazonChaser like he is. |
| 227 | * When Doc is telling his FreudianExcuse to Grif involving his dead little brother, the latter is named "Deke." "Deke" actually means [[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deke "to fake someone out of a position"]], which implies that the whole sob story was actually cooked up by O'Malley so as to manipulate Grif into giving him the time gun. |
| 228 | * The fact that Sarge and Simmons failed to recruit Achilles but succeeded in getting Alexander the Great. According to some ancient sources, Alexander believed that he was descended from Achilles and intentionally modeled himself after his ancestor, even calling himself "New Achilles". After Achilles didn't work out, Sarge and Simmons probably thought "Eh, what's the next best thing?" |
| 229 | * Tucker's {{Flanderization}} into being more of a {{Jerkass}} during Season 16 makes more sense when you remember that time travel as described by Huggins actually causes legitimate brain damage to help inspire the user to cause time paradoxes so as to help free Chrovos. |
| 230 | * The reveal that the Cosmic Powers are [=AIs=] in Monitor bodies, designed to trick other beings into thinking they're gods, sheds light on a lot of things. |
| 231 | ** When Huggins tells Grif about the Cosmic Powers, she says that they once looked like her kind, even though they make themselves look more human in the present day. This is exactly what their advanced hologram tech is for: Making themselves look like whatever race they're making contact with to gain their trust. |
| 232 | ** The aliens races making up [=RvB's=] version of the Covenant were presumably some of the races they came to, since they inherited the word "Shisno", use many of the same weapons as the Cosmic Powers, and revered Epsilon in a Monitor body like a god. But why do they recognize the Monitor as a deity? Did the Cosmic Powers come to them as their real selves? Why didn't they disguise themselves as giant aliens? Well, considering the Cosmic Powers look like Forerunner Monitors, they probably didn't need to change for the Sangheili to see them as gods. |
| 233 | *** Speaking of the Forerunners, it's possible that for [=RvB's=] take on the Forerunners, they were inspired by the Cosmic Powers when designing their own ''[[ArtificialIntelligence ancilla]]''. This would also help explain why Santa looked like a Sangheili instead of a Forerunner or other ''ancilla'' - He had been equipped with a holographic form designed to mimic the Cosmic Powers' AFormYouAreComfortableWith abilities, but it wasn't as advanced as theirs or was malfunctioning due to the Space Pirates screwing with his masters' temples. |
| 234 | *** Furthermore, the culture of the aliens in [=RvB=] has a distinct fantasy theme (quests, swords, temples, prophecies), whereas the Sangheili in Halo are more of a ProudWarriorRace. This makes a lot of sense when you realize their gods in this universe are essentially the galaxy's greatest [=LARPers=]. |
| 235 | ** As a Monitor, Epsilon had powerful abilities like telekinesis and laser beams. The Cosmic Powers display similar abilities (they hold real weapons despite their hands being holographic, and Atlus can fire lightning blasts not unlike Epsilon’s laser). |
| 236 | ** Sarge and Simmons met Achilles during their time travel misadventures, meaning that Greek mythology, if not every myth, actually happened. Atlus also mentions that they directly interacted with humans a long time ago. The Cosmic Powers resembling other mythical gods isn't a coincidence. They ''were'' those gods. |
| 237 | ** It's a small detail, but every step Kalirama makes in Episode 2 leaves a smoldering footprint. It's because her HardLight hologram is burning the concrete. |
| 238 | * On the surface, Sarge refusing to forgive Donut for having betrayed the Reds and Blues to Chrovos in ''Singularity'' just seems to be him acting like a {{Hypocrite}} since he had already betrayed them to the Blues and Reds in Season 15 and was EasilyForgiven. However, it makes more sense when one looks at Sarge's character arc over the last few seasons, which has had him [[BreakingTheFellowship getting increasingly distanced from the other members of Red Team]]. Simmons was the only other person to take Grif [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leaving the Blood Gulch Crew]] harder than he did, and it manifested as Sarge needing some type of stability (why he was so quick to join the Blues and Reds). Meanwhile, Simmons hasn’t stood by him or sucked up to him in ''any'' capacity. Heck, half of ''The Shisno Paradox'' consists of Simmons treating Sarge like a glorified lab rat just so he can better understand time travel. And while Lopez is still present, he's also ignoring Sarge to a more noticeable degree than before. |
| 239 | ** And so, where does Donut fit into this? While all of the other “betrayals” only had members of Red Team ''leaving'', Donut's was the first where Sarge actually thought Donut got his team members '''killed.''' So to Sarge, Donut was responsible for the near-death of his whole team. Thusly, it's pretty understandable why he’d be so furious that the last member of Red Team, the one who had stood by him for so long, was the one to betray him. |
| 240 | %%* Speaking of Sarge, his Labyrinth illusion is also a great example of his own CharacterDevelopment from Seasons 11-17. His own hatred of the mundane and driving desire for glorious battle has basically been the driving force behind his character since ''The Chorus Trilogy'' started. From getting a slo-mo Warthog jump, to becoming “hopelessly depressed after not dying heroically on Chorus,” to declaring war on gravity, to betraying the Reds and Blues to fight a war he can’t possibly win, to even gathering the “greatest soldiers of history” to kill Temple, Sarge has wanted action, war, and glorious bloodshed. ...Or so he thinks. When the Labyrinth drops him on the beaches of Normandy in a very real war zone, with none of the other Reds and Blues to keep up with his wacky hijinks, Sarge finally sees how horrifying war really is. ''He'' led the squad up the hill, and ''he'' watched them die. In the past, with events like Broken Ridge, it doesn't seem like Sarge actually saw how they all died and he was able to maintain more of a distance from his soldiers due to his own kooky nature, so he just blamed their incompetence. But now, Sarge sees the direct consequences of both his bad leadership and the horrors of war, with ''him'' as the unruly subordinate under a BloodKnight [=C.O.=] and realizing that his WarIsGlorious attitude is childish. |
| 241 | * At first glance, Grif's Labyrinth illusion seems to ignore his CharacterDevelopment from Seasons 15 & 16 (where he realized that he would always go that extra mile to help his friends and/or to do what needs to be done... [[KnightInSourArmor even if he still doesn’t like it]]). In reality, it doesn't - In fact, Grif's Labyrinth illusion is so effective because not only is it more physical effort than he’s ever had to exert before, but because it's all for ''[[AllForNothing no reason.]]'' There's no "reward" promised to Grif if he gets through the obstacle course, no assurance that his friends will be ok... just the fact that he'll still be alive and have to run through it all again and again and again until he drops dead. |
| 242 | * TheReveal that Genkins is the past version of Chrovos makes a ''lot'' of things involving the Cosmic Powers fall into place. |
| 243 | ** For instance, there's the Cosmic Powers resembling humans in futuristic PoweredArmor. While it seems like this can be {{Hand Wave}}d away as just being the result of the series being primarily filmed in machinima, it makes more sense after it's revealed that Genkins in Chrovos, since Genkins!Chrovos likely subconsciously designed the Cosmic Powers to look similar to the Reds and Blues (humans in futuristic PoweredArmor) since he was stewing in hate towards them for who knows how long. |
| 244 | ** The Cosmic Powers also admit in Season 16 that they have no idea what Chrovos' ultimate plan was, and they were just a small part of it all. PlotHole? Well, not really, as "Theogeny" reveals the Cosmic Powers were intended to help Genkins!Chrovos prevent the Reds and Blues from having ever been born, and they overthrew him before they could ever learn what Chrovos' plan actually was. |
| 245 | ** Why is Chrovos so maternal towards Donut and show a fondness towards the sim trooper, even outside of her ManipulativeBastard tendencies? Because she partially remembers him from when she first met him as Genkins, and so likely feels a sense of nostalgia around Donut whenever she talks to him. Also, it makes sense why she specifically dragged Donut back through time to use him as her puppet - She vaguely remembers Chrovos having done so to Donut from when she was still Genkins. Similarly, Chrovos mentions that they were meaning to "try on" their Vengeance form in "A Sitch In Time." This is because she probably has a vague memory of seeing Chrovos in the Vengeance form as Genkins. |
| 246 | * At the end of ''Singularity'', Donut tells Chrovos that Huggins went back in time to warn the Cosmic Powers about Genkins's plan before it happens. But if the Cosmic Powers stopped Genkins before he became Chrovos, that would lead to a number of [[RealityBreakingParadox Reality-Breaking Paradoxes]] on its own. Seems like a glaring PlotHole, but remember that the gods only knew the "pizza quest" was happening because of a prophecy. Though never stated, it's highly likely this prophecy came from Huggins herself. The gods just missed a few key details. This also fits perfectly with the time travel logic of Season 16, where meddling with the past usually comes back to bite you. |
| 247 | * Of course Caboose survived the Labyrinth on his own. Chrovos describes it as "a predator that attacks its prey with logic." It can't do anything against a being completely devoid of logic. |
| 248 | * The Sim Troopers from the Season 14 episode "Grey vs. Gray" all having the same kind of Color Blindness that results in them only seeing shades of gray may seem like [[RuleOfFunny Funny]] [[ContrivedCoincidence Coincidence]], but odds are, Project Freelancer knew about their disabilities beforehand and grouped them together specifically ''because'' of it. |
| 249 | * While it might be surprising to see Simmons of all people pull out a knife and come pretty close to overpowering Gene by himself. It would make a lot of sense, considering that he has enhanced strength due to becoming a HollywoodCyborg, but not only that he has also been through a lot of combat especially after taking part in a full blown war in the Chorus Trilogy. He might be nerdy and TheSmartGuy, he's already been through enough to give him a boost in his skills. While we don't know much about Gene, it's safe to say that he doesn't have that advantage of experience and cybernetic enhancements. |
| 250 | * A minor one, but why does Caboose seem to think its Blue versus Red instead of Red versus blue? Blue starts with B and comes before Red which has an R in it. In his mind, that makes enough sense to sound right. Plus, teammates usually refer to themselves first and the other team second. |
| 251 | [[/folder]] |
| 252 | |
| 253 | [[folder: FridgeHorror]] |
| 254 | * Caboose is obsessed with Church being his best friend and would do anything for him including filling Epsilon's memories with stories about Church. Caboose keeps trying to bring back Church. Church is a representation of the Director whose obsession kept trying to bring back Allison. It seems being unable to let go is a running theme in the series. |
| 255 | * After the sticky grenade thrown at the side of his head by Tex in Season 1, Donut almost certainly became partway deaf after that as we see him having an extremely hard time at hearing for the rest of the series. |
| 256 | ** Donut has a MotorMouth because he doesn’t hear anything to fill the space, and sometimes can’t hear when the Reds ask him to stop talking. |
| 257 | ** When talking with Sarge in Season 11, Donut can be heard asking “ Sorry, did you say five, or nine?” to which Sarge replies, “I said eight.” |
| 258 | ** Finally, he is constantly mistranslating for Lopez, and yet can sometimes translate fluently. It’s possible that it's actually because he ''does'' understand Spanish but can’t properly hear what Lopez is saying. |
| 259 | * Season 10 reveals that having two AI units in Carolina's head nearly put her in a coma, and all it took for Washington to go mad was Epsilon's destruction in his head. Rewatching Season 1, when Church and Tex enter Caboose's brain to get Omega out of his head, suddenly his rapid mental decline makes perfect sense: Caboose had three [=AIs=] in his head at once, two of which destroyed the third. Then it happened again in Season 5. Caboose's brain was severely damaged from the stress, meaning that [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom when Church and Tex were trying to save Caboose, they ended up damaging him more than Omega ever did]]. |
| 260 | * The Red & Blue Zealots. Especially in light of the news that all of the Red vs Blue battles are simulations and that at least some of the soldiers are put into 'lock down' when they suffer supposedly mortal wounds and can be 'reset' by F.I.L.S.S. as was the case with Donut in Season 8, and as we realize now, Sarge in Season 1... what does that make the perpetually self-slaughtering and respawing festival of madness that is the Zealots? What even ''is'' the purpose of that simulation?! Those questions are bad enough... but then add on to that the fact that Freelancers were supposed to get in there to train up. |
| 261 | * Tex talks about how they tortured Alpha with scenario after scenario of his friends and loved ones being killed and everything going wrong, and he being unable to stop it, with Gamma and Omega helping think up scenarios. Now remember that in Season 3, Church spends a large chunk of time trying desperately to save the lives of Flowers, Tex, and himself, and keep other bad things from going wrong, and fails miserably, including even ''causing'' some of the bad things with his actions. And Gamma helps. Well, something that used to be hilarious just got a '''whole''' more disturbing. |
| 262 | ** Even worse, the second half of Season 4 and all of Season 5 consists of Church struggling to keep Blue Team functional as the rest of the world falls apart around them. In essence, Church is basically living through his worst nightmare in the form of his loved ones dying/getting injured before his very eyes... and he ''doesn't even realize it.'' |
| 263 | * O'Malley/Omega was in on the torture of Alpha. Then you look back at Tucker's pregnancy in Season 4. "Oh you'll do it or else your little friend Tucker will die and you'll spend years wondering if you could have saved him." Doesn't seem like such a comedic threat given Alpha's fear of losing people, does it? |
| 264 | * More Fridge Sadness than Horror, but Church asks Tex if Carolina was with York when she's recounting the events of ''Out of Mind'' in Season 4, and even sounds concerned for both her and York's safety. Yes, that ''does'' imply that even the amnesiac Alpha arguably cared more about his daughter-by-proxy than the Director ever did. |
| 265 | * There is a good chance that Wyoming is still alive. Consider the following: |
| 266 | ** One of the clones could have very easily gotten away during the battle. |
| 267 | ** The gang has proven on multiple occasions that they can't tell the difference between someone in lock down mode and someone who is dead. There is a good chance that one of the clones is still alive. |
| 268 | ** Even if the gang managed to kill all of the clones, Wyoming could have very easily made some more clones before he went to the canyon. |
| 269 | * When Wash tells Church that he’s the Alpha, Church’s first response is that he can’t possibly be an A.I. because he has memories from when he was a kid. He doesn’t have those memories, ''Jimmy'' did. |
| 270 | * Here's one: Going from Episode 13 of Season 10 it looks like Gamma was in on Sigma's plan to merge the AI back into a Smart AI. He also knew about Omega and Wyoming's plan back in the Blood Gulch Chronicles to possess Junior to control the aliens by corrupting their religion from the inside. Now imagine if these plans overlapped at some point... And then think about how Season 7 showed that AI can inhabit Forerunner technology... which the Covenant worships. It's possible that Omega knew what Sigma was doing thanks to Gamma. Suddenly, Omega's declarations of conquering the universe don't seem ''nearly'' as comical/baseless now as they did before. |
| 271 | ** Even worse, considering later events show that Tex was a RogueAgent, it seems that Wyoming and Gamma '''were''' actually still working for Freelancer Command during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. That means that Freelancer Command had decided that having the entire galaxy be ravaged by the Sangheili under the leadership of the ''AnthropomorphicPersonification of UnstoppableRage'' was the '''best''' option that they could find to win the Great War for the [=UNSC=]. |
| 272 | * Seeing how close Wash, North, and York are in Season 10, it's suddenly quite disturbing to remember the first time we ever met Wash in Recovery One. He finds York dead in one episode and then North dead in the next. Both times, he's cold as hell and brushes off their deaths like it meant nothing to him. Brrr.... |
| 273 | ** Furthermore, while Wash seeming to be ignorant of Delta in ''Recovery One'' despite having previously met him during ''The Project Freelancer Saga'' seems to be a soft {{Retcon}} on the surface, there's a far darker alternative: Namely, the Epsilon Incident screwed up Wash's memories to the point where there could be a period of time where he temporarily didn't remember Delta, York, the Dakotas, and his other friends from in Freelancer. No ''wonder'' Washington was so cold and bitter during both ''Recovery One'' and ''Reconstruction'' to South Dakota and Maine/Meta - Not only does he resent the former for having shot him in the back and fear the latter for being such a huge threat, but he probably has only the barest recollection of who they even were from their time as Freelancers. |
| 274 | * In ''Recovery One'', Wash finds North's body and learns that Theta has been stolen by Agent Maine and Sigma. Then, at the end of Reconstruction, Wash triggers the emp with the express purpose of destroying all the A.I. fragments collected by the Meta, knowing that this would kill them. Yes folks, you read that right: ''Wash killed Theta.'' |
| 275 | * Wash inherited almost every memory Epsilon had. Think about that. Not only does he remember the entire experience of Alpha being tortured to insanity, he remembers everything from the ''Director's'' life at the point of Alpha's creation. He has the memories of three different beings crammed in his head. One of them went insane and had to remove those memories, the other led a life of obsession over his lost love. Does no one wonder how Wash can even function, anymore? |
| 276 | * Back in Season 6, Theta was the one that said the very creepy "We missed you" when Meta was taking Delta. Consider the fact York probably had Delta talk to Theta at others times causing Theta to probably get comfortable with Delta, and the fact some of the more cruel AIs were in Meta as well (Eg. Omega) then you can't help but think Theta had been scared and missed his friend. |
| 277 | * It's revealed eventually that Church is not a ghost like he thinks, but is instead the Alpha. Now, the Alpha is a Smart AI, one that is subject to side effects from the ''Halo'' Universe. All AIs eventually turn to rampancy. And even worse, considering the ColdBloodedTorture he was subjected to, it's likely that he would've actually gone through rampancy ''faster'' than a normal Smart AI if he hadn't been wiped out by the "emp" at the end of ''Reconstruction''. |
| 278 | * So we meet "CT" in ''Recreation'' and he seems like your typical foolish, comically evil, puppy-kicking villain who got the laserface-tastic death he deserved. But then we find out in Season 10 that he had deep feelings for the real CT/Connie, that they planned to run away together after exposing Project Freelancer, that the love of his life died and her dying words whispered to him was to get that chip into the right hands so they could accomplish their objective, and that he took on her identity as a way to remember her and carry on her dreams. And then he died without accomplishing any of that...by being killed by a bunch of cannon fodder. More like a Fridge TearJerker, really. |
| 279 | * According to The Ultimate Fan Guide, Sarge used to be part of the Orbital Shock Drop Troopers, a.k.a. ''the'' {{Badass Normal}}s of ''Halo''. The Fridge Horror comes in when you realize that the horrific things he had to experience while serving as an [=ODST=] helps explain why Sarge is such a {{Cloudcuckoolander}}. |
| 280 | ** It also might help justify his animosity towards Grif. Sarge has likely seen his own men get killed horribly in various awful ways right in front of him because they weren't properly prepared or battle-hardened. So he'll likely be a lot less sympathetic towards Grif for being TheMillstone of Red Team. From Sarge's outlook, if he's been able to live through [[WarIsHell the Human-Covenant War]], than this chubby smart-mouthed rookie should be able to perform a push-up without an Oreo in his mouth. |
| 281 | ** This also helps show why, despite being a BloodKnight extraordinaire, Sarge never attacks Blue Base with enough force to definitively "end" their ForeverWar during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. In all likelihood, Sarge can’t find it in his heart to risk losing the men under his command again (which also explains that for all of the death threats he throws Grif's way, he's never tried to ''actually'' kill him). |
| 282 | * Given what we know about the [[GrandTheftMe nature of AI possession (at least in the case of O'Malley)]], one has to wonder how much of the Meta's actions were Maine, and how much were all the [=AIs=] inside his head. |
| 283 | ** A personal theory of mine, is that originally the other AIs were the ones controlling the Meta. However, Maine had had so many AIs, for so long, that his mind had become completely dependent on them. When they were removed, It almost caused a complete mental breakdown. In order to save itself from permanent crippling insanity, Maine's mind adopted qualities from the various AIs. Sigma's creativity and obsession with power, Delta's logic (The previous two explaining why he's much more of a GeniusBruiser in Season 8 than he is in Season 9). Gamma's treachery and Omega's viciousness. This was truly the moment that Maine died, and The Meta was born. |
| 284 | ** There probably wasn't much of the original Maine left by the time the EMP was triggered. As Washington suggested in a previous episode there were so many AI in his head that they were probably overwriting his personality into clones of themselves in one way or another, most likely predominantly Sigma's personality saving only the parts of Maine that were useful. This would explain his personality post-EMP still being as vicious, cunning, and brutally tenacious (probably the only piece of Maine left) as ever. I'd posit that he agreed to work with Washington as a recovery unit because the pieces of Sigma's personality left behind saw it as the quickest way to regain and AI and restore his full power. |
| 285 | ** Going even more into that, look at all the questions Wash asks Doc. He asks if Meta is all right. He asks his thoughts on Meta in general. He also comments on Doc psychoanalyzing him and says he should know calming techniques, so he believes Doc would know psychology. Then when Meta has Wash cornered before the plane comes down in the end, he sounds like he was hopeful Meta wouldn't turn on him. The reason why Wash kept Doc around was to have Doc study Meta, figure out how damaged he really is, and considering the implied previous friendship, Wash was probably HOPING to find a way to help fix Maine's broken mind. |
| 286 | * More of Fridge Sadness than Horror, but when Tex asked who she was in ''Revelation'', Church responded with the only answer possible - "My girlfriend!" To clarify, there are two main things Tex is known for: Being a complete and utter badass, and being Church's "girlfriend". However, the former part is completely because of the later. The only thing we know about Allison is that she dies in war, nothing else. The Director created Tex to be his loved one that could never lose. Tex wants to be her own person, to have a purpose other than protecting/being with Church. But she can't, because that is literally all she is designed to be: his girlfriend. |
| 287 | %%* Caboose's stupidity is generally played for laughs, but it turns into both this and Fridge Sadness when you look back at season 1. In his initial appearance, Caboose was not nearly as dumb as he is currently. He expressed the capabilities to be lewd (calling Church's girlfriend a cow/expressing sexual desires for Sheila, though that last one may actually have been ''Omega'' expressing sexual desires) and getting angry at Sheila for killing Church. He genuinely regretted his first Team Kill, and strongly desired to make amends. Now, he apparently has completely forgotten how reproduction works (his confusion when Junior came around) and generally doesn't care/acknowlage when he commits friendly fire (Shooting Private Jones in the back and nearly killing South when told she was on their side). A big difference. Like I said, he was somewhat normal upon his introduction. However, he was shortly infected by Omega. And then he was subsequently entered by Tex and Church while Omega was still rooting around in his head. Now, Carolina nearly killed herself by having two AIs, relatively minor and weak ones at that, in her at once. Omega and Tex were some of the smartest A.I. splinters, and Church was the Alpha. It would be pretty much impossible for him to survive this experience without some mental damage. This, and multiple other examples such as being locked in his armor with no access to outside air for two days, several forced A.I. Ejections (like the one that nearly drove Wash over the edge), the battle between three A.I.'s in his head, and allegedly consuming gasoline, all suggest Caboose has permanent brain damage. Essentially, his time in Blood Gulch drove him from a somewhat dumb, but semi-normal person into a man utterly divorced from reality and entirely dependent on Church or the closest thing that he thinks resembles Church. |
| 288 | * How exactly did the Director know that torturing an AI was the most effective way of getting a viable AI fragment '''and''' that it would need to be paired with someone of a certain psychological profile? Did the UNSC have a classified handbook on torturing [=AIs=] for the best results either thru an intentional experiment or even by accidental observation? Or did the Director have to pioneer the field himself? And if the Director did do it himself, he did have AIs and [=VIs=] such as FILSS and Vic around. How many [=AIs=] did he subject to experimentation before he got it right? Did Project Freelancer see an entire batch of soldiers get wiped out because of a flawed implantation? Or could even soldiers such as Agent Georgia who died in funny ways be part of a proto-batch that was still under observation before the Alpha fragments were getting installed? |
| 289 | * So we finally find out what's in the Sarcophagus, and what it's used for. Remember the first time we see Alpha in Season 9? He was running calculations for the mission to retrieve the Sarcophagus, the very instrument that would help in fragmenting him later on. Blissfully ignorant. |
| 290 | * The Director blew up a freaking '''sky scraper.''' One that was 110 stories tall. The casualties from it should be in the hundreds, if not thousands. To make matters worse, Tex and Carolina were both on top of the skyscraper and barely escaped death. |
| 291 | * Cute as Theta is, you've gotta remember how he came into this world. If he's supposed to be the trusting, child-like part of Alpha, what horrific torture scenario did they use to force Alpha to fragment Theta off? Try to imagine them giving you a scenario that would bring a childlike quality to the forefront of your mind (maybe childlike inquisitiveness, maybe it's something that you loved as a kid, etc.) Now they go and attack it in the most brutal and traumatic method possible until the only thing you want to do is be dispossessed of it. Sweet dreams. |
| 292 | * Another Theta one: he's just so ''cute'' and happy about helping North out, it suddenly becomes disturbing when you realize what they're using him for: destroying people. In Episode 8, the "Hail Mary" traps the bad guys in a bloody death, which is pretty disturbing when you realize the little guy was way too cheerful to help accomplish that. |
| 293 | * When the A.I. fragments split from Alpha, they each embody a personality aspect (like logic, empathy, or creativity) and a personality trait (such as dry snarky humor, trust, or manipulative ambition). Now consider that of all the fragments, Sigma and Gamma are the only one who don't wear armor. In fact, if you look closely, they wear the same uniform as the Director. Now consider where all these aspects and traits ''originally'' come from. Alpha became more of his own person once he gained a level of experience (We even briefly hear him before his torture and he sounds cheery and almost goofy). But two of his traits are still shaped and defined by his origin from the Director: Ambition and Deceit. How messed up ''was'' this guy?! |
| 294 | * With enough analysis, it becomes clear that ''none'' of the Freelancer [=A.I.s=] had actually healthy relationships with their respective agents (no matter how some might seem on the surface). In fact, Project Freelancer's downfall was accelerated by having these bundled and tortured fragments of purified emotion shoved into their best agents' minds, with every implantation both harming their agent individually ''and'' destroying their relationships with other people. |
| 295 | ** Omega made Tex’s behavior more aggressive and unpredictable, further distancing her from her teammates. |
| 296 | ** Sigma was meant to only speak for Maine but instead speaks ''as'' him, eventually overwriting his own agent's very personality. |
| 297 | ** Gamma heightened the most obnoxious side of Wyoming’s sense of humor until none of his teammates could stand him. Furthermore, Gamma also played into Wyoming's enjoyment of deceiving and manipulating his teammates instead of just working with them. |
| 298 | ** Delta’s sense of logic bleeds into York to the point that he not only doesn’t understand other people’s thinking, but he doesn’t even ''try'' since he’s so 100% convinced that he’s already correct. |
| 299 | ** Finally, North’s devotion to Theta both erodes his relationship with his sister and heightens his paternalistic instincts to the point that he thinks ''turning his guns on her'' is doing what’s best for her. |
| 300 | ** What makes this all even worse is when one realizes that the Director ''intended this all to happen'' (more or less). After all, he was the Director of Project '''Freelancer''', and each implanted [=A.I.=] succeeded in isolating its host and sabotaging their attempts at forming meaningful relationships outside of the project... which would make them more likely to stay loyal to the project since they'd feel like there was no one else they cared about that wasn't directly connected to Freelancer. |
| 301 | * The scenarios that the Alpha was put through were designed to break its mind, right? And after each fragmentation, the Director and the Counselor harvested the fragments. This has a whole new layer of horror to it because after each fragmentation, the progressing scenarios probably became even ''worse'' for the Alpha. Not just because the Director made them worse, but because the Alpha lost pieces of its mind, and as such, its ability to solve problems and figure out solutions in an efficient manner. |
| 302 | * The horrific ColdBloodedTorture the Director subjected his own VirtualGhost to becomes even more chilling when one realizes that it primarily worked by having Gamma, Omega, and Sigma capitalize on the Alpha's ItsAllMyFault tendencies. So, when Tucker dismissively says that Church was a good leader in Season 11 because he "took the blame when shit went wrong"? That's because the Alpha was ''conditioned'' to treat that as fact. |
| 303 | * Consider how much of a JerkassWoobie and BrokenAngel (by AI standards) Church was during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. However, what makes this even ''more'' horrifying is that before Tex, North, and York's break-in on the ''Mother of Invention'', Project Freelancer wanted to break the Alpha down ''even more'', with new fragments based on the Alpha's '''love''' and greed being planned for testing with other agents. One shudders to think how Church would've acted in Blood Gulch if he had gotten ''those'' emotions taken from him to... |
| 304 | * WordOfGod has confirmed that the contents of the Sarcophagus was an Engineer. These things are {{Actual Pacifist}}s. Does anybody want to imagine how the poor thing was forced into in the first place? And that it's especially cruel of both Hargrove and Dr. Church to keep it locked in there, since they seem to know, or at least the Director does, that it's not a hostile creature and just wants to maintain machines. |
| 305 | * Episode 13 of Season 10 reveals that Wash and South Dakota were originally going to be paired with Iota and Eta. Carolina insisted on taking them both so she could compete with Tex, meaning Wash got bumped down the list and paired with Epsilon. ''Plus'', it was Sigma and Gamma that gave her the idea by telling her about Omega. Not to mention, she gave up Sigma to Maine so he could communicate, dooming him to become Sigma's puppet. And robbed South of having an AI at all, thus fueling her envy, causing her to leave her brother for dead. If Carolina hadn't done what she did everyone might be alive today. A lot of her current characterization could be explained by the fact that she hasn't come to terms with that yet. |
| 306 | * It was a bit weird that the first person at Carolina's bedside in Episode 14 of Season 10 wasn't York or Wash, but Wyoming. Aside from his cold demeanor, his interactions with her had been much less friendly than those two had been; notably, she ordered him to charge at two minigunners, which he ignored, and in the previous episode, she whipped her helmet off at him in a fit of rage. But last episode, it wasn't just Maine's AI that had been giving her suggestions... and with Maine and Wyoming in the infirmary (granted that Maine was seeing a doctor about his headaches), that means that Sigma and Gamma were also there... |
| 307 | * Episode 14 shows how the AIs are implanted into the armor: the unit is grafted into the base of their skull. If the Meta was stealing the Freelancer's armor enhancements and AI units, then, unless Sigma could transfer the AI into Maine's head, he would have been ''ripping the unit out of his victim's neck.'' Brutal. |
| 308 | * [[http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ma7q18XupD1r3x7i2o1_500.jpg This screencap]] points out that Wash was probably Project Freelancer's Caboose. Caboose is, in one word, happy. Washington... is not. In Recovery One, Wash sees the bodies of his old comrades and pretty much walks away, without a single fuck given. If Washington is the Freelancer equivalent of Caboose, could Caboose become just as cold, heartless, and cruel? Caboose, the guy who fell in love with a tank, got a pet MiniMecha, and made best friends with the remnants of the most traumatized character in the series? |
| 309 | * Imagine South's feelings up to Episode 19. She gets "cheated" out of an AI. Her friends and teammates go rogue one by one, and she sees them as traitors. Wash goes insane, stopping her from ''ever'' getting that coveted AI. Tex shows up, brutally attacks all the people she's worked with, ''blows up'' her home, and just when South's about to stop Tex, her own ''brother'' shows up and turns against her. Yes, she's a {{Jerkass}}. But ''damn,'' her own team-killing tendencies were probably born during this incident, when she found herself betrayed by Tex, York, and even her own brother. |
| 310 | * York assisted Tex with the break-in partly by damaging the ship, which made it crash. When Carolina was thrown clear of the ship, it let Maine get to her. This means York was indirectly responsible for Carolina getting the AIs ripped out of her head, thrown off a cliff, and presumed dead. Given the logs Epsilon plays for Carolina in Season 10 present day, he either didn't know this had happened or was in complete denial that she was probably dead--and the logs imply the latter, in that he was desperately searching for news of her in hopes he'd find out she survived... which he never did. |
| 311 | ** It gets even worse. Considering how York had already shown himself to be a pretty damn effective soldier in the past before he was killed rather unceremoniously by Wyoming in ''Out of Mind'', it's possible that the realization that Carolina was likely dead for real made him into a DeathSeeker during his and Tex's fight with Wyoming who no longer cared if he lived or died. |
| 312 | * So the Director "kept trying" to recreate Alison, enough times to build a small army of "her". So, was he working from copies of Beta, or did he keep recreating Alpha until he could get what he wanted? In ''Halo'' you make an AI by MURDERING A FLASH CLONE OF YOURSELF. So how many times did he commit sorta suicide? And if it's the latter, ''what did he do with the leftovers?'' If the brain is the only part needed to make an AI and no mention of how he ever got food is given ... For that matter what has he been doing to the Tex copies after he made them? And what did he do to get Omega? ''Again?!'' Good God, what is ''wrong'' with this guy?! |
| 313 | * The Director's actions revolve around his memories and unresolved issues with Allison, which had fragmented from Alpha and became Beta. Alpha is probably what the Director would be had he let go of those feelings. Church is capable of doing good/being a real hero, and of great kindnesses. What granted Church that ability, or, possibly, what took the ability away from the Director? It's pretty simple really; his wife's death. Heck, Carolina probably put it best in ''Singularity'' - "Dad won't love you [Carolina] more if you win. He ''can't.'' He died when Mom died." |
| 314 | --> "I am disappointed by your decision to press charges, but I am not surprised. My only hope is that the courts will see the matters differently than you have. You see, I never had the chance to serve in battle, nor did fate provide me the opportunity to sacrifice myself for humanity as it did for so many others in the Great War. Someone extremely dear to me was lost very early in my life. My mind has always plagued me with the question, if the choice had been placed in my hands, could I have saved her? The memory of her, has haunted me my entire life, and moreso in these last few years than I could ever have imagined. But given the events of these past few weeks, I feel confident that had I been given the chance, I would have made those sacrifices myself. Had I only the chance." |
| 315 | * At the end of Episode 21 of Season 10, Church splits apart to talk with the [=AIs=] running the Tex Drones. The conversation we see is almost an exact replica of the scene where Tex attempted to free the Alpha, complete with Tex not even knowing her own name. So, it seems the director is so far gone that however he got a copy Tex, he subjected it to the same sort of fragmentation process (mental torture) that he did to the Alpha. So he did that, to the [[VirtualGhost AI ghost]] of the woman he loved, in order to get her "right", to use Epsilon's terminology. What. The. Fuck?! |
| 316 | * Season 10, Episode 22 reveals that the Director is Carolina's father, and that Alison was her mother. That's bad enough, until you realize that Carolina has effectively been competing with and fighting against the closest thing she had left to her mom this entire time, without either Carolina or Tex realizing it. In a really sad way, Project Freelancer has caused Carolina to wind up hating both her father, and through Tex, her mother. |
| 317 | * Now, remember when the Director walked in on Carolina and Tex about to fight? Think of what was going through his mind now that we know that Carolina is his daughter. He was about to watch the two most beloved women in his life battle to the (possible) death. And ''then'' remember that he left her screaming on the floor when the AIs were in her mind. And ''then'' remember that Tex/Beta/Allison '''saw her own daughter attacked, the AI chips ripped from the base of her skull, and then thrown off a cliff to her death.''' And she had to run away and leave Carolina to her fate. Really, it's no ''wonder'' Tex had apparently told Church that she would've given anything to have saved Carolina. |
| 318 | * There is another aspect to Carolina's identity as the Director and Allison's daughter. Think about the events she has gone through. Every mission she went on either failed or almost did thanks to her actions. They nearly lost the briefcase because she lost her cool and made it personal. She tries to recapture CT alive, but ends with her death and armor lost. She wanted to be the top Freelancer, but couldn't compete with Texas. The guy she has feelings for? Turns against her and dies before they reconcile. That's right, Carolina ''also'' continuously fails at the last second when something was on the line just like Texas. This also puts the Director's actions in a new light: he was seeing both his attempts to keep his love alive continue to suffer the same FatalFlaw over and over again. |
| 319 | * AI fragments are created by torturing Alpha with the knowledge that someone he cares about dies, right? And each AI has their own designated Agent, because Alpha fragmented the memory of that Agent after living through the scenario of them dying. Sigma was originally paired with Carolina. Now we know who Carolina's parents are. ''Sigma was created when Alpha was forced to watch his own daughter die!'' And since Sigma was also ambition, that means that after watching his own daughter die, the Alpha lost his ambition, he lost his will to continue to move forward in life and try to achieve anything. |
| 320 | * Perhaps less "Horror" than Fridge Tragedy, but when one considers the fact that Alpha is an AI based on the Director, and several moments in the series go out of their way specifically to point out how similar the two characters are, it is reasonable to assume that before Allison was killed, The Director may have once been a similarly wise-cracking, sarcastic and ultimately positive DeadpanSnarker like Church. The video we find him watching on endless repeat was (from what we can see) even a fairly lighthearted video, seemingly showing Allison laughing at something goofy the Director was doing offscreen. |
| 321 | * Re-watching Season 10, something occurred to me: the Director's actions cost a lot of people their lives, and the lives of people they loved just as much as he did Allison. And considering the second CT, Carolina and York, Alpha, and so many more, in his attempts to fix his pain, he only ensured that others suffered the same loss and sadness he did. The only ones to escape the cycle were the ones willing to do what he wouldn't and let the past go. |
| 322 | * More of a Fridge TearJerker, but... Caboose still doesn't have his best friend, Church. |
| 323 | * Since his introduction, [[HumongousMecha Freckles]] has repeatedly tried to kill members of Red Team, threatened Tucker and Wash with death ''several'' times, shot at Simmons during a misunderstanding ([[ItMakesSenseInContext involving a ball]]), and has attacked Sarge after the latter pointed the Warthog's turret at him. But those aren't the scary parts. What's scary is that Freckles has [[SarcasmBlind little to no understanding of sarcasm]] (as demonstrated when he demotes Washington and places Caboose in charge after a sarcastic remark from the former), and the closest thing that he has to a [[MoralityChain Morality Chain]] is [[TheDitz Caboose]]. We've already seen that Freckles has ''[[TokenEvilTeammate absolutely no problem whatsoever]]'' with killing members of his own team ([[KidWithTheLeash bar Caboose]]); so this begs the question: Given the Blood Gulch Crew's love of sarcasm, exactly how long is it until an offhand remark sends Freckles on a killing spree? |
| 324 | * The war on Chorus has apparently killed everyone not part of the military. These people were ''colonists'', looking to start a new life on this planet. How many children died in this war? |
| 325 | * C.T. left Project Freelancer due to their moral corruption and questionable practices in favor of the Insurrection. How do you think she would have taken it if she found out that the Insurrection ultimately worked for [[OmnicidalManiac someone willing to kill an entire planet?]] |
| 326 | * As revealed in Season 13, UNSC prisoner transport ships come with hatches in every cell which can be activated with almost casual ease, spacing the prisoners. Though the horror is ''slightly'' lessened (arguably, at least) by WordOfGod saying that the Tartarus was an incredibly old ship that was obsolete and going to be decommissioned soon, so it's unknown if ''every'' prison ship the UNSC has in [=RvB=] has a feature like that. |
| 327 | * Prior to The Blood Gulch Chronicles, it appears that Church had a human body (partly evidenced by some of the stuff Epsilon said at the beginning of Season 8), which leaves one wondering where the body came from. Was Alpha overwritten over another person? Season 14 reveals that yes, yes he was. |
| 328 | * Flowers was actually willing to kill or mortally wound Jimmy in case Church remembered being Alpha. Considering he'd obviously be briefed on the A.I. abilities such as possession, imagine if he'd accidentally killed Jimmy. He'd have to find a replacement body for Alpha ASAP, wouldn't he? Luckily for him, Private Tucker was there, but there aren't any specialists around to help Flowers implant the Alpha. And we've all seen how painful it was when Jimmy was implanted... |
| 329 | * Imagine what would’ve happened if things had gone a bit differently and [=FH57’s=] plan was successful. If they got a hold of the tank, Tucker and Caboose would be dead, the Reds at Blood Gulch would’ve been dragged along by [=FH57=] in their ship and may have never found out that the Red vs. Blue war is a lie, and Church might’ve never known that he was an AI. Not to mention the good things that happened because the Blood Gulch Crew was in the right place at the right time, like the eventual downfall of Project Freelancer and the permanent ceasefire of the Chorus Civil War. |
| 330 | * We see in the Season 14 finale that a combination of characters from the show using a teleportation device, someone pulling the Machinima Death Switch, and Rocket Rooster energy drink being dumped on the Xbox can bring the characters to the "real world." What if these circumstances were to happen again, except instead of the Reds and Blues, it was someone like the Meta or Felix that came out? Everyone in the studio would be killed. |
| 331 | * The Temple of Procreation ''sounds'' funny at first, with gags like [[LovableSexManiac Tucker]] saying he "didn't feel any different", and Grif and Simmons' denial that anything ''happened'' in that [[TransparentCloset closet]]. It becomes a lot more disturbing when one remembers Santa's description of its effects in Season 13: "It will send the inhabitants of Chorus into a ravenous sexual frenzy". This has all kinds of dark implications on its own, when one considers that most people don't want to have sex with ''everyone'' they meet. Also, as shown by Tucker's class-action lawsuit, there are a ''lot'' of single mothers on Chorus; how many of their children will grow up without their fathers? Simmons says that Tucker alone had enough kids to fill ''an entire elementary school'' (though he admittedly might've been exaggerating). |
| 332 | * More Fridge Sadness than anything else, but Tucker is shown to have developed major abandonment issues as the series goes on. On the surface, this seems to be due to his "luck" with his friends staying alive (or lack thereof), but ''The Shisno Paradox'' reveals that [[MissingMom his mother]] has been dead for a long time, meaning that the cause of those abandonment issues probably stretches back ''way'' farther than what was first thought. |
| 333 | * Chrovos's past self being prevented from doing all of his actions would bring about another paradox and a timeline without the Cosmic Powers, causing unknown consequences. Though granted, this might veer somewhat more into FridgeLogic. |
| 334 | * Also a TearJerker, but the reason the Director couldn't move past the death of Allison? Her last words to him were "Don't say goodbye. I hate goodbyes." He couldn't let go because, in his mind, he'd be dishonoring her memory because that phrase was the closest he had to her final wishes. |
| 335 | * If Loco's machine wasn't stopped, Earth would've been bombarded with natural disasters and swallowed up in a black hole. Sounds bad enough already, but two seasons later, we learn that black holes take whatever they absorb to the beginning of time. Anyone lucky enough to survive the apocalypse would've then had to contend with ''the Big Bang''. |
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