Characters / Red vs. Blue - Red Team

Red vs. Blue Main Character Index
Blood Gulch Crew
Red Team | Blue Team (Leonard L. Church)
Supporting Cast
Project Freelancer (Simulation Troopers | Artificial Intelligences) | Charon Industries | Chorus | Cosmic Powers | Alliance of Defense | Others

Tropes pertaining to the Red Team of Red vs. Blue. All spoilers for the first fifteen seasons will be unmarked below.

Sarge

Super-Colonel Sarge

"You just got Sarge'd!"

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

Voiced By: Matt Hullum, Anna Hullum ("Get Bent")

The staff sergeant leading Red Team, and the only one in the canyon who's actually enthusiastic about the Red/Blue conflict, due to his intense and unexplained hatred towards all things Blue. His real name actually is Sarge, as revealed in Season 8. Sarge is incredibly loyal to the Red Army, and goes out of his way to excuse the nonsensical answers and directives Command sends his way. He is also fiercely supportive of the chain of command, especially if this allows him to punish Grif. Sarge wields a shotgun, which he uses as a cudgel more often than a projectile weapon, and speaks with a Southern US (vaguely Texan) accent. He's the only Red Team member to actually wear red armor (except for Donut, but see below).

Besides being Drill Sergeant Nasty and The Neidermeyer, Sarge is best described as "essentially every '50s stereotype character melted down into one." He exhibits characteristics of a Mad Scientist with regards to his tinkering with robotics and cybernetics, a used car salesman's flair for presentation and hype, and a "grumpy old dad" in his dealings with Simmons and Donut. Sarge is fond of overly-complicated plans, especially if they could result in Grif's death - his plan to attack the windmill power plant involved jamming the device with Grif's corpse, while his attempt to get Donut out from under a spaceship was to subject Grif to bites from irradiated insects in an attempt to give him superpowers. Personal quirks aside, Sarge is probably Red Team's most effective fighter (which is admittedly not necessarily as impressive as it sounds) - he was able to subdue Tex, cut down the Zealots of Battle Creek with relative ease, get the drop on Agent Washington, sufficiently distract the Meta so that Washington's plan to kill the rampaging Super-Soldier could be implemented, is brutally effective in close combat, and was an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper before he was reassigned to being a simulation trooper.

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Associated Tropes:

• 10-Minute Retirement: After the Reds read from the database that the whole Red and Blue war is a lie and that they only exist to test the skills of the Freelancers, Sarge promptly declares that he quits his role as sergeant. However, shortly afterwards when Caboose receives a Recovery Beacon from Epsilon and begs for help, Sarge agrees to help and gives a heroic Rousing Speech to the others about why they are all still there and will get back at Command for using them..
• Amazon Chaser: His reaction to Kalirama the Undying? "Marry me!"
• Ambiguously Bi: The only times Sarge has shown any romantic interest with anyone, was with Lopez. Though as it was a fake movie trailer directed by Donut, it should be taken with a grain of salt. He also shouted 'Marry me!' to Kalirama the War Goddess.
• And Then What?: In Episode 17 of Season 10, he admits that while the Director's evil, he doubts that killing him will make things better, and thinks that things could become worse for his team if they leave Valhalla again. Grif actually agrees with him on this.
• Anti-Hero: An Ax-Crazy Drill Sergeant Nasty who treats his team like crap isn't the most likely of heroes. However, he has more than proven himself over the series' course.
• Ascended Extra: In the first season, Sarge was a recurring character who rarely appeared. It wasn't until Season 2 that Sarge gained his current prominence.
• Awesome by Analysis: Along with some Bat Deduction. In Revelation, Simmons is forced to make a radio call to Sarge without telling him that they had been kidnapped by Wash and the Meta. Despite this, Sarge manages to work out every single detail instantly. His reasoning? Simmons answered 'hi' instead of 'thank you for calling Red Base, this is Private Simmons', he said the radio was in disrepair, something that Lopez would never let happen, the time was 17:30 (Donut's daily wine and cheese hour) and there was no sound of clinking glasses, he said the weather was rainier and Mt. Ranier is the largest landmass in the state of Washington, and the Meta is the biggest mass associated with Washington.
  Sarge: So the Meta and Washington have teamed up to kill Donut and Lopez, and now they're holding Simmons and Doc prisoner.
  Grif: We have to help 'em! Wait, Doc? How do you know he's there?
  Sarge: Please, Grif, it's so obvious. I don't wanna insult your intelligence by explaining every little detail.
• Ax-Crazy: How else would you describe someone who has "a boner for murder"? He also enjoys tormenting Grif way too much.
• Badass in Distress: As of the end of Season 11, and for the start of Season 12, he has been kidnapped along with Washington and Donut by the Federal Army of Chorus. However, although they were taken in by force at first, they remained there by choice with the promise of "rescuing" their friends to convince them, much like the others were with the New Republic.
• Badass Normal: No enhancements when he fights, but when he gets into a real fight he's easily the best on the Red Team. He also used to be an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, the poster-boys for Badass Normal in Halo.
• Bad Boss: His antics have nearly gotten his team (mainly Grif) killed on multiple occasions. Simmons even questions why they starved to death under his watch.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Very briefly in the finale to Singularity, once the Labyrinth throws him into the horrors of the Normandy landings, with him experiencing exactly what a real war is instead of the pretend war he has gotten used to living with the Reds and Blues, he becomes traumatized. He begins acting a lot like Grif, questioning the suicidal orders from his superior in the illusion, and after being rescued when Wash announces they need to confront whatever is Carolina's greatest fear, both he and Grif immediately begin giving excuses and/or refusing to participate, a far cry from Sarge's normal Blood Knight tendencies. However, just like Grif, when Wash underlines how she might die without all their help, both of them reluctantly agree to help, albeit while still complaining about it.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: After giving him a taste of insufferably dull and monotonous civilian life, the Labyrinth answers Sarge's desire to "storm a beach and kill a Nazi" (and, by extension, his desire to die gloriously on the battlefield as seen in Seasons 15-17) by shoving him straight into the horrors of the Normandy landings.
• Been There, Shaped History: In Season 16, while traveling through time, he stabs Achilles in the ankle after getting annoyed with him. The events of Season 17 means this technically never happened, though considering how confusing time travel gets, it's best not to dwell on it.
• Berserk Button: His character bio on one of the DVDs states that when presented with any Blue object, he either tries to bite it or shoot it.
• Blood Knight: The only member of the Blood Gulch crew passionate about warfare. Also, in Revelation, he seems more than happy to challenge the Meta. Taken further in Season 15, where he is severely depressed during the Reds and Blues' ten month retirement period, and resorts to silly things such as creating a robot army to fight and declaring war on gravity itself. He's been fighting for so long that has no idea how to function outside of the chain of command, and has a subconscious obsession with fighting. This, along with his desire to die heroically in battle, is part of the reason he temporarily performs a Face–Heel Turn and joins the Blues and Reds.
• Bond One-Liner: Spoofed. He frequently attempts to use his Character Catchphrase "You just got Sarge'd!" as one of these, but bungles it every time.
• Boisterous Bruiser: "I love blood and violence! I've got a boner for murder!"
• Broken Pedestal: For Simmons in Recreation. It becomes a Rebuilt Pedestal in Revelation.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite his quirks and lackluster leadership skills, he is a capable combatant, has built multiple robots and at least a couple combat vehicles, and even turned Simmons into a Cyborg.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Though inconsistently used, "You just got Sarge'd!"
  • Uses "Dirtbag" to describe the enemy (or anybody who just happens to be pissing him off) on a fairly regular basis.
  • "Today is a good day to die!"
• Character Development:
  • As of Chapter 18 of Revelation, he seems to have left behind his hatred towards the Blues and now treats his own team as equals, due to learning that the entire Red vs. Blue "war" was not only a simulation, but that the Red and Blue armies were culled from the "worst of the worst" soldiers.
  • In Episode 17 of Season 10, he seems somewhat reluctant to go off to battle again, despite finding out that the rest of the squad is okay. Acknowledging that the Director's actions caused a lot of trouble for the Reds, he asks Grif and Simmons if running off to fight him would make things any better. Rather than his usual bloodlust, he admits running off to battle would probably make things worse for the team.
    • Later, in Episode 20, he decides to head into the fray anyway, realizing that Church and Carolina need help. He even talks Washington into coming along... not for revenge or battle, but because True Companions count for a lot.
  • During Season 15, he suffers the equivalent of a mid-life crisis after he failed to die heroically on Chorus. His desperation for finding a way to go out in a blaze of glory results in him temporarily joining the Blues and Reds in their vendetta against the UNSC. Sarge then switches back to the side of the Blood Gulch Crew after being told to kill defenseless civilians, and even tells Surge to his "face" that honor isn't really that important and that soldiers should question the orders given to them instead of following them blindly.
  • His Labyrinth illusion in Singularity helps show how Sarge has struggled with his PTSD over the years and how his Blood Knight tendencies have been increasingly tempered by his appreciation for his friends. Notably, when he's shoved into an "actual" war and not just the joking rivalry the Reds and Blues have between each other, he almost completely shuts down and is utterly terrified.
• Characterization Marches On: In the first season, he was a mere Drill Sergeant Nasty who appeared scarcely, and lacked much of the quirks that came to dominate his character later on. His voice was also very different, being a nasally impression of R. Lee Ermey rather than his trademark Southern drawl.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Mainly Played for Laughs. For most of the series, Sarge is arguably the most treacherous member of the Blood Gulch soldiers and if there is an alliance between the two camps, he's the first to stomp it to death.
• CloudCuckoolander: Has his moments where he almost rivals Caboose for this role within the Blood Gulch Crew.
• Colonel Badass: At the end of Season 12, Doyle promotes Sarge to Colonel, meaning that he outranks Grif again. Parodied when Temple promotes him to the totally real rank of Super Colonel.
• Colonel Kilgore: Parodied, along with General Ripper and Knight Templar. Sarge appears to not even be familiar with the concept of normal life outside of the war and is constantly obsessed with one-upping the Blues in their Forever War even when forced to work together. The eventual reveal that the war is nothing but a training scenario leaves him momentarily almost crossing the Despair Event Horizon. The effect working in the army has had on his life is even brought up by Caboose in Recreation:
  Sarge: What kind of car doesn't have a massive cannon on it?
  Caboose: All kinds of cars. Most kinds of cars.
  Sarge: That's ridiculous! That would be like saying there's some kind of thing you can wear on your head that's not armor plated, and doesn't offer a 5x optical zoom!
  Caboose: ...I think you've been in the military a really long time.
  Sarge: Yep. It's been a good run!
• Cool Old Guy: A near-sociopathic and Cloudcuckoolander version of this. Also crosses into Boisterous Bruiser at times.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • He's recorded 57 hours of verbal abuse for Grif so that in the event of his death he can continue to verbally abuse him from beyond the grave.
  • He also has countless contingency plans for just about every imaginable situation, and a few unimaginable ones as well. They all start with shooting Grif.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Completely delusional and insane, as well as quite possibly suffering from PTSD or some such. He's also one of the most competent non-Freelancer soldiers in Blood Gulch, if not out of all the simulation troopers. It's also been confirmed that he was an ODST, though the experience is implied to have left him with more than a few issues.
• Death Seeker: Implied in Season 15. He mourns the fact that he didn't die heroically on Chorus, which left him severely depressed during their 10 month period of retirement. His attempt at convincing Simmons and Lopez to join the Blues and Reds wasn't that it was the right thing to do, but that they'd be facing impossible odds and would surely die. He gets snapped out of this, however.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Temporarily falls into one when the fact that the entire Red vs. Blue war is a simulation for training Freelancers finally sinks in in Revelation.
  • He also suffers through one after he failed to heroically die on Chorus, to the point where he spent almost all of the Reds and Blues' 10 month retirement on Iris picking fights with everything from dinosaurs to gravity itself.
• Disappeared Dad: He ran off to join the army because he didn't want to be around his kid. Turns out his kid is Boomstick. Though whether or not this canon has yet to be confirmed.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Naturally - it's in his name.
• Due to the Dead: He tends to act this way to the bodies of his enemies, insisting that they be treated with a modicum of respect (though only a modicum).
  Rest in peace... dirtbag.
• Easily Forgiven: In spite of the Kick the Dog moment mentioned below, people seem to forgive him, or at least let him off the hook, by the next meeting of the teams.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Is only ever referred to as "Sarge." Turns out that is his name.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As much as Sarge enjoys fighting, he does not agree with Carolina's plan to use the Blood Gulch Crew as cannon fodder to attack the facility the Director is hiding in during Season 10. He even calls out Carolina and Epsilon on their Revenge Before Reason attitude.
  • Though he first joins the Blues and Reds so he can get back into the fight, he instantly turns back when he's ordered to murder a pair of defenseless civilians.
• Expy: He started off as one for Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, being a mean-spirited Drill Sergeant Nasty who took a special interest in tormenting an overweight and incompetent soldier under his command. Matt Hullum even initially voiced the character with a R Lee Ermey impression. This faded as his Cloudcuckoolander traits were increasingly exaggerated.
• Face–Heel Turn: Temporarily sides with the Blues and Reds because of his desire to fight a war and be in the chain of command. Thankfully, it doesn't stick.
• The Faceless: Like almost everyone else in the series, he never removes his helmet.
• Failed a Spot Check: And how. In Season 4, he failed to notice a tank riding behind his back, as he was too busy giving a speech about the importance of keeping alert.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • His hatred for the Blues borders on this.
  • He also has a hatred for anyone wearing white armor, like the Meta and Wyoming.
• A Father to His Men: Buried deep deep deep down underneath all of his insults and self-importance, he really does care about all of his men and refuses to leave a single one of them behind. Yes, this even includes Grif.
  Sarge: You bastards stay away from my men! If anybody's gonna kill 'em, it's gonna be me!
• Firing One-Handed: Occasionally does this with his Short-Range Shotgun, whether for Rule of Cool or to hold something with his free hand.
• Flanderization: His hatred towards Grif was elevated from simply disliking Grif’s laziness to constantly trying to murder him and coming up with plans that always involve his gruesome and bloody death.
• Foil: To Church during The Blood Gulch Chronicles. The two of them seem to be the only soldiers that want to actually win against the other team, are verbally (and often even physically) abusive towards their subordinates (though they do genuinely care for their soldiers deep down), and have troubling anger issues. However, while Sarge blindly hates anything associated with the Blues, Church hates the Reds, his own allies, and everyone else in Blood Gulch for far more personal and intimate reasons.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • It is heavily implied that Sarge suffers from severe PTSD that left him unable to function outside of the military.
  • As a soldier, Sarge desires conflict, needs to be in the chain of command, and wants to die heroically in battle before natural causes can take him. These are the reasons why he joins the Blues and Reds.
  • His fear of heights stems from the fact that jumping out of ships in high orbit is crazy shit.
• Freudian Trio: Probably works like this. Simmons is the Superego, serving as the mediator between Sarge (the Id) and Grif (the Ego).
• Friendly Enemy: After Season 8, he tries to act like the Blood Gulch Reds and Blues are still bitter enemies, but it just doesn't take.
  Epsilon-Church: I don't get it, does he still think we're fighting or something?
• Gadgeteer Genius: With only a few exceptions (such as when he breaks Lopez's speech unit and condemns him to speak only Spanish), just about everything he builds works perfectly, including Church and Tex's robot bodies, Lopez's own body, and the few combat vehicles he works on. The problem then becomes the fact that his perfectly-functioning ideas and machines are horrible ideas that tend to endanger everyone around them by design.
• Gender Flip: His Epsilon-Double, along with the rest of the Reds and Tex are all misremembered as being the opposite gender in one of Epsilon-Church's iterations seen in "Get Bent".
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He's very easy to enrage, especially if you're Grif
• Heel Realization: During Season 15, he eventually comes to realize that the Blues and Reds are the true enemy and turns back to the side of the heroes.
• Heroic BSoD: He takes the truth about the Red and Blue war hardest out of all the Blood Gulch Crew. Not only did he learn that he is considered one of the worst soldiers in the army, he finds out that his entire military career has been a lie and he is just considered a human lab rat at best and a living crash test dummy at worst fighting a pointless fake war meant to test the skills of the "real soldiers" in Project Freelancer. He ends up building himself a new Red Base out of junk, declaring he quits. Thankfully though, he recovers quickly by the next episode and rallies everyone to help Caboose rescue Church and Tex and get back at Command for using and lying to them.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: "I LOVE BLOOD AND VIOLENCE!!! I'VE GOT A BONER FOR MURDER!!!"
• Hidden Depths:
  • Season 15 implies that he's subconsciously aware of the effects being in the army for so long has had on his life.
  Sarge: Simmons, I know this sounds crazy, but either I'm right, or I'm just an old man who's lost his marbles because he can't adjust to life outside the military chain of command, and continues to have increasingly absurd things to declare war on as a subconscious way of avoiding the sad truth that he no longer really knows who he is!
  (Beat)
  Sarge: Anyway, where was I?
  • On a different note, he's shown interest in being an actor more than once, particularly when he gets to play the lead. This is played up a bit more in “The #1 Movie in the Galaxy” PSAs, where he makes himself the main character of an entire film trilogy. It comes back in both Season 15 (with Jax successfully distracting him by convincing him to give a pretend interview) and The Shisno Paradox, where he cheerfully abandons his previous desire to fix his past mistakes with time travel just so he can get a part in Jax's Red vs. Blue movie.
  • Season 17 reveals he's a fan of Neil Gaiman and other books.
  (Both Grif and Simmons turn to him in surprise)
  Sarge: (defensively) ...What? I read!
  • Speaking of Season 17, his Labyrinth illusion reveals that for all of Sarge's Blood Knight tendencies, he's actually become very accustomed to the "friendly war" waged between the Reds and Blues and can't actually handle getting dragged into a "real war." Notably, he starts shouting and panicking when the Labyrinth shoves him into the Normandy landings.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": In Episode 17 of Season 8, his real name is revealed: Sarge (or S-Dog). Season 14 reveals that Sarge wasn't his birth name though; he had it changed when he joined the army. His father always advised him to dress for the job he wants, so he took that logic a bit further. He later tells Dylan and Jax his birth name. We don't get to hear it, but judging by the following conversation, it's quite unlike any other name out there.
• Honest John's Dealership: Not a literal case, but as alluded to above, he often takes on the demeanor of a swindling car salesman when trying to manipulate others.
• Hypocrite: He is the most aggressive and violent of the Blood Gulch Crew, often looking for a fight, boasting how great a leader and soldier he is, and dismissing any actual kind of strategy or pragmatism as overly convoluted or irrational. However, when things actually get dangerous (basically whenever he and the Reds are fighting a competent enemy), he'll be one of the first running away, all while blathering about it being a "tactical retreat," no less. He is never directly called out on it, though, because this usually happens around the Red Team, which is composed of: Simmons, who usually sees how deluded Sarge is, but is an insecure sycophant; Grif, who is usually too exasperated and/or lazy to actually try to break through Sarge's delusions; Donut, who is just too dumb to notice; Lopez, who actually does call Sarge out, but can only speak Spanish, and is therefore never actually understood.
  • During Singularity, he's by far the most hesitant to forgive Donut for betraying the rest of the Reds and Blues to Chrovos when Sarge himself had previously betrayed the Blood Gulch Crew for the Blues and Reds in Season 15 and was Easily Forgiven.
• I Reject Your Reality: There are times where he ignores blatant facts that contradict his insane way of thinking. This includes openly ignoring Shiela's presence in Blood Gulch when Simmons keeps trying to tell him about it, even when the tank is constantly shooting at Red Base in plain view. He nearly drops the trope phrase in Singularity, when he and the others are planning to execute Donut for betraying them in the previous season and Washington speaks in his defense saying he was the one who saved them all, Sarge shouts "I do not subscribe to that reality!" Pretty much the only thing he couldn't ignore was the reveal that the Reds and Blues are all just glorified Cannon Fodder used by Project Freelancer as practice for the Freelancer Agents, and that is only because Grif and Simmons were reading it directly from the database to him.
• Image Song: "Sarge's Blues".
• I Meant to Do That: Tries to play off his defection to the Blues and Reds as some sort of master plan to save everyone. No one buys it.
• In Harm's Way: When Doc brings up that his adventures after Blood Gulch led to him leading his first real military operation in Episode 20 of Season 10, he decides that he'll go ahead and help take down the Director anyway due to Epsilon being a member of their True Companions along with the fact that Valhalla was "getting stale anyway."
• Insane Troll Logic: The basis of most of his plans. During Reconstruction, he orders Simmons to delete all command files on the Blue Army, claiming that it'd be instant victory for the Reds because the Blues would never have existed. They often prove to be surprisingly effective, however.
• Irrational Hatred: His hatred for Grif, natch. While it is fair enough for Sarge to be annoyed by Grif due to the latter's laziness and insubordination often putting the two at odds, Sarge's near never-ending abuse towards Grif goes well beyond the fact that Grif is lazy and is often exaggerated to the point that he can barely go a single conversation without insulting Grif in some way or wishing he was dead, sometimes without even speaking to Grif himself. It is actually shown in "Standardized Testing" that Grif's very presence causes Sarge to get angry. While he is admiring a forklift, Grif runs past him from behind without Sarge noticing him, only for Sarge to then ask himself why he's so angry all of a sudden.
• It Has Been an Honor: In Season 16, after Carolina causes a Time Crash due to creating a very powerful paradox. His last words before everything disappears into white nothing-ness is telling Grif and Simmons that it has been an honor.
• It's Raining Men: Was an ODST before being assigned to Blood Gulch, but was kicked out after dismantling a UNSC ship in order to build a robot. This is confirmed in both The Ultimate Fan Guide and Season 15, but was previously hinted at by Simmons' talk of his war stories in Relocated.
  Simmons: You have a fear of heights? Didn't you use to jump out of ships in high orbit during the war?
  Sarge: And how do you think I developed that fear? That shit was crazy!
• Jerkass to One: Sarge is usually a cantankerous if harmless nutjob to just about everyone he interacts with but he practically lives to torment Grif, often trying to engineer a violent death for him or dreaming up ways to humiliate and injure the slacker.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sarge may be an insane Drill Sergeant Nasty who treats his crew with little respect (especially Grif), but he still does care for them. He also develops a begrudging respect for the Blues and seems to openly see them as friends by the finale of Season 10.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When he orders Andy to blow up the pelican that Tex, Junior and Omega are in. Granted, he's technically saving the day, but his tone implies that he actually does that out of spite and anti-blue sentiment rather than a desire to thwart Omega's plan. In fact, he might not even be aware that there was an evil plot for him to thwart.
  • He murdered his superior Lemons, under the assumption he was a Blue.
  • He changed Donut's phone notification to the ping of a grenade. Since Donut likely has PTSD from the time Tex blew him up just makes it worse.
• The Kirk: Parodied. He tries to be a balance between Grif's laziness and Simmons's kiss-assiness, but really goes off on his own tangent of insanity.
• Large Ham: Very enthusiastic about his love of war, and goes all out to proclaim it.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His mentality when fighting Freckles in Season 11. Attacking a MANTIS on foot isn't exactly a prudent strategy.
• Leitmotif: "Rally", which plays whenever Sarge gives a Rousing Speech.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Gets into a shooting match with Freckles in Season 11. Or rather, he's on the receiving end of a Macross Missile Massacre after pointing a gun at said robot.
• Lovable Traitor: He's not too keen on being betrayed, though. It should be noted that his view on what constitutes treason is rather warped (for instance, he thinks that two of his enemies joining forces is a "backstab").
• Mad Scientist: Sarge is capable of creating robots and turning some of his own soldiers into cyborgs. You'd think he could be able to use his impressive technical prowess for profit. Maybe then they could afford something to eat at Red Base.
• Made of Iron: The Reds and Blues can easily all be considered this, given the abuse they frequently go through. However, Sarge is a particularly noteworthy example in that he survived getting shot through the head with a sniper rifle and only needed CPR to get back on his feet afterwards.
• The Millstone: Sarge has a tendency to screw things up for everyone else with his deranged plans, which generally make Red Team even more ineffectual than it already is and screw up Blue Team's plans even when the two teams are in an Enemy Mine situation. This mainly happened in the early seasons, though it still pops up in recent seasons, most notably Season 15.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Played for Laughs in "Self-Fulfilling Odyssey" when he's initially freaking out over starting to remember Wash, Carolina, and Kaikaina.
  Sarge: (in the background while Wash and Donut are talking) I feel weird! It feels like I've been Sarged! Oh, what have I been doing to people?!
• The Neidermeyer: Mostly towards Grif. For example - His idea of an obstacle course consists of a fake starting line and him shooting Grif with his shotgun. All of his contingency plans entail attacking Grif.
• Never My Fault: Sarge will practically never see his own faults and will usually find a way of passing the blame to someone else; most likely Grif or Simmons or someone else who suffered from his own actions.
  • Once shot Simmons with his shotgun, then blamed Simmons for bleeding on the Red Base floor.
  • When Simmons 2.0 reveals his upgrades cause him to shoot himself in the foot occasionally, Sarge just says "I'm sure it's user error!"
  • In Season 11, he decided to take half of Red Base for himself as his own "personal space" to reflect on his vast victories and "non-existent" failures, forcing Grif and Simmons to share the other half with each other. Being this close to Grif's disgusting habits causes Simmons to join the Blues (not that they want him) to get away from it all. When Sarge gets confirmation of this, and how Simmons agrees with Grif that it's Sarge's fault for forcing them together in the first place, he deems Simmons a "traitor" for joining the enemy.
  • When he time travels back to the Battle of Broken Ridge to save the soldiers that were under his command, his current self and his past self give them conflicting orders, and they become sitting ducks because they're running up and down the same hill. Sarge somehow convinces himself that this is their fault, and when Simmons points out his mistake, he says there was only so much he could do.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Matt Hullum initially voiced Sarge with a nasally R. Lee Ermey impression. Vocal Evolution resulted in his voice shifting into a more generic Southern accent.
• No Indoor Voice: He's Hot-Blooded and is almost always screaming. Matt Hullum even said that when he recorded lines in an hotel room for Sarge at one point, it was enough for passing people to knock on the door complaining about the noise.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently someone who "claimed" to be his uncle once did something with a garden hose that haunts him to this day. He's very adamant that the man wasn't really his uncle.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Respects redundant and overly complicated systems of command. For his part, Sarge has made it so that the process of lodging a formal complaint to him is as tedious and unappealing as possible.
• Odd Friendship:
  • While it's primarily limited to the PSAs, Sarge and Caboose actually get along quite well as the series goes on.
  • Out of the Blood Gulch Crew, he probably gets along the best with Jax Jonez during both Season 15 and The Shisno Paradox because of his own desire to be an actor.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He was once part of the UNSC's most elite non-Super-Soldier troops (namely, the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) before eventually becoming a common foot soldier again and eventually getting demoted again to the position of simulation trooper when he got all of the men under his command killed in the Battle of Broken Ridge.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During Singularity, he suffers through PTSD flashbacks and is reduced to a terrified and panicking mess when the Labyrinth forces him to take part in the Normandy landings.
• Overly Long Name: According to Season 15 Episode 17, his name has at most 57 syllables. In order to get his name exactly right, you need a Mandarin keyboard, and the fifth letter is an emoji.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: As a former ODST, Sarge is a legitimately skilled soldier. Unfortunately, being surrounded by Freelancers doesn't give him many chances to demonstrate that. His degrading mental health and trauma from the war doesn't help either.
• Pet the Dog: On several occasions Sarge has shown a peculiar fondness for Caboose, possibly owing to the latter's childlike naïveté. And not to mention the few times where he hasn't insulted Grif and even complimented him (even if it was a little backhanded), or, in Relocated, showed actual concern for Grif learning about the death of a family member. By Revelation, he's essentially become the Team Dad to both the Reds and the Blues.
• Precision F-Strike: Sarge drops the F-bomb exactly once during The Blood Gulch Chronicles, though he's a bit more liberal with it afterwards.
  Simmons: Sarge, I'm not sure Grif knows what he's talking about.
  Sarge: Grif doesn't know what he's talking about, eh? Stop the fuckin' presses.
• Put on a Bus: He spends most of the first half of Season 1 at Command for nebulous reasons, eventually returning in "After Church".
• Rousing Speech:
  • During Episode 18 of Season 8, he delivers a speech that mobilizes both the Red and Blue teams to go help Church and Tex against the Meta and Washington, never mind that they're way out of their league.
  • Later, in Episode 20 of Season 10 he comes up with one that convinces Washington that they need to go help Carolina and Church, even though they parted on less-than-amicable terms, since the Reds and Blues have proven to be better than the Freelancers due to their status as True Companions.
• Self-Botched Catchphrase: Provides the page quote after he accidentally interrupts it by causing an explosion.
  "God dammit, I messed up my one-liner!"
• Sergeant Rock: After a lot of Character Development, he grows into this role, especially in Seasons 8 and 10.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He's heavily implied to be this. He served as an ODST and his comments about it imply it was a horrific experience, and he can no longer function outside of the military.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • It doesn't matter how dire the situation is. If Sarge has a favor he got from someone else in authority, he will use it to either make himself feel better compared to Grif, or make Grif's life worse.
  • His hatred of Blues easily kept overcoming his reason before they achieved a Friendly Enemy status. Case in point - He literally preferred to let himself be buried alive than to admit the possibility that the Blues don't suck during the last season of The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
• Southern-Fried Private: An officer example of the trope, filling all the prerequisites such as the drawl, the illogical line of thought, and liking to fight way too much.
• Success Through Insanity: Sarge's plans make no real logical sense, but work nonetheless. Highlights include getting the drop on Washington by pretending to be a cardboard cutout of himself and making an adrenaline fueled, slow motion car crash happen in real life.
• Supporting Leader: After significant Character Development in Revelation, he becomes this for the Reds and Blues.
• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: In Season 1 he was shot in the head with a sniper rifle by Caboose (though everyone counted this as a team kill since Sarge was possessed by Church at the time), but recovered after some CPR from Grif.
• Took a Level in Kindness: After discovering the entire war between the Reds and Blues was a sham, Sarge mellows out somewhat and changes for the better. He's still a deranged hardass, but it becomes much clearer that he legitimately cares about the Blood Gulch Crew and views them as friends, and he's much more prone to Pet the Dog moments afterwards.
• The Unpronounceable: Although we don't get to hear or see his real name, the conversation Sarge and Jax have after he reveals it to him and Dylan indicates it's this trope.
  Jax: Seriously. Is that like Russian? Scandinavian? Pig Latin?
  Sarge: My family history ain't part of the deal.
  Jax: How do you even spell it? It sounded like 57 syllables!
  Sarge: Well, you need a Mandarin keyboard to get it exactly right, and the fifth letter is an emoji.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: To an extent. It's hinted throughout the later seasons he's grown to care about Grif, and their animosity comes off as being somewhat more playful from Sarge's end. It gets to the point that Sarge is legitimately heartbroken when Grif temporarily abandons the team in Season 15.
• Vocal Evolution: In Season 1, he just does a ruff copy of the Drill Sergeant Nasty R. Lee Ermey. Then Matt Hullum went to that trademark Southern drawl. His voice also has gotten increasingly deeper.
• Weapon-Based Characterisation: Sarge almost exclusively uses his shotgun. He's a Blood Knight who loves killing up close and personal; he also enjoys threatening violence or emphasizing his moods through dramatically loading the gun. The one time Washington mimics Sarge's likely reaction to the situation they're in, he picks up a shotgun to sell the imitation.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Claims to have developed a fear of heights from a career as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.
• With Catlike Tread: Sarge's attempts at stealth amount to charging at the enemy while yelling "Sneak attack! Hurrah!" and shooting them with his noisy shotgun.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Sarge claims that he's never hit a girl in his life (he did once knock Tex out, but he thought she was a man at the time). This attitude caused a brief stalemate at Blood Gulch when Sister was the only Blue left. Comes up again in the fight against Tex in Revelation.
  Grif (terrified) What do we do Sarge?
  Sarge: (concerned) I dunno, I've never hit a girl in my life!
  Simmons: (terrified) Yeah, I noticed! Try harder!
• Younger Than They Look: In the fourth PSA released during Season 13, he claims to be 29. Church doesn't buy it for a moment.

Simmons

Captain Richard "Dick" Simmons

"You ever wonder why we're here?"

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

Voiced By: Gus Sorola, Lindsay Jones ("Get Bent")

Sarge's right-hand man and suck-up extraordinaire, though an incident involving Sarge being incorrectly declared dead showed how quickly this loyalty evaporates once an opportunity for promotion arises. Simmons attempts to be the voice of reason with regard to Sarge's (frequently insane) plans, with little success. For one, Sarge is too out there, for two, Simmons is too sycophantic to truly qualify as "sane". Simmons isn't much use in combat, as his main skills are computer programming, memorization of tedious Red Team procedures and regulations, and kissing Sarge's ass. However he does have a tendency to be the gunner any time Grif drives the Warthog. He wears dark red/maroon armor.

Simmons forms a comic duo with Grif, though has expressed a disturbing eagerness to sacrifice his friend in an effort to gain favor with Sarge. After Lopez defects and Grif needs an organ donor, Simmons is upgraded to a cyborg by Sarge and will occasionally answer to "Simmons 2.0."

During Reconstruction, he attempts to stall for time during he and Grif's execution by forcing his teammates to look up an obscure subsection, while when the team reaches Command, he hacks into the Blue Army records and deletes them under Sarge's order, resulting in a technical "victory" for the Reds. Throughout Relocated and Recreation, Simmons has been shown to be slightly more critical of Sarge and his leadership methods.

In Season 12, he has joined the New Republic along with Grif, Tucker and Caboose, and is captain of the his squad, the Red Team. Wishing to rescue their friends Simmons and the others try to get a team together using a members of their squads. Realizing that their squads will only die during their rescue mission, Simmons and the others ditch their trainees and rescue the other Reds and Blues by themselves. After learning that the others aren't actually kidnapped, as well as learning of a conspiracy wishing to exterminate all life on Chorus, Simmons and the others band together and unites the Federal Army and New Republic.

In Seasons 13, he joins the other Reds and Blues to take down Chairman Hargrove and save Chorus. They soon go into retirement after Epsilon-Church sacrificed himself to save them.

---

Associated Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: His father used to bully him for his nerdy traits. One example includes his father forcing him to join a women's league sports team when just he wanted to be a "mathlete."
• Ambiguously Bi: While Simmons has shown attraction towards women, he and Grif might be more than Vitriolic Best Buds, as suggested by Rooster Teeth. There was a question at a panel with RT where they got asked what Grif and Simmons were doing in the shade for two hours. Apparently, they'd read a slash fanfic earlier. And they have a Call-Back reference to that. So.. take that how you will. Then there's whatever happened between them in the closet during their retirement in Season 15 after Tucker activated the Temple of Procreation.
• Badass Bookworm: A fully competent soldier and tech specialist. It was implied that he ended up as a simulation trooper only because of the time limit during the tests.
• Beneath the Mask: O'Malley's possession of him reveals a lot of Suppressed Rage, mainly directed at Sarge. It gradually surfaces following this until Sarge becomes a Broken Pedestal for him in Recreation.
• Book Smart: He is technically-minded and knows about computers and physics, though he does poorly on timed tests.
• Boomerang Bigot: A Running Gag during Recreation had him insult robots in front of Lopez, in spite of the fact Simmons is a Hollywood Cyborg. Eventually, Simmons is able to smooth things over with him by bringing this fact up, only to piss off Lopez again when he (accidentally) makes a racist remark about Mexicans.
• Broken Pedestal: In Recreation, after several seasons of gradually realizing his ailing as a leader, he loses his respect for Sarge and starts lashing out at him and flat-out disobeys him. It becomes a Rebuilt Pedestal in the following season, particularly after Sarge's Rousing Speech.
• Butt-Monkey: While not as bad as Grif, Donut, and Doc, he definitely has his moments. His entire attempts to lead or both times he's left the Red Team for example.
• Cannot Talk to Women: He'd be a good leader in Season 12... if his squad didn't consist of a lot of women.
• The Cassandra: In regards to Sheila in Season 4, at least towards Sarge. Against all common sense, this continues even after Simmons uses the tank to attack Sarge.
  Sarge: ...and I can understand that you've gone insane and see imaginary tanks...
  Simmons: THE TANK IS RIGHT THERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
• Character Development: As of Season 4, he no longer instantly sucks up to Sarge. He'll still usually go along with it, but he'll grumble if The Plan is particularly insane, even when it doesn't directly threaten his life. Then comes Recreation, where he's more openly critical of Sarge's leadership. Grif actually points out a lack of sucking-up on his part at one point on Chorus. This is after Grif has just ticked off Sarge and hung up on him, and Simmons' reaction was "Heh, nice."
  • Taken a step further in Season 15, where he outright refuses to join the Blues and Reds with Sarge (although he pretends to at first in order to improve their chances to escape; Caboose made sure that plan lasted all of eight minutes).
  • He also starts to get a better handle on his insecurities as the series goes on, and even gets to show off more of his skill with technology as he grows into becoming the closest thing the Blood Gulch Crew has to a science officer. He's even the first member of the Blood Gulch Crew to realize that the Cosmic Powers are actually hyper-advanced Monitors perpetuating a God Guise.
• Characterization Marches On: Initially, his sycophanthy was implied to be fueled by his attempts to get a promotion. It was only later on that it was shown to be the result of his multiple hang-ups and insecurities.
• Chick Magnet: Ironically, he is the character that gets most attention from women.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Simmons would be a great and noble hero...if he wasn't an insecure nerd with Daddy Issues.
• Crazy-Prepared: According to himself in the Season 14 episode "Head Cannon", he was fully prepared to have an A.I. invade his mind.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: While Simmons seems like the wimpiest and least physically capable of the BGC, this is mainly due to his insecure personality. When he's actually in a fight, he's pretty dangerous, and Season 15 has him nearly kill Gene with a knife when the two fight each other.
• Deadpan Snarker: As his Character Development continues onward, he snarks more at Sarge. He always behaved like this towards Grif.
• Deuteragonist: For Recreation, with Caboose as the protagonist and Epsilon as the Tritagonist. While the season's story is ultimately about Caboose attempting to resurrect Church via Epsilon, Simmons' subplot involving him getting increasingly distanced from Sarge and him growing more of a spine as he struggles to take leadership over the rest of Red Team in Valhalla takes up quite a bit of screen-time.
• Dork Knight: Especially while on Chorus. Being in charge of an Amazon Brigade was hell for a nerd like him.
• Drunk with Power: After he temporarily gets leadership in Season 5 thanks to a technicality, Simmons immediately becomes a Drill Sergeant Nasty and tries to bury Sarge alive. By the Chorus Trilogy, he’s become a far more competent and level-headed commander.
• Everyone Has Standards: Though he doesn't particularly like Doc, Simmons is clearly sad to see that he was the one called to Valhalla and apologizes repeatedly for dragging him into the mess.
• The Faceless: Like almost everyone else in the series, he never removes his helmet.
• Fake Defector: Pretends to join Temple's forces in order to help his non-defecting teammates, but is almost immediately outed by Caboose's idiocy.
• Fantastic Racism: Similar to Sarge, but less pronounced with the Blues, and when he temporarily switched sides, he had a hard time telling his own team to "suck it," as he ended up still saying "Blue." Averted with actual race when he yells "Suck it, black!" at a Space Pirate and then clarifies that it wasn't a race thing.
• Fatal Flaw: Both his desire to gain the approval of others and his countless insecurities.
• Flanderization: Simmons started off as a teacher's pet who sucked up to Sarge on occasion, but generally did it to stay on his good side, could prove to be as anti-Sarge as Grif, and disagreed with him on many occasions, to a Professional Butt-Kisser who compliments Sarge for everything he does and goes along with his insane plans out of his own insecurities.
• Foil:
  • To Grif. Specifically, Simmons is a insecure suck-up who is constantly working, thrives on rigid organization, and takes great pains to appear to be a genius when he really isn't as smart as he likes to think he is. Meanwhile, Grif is a Lazy Bum who constantly avoids work, has no respect for authority, and is implied to be considerably smarter than he lets on.
  • Weirdly enough, he also turns out to be one (at least during the events of The Blood Gulch Chronicles) for Carolina, of all people, from during her time in Project Freelancer. Both of them suffer from looking up to a terrible father figure (The Director and Sarge, respectively) who they feel the need to please regardless of futility, build their own identity around being the best or most obedient child/pupil for their father figure (which they inevitably fail at), suffer from a loss of personal identity because of that aforementioned inevitable failure to please them, and then lash out and hurt those that they really care about. Really, the only differences between the two characters (aside from their genders) is that the overall stakes for Simmons during The Blood Gulch Chronicles are incredibly low compared to Carolina's during The Project Freelancer Saga and Simmons eventually re-focused himself on being just The Smart Guy for Red Team while Carolina strove herself to be The Ace for the Freelancers as a whole until it nearly killed her.
• Freak Out: During Season 4 after Sarge thinks he's gone insane. It's rather ironic in hindsight.
• Freudian Excuse: The abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, followed by the latter's abandonment of him, left him with a lot of issues.
• Gender Flip: His Epsilon-Double, along with the rest of the Reds and Tex are all misremembered as being the opposite gender in one of Epsilon-Church's iterations seen in "Get Bent".
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Does this in Season 15 with Esperanto of all things.
  Ĝi estas tiel sole. ("I am so alone.")
• Hazy-Feel Turn:
  • Makes a change to the Blue Team in Season 4. While this is straight Face–Heel Turn in Sarge's eyes, the other Reds are mostly just confused by his decision, and Church just assumes he's there to spy on the Blues and takes the opportunity to screw with him by pretending to believe he actually is a new Blue.
  • He makes a similar change in Season 11, preferring to sleep in the clean and orderly Blue Base than share with Grif. Though a later misunderstanding made this a more serious arrangement.
• Hidden Depths: In the Season 15 finale, Simmons demonstrates surprising physical prowess when he starts winning the knife fight with Gene, posing enough of a threat to make Gene try to get Grif to Spot the Imposter and make him believe Gene is the actual Simmons.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: The actions of his abusive father are Played for Laughs.
• Hollywood Cyborg: He was upgraded into one during their time in Blood Gulch, and while it generally doesn't come up it is mentioned from time to time.
• Insistent Terminology: "I'm Dutch-Irish!"
• Insufferable Genius: And he isn't always right, either.
• Ironic Name: Named after Richard Simmons, a famous American fitness instructor. Simmons himself is a nerd.
• Irony: Despite being a nerd, he actually gets the most attention from the opposite sex over the course of the series.
• It Has Been an Honour: His last words to Sarge before their Last Stand against Charon in the Season 13 finale.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Simmons can be insufferable at times, but nonetheless is the most approachable and compassionate member of Red Team next to Donut.
• Lethally Stupid: Simmons is not immune to this. He can be considered to exhibit this just for choosing to suck up to Sarge of all people. Granted, being possessed by Omega seems to bring out some of his repressed anger, and make him somewhat less submissive to Sarge's incompetence. Sycophantic tendencies aside, though, he occasionally seems to genuinely believe Sarge's crackpot theories (i.e., the bomb "blowing them into the future" in Season 3), while Grif just seems to mostly go along with them in order to make things smoother. Ultimately, Grif and Simmons show that there is a pretty big difference between being smart/logical and intelligent/knowledgeable.
• Like an Old Married Couple: His arguments with Grif, according to Tucker.
  Tucker: I've only been listening for ten minutes and I can already tell they're really in love. Why can't they see it?
• Like Brother and Sister: Played for laughs. When Kaikaina's ship lands on Donut in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Simmons says he'll miss him like a sister.
• Manchild: Is repeatedly shown to have serious daddy issues, which he imprints onto any superior officer that he has at the time. Sarge revels in this throughout the series, while Washington is simply irritated during Simmons' brief stay with Blue Team in Season 11.
• Mood-Swinger: He mostly tries to keep himself stoic and level-headed. But it's somewhat easy to get him to panic (when the situation goes wrong) or start crying.
• Named After Somebody Famous: As mentioned above, he's named after Richard Simmons.
• Nice Guy: While Simmons still has his flaws, he's also proven himself to be a very considerate person and is quite compassionate and kind to the other members of both his own team and the Blood Gulch Crew as a whole.
• Only Sane Man: The Sanity Ball for Red Team generally rotates between Simmons, Grif, and Lopez, and at any given situation any of them could be this. By the Chorus Trilogy, Simmons firmly becomes the Only Sane Man of Red Team along with Lopez, while Grif has moved away from being this.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: By the end of his time travel experiments in The Shisno Paradox, Simmons faces an existential crisis and decides to reject science altogether. When Simmons no longer believes in science, then all logic is clearly being thrown out the window. He's positively relieved when he figures out near the end of the season that the Cosmic Powers are actually sufficiently advanced A.I.s, even proudly proclaiming "Science is good for something after all!"
• Other Me Annoys Me: Gene, his counterpart from the Blues and Reds, gets on his nerves because of his voice, his manner of speaking, and his personality. Tucker is quick to point out that they’re nearly identical, though Grif does ultimately agree that Gene is more annoying.
• Ow, My Body Part!: One of his running character gags during the earlier seasons is that he does this whenever he's injured.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Though he grows out of it somewhat over time due to Character Development.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The thoughtful Blue to Sarge's Red. Ironically, though, his emotional problems also sometimes make him the nervous Red to Grif's laid-back Blue.
• The Smart Guy: Arguably the most rational member of Red Team, next to Lopez, he also possesses astute knowledge of computer technology and physics. But to a fault, it's made him more than a little arrogant, which does tend to blind his rationality.
• The Spock: Simmons would love to be this. But his own emotional, psychological hang ups get in the way.
• The Starscream: After Sister declared that "Red" Team's leader was dead, Simmons was quick in burying Sarge and assuming command, at which point he promptly turns into Drill Sergeant Nasty.
• Stepford Smiler: He constantly tries to put on a face of order and discipline, along with a satisfaction with his surroundings, but is very depressed about his life deep down.
• Straight Man: To Sarge. Ironically, Grif is the Straight Man to him.
• Super Gullible: Grif once convinced him that Game of Thrones really happened. He didn't need any evidence to believe it, he just needed to be told "Yeah, really" enough times.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Becomes this to the Blues in Season 11. After Sarge takes half of Red Base for himself and Simmons grows frustrated with Grif's laziness and disgusting habits he becomes overjoyed to hear Agent Washington is much better at organization and schedules then Sarge or Grif. He moves into Blue Base to get away from Grif and annoys Wash and Tucker who are becoming frustrated with each other and Simmons presence doesn't help them. Inverted later when Simmons wants to leave Blue Team after Caboose becomes leader, but he can't because Freckles threatened to kill him if he did.
• TV Genius: He isn't as smart at he likes to think he is, but he is still capable of reprogramming a teleporter, hacking Freelancer Command, creating sophisticated helmet cameras, and programming an entire social media website among other feats.
• Unwilling Roboticization: Unfortunately, Grif needed his squishy parts and Sarge needed a new robot person.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Grif have extremely contrasting personalities and rarely waste an opportunity to argue, usually over what a sycophant Simmons is and what a lazy bum Grif is, but despite their tendency to argue, they're actually very good friends (at the least).
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: At least part of the reason Simmons sucks up to Sarge so much is because he sees him as a Parental Substitute and he desperately wants Sarge to consider him a son in return.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Parodied in Season 5 when Sarge becomes convinced he's dead, has himself Buried Alive, and Simmons takes his position. Simmons immediately goes mad with (nonexistent) power, even though absolutely no one listens to him.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: A literal case - When they have to find Sarge from the cave he fell into after they buried him in Season 5, Simmons is happy to ignore Grif's issue with bats when he wants to stand near the light. And then Grif brings up Simmons' issue with snakes. It comes up again in Season 15, where he's afraid to investigate an abandoned city because of snakes, and the mere sight of a tiny one causes him to faint.
• Yes-Man: The entire core of his character, to the point his Character Development of not doing so is notable in Season 13. Before then he agreed with just about everything Sarge or another person in command says. Causing his closest teammate, Grif, to snark at him.

Grif

Captain Dexter Grif

"I don't want to be shot at! I don't want to shoot at other people! I just want to chill! I want to sit and chill!"

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

Voiced By: Geoff Lazer Ramsey, Amber Benson ("Get Bent")

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

Grif's orange armor is commonly mistaken for yellow, at least while the series was still being shot in Halo 1 (later games have a much more orange-y "Orange"). He begins the series as the Reds' Sniper, opposite Church, but as the series goes on, he gradually finds himself driving and piloting vehicles, culminating at the end of Revelation, where he pilots a Pelican, untrained, with reasonably effective results.

In Reconstruction Grif is briefly promoted to Sergeant of the Rat's Nest outpost once Sarge goes AWOL, but is quickly subject to a mutiny and near-execution after he sells Red Team's ammunition to the area's Blues. Sarge agrees to work with Agent Washington in exchange for Grif's particularly humiliating demotion (this humiliating demotion might not be official however, considering Agent Washington later still refers to Grif as "Sergeant Grif").

In Season 10, he is shown to have kept the Meta's brute shot, which he dubs "the Grifshot", and uses it in the fight against the Tex clones to rescue Epsilon and Carolina in Episodes 20 and 21.

In Season 12, Grif has joined the New Republic along with Simmons, Tucker and Caboose, and is the captain of his own squad, the Gold Team. He dislikes the name, wishing for it to be known that his armour is orange, not gold.

---

Associated Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: His mother abandoned the family to run off and join the circus, and his father shut down because of it. Leaving Grif to raise his sister on his own.
• Action Survivor: Once the fighting comes to him in The Recollection and afterwards.
• Ambiguously Bi: While he has shown attraction towards women, his relationship with Simmons might be more than Vitriolic Best Buds, as suggested by Rooster Teeth. There was a question at a panel with RT where they got asked what Grif and Simmons were doing in the shade for two hours. Apparently, they'd read a slash fanfic earlier. And they have a Call-Back reference to that. So.. take that how you will. What's more, it's implied that when Tucker activated the Temple of Procreation on Chorus, they had sex with each other.
• Anti-Hero: He's a Lazy Bum and an apathetic jerk, but he always comes through in the end.
• Bad Boss: Whenever he's put in a position of authority, he tends to do quite badly due to his laziness and general apathy. He claims that this is because he's just following Sarge's example, but while Sarge may not have been the best commanding officer, he never did anything as blatantly counterproductive as selling the ammo of his men to the opposing side. May be a Deconstruction, however, for as the seasons go on Grif is shown to be a rather good (if eccentric and lazy) leader and is an unusual version of A Father to His Men.
• Badass Driver: While he has shown considerable motor skills in seasons one to five and is the Red Team's designated driver, by Revelation, he has completely owned and adopted this trope. He just has trouble stopping driving sometimes.
• Badass Normal: Butt-Monkey status aside, Grif has been surviving explosions, falls, blunt-force trauma and bullets that should've killed him since Season 2 from both enemies and allies, yet he’s been shown to make quick recovery! Hell, a normal human would've died dozens of times during his fight with Tex in Revelation.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Played for Laughs in Season 12, where he suffers a mental breakdown from the stress of leadership and starts acting like Sarge, who he subconsciously looks towards as a definitive leader. Once he realizes this, he reacts predictably.
  Grif: That's not true! That's impossible! NOOOOOOOOO!
• Berserk Button:
  • He's pretty fed up with no-one being able to associate orange with him (his true, though difficult to see armour colour). By Season 12, this is fully apparent.
  • He's also pretty PO'd by people spelling his surname with two "F"s.
  • Don't try to take his weapon. When Dr. Grey tries to examine his Suppressor, he refuses to let her have it and accidentally shoots at Carolina when she tries to pry it away.
• Big Brother Instinct: Towards Kaikaina, his younger sister.
  • He's also had his moments towards Caboose. For instance, both he and Tucker were the first ones to yell at Temple when the latter was rubbing Caboose's face in the fact that Church had been Killed Off for Real. He also checked on Caboose while he was in Valhalla's Blue Base during Recreation, and volunteered to help Caboose rescue Tucker from Sandtrap (though there's admittedly ulterior motives there).
• Big Eater: At the end of Season 11, he ate enough of the New Republic mess hall's rations to force them to close. Lampshaded in the final episode of Season 15.
  Grif: I could eat a horse!
  Carolina: With you, I'm worried that's not a figure of speech.
  Grif: That's a figure of speech?
  Simmons: What the fuck is wrong with you?
• The Big Guy: Fat jokes aside, Grif naturally evolves into this role for the rest of Red Team as the series goes on.
• Bizarro Universe: Epsilon-Grif starts out very inaccurate, being a Neat Freak who regularly and obsessively cleans the base. It's only when Epsilon-Church gets the idea of being a slob in his head does he become more accurate.
• Book Dumb: Grif is actually pretty crafty and intelligent, but can be suicidally dumb whenever he's not using his intelligence to get out of work, believing that electricity is "invisible magic", attempting to clean off the top of the base by throwing a grenade on it while he's still on top, and saving an expired cream pie for years and freaking out when Bitters eats it since he was "saving it for emergencies", among other things.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Does this by accident when he's having his meltdown over being put in a command position and starts subconsciously imitating Sarge during Season 12. He even calls Bitters a dirtbag without realizing it until after he's said it.
• Boss's Unfavorite Employee: Grif is the least favorite subordinate of Sarge. Sarge singles him out for dangerous work, openly wishes for his death, and has tried to get him killed on various occasions.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Church claims he is this... though Church may have been mistaken, exaggerating, deliberately trying to screw with Simmons, or only comparing Grif to the other Reds. It is perhaps notable that Simmons doesn't seem to disagree with Church that Grif is the smartest Red other than himself. He is finally confirmed to be legitimately cunning during the final episode of Revelation. During the fight against the Meta, Grif bodily throws himself onto the Meta's back. When the Meta throws him down, Grif steals his Brute Shot with a cocky "Yoink!". Considering that the Meta had been owning everyone's asses with the weapon at that point, using it to block all their attacks, it is likely that Grif knew they needed to get it off him, and decided to take advantage of his own mass and weight, putting himself in immense danger just to give his friends an edge. In Season 15, Grif was able to become fluent in Spanish in less than a month just to get Lopez's voice right.
• Butt-Monkey: Every Red Team plan involves sacrificing him in one way or another. And that's not even counting the horrible, horrible beatdown he receives in Revelation at the hands of Tex.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Locus and Lopez's head come to find him after the rest of the Reds and Blues are either captured or defected to the Blues and Reds. Furthermore, his attempts to just get pizza and avoid Donut's time travel quest only result in the plot involving the Cosmic Powers.
• Captain Crash: Specifically, he's a little fuzzy on the whole concept of "landing":
  Grif: Sure! That just means "stop flying", right?
• Car Fu: To Agent Washington in Season 8, Episode 3, and to some soldiers in Season 10, Episode 3. On the receiving end of this in Reconstruction.
• Character Development: During The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Grif is a Lazy Bum who doesn't like to fight and is rather weak compared to the other individuals in the canyon, which doesn't match up well with his bitter, apathetic attitude and snarky quips. Come The Recollection, and it is shown that Grif is rather decent (perhaps above decent) with his battle rifle and has better insight and a bit more initiative, developing a stronger relationship with Sarge and evolving into The Slacker as well as The Heart of Red Team. In The Project Freelancer Saga, Grif displays he does care about the other members of the Blood Gulch Crew, and his Undying Loyalty is cemented. And in The Chorus Trilogy, Grif actually shows care for the men under his command after becoming a Captain, and is the only person besides Tucker that is shown to be teaching them worthwhile lessons. All in all, Grif has subtly become a better person and soldier.
  • Compare these lines, first from Season 2, then Season 13:
    Sarge: TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!
    Grif: Wait! I think today is actually a good day to retreat! Can't we push dying to a week from Friday?
  • Meanwhile, eleven seasons later...
    Sarge: (in a far more somber tone) Well, fellas, you know what they say. Today, is a good day to die...
    Grif: (in an oddly calm voice) Permission to speak freely sir? (camera pans around, revealing that Grif has picked up the recovered Grif Shot) Fuck that.
  • After abandoning the team at the start of Season 15 and undergoing some Sanity Slippage, Grif decides to step up and take a more active role within the group, namely teaming up with Locus and joining the fight against the Blues and Reds.
• Character Focus: In Season 15, despite being absent for a good deal of the season. In fact, both he and Dylan Andrews are arguably the main protagonists of the season, much in the same way that Tucker was the protagonist of Season 12.
  • Grif is also later the protagonist of The Shisno Paradox.
• Characterization Marches On: In Season 1, Grif would frequently try to get Simmons to keep on task and actually try to do his work, something that would be absolutely unthinkable for him for the rest of the series.
• The Chew Toy: He's on the receiving end of most of Sarge's abuse, and not a few Groin Attacks from Tex.
• Corrupt Quartermaster: In The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he was in charge of Red Team's ammo, and always forgot to bring it with him. In Reconstruction, he actually sells all of the ammunition his new team has to the Blues, resulting in him and Simmons nearly being executed by firing squad before Sarge shows up.
• Cowardly Lion: Usually among the first soldier in the Blood Gulch Crew to suggest running away at the first sign of danger (see his page quote), but he has little trouble overcoming his cowardice to help save the day when he really needs to.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • By virtue of being deceptively heavy, which allows him to disarm both the Meta and Carolina of all people!
  • His plan to free the Reds and Blues from Temple's brig? Sneak around the Blues and Reds' lair in plain view of all the security cameras, and then getting stuck in an air vent thanks to his girth. Except this was all according to plan - he needed to get all eyes off of Locus, who successfully sneaks in and frees the Reds and Blues (as well as Wash and Carolina).
• Deadpan Snarker: Even compared with the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew, Grif stands out at being the snarkiest of them all (aside from maybe Church). Most of it is aimed toward Sarge or Simmons, but no one is immune.
• Decoy Protagonist: A downplayed example. The Shisno Paradox initially seems set up to continue his Character Focus from Season 15 by making him the main character. The end of the season however makes clear he isn't the main character, Donut is, and continues to be in Singularity. Grif meanwhile takes the position of deuteragonist, which he shares with Wash in Singularity.
• Deuteragonist: He serves as this in Season 15, in spite of being Put on a Bus for most of it. A good portion of the season's story revolves around him quitting, and then realizing how much his friends mean to him and how much he took them for granted
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: When placed in charge of his own squad in The Chorus Trilogy, he becomes one of these due to subconsciously following Sarge's example. When he realizes this, he is horrified.
• The Faceless: Like almost everyone else in the series, he never removes his helmet.
• Fatal Flaw: Sloth and Gluttony, as one could likely expect.
• Flanderization: He started off as the most competent of the Reds who occasionally slacked off because the work he would have done would have been complete nonsense anyway, and he came off as the Red Team’s version of Church; sane and intelligent, but too cynical to even care that much about his duties. Later on, Grif became an overweight lazy glutton who refuses to any sort of work and flat out admits to hating effort itself, and will go to great lengths to avoid work. It reaches its apex in the middle of The Recollection, where he actually starts going along with Sarge's deranged plans (plans so insane that even Simmons refuses to go along with them) because of his laziness, something Grif would never do in earlier and later seasons. The Chorus Trilogy further Flanderizes him, increasing his gluttony and sloth at the expense of his status as Red Team's Only Sane Man.
• Foil: To Simmons. Specifically, Simmons is a insecure suck-up who is constantly working, thrives on rigid organization, and takes great pains to appear to be a genius when he really isn't as smart as he likes to think he is. Meanwhile, Grif is a Lazy Bum who constantly avoids work, has no respect for authority, and is implied to be considerably smarter than he lets on.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Subverted in terms of his relationship with Kaikaina, as both have elements of the "Responsible Sibling" (Grif's Big Brother Instinct towards her and Kaikaina becoming an event coordinator) and the "Foolish Sibling" (Grif is a Lazy Bum par excellence and Sister was originally written to be a "loud slut").
• Freudian Excuse:
  • According to Doc/O'Malley, Grif's adversity to discipline and work stems from his terrible childhood, in which his sister was always the favorite, his father was absent and his mother was too busy at the circus to give him the attention he needed.
  Grif: (sad) It was a nice circus...
  • Singularity implies that his Lazy Bum habits were the result of a particularly sadistic gym coach.
• Gender Flip: His Epsilon-Double, along with the rest of the Reds and Tex are all misremembered as being the opposite gender in one of Epsilon-Church's iterations seen in "Get Bent".
• Genius Ditz: Described as "crafty" by Church, Grif is certainly unbeatable concerning inventing methods of avoiding work. One of the PSAs has Grif scoff at how easy it is to get into Columbia University, adding "I'm a Harvard man."
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Staying on the moon by himself turns out to be a bad choice. Without anyone to talk to, he goes crazy and pretends a bunch of volleyballs are the other Reds and Blues. He becomes so desperate for human interaction that, after getting over the shock of seeing him, he's actually excited to talk to Locus.
• Groin Attack: Suffers no fewer than seven of them at the hands of Tex during their big battle. Two of which are hard enough to crack stone. Poor guy.
• The Heart: Has surprisingly evolved into this role as the series has gone on.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He's a lot smarter than he lets on, which tends to get overshadowed by the fact that he's lazy. Beyond that however, he has shown occasional instances of genuine selflessness that clash with his usual facade of a "Do-Nothing-Slacker".
  • In the last episode of Reconstruction when they are all trying to escape the EMP, Grif yells at Caboose (his enemy) "Get Epsilon out of here! Don't worry about us!" That's right, Grif was more concerned about the success of the mission than his own safety.
  • In Revelation, his first thought after hearing that Simmons and Doc are being held prisoner by Wash and the Meta are "We have to help them!" Keep in mind that Grif is scared to death by the Meta and for good reason considering the thing is a One-Man Army that gives all the other One Man Armies nightmares. And yet his first instinct is to go right over there and try to save his friends. Later on, Grif plays perhaps the most crucial role in the Meta's death by getting the Brute Shot away from him, crippling his defense.
  • Later in the same season, he throws Sarge out of the way of an incoming Warthog. Keep in mind, Sarge is a guy he hates and by trying to save Sarge, Grif ran the risk of being crushed by the Warthog as well.
  • When Kaikaina arrives at Blood Gulch, having joined the army because she wanted to see Grif, his first response is to tell her to go home, as he doesn't want her to get hurt, and he even threatens to beat her up and force her back into the ship. Because she can't leave, he instead actively looks out for her and tries to protect her, despite her being on the enemy team. Becomes even more touching when she says he became her guardian after their mother left and has always looked after her.
  • In Season 15, Dylan brings up all these previous examples to light, telling Grif that - despite his claims to the contrary - he does care deeply for those around them. Far more than he is willing to let on. All this does is piss him off and make him decide to quit. Only for him to regret this decision to the point where made volleyball versions of his friends for him to talk to, showing that despite his previous claim, he does truly care for them.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: Played with in Season 15. He repeatedly declares that he hates the Blood Gulch Crew before quitting, but once he reappears it becomes clear that he deeply regrets abandoning them and he truly does consider them to be his friends.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: His horrible childhood is usually used to mock him. Grif himself seems more embarrassed of his horrendous upbringing than anything.
• Hypocrite: Singularity reveals that Grif was never actually drafted into the army - He actually enlisted on his own since he realized his life needed more structure than what his horrible parents and school could give him. That being said, it's likely that him being constantly forced into life-threatening situations might've changed his outlook on the whole situation.
• Hypocritical Humor: He's the most likely to call out Donut for calling his pink armor "lightish red", but Grif himself hates it when people mistake his orange armor for yellow.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Grif was drafted into the army and does not like getting involved with the adventures Red Team and eventually the Blood Gulch Crew find themselves in. If he had his way, he would spend everyday just snacking and taking naps. The only reason he decides to stay with everyone is because they are the closest thing he has to a family. This finally comes to a head in Season 15 though, when Dylan and Jax track down the Blood Gulch Crew to tell them that impostors of them are attacking the UNSC and they are given an apparent distress message of Church. Grif doesn't want to come out of retirement to get involved in another adventure revolving around Church again and even quits the team. He eventually comes back, though. It also later turns out that he actually enlisted in the military since he realized that he needed more of a structure than what his Abusive Parents and public school could offer him.
  Grif: I don't wanna go on another adventure! I don't wanna listen to Sarge! I don't wanna get shot at! I don't want to shoot at other people! I want to chill! I want to sit and chill!
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Well... Incorruptible Pure Laziness anyway. When O'Malley goes on a body-surfing excursion through the Reds and Blues, he transfers into Grif, who immediately gets the impulse to take over the universe... only to decide he doesn't feel like following through because that would actually take work. As a result, he's the only character O'Malley abandons by choice, rather than being punched out. Not even the AI personification of malice and hostility can convince Grif to get off his ass.
• Informed Deformity: Justified. Everyone's making comments on how Grif is fat, yet, due to the limitations of the Halo game engine, Grif appears as lean as any other character (which carries over into the CGI sequences for consistency). Completely averted in "Room Zero," however, where Grif is actually chubby.
• Insistent Terminology: His armor color.
  Grif: I am not gold, I am not yellow, I am fucking ORANGE!
• I Resemble That Remark!: When Wash calls the Reds and Blues the most immature soldiers he's ever met during Reconstruction, Grif responds with "Your face is immature."
• Ironic Name: His first name, "Dexter," is an name of Latin and Old English origin meaning "fortunate." He's the Butt-Monkey of Red Team and suffers probably the highest number of Amusing Injuries out of any other character in the whole series.
• Irony:
  • For his constant griping about getting dragged into new life-threatening adventures and claiming that he was drafted into the military, he actually enlisted of his own free will since he was running away from his terrible home life.
  • In the near-end of Season 13, Grif quips after seeing Locus go "If I ever see another mercenary again, it'll be too soon.", but then by the time he sees Locus again in Season 15. He is almost overjoyed to see him. Granted he was stranded in a moon all on his own without anyone living to interact with.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Grif takes a lot of punishment over the course of the series, including his Groin Attack filled fight with Tex, being blasted by a tank shell, and being blown 80 feet into the air by a grenade blast and falling back down unto the ground, somehow managing to get out mostly unharmed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his laziness and general uncaring attitude, Grif will occasionally help his teammates and those he respects, and is shown to genuinely care for the other members of the Blood Gulch Crew outside his jerkish personality. He's just rather pissed off that Sarge brushes him off all of the time and would rather chill than get wrapped into life-threatening shenanigans. Deconstructed in Season 15, where he quits the team because of both his attitude and the aforementioned anger at being dragged into adventures all the time, only for it to be reconstructed when he rejoins them and tries to help because he was ridden with guilt over abandoning them.
• Karmic Transformation: In Season 12, the stress of leadership causes him to have a mental breakdown and start unconsciously acting like Sarge. When he finally realizes this, he understandably freaks out.
  Grif: Tucker, tell me I'm cool and don't play by the rules!
  Tucker: What?
  Grif: (wailing) I DON'T WANT A SOUTHERN ACCENT!
• Laborious Laziness: He takes to this in Season 16 to get out of going on another adventure. His methods include deliberately crashing a Pelican to avoid hearing Locus' message and deliberately taking a longer walking route because it looks more peaceful than the shorter, scarier looking one. Unfortunately for him, The Call Knows Where You Live.
• The Lancer: Plays this role for the Reds, until Revelation where he becomes both The Heart and The Big Guy. He usually serves as Sarge's Lancer, but also becomes this to Tucker in The Chorus Trilogy.
• Laser-Guided Karma: invoked An amusing variant - According to Word of God, the reason why Grif was subjected to so many Groin Attacks by Epsilon-Tex during "This One Goes To Eleven" is because she remembers from when she was part of Epsilon and Grif kicked away the Monitor Epsilon was housed in like a soccer ball during "Fourth and Twenty" (which apparently really hurt).
• Lazy Bum: He goes to great lengths to avoid doing anything, whenever possible. Or at least to convince Simmons to do it for him. Deconstructed in Season 15, where he quits because, as he points out, he has no real personal obligation to help the Blood Gulch Crew and he just wants to "sit and chill" rather than be dragged into anymore adventures.
• Leitmotif: Gains one in Season 15 entitled "Hateglue."
• Like an Old Married Couple: With Simmons, naturally.
  Tucker: I've only been listening for ten minutes and I can already tell they're really in love. Why can't they see it?
• Made of Iron: No matter what he goes through, courtesy of Sarge, Tex, or the Meta, Grif will simply not die, no matter how much he may want to. He was even hit by a tank shell with barely any injuries. As it turns out this is a familial trait, as Sister survived when Lopez tried to choke her to death, backing up Grif calling bullshit on it back in Relocated.
• The McCoy: Definitely a parody. Again, although the more emotional of the trio, Grif is way too lazy to act on his conscience or change the status quo.
• Military Maverick: Subverted. He considers himself this trope and outright refers to himself as a maverick in Season 12, but in reality he's just really lazy.
• Motor Mouth: After going insane from loneliness on Iris, he gained this trait, as Locus finds out first-hand.
• Mundane Utility: In Season 8, Grif tries to install a Freelancer armor module that turns the user invisible so that he can nap whenever and wherever he wants. Unfortunately, the module he installs induces Super-Speed instead. Hilarity Ensues.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • The time he spends stuck alone on the Reds and Blues' moon Iris shows that he clearly feels guilty for not coming with the rest of his friends on their quest to find Church again.
  • As he later admits to Kaikaina in "Theogeny," he's never really forgiven himself for essentially running away from her to join the army before the series began.
• Non-Action Guy: For The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
• Odd Friendship: Forms one with Huggins, of all people, during The Shisno Paradox.
• Oh, Crap!: He's completely horrified when he realizes during The Shisno Paradox that Genkins actually wants the Reds and Blues to save Wash from his brain injury.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In Season 10, Grif (who usually takes any and all insults Sarge throws at him with either snark or apathy due to being a Lazy Bum) is the first to call out Epsilon when the latter starts acting like a complete jerk with his plan to take on the Director.
  • In the Season 13 finale, when the Chairman begins his invasion of Chorus just barely after the Reds and Blues managed to broadcast a message to the UNSC about the Chairman’s duplicity, Grif starts cursing around and screaming in frustrated rage about how they were so close to winning. It bears repeating: Grif, Lazy Bum extraordinaire, is actually displaying an emotion other than apathy.
  • In Season 15, he gets really angry with Dylan for spurring everyone else out of retirement by delivering Church's message. Also, when he quits, he's almost completely devoid of his usual snark, instead being very blunt and straightforward with the crew.
  • In the finale of The Shisno Paradox, he realizes that there is another time traveler in the base with him and the others and goes to investigate alone while the others proceed with the mission. He finds Genkins and interrogates him for answers, ignoring the pizza Genkins brought with him for almost the entire time. Instead of taking a moment to enjoy the one meal he has wanted for the entire season, he holds Genkins at gunpoint and demands answers from him. When he realizes Genkins wants them to save Wash so it will create a paradox, Grif, the Lazy Bum of the team, runs as fast as he can to warn everyone while still ignoring the pizza right next to him. When he reaches everyone he screams for them to stop, but is too little too late.
• Promoted to Parent: Sister reveals that Grif did this for their family after their mother left, displaying his Hidden Depths.
• Refusal of the Call: He was against going on another adventure after Church once more when a message that appeared to come from him reached them, and left the Blood Gulch Crew to stay behind on the moon they'd been living on for 10 months. Then Locus and Lopez found him.
• Running Gag: Him misplacing Red Team's ammunition during both The Blood Gulch Chronicles and The Recollection. And him getting a Groin Attack from Tex.
• Sanity Ball: The role of Only Sane Man on Red Team is either Grif, Simmons or Lopez, depending on the circumstances. However, he does move away from this by The Chorus Trilogy (Simmons takes his place).
• Sanity Slippage:
  • In Season 12, the stress of being thrust into a position of command causes him to eventually have a mental breakdown and start subconsciously acting like Sarge. His horror at this fuels his actions for a good chunk of the season.
  • In Season 15, a combination of remaining isolated on the planet and his guilt over quitting results in him going crazy and pretending that volleyballs are the Reds and Blues. He eventually seems to get better, but Season 16 shows his mental state is still pretty fragile, and he tries to kill himself after pizza is erased from existence.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In Season 15 Episode 6, upon finding out that Church is alive again, and everyone packing up to go rescue him, Grif finally decides he's done with adventures and quits. It doesn’t last.
  • And as he later admits to Kaikaina during Singularity, he was never actually drafted - he enlisted since he wanted to run away from the terrible home life he got saddled with.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: By the time of Season 15, he appears to have some form of PTSD from the Reds and Blues' adventures, which is part of the reason he chooses to leave while they go on another adventure.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Gives one of these to Dylan Andrews when she tries to convince him he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. He later regrets this.
• Skewed Priorities: Grif cares more about food than anything else. During the war on Chorus, Grif freaks out when an expired cream pie he had was eaten by Bitters (though he was having a mental breakdown at the time) and he confronts Kimball about how he wants more food, ignoring that food and rations are scarce during war, and he spends the entirety of Season 16 on his own quest to restore pizza just so he can eat at Sammie Raphaelo's, his favorite restaurant, even when the universe is in danger.
• The Slacker: Grif self-identifies as and takes pride in being lazy, has no real goals outside of eating, sleeping, and relaxing, and ignores and/or tries to weasel his way out of any work assigned to him.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Pre-Blood Gulch, he slept through a devastating Covenant attack on a human colony during the Great War. Allies and enemies both left him alone because they thought he was dead.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: It is a sign of Grif's terrible health (he does it inside his helmet). He even smokes after having most of his organs being replaced by Simmons' after being crushed by Sheila. In fact, he might have started smoking more just to piss off Simmons.
• Sour Supporter: He may not like most of the people he spends his time with, but he still sticks with them through thick and thin. Even when he leaves them behind in Season 15, he comes back later, more willing to help out than ever before.
• Token Minority: invoked Downplayed, but due to his younger sister's name being "Kaikaina" (which is an actual Hawaiian name) and his own voice actor Geoff Ramsey claiming that Honolulu was the Grif siblings' hometown, Fanon has interpreted this to mean that both he and Kaikaina are native Hawaiians. By consequence, most fan art depicting the Grif siblings has them as Hawaiian.
• Too Dumb to Live: Invoked by Simmons, who once uses this trope by name to insult Grif, though he's not actually an example.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • In Revelation, he smashes through the wall at Valhalla and nearly kills Wash with a Warthog.
  • During the fight against the Tex Drones, he doesn't do the best out of the group but still manages to take quite a few of them down with the Brute Shot. Considering how lazy he's been, that's one hell of an accomplishment.
  • There are examples even earlier than that. By the time of Recreation, we don't see Grif purposefully ignore facts or events to avoid work anymore. He was the first to note that "something doesn't feel right" at Sandtrap. We also see Grif actively using his weapon and taking the initiative in coming up with a plan. He even tackled the Meta and took his bruteshot. Considering how the Meta can throw Warthogs without even sweating (and Grif should know this better than anyone), getting into such close proximity raises the chance of him getting crushed into a pulp quite high.
  • He does it again in The Chorus Trilogy, where he seems to have become the Number Two to Tucker and is actively shown to give the New Republic training and information that will benefit them on the battlefield (without losing his personality).
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pizza, to the point where he tries to blow himself up when the timeline is altered during the events of The Shisno Paradox so that pizza was never invented.
• The Unfavorite: His parents allegedly always preferred his sister, as revealed by Doc/O'Malley's "The Reason You Suck" Speech in Season 13.
• Universal Driver's Licence: In Revelation, Grif flies a Pelican and a Hornet with no training whatsoever. He crashes the Pelican, but it's still quite an accomplishment. He later pilots Dylan's ship when the Reds and Blues attack the Blues and Reds' Earth base, and successfully dodges some (but not all) of the enemy's missile defenses.
  Sarge: There they are! Land right next to 'em!
  Grif: Right... "Land"...
  Sarge: You do know how to land this thing, right?
  Grif: Sure! That just means stop flying, right?
  Sarge: Brace for impact!
• Unwilling Roboticization: A variant. In The Blood Gulch Chronicles, when Simmons is turned into a cyborg, Sarge has his "negative emotion centers" put in Grif, most likely against his will. This only comes up once, though, due to Rule of Funny.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Simmons due to very different personalities, which causes them to bicker frequently, but despite their tendency to argue, they're actually very good friends (at the least).
• Vocal Evolution: In the first season, Grif’s voice was gravelly, deeper, and somewhat gruff, though this vanished by the season finale and was replaced with his more high-pitched voice. He has also gotten increasingly higher-pitched throughout the series.
• Weak, but Skilled: Is one of the more low level soldiers in regards to the other Blood Gulchers and is definitely no match for a Freelancer or Space Pirate, but Grif is shown to be at least a better shot than Simmons and Donut and is rather a nice tactician on the battlefield. However, his best kills still come from when he is in the possession of a car.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Part-way through Season 8, Grif takes on an armor modification that grants him super-speed. After its introduction it is then never used again, though it's arguably justified in that the Project Freelancer armor modifications need an AI to use properly and it was shown to be malfunctioning whenever he tried to use it.
• What Have I Become?: After realizing that his stress-induced mental breakdown in Season 12 is making him act like Sarge, Grif has a heavy meltdown.
  Grif: (wailing) I DON'T WANT A SOUTHERN ACCENT!
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: On top of Grif's pretty understandable natural reluctance to help Sarge in Season 5 when he falls in a cave, he then exposes a fear of his that was never brought up before due to lack of exposure: bats.
  Simmons: Okay idiot, let's assume I'm wrong. Let's assume there are bats. So what? You're wearing state-of-the-art, bio-mechanical body armor. It's designed to deflect bullets and absorb explosions. What kind of five-ounce flying rodent possibly do?
  Grif: (beat) ...So basically you're saying that you think there's bats?
  Simmons: Sure, why not...?
  Grif: (in panicky tone) I'm getting the fuck outta here!
• Why Won't You Die?: Or more accurately, "Why Won't You Stay Dead?" In Season 15, he is fed up with Church apparently coming back to life once again and everyone rushing to go on another adventure to help him. Since he has already spent "half his life" on adventures revolving around Church and Church has already "died more times than Jean Grey" he is in no hurry to help him again. Furthermore, he and Church were, while friends as members of the Reds and Blues, never really developed beyond a distant respect, which further helps explain why he's so unenthused to save Church yet again. However, it's clear from his conversation with the Volleyball!Blues in "Objects in Space" that he's changed his mind and regrets thinking this way.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In The Shisno Paradox, Grif thinks he can avoid adventures altogether if he ignores Inciting Incidents. He didn’t take into account stories that involve characters ignoring the incident.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: During the fight with the Meta, Grif steals his Brute Shot, and after Meta's death Grif keeps it as his own, renaming it the "Grif Shot". However, he doesn't have anything better to do with it except mount it on the wall as a trophy... until the end of Season 10, that is.

Donut

Private Franklin Delano Donut

"It's not pink, it's lightish-red!"

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

Voiced By: Dan Godwin, Jordan Burns (Caboose's Mind, Seasons 2, 5-6), Miles Luna (radio transmission, Season 11), Barbara Dunkelman (Caboose's Mind, Season 14), Maggie Tominey ("Get Bent")

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

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

Like Tucker and Doc, he is Put on a Bus before Reconstruction, but returns in Relocated' during an experiment by Sarge to test the capabilities of a new plasma weapon. He's mistaken at first for a holographic Grif clone, but the others soon realize it's him and he passes out, exclaiming that he needs water. He then becomes a main character for Recreation, rejoining the Red team to fight against the remaining Blues (i.e. Caboose).

At the end of the season, he is murdered in cold blood by a post-Face–Heel Turn Washington, setting up the much darker plot for the remainder of the Recollection saga. In the Revelation premiere, Doc confirms that he is indeed dead. However, in the sponsors-only ending of Chapter 13, F.I.L.S.S. shutting down the armour lock on the soldiers' armour ends up bringing him back to life. This is confirmed to be canon in Season 10, when the Reds and Blues (and Carolina) return to Valhalla to find that Doc and Donut have set up an organic farm, using Lopez's body as a scarecrow.

He initially isn't involved in the crash landing with the Reds and Blues in Season 11, but eventually makes contact with them in Episode 6. However, when he actually shows up in Episode 10, alongside Doc and Lopez('s head), he forgets to bring the pilot that brought the three there, leaving them also stranded on the planet.

Season 12 has him "kidnapped" by the Federal Army of Chorus, but is revealed to be safe along with Sarge, Lopez, and Washington. After escaping the clutches of the conspiracy that surrounds Chorus, he, along with the rest of the Reds and Blues, convinces the opposing armies of Chorus to stop fighting each other

Season 13 has him take over the weapons depot in Armonia along with Lopez, until Armonia is lost, and later, joins the rest of the Reds and Blues in their effort to stop Chairman Hargrove from killing everyone on Chorus.

In Season 15, after the defeat of Hargrove and death of Epsilon-Church, he retires with the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew, until attacks caused by the Blues and Reds forces him out of retirement. At the end of the season, he's blasted by a stray bolt of lightning from Loco's Machine, which has serious consequences in the next two seasons.

In Season 16, the lightning that struck him reveals to have completely destroyed his physical body, with Caboose as the only witness to his "death." His consciousness was saved however, thanks to a mysterious being he calls "God," which then restores his physical form and tells him of the "Devil King." God then tells him to gather the rest of the Reds and Blues to save the universe by traveling in time. When it's revealed the "God" is in fact an evil Titan named Chrovos, Donut still sides with him due to the effects of the time traveling and his anger with the Blood Gulch Crew treating him poorly. When he eventually realizes that Chrovos was only using him, after an extensive fight with O'Malley/Doc, Donut uses the Hammer that he stole from the Cosmic Powers to reseal Chrovos.

Season 17 reveals that though Donut sealed Chrovos away, he still escaped (somewhat) due to the paradox caused by the Blood Gulch Crew. Donut then spends the season trying to save his friends and fix everything, and while he ultimately succeeds in bringing down Chrovos and Genkins, the traumas he dealt with through the arc plus his Rage Breaking Point being pressed due to the Blood Gulch Crew still treating him poorly, causes him to decide to spend some time away from the group by travelling across the universe to try and recover on his own.

---

Associated Tropes:

• Accidental Innuendo: Most of Donut's dialogue is filled with innuendos and double entendres to the point it is practically a Running Gag. But it is confirmed in-universe in Season 17 that he legitimately had no clue he was doing it or how often he was doing it, only realizing it when Tucker finally pointed it out to him and he, in his own words, "relived everything he has ever said". He makes an active effort to stop after this, but finds it much harder than he thought it would be.
• Ambiguously Gay: A subject of intense debate both amongst fans and in-universe.
• And I Must Scream: Played for Laughs in Season 17. As he gets the hang of Mental Time Travel, he inadvertently gets himself trapped in a loop of reliving being shot by Wash. Multiple times.
• Back from the Dead: Unlike all the times where he's nearly killed and revealed to be alive later on, Chrovos did actually kill Donut and revive him with the express purpose of having Donut serve their whims, though Donut retains all his free will and personality.
• Badass in Distress: As of the end of Season 11, and for the start of Season 12, he has been kidnapped along with Sarge and Washington by the Federal Army of Chorus. However, although they were taken in by force at first, they remained there by choice with the promise of "rescuing" their friends to convince them, much like the others were with the New Republic.
• Batman Gambit: How he ultimately defeats Genkins in Singularity. He figured out off-screen that Genkins and Chrovos were the same person via a Stable Time Loop. With this knowledge, he tricks Genkins into becoming Chrovos and starting the chain of events that end with him being defeated and imprisoned by pretending to say too much to him and "accidentally" reveal that black holes send you back to the beginning of time so Genkins willingly throws himself into one to stop the Reds and Blues from ever existing, only to go insane long before he can do it and become Chrovos.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason he sides with Chrovos for much of The Shisno Paradox is because the time god showed him kindness and respect, whereas the Reds and Blues tend to treat him like dirt. He only switches back when he realizes that Chrovos was just using him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Out of all the Reds, he is probably the silliest. But make no mistake - this is the guy who killed Tex and has made countless more displays of badassery later on.
• Big Damn Heroes: Twice in Season 11: His arrival at Chorus stops Sarge and Freckles from continuing their fight - where Sarge would likely have been killed. Later on, he kills a rampaging Dos.0 (in C.C.'s body), saving Freckles and the rest of the gang.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Lets one out during his "The Reason You Suck" Speech in Singularity... to Carolina, of all people.
• Butt-Monkey: Gets poorly treated a lot as the series goes on. It actually gets Played for Drama surprisingly enough in The Shisno Paradox, with him performing a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal and temporarily joining Chrovos.
• Camp Straight: One of the alternate endings to The Blood Gulch Chronicles mentions he married a stripper and had a bunch of kids.
• Character Development: He becomes a significantly more assertive and focused individual over the course of Season 17, along with gaining a snarkier side and even a shorter temper. Donut also becomes more willing to stand up for himself when other people insult him, tries to avoid saying Double Entendres when talking for people, and eventually becomes The Leader of the Reds and Blues during their struggles against Genkins and Chrovos.
  • And even before Singularity, Donut's character has subtly evolved over the series' course, with his status as the absurdly naive and ditzy dandy of Red Team being increasingly emphasized over his Ambiguously Gay qualities after The Project Freelancer Saga.
• Character Focus: He serves as the protagonist of Season 17, and undergoes quite a bit of Character Development.
• Characterization Marches On: Donut is almost a completely different character in Season 1. He's still naive and gullible, but he's characterized as being serious and strait-laced in spite of his status as the rookie, contrasting him with the more experienced but cynical and lazy Grif and Simmons and Red Team's Only Sane Man outside of Grif, and he has red armor. At the end of Season 1, he gets his iconic pink armor and quickly settles into his familiar characterization as a moronic, innuendo-spewing dandy.
• Characterisation Click Moment: Donut doesn't really settle into his familiar characterization until he starts vehemently claiming his new pink armor is "lightish-red" to Grif and Simmons.
• The Chew Toy: Donut goes through a massive Trauma Conga Line in The Shisno Trilogy, which starts with him being dying horrifically and then being revived by Chrovos, realizing the Reds and Blues don't respect him at all or value his opinions and judgement, relives the most painful moments of his life thanks to his Mental Time Travel, and after freeing the Reds and Blues from the singularity they've been trapped in, they're still angry at him and Sarge outright threatens to execute him.
• Comically Missing the Point: Practically a Running Gag with him. For instance, in Season 4 he laments how Church stealing the Reds' Warthog means that he's "signing [the Reds'] death warrants"... despite the fact that, as an exasperated Church points out, Donut and the other Reds are so close to the Red Base that they all could've walked back there in the time that Donut was complaining.
• The Comically Serious: A weird variant. While it's not that Donut's delivery is a Machine Monotone or anything, but lots of otherwise normal comments become absolutely hilarious when spoken by Donut due to his endlessly upbeat and absurdly genuine delivery of virtually every line. For instance, below is his response when Church tells him in Season 4 to lie and say that he saved the other Reds from the Blues:
  Donut: Hmmmm... I always did want to be a hero... And a liar!
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Despite his rather... unusual behavior, he managed to grenade Tex from halfway across the canyon.
  • The fact that he was briefly working with Tucker as an infiltration specialist^note he says he's good at penetrating rear entrances for the UNSC implies he received some special training to perform his new job.
  • In Season 10, he sticks three Tex clones at once with a single throw.
  • In Season 11, he single-handedly defeats Dos.0 with a "future cube" and a nearby (meaning "within Donut's considerable throwing range") mine field in under a few minutes.
  • Seasons 16 and 17 put Donut in the spotlight, and again he has badass moments, fighting O'Malley across space and time, and doing his best to foil Genkins and Chrovos' plans.
• Cunning Linguist: Subverted. Despite "translating" for Lopez, his grasp of Spanish is rudimentary at best and he frequently proves that he really has no idea what Lopez is saying.
• The Cutie: He's so sweet, adorable and cheerful that even Church likes him.
• The Dandy: By far, with him having a traditionally feminine mind of things and often being more into interior decoration, knitting, and gardening than the other activities of the Red Team.
• Deadpan Snarker: Grows into this over the course of Singularity due to getting increasingly frustrated with the other Reds and Blues' poor treatment of him and Chrovos trying to manipulate him to her own ends.
• Depending on the Writer: He frequently alternates between a legitimately competent Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass and a useless moron depending on what's funniest, though he's portrayed primarily as the former following Season 16.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Part of his decision to set out on his own after the end of Singularity is because he wants to make a name for himself independent from the rest of the Reds and Blues.
• Disney Death: His death in Recreation is eventually revealed to be this when he returns in Season 10.
• The Ditz:
  • Is usually too busy bubbling happily along to notice the assorted weird and dangerous crap going on around him.
  • He once nearly revealed the secrets of Red Team to the Blues while playing a game of "Truth or Dare" with Caboose, who decided to use the dare part to make him tell. It really says a lot when you can be outsmarted by Caboose.
  • His actions in Season 11 speak volumes to this.
• Double Entendre: Pretty much everything he says. "Donut: The Musical" is nothing but this. However, this actually gets deconstructed in Season 17 when Donut realizes that this makes it harder for the other Reds and Blues to take him seriously, leading to him resolving to avoid making them so they'll treat his comments with more weight.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: When the chips are down, Donut repeatedly proves himself to be a competent and loyal soldier, but all of the Reds and Blues tend to treat him as a barely functional idiot and absolutely refuse to trust his judgement or even listen to him. He becomes increasingly aware and bitter of this throughout the Shisno Trilogy; at one point he notes that Wash - the man who shot him - gets more respect than he does.
• Dumbass No More: He becomes less naive and ditzy in Season 17 as part of his Character Development.
• Easily Forgiven: He has no hard feelings towards Wash for shooting and nearly killing him. Donut does lampshade it bitterly during Singularity, but more to make the point he and Doc are being treated unfairly when the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew have done things just as bad as their Mistreatment Induced Betrayals.
• The Faceless: Like almost everyone else in the series, he never removes his helmet, unless he's off-screen. He apparently has a habit of wandering around stark naked off-screen, much to pretty much everybody else's dismay.
• Flanderization: Initially, Donut was the Only Sane Man of Red Team, being a mildly naive but highly professional soldier, serving as a Foil to the cynical and more experienced soldiers Grif and Simmons. After getting his trademark pink armor, he began protesting that it was "lightish-red" rather than pink, but generally retained his rationality. By late to the end of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, his naivety and his insistence on his armor being "lightish-red" blossomed into him being an Ambiguously Gay ditz who frequently makes Accidental Innuendos and Double Entendres.
• Foil:
  • To Caboose. Both are easily the friendliest, dumbest, and silliest members of their respective teams along with being Made of Iron to an absurd degree. Caboose and Donut also both use (relatively) archaic weapons for the setting (Caboose has a standard assault rifle and Donut uses (plasma) grenades), and wear colored armor that makes them stick easily out from the rest of their teams (Donut wears bright pink armor, and Caboose has both dark blue armor and a MJOLNIR Mark V helmet). It certainly helps that both are surprisingly good friends with each other even going into the later seasons, and have goofy-sounding last names that fit their remarkably silly personalities. However, they differ in that Donut is more emphasized to be absurdly naive rather than almost completely divorced from reality like Caboose is (which is quite befitting Caboose being a Fourth-Wall Observer unlike Donut). Furthermore, Donut is highly Ambiguously Gay, with almost all of his dialogue being Double Entendres, while Caboose is more like a little kid (to the point where he doesn't know where babies come from in Season 5).
  • To Tucker. Both favor weapons that need a strong arm (Donut's grenades and Tucker's Great Weapon), have a knack for alien technology and Double Entendres, and constantly quibble about their respective armor colors. However, Donut consistently claims his armor is lightish-red while Tucker doesn't even know what color armor he is and Donut makes homoerotic Innocent Innuendos while Tucker intentionally makes Double Entendres as part of his Casanova Wannabe schtick.
• Freudian Excuse: Dialogue from him in Season 3 implies that he's so absurdly over the top and campy because he came from a very repressive background as a Farm Boy in Iowa, and his time as a simulation trooper is the first chance he's ever gotten to actually act how he wants to. Singularity however makes it clear he's unaware about the constant Double Entendres he spews out, implying it's more a result of the repression he's had to deal with, something he mentions in Donut: The Musical.
  Donut: You spend a lot of time thinking when you're on a farm. And then a lot of time repressing those thoughts.
• Gender Flip: Caboose's mental image of him is female. His Epsilon-Double, along with the rest of the Reds and Tex, are all misremembered as being the opposite gender in one of Epsilon-Church's iterations seen in "Get Bent".
• Genre Blindness: It takes him until Season 16 to realize that the Reds and Blues are idiotic assholes.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Aside from Caboose, he probably has the cleanest mouth out of everyone in the main cast. He starts to drop it in Singularity as his frustration with the situation builds, to the point where he even lets out a Precision F-Strike once he reaches his Rage Breaking Point. Simmons is clearly taken aback when it happens.
• Granola Girl: Starts developing some of these tendencies after spending so much time with Doc in-between Seasons 8 and 10.
• The Heart: As one of the few truly Nice Guys in the series, he generally has this role among the Reds. As Grif starts to grow more into this role as the series goes on, though, Donut starts to become more irrelevant.
• Heel Realization: Played for Laughs in Season 17 where he realizes the sheer amount of Innocent Innuendos he spurts out after he relives everything he ever said. He spends the rest of the season desperately trying (and failing) to stop.
• Hero of Another Story: He sets out to explore the universe on his own after the events of Singularity, both to recover from the horrible trauma that he's gone through and also to make a name for himself outside of the Reds and Blues. And even before that, Donut apparently served as an infiltration expert for the UNSC in the time between the end of The Blood Gulch Chronicles and his return in Recreation.
• Hidden Depths: Tying in with Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Donut is repeatedly shown to be a highly competent soldier in spite of his many, many quirks.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Claims to have become an infiltration expert after The Blood Gulch Chronicles despite not owning a cloaking device, being rather obnoxious, and having a very garish set of armor.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: This literally happens to him in the climax of Season 11 when Locus snipes one of his grenades (which subsequently detonates) to incapacitate him.
• Horrible Judge of Character: From walking into the enemy base assuming it's a general store, to chatting with the Meta under the misguided assumption it's a new recruit for Blue Team (and completely oblivious to the fact it's trying to kill him with a Brute Shot... which Donut thinks is a broom) ...suffice to say, Donut suffers from this a lot.
• Iconic Item: Frequently associated with elbow grease and headlight fluid.
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Throughout Season 2, he expresses a desire to claim Sarge's armour if he dies, which is probably because he's embarrassed about his new pink outfit. He gives this up quickly though.
• Image Song: "Donut: The Musical."
• Improbable Aiming Skills:
  • His skill with plasma grenades is incredible, ranging from a long-distance lob from the base into the open hatch of a tank to kill someone, to sticking three people at once on the heads with a single throw of three grenades.
  • He's also quite handy with alien weaponry, managing to effortlessly blast Felix's gun out of his hand with a Needler during "The End Is Near."
  • In The Shisno Paradox, he throws a grenade into the distance during his fight with O'Malley, seemingly missing by a long shot. At the end of the fight, though, he opens a portal and that same grenade comes through, hitting his target after all.
• Innocent Innuendo: More than half his lines drip with Double Entendres, and he's completely oblivious to all of them. He finally starts to realize this in Singularity... although it takes him reliving everything he's ever said for that to happen.
• Insistent Terminology: "It's not pink, it's lightish-red!" This eventually ends during Singularity with him proudly owning the fact that his armor's pink.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: It causes the others some confusion.
• Irony: During The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he wondered out loud why the Reds and Blues never tried to kill one another using the Sniper Rifle instead of using it as a glorified telescope. During Season 11, this is exactly how Locus neutralizes him, Washington, and Sarge.
• Large Ham: In Season 1, not so much, aside from his ultimatum to Tex ("Hey bitch! Remember me? I saved you something! Yeah! Three points you dirty whore!"). But then Donut gets increasingly Camp and basically all of his lines drip with ham.
  Oh my gosh! You guys were supposed feed my cat! Whiskers!
• Less Embarrassing Term: Insists his armor is lightish-red. Only twice he didn't do so, when refusing to be turned into a cyborg in Season 2 ("Hey, pink suit, guys! I think it's somebody else's turn in the barrel!") and his Rage Breaking Point in Season 17 ("You all think you're better than me cause I have pink armor!").
• Macho Camp: Epsilon-Donut in Season 9 combines his usual Innocent Innuendo with Sarge's gung-ho attitude.
• Made of Iron: Has survived being blown up with a plasma grenade, having a ship dropped on him, and being shot through the chest. Donut is a particularly notable example because, unlike similarly severe injuries suffered by other main characters, his injuries are typically treated completely seriously instead of Played for Laughs, at least at the time they are inflicted.
• Manchild: Less so when he made his debut in actual red armor. However, much like Caboose, Donut's subsequently gained a very childish and immature view of the world as part of his Naïve Newcomer status.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: During The Shisno Paradox he gets tired of the Reds and Blues being mean to him and decides to work for Chrovos. However, he changes his mind in end, saying that even though they're jerks, they're still his friends. It proves to be too little too late... or not, as the next season reveals.
• Naïve Newcomer: One of his defining characteristics. Donut isn't just The Ditz, he also frequently gets played for a fool and made the butt of countless jokes because of his naivete and eagerness.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Most of his name, anyway.
• Nice Guy: Definitely the nicest member of Red Team. He's also one of the most selfless and altruistic members of the whole cast, with him even being the first of the Blood Gulch Crew to insist that they need to stay and fight for Chorus.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His actions make him constantly alternate between being helpful and a hindrance during Season 11.
• No Sense of Direction: It's mostly prevalent in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, but Donut's understanding of navigation is utterly laughable, with the most prominent example being that he starts taking the Blue Team's flag back to Blue Base after Grif rescues him in the sixth episode of the series and tells him to head back.
• No-Respect Guy: Seasons 16 and 17 have him come to the painful realization that, for all that they like him, none of the BGC actually respect him or view him as anything other than a double entendre-spewing moron. The only one who gets less respect than him is Doc.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • He survives Tex sticking a Plasma Grenade to his head, but has to be airlifted out of the canyon, returning with his trademark lightish-red armour.
  • He also survives being shot by Wash at the end of Recreation, as revealed in a sponsors-only ending for an episode of Revelation and Season 10 for non-sponsors.
  • Lampshaded in Season 11 when Locus snipes a grenade next to him and knocks him out. He's immediately confirmed as being alive, much to the relief of Simmons.
  • In later seasons, this tends to be Played for Laughs. Other characters will think he's dead, only to quickly find out he's still alive, no matter how improbable it is that he survived.
  • Getting hit with a stray bolt from Loco's time machine caused him to get horrifically mangled and thrown back into the past, a process that destroyed his body, but not his mind. However, he was found by a being he describes as "God" (it was actually Chrovos) and was reconstructed. It's safe to say that Donut's pretty goddamn unkillable at this point.
• Odd Friendship:
  • Donut became best buddies with Caboose when he was temporarily captured by the Blues in the tail end of Season 2.
  • Forms one with Wash, of all people, during Season 17.
• Only Sane Man: In Season 1, thanks to Early-Installment Weirdness, he's characterized as the only legitimately competent soldier in Blood Gulch (until Tex shows up, anyway), and his only real quirk was being naive. It ends almost immediately after getting his pink armor.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • For Church, it's a sign there's something very wrong with his constructed reality in the Epsilon Unit during Season 9 when Donut starts out as a Macho Camp Drill Sergeant Nasty.
  • As part of his Character Development in Season 17, he becomes significantly more sarcastic, assertive, and determined, to the point where he gives a vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew in "Limbo" for them having treated him like crap for so many years. It's sold in part by Sarge being stunned when Donut actually calls his armor pink, with him even proudly shouting it multiple times and saying "I'm owning it, now!"
• Put on a Bus: From Season 6 to 10, he's practically on a rotating shift between this trope and The Bus Came Back. He is completely absent from Season 6, spends Seasons 8 and 9 Not Quite Dead after being shot by Wash, only to finally return midway through Season 10. It also looks like he will be put on another bus after Season 17 due to his desire to have a life independent of the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew.
• Rage Breaking Point: He goes through a massive Trauma Conga Line in Seasons 16 and 17, going through a ton of pain and humiliation just to rescue the Reds and Blues from the singularity and atone for his Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal. After they continue to stay angry at him out of spite and Sarge outright threatens to execute him, Donut snaps and gives them all a vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Reformed, but Rejected: In Season 17, in spite of his attempts at atonement, preventing Chrovos' escape, and saving everyone's lives, none of the Reds and Blues are keen on forgiving him for betraying them to Chrovos and even threaten to execute him for it.
  Donut: (While freeing Tucker from the singularity) Me and Doc betrayed everyone, and (turns to the Reds and Blues) NO AMOUNT OF ATONEMENT SEEMS TO FIX IT!
• Screams Like a Little Girl: On orders from Sarge, he proceeds to run around screaming like a woman in nearly all combat situations.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Though he and the rest of the Blood Gulch Crew bury the hatchet come the end of Singularity, he still decides to go off on his own exploring the universe so as to carve out his own identity.
• Shout-Out: Donut is one of two characters (the other being Caboose) named after one of the randomly generated names assigned to temporary multiplayer profiles in Halo: Combat Evolved.
• Stereotype Gay: Though at times it comes off as Innocent Innuendo taken to extremes. Still doesn't explain Officer Hotpants, though.
• They Killed Kenny Again: He dies, or at least goes through situations where anyone else would die a lot, like being crushed by a Pelican and shot by Washington; he actually dies for real at the beginning of Season 16, only to be revived by Chrovos.
• Too Dumb to Live: Donut is definitely the biggest example most of the time, and considering he competes against the likes of Sarge's suicidal plans from overconfidence and Caboose's Cloudcuckoolander personality, that's saying a lot.
  • Despite being in the army, Donut almost never treats the situation like a war, even in the early seasons. He actually thought that Blue base was a store, and the only reason he got away was because the only one who saw him was fellow rookie Caboose.
  • While trying to clean Blue base in Season 7, he runs into The Meta and mistakes him for a new recruit for Blue Team, despite The Meta having no blue anywhere on his armor. He also mistakes The Meta's attempts to kill him by shooting at him and swinging his Brute Shot at him as attempts to help him check the weapons and clean the base.
  • He receives the Reds and Blues distress signal in Season 11, and they tell him they are stranded. His idea of a "rescue" is to grab Doc and Lopez, get on a ship to travel to where they are, and then tell the ship to leave. This gets him beat up by everyone else for how stupid it was (including Caboose).
  • He completely trusts Chrovos throughout Season 16, passing his message to the Reds and Blues "to save the future, we must fix the past", even as Grif and Huggins poke holes in how ambiguous this is. After being told the true story by the Cosmic Powers, he still betrays the Reds and Blues and steals The Hammer to bring it to Chrovos, because he was sick of being insulted by his friends. Though he at least makes an effort to stop Chrovos himself later.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Just ask Donut if he wants to be pinched.
• Took a Level in Badass: In Church's artificial reality, Donut somehow becomes the Red Team leader, and leads a rocket assault against the Blues. Also, he's a lot more competent in Season 10 and onward than he used to be, mainly due to him being assigned primarily to grenade duty.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Initially, he was the Only Sane Man of Red Team, being mildly naïve but very much professional and competent. By the end of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, this is no longer the case, and he’s on the same level as Caboose in the intelligence department.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: While his intention was simply to stop him from interfering further, Donut's "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards Genkins pointing out he's just a pawn ultimately convinces Genkins to become The Starscream to Chrovos and usurp them as the Big Bad, and with it, change his gameplan to getting people who can kill the Reds and Blues to do what he's failed to do.
• Vocal Evolution: His voice gets higher and louder each season. Singularity has him undergo this in the opposite direction, his voice deepening being tied into his Character Development and becoming the unofficial leader of the BGC against Genkins.
• Weak, but Skilled: He's not much of a straight-up fighter, but he's got a great grenade-tossing arm, and after Blood Gulch was apparently recruited by UNSC Command due to his skill as an "infiltration specialist."
• Weapon-Based Characterisation: Donut is freakishly good at throwing things and becomes increasingly associated with plasma grenades as the show progresses.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Has this air about him, with him firmly sticking to his hope and faith that things will work out in the end even as things seem to continue to spiral out of control for him.
• The Woobie: In-Universe. When he's hurt, people on both the Red and Blue Teams get upset.
  Grif: Seriously, what's with all these feelings for Donut?

Equipment and Mercenaries

Lopez

Lopez the Heavy / Lopez la Pesado

"¿Por qué estás contestando si usted no sabe qué estoy diciendo?" ("Why do you bother replying if you don't know what I'm saying?")

"Voy a borrar todo recuerdo tuyo el segundo que te hayas ido. Al igual que por...y..." ("I am going to erase every memory of you the second you are gone. Just like I did for [FILE DELETED] and [FILE DELETED].")

Voiced By: Burnie Burns (Seasons 1-17), Eddy Rivas (Family Shatters), Ashley Jenkins ("Get Bent")

Sarge's pet project and team mechanic, a robot who only speaks bad Spanish (and occasionally takes advantage of the fact he's the only one fluent in the language).

Lopez seems to view his teammates with cold resentment, either due to their reliance on him for mechanical help, constant damage to the team Warthog that Lopez ends up repairing, for programming him to speak Spanish instead of English, or all of the above.

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

As of Reconstruction he's been rebuilt and is back at Red Base, and has deleted the memories of his departed teammates. By Relocated, he has recently rejoined the Red Team because he was bored (and because Sarge knew the command codes that would make him do it anyway), and assisted Sarge in developing an EMP-powered Gauss Gun and installing it on the Warthog. To this end, and for any future research, he created an underground holographic test facility, which Sarge uses mostly to kill Grif avatars over and over again.

At the end of Recreation, he was shot along with Donut by Washington, but survived through a battery backup. His body was briefly used as a scarecrow by Donut and Doc in Season 10. He returned to the Reds and Blues in Chorus with Doc and Donut in Season 11. He spends most of the season as a head, but eventually steals Dos.0's body. He was recruited into the Federal Army of Chorus along with Sarge, Donut and Wash when everyone gets separated at Crash Site Bravo. When the armies of Chorus unite, he starts working as their technician in Season 13.

Associated Tropes:

• Badass Boast: "I'm Lopez the Heavy. Bitch."
• Beleaguered Assistant: Anything that the Reds can't be arsed to do will inevitably be given to Lopez.
• Beyond the Impossible: Despite supposedly being a Dumb A.I., he starts to develop characteristics that would usually be seen only in Smart A.I.s, even becoming able to make sure the Alpha A.I. can't possess him anymore after Season 2.
  • He also manages to maintain his own personality and memories while floating through space for several eons - something that not even Chrovos could do.
  • In a Rule of Funny case, back in Season 3 he managed to both build a robot army and operate a machine gun... despite being only a head.
• Big Damn Heroes: Brings out a Missile Pod against the Meta and drives him off at Valhalla in Recreation, headshots a Fed to save Tucker in Season 11, and after getting decapitated yet again in the penultimate episode of Season 12, he figures out that he can still move his body and put his head back on, then he proceeds to knock out the Space Pirate that shot it off with one punch.
• Bilingual Backfire: He loves to insult people in Spanish, since he's the only one fluent in the language. Then he finds out that Locus is too after the latter snaps at him for calling him insane.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The reason that he temporarily ended up as The Dragon to O'Malley during The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
• Broken Pedestal: Early on, both Lopezes viewed Sarge as A Father to His Men both figuratively and (since Sarge built them) literally. However, once they realized how insane Sarge really is, this faded into snarkiness for the former and sheer insanity from the latter.
• Characterization Marches On: Probably the most striking case in the series outside of Donut, though it is mixed with Character Development. Lopez starts out as Sarge's loyal, silent enforcer before getting a speech unit installed, at which point he reveals himself to be The Comically Serious, completely dedicated to the Reds' mission and viewing Sarge as his father. It takes getting hit by the Warthog for him to truly become the long-suffering, bitter fatalist he's best remembered as.
• Character Development: Lopez used to be an absurdly over-dramatic and serious robot with Undying Loyalty towards the Reds. After he was possessed by Church for a while and he was then accidentally injured by the Reds (who still thought he was their enemy), he became a overly bitter living being. Since then, he's become a Deadpan Snarker who only really seems to hang around with the Reds and Blues because he has nothing better to do. However, Season 11 also shows that he does seem to genuinely care for them to a degree, since he is disgusted at Dos.0 actually trying to kill them. Furthermore, the same aforementioned season displays that he's become The Fatalist, fully aware of being a Cosmic Plaything but just trying to make the most of his life while he can in the process.
• The Comically Serious: More pronounced before his Character Development, but he still has moments like this due to his Machine Monotone.
• Cosmic Plaything: Even among the other Reds and Blues he falls into this, with Doc probably being the only other member to get more crap than he does. The fact that him getting decapitated is essentially a Running Gag should really tell you something about Lopez's life.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has understandably evolved into this, especially in The Recollections, after chafing under the frankly insane leadership of Sarge and later O'Malley.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Played for Laughs in The Shisno Paradox when he realizes that he's stuck with Caboose as they travel through time together. To further clarify, he (who can't be understood) is now stuck with Caboose (who can't understand anything).
  • However, it's later done more seriously in Singularity. When the Labyrinth tricks him into thinking that he's an English-speaking human during "Omphalos," he throws himself into a black hole. Being a robot, though, he survives.
• Determinator: In Season 3 of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he somehow effectively operated a machine gun despite being only a head at the time. Simmons' only explanation for this?
  Simmons: He's very determined.
• Disney Death:
  • He is seemingly killed off at the end of Season 7 along with Donut, and when he is seen in Season 10, his body is being used as a scarecrow. However, before he returns in Season 11, Donut and Doc were able to bring him back to life (and Lopez himself mentions that he was fully aware of his time as a scarecrow), which doesn't seem too unlikely considering he mentioned "keeping backups" of himself.
  • Happens again at the end of Singularity. The Labyrinth tricks him into thinking he is an English speaking human, instead of a Spanish speaking robot. With the rest of Red Team now able to understand his insults, him now having to deal with hunger and taste, and has been replace by "Gustavo" as the team's robot, Lopez quickly falls into despair and attempts suicide by jumping off a cliff, which in reality has him fall into a black hole. However, Lopez survived this because black holes actually send you back to the beginning of time, and since Lopez is a robot he survived the experience, spending billions of years alone in space before reuniting with the rest of the Reds and Blues in the Present day.
• Does Not Speak Common: Lopez can only speak in slow and halting Spanish due to a hardware error. No one around him understands any Spanish at all, resulting in much frustration.
• The Dragon: Briefly to O'Malley after losing his head, though that's because he was reprogrammed.
• Driven to Suicide: Tries to kill himself in "Omphalos" due to the Labyrinth's manipulations. Thankfully, he survives and instead just takes The Slow Path to meet back up with the Reds and Blues in the present day.
• Easily Forgiven: Played for Laughs. According to a Freeze-Frame Bonus in "The Federal Army of Chorus", not only does Lopez not care about getting shot by Wash in Recreation, but he actually shows the former Freelancer more respect than he does both Donut and Sarge (who he has labeled as "Idiot" and "Loud Idiot" respectively).
• Everyone Has Standards: Lopez may have nothing but barely disguised contempt for Red Team (and, by extension, the other Reds and Blues), but he balks at actually trying to kill them like Lopez Dos.0 in Season 11.
• The Faceless: Although, being a robot, there's probably nothing under there anyways.
• The Fatalist: Has become this by the time of Season 11.
  Lopez: (to Dos.0 on the prospect of them being rescued) Puedo ser una cabeza en este cañón. O podría ser una cabeza en otro cañón. En este momento ya no me importa. (I can either be a head in this canyon. Or I could be a head in another canyon. At this point I really don't care.)
• Gender Flip: His Epsilon-Double, along with the rest of the Reds and Tex are all misremembered as being the opposite gender in one of Epsilon-Church's iterations seen in "Get Bent".
• Gratuitous Spanish: Caused by a faulty speech unit that made him unable to speak English (though Church managed to override that at a great cost when he possessed his body). In the Epsilon Unit, this happens because Sarge hoped an extra language could give variety.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Becoming the Servile Snarker of Red Team and the Reds and Blues in general has made him far more inquisitive and intelligent than what what an android built to help Project Freelancer's simulation troopers likely would be normally.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Justified due to being Surrounded by Idiots.
• Hero of Another Story: He drifted through space for countless eons before he eventually arrived back on Chorus in the "present," and even excitedly tells the Reds and Blues that he has "many truths to share".
• Insulting from Behind the Language Barrier: This is Lopez's schtick after realizing how idiotic everyone else is. He constantly makes sarcastic comments and direct insults towards everyone, knowing that they can't understand him anyway since none of them speak Spanish and won't know he's insulting them. By Season 11, he claims this is the one good thing about being on Red Team. The one time this fails him is when it is revealed that Locus is bilingual
• Iron Butt Monkey: Lopez gets a lot of damage thrown at him over the course of the series.
• Losing Your Head: Practically a Running Gag with him.
  • For a long time in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, he's nothing more than a head. He can operate a machine gun and build robots anyway.
  • He's reduced to a head once more in Season 11, when he returns alongside Donut and Doc. However, he ends up taking Dos.0's body when the original owner takes over C.C.'s to initiate a rampage.
  • It happens again in Season 12... until he realizes that he can still move his body, to which he puts himself back together and even punches out his decapitator.
  • Once it happens yet again in Season 15, Sarge decides to toss Lopez's head into the ocean fearing he could be captured by the enemy. He inexplicably gets better in Season 16.
• Machine Monotone: Well, he is a typical robot. It's increasingly downplayed as the series goes on, though, with him emoting more in the later seasons.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Since no one on the Rooster Teeth team actually speaks Spanish, Lopez's dialogue is mainly generated mechanically via the online computer translator Babelfish. This leads to some... interesting... results for anyone who does speak the language (for starters, "La" is a female pronoun, so his name would actually be "El Pesado"). It's always played for laughs, especially since the only reason why he's speaking Spanish at all was because of a malfunction in his programming. In fact, at times he dips into Gratuitous French of all things. In the commentary for earlier seasons, Burnie Burns mentioned that Gus Sorola would coach him on his accent.
• Nice Guy: He doesn't get to show it very often due to his low tolerance for stupidity, and being Surrounded by Idiots. However, when around people who are actually competent, Lopez is quite friendly and has even shown himself to be surprisingly selfless at times.
• Not So Above It All: Despite his frustrations with the Reds, and considering himself the Only Sane Man, Lopez frequently proves himself to be just as foolish and petty as the rest of the team.
• Odd Friendship: Downplayed, but Tucker is probably the only member of the Reds and Blues that Lopez really has that much of a positive relationship with. Notably, he saves Tucker from a Fed Soldier in Season 11's penultimate episode, and Tucker is the first one to notice Lopez's absence in "Theogeny".
  • Same goes for Agent Washington. See Easily Forgiven above.
• Official Couple: With Sheila for awhile.
• Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction in Season 12, when Locus reveals that he can understand Spanish, as Lopez had been insulting and snarking at him in Spanish up until that point the moment he calls him "insane".
  Lopez: MIERDA. ES BILINGÜE. POR FAVOR NO ME MATES. (HOLY SHIT. HE'S BILINGUAL. PLEASE DON'T KILL ME.)
• Only Sane Man: Views himself as this compared to the Reds and Blues, and isn't far from the truth. Notably, he's the only one to actually remember Doc disappearing in Season 11.
• Pet the Dog: Never balks at the prospect of helping the people of Chorus, and is surprisingly sarcasm-free in the face of almost certain death during the Last Stand of the Reds and Blues aboard the Staff of Charon.
• The Power of Hate: Well, more like "The Power of Bitterness" rather than anything else, but Lopez seems to have developed full sentience by mere frustration and spite alone.
• Prophetic Name: Only in that Lopez is a Spanish name, and Lopez ends up unable to speak any language except Spanish.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Not just in terms of personality, but Church's possession of him throughout Season 2 would also show that he seems to generally be closer to an android than what is first implied.
• Robo Speak: Always speaks in a flat, mechanical voice. In Spanish. Made even funnier by the fact his actual Spanish dialogue is largely nonsense.
• Sarcastic Devotee: To Sarge, then to O'Malley, then to Sarge again. 'A day of victory' indeed.
• Sarcasm Mode: He's sarcastic ALL THE TIME. Hell, he literally has a Sarcasm Module at 100%, making this trope invoked.
• The Slow Path: It takes him several eons, but after getting tricked into being sent back to the beginning of the universe by falling into a black hole during "Omphalos", he floats around in space until he meets up with the rest of the Reds and Blues in the present.
• The Smart Guy: The other Smart Guy of Red Team, being the only one with any degree of competence.
• Stylistic Suck: His Spanish dialogue intentionally goes for a "Blind Idiot" Translation more often than not, resulting in him speaking in My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels more often than not. This is intentional on a meta level, both for Rule of Funny and to represent how Lopez is only speaking Spanish thanks to a malfunction. Additionally, his dialogue always sounds somewhat stilted (as per Word of God, each word Lopez speaks is translated individually and Burnie Burns speaks that single word in as mechanical a tone he can come up with to sell the idea of Lopez being a malfunctioning robot, with each line of Lopez’s dialogue being effectively “spliced” together) since it’s much funnier to hear Burnie Burns awkwardly stumble his way through poorly translated Spanish in a Machine Monotone than if he were able to easily recite said Spanish in a fluid, naturalistic tone.
• Super Drowning Skills: Slightly averted with the "drowning" part omitted due to Lopez being a robot, but he still sinks like a rock in water regardless.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His view of his situation vis-a-vis the entire cast, and the Red Team in particular. To his credit, he takes this in stride.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Considers the Reds to be this, as he can't seem to stay away from them no matter how hard he may try.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Often killed. A Justified Trope, as said under We Have Reserves.
• Time Abyss: Due to black hole shenanigans at the end of Singularity, he is now literally older than time itself.
• Token Minority: Not only is he the only real robot on both teams even going into the present (as Church and Epsilon are Smart A.I.s), but he's also the only Latino character shown in the entire series until Locus is revealed to be of Hispanic descent in Season 14.
• Took a Level in Badass: Subverted. Lopez was the only member of the Blood Gulch Crew who was actually competent from the start. He just gets the chance to show it off more often in the later seasons.
• Took a Level in Smartass: At the beginning of the series, Lopez was an overly dramatic and serious robot who showed Undying Loyalty to the Reds. However, after getting possessed by Church and injured by the Reds, who thought he was still an enemy at that time, realizing how insane his "father" Sarge is, and temporarily working for O'Malley, Lopez becomes a lot more snarky throughout the rest of the series, constantly making sarcastic remarks and getting away with them since nobody can understand him anyway.
• Troll: While serving as The Dragon to O'Malley, he not only programs their Robot Army to bring him a day of victory in literally one day, meaning they are extraordinarily slow, but he programs them in Spanish, meaning that O'Malley can't get them to operate without his help. When O'Malley asks for his help, he ends up insulting himself, much to the robot army's confusion.
  • He also likes to troll the Red Team, since he can insult them with impunity due to the Language Barrier between them.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Even more so than the rest of the Reds and Blues. Lopez considers them all idiots and seems to outright hate them most of the time, but he also sticks with them throughout the entire Chorus Trilogy, never even balking at the prospect of defending the people of Chorus with them and joining them in the Last Stand aboard the Staff of Charon, and he is legitimately excited to see them again at the end of Singularity.
• We Have Reserves: According to himself, he makes backups of his software when he is especially in danger, so that he can survive whatever problem comes up somehow.
• Would Hit a Girl: He attempted to strangle Grif's sister to death. It failed, but only barely.

John, George, and Alex

John Wayne, George Washington, and Alexander III

Three historical figures that Sarge went back in time to recruit. They appear in The Shisno Paradox.

Voiced By: Rick Robertson (John), Todd Womack (George), Chris Kokkinos (Alex)

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• Always Someone Better: When Sarge tries to act against Private John to get Jax's attention, Jax instead takes notice of John's acting skills and casts him in his movie. Sarge resents John for this.
• Army of The Ages: They’re supposed to be this, but the results of Sarge’s efforts are less than stellar.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Apparently, John Wayne, George Washington, and Alexander the Great were a dream team of time-traveling space warriors in the distant future. The first ends up getting another movie role nearly five centuries after his death, with the second becoming an assistant director (the third just dies).
• Dream Team: Sarge's best choices for an army. Albeit the choices are not optimal - one was an actor who only played badasses (and in fact was rejected by the U.S. Naval Academy), one was an officer instead of a combatant, and the third is clearly already succumbing to what killed him at just 32.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Of course. Private John is even confused once Sarge states he could ride a Mongoose as a distraction. That being said, George somehow manages to work well in a film production.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Private Alex is coughing constantly, and the next time Sarge, Simmons, and Jax appear, they state that he's dead.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Even moreso than the usual Reds and Blues. One's a famous actor known for his roles in western films, one's a commander from the American Revolutionary War, one's a European conqueror slowly succumbing to illness, and they've all been brought to the distant future via time travel.
• Ret-Gone: The Reds and Blues undoing the time paradoxes they created at the end of Singularity erases the events of Season 16 and Season 17 from history, meaning that Sarge never brought them into the future.
• The Unintelligible: Alex can only speak Ancient Macedonian, which no one understands (it's even a lost language, whose only known words are the ones inherited by Ancient Greek).
• Weaksauce Weakness: Alexander the Great, one of history's most famous warriors, is killed by the common cold as a result of his weaker immune system.
  Sarge: Alexander the Overrated!