Red Shirt - Television Tropes & Idioms

In Mobile Suit Gundam, the mass-produced federation mooks were called RGM-79 G Ms, which exploded by the dozens any time they were shown in a fight. Bonus Points because their standard armor was colored like a red T-shirt.
- Occurs in Gundam Seed, in which Athurn's buddy Rusty (who never shows his face or has any dialog) is killed. He's wearing red, which ironically is supposed to be the uniform of ZAFT's elite.
- Aside from those few exceptions, the color red specifically invokes a completely different trope in the Gundam universe.
In Naruto, in several scenes including Kabuto's attempted assassination of Sasuke, several ANBU Black Ops are easily killed. This is to show how powerful the invaders from the Sound and Sand villages actually were.
Funimation voice actor Vic Mignogna wrote a (horribly catchy) song about the Red Shirt anime equivalents, called "Soldier A":
Soldier A, Soldier A
The unsung hero of anime
Hip hooray for Soldier A
He only has one line but saves the day
He's called upon to grunt or yell or scream
Even if his mouth is never seen
Through the fray with ne'er to say
He'll lead the way, he's Soldier A

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Mr. Immortal from Great Lakes Avengers got a Red Shirt for his X-Mas present since, you know, he's a red shirt army by himself...
In an IDW company Star Trek comic, a red shirt security officer named Boyd outright complains about this to Chekov, Bones, and two other security officers. His words: "You're not redshirts, you two are fine. Security doesn't always make it home as much as you guys." In this troper's opinion, Boyd might turn out to be a mauve shirt.

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In Star Munchkin, there is a hireling called a red shirt. Their only use is to die when you lose a battle, thus preventing the "Bad Stuff" from happening to you. However, they have, on a success, a one in six chance of getting overexcited and sacrificing themselves anyway.
- 'The Good, the Bad and the Munchkin has the greenhorn, whose only purpose is to be fed to a monster so you can steal its stuff and run away while it's busy chewing.

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The Finnish Star Trek/Babylon 5 spoof Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning put the Trek redshirts against the B5 security forces. The carnage was horrible.
- The redshirts throughout the Star Wreck series are also given names that reflect their expendable nature, such as "Lt. Suicide," "Sgt. Manshield," and "Lt. Cannonfodder."
Cleverly spoofed in a short Star Trek parody film, ''Steam Trek: The Moving Picture'' (premise: Trek as it would be done 100 years ago by George Melies), where the expendable member of the away team wears a shirt with a target on the back.
- Also, this character is listed in the opening credits as "Ensign Expendable." For some reason, the opening credits were cut out of the You Tube version, but the full parody film can be seen here, under "Films."
Notorious TNG author Stephen Ratliff unironically(?) gave us Ensign Throwaway in his "Marrissa Picard" stories.

Close Fan Works

In the Hell Boy movies the random B.P.R.D. agents who accompany the titular big red guy on his missions all but define redshirt.
This trope was parodied very effectively in Galaxy Quest in the character of Guy Fleegman, "Crewman Number Six" — who is the only cast member NOT shot or killed during the climactic final battle! (Although a bit of time travel makes everyone else better). Lamp Shade Hanging at its finest (also see Plucky Comic Relief).
A film that seriously plays with the concept is Aliens. Who can forget Hudson's "Four more weeks and out" tirade?
- Everyone who fast forwards past it because he's a whiner.
  - Aliens kinda plays it straight with Crowe and Wierzbowski; one line from Crowe (said when he's offscreen), and no lines from poor Ski except a scream.
A discreet spoof in the movie The Running Man: Two contestants wore yellow jumpsuits while two wore red. Guess who died?
And let us not forget Revenge of the Sith — Jedi... frickin Jedi becoming redshirts for the clones to kill. Jedi. I mean, come on, they could at least have died badass deaths, not just being shot a few times.
- An example from the film: While going to confront Darth Sidious, Mace Windu brings three nameless (to those unfamiliar with the Expanded Universe anyway) Jedi who are easily carved up by the Dark Lord.
The countless native African servants and carriers in the Allan Quartermain movie adaptions exist only to be eaten by crocodiles or killed by traps so that the danger can be demonstrated without killing off a main character.
During the opening of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy is accompanied by two random native guides. They don't make it.
In the 2009 Star Trek movie, Kirk (in blue) and Sulu (in gold) are accompanied on a drop mission to take out a planetary drill with a character wearing red armor (to guard against the heat of re-entry). Guess which one of the trio dies?
- At first it seems to be a subversion, as he survives what seems to be the obvious fate of missing the platform and falling to his death from the upper atmosphere of a planet. Unfortunately for the poor guy, it's a Double Subversion; his final fate actually manages to be fairly spectacular. His parachute catches on the platform, and he gets vaporized by the drill.
- To add insult to injury, we later find that crew of the Enterprise are quite capable of teleporting someone falling from the platform.
  - But only after the drill is shut down and has stopped interfering with the teleporter signals.
  - The mission assignement itself is given in a way so similar to the Family Guy quote at the page top This Troper almost expected Olson to go "oh crap" in response.

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Subverted in the Star Trek Expanded Universe novel The Eyes of the Beholders, by A.C. Crispin. The apparent red shirt for a mission not only survives but saves the rest of the away team.
Another literary example: Brilliantly skewered in the James Alan Gardner novel Expendable.
Maybe this troper missed something but the african porters of Congo, the movie of the Crichton novel), seemed to regenerate like clones. "Oh, look, there are three left. Oh, wait, the apes just killed them all. Hey, where did those other two porters come from?"
In the book The Stupidest Angel, one character decides to wear a starfleet command shirt because it's a festive, Christmas-y red colour. Another character even comments on how the redshirts always died in that series. Guess who gets shot in the head when the lead zombie walk's through the door? Here's a hint. He's wearing a red shirt, and it ain't the guy in the santa suit.
David Weber hands out "Redshirt Awards" to fans who spot errors in his books. In the next book, he names a character after the fan, and kills him. Some of the later Honor Harrington books have had entire ships crewed by Redshirts, which then get blown up.
Even though the Warriors series has a strict Anyone Can Die policy (and how), the seldom seen Tribe of Rushing Water is made up of about 75% Red Shirts, who get killed off in bunches pretty much anytime the Tribe is featured in a book.
In the prolouge of Eragon, Arya is accompanied by two guards who are killed in the ambush quite easily.

Close Literature

The redshirt seen at the top of this page is actually a subversion. Lt. Leslie, played by Eddie Paskey, was actually seen in the background of over 50 episodes, and survived a number of away missions. The picture, showing the one where he didn't, gets subverted in the same episode where after his death, Eddie is seen once again walking the Enterprise hallways.
The first broadcast episode of Star Trek ("The Man Trap") has a body count of four minor crewmen, most of whom of course become monster chow shortly after beaming down to the planet. Ironically, the casualties are two blues, a gold and one unknown wearing a hazmat suit.
- In fact, no red shirt deaths occur until the seventh episode. The dubious honor goes to Crewman Mathews, who is pushed into a bottomless pit in "What Are Little Girls Made of?"
- This is either averted or subverted in "A Taste Of Armageddon". Kirk, Spock, and three redshirts beam down to Eminiar VII whereupon landing, are declared casualties of war and sent to be killed. All of them survive.
Later incarnations of Trek (Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager) subverts the term by giving prominent command positions red uniforms. Numerous unimportant crew members do continue to get killed but more often than not they are wearing yellow.
Star Trek Voyager. Averted in the early seasons by giving some screen time to crewmembers who were slated for death in later episodes (i.e. Hogan, Jonas, Carey). But eventually they reverted to bumping off anonymous ensigns by the shuttleload. A notable subversion however occurs in "Latent Image" where the Doctor is guilt-ridden over his choice to save Harry Kim as opposed to the expendable ensign.
- And Harry Kim seems to have been intended as a subversion, as an Ensign without much of a real job on the ship, yet he's a major character. Who never, ever makes it past Ensign (except in alternate futures).
  - ...As opposed to Tom Paris who gets a commission of Lieutenant, a demotion to Ensign, and a new promotion to Lieutenant (again).
In Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Valiant" titular ship is crewed by cadet group called "Red Squad".Guess what happens...
Star Trek Enterprise. The crew never suffered any fatal casualties in the first two seasons (despite incidents like a Romulan stealth mine blowing away a section of the hull), no doubt so as to avoid the 'phaser fodder' cliché. All this changed in the third season Xindi war arc, with eighteen killed in "Azati Prime" alone. The trope is lampshaded in "The Forgotten", when Trip has to write a letter to the parents of a dead crewmember but can't remember much about her, so he keeps getting her mixed up with his Dead Little Sister. There's also two classic redshirt incidents: in "The Council" an away team takes along a MACO when entering one of the mysterious Spheres, and in Season 4 "Daedalus" Reed goes searching through a dark room for a Negative Space Wedgie with an unnamed crewmember – no guessing who gets killed on both occasions. Deliberately parodied in "In A Mirror, Darkly" where Mirror Reed puts on an Original Series redshirt with fatal consequences.
Played straight in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series and averted in one notable example: Helo was originally supposed to die during the miniseries, but the fans took a liking to him so the writers brought him back. Helo has since gotten his own season-long subplot, his own episode and has started a family with one of the core characters, as well as displaying morality that is more admirable and consistent than almost any other character on the show.
- Thanks to the show having Loads And Loads Of Characters, a lot of characters who have been around for a long time can and do die.
Random military types in Doctor Who often are used as cannon fodder. UNIT personnel are frequent victims. In the New Series, they have red hats too.
- This has been subverted a few times too. At least twice the Redshirt Army has beaten aliens the Doctor claimed they couldn't.
In Crime And Punishment shows, the newly deceased Red Shirt only has one week left to go before retirement. At the opposite end of a career-span, the first CSI episode had a Red Shirt who had only been on the job for a week. (Also done in The Bill.)
During the conversation in the page quote, on Lost, Boone was tying red shirts to trees. Eight episodes later, he died (and was the first main character to do so.) Lampshade Hanging and Foreshadowing at the same time.
- This scene is even more ironic because the actor who played Locke had been in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which he wore, you guessed it, a red shirt. He didn't die in the episode. Being that his Star Trek character got court martialed and imprisoned for his poor decisions as Captain which resulted in the deaths of his almost his entire crew and loss of his ship, he definitely doesn't have the right to call Kirk "a piss poor Captain". (Although Kirk had his fair share of court martials as well, he only got a few redshirts killed at a time, not an entire crew in one go).
- The show itself performs many a Lampshade Hanging on its actual red shirts. The characters Scott and Steve, for instance, are always confused by important characters, even after one of them dies (Hurley's eulogy for him boils down to "Sorry I could never remember your name.") The character Dr. Arzt is introduced near the end of season 1 and complains about how everyone (i.e., the main characters) acts like a high school clique. What happens to Arzt? He gets blown up an episode later.
- A final point of irony in this quote comes from the fact that J.J. Abrams (the show's co-creator, writer, executive producer, and director) went on to direct and produce Star Trek XI (coming out 2009.) This troper wonders how many red shirts will be killed in the movie.
- It's taken to pretty much the ultimate level in a season four episode where one Red Shirt after another comes running out of a house during a huge gun battle, and each one is immediately mowed down. What makes it gold is that Sawyer screams at each one to go back in the house, and none of them listen.
- So in conclusion, hopefully any background castaways have learned to duck and cover if one of their fellows starts to do anything more but help out quietly.
- They haven't learned: in the second episode of season 5, Neil "Frogurt" gets hit by a flaming arrow while wearing a red shirt. Sure enough, several more redshirts get killed while the main characters successfully escape into the jungle.
This troper nearly had a heart attack watching a recent episode of Bones when one of the main characters infiltrated a sci-fi convention while wearing a Star Trek red shirt. Then came the car accident...
Any CTU field agent who isn't Jack Bauer or the season's Colonel Makepeace is a red shirt. In season 4 and part of season 5, CTU HQ's security officers actually wore red shirts - that is, until they were all killed at once in a nerve gas attack.
In Combat! they aren't so much red shirts as Redemption Equals Death shirts. In fact, a good way to tell if someone will die is if they are given a name.
- You did that on purpose, didn't you?
Blake's Seven, having been designed in response to Star Trek, featured a character announcing "I am not expendable, I am not stupid, and I am not going."

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In one issue of Toyfare's Twisted Toyfare Theatre, Kirk returns from a mission in which "only a dozen redshirts died," to find himself in the Mirror Universe, where the meek and pragmatic Mirror Kirk is protected by the immortal Redshirts.

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Parodied many times over in filk, from Leslie Fish's "Landing Party Blues" to "Redshirt's Lament":
Tis a gift to wear a gold shirt or a blue, you see
But look, my dear, what they have done to me
Even Engineering would a blessing be
But no, they've made me Security
Whe-en the landing party's gone
I'll be there with my red shirt on
I'll make sure my estate's all orderly
Because that is the last that you'll see of me
- And played with in Trek fanfic. Typical example here.

Close Music

Paranoia has the players taking the roles of Troubleshooters tasked with the job of shooting trouble wherever it should arise in Alpha Complex. The starting rank is "Red". As each character is part of a six-pack of clones, the body count can rack up astronomically quickly...
This RPG motivational poster explains it all...
Brik Wars gives Hero units the explicit ability to make other units Redshirt.
A minor setting in "Warhammer 40000" is Kill Team, where a squad of highly trained specialists go up against countless enemies, and they can purchase upgrades. The most useful: Red Shirt, a minor character who, according to the other Kill Team members, is probably going to get killed in a variety of gory ways. Can be averted in that if the Red Shirt survives, he becomes a member of the Team, and upgraded accordingly.

Close Tabletop Games

In Gears Of War, Carmine (whose name is a shade of red) is a rookie squadmember who is the only character to wear a helmet and mask. He's also the first squad member to die in the game (and actually 1 of the only 2 characters who die), shot in the head by a sniper after the first couple of levels.
- Repeated in part two, when Carmine's brother (who joins your team) dies even more horribily. The first Carmine's Red Shirt status was Lampshaded before that by a dialogue between the brother and Dom. Parodied in the VgCats webcomic.
Almost every friendly NPC in the first-person shooter Half Life was a redshirt. The security guards would tag along and give support, but their low hit points and wimpy pistols meant they never lasted long. And the scientists, oh those poor scientists. Almost all of them only existed to die in scripted set-pieces to remind you of how insanely dangerous everything was.
- One of the guards, however, got his own spin-off. You don't mess with Barney.
Parodied in Space Quest 5, where miscellaneous crew members all wear blue shirt, and Roger Wilco, the protagonist (and ship's captain) is the one who wears a red shirt. Guess who gets shot at all the time?
Droole: This may be dangerous, lets split up so we can cover more territory.
Roger: Don't you think we should stick together?
Droole: Only if you do a quick wardrobe change, sir.
Roger: This is hardly a time play Fashion critic.
Droole: It's not that, it's your shirt... it's... well... so red... It's bad luck.
(They separate, only for Roger to be attacked later.)
Star Trek Voyager - Elite Force lampshades this by giving the "Redshirt Award" to the teammate who died the most during a Capture the Flag or Team Deathmatch game.
The amateur PC Adventure Game Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment, which is pretty much what it sounds like, takes the trope to its logical extreme by making redshirts into a commodity cloned and sold in 5-packs. They die in a great number of interesting ways. In fact it's actually impossible for an away mission to end any way but the death of the redshirt.
Jean Jack Gibson, from SNATCHER. His outfit is more of a burgundy-orange, but it doesn't change the fact that his only purpose in-story is to be brutally murdered half an hour into the game.◊
In Mass Effect, the introductory mission on Eden Prime begins with a squadmate named Richard L. Jenkins. Guess what happens the first time you encounter any enemies. Go on, guess.
Real-life game related example: Introvision Software, creators of Uplink, included a bunch of bonus materials with the game. The catch? They (weakly) encrypted them via a encryption called "Red Shirt". Guess how long they expected it to take the fans to break the encryption? They also encrypted some game data (most notably, saved games) with the method, and replaced it with an update, called Red Shirt 2, in later versions. Their next game, Darwinia, also use a modified version of Red Shirt 2 for it's saved games.
Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis lampshaded this. All the named characters who died appear in the ending...in pictures, wearing red shirts.

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Completely subverted in Starslip Crisis with the introduction of Quine, a "Protocol Officer" who's in charge of building relationships with new species. While he has a tendency to die on every "away mission", upon death, a clone is awakened on ship with all of his memories up to the time of death intact. The trope is outright inverted by the fact that he's the only member on the ship with this privilege (due to the rarity and importance of the protocol officer).
Subverted in Schlock Mercenary, where the appropriately red-shirted Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-Commander) Der Trihs (Red Shirt spelled backwards) is repeatedly injured in various grievous ways, including being reduced to a head-in-a-jar a couple of times, but never actually dies. Instead, he actually 'wins the game' by retiring from the mercenary business to live with a pretty girl on a paradisaical vacation-planet. It is revealed at one point that his skull is quite nearly impervious to harm.
Intragalactic has its Enstant Ensigns, who are apparently mass-produced disposable clones is stylish red outfits. They work hard and die with great efficiency, some even climbing into their disposal Ensacks before the ship crashes, to save time. Then, when the ship docks, they are taken off to the Ensignerator.
Officers Getskilled and Oneshot in Girly. Amusingly, neither of them die, and Getskilled goes on to become a minor part of the ensemble until at last he meets his eventual fate. It's pretty cool.
Parodied several times in Sluggy Freelance:
- This strip from the "Stick Figures in Spaaaaace" series of stick-figure Filler Strips.
- And this one.
- During Oceans Unmoving, Quartermaster Flipp complains about not getting any characterization... and is knocked overboard to certain death in the very next strip. Of course, it's subverted when, after the whole plot and the deaths of many major and minor characters, it's revealed that he didn't die, but instead is sent through time.
- Sluggy has been on long enough to have hit this trope dozens of times. Without even bringing in the number of disposable elves who die in the formerly annual Christmas messes, there's:
  - "We'll be sending some expendable crewmembers to investigate..."
  - "Wow! It knows to go after the extras first!"
I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space features at least two strips lampshading this trope, as seen here.
Played with in this Phil Foglio comic:

"Snapper" Mc Fipt: Shipman. You know when a monster or ninja or something sneaks on board and attacks a crewman to show how evil it is? Well, the person it attacks is Mc Fipt, and he's getting pretty tired of it.

Parodied in Legostar Galactica where one of the main charactors is Ensign Redshirt and is continually being killed yet is always brought back to life.
Played with in Strip 480 of Metroid: Third Derivative in which Joey asks for red paint so he can paint a red shirt on all the other degenerates.

Close Webcomics

Perfectly parodied in the South Park episode "City on the Edge of Forever" the school bus is trapped teetering on the edge of a cliff and the bus driver leaves to find help, ordering the kids to remain on the bus or else a big black monster will eat them. After a long time of waiting, the children grow nervous and antsy. One of the kids- a child wearing an actual Star Trek red shirt outfit can't take the waiting and leaves the bus to find help. No black monster appears and the kid even waves back to the other kids, causing remarks from the main characters about how the bus driver must have lied... only for the big black monster to immediately appear and eat the red shirted kid.
Parodied in Futurama, "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", in which the entire Star Trek The Original Series cast is threatened by a jealous energy being, but only Welshy (a parody of Jonas Quinn for Scotty), who's dressed in the classic Red Shirt, gets killed. Three times over. Additionally, Zapp Brannigan's entire brigade all wear red which accurately shows how he often sacrifices them freely and considers all missions suicide missions.
- In the same episode, a flashback of the so-called Star Trek Wars is shown where some officials are throwing redshirted Star Trek devotees into a volcano while chanting "He's dead Jim."
Parodied in Kim Possible, in the Trapped In TV Land episode called "Dimension Twist", when Kim is temporarily sent to a Star Trek-esque tv show and appears in a red uniform:
Wade: This is the part of the show where they pick series regulars to go on a mission. Just make sure you're not the one wearing...
Kim: ...a red shirt?
Pseudo-Kirk: And... (to Kim) you! You're expendable.
Parodied in the same Family Guy episode that the quote at the top of this article comes from: when Peter is running in the road with William Shatner, the latter gets hit and killed by a car. The camera then pans to Ensign Ricky, who declares: "I did not see that coming."
- In the episode "There's Something About Paulie", it is more subtly parodied. After Louis’s and Peter's car get blown up with a valet inside, Peter remarks that nobody important got hurt, while the valet's red vest slowly falls to the ground.
Star Wars The Clone Wars made use of this trope in the episode Lair of Grievous, in which Jedi Master Kit Fisto was accompanied on his mission by his never-before-mentioned Padawan Nahdar Vebb and a group of clone troopers. Predictably enough, each of them had died a horrible death by the end of the episode. The writers were aware of this convention and gave the clones wore red-striped body armour.
Lampshaded endlessly in an episode of The Venture Bros, where Mauve Shirt Henchmen #21 and #24 repeatedly taunt the previously unseen Henchman #1 for his red shirt status. By the end of the episode, #1 is beaten to death by Brock Samson, as the genre savvy #21 and #24 miraculously escape harm.
The Red Shirt gets his revenge in Robot Chicken with a Star Trek sketch. When the crew teleported down to a planet to survive the Enterprise exploding, the crew reasons that to survive one of them must be sacrificed as food. Obviously they choose the Red Shirt first, but the Red Shirt tells them off by saying "On behalf of all the redshirts that fell before me, it makes me proud to say the following sentence... I'm the only one who brought a gun." He proceeds to kill and eat them all.
Subverted during "Garbage Trek", a Star Trek-mocking episode from The Backyardigans. Tasha wore a red dress◊ (meaning she was the captain), yet she survived.
- To be fair, the show IS intended for 5 year olds.
Spoofed mercilessly in Sev Trek: Puss in Boots (the Australian CGI spoof of Star Trek The Next Generation). An alien asks the Enterforaprize to supply hosts for its young, as they're reputed to have "endless supplies of expendable ensigns". After the offer is curtly refused ("Each ensign is a valuable member of our crew!") the alien runs rampant on the ship, causing the death of 47 ensigns, mainly due to Failsafe Failures and the lousy aim of the main characters.

Close Western Animation

Cheat Commandoes parodies this with its Green Helmets. "We've got, like, fifty of them!"
Lampshaded in Stone Trek: Every time a redshirt dies, a "Dead Redshirt Count" is shown.
- Played with in the episode Star Trekkin just about everyone but Kirkstone, Sprock, and Rc Coy (sp?) dies, though Sprock is transformed into one of the creepy jellyfish (his head on their tentacles)
Lampshaded in ''Worms Trek Rhapsody. One gets hit by a Klingon missile (Scotty's line "Hit by Klingon missiles, no!"), one gets fired out of a torpedo bay ("Photon torpedooooooos!") and other instances this troper can't remember.

Close Web Animation

Finding creative ways to kill off redshirts was part of the fun for some of the writers of the League Of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions (other writers thought we were sick.)

Close Web Original

Redshirts getting killed just because are rather standard in pretty much any fiction portraying a battle or war, possibly somewhat reasonable, because... well, it is a battle or war, after all.
Honorable mention must go to the black guy in survival horror stories. If he dies first, you know how the rest of the story is going to go. If he doesn't, all bets are off.
Point of interest: In honor of the new Star Trek movie, a company has released a Red Shirt cologne. The tagline? Because Tomorrow May Never Come. The packaging features a red-shirted officer in a set of crosshairs.
This shirt.
- Also, Exactly What It Says On The Tin.

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