| 1 | [[WMG:[[center: [- ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'' '''[[Characters/RedVsBlue Main Character Index]]'''\ |
| 2 | [[Characters/RedVsBlueBloodGulchCrew Blood Gulch Crew]]\ |
| 3 | '''Red Team''' | [[Characters/RedVsBlueBlueTeam Blue Team]] ([[Characters/RedVsBlueLeonardLChurch Leonard L. Church]])\ |
| 4 | Supporting Cast\ |
| 5 | [[Characters/RedVsBlueProjectFreelancer Project Freelancer]] ([[Characters/RedVsBlueSimulationTroopers Simulation Troopers]] | [[Characters/RedVsBlueArtificialIntelligences Artificial Intelligences]]) | [[Characters/RedVsBlueCharonIndustries Charon Industries]] | [[Characters/RedVsBlueChorus Chorus]] | [[Characters/RedVsBlueCosmicPowers Cosmic Powers]] | [[Characters/RedVsBlueAllianceOfDefense Alliance of Defense]] | [[Characters/RedVsBlueOthers Others]]-]]]]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Tropes pertaining to the Red Team of ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue''. '''All spoilers for the first fifteen seasons will be unmarked below.''' |
| 8 | |
| 9 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 10 | |
| 11 | [[folder:Sarge]] |
| 12 | !Super-Colonel Sarge |
| 13 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sarge_s15.png]] |
| 14 | [[caption-width-right:350:''"You just got Sarge'd!"'']] |
| 15 | |
| 16 | ->''"Continue with Operation: Meatshield. Remember, just 'cause your bones are broken doesn't mean it won't stop bullets from hitting me."'' |
| 17 | -->'''Voiced By:''' Matt Hullum, Anna Hullum ("Get Bent") |
| 18 | |
| 19 | The [[TheLeader 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. [[HisNameReallyIsBarkeep 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). |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Besides being DrillSergeantNasty and TheNeidermeyer, Sarge is best described as "essentially every '50s stereotype character melted down into one." He exhibits characteristics of a MadScientist 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 SuperSoldier 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. |
| 22 | ---- |
| 23 | !!Associated Tropes: |
| 24 | * TenMinuteRetirement: 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 RousingSpeech to the others about why they are all still there and will get back at Command for using them.. |
| 25 | * AmazonChaser: His reaction to [[WarGod Kalirama]] [[MultiArmedAndDangerous the]] [[RedBaron Undying]]? "Marry me!" |
| 26 | * AmbiguouslyBi: 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 was genuinly disappointed when the naked Kaikaina was getting dressed after appearing naked on camera. |
| 27 | * AndThenWhat: 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. |
| 28 | * AntiHero: An AxCrazy DrillSergeantNasty who treats his team like crap isn't the most likely of heroes. However, he has more than proven himself over the series' course. |
| 29 | * AscendedExtra: In the first season, Sarge was a recurring character who rarely appeared. It wasn't until Season 2 that Sarge gained his current prominence. |
| 30 | * AwesomeByAnalysis: Along with some BatDeduction. 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. |
| 31 | -->'''Sarge''': So the Meta and Washington have teamed up to kill Donut and Lopez, and now they're holding Simmons and Doc prisoner.\ |
| 32 | '''Grif''': We have to help 'em! Wait, Doc? How do you know he's there?\ |
| 33 | '''Sarge''': Please, Grif, it's so obvious. I don't wanna insult your intelligence by explaining every little detail. |
| 34 | * AxCrazy: How else would you describe someone who has "a boner for murder"? He also enjoys tormenting Grif ''way'' too much. |
| 35 | * BadassInDistress: 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. |
| 36 | * BadassNormal: 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 BadassNormal in ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''. |
| 37 | * BadBoss: His antics have nearly gotten his team (mainly [[SitcomArchNemesis Grif]]) killed on multiple occasions. Simmons even questions why they starved to death under his watch. |
| 38 | * BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: Very briefly in the finale to ''Singularity'', [[spoiler:once the Labyrinth throws him into the horrors of the Normandy landings, with him experiencing exactly what a [[WarIsHell 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 [[INeedToGoIronMyDog giving excuses]] and/or [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere refusing to participate]], a far cry from Sarge's normal BloodKnight tendencies. However, just like Grif, when Wash underlines how she might die without all their help, both of them [[TrueCompanions reluctantly agree to help, albeit while still complaining about it]].]] |
| 39 | * BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: [[spoiler:After giving him a taste of insufferably dull and monotonous civilian life, the Labyrinth answers Sarge's desire to [[IJustWantToBeSpecial "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]]. |
| 40 | * BeenThereShapedHistory: 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. |
| 41 | * BerserkButton: 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. |
| 42 | * BloodKnight: The only member of the Blood Gulch crew passionate about warfare. Also, in ''Revelation'', he seems more than happy to challenge '''[[TheDreaded 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 FaceHeelTurn and joins the Blues and Reds. |
| 43 | * BondOneLiner: Spoofed. He frequently attempts to use his CharacterCatchphrase "You just got Sarge'd!" as one of these, but bungles it every time. |
| 44 | * BoisterousBruiser: "I love blood and violence! I've got a boner for murder!" |
| 45 | * BrokenPedestal: For Simmons in ''Recreation''. It becomes a RebuiltPedestal in ''Revelation''. |
| 46 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: Despite his quirks and lackluster leadership skills, he is a capable combatant, [[GadgeteerGenius has built multiple robots and at least a couple combat vehicles,]] and [[WeCanRebuildHim even turned Simmons into a]] {{Cyborg}}. |
| 47 | * CharacterCatchphrase: |
| 48 | ** Though inconsistently used, "You just got Sarge'd!" |
| 49 | ** Uses "Dirtbag" to describe the enemy (or anybody who just happens to be pissing him off) on a fairly regular basis. |
| 50 | ** "Today is a good day to die!" |
| 51 | * CharacterDeath: [[spoiler:Sarge dies halfway though ''Restoration'', saving Caboose from The Meta, being fatally wounded in the process.]] |
| 52 | * CharacterDevelopment: |
| 53 | ** 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. |
| 54 | ** 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. |
| 55 | *** 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 TrueCompanions count for a lot. |
| 56 | ** 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 [[FaceHeelTurn temporarily joining the Blues and Reds]] in their vendetta against the [=UNSC=]. Sarge then [[HeelFaceTurn switches back to the side of the Blood Gulch Crew]] [[EveryoneHasStandards 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. |
| 57 | ** His Labyrinth illusion in ''Singularity'' [[spoiler:helps show how Sarge has struggled with his [=PTSD=] over the years and how his BloodKnight 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]]. |
| 58 | ** The biggest one though is in ''Restoration''. [[spoiler:He finally comes to see Caboose as "one of them" instead of just a Blue. When presented with the chance to abandon Caboose to die to save himself and the Reds, he goes back to save him, being fatally wounded in the process. As he dies, he [[YouAreInCommandNow declares Simmons the new leader of Red Team]], saying [[SoProudOfYou he's proud of him]], and admits to Grif he was always mean to him and hard on him because [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre he knew he could be better and never stopped believing in him]], even when Grif didn't believe in himself]]. |
| 59 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: In the first season, he was a mere DrillSergeantNasty 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 Creator/RLeeErmey rather than his trademark Southern drawl. |
| 60 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Mainly PlayedForLaughs. 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. |
| 61 | * {{CloudCuckoolander}}: Has his moments where he almost rivals ''[[TheDitz Caboose]]'' for this role within the Blood Gulch Crew. |
| 62 | * ColonelBadass: At the end of Season 12, Doyle promotes Sarge to Colonel, meaning that he outranks Grif again. [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] when Temple promotes him to the [[SarcasmMode totally real]] rank of Super Colonel. |
| 63 | * ColonelKilgore: Parodied, along with GeneralRipper and KnightTemplar. 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 ForeverWar even when forced to work together. The eventual reveal that the war is nothing but a training scenario leaves him momentarily almost crossing the DespairEventHorizon. The effect working in the army has had on his life is even brought up by Caboose in ''Recreation'': |
| 64 | -->'''Sarge''': What kind of car doesn't have a massive cannon on it?\ |
| 65 | '''Caboose''': All kinds of cars. ''Most'' kinds of cars.\ |
| 66 | '''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!\ |
| 67 | '''Caboose''': ...I think you've been in the military a really long time.\ |
| 68 | '''Sarge''': Yep. [[ComicallyMissingThePoint It's been a good run!]] |
| 69 | * CoolOldGuy: A near-sociopathic and {{Cloudcuckoolander}} version of this. Also crosses into BoisterousBruiser at times. |
| 70 | * CrazyPrepared: |
| 71 | ** 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. |
| 72 | ** 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. |
| 73 | * CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: 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. |
| 74 | * DeathSeeker: 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. |
| 75 | * DespairEventHorizon: |
| 76 | ** 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''. |
| 77 | ** 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''. |
| 78 | * DisappearedDad: He ran off to join the army because he didn't want to be around his kid. Turns out his kid is [[WebAnimation/DeathBattle Boomstick]]. Though whether or not this canon has yet to be confirmed. |
| 79 | * DrillSergeantNasty: Naturally - it's in his name. |
| 80 | * DueToTheDead: |
| 81 | ** 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). |
| 82 | ---> Rest in peace... dirtbag. |
| 83 | ** [[spoiler:He gets this himself upon his own death, with Grif and Simmon burying him at Blood Gulch. Simmons even included a button that when pushed plays grief-themed insults in Sarge's southern accent. After the final battle with The Meta, Sarge's broken shotgun is added to his grave.]] |
| 84 | * EasilyForgiven: In spite of the KickTheDog moment mentioned below, people seem to forgive him, or at least let him off the hook, by the next meeting of the teams. |
| 85 | * EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Is only ever referred to as "Sarge." [[HisNameReallyIsBarkeep Turns out that is his name.]] |
| 86 | * EveryoneHasStandards: |
| 87 | ** 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 RevengeBeforeReason attitude. |
| 88 | ** 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. |
| 89 | * {{Expy}}: He started off as one for [[Film/FullMetalJacket Gunnery Sergeant Hartman]], being a mean-spirited DrillSergeantNasty who took a special interest in tormenting an overweight and incompetent soldier under his command. Matt Hullum even initially voiced the character with a Creatir/RLeeErmey impression. This faded as his {{Cloudcuckoolander}} traits were increasingly exaggerated. |
| 90 | * FaceHeelTurn: 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. |
| 91 | * TheFaceless: Like almost everyone else in the series, he never removes his helmet. |
| 92 | * FailedASpotCheck: 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 [[HypocriticalHumor of keeping alert]]. |
| 93 | * FantasticRacism: |
| 94 | ** His hatred for the Blues borders on this. |
| 95 | ** He also has a hatred for anyone wearing white armor, like the Meta and Wyoming. |
| 96 | * AFatherToHisMen: 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. |
| 97 | -->'''Sarge''': You bastards stay away from my men! If anybody's gonna kill 'em, it's gonna be ''me!'' |
| 98 | * FiringOneHanded: Occasionally does this with his ShortRangeShotgun, whether for RuleOfCool or to hold something with his free hand. |
| 99 | * {{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. |
| 100 | * {{Foil}}: To [[KnightInSourArmor 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, [[BadBoss are verbally]] (and often even ''physically'') [[TheNeidermeyer abusive towards their subordinates]] ([[JerkWithAHeartOfGold though they do genuinely care for their soldiers deep down]]), and have [[HairTriggerTemper troubling anger issues]]. However, while Sarge blindly hates anything associated with the Blues, Church [[HatesEveryoneEqually hates the Reds, his own allies, and everyone else in Blood Gulch]] [[ItsPersonal for far more personal and intimate reasons]]. |
| 101 | * FreudianExcuse: |
| 102 | ** It is heavily implied that Sarge suffers from severe [[ShellShockedVeteran PTSD]] that left him unable to function outside of the military. |
| 103 | ** 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. |
| 104 | ** His fear of heights stems from the fact that jumping out of ships in high orbit is crazy shit. |
| 105 | * FreudianTrio: Probably works like this. Simmons is the Superego, serving as the mediator between Sarge (the Id) and Grif (the Ego). |
| 106 | * FriendlyEnemy: After Season 8, he ''tries'' to act like the Blood Gulch Reds and Blues are still bitter enemies, but it just doesn't take. |
| 107 | -->'''Epsilon-Church:''' I don't get it, does he still think we're fighting or something? |
| 108 | * GadgeteerGenius: 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. |
| 109 | * GenderFlip: 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". |
| 110 | * HairTriggerTemper: He's very easy to enrage, especially if you're [[ButtMonkey Grif]] |
| 111 | * HeelRealization: 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. |
| 112 | * HeroicBSOD: 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. |
| 113 | * HeroicComedicSociopath: "'''I LOVE BLOOD AND VIOLENCE!!! I'VE GOT A BONER FOR MURDER!!!'''" |
| 114 | * HiddenDepths: |
| 115 | ** Season 15 implies that he's subconsciously aware of the effects being in the army for so long has had on his life. |
| 116 | --> '''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!\ |
| 117 | ''({{beat}})''\ |
| 118 | '''Sarge:''' Anyway, where was I? |
| 119 | ** 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. |
| 120 | ** Season 17 reveals he's a fan of Creator/NeilGaiman and other books. |
| 121 | --> ''(Both Grif and Simmons [[LampshadeHanging turn to him in surprise]])''\ |
| 122 | '''Sarge:''' ''(defensively)'' ...What? I read! |
| 123 | ** Speaking of Season 17, his Labyrinth illusion reveals that for all of Sarge's BloodKnight tendencies, [[spoiler: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 [[WarIsHell "real war."]] Notably, he starts shouting and panicking when the Labyrinth shoves him into the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Normandy landings]]]]. |
| 124 | * HisNameReallyIsBarkeep: 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. [[TheUnreveal We don't get to hear it]], but judging by the following conversation, it's [[TheUnpronounceable quite unlike any other name out there.]] |
| 125 | * HonestJohnsDealership: 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. |
| 126 | * {{Hypocrite}}: He is the most [[AxCrazy aggressive]] and [[BloodKnight violent]] of the Blood Gulch Crew, often [[HairTriggerTemper looking for a fight]], boasting how [[BlatantLies 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: [[YesMan Simmons]], who usually sees how deluded Sarge is, but is an insecure sycophant; [[LazyBum Grif]], who is usually too exasperated and/or lazy to actually try to break through Sarge's delusions; [[TheDitz Donut]], who is just too dumb to notice; [[OnlySaneMan Lopez]], who actually ''does'' call Sarge out, but can only speak Spanish, and is therefore never actually understood. |
| 127 | ** During ''Singularity'', he's by far the most hesitant to forgive [[spoiler: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 EasilyForgiven]]. |
| 128 | * IRejectYourReality: 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 CannonFodder 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. |
| 129 | * ImageSong: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tHLxEv6_ik "Sarge's Blues"]]. |
| 130 | * IMeantToDoThat: Tries to play off his defection to the Blues and Reds as some sort of master plan to save everyone. No one buys it. |
| 131 | * ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: [[spoiler:The Meta stabs him through a door with Tucker's sword in ''Restoration''. This proves to be a fatal injury, with Sarge having just enough time to say goodbye to Caboose, Simmons, and Grif before dying.]] |
| 132 | * InHarmsWay: When Doc brings up that his [[WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheRecollection 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 TrueCompanions along with the fact that Valhalla was "getting stale anyway." |
| 133 | * InsaneTrollLogic: 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. |
| 134 | * IrrationalHatred: 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. |
| 135 | * ItHasBeenAnHonor: In Season 16, [[spoiler:after Carolina causes a TimeCrash 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.]] |
| 136 | * ItsRainingMen: Was [[ElitesAreMoreGlamorous 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''. |
| 137 | -->'''Simmons:''' You have a fear of heights? Didn't you use to jump out of ships in high orbit during the war?\ |
| 138 | '''Sarge:''' And how do you think I developed that fear? That shit was ''crazy!'' |
| 139 | * JerkassToOne: 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. |
| 140 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Sarge may be an insane DrillSergeantNasty 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. |
| 141 | * KickTheDog: |
| 142 | ** 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. |
| 143 | ** He murdered his superior Lemons, under the assumption he was a Blue. |
| 144 | ** 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. |
| 145 | * TheKirk: 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. |
| 146 | * LargeHam: ''Very'' enthusiastic about his love of war, and goes all out to proclaim it. |
| 147 | * LeeroyJenkins: His mentality when fighting Freckles in Season 11. Attacking a ''[[HumongousMecha MANTIS]]'' on foot isn't exactly a prudent strategy. |
| 148 | * {{Leitmotif}}: "Rally", which plays whenever Sarge gives a RousingSpeech. |
| 149 | * LetsYouAndHimFight: Gets into a shooting match with [[HumongousMecha Freckles]] in Season 11. [[CurbStompBattle Or rather, he's on the receiving end of a]] MacrossMissileMassacre [[DisproportionateRetribution after pointing a gun at said robot.]] |
| 150 | * LovableTraitor: 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"). |
| 151 | * MadScientist: Sarge is capable of creating robots and turning some of his own soldiers into cyborgs. You'd think he could be able [[ReedRichardsIsUseless to use his impressive technical prowess for profit.]] Maybe then they could afford something to eat at Red Base. |
| 152 | * MadeOfIron: 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. |
| 153 | * TheMillstone: 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 EnemyMine situation. This mainly happened in the early seasons, though it still pops up in recent seasons, most notably Season 15. |
| 154 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: PlayedForLaughs in "Self-Fulfilling Odyssey" when he's initially freaking out over starting to remember Wash, Carolina, and Kaikaina. |
| 155 | -->'''Sarge''': ([[FunnyBackgroundEvent 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?! |
| 156 | * TheNeidermeyer: 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. |
| 157 | * NeverMyFault: 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. |
| 158 | ** Once shot Simmons with his shotgun, then blamed Simmons for bleeding on the Red Base floor. |
| 159 | ** 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!" |
| 160 | ** 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 ([[TheThingThatWouldNotLeave 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. |
| 161 | ** 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 [[ImplausibleDeniability there was only so much he could do.]] |
| 162 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Matt Hullum initially voiced Sarge with a nasally Creator/RLeeErmey impression. VocalEvolution resulted in his voice shifting into a more generic Southern accent. |
| 163 | * NoIndoorVoice: He's HotBlooded 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. |
| 164 | * NoodleIncident: 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. |
| 165 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: 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. |
| 166 | * OddFriendship: |
| 167 | ** While it's primarily limited to the [=PSAs=], Sarge and [[CloudCuckoolander Caboose]] actually get along quite well as the series goes on. |
| 168 | ** Out of the Blood Gulch Crew, he probably gets along the best with [[TagalongKid Jax Jonez]] during both Season 15 and ''The Shisno Paradox'' because of his own desire to be an actor. |
| 169 | * OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: He was once part of the [=UNSC's=] most elite non-SuperSoldier 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. |
| 170 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: [[spoiler: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]]. |
| 171 | * OverlyLongName: 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 [[RuleOfFunny the fifth letter is an emoji]]. |
| 172 | * OvershadowedByAwesome: 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. |
| 173 | * PetTheDog: 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 TeamDad to both the Reds and the Blues. |
| 174 | * PrecisionFStrike: Sarge drops the F-bomb exactly once during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', though he's a bit more liberal with it afterwards. |
| 175 | -->'''Simmons''': Sarge, I'm not sure Grif knows what he's talking about.\ |
| 176 | '''Sarge''': Grif doesn't know what he's talking about, eh? [[SarcasmMode Stop the fuckin' presses.]] |
| 177 | * PutOnABus: He spends most of the first half of Season 1 at Command for nebulous reasons, eventually returning in "After Church". |
| 178 | * RousingSpeech: |
| 179 | ** 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. |
| 180 | ** Later, in Episode 20 of Season 10 he comes up with one that convinces Washington that they need to go help [[AFriendInNeed 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 TrueCompanions. |
| 181 | * SelfBotchedCatchPhrase: Provides the page quote after he accidentally interrupts it by causing an explosion. |
| 182 | -->[[LampshadeHanging "God dammit, I messed up my one-liner!"]] |
| 183 | * SergeantRock: After a ''lot'' of CharacterDevelopment, he grows into this role, especially in Seasons 8 and 10. |
| 184 | * ShellShockedVeteran: 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. |
| 185 | * SkewedPriorities: |
| 186 | ** 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. |
| 187 | ** His hatred of Blues easily kept overcoming his reason before they achieved a FriendlyEnemy 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''. |
| 188 | * SouthernFriedPrivate: 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. |
| 189 | * SuccessThroughInsanity: 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.'' |
| 190 | * SupportingLeader: After significant CharacterDevelopment in ''Revelation'', he becomes this for the Reds and Blues. |
| 191 | * TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain: 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. |
| 192 | * TookALevelInKindness: 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 PetTheDog moments afterwards. |
| 193 | * ToughLove: [[spoiler:He admits after being fatally wounded that his bullying of Grif was because Sarge recognized he had a lot of potential that he was too lazy to use, and Sarge wanted to him to live up to it.]] |
| 194 | * TheUnpronounceable: 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. |
| 195 | -->'''Jax''': Seriously. Is that like Russian? Scandinavian? Pig Latin?\ |
| 196 | '''Sarge''': My family history ain't part of the deal.\ |
| 197 | '''Jax''': How do you even spell it? It sounded like 57 syllables!\ |
| 198 | '''Sarge''': Well, you need a Mandarin keyboard to get it exactly right, and the fifth letter is an emoji. |
| 199 | * VitriolicBestBuds: 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. [[spoiler:As he dies, Sarge admits he only bullied Grif because he wanted to force him to live up to his potential, having recognized his intelligence and competence from the beginning.]] |
| 200 | * VocalEvolution: In Season 1, he just does a ruff copy of ''the'' DrillSergeantNasty Creator/RLeeErmey. Then Matt Hullum went to that trademark Southern drawl. His voice also has gotten increasingly deeper. |
| 201 | * WeaponBasedCharacterisation: [[DrillSergeantNasty Sarge]] almost exclusively uses his [[ShortRangeShotgun shotgun]]. He's a BloodKnight 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. |
| 202 | * WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Claims to have developed a fear of heights from a career as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. |
| 203 | * WithCatlikeTread: Sarge's attempts at stealth amount to charging at the enemy while yelling "Sneak attack! Hurrah!" and shooting them with his noisy shotgun. |
| 204 | * WouldntHitAGirl: 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''. |
| 205 | -->'''Grif''' ''(terrified)'' What do we do Sarge?\ |
| 206 | '''Sarge:''' ''(concerned)'' I dunno, I've never hit a girl in my life!\ |
| 207 | '''Simmons:''' ''(terrified)'' [[CurbStompBattle Yeah, I noticed! Try harder!]] |
| 208 | * YoungerThanTheyLook: In the fourth [=PSA=] released during Season 13, he claims to be 29. Church doesn't buy it for a moment. |
| 209 | [[/folder]] |
| 210 | |
| 211 | [[folder:Simmons]] |
| 212 | !Captain Richard "Dick" Simmons |
| 213 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/simmons_s15.png]] |
| 214 | [[caption-width-right:350:''"[[ArcWords You ever wonder why we're here?]]"'']] |
| 215 | |
| 216 | ->''"You're both an excellent leader and an attractive man, sir!"'' |
| 217 | -->'''Voiced By:''' Gus Sorola, Lindsay Jones ("Get Bent") |
| 218 | |
| 219 | Sarge's [[NumberTwo right-hand man]] and [[ProfessionalButtKisser 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 "[[OnlySaneMan 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. |
| 220 | |
| 221 | 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." |
| 222 | |
| 223 | 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. |
| 224 | |
| 225 | 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. |
| 226 | |
| 227 | 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. |
| 228 | |
| 229 | |
| 230 | ---- |
| 231 | !!Associated Tropes: |
| 232 | * AbusiveParents: 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." |
| 233 | * AmbiguouslyBi: While Simmons has shown attraction towards women, he and Grif might be ''more'' than VitriolicBestBuds, as suggested by Rooster Teeth. [[spoiler: 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 CallBack 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. |
| 234 | * BadassBookworm: 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. |
| 235 | * BeneathTheMask: O'Malley's possession of him reveals a ''lot'' of SuppressedRage, mainly directed at Sarge. It gradually surfaces following this until Sarge becomes a BrokenPedestal for him in ''Recreation''. |
| 236 | * BookSmart: He is technically-minded and knows about computers and physics, though he does poorly on timed tests. |
| 237 | * BoomerangBigot: A RunningGag during ''Recreation'' had him insult robots in front of Lopez, in spite of the fact Simmons is a HollywoodCyborg. Eventually, Simmons is able to smooth things over with him by bringing this fact up, only to piss off Lopez again when he (accidentally) [[HereWeGoAgain makes a racist remark about Mexicans.]] |
| 238 | * BrokenPedestal: 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 RebuiltPedestal in the following season, particularly after Sarge's RousingSpeech. |
| 239 | * ButtMonkey: While not as bad as [[LazyBum Grif]], [[AmbiguouslyGay Donut]], and [[ForgettableCharacter Doc]], he definitely has his moments. His entire attempts to lead or [[PaperThinDisguise both]] [[GotVolunteered times]] he's left the Red Team for example. |
| 240 | * CannotTalkToWomen: He'd be a good leader in Season 12... if his squad didn't consist of ''a lot'' of women. |
| 241 | * TheCassandra: In regards to [[TankGoodness Sheila]] in Season 4, at least towards Sarge. Against all common sense, this continues even after Simmons uses the tank to attack Sarge. |
| 242 | -->'''Sarge:''' ...and I can understand that you've gone insane and see imaginary tanks...\ |
| 243 | '''Simmons:''' THE TANK IS ''RIGHT THERE,'' FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! |
| 244 | * CharacterDevelopment: 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 ThePlan 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." |
| 245 | ** 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; [[TheDitz Caboose]] made sure that plan lasted all of eight minutes). |
| 246 | ** 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 [[TheSmartGuy science officer]]. He's even the first member of the Blood Gulch Crew to realize that [[spoiler:the Cosmic Powers are actually [[RoboticReveal hyper-advanced Monitors]] perpetuating a GodGuise]]. |
| 247 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: 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. |
| 248 | * ChickMagnet: [[CannotTalkToWomen Ironically]], he is the character that gets most attention from women. |
| 249 | * ClassicalAntiHero: Simmons would be a great and noble hero...if he wasn't an insecure nerd with DaddyIssues. |
| 250 | * CrazyPrepared: According to himself in the Season 14 episode "Head Cannon", he was fully prepared to have an A.I. invade his mind. |
| 251 | * CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: 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 [[EvilCounterpart Gene]] with a knife when the two fight each other. |
| 252 | * DeadpanSnarker: As his CharacterDevelopment continues onward, he snarks more at Sarge. He always behaved like this towards Grif. |
| 253 | * {{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. |
| 254 | * DorkKnight: Especially while on Chorus. Being in charge of an AmazonBrigade was hell for a nerd like him. |
| 255 | * DrunkWithPower: After he temporarily gets leadership in Season 5 thanks to a technicality, Simmons immediately becomes a DrillSergeantNasty and tries to [[BuriedAlive bury Sarge alive.]] By the Chorus Trilogy, he’s become a far more competent and level-headed commander. |
| 256 | * EveryoneHasStandards: 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. |
| 257 | * TheFaceless: Like almost everyone else in the series, he never removes his helmet. |
| 258 | * FakeDefector: Pretends to join Temple's forces in order to help his non-defecting teammates, but is almost immediately outed by Caboose's idiocy. |
| 259 | * FantasticRacism: 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. |
| 260 | * FatalFlaw: Both [[WellDoneSonGuy his desire to gain the approval of others]] and his countless insecurities. |
| 261 | * {{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 ProfessionalButtKisser who compliments Sarge for everything he does and goes along with his insane plans out of his own insecurities. |
| 262 | * {{Foil}}: |
| 263 | ** To Grif. Specifically, Simmons is a insecure [[ProfessionalButtKisser 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 LazyBum who constantly avoids work, [[DeadpanSnarker has no respect for authority]], and is implied to be [[BrilliantbutLazy considerably smarter than he lets on]]. |
| 264 | ** Weirdly enough, he also turns out to be one (at least during the events of ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'') for ''[[BrokenAce Carolina]],'' of all people, from during her time in Project Freelancer. Both of them suffer from looking up to a [[AbusiveParents terrible father figure]] ([[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate The Director]] and [[DrillSergeantNasty 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 TheSmartGuy for Red Team while Carolina strove herself to be TheAce for the Freelancers as a whole until it nearly killed her. |
| 265 | * FreakOut: During Season 4 after Sarge thinks he's gone insane. It's rather ironic in hindsight. |
| 266 | * FreudianExcuse: 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. |
| 267 | * GenderFlip: 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". |
| 268 | * GratuitousForeignLanguage: Does this in Season 15 with ''Esperanto'' of all things. |
| 269 | --> Ĝi estas tiel sole. ("I am so alone.") |
| 270 | * HazyFeelTurn: |
| 271 | ** Makes a change to the Blue Team in Season 4. While this is straight FaceHeelTurn in [[AxCrazy 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. |
| 272 | ** 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. |
| 273 | * HiddenDepths: 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 SpotTheImposter and make him believe Gene is the actual Simmons. |
| 274 | * HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: The actions of his abusive father are PlayedForLaughs. |
| 275 | * HollywoodCyborg: 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. |
| 276 | * InsistentTerminology: "I'm Dutch-Irish!" |
| 277 | * InsufferableGenius: And he isn't always right, either. |
| 278 | * IronicName: Named after Richard Simmons, a famous American fitness instructor. Simmons himself is a nerd. |
| 279 | * {{Irony}}: Despite being a nerd, [[ChickMagnet he actually gets the most attention from the opposite sex]] over the course of the series. |
| 280 | * ItHasBeenAnHonour: His last words to Sarge before their {{Last Stand}} against Charon in the Season 13 finale. |
| 281 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Simmons can be insufferable at times, but nonetheless is the most approachable and compassionate member of Red Team next to Donut. |
| 282 | * LethallyStupid: Simmons is not immune to this. He can be considered to exhibit this just for choosing to suck up to ''[[InsaneTrollLogic 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, [[OnlySaneMan Grif]] and Simmons show that there is a pretty big difference between being smart/logical and intelligent/knowledgeable. |
| 283 | * LikeAnOldMarriedCouple: His arguments with Grif, according to Tucker. |
| 284 | -->'''Tucker''': I've only been listening for ten minutes and I can already tell they're really in love. [[ShipperOnDeck Why can't they see it?]] |
| 285 | * LikeBrotherAndSister: Played for laughs. When Kaikaina's ship lands on [[TheDandy Donut]] in ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', Simmons says he'll miss him like a sister. |
| 286 | * ManChild: Is repeatedly shown to have serious [[ParentalAbandonment daddy issues]], which he imprints onto any superior officer that he has at the time. [[SmallNameBigEgo Sarge]] revels in this throughout the series, while [[OnlySaneMan Washington]] is simply irritated during Simmons' brief stay with Blue Team in Season 11. |
| 287 | * MoodSwinger: 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. |
| 288 | * NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: As mentioned above, he's named after Richard Simmons. |
| 289 | * NiceGuy: 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. |
| 290 | * OnlySaneMan: The SanityBall 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 OnlySaneMan of Red Team along with Lopez, while Grif has moved away from being this. |
| 291 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: 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 [[ClarkesThirdLaw sufficiently advanced]] [=A.I.s=], even proudly proclaiming "Science ''is'' good for something after all!" |
| 292 | * OtherMeAnnoysMe: 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. |
| 293 | * OwMyBodyPart: One of his [[RunningGags running character gags]] during the earlier seasons is that he does this whenever he's injured. |
| 294 | * ProfessionalButtKisser: Though he grows out of it somewhat over time due to CharacterDevelopment. |
| 295 | * RedOniBlueOni: The thoughtful Blue to [[DrillSergeantNasty Sarge's]] Red. Ironically, though, his emotional problems also sometimes make him the nervous Red to [[LazyBum Grif's]] laid-back Blue. |
| 296 | * TheSmartGuy: 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. |
| 297 | * TheSpock: Simmons would love to be this. But his own emotional, psychological hang ups get in the way. |
| 298 | * TheStarscream: 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 DrillSergeantNasty. |
| 299 | * StepfordSmiler: 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. |
| 300 | * StraightMan: To Sarge. Ironically, Grif is the StraightMan to ''him.'' |
| 301 | * SuperGullible: Grif once convinced him that ''Series/GameOfThrones'' really happened. He didn't need any evidence to believe it, he just needed to be told "Yeah, really" enough times. |
| 302 | * TheThingThatWouldNotLeave: 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 [[TheDitz Caboose]] becomes leader, but he can't because [[HumongousMecha Freckles]] threatened to kill him if he did. |
| 303 | * TVGenius: He isn't as smart at he likes to think he is, but he is still capable of [[MrFixit reprogramming a teleporter, hacking Freelancer Command]], creating sophisticated helmet cameras, and programming an entire social media website among other feats. |
| 304 | * UnwillingRoboticization: Unfortunately, Grif needed his squishy parts and Sarge needed a new robot person. |
| 305 | * VitriolicBestBuds: 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). |
| 306 | * WellDoneSonGuy: At least part of the reason Simmons sucks up to Sarge so much is because he sees him as a ParentalSubstitute and he ''desperately'' wants Sarge to consider him a son in return. |
| 307 | * WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: Parodied in Season 5 when Sarge becomes convinced he's dead, has himself BuriedAlive, and Simmons takes his position. Simmons immediately goes mad with (nonexistent) power, even though absolutely no one listens to him. |
| 308 | * WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: 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. [[CallBack 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. |
| 309 | * YesMan: The entire core of his character, to the point his CharacterDevelopment of not doing so is notable in Season 13. Before then he agreed with just about everything [[SmallNameBigEgo Sarge]] or another person in command says. Causing his closest teammate, [[LazyBum Grif]], to [[DeadpanSnarker snark at him]]. |
| 310 | * YouAreInCommandNow: [[spoiler:Simmons is made the new leader of Red Team by Sarge in ''Restoration'' as Sarge himself slowly dies from being stabbed by The Meta.]] |
| 311 | [[/folder]] |
| 312 | |
| 313 | [[folder:Grif]] |
| 314 | !Captain Dexter Grif |
| 315 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/grif_s15.png]] |
| 316 | [[caption-width-right:350:''"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!"'']] |
| 317 | |
| 318 | ->''"Finally, an order I ''want'' to follow: run away and live."'' |
| 319 | -->'''Voiced By:''' Geoff Lazer Ramsey, Creator/{{Amber Benson}} ("Get Bent") |
| 320 | |
| 321 | Lazy, out-of-shape, and Sarge's personal ButtMonkey. 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 [[BrilliantButLazy 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 DeadpanSnarker and OnlySaneMan, 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. |
| 322 | |
| 323 | 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. |
| 324 | |
| 325 | 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"). |
| 326 | |
| 327 | 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. |
| 328 | |
| 329 | 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. |
| 330 | ---- |
| 331 | !!Associated Tropes: |
| 332 | * AbusiveParents: 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. |
| 333 | * ActionSurvivor: Once the fighting comes to him in ''The Recollection'' and afterwards. |
| 334 | * AmbiguouslyBi: While he has shown attraction towards women, his relationship with Simmons might be ''more'' than VitriolicBestBuds, as suggested by Rooster Teeth. [[spoiler: 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 CallBack 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.]] |
| 335 | * AntiHero: He's a LazyBum and an apathetic jerk, but he always comes through in the end. |
| 336 | * BadBoss: 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 [[DeconstructedTrope 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 AFatherToHisMen. |
| 337 | * BadassDriver: 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. |
| 338 | * BadassNormal: ButtMonkey status aside, Grif has been [[ActionSurvivor surviving explosions, falls, blunt-force trauma and bullets that should've killed him since Season 2 from both enemies]] [[TeamKiller and allies]], yet he’s been shown to make quick recovery! Hell, a normal human would've died dozens of times [[GroinAttack during his fight]] with Tex in ''Revelation''. |
| 339 | * BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: PlayedForLaughs 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 [[WhatHaveIBecome reacts predictably.]] |
| 340 | -->'''Grif:''' [[Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack That's not true! That's impossible! NOOOOOOOOO!]] |
| 341 | * BerserkButton: |
| 342 | ** 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. |
| 343 | ** He's also pretty PO'd by people spelling his surname with two "F"s. |
| 344 | ** 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. |
| 345 | * BigBrotherInstinct: Towards Kaikaina, his younger sister. |
| 346 | ** 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 KilledOffForReal. 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 [[LaboriousLaziness ulterior motives there]]). |
| 347 | * BigEater: 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. |
| 348 | -->'''Grif:''' I could eat a horse!\ |
| 349 | '''Carolina:''' With you, I'm worried that's not a figure of speech.\ |
| 350 | '''Grif:''' That's a figure of speech?\ |
| 351 | '''Simmons:''' What the fuck is wrong with you? |
| 352 | * TheBigGuy: Fat jokes aside, Grif naturally evolves into this role for the rest of Red Team as the series goes on. |
| 353 | * BizarroUniverse: Epsilon-Grif starts out ''very'' inaccurate, being a NeatFreak 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. |
| 354 | * BookDumb: 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. |
| 355 | * BorrowedCatchphrase: 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. |
| 356 | * BosssUnfavoriteEmployee: 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. |
| 357 | * BrilliantButLazy: Church claims he is this... though [[UnreliableNarrator 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 [[TheJuggernaut 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. |
| 358 | * ButtMonkey: Every Red Team plan involves sacrificing him in one way or another. And that's not even counting the [[GroinAttack horrible,]] [[RunningGag horrible]] [[CurbStompBattle beatdown]] he receives in ''Revelation'' at the hands of Tex. |
| 359 | * TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive: 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. |
| 360 | * CaptainCrash: Specifically, he's a little fuzzy on the whole concept of "landing": |
| 361 | -->'''Grif:''' Sure! That just means "stop flying", right? |
| 362 | * CarFu: 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''. |
| 363 | * CharacterDevelopment: During ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles,'' Grif is a LazyBum 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 [[SourSupporter bitter, apathetic]] attitude and [[DeadpanSnarker 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 TheSlacker as well as TheHeart of Red Team. In ''The Project Freelancer Saga,'' Grif displays he does care about the other members of the [[TrueCompanions Blood Gulch Crew]], and his UndyingLoyalty 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. |
| 364 | ** Compare these lines, first from Season 2, then Season 13: |
| 365 | --->'''Sarge:''' [[BloodKnight TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE!]]\ |
| 366 | '''Grif:''' Wait! I think today is actually a good day to retreat! Can't we push dying to a week from Friday? |
| 367 | ** Meanwhile, eleven seasons later... |
| 368 | --->'''Sarge:''' [[FaceDeathWithDignity (in a far more somber tone)]] Well, fellas, you know what they say. Today, is a good day to die...\ |
| 369 | '''Grif:''' (in an oddly calm voice) Permission to speak freely sir? (camera pans around, revealing that Grif has picked up the recovered Grif Shot) ''[[PrecisionFStrike Fuck that.]]'' |
| 370 | ** After abandoning the team at the start of Season 15 and undergoing some SanitySlippage, 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. |
| 371 | * CharacterFocus: In Season 15, despite being absent for a good deal of the season. In fact, both he and [[IntrepidReporter Dylan Andrews]] are arguably the main protagonists of the season, much in the same way that Tucker was the protagonist of Season 12. |
| 372 | ** Grif is also later the protagonist of ''The Shisno Paradox''. |
| 373 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: In Season 1, [[LazyBum 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. |
| 374 | * TheChewToy: He's on the receiving end of most of Sarge's abuse, and not a few {{Groin Attack}}s from Tex. |
| 375 | * CorruptQuartermaster: 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. |
| 376 | * CowardlyLion: 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. |
| 377 | * CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: |
| 378 | ** By virtue of being deceptively heavy, which allows him to disarm both the Meta and ''Carolina'' of all people! |
| 379 | ** 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). |
| 380 | * DeadpanSnarker: 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. |
| 381 | * DecoyProtagonist: A {{downplayed|Trope}} example. ''The Shisno Paradox'' initially seems set up to continue his CharacterFocus 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''. |
| 382 | * {{Deuteragonist}}: He serves as this in Season 15, in spite of being PutOnABus 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 |
| 383 | * DrillSergeantNasty: 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. |
| 384 | * TheFaceless: Like almost everyone else in the series, he never removes his helmet. |
| 385 | * FatalFlaw: {{Sloth}} and [[SevenDeadlySins Gluttony]], as one could likely expect. |
| 386 | * {{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 ''[[ProfessionalButtKisser 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 OnlySaneMan. |
| 387 | * {{Foil}}: To Simmons. Specifically, Simmons is a insecure [[ProfessionalButtKisser 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 LazyBum who constantly avoids work, [[DeadpanSnarker has no respect for authority]], and is implied to be [[BrilliantbutLazy considerably smarter than he lets on]]. |
| 388 | * FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: Subverted in terms of his relationship with Kaikaina, as both have elements of the "Responsible Sibling" (Grif's BigBrotherInstinct towards her and Kaikaina becoming an event coordinator) and the "Foolish Sibling" (Grif is a LazyBum ''par excellence'' and Sister was originally written to be a "loud slut"). |
| 389 | * FreudianExcuse: |
| 390 | ** 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. |
| 391 | -->'''Grif:''' ''(sad)'' It was a nice circus... |
| 392 | ** [[spoiler: ''Singularity'' implies that his LazyBum habits were the result of a [[SadistTeacher particularly sadistic gym coach]].]] |
| 393 | * GenderFlip: 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". |
| 394 | * GeniusDitz: 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." |
| 395 | * GoMadFromTheIsolation: Staying on the moon by himself turns out to be a bad choice. Without anyone to talk to, he goes crazy and pretends [[Film/{{Castaway}} a bunch of volleyballs]] [[ShoutOut 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''. |
| 396 | * GroinAttack: 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. |
| 397 | * TheHeart: Has surprisingly evolved into this role as the series has gone on. |
| 398 | * HiddenDepths: |
| 399 | ** 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". |
| 400 | ** 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. |
| 401 | ** 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 OneManArmy that [[HeroKiller 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. |
| 402 | ** 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. |
| 403 | ** When Kaikaina arrives at Blood Gulch, having joined the army because [[TheDitz 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. |
| 404 | ** 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. [[ShutUpKirk All this does is piss him off and make him decide to quit.]] [[SubvertedTrope 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. |
| 405 | * HiddenDisdainReveal: 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. |
| 406 | * HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: His horrible childhood is usually used to mock him. Grif himself seems more embarrassed of his horrendous upbringing than anything. |
| 407 | * {{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. |
| 408 | * HypocriticalHumor: 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. |
| 409 | * IJustWantToBeNormal: 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 AbusiveParents and public school could offer him. |
| 410 | -->'''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! |
| 411 | * IncorruptiblePurePureness: 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. |
| 412 | * InformedDeformity: {{Justified|Trope}}. 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. |
| 413 | * InsistentTerminology: His armor color. |
| 414 | --> '''Grif:''' I am not gold, I am not yellow, I am '''fucking ORANGE!''' |
| 415 | * IResembleThatRemark: When Wash calls the Reds and Blues the most immature soldiers he's ever met during ''Reconstruction'', Grif responds with "[[NoYou Your]] ''[[NoYou face]]'' [[NoYou is immature]]." |
| 416 | * IronicName: His first name, "Dexter," is an name of Latin and Old English origin meaning "fortunate." He's the ButtMonkey of Red Team and suffers probably the highest number of AmusingInjuries out of any other character in the whole series. |
| 417 | * {{Irony}}: |
| 418 | ** For his constant griping about getting dragged into new life-threatening adventures and claiming that he was drafted into the military, [[spoiler:he actually enlisted of his own free will since he was running away from his terrible home life]]. |
| 419 | ** 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. |
| 420 | * IronButtMonkey: Grif takes a lot of punishment over the course of the series, including [[NoHoldsBarredBeatDown his]] GroinAttack [[NoHoldsBarredBeatDown 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. |
| 421 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: 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. |
| 422 | * KarmicTransformation: 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. |
| 423 | --> '''Grif:''' Tucker, tell me I'm cool and don't play by the rules!\ |
| 424 | '''Tucker:''' What?\ |
| 425 | '''Grif:''' ''(wailing)'' I DON'T ''WANT A'' SOUTHERN ACCENT! |
| 426 | * LaboriousLaziness: 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, TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive. |
| 427 | * TheLancer: Plays this role for the Reds, until ''Revelation'' where he becomes both TheHeart and TheBigGuy. He usually serves as Sarge's Lancer, but also becomes this to Tucker in ''The Chorus Trilogy''. |
| 428 | * LaserGuidedKarma: [[invoked]] An amusing variant - According to WordOfGod, the reason why Grif was subjected to so many {{Groin Attack}}s 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). |
| 429 | * LazyBum: 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. |
| 430 | * {{Leitmotif}}: Gains one in Season 15 entitled "Hateglue." |
| 431 | * LikeAnOldMarriedCouple: With Simmons, naturally. |
| 432 | --> '''Tucker:''' [[ShipperOnDeck I've only been listening for ten minutes and I can already tell they're really in love. Why can't they see it?]] |
| 433 | * MadeOfIron: No matter what he goes through, courtesy of [[UnfriendlyFire Sarge]], [[GroinAttack Tex]], or [[TheJuggernaut the Meta]], Grif will simply not die, [[ButtMonkey 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''. |
| 434 | * TheMcCoy: 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. |
| 435 | * MilitaryMaverick: 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. |
| 436 | * MotorMouth: After going insane from loneliness on Iris, he gained this trait, as Locus finds out first-hand. |
| 437 | * MundaneUtility: 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. [[GoneHorriblyWrong Unfortunately, the module he installs induces]] SuperSpeed [[GoneHorriblyWrong instead.]] HilarityEnsues. |
| 438 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: |
| 439 | ** The time he spends [[GoMadFromTheIsolation 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. |
| 440 | ** 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. |
| 441 | * NonActionGuy: For ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. |
| 442 | * OddFriendship: Forms one with ''[[EnergyBeings Huggins]]'', of all people, during ''The Shisno Paradox.'' |
| 443 | * OhCrap: [[spoiler: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]]. |
| 444 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: |
| 445 | ** In Season 10, Grif (who usually takes any and all insults Sarge throws at him with either snark or apathy due to being a LazyBum) is the first to call out Epsilon when the latter starts acting like a complete jerk with his plan to take on the Director. |
| 446 | ** 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, LazyBum extraordinaire, is ''actually displaying an emotion other than apathy.'' |
| 447 | ** 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. |
| 448 | ** 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 LazyBum 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. |
| 449 | * PromotedToParent: Sister reveals that Grif did this for their family after their mother left, displaying his HiddenDepths. |
| 450 | * RefusalOfTheCall: 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. [[TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive Then Locus and Lopez found him.]] |
| 451 | * RunningGag: [[CorruptQuartermaster Him misplacing Red Team's ammunition]] during both ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' and ''The Recollection''. And him getting a GroinAttack from Tex. |
| 452 | * SanityBall: The role of OnlySaneMan 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). |
| 453 | * SanitySlippage: |
| 454 | ** 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. |
| 455 | ** 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. |
| 456 | * ScrewThisImOuttaHere: |
| 457 | ** 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. |
| 458 | ** 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. |
| 459 | * ShellShockedVeteran: 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. |
| 460 | * ShutUpKirk: Gives one of these to Dylan Andrews when she tries to convince him he's a JerkWithAHeartOfGold. He later regrets this. |
| 461 | * SkewedPriorities: 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. |
| 462 | * TheSlacker: 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. |
| 463 | * SleptThroughTheApocalypse: 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. |
| 464 | * SmokingIsNotCool: 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. |
| 465 | * SourSupporter: 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. |
| 466 | * TokenMinority: [[invoked]] Downplayed, but due to his younger sister's name being "Kaikaina" (which is an actual Hawaiian name) and his own voice actor [[WordOfGod 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. |
| 467 | * TooDumbToLive: Invoked by Simmons, who once uses this trope by name to insult [[BookDumb Grif]], though he's not actually an example. |
| 468 | * TookALevelInBadass: |
| 469 | ** In ''Revelation'', he smashes through the wall at Valhalla and nearly kills Wash with a Warthog. |
| 470 | ** 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. |
| 471 | ** 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. |
| 472 | ** He does it again in ''The Chorus Trilogy'', where he seems to have become the NumberTwo 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). |
| 473 | * TrademarkFavoriteFood: Pizza, to the point where he tries to ''[[DrivenToSuicide blow himself up]]'' when the timeline is altered during the events of ''The Shisno Paradox'' so that [[RetGone pizza was never invented.]] |
| 474 | * TheUnfavorite: His parents allegedly always preferred his sister, as revealed by [=Doc/O'Malley=]'s TheReasonYouSuckSpeech in Season 13. |
| 475 | * UniversalDriversLicence: In ''Revelation'', Grif flies a Pelican and a Hornet with no training whatsoever. He ''crashes'' the Pelican, but it's still quite an accomplishment. [[spoiler: 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]]. |
| 476 | --> '''Sarge''': There they are! Land right next to 'em!\ |
| 477 | '''Grif''': Right... "Land"...\ |
| 478 | '''Sarge''': You do know how to land this thing, right?\ |
| 479 | '''Grif''': Sure! [[CaptainCrash That just means stop flying, right?]]\ |
| 480 | '''Sarge''': [[OhCrap Brace for impact!]] |
| 481 | * UnwillingRoboticization: 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 RuleOfFunny. |
| 482 | * VitriolicBestBuds: 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). |
| 483 | * VocalEvolution: 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. |
| 484 | * WeakButSkilled: 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. |
| 485 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: 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. |
| 486 | * WhatHaveIBecome: After realizing that his stress-induced mental breakdown in Season 12 is making him act like Sarge, Grif has a heavy meltdown. |
| 487 | --> '''Grif:''' ''(wailing)'' I DON'T ''WANT'' A SOUTHERN ACCENT! |
| 488 | * WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: 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. |
| 489 | --> '''Simmons:''' Okay idiot, let's assume I'm wrong. Let's assume there ''are'' bats. So what? You're wearing [[PoweredArmor 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?\ |
| 490 | '''Grif:''' (beat) [[ComicallyMissingThePoint ...So basically you're saying that you think there's bats?]]\ |
| 491 | '''Simmons:''' [[SarcasmMode Sure, why not...?]]\ |
| 492 | '''Grif:''' ''(in panicky tone)'' I'm getting the fuck outta here! |
| 493 | * WhyWontYouDie: 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 ComicBook/JeanGrey" 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. |
| 494 | * WrongGenreSavvy: In ''The Shisno Paradox'', Grif thinks he can avoid adventures altogether if he ignores {{Inciting Incident}}s. He didn’t take into account stories that [[RefusalOfTheCall involve characters ignoring]] [[TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive the incident]]. |
| 495 | * YouKillItYouBoughtIt: 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. |
| 496 | [[/folder]] |
| 497 | |
| 498 | [[folder:Donut]] |
| 499 | !Private Franklin Delano Donut |
| 500 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/donut_s15.png]] |
| 501 | [[caption-width-right:350:''"It's not pink, it's [[InsistentTerminology lightish-red]]!"'']] |
| 502 | ->''"Who wants to hold my ankles while I stretch out my hammies?"'' |
| 503 | -->'''Voiced By:''' Dan Godwin, Jordan Burns (Caboose's Mind, Seasons 2, 5-6), Creator/MilesLuna (radio transmission, Season 11), Barbara Dunkelman (Caboose's Mind, Season 14), Maggie Tominey ("Get Bent") |
| 504 | |
| 505 | Red Team's rookie member with some major issues, acting as the team's [[TheDitz 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 [[LessEmbarrassingTerm lightish-red]] armor out of recognition for his flag capture. |
| 506 | |
| 507 | 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 CampGay 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 [[ScreamsLikeALittleGirl scream like a girl]], a role he takes to with gusto. |
| 508 | |
| 509 | Like Tucker and Doc, he is PutOnABus 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). |
| 510 | |
| 511 | At the end of the season, he is murdered in cold blood by a post-FaceHeelTurn 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. |
| 512 | |
| 513 | 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. |
| 514 | |
| 515 | 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 |
| 516 | |
| 517 | 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. |
| 518 | |
| 519 | 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, [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom which has serious consequences in the next two seasons.]] |
| 520 | |
| 521 | In Season 16, the lightning that struck him reveals to have completely destroyed his physical body, with [[IdiotHero 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. |
| 522 | |
| 523 | 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 RageBreakingPoint 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. |
| 524 | ---- |
| 525 | !!Associated Tropes: |
| 526 | * AccidentalInnuendo: Most of Donut's dialogue is filled with innuendos and {{double entendre}}s to the point it is practically a RunningGag. 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. |
| 527 | * AmbiguouslyGay: A subject of intense debate both amongst fans and in-universe. |
| 528 | * AndIMustScream: PlayedForLaughs in Season 17. As he gets the hang of MentalTimeTravel, he inadvertently gets himself trapped in a loop of reliving being shot by Wash. [[RunningGag Multiple times.]] |
| 529 | * BackFromTheDead: 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. |
| 530 | * BadassInDistress: 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. |
| 531 | * BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:How he ultimately defeats Genkins in ''Singularity''. He figured out off-screen that Genkins and Chrovos ''were the same person'' via a StableTimeLoop. 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 [[SayingTooMuch 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.]] |
| 532 | * BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: 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. |
| 533 | * BewareTheSillyOnes: 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. |
| 534 | * BigDamnHeroes: Twice in Season 11: His arrival at Chorus stops Sarge and [[HumongousMecha Freckles]] from continuing their fight - where [[LeeroyJenkins 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. |
| 535 | * BigShutUp: Lets one out during his TheReasonYouSuckSpeech in ''Singularity''... to ''[[BrokenAce Carolina]]'', of all people. |
| 536 | * ButtMonkey: Gets poorly treated a ''lot'' as the series goes on. It actually gets PlayedForDrama surprisingly enough in ''The Shisno Paradox'', with him performing a MistreatmentInducedBetrayal and temporarily joining Chrovos. |
| 537 | * CampStraight: One of the alternate endings to ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' mentions he married a stripper and had a bunch of kids. |
| 538 | * CharacterDevelopment: 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 Entendre}}s when talking for people, and eventually becomes TheLeader of the Reds and Blues during their struggles against Genkins and Chrovos. |
| 539 | ** And even before ''Singularity'', Donut's character has subtly evolved over the series' course, with his status as the [[NaiveNewcomer absurdly naive]] and [[TheDitz ditzy]] [[TheDandy dandy]] of Red Team being increasingly emphasized over his AmbiguouslyGay qualities after ''The Project Freelancer Saga''. |
| 540 | * CharacterFocus: He serves as the protagonist of Season 17, and undergoes quite a bit of CharacterDevelopment. |
| 541 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: 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, [[{{Foil}} contrasting him with the more experienced but cynical and lazy Grif and Simmons]] and Red Team's OnlySaneMan outside of Grif, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking 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. |
| 542 | * CharacterisationClickMoment: 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. |
| 543 | * TheChewToy: Donut goes through a massive TraumaCongaLine 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 MentalTimeTravel, 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. |
| 544 | * ComicallyMissingThePoint: Practically a RunningGag 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. |
| 545 | * TheComicallySerious: A weird variant. While it's not that Donut's delivery is a MachineMonotone 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: |
| 546 | -->'''Donut:''' Hmmmm... I always ''did'' want to be a hero... And a '''''liar!''''' |
| 547 | * CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: |
| 548 | ** Despite his rather... unusual behavior, he managed to grenade Tex from halfway across the canyon. |
| 549 | ** The fact that he was briefly working with Tucker as an infiltration specialist[[note]]he says he's good at [[InnocentInnuendo penetrating rear entrances]][[/note]] for the [=UNSC=] implies he received ''some'' special training to perform his new job. |
| 550 | ** In Season 10, he sticks three Tex clones at once with a single throw. |
| 551 | ** 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. |
| 552 | ** 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. |
| 553 | * CunningLinguist: 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. |
| 554 | * TheCutie: He's so sweet, adorable and cheerful that even ''[[HatesEveryoneEqually Church]]'' likes him. |
| 555 | * TheDandy: 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. |
| 556 | * DeadpanSnarker: 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. |
| 557 | * DependingOnTheWriter: He frequently alternates between a legitimately competent CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass and a useless moron depending on [[RuleOfFunny what's funniest]], though he's portrayed primarily as the former following Season 16. |
| 558 | * DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: [[spoiler: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]]. |
| 559 | * DisneyDeath: His death in ''Recreation'' is eventually revealed to be this when he returns in Season 10. |
| 560 | * TheDitz: |
| 561 | ** Is usually too busy bubbling happily along to notice the assorted weird and dangerous crap going on around him. |
| 562 | ** 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'''. |
| 563 | ** His actions in Season 11 speak ''volumes'' to this. |
| 564 | * DoubleEntendre: Pretty much everything he says. [[ImageSong "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. |
| 565 | * DudeWheresMyRespect: 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. |
| 566 | * DumbassNoMore: He becomes less naive and ditzy in Season 17 as part of his CharacterDevelopment. |
| 567 | * EasilyForgiven: 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 Betrayal}}s. |
| 568 | * TheFaceless: 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. |
| 569 | * {{Flanderization}}: Initially, Donut was the OnlySaneMan 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 AmbiguouslyGay [[TheDitz ditz]] who frequently makes {{Accidental Innuendo}}s and {{Double Entendre}}s. |
| 570 | * {{Foil}}: |
| 571 | ** To Caboose. Both are easily the [[NiceGuy friendliest]], [[TheDitz dumbest]], and [[PluckyComicRelief silliest]] members of their respective teams along with being MadeOfIron 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 [[OddFriendship surprisingly good friends with each other]] even going into the later seasons, and have goofy-sounding last names that fit their [[TheDitz remarkably silly]] personalities. However, they differ in that Donut is more emphasized to be [[NaiveNewcomer absurdly naive]] rather than [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} almost completely divorced from reality]] like Caboose is (which is quite befitting Caboose being a FourthWallObserver unlike Donut). Furthermore, Donut is highly AmbiguouslyGay, with almost all of his dialogue being {{Double Entendre}}s, while Caboose is more like a little kid (to the point where he doesn't know where babies come from in Season 5). |
| 572 | ** To Tucker. Both favor weapons that need a strong arm (Donut's grenades and Tucker's [[LaserBlade Great Weapon]]), have a knack for alien technology and {{Double Entendre}}s, and constantly quibble about their respective armor colors. However, Donut consistently claims his armor is [[InsistentTerminology lightish-red]] while Tucker doesn't even know what color armor he is and Donut makes homoerotic {{Innocent Innuendo}}s while Tucker ''intentionally'' makes {{Double Entendre}}s as part of his CasanovaWannabe schtick. |
| 573 | * FreudianExcuse: Dialogue from him in Season 3 implies that he's so absurdly over the top and {{camp}}y because he came from a very repressive background as a FarmBoy 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 Entendre}}s 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''. |
| 574 | -->'''Donut:''' ''You spend a lot of time thinking when you're on a farm. And then a lot of time repressing those thoughts.'' |
| 575 | * GenderFlip: 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". |
| 576 | * GenreBlindness: It takes him until ''Season 16'' to realize that the Reds and Blues are idiotic assholes. |
| 577 | * GoshDangItToHeck: 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 PrecisionFStrike once he reaches his RageBreakingPoint. Simmons is clearly taken aback when it happens. |
| 578 | * GranolaGirl: Starts developing some of these tendencies after spending so much time with Doc in-between Seasons 8 and 10. |
| 579 | * TheHeart: As one of the few truly {{Nice Guy}}s 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. |
| 580 | * HeelRealization: PlayedForLaughs in Season 17 where he realizes the sheer amount of {{Innocent Innuendo}}s he spurts out after he relives everything he ever said. He spends the rest of the season desperately trying (and failing) to stop. |
| 581 | * HeroOfAnotherStory: 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''. |
| 582 | * HiddenDepths: Tying in with CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass, Donut is repeatedly shown to be a highly competent soldier in spite of his many, many quirks. |
| 583 | * HighlyVisibleNinja: 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. |
| 584 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: This literally happens to him in the climax of Season 11 when Locus snipes one of his grenades (which subsequently detonates) to incapacitate him. |
| 585 | * HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: From walking into the enemy base assuming it's a general store, to chatting with [[TheJuggernaut 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''. |
| 586 | * IconicItem: Frequently associated with elbow grease and headlight fluid. |
| 587 | * IfYouDieICallYourStuff: 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. |
| 588 | * ImageSong: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8R-B7efoHs Donut: The Musical]]." |
| 589 | * ImprobableAimingSkills: |
| 590 | ** 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. |
| 591 | ** He's also quite handy with alien weaponry, managing to effortlessly [[BlastingItoutofTheirHands blast Felix's gun out of his hand]] with a Needler during "The End Is Near." |
| 592 | ** 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. |
| 593 | * InnocentInnuendo: More than half his lines drip with [[DoubleEntendre 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. |
| 594 | * InsistentTerminology: "It's not pink, it's ''lightish-red''!" This eventually ends during ''Singularity'' with him proudly owning the fact that his armor's pink. |
| 595 | * InTouchWithHisFeminineSide: It causes the others some confusion. |
| 596 | * {{Irony}}: During ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', [[LampshadeHanging he wondered out loud why]] the Reds and Blues [[StatingTheSimpleSolution never tried to kill one another]] using the SniperRifle instead of using it as a glorified telescope. During Season 11, this is ''exactly'' how Locus neutralizes him, Washington, and Sarge. |
| 597 | * LargeHam: In Season 1, not so much, aside from [[PreMortemOneLiner 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. |
| 598 | -->[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri3hJ6bdCYo Oh my gosh! You guys were supposed feed my cat! Whiskers!]] |
| 599 | * LessEmbarrassingTerm: 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 RageBreakingPoint in Season 17 ("You all think you're better than me cause I have '''pink''' armor!"). |
| 600 | * MachoCamp: Epsilon-Donut in Season 9 [[CompositeCharacter combines]] his usual InnocentInnuendo with Sarge's gung-ho attitude. |
| 601 | * MadeOfIron: 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 PlayedForLaughs, at least at the time they are inflicted. |
| 602 | * 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 NaiveNewcomer status. |
| 603 | * MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: 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. |
| 604 | * NaiveNewcomer: One of his defining characteristics. Donut isn't ''just'' TheDitz, he also frequently gets played for a fool and made the butt of countless jokes because of his naivete and eagerness. |
| 605 | * NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: [[UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt Most of his name]], anyway. |
| 606 | * NiceGuy: 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. |
| 607 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: His actions make him constantly alternate between being helpful and a hindrance during Season 11. |
| 608 | * NoSenseOfDirection: 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. |
| 609 | * NoRespectGuy: 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''. |
| 610 | * NotQuiteDead: |
| 611 | ** 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. |
| 612 | ** 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. |
| 613 | ** 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. |
| 614 | ** In later seasons, this tends to be PlayedForLaughs. 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. |
| 615 | ** 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. |
| 616 | * OddFriendship: |
| 617 | ** Donut became best buddies with Caboose when he was temporarily captured by the Blues in the tail end of Season 2. |
| 618 | ** Forms one with ''[[OnlySaneMan Wash]]'', of all people, during Season 17. |
| 619 | * OnlySaneMan: In Season 1, thanks to EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, 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. |
| 620 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: |
| 621 | ** 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 MachoCamp DrillSergeantNasty. |
| 622 | ** As part of his CharacterDevelopment in Season 17, he becomes significantly more sarcastic, assertive, and determined, to the point where [[spoiler:he gives a ''vicious'' TheReasonYouSuckSpeech 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 [[OhCrap being stunned]] when [[spoiler:Donut actually calls his armor ''pink'', with him even proudly shouting it multiple times and saying "I'm ''owning'' it, now!"]] |
| 623 | * PutOnABus: From Season 6 to 10, he's practically on a rotating shift between this trope and TheBusCameBack. He is completely absent from Season 6, spends Seasons 8 and 9 NotQuiteDead 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. |
| 624 | * RageBreakingPoint: He goes through a massive TraumaCongaLine 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 MistreatmentInducedBetrayal. [[UngratefulBastard 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 TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. |
| 625 | * ReformedButRejected: 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. |
| 626 | --> '''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! |
| 627 | * ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: On orders from Sarge, he proceeds to run around screaming like a woman in nearly all combat situations. |
| 628 | * ScrewThisImOuttaHere: [[spoiler: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]]. |
| 629 | * ShoutOut: Donut is one of two characters (the other being Caboose) named after one of the randomly generated names assigned to temporary multiplayer profiles in ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved''. |
| 630 | * StereotypeGay: Though at times it comes off as InnocentInnuendo taken to [[ExaggeratedTrope extremes]]. Still doesn't explain Officer Hotpants, though. |
| 631 | * TheyKilledKennyAgain: 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. |
| 632 | * TooDumbToLive: 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''. |
| 633 | ** 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. |
| 634 | ** 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. |
| 635 | ** 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). |
| 636 | ** 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 [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal he was sick of being insulted by his friends]]. Though he at least makes an effort to stop Chrovos himself later. |
| 637 | * TooKinkyToTorture: Just ask Donut if he wants to be pinched. |
| 638 | * TookALevelInBadass: 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. |
| 639 | * TookALevelInDumbass: Initially, he was the OnlySaneMan 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. |
| 640 | * UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: While his intention was simply to stop him from interfering further, Donut's TheReasonYouSuckSpeech towards Genkins pointing out he's just a pawn ultimately convinces Genkins to become TheStarscream to Chrovos and usurp them as the BigBad, and with it, change his gameplan to getting people who ''can'' kill the Reds and Blues to do what he's failed to do. |
| 641 | * VocalEvolution: His voice gets higher and louder each season. ''[[WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheShisnoTrilogy Singularity]]'' has him undergo this in the ''opposite'' direction, his voice deepening being tied into his CharacterDevelopment and becoming the unofficial leader of the BGC against Genkins. |
| 642 | * WeakButSkilled: 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." |
| 643 | * WeaponBasedCharacterisation: [[TheDandy Donut]] is freakishly good at throwing things and becomes increasingly associated with [[ThrowDownTheBomblet plasma grenades]] as the show progresses. |
| 644 | * WideEyedIdealist: 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. |
| 645 | * TheWoobie: InUniverse. When he's hurt, people on both the Red and Blue Teams get upset. |
| 646 | -->'''Grif:''' [[LampshadeHanging Seriously, what's with all these feelings for Donut?]] |
| 647 | [[/folder]] |
| 648 | |
| 649 | !Equipment and Mercenaries |
| 650 | |
| 651 | [[folder:Lopez]] |
| 652 | !Lopez the Heavy / Lopez la Pesado |
| 653 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lopez_s15.png]] |
| 654 | [[caption-width-right:350: ''"¿Por qué estás contestando si usted no sabe qué estoy diciendo?" ([[LampshadeHanging "Why do you bother replying if you don't know what I'm saying?"]]'')]] |
| 655 | |
| 656 | -> ''"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]."'') |
| 657 | -->'''Voiced By:''' Burnie Burns (Seasons 1-17), Eddy Rivas (''Family Shatters''), Ashley Jenkins ("Get Bent") |
| 658 | |
| 659 | Sarge's pet project and team mechanic, a robot who only speaks [[FunWithForeignLanguages bad Spanish]] (and occasionally takes advantage of the fact he's the only one fluent in the language). |
| 660 | |
| 661 | 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. |
| 662 | |
| 663 | 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 ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' and ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'', and he becomes the [[DeadpanSnarker bitingly sarcastic]] sidekick to O'Malley until he is finally recovered by the Red Team at the end of ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. |
| 664 | |
| 665 | 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. |
| 666 | |
| 667 | 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. |
| 668 | |
| 669 | !!Associated Tropes: |
| 670 | * BadassBoast: "I'm Lopez the Heavy. [[ThisisForEmphasisBitch Bitch]]." |
| 671 | * BeleagueredAssistant: Anything that the Reds can't be arsed to do will inevitably be given to Lopez. |
| 672 | * BeyondTheImpossible: 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. |
| 673 | ** [[spoiler:He also manages to maintain his own personality and memories while floating through space for several eons - something that not even ''[[TimeMaster Chrovos]]'' could do]]. |
| 674 | ** In a RuleOfFunny case, back in Season 3 he managed to both build a robot army and operate a machine gun... despite being only a head. |
| 675 | * BigDamnHeroes: 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. |
| 676 | * BilingualBackfire: 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. |
| 677 | * BrainwashedAndCrazy: The reason that he temporarily ended up as TheDragon to O'Malley during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles''. |
| 678 | * BrokenPedestal: Early on, both Lopezes viewed [[TheNeidermeyer Sarge]] as AFatherToHisMen both figuratively and (since Sarge built them) literally. However, once they realized how insane Sarge really is, this faded into [[DeadpanSnarker snarkiness]] for the former and [[GoMadFromTheRevelation sheer insanity]] from the latter. |
| 679 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: Probably the most striking case in the series outside of Donut, though it is mixed with CharacterDevelopment. Lopez starts out as Sarge's loyal, silent enforcer before getting a speech unit installed, at which point he reveals himself to be TheComicallySerious, 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. |
| 680 | * CharacterDevelopment: Lopez used to be an absurdly over-dramatic and serious robot with UndyingLoyalty 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 DeadpanSnarker 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 TheFatalist, fully aware of being a CosmicPlaything but just trying to make the most of his life while he can in the process. |
| 681 | * TheComicallySerious: More pronounced before his CharacterDevelopment, but he still has moments like this due to his MachineMonotone. |
| 682 | * CosmicPlaything: 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 ''RunningGag'' should really tell you something about Lopez's life. |
| 683 | * DeadpanSnarker: Has understandably evolved into this, especially in ''The Recollections'', after chafing under the frankly insane leadership of Sarge and later O'Malley. |
| 684 | * DespairEventHorizon: |
| 685 | ** PlayedForLaughs in ''The Shisno Paradox'' when he realizes that he's stuck with [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} 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''). |
| 686 | ** However, it's later done more seriously in ''Singularity''. [[spoiler:When the Labyrinth tricks him into thinking that he's an English-speaking human during "Omphalos," he [[DrivenToSuicide throws himself into a black hole]]. Being a robot, though, he survives]]. |
| 687 | * {{Determinator}}: In Season 3 of ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', he somehow effectively operated a machine gun despite being [[LosingYourHead only a head]] at the time. Simmons' only explanation for this? |
| 688 | -->'''Simmons:''' He's ''very'' determined. |
| 689 | * DisneyDeath: |
| 690 | ** 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. |
| 691 | ** Happens again at the end of ''Singularity''. [[spoiler: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.]] |
| 692 | * DoesNotSpeakCommon: 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. |
| 693 | * TheDragon: Briefly to O'Malley after losing his head, though that's because he was reprogrammed. |
| 694 | * DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Tries to kill himself in "Omphalos" due to the Labyrinth's manipulations. Thankfully, he survives and instead just takes TheSlowPath to meet back up with the Reds and Blues in the present day]]. |
| 695 | * EasilyForgiven: PlayedForLaughs. According to a FreezeFrameBonus 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). |
| 696 | * EveryoneHasStandards: 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. |
| 697 | * TheFaceless: Although, being a robot, there's probably nothing under there anyways. |
| 698 | * TheFatalist: Has become this by the time of Season 11. |
| 699 | -->'''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.) |
| 700 | * GenderFlip: 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". |
| 701 | * GratuitousSpanish: 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. |
| 702 | * GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: Becoming the ServileSnarker 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. |
| 703 | * HatesEveryoneEqually: Justified due to being SurroundedByIdiots. |
| 704 | * HeroOfAnotherStory: 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". |
| 705 | * InsultingFromBehindTheLanguageBarrier: 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 [[BilingualBackfire Locus is bilingual]] |
| 706 | * IronButtMonkey: Lopez gets a ''lot'' of damage thrown at him over the course of the series. |
| 707 | * LosingYourHead: Practically a RunningGag with him. |
| 708 | ** For a long time in ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'', he's nothing more than a head. [[{{Determinator}} He can operate a machine gun and build robots anyway.]] |
| 709 | ** 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. |
| 710 | ** 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. |
| 711 | ** 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. |
| 712 | * MachineMonotone: Well, he ''is'' a typical robot. It's increasingly downplayed as the series goes on, though, with him emoting more in the later seasons. |
| 713 | * MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels: 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 [[RuleOfFunny 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 ''GratuitousFrench'' of all things. In the commentary for earlier seasons, Burnie Burns mentioned that Gus Sorola would coach him on his accent. |
| 714 | * NiceGuy: He doesn't get to show it very often due to his low tolerance for stupidity, and being SurroundedByIdiots. However, when around people who are actually competent, Lopez is quite friendly and has even shown himself to be surprisingly selfless at times. |
| 715 | * NotSoAboveItAll: Despite his frustrations with the Reds, and considering himself the OnlySaneMan, Lopez frequently proves himself to be just as foolish and petty as the rest of the team. |
| 716 | * OddFriendship: Downplayed, but [[CasanovaWannabe 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 [[spoiler:Lopez's absence in "Theogeny".]] |
| 717 | ** Same goes for Agent Washington. See EasilyForgiven above. |
| 718 | * OfficialCouple: With Sheila for awhile. |
| 719 | * OhCrap: 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". |
| 720 | -->'''Lopez''': MIERDA. ES BILINGÜE. POR FAVOR NO ME MATES. (HOLY SHIT. HE'S BILINGUAL. PLEASE DON'T KILL ME.) |
| 721 | * OnlySaneMan: 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. |
| 722 | * PetTheDog: 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 LastStand of the Reds and Blues aboard the Staff of Charon. |
| 723 | * ThePowerOfHate: 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. |
| 724 | * PropheticName: [[DownplayedTrope Only in that]] Lopez is a Spanish name, and Lopez ends up unable to speak any language ''except'' Spanish. |
| 725 | * RidiculouslyHumanRobots: Not just in terms of [[DeadpanSnarker 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. |
| 726 | * RoboSpeak: Always speaks in a flat, mechanical voice. In ''Spanish''. Made even funnier by the fact his actual Spanish dialogue is largely nonsense. |
| 727 | * SarcasticDevotee: To Sarge, then to O'Malley, then to Sarge again. [[ExactWords 'A day of victory' indeed.]] |
| 728 | * SarcasmMode: He's sarcastic '''ALL THE TIME'''. Hell, he literally has a Sarcasm Module at 100%, making this trope invoked. |
| 729 | * TheSlowPath: 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. |
| 730 | * TheSmartGuy: The ''other'' Smart Guy of Red Team, being the only one with any degree of competence. |
| 731 | * StylisticSuck: His Spanish dialogue intentionally goes for a BlindIdiotTranslation more often than not, resulting in him speaking in MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels more often than not. This is intentional on a meta level, both for RuleOfFunny and to represent how Lopez is only speaking Spanish thanks to a malfunction. Additionally, his dialogue always sounds somewhat stilted (as per WordOfGod, 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 MachineMonotone than if he were able to easily recite said Spanish in a fluid, naturalistic tone. |
| 732 | * SuperDrowningSkills: Slightly averted with the "drowning" part omitted due to Lopez being a robot, but he still sinks like a rock in water regardless. |
| 733 | * SurroundedByIdiots: His view of his situation vis-a-vis the entire cast, and the Red Team in particular. To his credit, he takes this [[TheFatalist in stride]]. |
| 734 | * TheThingThatWouldNotLeave: Considers the Reds to be this, as he can't seem to stay away from them no matter how hard he may try. |
| 735 | * TheyKilledKennyAgain: Often killed. A JustifiedTrope, as said under WeHaveReserves. |
| 736 | * TimeAbyss: [[spoiler:Due to black hole shenanigans at the end of ''Singularity'', he is now literally older than time itself.]] |
| 737 | * TokenMinority: 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. |
| 738 | * TookALevelInBadass: 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. |
| 739 | * TookALevelInSmartass: At the beginning of the series, Lopez was an overly dramatic and serious robot who showed UndyingLoyalty 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. |
| 740 | * {{Troll}}: While serving as TheDragon to O'Malley, he not only programs their Robot Army to [[ExactWords 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 [[MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels insulting himself, much to the robot army's confusion]]. |
| 741 | ** He also likes to troll the Red Team, since he can insult them with impunity due to the LanguageBarrier between them. |
| 742 | * VitriolicBestBuds: 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 LastStand aboard the ''Staff of Charon'', and he is legitimately excited to see them again at the end of ''Singularity''. |
| 743 | * WeHaveReserves: 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. |
| 744 | * WouldHitAGirl: He attempted to strangle Grif's sister to death. It failed, but only barely. |
| 745 | [[/folder]] |
| 746 | |
| 747 | [[folder:John, George, and Alex]] |
| 748 | !John Wayne, George Washington, and Alexander III |
| 749 | Three historical figures that Sarge went back in time to recruit. They appear in ''The Shisno Paradox''. |
| 750 | |
| 751 | -->'''Voiced By:''' Rick Robertson (John), Todd Womack (George), Chris Kokkinos (Alex) |
| 752 | ---- |
| 753 | * AlwaysSomeoneBetter: 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. |
| 754 | * ArmyOfTheAges: They’re supposed to be this, but the results of Sarge’s efforts are less than stellar. |
| 755 | * BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Apparently, Creator/JohnWayne, UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, and UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat 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). |
| 756 | * DreamTeam: 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. |
| 757 | * FishOutOfTemporalWater: 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. |
| 758 | * IncurableCoughOfDeath: Private Alex is coughing constantly, and the next time Sarge, Simmons, and Jax appear, they state that he's dead. |
| 759 | * RagtagBunchOfMisfits: 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. |
| 760 | * RetGone: 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. |
| 761 | * TheUnintelligible: 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). |
| 762 | * WeaksauceWeakness: Alexander the Great, one of history's most famous warriors, is killed by the common cold as a result of his weaker immune system. |
| 763 | -->'''Sarge''': Alexander the Overrated! |
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