Warning: Spoilers Off applies to these pages before Singularity. Proceed at your own risk.
Trivia Tropes:
Acting for Two: Several times, given that many people play multiple parts.
Burnie Burns plays Church, Lopez, Vic, and other voices when needed; he also does sound effects with his own voice, such as grenades hissing and ominous wind.
Matt Hullum plays Doc, Sarge, O'Malley, and Wyoming.
Nathan Zellner plays The Alien/Crunchbite and Andy.
Jason Saldaña plays Tucker and Junior.
Combined to a degree with Talking To Them Self when O'Malley possesses a character; whether O'Malley has what could be considered a separate voice from the possessed regular character varies by character/actor.
The first half of episode 43 is a climactic confrontation that gathers most characters from the series thus far. Of the ten characters who speak in this scene (including O'Malley), Burns (Lopez, Church, Red Zealot) and Hullum (O'Malley, Doc, Sarge, Wyoming) play all but three (those being Simmons, Grif, and Tucker).
Gray Haddock plays both the cowardly British General Doyle and the menacing, deep-voiced mercenary Locus, who do talk to each other in Episode 16 of Season 12. However, it's confirmed that Haddock has to do their voices separately.
Shannon McCormick, the voice of Washington, has also voiced Lopez Dos.0 and Agent Iowa, who both have had brief interactions with Wash.
In Season 15, Gus Sorola voices both Simmons and Gene, his counterpart from the Blues and Reds.
According to Torrian Crawford on Twitter (1:19), Raymond and One are black. Their voice actors (Noel Wiggins and Fiona Nova) are also black.
Family Shatters implies that One's first language is French. Her voice actress, Fiona Nova, is a native French speaker.
Approval of God: Bungie and 343 Industries have expressed their approval of the franchise, to the point of allowing them usage of their assets. Halo in turn started adding nods to RvB (along with all those here, the Tribute Room in Halo Reach has RvB among other Halo fan projects), and even brought in Rooster Teeth for both the 'Password Forgetting Marine'Easter Egg in Halo 3 (where they are not officially their characters, but are pretty clear who they are) and the radio clips featured in the Spartan Ops mode of Halo 4.
Ascended Fan Nickname: Phase was dubbed "knife wife" by fans. This was referenced in the merch, with a t-shirt sporting the phrase, and in Family Shatters, with Zero using the nickname in "Walk & Talk".
Similarly, Donut says "the Reds and Blue" - not "the Reds and Blues" - in "Breaching the Torus" while talking to Wash at one point. Again, it's unknown if Dan Godwin had flubbed the line or if the episode's script had a typo.
It's possibly because the Blue Team was a one man army for most of Recreation.
B-Team Sequel: Red vs. Blue: Zero was done primarily by Rooster Teeth employees more associated with ScrewAttack/DEATH BATTLE! than those associated with Rooster Teeth's own animation division, in particular led by former animator Torrian Crawford.
Cash-Cow Franchise: On a lesser level than RWBY, given half the assets from the show are technically property of Microsoft's. Still, Rooster Teeth's founders quit their old jobs and managed to live with the cash from T-shirts, posters and DVDs (not to mention PayPal and the Sponsor program, now known as RT First), and still bring out merch such as a Caboose Plushie.
Lopez had the voice of the Blue leader Church. So Lopez Dos.O had the voice of the new Blue leader, Wash. And the Latin-speaking Lopez in Family Shatters had the voice of the episode's writer to keep the meta casting.
Huggins is a being of light. Her parents were voiced by lighting artists.
Celebrity Voice Actor: A surprisingly high amount, including Ed Robertson from the Barenaked Ladies as Captain Butch Flowers (somewhat fitting given that the Barenaked Ladies' entertainment style is rather similar to Rooster Teeth's), Elijah Wood as Sigma, Amber Benson as Female Grif, SungWon Cho as King Atlus Arcadium Rex, and Ricco Fajardo as Genkins. According to Word of God, it apparently pays to have friends who are friends with celebrities.
Children Voicing Children: Theta, while an AI, has the personality of a child. He is voiced by J.D. Burns, the young son of series creator Burnie Burns.
Chronically Killed Actor: Following the debut of the "Lopez's Technical Guide to Empathy" PSA at RTX Sydney, Burnie Burns noted that Lopez was "my only character they did not kill yet" (the others are Church, Epsilon, Vic, and possibly Lorenzo; not to mention the Red Zealot and him briefly voicing both Tex and Omega). During RTX 2019, he downright introduced himself in the RvB panel as "My name is Burnie Burns, and my character [Church] is dead."
Burnie Burns: In the first six seasons, wrote, produced, directed, edited, "animated", did some effects, sound editing, and voiced three main characters (Church, Lopez and Vic). As time went on, Rooster Teeth got bigger and he could share the workload more.
Miles Luna: In all of The Chorus Trilogy, directed, wrote, edited, and voiced Felix (along with unofficially voicing Donut during his first scene in Season 11). In two of the seasons, he's also credited for machinimating, motion capture, compositing, effects, producing, and casting. He's since done additional writing for most of the post-Chorus seasons up to Zero.
Joe Nicolosi: Season 15 had him writing, directing, editing, compositing, writing/performing the song "VelociROCKtor", and voicing Jax. The Shisno Paradox had all but the music part repeating.
Averted with Singularity, where the work load is more split as Joe Nicolosi moved onto another project (he only contributed with the story) and Miles Luna was only credited as writing a few episodes, with the rest of the season being written by Jason Weight and both Austin Clark and Joshua Ornelas co-directing.
Zero brings it back, as Torrian Crawford was responsible for the story, co-writing the scripts, directing, animation, editing, and motion capture. (lampshaded in this announcement) He also had a small voice role in the first episode.
Creator Breakdown: Red vs. Blue can take a lot out of its showrunners on the production side of things, and unfortunately gave birth to the company's crunch culture that has permeated it for nearly two decades.
Burnie Burns admitted that the rapid transition to Halo 2 during Season 3 took its toll on him psychologically and led to him getting very little sleep over the three-day period he spent writing those episodes. At one point, mid sentence, he fell asleep from exhaustion and someone thought he'd either died or had a seizure. He now regards the jump to 2as a misfire and that it would have been best to wait for the season to end before moving to the new game (nowadays, most seasons specifically wait until a season finale or hiatus to mark a game change).
Writing for The Chorus Trilogy alongside his other commitments ate into Miles Luna's life. During an AfterBuzz TV interview for Season 12, Luna freely admitted that at one point, he was so exhausted while making it that he wanted to drive his car into oncoming traffic so he'd be forced to take bedrest days.
invoked Joe Nicolosi has gone on record stating that in retrospect, he despised having Vic's Heroic Sacrifice in Season 15's finale be so similar to Church/Epsilon's in Season 13 (with him agreeing with many fans claiming it was redundant), and only kept it in for the sake of continuity in the episode. Nicolosi has also said that while he doesn't hate the character arc he wrote for Sarge in Season 15, he wishes that he could have fine-tuned it more in the script before it was put into the actual season.
A more downplayed case is Tucker getting the Designated Marksman Rifle as his weapon during Season 11, as Miles Luna originally wanted all of Blue Team to use the DMR during that season. However, he later decided to have Caboose and Wash retain their signature weapons. As this left Tucker having the only DMR on Blue Team, Luna found it to be distracting and regretted the initial choice.
One of Miles Luna's greatest regrets when writing Season 12 was the leg injury given to Carolina by Felix in "Cloak and Dagger." He even promised in an interview leading up to Season 13 that he was going to make sure to have the writing for her character be improved for that season.
Another downplayed example, but Burnie Burns said at RTX 2019 that he greatly regretted jumping into Halo 2 so quickly during Season 3. Burns also clarified that in the series going forward, RT sees it as important to at least wait until the current season is over before switching over to the next Halo game. Burnie has also said that the process of transition from Combat Evolved to Halo 2 was so stressful he got no sleep for nearly three days and fell asleep mid conversation with someone, making them think he'd had a seizure or died.
Miles Luna's favorite characters to write are Wash and Tucker, Joe Nicolosi's favorite character to write is Grif, and Jason Weight's favorite characters to write are Kaikaina/Sister and Donut.
On a meta level, Rooster Teeth has claimed that Halo 3 was their favorite game to work in for machinima.
Torrian Crawford's favorite character is Carolina.
Burnie Burns has said that Chapter 19 of Reconstruction is both his favorite episode and what he feels is the best episode that he's ever written for RvB.
Sarge's reaction to the Red vs. Blue war being a lie the whole time in Revelation is Joe Nicolosi's favorite moment out of the series.
Sorola's favorite moment is all of the Multiple Endings released for "Why Were We Here?".
Ramsey's favorite moment was the "I Spy" game played between Grif and Simmons in Season 1.
Hullum's favorite moment was Sheila being moved to the top of Red Base at the end of the Season 2 finale.
Burns didn't give a specific answer in the interview, but has previously stated that his two favorite moments in the series were both the Director's final speech at the end of Reconstruction and Epsilon's Heroic BSoD in Season 13's "Dish Best Served".
The Danza: Koen Wooten voices Kohan Wooter, which is also a producer.
Defictionalization: In Episode 59 of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, while he, Simmons, and Donut are treating Grif like "one of those ducks at the shooting gallery," Sarge declares that "This is the best game since Grifball!" Then came Halo 3, and the Forge map builder, and the rest is history.
The second stinger for Season 15 has the script for Jax's "Red vs. Blue" movie being 311 pages long. According to Joe Nicolosi, the actual script for Season 15 was 311 pages long.
There's also an humorous pervasive example within Season 15 itself - the large number ofShout Outs and pop culture humor were originally far more subtle in Nicolosi's original scripts and less blatant. However, whenever Nicolosi would give the scripts off to Miles Luna to proofread, Luna failed to get almost every reference and be left very confused at whatever was going on. This led to Nicolosi rewriting each script so as to make the references more explicit and not leave Luna in the dark.
While Miles Luna was writing "The Not So Good Ol' Days" for Singularity, which had Wash going back in time to try and learn more about Carolina, Jason Weight asked "Why doesn't he just ask her in the future where they are friends?". That lead Luna to furiously yell "Goddammit!" at the simple solution he missed. The exchange became a joke (courtesy of Wash in Miles' place) in the actual episode.
Directed by Cast Member: For the main show runners, Burnie Burns has a lot of roles, Miles Luna was Felix, and Joe Nicolosi was Jax. But subverted in some episodes of Season 14 (most are directed by machinimators Kyle Taylor and Josh Ornelas, who usually don't dub) and Singularity, as Ornelas and Austin Clark also aren't in the cast, and Zero, given Torrian Crawford has at most a cameo.
Edited for Syndication: Prior to the Chorus Trilogy, dialogue during the end of episodes would often continue into the credits. After the show was remastered, many episodes had their ending dialogue cut off and, due to Blip and Machinima shutting down, currently the only way to hear them is to find the older uploads on the original Rooster Teeth YouTube channel.
A popular fanon of Wash (especially on Tumblr) is "Cat Lady Wash" with fans giving him a cat (usually named Hartford, but this can vary). In Season 10 Episode 14 when we see inside his locker, inside are some towels, a skateboard featuring the Rooster Teeth emblem, a rubber ducky, and pictures of cats!Shannon McCormick had known about the fanon, having discovered it on Tumblr, and specifically campaigned to get the cats included.
On a similar note, the credits for Rooster Teeth Animation productions say "Wash's Cats: Ari and Skyler" under Security.
The Shisno Paradox downright has Wash telling the story of a childhood cat. And in another ascended piece of fandom, the Carolina-Washington love scene in Jax's movie is codenamed after how that ship is known, CarWash. Similarly, Jax's movie also has a love scene between Grif and Simmons called the "Grimmons" scene In-Universe (named after what their ship is called in the fanbase).
invoked Tucker gets into an argument with Genkins during Singularity, with him directly addressing several accusations given by the fanbase about his character being derailed over the last two seasons. Similarly, the widely criticized Retcon from The Shisno Paradox over the definition of "Shisno" was discussed by Chrovos and Genkins in the season premiere for Singularity.
Family Shatters references the attention received by a line of Phase's from Zero.
Zero: Yes, yes, you hate fruit, I know. I saw all of those little gifs all over the social media.
Donut was killed by Washington (the Recreation DVD commentary confirms this), then he's revived in the sponsors-only ending of Chapter 13 of "Revelation". With some Retcon thrown in as well, since Donut was not really dead but in Recovery Mode all along. It's possible Rooster Teeth planned this, and were intentionally misleading in that commentary so as to preserve the secret.
Both the show and Rooster Teeth themselves can't seem to decide whether or not Alpha-Church and Epsilon-Church are the same character due to Epsilon being created from the Alpha's memories and essentially being a back up in some respects. One example is in the second episode of Season 13, where Epsilon asks "In all the years we spent in the canyon, when the hell did [Tucker] learn to dance?" ...Even though by the time Epsilon met Tucker, The Blood Gulch Chronicles were long over. The current stance is that Epsilon is not Church, who died in Reconstruction, but whether or not it sticks has yet to be seen. Amusingly, this was even lampshaded by the Narrator in "The Complete Unabridged Story of Red vs Blue Abridged".
Narrator: (regarding the death of Alpha-Church) But there was also a piece of him still alive. A part of that same computer program, called Epsilon. Later also called Church. Because that's not confusing at all!
There's an audio clip of "Gavino" reading The Director's letter from the Reconstruction Trailer, before Burnie interrupts, clarifying that he didn't want him to be "The Director for the season" he wanted him to "direct the season".
Gavin: "Oh... Oh. I get it. My- So I should just-" Burnie: "Get the fuck out of the booth, okay?"
Here's a list of different season's Outtakes. Remember to breathe!
Season 11, Episode 2 was dedicated to David Dreger, a former contributor to Achievement Hunter who was found dead after an extended disappearance.
Season 13 as a whole was dedicated to Monty Oum after his untimely passing.
Season 17, Episode 4 was dedicated to Kaycee Kendrick, who worked as a modeler in Season 14 and had died shortly before the episode's release in a plane crash.
Inspiration for the Work: Many of the series' classic jokes (like whether the Warthog looks more like a puma or not) came from real-life conversations that series creator Burnie Burns had with his friends while screwing around on the Blood Gulch map in Halo: Combat Evolved. In fact, Burns was inspired to actually start filming their skits as part of a web series while recording gameplay and letter boxing without the HUD, realizing that doing so made it "kind of look like a movie."
Irony as She Is Cast: Carolina is established as being Hollywood Tone-Deaf in Season 15. Her voice actor, Jen Brown, is an accomplished singer in real life (and has even noted that singing badly for the show was both really difficult and fun).
Missing Trailer Scene: Torrian released a sneak preview forRed Vs. Blue: Zero depicting a heist style scene featuring a woman wearing a blue Recon helmet fighting and killing a group of men lead by a man wearing a grey Locus helmet. The two characters were also featured in one of the few promotional images for some time. When Zero concluded however, this scene was conspicuously absent, and neither character actually appears. (even if the clip had 'Test' at the top, no one expected it to end up wholly unrelated, specially as the next public clip of Zero was in the season!)
In their first appearance in Season 1, Vic and Private Jimmy have different voice actors (and in the former's case, a whole different personality).
One episode of Season 1 had Tucker's lines mostly recorded by Jason Saldaña's brother Nick, given a power outage prevented him from doing so.
Miles Luna has filled in for both Tucker and Donut in PSAs. Luna would also voice the latter for character's debut in Season 11 (although the DVD version has Dan Godwin back), and voiced the former in the Season 12 Teaser Trailer.
Charlie Campbell voices the Director in Season 15 instead of John Reed. Rooster Teeth tried to get in touch with Reed, but he was completely incommunicado.
In the 2020 Death Battle episode between the Red and Blue Teams, due to Joel Heyman being let go from Rooster Teeth earlier that year (not that he wasn't invited), Caboose is voiced by Promoted Fanboy Michael Malconian.
Family Shatters had the Latin-speaking Lopez voiced by writer Eddy Rivas.
The Other Marty: During RTX at Home 2020, fans were allowed to watch the first episode of Zero in which Diesel was voiced by Ryan Haywood. Due to the controversy around him and his subsequent departure, he was replaced by Daman Mills.
Parody Assistance: To Rooster Teeth's eternal relief, Bungie loved the early episodes and gave the company permission to use the Halo assets. An early copy of Halo 2 was given for them to work on, and RT continues to get Halo games with everything unlocked from follow-up developer 343 Industries to help with their machinimation.
Permanent Placeholder: As told by composer Jeff Williams, he thought about "hiring some badass soprano opera singer" to do the Ominous Latin Chanting in the Season 9 score. He decided to test it by asking his 12-year-old daughter Casey to record the lyrics... "then, she just nailed it". Casey wound up doing the chorus of another track in that season, a third the following one, and is now the primary singer in Williams' score for RWBY.
Elijah Wood as the evil, creepy Sigma. Mind you, this isn't the first time he's taken up the role of a villain.
North Dakota is a fairly serious guy. His voice actor (John Erier) is a professional comedian.
Miles Luna, who played JauneArc in RWBY, plays the very much badass Felix. Moreso in Season 12, when he turns out to be one of the bad guys, and a rather Ax-Crazy and Faux Affably Evil one at that who puts on the dorky routine to manipulate.
Yet again with RWBY, Arryn Zech is known for playing the stoic and reserved Blake. Here she voices DoctorEmilyGrey, who's a bit... crazier with a double dose of psychotic.
Production Nickname: Monty Oum, one of the Freelancer animators, simply referred to the "Mysterious Blue Guy" (AKA Captain Butch Flowers/Agent Florida) as "Blue". Likewise, the only known woman in the Insurrection is called "Girlie" by the cast and crew.
Promoted Fanboy: Many of the people who've worked on the show in more recent years started out as fans, including but not limited to:
Ed Robertson, who voiced Captain Butch Flowers/Freelancer Agent Florida.
Gavin Free, who directed both the Relocated miniseries and Recreation.
Monty Oum, who would help add in CGI animation to the series starting with the season finale of Recreation and would be brought on as a guest writer & additional voice actor in later seasons.
Elijah Wood, who would voice the A.I. fragment Sigma during Season 10.
Arryn Zech, who would voice Dr. Emily Grey in Seasons 12, 13, and 15-17.
Eddy Rivas, who co-wrote both Season 10 and The Ultimate Fan Guide.
Miles Luna, who also co-wrote Season 10, wrote and directed The Chorus Trilogy, and contributed to several episodes of Season 14. Luna would also later both write an episode of Singularity and co-write another with Jason Weight for that same season.
Jordan Cwierz, who wrote the Season 14 prequel episodes for The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
Barbara Dunkelman, who wrote the Season 14 episode "Head Cannon."
Joe Nicolosi, who wrote, directed, and animated the Season 14 episode "The Brick Gulch Chronicles," and wrote and directed the show itself for Seasons 15 and 16.
Jason Weight, who co-wrote Season 16 and then wrote virtually all of Season 17.
Torrian Crawford, who first animated the DEATH BATTLE! in Season 14 and was then elevated to showrunner on Season 18.
Both Freckles and Tex appear in Season 15, but only in flashbacks and with different voices due to their original VA's no longer working with Rooster Teeth, with In-Universe reasoning to justify the shift.
Freckles is instead voiced by Miles Luna using a high pitched voice, justified as Freckles being put in a very tiny body, with Freckles in turn left behind on Iris as the BGC go looking for the Blues & Reds.
Tex is instead voiced by Burnie Burns using a deep modulated voice similar to when she first debuted, justified as said appearance is set during the days of Project Freelancer during a training match against Carolina, the Director seeking to test new equipment as well as monitor Tex's behavior with Omega, with it all but said one of the equipment being tested was the voice modulator.
Burnie Burns has stated that after so many years of shouting his lungs off as Church, he can't do that voice for too long without hurting his throat. Therefore, Genkins (voiced by Ricco Fajardo) spent virtually all of their time in the Blood Gulch portions of Singularity possessing Church, the few times Church appearing as himself either keeping the yelling brief, or having him talk in a more subdued tone.
According to Miles Luna, Wash opening up to Tucker about his self-doubt and struggles as the leader of Blue Team in the second half of Season 11 was heavily inspired by Luna's own insecurities after becoming the new showrunner for the series after The Project Freelancer Saga.
Dylan Andrews from Season 15 is often written as if she were a fan of the show. She thinks there's still an interesting story to be found in the Reds and Blues, and she wants to see how it ends. She also expresses great interest in finding out what happened aboard the Staff of Charon towards the end of the Chorus war.
Conversely, Carlos Trabka from the same aforementioned season is written like someone who dislikes the show. He would be more in favor if Dylan reported on a group of "monster-fighting sexy teenagers".note Not everyone who likes RWBY dislikes Red vs. Blue, of course, but RWBY has become the far more popular of the two. He also finds the events that happened in Blood Gulch too crazy to take seriously.
Zero has Omega Sparx's "The Mark" in the opening titles. (the soundtrack also includes an old track of his, "Gamebreakers")
A more downplayed case, but a few Trocadero songs that actually preceded the show's beginning have been later used in the series itself (such as "Vale Deah", which plays during Season 1's credits).
Downplayed, but Miles Luna originally wanted Episode 8 of Season 13 to be titled "You Better Watch Out" as an allusion to it being the first appearance of the Santa A.I.. Instead, they decided to name it "Test Your Might" as a Shout-Out to Mortal Kombat, and Episode 9 of the same season was entitled "You Better Watch Out."
Season 15 Episode 6 was originally going to be shot in a Mockumentary style, with Dylan and Jax interviewing the Reds and Blues individually. This idea was reworked into The Shisno Paradox as a documentary Jax was making as part of his film production.
In Season 10, Michael Jones and Lindsay Jones (nee Tuggey) are an Official Couple in reality, and were paired as the Chain Guy and Chain Girl.
In Season 12, Burns' son was brought in to voice Theta.
Doubled with Casting Gag; In "Get Bent" (the Season 14 episode where Church, Tex, and all of Red Team are Gender Flipped), the female Sarge is voiced by Anna Hullum (Matt Hullum's wife) and Lopez and Church both get the voice of Ashley Jenkins (Burnie Burns' wife).
Burnie Burns' ex-wife Jordan Burns originally voiced the female Donut that appears in Caboose's mind (when the setting returns in "Head Cannon", she's replaced by Barbara Dunkelman). Related, Jordan's brother Mark Bellman voices Delta.
Agent Idaho is Carolina's husband (though took two years of dating after the episode for Barret Tribe and Jen Brown to marry).
In 2016, Kathleen Zuelch (the voice of Agent Texas) was fired for getting drunk on Twitter and insulting her castmates. Although this is a rather downplayed example since Zuelch's character hadn't had a significant role in the series for roughly four years prior to her being fired.
Relatedly, Joel Heyman (the voice of Caboose) was let go from Rooster Teeth in late 2019 (only confirmed in mid-2020) after tensions in the workplace culminated in him not showing up to work, combined with his more volatile activity online causing controversy for the company on a regular basis. Heyman has since moved to LA and expressed no desire to work with RT again. He later clarified that Rooster Teeth had aparently intended on letting him stay on as an independant but Heyman himself walked from the role, ultimately rendering this a Subverted Trope.
Ryan Haywood (the voice of the Chorus Lieutenant Andersmith and Zero's henchman Diesel) was fired from Rooster Teeth in late 2020 after allegations of sexual misconduct were released. The role of Diesel was recast and redubbed, leading to a slight delay.
Running the Asylum: Miles Luna was given control of the series for Seasons 11 to 14, though the original creators did help him get his bearings at first. When Joe Nicolosi ran the show and Luna helped him, however, this was in full effect. Nicolosi even said that he felt like he was writing fan fiction in an interview.
Screwed by the Lawyers: Due to the fact that most of the show's assets are (technically) owned by Microsoft, Miles Luna has said that any potential crossover between Red vs. Blue and Rooster Teeth's other works (i.e., RWBY, Camp Camp, Nomad of Nowhere, and Day 5) is currently impossible.
Due to being limited by the games, certain armor configurations, maps, and weaponry have to be changed between seasons.
The Meta's Brute Shot, christened the "Grif Shot" after Grif stole it, became unavailable after Season 10 due to not being available in Halo 4. As such, Simmons explains that the UNSC confiscated it in between Seasons 10 and 11, with Hargrove putting it in his trophy room. The only time Grif gets to use it again would be in the finale of Season 13, in which he was completely animated and as such able to be implemented.
The Meta's suit was introduced as a small plot point in Season 13, but kept in the style of the armor from Halo 3, requiring it be limited strictly to animation due to the season using Halo 4. So while Tucker dons it in order to fight off Hargrove's forces in the finale, Season 15 offhandedly mentions the suit was rendered useless, hence why Tucker is back in his standard armor.
When introduced in The Freelancer Saga, made using Halo 3 and animation, Carolina wore the Rogue helmet and Recon body armor. When the finale of Season 10 shifted to Halo 4, Carolina had to have her armor configuration changed due to the Rogue helmet being heavily redesigned between games, instead being given the Recon helmet and Stalker body armor. Any usage of her old configuration was limited to either animation or using Halo 3, with the In-Universe justification that she donned armor used by the Space Pirates to infiltrate their numbers. Likewise, when Singularity touched on where she was at the time of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, it was set in Halo 2, which didn't allow armor customization outside of colors, so Carolina wore the standard armor in tan, the In-Universe justification being that she was in hiding and had stored her normal set of armor somewhere else.
While playable in the first three games, Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians lack the ability to play as aliens like the Sangheili/Elites. This prevented aliens from having major roles in the narrative without certain workarounds as seen in Season 13, such as Santa using a Halo 3 model and Junior's cameo being made in Halo 3.
In The Chorus Trilogy, made using Halo 4, the Federal Army of Chorus all wore Prefect helmets, and most wore Prefect body armor, in particular Dr. Grey. As the Prefect armor was not available in Halo 5: Guardians, Dr. Grey's was changed to the Cypher helmet and Legionnaire body armor.
Due to a large amount of the remaining multiplayer maps in Halo 4 that Rooster Teeth hadn't used yet for Chorus all involving Forerunners and the Covenant in some fashion, the plot of Season 13 had to be changed to incorporate Aliens into it.
Part of Locus' characterization was his considering himself to be nothing more than a killing machine, even taking the name of his armor as a result, punctuated with the "X" on his helmet reflecting the scar on his face. Halo 5: Guardians redesigned the Locus helmet, removing the iconic "X" and making it lighter in coloration. In-Universe this helps show Locus's Heel–Face Turn and Character Development.
According to Shannon McCormick concerning his two Freelancer episodes in Season 14, the Triplets were originally going to be abandoned on a planet made up of tropical islands. However, the multiplayer map needed for it wasn't able to be found in time for the episode's production, and so the script was rewritten to account for the Triplets being abandoned on an ice world (which was easier to machinimate anyways).
During Tex's flashback cameo in Season 15, she is using the voice filter (and thus is once again voiced by Burnie Burns), owing to Kathleen Zuelch's break-up with Rooster Teeth.
The Ultimate Fan Guide answers a lot of long-standing fan questions, but it says that Church's time travel shenanigans in Season 3 are subject to "conflicting reports", which seems to be the writers' way of saying that they don't know if it really happened or not either.
When asked if the Forerunners, Precursors and Flood all exist in Red vs. Blue in an interview with AfterBuzzTV or only Broad Strokes versions of them exist (if at all), Miles Luna literally gave an ambivalent shrug in response.
Similarly, Jason Weight, Burnie Burns, and Luna all haven't said anything definite one way or the other regarding if Singularity retroactively erased the events of Season 15 and The Shisno Paradox.
Swan Song: Restoration will be the final project made by Rooster Teeth after its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery shut down the studio in March 2024.
Again played for laughs when showrunner Joe Nicolosi, Jason Weight (one of Season 16's main co-writers), and producer/creative consultant Miles Luna jokingly released a fake whiteboard from the writer's room after Season 16 got a decidedly controversial reception.
Many lines and shots, including one notable case in Season 3 where Donut in the script was supposed to just scream once, but the actor decided that instead he'd run around babbling incoherently while the other characters delivered their lines. Most of the time the cast agrees that what was improvised was better than the actual script.
Another good example is in Season 14's "Head Cannon." During a sequence set inside of Sarge's mind, several members of Blue Team are seen getting shot/thrown away by explosions within a war zone. However, during the machinimation of the scene, the "Caboose" model accidentally fell over while walking down a street. The scene was so funny that the animators got Joel Heyman to record an additional line for Caboose so as to not waste the opportunity.
While relatively common after over 16 years of the voice actors knowing their characters, the reigning champion is reportedly Matt Hullum's work as Sarge. By all reports, sessions with him last far longer than anything scripted as he rambles on in every different direction, which is fully in Sarge's character.
According to Miles Luna, the fact that the shot in "The End Is Near" where Felix is surrounded by both Locus and the Reds and Blues in the Communications Temple looks so close to the shot of Locus' "trial" in the Jungle Temple during "Locus Of Control" was actually unintentional, and they decided to keep it in after Luna realized what a nice parallel the two scenes made.
When Meredith Hagan was recording "Contact Redux" (a Dark Reprise she created based on "Contact" from Season 11) as the credits song for Season 13, she accidentally misplaced a lyric - Namely, "Contact" has the line "One of us won't be forgotten", while "Contact Redux" has the corresponding line of "One of uswillbe forgotten". After both her and Miles Luna realized how unintentionally powerful that lyrical change was (namely, the assertion of someone being forgotten can be seen as referencing Epsilon's Heroic Sacrifice by erasing his own memories to help power the Meta suit in the Season 13 finale), though, they decided to keep it.
Overlapping with What Could Have Been; Joe Nicolosi was originally going to voice Lorenzo, and Burnie Burns provided him with reference audio to help him with the role. However, Nicolosi thought Burns' Italian was so hilariously terrible that he decided to just use the temp audio instead.
According to Joshua Kazemi's post-release notes for the QvsA episode "Caboose vs Carolina, Who Would Win?", Carolina's laugh before she hits Caboose was unscripted.
There wasn't a scripted laugh for Carolina before she hits Caboose. I wrote in another heavy sigh, so seeing that change was a really fun surprise for me when I saw the cut. It's so good and so satisfying! I love that they made that change. It works so much better.
Season 3, where the guys were really overworked trying to get the first episode filmed in Halo 2the same day said game hit stores. Burnie Burns also had to rewrite several episodes over and over again, twice filling a Cosmic Deadline (the characters going to the future - i.e. Halo 2 - in Episode 43 and the season finale in Episode 57) and what he intended to be the series' Milestone Celebration on Episode 50 ended up being so extensive that its events had to be spread over three chapters. In Burns' own words, "I got 4 hours of sleep in three days. After Episode 43 came out, I actually fell asleep in mid-sentence while talking to someone. They thought I died."
Season 14, where after realizing that they couldn't think of a proper follow-up to the cliffhanger that the previous season left off on in time, the producers instead decided to change it into an anthology that informally served as a showrunner audition.
According to Joe Nicolosi, Season 15 was really difficult to produce because of both the stresses of the production crew switching over to a new showrunner and the machinimators having to quickly get used to working in Halo 5. As an example, "Nightmare on Planet Evil" had to be re-filmed three different times due to so many scenes having the Reds and Blues' colors being completely off since the game's way of handling lighting was so radically different compared to what the machinimators were previously used to dealing with in Halo 4.
Austin Clark had never made any machinima with Halo 4 prior to working on Singularity, and so was immensely stressed out when re-choreographing the fight scene at Crash Site Bravo in "Succession". Apparently, it had gotten to where Clark claimed it took eight hours to just get three different shots at one point.
As noted under Schedule Slip, Zero took a whole year to make due to both the transition between production crews and the COVID-19 Pandemic at a certain point forcing everyone to work from home - and both showrunner Torrian Crawford and animator Kristina Christofferson noted how stressful and unfavorable things were. It also suffered another production delay just as it would be released with Ryan Haywood's Role-Ending Misdemeanor, which required his role to be recast and redubbed. Furthermore, Rooster Teeth itself was hit with multiple high-profile PR messes during the seasons' production cycle, most notably Joel Heyman being fired for making offensive comments on Twitter and both Burnie Burns and Rebecca Frasier resigning from Rooster Teeth (albeit with both seeming to be on good terms with the company itself, with the door being kept open for them to potentially reprise their roles later on).
Word of Gay: While "The 'Mission'" explicitly reveals Ohio to be a lesbian, it's more ambiguous about Sherry. Shannon McCormick, the episode's writer, later confirmed it in an AfterBuzz TV interview.
According to Torrian Crawford on Twitter (1:19), Zero, Raymond, and One are black.
Working Title: The first title for spin-off QvsA was Grimmons, but as the producer put it "we don't want to take that from the fans". The trailer announcement still made a Fandom Nod to that ("Is that what people call us?").
Write Who You Know: V.I.C. is based on a former roommate of Burnie's, also called Vic, who spoke the same way, down to the overuse of "dude". Geoff Ramsey has also noted that his own contributions to the episodes/seasons' scripts are heavily based on his own experiences serving in the US Army.
Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Season 1 was like this, with Burnie Burns writing the episodes the same week they would be released, and creating on the fly things such as Church's death and Tex being a woman. Season 2 started to change it, as Matt Hullum was added as a main writer, and he and Burns started to plan much more in advance.
Written by Cast Member: Of the main writers, everyone but Monty Oum and Joshua Kazemi voices a character. Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum have a lot of roles, Miles Luna started with no role in Season 10 but became Felix afterwards, and Joe Nicolosi was Jax Jonez. Season 14 has promoted examples with Shannon McCormick (Washington, wrote two episodes where he appears as both him and Iowa) and Barbara Dunkelman (Katie Jensen, also voices female Donut in "Head Cannon"), plus several guests — James Willems as Drag in the two episodes written and voiced by members of Funhaus, the Game Grumps in Gray vs. Grey (where Miles also co-wrote and appeared), and the creators of DEATH BATTLE! in the Meta vs. Carolina episode. Season 16's co-writer Jason Weight plays the Orange Knight (who is later revealed to be Lancelot). In Season 17, where Weight was the lead writer, he voices the Labyrinth's simulacrum of the sadistic P.E. instructor Coach Prestwood. In Season 18, Noel Wiggins voices Raymond. Family Shatters had episodes written by Hannah McCarthy (Phase) and Jenn Tidwell (East), and Eddy Rivas does the voice of Lopez.
, Darryl is African-American, like his voice actor, Aaron Alexander.