What Could Have Been / Red vs. Blue

• The first season of Red vs. Blue, and by extension the entire series, was originally supposed to unfold in a dramatically different fashion than the finished product. DVD Audio Comentary for the first season reveals that, as originally envisioned, the entire project would only have been six to nine episodes in length, which had all been very loosely planned in advance. Additionally, the format of the first two episodes (The Reds talking at their base while the Blues observe them through the sniper rifle and make snarky comments) was supposed to be maintained until the end. However, by the third episode the expanding script had already pulled the Blues to their own base, and when they reached the tenth episode the writers realized they had not gotten to almost any of the jokes they had planned for the "final" ninth episode (Specifically, putting Donut in the pink armor). The episodes continued to be written until the immediate story was completed, with a total of nineteen episodes which were subsequently billed as "Season One." Continuing the leftover plots points from those episodes lead into four more seasons, as well as several sequel series, and are still ongoing.
• The characters themselves were also supposed to evolve differently, and their portrayals in their first appearances (Even throughout the entire first season) contrast heavily with their final forms. Caboose, the Breakout Character legendary for his severely warped mind and personality, was originally a rather bland character who was introduced to the series simply to serve as a catalyst to get Church angry. Donut, who became almost as widely known for his armor-induced personality, was one of the "normal" characters of the series, and as a whole the entire cast was saner and more likely to at least notice the Idiot Ball, even if they could not quite let go of it. Fan reaction to individual points of personality that each character showed lead the writers to magnify and focus on those points, which eventually resulted in the insanity of the series itself.
  • Grif and Sarge were originally supposed to be friendly to each other! When Tex headshots Sarge, Grif revives him with CPR (don't ask) and Church, who'd already have been dead, convinces Sarge to lay off of Grif. However, they decided it wouldn't work out in the end and, when Sarge is revived, he berates Grif for his means of reviving him.
• A character introduction video that Burnie Burns created in preparation for the pilot episode was based around heavy action and extensive violence. However, Burns ended up taking inspiration from Homestar Runner, Penny Arcade, and (to a lesser extent) Mystery Science Theater 3000, resulting in the pilot's script being shifted to focus on situational comedy instead.
  • According to Word of God, there was originally a concept in which the characters, in preparation for battle, would call out "Go Red/Blue for battle!" This would trigger a Transformation Sequence in which the character's armour would change to the standard red or blue, making the battles appear more like actual multiplayer games.
• The story was originally going to be about the Reds, with Church and Tucker always observing from the cliff and making snarky comments, a la Statler and Waldorf.
• Most famously, Red vs. Blue was only supposed to last six episodes. However, Burns and Hullum kept getting so many new ideas (such as Donut having pink armor) that they wanted to try out that they kept pushing back the planned end-date before they decided to actually make RvB into a proper web series.
• According to the Season 2 commentary, Doc was going to be a reporter/journalist when he was first conceived but because of where his character was going (eg. kidnappings) it was seen as hitting too close to home considering the real wars in the Middle East happening at the time.
• The now-iconic helmet filters were originally never going to be used for the characters. However, when the series had just started production, Gus Sorola (the voice actor for Simmons) had moved to Puerto Rico and had to record his dialogue over the phone. Burnie Burns then had to add voice filters to everyone so as to keep the audio consistent.
• There were plans to give the Reds' Warthog be a character in the same vein of the Blues' with Sheila in the Scorpion Tank. The idea was to have the Warthog have a similar personality to Speed Buggy.
• Originally, Sarge's animosity towards Grif would have ended after Sarge was revived by Grif's CPR for a headwound. The talk Church would have had with Sarge would have convinced him to lay off and the two would have treated each other better. They decided it wouldn't work and, instead, Sarge chews Grif out for how he was saved.
• The character who captures Church and Grif at the end of Season 2, Max Gain, was supposed to have a much larger role in Season 3. But given the script wound up very condensed so as to make the show progress the plot while still moving to Halo 2 the same day the game hit stores, most of his appearances were cut.
• Commentary reveals that Sister was originally not meant to be portrayed as the... ah, "girl of questionable morals, standards, and intelligence" that she is. The writers had originally intended to depict her as a kind-hearted, but naive girl-next-door type, but that was before they interviewed Rebecca Frasier. The writers then played a joke on Frasier during auditions—they kept adding more and more vulgar jokes into the scripts to see when she'd ask to stop reading. She didn't, and that's how they discovered she was willing to say pretty much anything in her lines, whereupon they picked her for the role and Sister was rewritten to be a "loud slut" instead.
• Doing the Animated Adaptation was an ambitious idea, but the crew just didn't have the money and time for it.
• In the original script for "Why Were We Here", Tucker and Sister were included during the sequence when O'Malley body surfed across everyone in the canyon, but the dialogue written for them was so offensive that it was never even recorded for a deleted scene.
• The commentary track on the Revelation DVD suggests that Grif was originally going to take up the Meta's Brute Shot as his weapon (as he's noticeably the only member of the main cast not to have one). They decided not to go with this idea, however... Well, at least until he decides to help save Carolina and Epsilon in Episodes 20 and 21 of Season 10. But then the weapon unfortunately became unavailable in the Halo 4 engine, meaning it could not be used for Seasons 11 & 12, and was Hand Waved that it was confiscated by the UNSC between Seasons 10 & 11. They did get around this in the finale of Season 13 by having Grif briefly take it back during a fully CGI sequence, but it's confiscated again after that scene.
• There exists a deleted scene, fully animated but unused, of the Meta killing Agent Washington with the Warthog by splitting him in half. This scene would have been used in the finale of Season 8.
  • Speaking of the Season 8 finale, the original script for the episode ended with the Halo: Combat Evolved engine being used for the "inside" of the Epsilon Unit (likely to reflect it serving as a Book Ends for Church's character arc up to that point). This was changed early on due to Bungie approaching Rooster Teeth with early access to Halo: Reach and letting them use it for the Epsilon Unit.
• Revelation was originally going to be titled Resolution - Burns refers to it as that on the Recreation DVD commentary (even joking that the DVD would become a collector's item if the name changed).
• An unused fight scene for Season 9, but that was later updated for use in Season 10, would've had Carolina's armor completely break off after chasing the Sleeveless Insurrectionist, having a fight in a subway that would've ended with Carolina using her Grappling-Hook Gun to decapitate the guy.
  • An early idea for the "Mysterious Blue Freelancer" was that it was Sarge, he was silent all that time because his helmet mike was broke, and at the end of the season, they would give him a red helmet, allowing them to reveal his voice. They then decided that making it Flowers would be better.^note As per the RvB panel at RTX 2016
• Early in the development of Season 11, Locus and Felix, both in green and grey armor, were going to be introduced as villains, which changed when Miles decided to have them be Playing Both Sides. Additionally, both Locus and Felix were going to be introduced later into the season, but Luna decided to speed up their introductions so as to get the plot moving forward at an increased pace.
• Felix was originally going to be called "Leon," but both Hullum and Burns thought it sounded too much like "Leonard" (as in, "Leonard Church") and so asked Luna to give him a different name.
• In an interview on AfterBuzz TV, Miles Luna revealed that an early plan was for Kimball to lose it when Felix's betrayal is revealed and shoot Doyle, and then be shot down herself.
• Early plans for Episode 8 of Season 13 were to actually show Tucker's test in the alien gateway, and to have Dr Grey go in too, but time constraints forced them to cut both sequences.
• Season 14 had quite a few episodes and arcs that had to be scrapped, though it's possible they'll be able to make these happen eventually.
  • One episode gathered the main cast together to do a live reading of Season 1 Episode 2 while drunk. First, they would would read a new script with the Reds getting a supply of alcohol instead of the Warthog. Then, they'd have to recite the original dialogue from memory. Predictably, it went off the rails, and the episode wasn't aired. It wasn't until a year later that they released a version of it for FIRST members as a reward for FIRST Week.
  • Burnie Burns planned to write an episode, but according to him, it just didn't pan out. An interview with AfterBuzz TV implied that he wanted to write an episode focused on Agent Maine during the years of Project Freelancer, and have it depict Sigma manipulating him into becoming the Meta - but from his perspective.
  • There was originally going to be a multi-part story about 479er written by Kerry Shawcross. It didn't make the cut due to time constraints.
  • Relatedly, Shannon McCormick apparently told Miles Luna about the idea of a "Freelancer Ladies' Night Out"-style episode that would've focused on 479er and Carolina hanging out at Errera. Unfortunately, the animation department was too busy with the Merc Trilogy at the time to work on it. However, it did help inspire the idea for Shannon's two Freelancer episodes - "The Triplets" and "'The 'Mission'."
  • Gray Haddock had an idea for a genuinely scary horror story centered around Charon Industries. As Haddock ran Rooster Teeth's entire animation department at the time, he was too busy to be able to work on it.
  • Kyle Taylor wanted to make a story focused on York, taking place between him leaving Project Freelancer and meeting up with Tex in Out of Mind.
• Season 14 was "a sort of audition process" for who would be the showrunner next season. It could've been any of the writers and directors who contributed, or maybe some of the aforementioned people who didn't get to, but they ultimately chose Joe Nicolosi.
• Season 15 Episode 5 had some cut jokes:
  • To explain why everyone is still wearing their armor, Caboose would've found a nail gun while their bases were being built, and everyone would've had a bunch of nails on them. Having so many tiny nails on every character was too difficult to animate, though.
  • The original idea for the episode was that none of them could get along, so they would each live on a different part of the moon and essentially have their own countries. Once a month, they would all come together for a UN-style meeting. The whole concept ended up being too convoluted, so it had to be scrapped.
• According to a post-Season 15 Reddit AMA with Joe Nicolosi, the Blues and Reds' original Evil Plan was to cause a massive explosion on the far side of Earth's Moon and force it to crash into the planet below, with Jax's "Moon Doom" script meant to serve as Foreshadowing.
• Season 16 Episode 10 had two jokes cut when there was a decision to make a slideshow instead of video: Caboose would have been the echo that responds to his past self in the cave scene in Season 11, and when Caboose was time-skipping while on fire, he would've inspired Moses by igniting a bush. Word of God is that the former is still canon, just because it's funny.
• According to Jason Weight, Singularity initially had two other possible titles: Everwhen and The Firewall Paradox. The former eventually became the title of the season's second episode.
  • Speaking of Singularity, Lee Eddy was originally not going to be cast as Chrovos for the season. However, Jason Weight was so impressed by Eddy's voice acting when he was visiting the Camp Camp panel at RTX 2018 that he decided to rewrite Chrovos as a woman for Singularity just to have Eddy voice her.
  • While filming Singularity and having several events taking place during the earliest seasons, Burnie Burns, Jason Weight, and Miles Luna discussed if they should have Past Caboose sound more like he did during the first season or just stick with the current voice. They eventually kept it the same since Sarge had a similar case where the voice sounded nothing like he does in the present, but they hadn't already changed it for the Blood Gulch Prequel Trilogy episodes in Season 14 and they decided to keep it the same for Caboose so it wouldn't be distracting.
  • Since there's countless scenes in Singularity taking place during the events of previous seasons, there was a point where Rooster Teeth considered re-using old footage from previous seasons to make the workload easier. However, aside from a few shots in montages, that didn’t work, and everything had to be re-shot, re-recorded, and RT even had to get back all of the voice actors that weren’t still on the show. According to RTX 2019, the primary reason why is because of how much graphics quality has evolved over time, so putting together the old Halo footage with the new would've been very noticeable.
  • invoked In an interview after the season, Jason Weight claimed that Simmons' Labyrinth illusion was more or less the same as what was seen in "Theogeny"... except for that Simmons' father was inside of the UFO attacking Simmons, and it was meant to serve as a Freudian reference to Simmons still feeling like he's in his father's shadow. The higher-ups at RT vetoed the idea since it could come off as unintentionally incestuous/pedophilic.
  • Weight also stated that the season's final script was the third delivered. The second had a different concept, where Blood Gulch was sort of a containment unit stationed at the beginning of time while Chrovos worked his way into eroding time from the present backwards. He would even release one earlier draft once WandaVision turned out to go for similar grounds.
  • The aforementioned interview also notes that Miles Luna had toyed with having a scene set directly after Season 13, but Weight felt that it was best to leave that area alone since it had ended on such a perfect note already and so convinced him to let the moment be left alone. Weight also toyed with having the Blood Gulch Crew actually see Epsilon’s final message and Tucker picking them up/explaining Epsilon's nature, but the scene was both too long and not directly involved with the rest of the season's storyline, so Miles Luna instead went with having Tucker re-live the Battle of Crash Site Bravo.
  • Finally, the Cosmic Powers other than Chrovos and Genkins would've had roles in the season.
• Season 18 was supposed to still use the original cast alongside new characters, downright opening with Caboose and featuring a fight scene for Tucker. Executive Meddling told otherwise. Some actors also didn't want to return.
• On Joshua Kazemi's post-release episode notes, he notes the Carolina/One/East fight would have a The Matrix-inspired scene where Tiny would break into a mess hall to announce it to the others, but they deemed the scene unnecessary.
• The overall plot for Zero and whatever was intended to come of it falls under this following an official statement from Sean Hinz (the current co-head of Rooster Teeth's Animation Department) revealing the Zero plot would not be continued following the season's negative reception.
• According to Joshua Kazemi's post-release notes for the QvsA episode "Caboose vs Carolina, Who Would Win?", Carolina was scripted to give a heavy sigh before she hits Caboose instead of the laugh she does in the final cut.
• When it was first announced in back in August 2023, Restoration was billed as the Grand Finale and final season of Red vs. Blue and was initially scheduled to drop in Fall later that same year. For undisclosed reasons, however, Restoration was later changed into a feature-length film, now scheduled to release in May 2024

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