Caboose (Red vs. Blue)

infobox RvB character
name=Caboose


caption=Images from Caboose's DVD character profiles.
fullname=Private Michael J. Caboose
affiliation=Blue
color=Blue
voice_actor=Joel Heyman
first_appearance=3

Private Michael J. Caboose is a main fictional character in Rooster Teeth Productions' machinima comic science fiction video series "Red vs. Blue". Voiced by Joel Heyman, Caboose first appears in episode 3 of rvbep|season 1 as a new recruit for the Blood Gulch rvbchar|Blue Team, a group of soldiers engaged in a futuristic civil war against the rvbchar|Red Team.

Caboose is portrayed as one of the most eccentric characters in the series. Consistently shown to be mentally abnormal, his behavior varies from merely somewhat dim-witted in Season 1 to almost completely divorced from reality in Season 3 and onwards. His unusual behavior frequently earns him the scorn and disrespect of the series' other characters.

In part due to positive early fan reaction, Burnie Burns, the main writer for the series, focused the storyline on Caboose and rvbchar|Donut (Dan Godwin), the Red Team's rookie.

Role in the plot

Prior to the series, Caboose was born and raised in a colony on the moon with 17 siblings; dialogue suggests that all of his siblings are sisters. He joined the army after mistaking a recruiting center for college.Rooster Teeth Productions (2005). Character profiles. In "rvbep|season 3|Red vs. Blue Season Three" [DVD] . Buda, Texas: Rooster Teeth Productions.] Caboose first appears in episode 3. Arriving with a tank named rvbchar|Sheila, he soon annoys the Blue Team's self-appointed leader, rvbchar|Church by accidentally calling his girlfriend a slut, and is consequently tasked with guarding the flag inside the team's base and waiting for a nonexistent general. Meanwhile, rvbchar|Simmons and rvbchar|Grif have sent their team's rookie, Donut, on a fool's errand for nonexistent supplies. In a mutual misunderstanding, Donut mistakes Caboose for a shopkeeper, and Caboose mistakes Donut for the "General" and allows him to take the flag. In the ensuing conflict, Caboose accidentally kills Church while using Sheila and narrowly escapes a bombing run that disables the tank. Caboose begins to show affection towards Sheila. Near the end of season 1, Caboose becomes possessed by rvbchar|O'Malley, an evil artificial intelligence (AI) who transmits himself to Caboose via radio before his original host, a mercenary named rvbchar|Tex, is killed.Burns, et al., 2003.]

rvbep|Season 2 continues Caboose's character development.Jandoc.] Parts of episodes rvbep|31–rvbep|33 take place inside Caboose's mind, which Church and Tex explore as ghosts in an attempt to kill O'Malley. There, they encounter Caboose's skewed mental images of other characters. At the end of the season, Caboose becomes stranded with rvbchar|Sarge in an unknown location when a teleporter malfunctions.Burns, et al., 2004.] In rvbep|season 3, Caboose and Sarge escape from the rvbchar|Grunts, another set of respawning Red and Blue teams constantly fighting each other. After a bomb blasts most of the characters into the future, but Church into the past, Church learns of rvbchar|The Great Destroyer from rvbchar|Gary, a computer, who says that The Great Destroyer "will be known as the stupidest life form in the universe". Church assumes that this description refers to Caboose, but later events and the introduction of a new character, the rvbchar|Alien, cause the characters to suspect that the Great Destroyer is not Caboose. After the Blues encounter the Alien and learn of its quest, Caboose is sent along with Tucker; after the quest fails, they return to Blood Gulch. Caboose is later injured by 'donating' some blood to Tucker's Alien baby.

In rvbep|89 Caboose is picked by his team to distract Sheila, while Tex shuts her down. They succeed but Sheila is shut down just before she reveals the location of O'Malley to Caboose. He convinces his team of this, and they decided to place Sheila's AI into the newly arrived ship. When the other Blues are ordered to attack Red base, Caboose stays behind to ensure the success of the transfer, and informs Tex by radio of the location of O'Malley, which was the leader of the blue team. In rvbep|98 when Church, Tucker and Tex are held hostage by rvbchar|Wyoming, a mercenary hired to kill Tucker, Caboose tries to save them. However, he is gunned down by rvbchar|Gary, who was controlling the tank. Fortunately, Wyoming's A.I gives him the ability to loop time which he does after he is shot by Church. The second time around, Caboose is sniped in the head and killed by Wyoming. The third time, however, Tucker shoots at Caboose with the fallen Wyoming's sniper rifle and he runs back to the ship, not wanting to help out anymore. In rvbep|99 Tucker convinces Caboose to distract the tank while he downloads Gary's personality into the ship for Sheila to imprison. Buoyed by this success, he challenges the Reds on the Warthog and is then chased around the canyon. In rvbep|100, O'Malley enters Caboose's mind again, but is chased out by Church.

After the conclusion of the Blood Gulch Chronicles, Caboose is transferred out of Blood Gulch to another location, like much of the main cast. rvbchar|Washington|Agent Washington a Freelancer looking for anyone with information regarding the Omega AI, tracks him to another Blue Base, where Caboose has been responsible for a large amount of havoc and the commanding officer is only too happy to let Caboose go with Washington. On Caboose's advice, they proceed to another base to find Church, and then they proceed to another base to study the crashed ship. Shortly after, they return to Church's base to aid rvbchar|South|Agent South against the rvbchar|The Meta|Meta and Caboose prevents her escape. Finding no alternative, Caboose is given the rvbchar|Delta|Delta AI to hold onto. Caboose is later knocked out by the Meta in order for it to steal Delta. Some time after waking up, he manages to come up with a plan to infiltrate the Freelancer base.

Themes

Intelligence

Rooster Teeth notes that originally, there was no plan for Caboose as a character; he started out simply as the Blue rookie counter to Donut. Geoff Ramsey states on the DVD commentary that Caboose was initially "smarmy" and "a very different character", albeit rather dim-witted. After fans reacted well to his moments of stupidity,Smith.] however, the crew later orchestrated a long decline in Caboose's intelligence, starting when Sheila is disabled for the first time in rvbep|9.Burns, et al, 2003, Audio Commentary, episode 9.] His mentality is again dealt a blow after O'Malley is forcibly ejected from his system,Rooster Teeth Productions (2005). Character profiles. In "rvbep|season 3|Red vs. Blue Season Three" [DVD] . Buda, Texas: Rooster Teeth Productions.] and he becomes fairly divorced from reality and prone to frequent non sequiturs, going as far as to load his rifle with crayons and spelling his own name wrong. He has also forgotten how to use the sniper rifle. Shown in the first season to have the accuracy to get a headshot on a Church possessed Sarge, he is quoted in saying he has no idea how to use the gun in rvbep|82. Sarge notes in rvbep|39 that it "sounds like O'Malley took some of the furniture when he left".

He occasionally asks questions about things the others take for granted, such as why a flag is so important, and often fails to grasp even basic concepts, such as the meaning of "AI". The only human initially able to lift Andy, he is physically one of the strongest soldiers on either team; Church and Tucker think that it is "God's way of compensating" for his glaring mental deficiencies.

Relationship with other characters

Caboose's relationships with the other characters is unique in that a few episodes depicted the interior of his mind, where the incorrect mental projections of the other characters appeared (with the exceptions of Tex, Lopez, Doc and Sheila). In his mind, Caboose believes himself to be intelligent, Church his foul-mouthed best friend, Tucker stupid, Grif yellow-armored, Donut female, Sister the brother of Church, Agent Washington named "Agent Washing-Tub" and that Sarge speaks in what is actually in a pirate accent that is not very consistent which switched between a British accent in episode 100. Additionally, in rvbep|54, he refers to Simmons as "Simmond", Grif as "Gruf", and the Warthog as the "Boss Hogg" - though in rvbep|82 he is able to correctly name both Grif and Simmons, but in rvbep|100, Caboose's mental images of these characters are "orangeish guy whose name I really don't remember" and "Simon" respectively. He still suffers from incorrect mental images with at least Church and Tucker, as in rvbep|97, he refers to Tucker as his sidekick whom he dislikes, and believes Church to be calling to ask Caboose to be his best friend.

Caboose's most prominent relationship is his remarkable admiration of Church. After dealing him several initial misfortunes, Caboose was eager to make amends and become Church's friend; his attempts to do so inevitably failed. The issue was complicated when O'Malley shot and killed Caboose's mental image of Church, immediately causing Caboose not to recognize the real Church, and all his memories of him were lost. However, by the end of season 2, Caboose resumes communication with Church as before, and references the events he had previously forgotten. The Rooster Teeth crew notes that the plot point was just too complicated to keep up.Rooster Teeth Productions (2004). Audio commentary. In "rvbep|season 2|Red vs. Blue Season Two" [DVD] . Buda, Texas: Rooster Teeth Productions.] As late as rvbep|77, Caboose has referred to Church as his best friend. For his part, Church puts up with Caboose, but often loses his temper with him. However, in rvbep|76, Caboose implied that he didn't know how pregnancy occurred, though Church offered to teach him. In rvbep|98, Church expressed grief both times Caboose was killed by Wyoming and Gary (although Matt Hullum notes that this may be because Church never killed Caboose himself [Episode 98 sponsor commentary] ), and in rvbep|100, Church admits begrudgingly to being Caboose's best friend in order for the images of the Reds within Caboose's mind to show him where Caboose's self-image is.

Caboose is also infatuated with Sheila. He expresses much grief when Sheila is bombed out of commission in rvbep|9, calling Sheila his "friend". He later refers to her as his "girlfriend". When she expresses interest in Lopez in rvbep|30, what Tucker calls "a weird, horribly disgusting love triangle" begins to form. In Episodes 89-90, the relationship is touched on again, when Caboose is enlisted to reboot Sheila after she begins acting aggressively, though he seems hesitant to talk to her because they have a 'history' and could have an argument much like Tex and Church "only with more being shot by tanks".

Caboose's "romance" with Sheila is touched on again in Chapter 5 of "Reconstruction", when Agent Washington re-activates Sheila's AI in the ship. Caboose becomes angry at him for calling Sheila an "it" instead of a "she".

Reception

Caboose has become one of the more popular characters in the series, and in 2005, Caboose was selected as the Best Male Performance in the 3rd Annual Rockets on Prisoner Awards,The 3rd Annual "Rockets on Prisoner Awards.] which are intended to recognize exemplary work in "Halo" machinima. In his acceptance speech, Joel Heyman acted in-character.

Burns has noted that the character was one of, if not the most popular character of the Blood Gulch Chronicles, which was part of the reason behind his inclusion in "Reconstruction", and in Caboose's introduction chapter Burns felt it unnecessary to cut any of the jokes regarding Caboose, including the ones that were direct references to the earlier series, so the fans would enjoy it more. ["Reconstruction" Chapter 3 commentary.]

Notes

References

*cite web|year=2005|url=http://rop2005.thatweasel.tv/index.php?site=O&pg=W|title=The 3rd Annual "Rockets on Prisoner" Awards|work=That Weasel Television|accessdate=2006-04-30
*cite video|people=Burns, Burnie (Writer, Director), et al|year=2003|title=Red vs. Blue Season One|medium=DVD|location=Buda, Texas|publisher=Rooster Teeth Productions
*cite video|people=Burns, Burnie (Writer, Director), et al|year=2004|title=Red vs. Blue Season Two|medium=DVD|location=Buda, Texas|publisher=Rooster Teeth Productions
*cite video|people=Burns, Burnie (Writer, Director), et al|year=2005|title=Red vs. Blue Season Three|medium=DVD|location=Buda, Texas|publisher=Rooster Teeth Productions
*cite video|people=Burns, Burnie (Writer, Director), et al|year=2006|title=Red vs. Blue Season Four|medium=DVD|location=Buda, Texas|publisher=Rooster Teeth Productions
*cite web|last=Jandoc|first=Wilma|date=December 5, 2004|url=http://starbulletin.com/2004/12/05/features/story4.html|title="Red vs. Blue" mines game for comedy gold|work=Honolulu Star-Bulletin|accessdate=2006-06-25
*cite web|last=Smith|first=Bryan|date=February 21, 2006|url=http://halogrid.com/download/burnieint.html|title=Burnie Burns Interview|work=HaloGrid.com|accessdate=2006-07-02