Red vs. Blue

Lore & Background

Red vs. Blue emerged from Burns' voice-over gameplay videos of Bungie's first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved. The series is primarily produced using the machinima technique of synchronizing video footage from a game to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio. Footage is mostly from the multiplayer modes of Halo: Combat Evolved and its followups on the Xbox consoles. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its premiere on April 1, 2003. The series consists of twenty seasons and six mini-series, concluding with Red vs. Blue: Restoration, originally released as a feature-length movie on May 7, 2024, with an episodic version later released on November 16, 2025.

Reader's Guide

Red vs. Blue has been generally well-received and praised for its originality. It won four awards at film festivals held by the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, the award for 'Best Animated Web Series' from the International Academy of Web Television, and a 2013 Webby Award for Animation, as well as a nomination in 2014. Graham Leggat, former director of communications for Lincoln Center's film society, described Red vs. Blue as 'truly as sophisticated as Samuel Beckett'. The series has been credited with popularizing machinima and gaining the medium mainstream exposure. Rooster Teeth created episodes, some under commission from Microsoft, for special events. Voice actors from Red vs. Blue appear in cameos for Halo 3 and Halo 4, and the series is referenced in Halo: Reach and Halo Infinite.

Did You Know?

• The series was initially intended to be six to eight episodes long.
• The eighteenth season, Zero, was fully animated in Unreal Engine 4 rather than using machinima from Halo.
• The final season, Restoration, was first released as a feature-length movie on May 7, 2024.
• The series won a 2013 Webby Award for Animation.