#rvb16 theories

[agent-washingtub343]

“Meta” Wash theory

Delta in Season 6 told Wash that “Memory is the key”.

Wash in Season 16 is having gaps in his memory.

When Maine was the Meta, it was implied that he didn’t remember or recognize any of his old teammates except for perhaps Wash, given that he spared Wash’s life twice.

The first time when South shot Wash in the back, proceeding to take Delta and run.

The second time in Season 6, when the Meta activated his temporal distortion unit as Wash and Caboose were escaping the resulting explosion from “The worst throw ever...of all time”

We know that Wash has cerebral hypoxia (whereas Maine was influenced by Sigma). However, the music that was most often associated with instances concerning the Meta was used as soon as Carolina told Wash that his brain had gone several minutes without oxygen.

The music ended moments before Wash walked away from Carolina as she sought for words to justify her actions.

The first time an agent from Project Freelancer encountered the Meta, where his “identity” per say, was confirmed, was when Maine took Eta and Iota from Carolina before tossing her off the cliff. Promptly after, Sigma makes his proclamation of “We are the Meta”.

Maine walked away from Carolina after throwing her off that cliff as “The Meta”.

Wash walked away from Carolina with a feeling of betrayal, moments after the Meta music had played.

Both occurrences happened in Carolina’s presence, and it’s possible that Wash may begin to act similar to how the Meta did.

After all, it is revealed that the “cosmic gods” are nothing more than A.I. with seemingly magical powers.

Granted, Price did reveal in Season 13 that Wash has refused A.I. implantation due to his experience with Epsilon. But this isn’t the first time the Meta music has played when the main focus of the scene is on Wash.

The Meta music also played in Season 7 - right before the story arc where Wash became one of the villains.

If he does go Meta, does that mean he might react to Carolina similar to the way Maine did? And spare the BGC? How would him becoming the next Meta affect the plot?

Would Wash take the A.I. to fight Chrovos??

[rooster-teef]

I wish Donut had gone further back in time to convince the reds and blues because 1) earlier in the BGC, everybody loved him! Even world-hater Church said he liked him. 2) There’s a big time period where Tucker was parasitically impregnated with an alien spawn after finding a prophetic sword/key in a hole, Tex, who is currently a ghost, brought a bloodthirsty A.I. capable of possession via radio, Church has died like 4 times, and keeps coming back, a shot toe is treated by rubbing aloe on the neck, and a bullet to the head can be solved with CPR- a Robot somehow gained his own sentience and uses it to fuck with everyone. Dibs is a legal possession protocol, and a dumbass can somehow lift 4 times his weight, and the blues have a tank that goes by the name Sheila that has somehow self proclaimed herself the team mom and packs them lunches for their trips. Donut traveling back from time to give the others a message? Not that big of a stretch

[zeravmeta]

Theory/Prediction with RvB17 coming up

Atlas in RvB16 stated that there was nothing before "The Word". That it was this word that created existance, and birthed the forces that would create Chrovos. And it was after his creation that Chrovos, using his powers to control time, created the Titans and the Cosmic Powers to understand the meaning of this "Word", his project of galactic proportions. I thought about it alot, especially with how RvB 15-16 put a particular emphasis on the dynamics of the Red and Blues and Grif in particular, but I'm pretty sure we all know what the "Word" is. Or rather, what it fully is:

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"You ever wonder why we're here?"

Grif and Simmons first conversation was the first word. But not that current conversation, rather, one that Chrovos himself must have had way back when he was first created. And that's probably why Grif is set up against Genkins and Chrovos in RvB16. Because he, along with the Reds and Blues, realized long ago that the reason never mattered.

Chrovos doesn't know why he's here, but Reds and Blues knows the reason doesn't matter. Chrovos doesn't know why he was made, but Grif knows that he made himself who he is.

[jomeimei421]

rvb 16x08 spoilers

Ok we’ve all speculated about Wash getting mixed up in the time travel and getting corrupted because weak mind + regrets = bad;;; and like Carolina too because hoooo damn she has a lot to be sorry for too but

What about Tucker? We spent some time talking with Tucker and Sister about how Tucker made some mistakes and suddenly the consequences are super severe, how he regrets a lot of bad calls he made right, and how he feels really guilty about what happened Wash because he thinks it’s his fault he got shot right? Bruh;; if Tucker finds out what actually happened to Wash because of the shot through his throat ;;;;;;;;;;;

[anneapocalypse]

@akisawana said:

odds of this season/last episode being an acid trip?

Right now, given that “firewall” line, I’m pulling for “The Reds and Blues are actually in-universe inside a video game, and physically never left Earth.” :D

[calliecat93]

So I’ve had this stupid theory since S16 started. The recent episode pretty much disproved it, but I want to get this put of my system. So here it goes...

Up to now, my thought was tat the villain (aka the giant God guy) was future!Grif. Here’s why.

The cause of this prophecy and the end of the universe is the pizza quest. Grif has been the most insistent on it. Episode 4 hammers it in more as he decides to ignore Donut and continue with it. So the Pizza Quest is mainly with Grif and Doc, meaning that one or both of them potentially do something that triggers whatever is going to happen. It would also explain why Huggins followed Grif and Doc specifically, they’re the ones most likely to cause it.

And whatever happened left future!Grif alive, but everyone else dead. So by... however it would happen, he’d become a God-like figure and try to prevent it from happening again. I know that makes no sense, but it’s time travel. He could have gotten stuck int he past permanently when it was all over so knowing what would happen he fled Earth, somehow got ultimate power that kept him alive, and now that he’s lived up to the present, he knows what’s coming. So he’s pretty much trying to stop his past self and the others by any means necessary to prevent the world-ending prophecy. It would also explain why none of the villains haven’t really done anything yet or acted even earlier, cause Grif is still Grif and is lazy. SO just wait for the most convenient time, then get it over with.

Of course that still leaves plenty of holes like how Grif became a God to begin with. Plus the recent episode confirmed that the head God is a different person entirely unless he’s faking the name) and it sounds more like the time travel in general is causing problems. I mean I guess it’s still possible, especially since some of these guys have orange incorporated into their armor, but it’s pretty unlikely.

[leafyfiddle13]

Joe liked my tweet!

Joe Nicolosi, lead writer and director of RvB16, liked my tweet regarding the whole "who is not-Church/Genkins/Film Crew Guy theory!"

Gotta admit, I'm shook.

[callie-the-snarky-geek-blog]

RvB16 Episode 9 Review: Walk and Talk

(Old Blog Repost)

Sorry that this is going up later than normal guys. Had to clean all day and I can barely feel any part of my body. But like Hell am I NOT talking about this episode cause… gosh I need to talk about this episode. So I’m not even going to bother with an intro, lets just get right into it!

Overview

Carolina and Wash have arrived at… I guess some studio. Yeah, Dylan sent them to Jax so I guess they’re in Vancouver since Jax mentioned having a soundstage there. Also turns out Private George is still around and he escorts them to Jax, who is causing the producer Kohan (which may be a reference to Koen Wooten, RT’s 3D producer) to have a nervous breakdown. Jax proceeds to give the Freelancers a look around the soundstage which is a replica of the Blues and Reds underwater base. Speaking of which, whatever happened to that base? We never saw it blow up or anything, so is it under UNSC investigation and Jax can’t use it because of that?

The tour eventually leads to Jax showing the Freelancers… the room where they got armor locked. Yeah, because showing people where they got tortured is a great idea. Wash however doesn’t quite recall it. We do find out that he’s aware that parts of his memory are fuzzy, at least the memories involving Season 15. But he starts to recall the armor lock and Locus rescuing him and Carolina, so he thinks that this could be good for his memory! Haha, sure buddy… yeah I get the feeling that something’s gonna go wrong eventually.

Anyways, I guess Dylan told Jax that the Freelancers were coming, but not why as he asks why they’re there. Carolina explains about needing to find the Reds and Blues… and as it turns out Sarg and Simmons are still with Jax! In fact, Sarge is in the room! Yeah it looks like Jax decided to throw Sarge a bone and let him be a walk-on by playing one of the frozen Freelancers. Which seeing Sarge in a different armor is… weird, but at least it’s still red! Carolina thinks that this means that everything about time travel was wrong and she can be relieved, but haha nope! Sarge confirms that Simmons currently has the time gun and they did indeed go through time! But they weren’t lost guys! They only had to ask for directions once or twice! Just to make that clear!

Speaking of lost in time, we cut back to Grif who is currently heading for England along with Huggins, who is just singing to herself. Grif gets annoyed and tries to make a new rule for her to not do that, making Huggins gripe that he acts like Atlus. Essentially realizing that he can’t keep up his own ‘no talking’ taboo, he asks if Atlus was who attacked them in Episode 2. Silly, she told you her name… though I guess watching the innocent pizza shop get blown up would make him forget. That was Kalirama, who we learn is Atlus’ wife and is scary. I cans ee that union working out great! Huggins then reminds Grif that he didn’t want to know about the God stuff, which he clarifies that he doesn’t…

And cut to that night where he’s asking about what the Gods are. Yep, I knew he wouldn’t last. Huggins says they’re God-Gods, which Grif pretty much represents most people I’ve seen and calls it bullshit. While Huggins can’t speak for humans, she explains that her own kind were given religion, language, etc when the Cosmic Powers came to be and assumes that it worked that they likely did the same for humanity. Something that Grif doesn’t buy whatsoever, saying that he made him. I guess that means Grif at some point decided that the reason why we’re here isn’t due to some kind of cosmic coincidence. Well he has had 16 seasons to think about it. Anyways, Hugigns tries to argue this which causes her to go into a Southern accent. This actually makes Grif laugh, although he does try to cover it up.

So yeah, we get more Grif and Huggins bonding and I’ll go more in depth over their interactions in the review portion, but I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT! So we get some talk about stuff like Die Hard and destiny (who is someone Hugigns actually knows) before the two finally make it to the English Channel. Grif claims he can’t swim and I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not, but apparently his armor can… let him just walk across the bottom of the sea. Ugh… is that a thing in actual Halo? Also I’m pretty sure that he’d still have to swim to the bottom to walk across it, so yeah he was 100% being sarcastic and probably just didn’t want to put in the effort of swimming for it. Anyways as they continue on, Huggins tries to get Grif to have an epiphany on the whole ‘complain about adventure every time it happens’ thing by convincing him that it’s better to focus on resolving it as fast as possible. Aka, actually work to resolve his problems instead of using pre-emptive laziness and whining over it. Grif doesn’t seem to like that idea… but he’s having a bit of a gas problem so…  we’ll see if he takes the advice when out of the water.

Back in present day, Sarge and Jax have taken Carolina and Wash to Simmons, who shows them the time gun. Carolina is very skeptical about this, but Simmons remembers that he proved it before. What do I mean? Well he opens up a portal and it shows past!Simmons from a few weeks ago. Yeah, current!Simmons knew that he talked to his past self because… well he met his future self in the past. Past!Simmons is with past!Sarge in Troy where they are trying to recruit Achilles for their makeshift Red Army. Currently past!Sarge is trying to poses as Zeus, which goes about as well as you’d expect. Current!Sarge explains that ultimately the recruitment failed, so he just stabbed Achilles in the foot. Advice Past!Sarge takes, does so, and the portal closes. So we can blame Sarge for Achilles dying? GDI SARGE!

So to say that Wash and Carolina have a hard time accepting this would be putting it lightly. But Jax certainly believes their case! So yeah the John he hired was John Wayne, his new AD is George Washington, and Alexander the Great… yeah he’s died since Episode 5. RIP. Turns out his immune system couldn’t handle the modern common cold. So this leads us to why Carolina and Wash are there, Dylan said that Jax was an expert on the subject. Simmons tries to warn them against going into it since if you recall, last we saw Simmons he called bullshit to it all since it went beyond science. I guess he decided to avoid religion though. However Jax explains that while regular science may not be able to explain it, science fiction can.

So there have been a lot of questions about how time travel works in this series, so Jax explains paradoxes to us. In most films that deal with this kind of topic, we normally get one of three different forms of a paradox. Those forms are:

A Closed Loop: In this paradox, everything that one does is essentially pre-determined. For example, when Sarge went to Broken Ridge and caused his men’s deaths that he time traveled to prevent. Or when in the past, Tucker shooting Flowers and cockblocking himself. These are examples of events that they’ve seen/remembered in the past, but it was caused by their future selves so it is the most logical theory. There is a downside though, but we will go into that later.

Multiverse/Alternate Reality: In this paradox, any change you make does change things. But what it actually does is create a different universe. So your timeline still exists, but you also created a new one. Jax deems that this theory means that you are essentially ignoring the paradox to being with, so he deems this one unlikely.

Flexible Timeline: This is when you make a change in time that affects your existence or something else important that can change time. But instead of everything changing, there is a buffer period that gives you time to fix everything. The problem however is that there is no explication for how this buffer period exists, so Jax also deems it unlikely.

Therefore, we are left with a closed loop. As I said, everything you do is what you were meant to do and history plays out as it is meant to. But as Jax explains, this comes with some free will issues. You see, since everything that is meant to happen happens, it means that you can’t actually control it. Lets use Church’s efforts in Season 3 as an example. Yeah I know it’s not 100% clear if he DID time travel, but it’s the best we got. Church tried to prevent things, like Flowers dying or getting himself killed by Sheila. But his efforts ultimately led to those things happening. He caused Flowers to have an aspirin overdose and die and his efforts with Sheila caused him to get blown up to begin with. Despite Church having tried to stop those things, he instead caused them. He had no free will over his efforts as they were already pre-determined. Kind of like if it was pre-ordained by the Gods. HMM…

Since most everyone is very skeptical about this, Jax decides to run a test. He asks Sarge to decide whether he’s going to use the time gun to appear inside a closet int he meeting room when the meeting is over. Of course Sarge says he will, which he’s not supposed to do but moving on! So lets just say that Sarge decides not to use the gun when the meeting ends to appear in the closet. They are going to open the door right now. If they open it and find future!Sarge behind it, it means that free will doesn’t exist as it goes against what Sarge has intended. If the closet is empty, it’s because Sarge didn’t go back as he himself decided and therefore free will is fine. I… probably am understanding this wrong, so take that explanation with a grain of salt.

Now the question is, who is going to open the door. Everyone opts out except Simmons, who decides fuck with it and to go for it. He hesitates at first, but eventually he opens it. And what do they find behind it? Why none other than Caoose and Lopez of course! FINALLY!!!

Review

DEAR GOD WHERE DO I BEGIN?!

Okay since time travel stuff is going to give me a headache, lets do Grif and Huggins first. And as I said above, I LOVE IT! So first we do get a little exposition from these scenes. For example, Huggins explaining that the Gods to her kind are God-Gods, but Grif believing that they’re alien somethings isn’t exactly said to be wrong. It’s not much, but it does help leave open to what the Cosmic Powers really are and we can assume that Huggins’ species of light beings are probably aliens that look like… well, lens flares. Going off Huggins dialogue despite being a rookie on the field, she’s been around beings like Atlus for awhile and even has family members. So likely Huggins’ kind are just devout followers of the Cosmic Powers who work for them on tasks like spying and being messengers, but aren’t God-like themselves.

These scenes were just… so frekain’ good. Like you can tell that at first, Grif is trying to not warm up to Huggins or get into any of the Gods stuff as he said he wouldn’t. But as last season demonstrated, he really can’t handle having no kind of one-on-one intention and starts to warm up to the little lens flare. He even tries to sell to her that Die Hard was his life story (side note: seriously Geoff, what was that voice when quoting the one line? WHAT WAS THAT VOICE YOU DORK?!) cause Grif is a dork. It was sweet of Huggins to go along with it and find it funny until getting excited and quoting lines herself. Like it was funny and cute and I freakin’ LOVED it. Like when Grif starts to laugh at Huggins’ southern accent before trying to stop himself was just… OMG Grif you softie.

It was also nice to have Grif let out about how he feels about the frequent getting dragged into adventures stuff. We all know that he’s stick of it and he’s gone into it before, like to Dylan last season and to a lesser degree Simmons when explaining his plan of pre-emptive laziness. But he’s never actually had someone try to work with him to get him through it, like Huggins did here. Like Huggins is just so positive but insightful and seems like the kind of positive reinforcement that Grif currently needs. And her advice isn’t wrong either. Shit happens and trying to avoid it or complain about it isn’t going to make it go away. You have to work through it, no matter how much you don’t want to. That’s life: frustrating but ultimately you take what it throws at you. It seems that this is the lesson that Grif is going to have to learn, and maybe now he’ll start to. I mean him taking the trek to England on foot and so far taking it incredibly well with no complaints so far is a good sign.

Alright, back to the present day stuff. So we do see that Wash on some level knows that he has memory issues. If I were to guess, he knows that his memory of the Blues and Reds stuff is fuzzy, but not everything else. He pretty much thinks that it’s not as big of an issue than it really is and that he’s closer to being better than he is. Speaking from experience here, that’s pretty normal honestly. Still, eh does seem to be doing okay and takes the time travel stuff exactly as I expected him to: complete and utterly exasperated like Carolina is. It was also nice to see Jax, Sarge, and Simmons be relived that he’s okay, even if he got annoyed with them asking about if his neck was okay. Past!Simmons being outright ecstatic to see him up and okay made me smile.

So this is the first time in four episodes that we’ve seen Sarge and Simmons again. They seem to be doing well. Sarge got a walk-on role that he seems satisfied with and while Simmons has still given up on trying to figure out how time travel works, he doesn’t seem to find science bullshit anymore. Heck, eh seems a lot more relaxed in this episode. Of course, going back to the whole ‘corruption’ thing, I don’t know if they’re still at risk or not since by now they’ve been back in the present for a few weeks. And then Caboose and Lopez are FINALLY back after six straight episodes of being missing, but who knows that the Hell they’ve been up to… but I’m calling it now, they’re why pizza doesn’t exist. I am calling it right now because it would explain why we haven’t seen them this long! But yeah Caboose seems normal, but we’ll have to wait and see.

So now lets talk time travel. Dear God… so it’s good that Joe seemed to realize that people were going to be confused and decided to explain paradoxes. I figured that it was the closed loop type, but I know a lot were confused. But now we have the question of free will in play. As I hinted u above, trying to figure this out is going to give me a headache. Plus even if not this season, we’ll likely go down the ‘you don’t pre-detemrine our fates, we do!’ type thing later n this arc. Which I’m fine with, it just always hurts to think about is all. Still yeah, we finally talk about the time travel stuff and it really helped give some distinction on what we’re dealing with exactly. But going of the whole ‘pre-ordienced by God’ part… I think that Chrovous planned on this. Remember the move it goes on, the more the chains weaken and he gets free as the others become shisno.

So we are now going into Episode 10, aka the Big Twist Episode. Maybe Joe will go against that, but still… so one of two things are likely gonna happen. We’re either going to stick with present day, find out what Caboose and Lopez have been up to, and it ends with some kind of major shake-up happening. Or we’re going to sick to the Sixth Century, Grif and Huggins make it to England, and shit breaks loose. Or even a combo of the two. Either way, if Joe sticks to the ‘Episode 10 = Big Twist’ trend, then next week is going to be insane. And with how this one went, it is very possible for something to happen. So now, we wait.

Final Thoughts

This season continues to be great. We got a lot of humor, some good exposition, Grif and Huggins bonding was fantastic, and FINALLY everyone is back in the plot. Something tells me that things are going to be kicking into overdrive soon, and I cannot be both more excited and more terrified for what awaits us. But this episode was absolutely great and the more light-hearted feel was very much needed after last week. Very much enjoyed it!

[toaarcan]

RvB16 Theory: The Accomplice

Muggins is working with Genkins.

Now this one’s admittedly a bit shaky, but:

In episode 10, the Uncredited-Grey-Guy-Who-Shows-Wash-The-Set-And-Is-Probably-Genkins-And-Fake-Church appears with an out-of-place lens flare above his head. Given that Huggins is with Grif, it can’t be her, and while it could be another sentient lens flare, it could also be Muggins.

Additionally, as I said in my post back when Huggins got rifted, Muggins’ speech to The Cosmic Powers is somewhat overacted, didn’t add up with his attitude toward Huggins before, and rings somewhat false. Almost like he’s... Mugging.

Awful puns aside, he also arrives extremely conveniently to explain Huggins’ disappearance in a way that only helps Genkins’ plans. 

[agent-washingtub343]

Genkins is a fucking traitor and I betcha he works for Chrovos.

He fucking killed Huggins and he’s allowing everyone to think the Reds and Blues killed her to keep her from reporting to Atlus.

That little shit is a fucking traitor.

[mykethequestionista]

Rvb16 Finale Spoilers

Alrightie so this is mostly about what probably happened after the paradox and why the heck are we back at square one.

So I’m reaaaally invested in the “Church” guy we have at the ending. I’m gonna get straight to the point and say it’s Jax’s crew member who told Wash to get ready for his scene he was supposed to shoot. Of course we thought this was an accident because the place is full of actors and anyone could get mixed up when there are just suits of armor walking around, but I’m convinced after watching the scene about 5 more times that this was not an accident.

On Twitter, literally like just now, Joe responded to my comment saying “go check episode 10” after I was thankful it was confirmed that the Church replacement was in fact not Jimmy. I went through episode 10 which is in summary Tucker’s king phase, Wash seeing himself get shot, and Donut meeting “God”. After going through it, I heard a familiar voice and that was Jax’s crew member who pulled Wash away to do the scene. Now I know it’s already pretty confusing as to why this random, unimportant person would also be the “Church” at the ending. Like I said previously though, the more I listened, the weirder the scene got. This person had to of deliberately lead Wash away to witness something horrific he was trying to recover from because why the heck would he grab Wash when he clearly came from the set that already had the Wash actor? Yeah, yeah, I know he could’ve left set when the actor wasn’t there at the time and he showed up when the crew member was still looking, but it’s just too suspicious for that to be the case.

Now as to why this person would be the blue we all assumed was Jimmy? I have no clue cause it literally makes no sense. My theory is that he’s someone working on the side, maybe someone the Gods nor Genkins know about. Or maybe Genkins does know about him! His voice just sounded too strange and off for me to believe he’s a minor character once I replayed both scenes of him in episode 10 and the finale. So if he’s truly working on the sidelines, what’s his motive? Is he against the gods or is he really just some stupid villain who’s “bored” and wants to see the reds and blues fail? He also seems to try to lead Tucker on as in asking him if he wants to know what the reds are doing or if he wants the sniper rifle when Church would clearly never do that. He seems to want to change the timeline by asking things Church wouldn’t ask, but Tucker would. Tucker himself seemed off as if he sort of knew what was going on? The reds as well since Grif and Simmons mixed up their sentences and didn’t even finish them. They seemed aware that maybe they shouldn’t be saying what the other said in season 1, even if it was deja vu. The whole situation seemed strange and I’m convinced this new character has a lot to do with it. Maybe he’s the real villain who coincidentally sounds a lot like Jax and Temple to me, but that’s just me.

Genkins sucks though

Another theory I’m not 100% on board with, but it honestly could be possible is that this is all a scene from Jax’s movie which for some reason he wanted to film? I mean he was really focusing on filming everything that happened in season 15, so I’m a bit hesitant to believe he wants to film season 1 stuff. Everything wasn’t even correct when it comes to lines and scenes being in chronological order. I know Jax sort of cares about filming everything precisely as it happened but we saw he even added the carwash stuff so I’m not surprised if he messed up on this. Also, he would know information about the reds and blues that far back because of the footage Vic had, remember? Footage him and Dylan watched! So it’s completely possible that the ending could just be a scene from Jax’s movie, but I don’t believe he would film things from season 1.

And then the last and less than likely theory is that this is just a big diversion from what really happened to the reds and blues. The paradox went down and a flash of white! Then we see them in blood gulch again, but Church is replaced and everything is whacky, lines not being said correctly and scenes not happening in order. This could honestly be an alternate timeline which is stupid, I know, but they already tricked us by making a minor character more important than he seemed so they could honestly just poof us a timeline where everything is a little different and pull us away from what really happened to everyone. But this is least likely to happen so it’s just a random thought Joe could pull on us.

Thats about it? I’m pretty excited cause the fight scene made me happy and I’m anticipating a bigger problem for the gang since this new guy showed up. Season 17 (wow that’s weird to type) is gonna be crazy.

Also is Wash, like.... dead? Is he not existing anymore is he okay?

[jomeimei421]

RvB16 FINALE Final Thoughts

Hhhh wow....that was a...phenomenal season finale. RvB always has great finale episodes, and this one did not disappoint.

Alright, before I actually begin compiling my thoughts, I’m going to issue a SPOILER WARNING for those who haven’t seen the finale yet because there will be spoilers in this post. You do NOT want this episode in particular to be spoiled. It is amazing.

SPOILERS START HERE

The episode starts off with Carolina briefing the Reds and Blues on their mission to go save Wash. During their mission, Grif smells pizza, which is impossible since the pizza paradox from the very beginning. Figuring something is wrong, he follows the smell while the others go save Wash.

Meanwhile, Donut and Chrovos have a chat during which Donut admits that while his friends don’t reciprocate his kindness, they’re still his friends. He is planning on betraying Chrovos when O’Malley shows up and they have a fight that spans across dimensions and using time machines as a medium in the fight over the hammer.

While this is happening, Grif tracks down Genkins who has been lurking, and who explains what’s happening rather lazily. He reveals that if Grif and his friends actually went through with their plan, they would never have time travelled in the first place, and they would create a paradox. Grif, realizing their mistake, rushes off to stop his friends

Donut emerges victorious from his fight with O’Malley, and is about to swing the hammer down on Chrovos when Carolina and co. succeed in saving Wash.

The Universe undergoes a soft reset and the next scene is back in Blood Gulch, but with slight differences. Church is not Church, Tucker doesn’t want the sniper rifle, and Grif and Simmons experience de ja vu. At the very end of the episode, there is a flash of distortion before credits roll.

THOUGHTS

Wow. Season 16 has had its ups and downs, and this was definitely the highest point in the season. The finale was AMAZING. The soundtrack was phenomenal, the character writing was good, and I’m incredibly satisfied with the result.

Most of all, I’m glad we’re getting real red team development. This season was overall a great Grif season (both Grifs) and Donut actually got a lot of screen time! Not that I wouldn’t kill for another badass Freelancer battle, but Donut vs O’Malley was so amazing to me because...well, DONUT.

As a Blue, I’m sad that there wasn’t too much Blue Team Together Time, but I was absolutely digging the extra red team screen time because they’re FINALLY GETTING PLOT STUFF.

As for theories....

First, I’d like to point out the whole Soft Reset vs Quick Save thing, like Joe.....shut up....shut the fuck up.......

So in this new reset universe, Church isn’t there. If so, does that mean Tex never shows up and the plot never happens? It would be interesting to see an “Allison never dies” universe, but I don’t that that’s the case since the Reds and Blues are still....sim troopers of project Freelancer. So where did Alpha go? And what was the distortion at the end of the episode?

So far at least, Tucker is the only one who seems out of character, so it might be interesting to see him figure out what’s going on, similarly to how he figured out the whole fake war during the original BGC. There’s also the possibility of Freelancer still sending someone to help blue team. It could be Wash, but I’d like to think that it would be Carolina because of all the Tex Carolina parallels.

I’m interested in seeing how Donut plays into all this as well. Is he ok? What happens when Doc shows up again? If Tex never shows up, then what would happen with Omega? If Carolina shows up and brings Sigma....

Anyway, this next year is going to be WILD. I’m curious to see how they’re going to resolve this in the next 2 seasons. Fandom stuff is going to be CRAZY, @ fandom DELIVER

[therealdragyon]

RvB16 Beyond Theory!!!

!!spoilers!! under the cut 

What if instead of inhabiting Jimmy, in the new timeline Church (Alpha) is in Caboose 

[calliecat93]

RvB Season 16 Commentary Masterpost

This post details the commentary from the RvB16 DvD. I tried to add as much and be as detailed as possible and I apologize if I misconstrued anything. This was 12 pages long BTW... I hope you all enjoy!

Commentators

All Episodes: Joe Nicolosi (writer/director)

Episodes 1-5: Kyle Taylor (machinima director), Josh Ornelas (senior machinimator)

Episodes 6-10: Jason Weight (co-writer), Greg Slagel (show producer), Billy Burson (Visual Supervisor/Lighter)

Episodes 11-15: Phillip Sparn (Audio Mixer/Sound Designer), Ian Sheppard (Lead Animator), David Levy (Audio/Music Composer)

Episode 1

The intro scene with the knights involved zero machinima (Kyle very much appreciated that), IDK if this was a joke, but Joe said that he wrote the intro three years ago and sent it to Miles, who was confused by it. He thought this would be a good place to finally use it.

The Grif knight is now Sir Gryffandor and the Simmons one Simmtarian XD

Joe use to be in a time traveled-theme band and many of the unused ideas it's where he got several of his ideas for this season.

Joe felt that it took far too long to get into the action in S15, so he tried to have it go faster this time around. Hence why he sped through the setup in this and Season 2.

Kyle and Joe talk about how there was a joke in S11 where Caboose responded to his echo in a cave. Joe wanted the echo to have been time travel Caboose, but when they decided on the slideshow format he couldn't. Miles confirmed at RTX that it is now canon so yay!

Joe had gone back through the show and made notes about where the characters could mess with their past. He also has a fan theory that Two Coffee Mug Guy from the Freelancer Saga is the cause of everything bad that happened since if he didn't show up, North wouldn't have gotten caught, the mission would have gone fine, etc. I am on board with this theory!

In one shot, they forgot to put Huggins and Muggins in as the headlights and it was too late to fix when the time came to air it. Oops. Kyle jokes that they have to blink off every one in a while due to their anatomy XD

The scene where Donut has... broke I guess was apparently a pain in the ass to do. For example when there's like eight of him in a row, they had to time the shot exactly right to machinimate it properly. It involved a LOT of coordination. They all agree that the bit where Donut glitches/contorts is the stuff of nightmares.

Speaking of that bit, you'd think that would be easy since it's essentially glitched out animation. But doing it apparently broke all the rendering machines and they had long talks with the tech department to get it rendered properly. It got to the point where it actually went up to Gray Haddock, the Head of Animation. Daaamn.

Joe's original vision for Episode 1 was to have a long conversation about food that triggered a series of horrific events as it was going on. Kind of like a one act play. Only the Caboose bit with Donut made it through however.

Grif's love of Sammie Raphaello's is based on Joe's feelings about a similarly named place in New York, including eating it for 100 days straight. It had been worth it.

Starseat, the Cosmic Gods base. Is one of the only maps that they hadn't used form Halo 5. They used the majority in S15 so they needed to use some of the alien locations for this one. Since S16 has the Cosmic Powers, it worked out for them.

Episode 2

The forest area was a custom map made by Josh. They used several custom maps this season.

Josh calls layering trees the 'Bob Ross effect' XD

There's this lightning effect in this map that had to me timed perfectly to not mess up the shot. Lets just say that they had to redo several shots because they got the timing wrong or it was too distracting.

When there is a joke that has an awkward pause or silence in it, Joe likes to add a bird effect to it. In the bit with Caboose's 'Your Mama' joke, he used an owl effect

It is canon that Caboose has shy tinkle and can't do his business with others around XD

Because the Halo 5 models have this bad tendency with their coloring (ie, Simmons sometimes looks too much like Sarge), they hired a colorist for the first time in the series history. So every Simmons scene (IDK if they mean just this one or every single one) had to be hand colored to keep him as maroon as possible.

Kyle asked about what was going in on Chorus. Joe says that this is NOT canon, but in his mind Locus got arrested when he brought Wash back to Chorus. They want to try Locus as a war criminal where he COUDL escape, but since he swore off killing people he cna't without doing so. Apparently his ship has an AI ready to split the planet with him Locus gone so Kimball, whose in the middle of an election, has the choice to either let Locus go and save the planet, or not and not get re-elected. This is strictly headcanon, but Joe considered using it as a subplot but since it had nothing to do with the time travel, he opted against it.

Donut is now God Jesus Donut. Something that Joe was very excited to do.

Kyle had no idea how they were going to have Donut walk across water. Apparently Halo 5 has these invisible blocks that they were able to use to pull off the effect.

The music used in this scene is a genre called 'monk-step', which is like Gregorian chanting mixed with ETM (from what I can gather, it's some kind of electro music). Apparently this is a real genre.

The city and destroyed Sammie Raphaello's was made by Austin Clark and Kyle Moran.

Conner, one fo the editors, edited the scene pretty tightly as with most RvB scenes. Joe then made him go back and add a punch of long. pauses

The cop was indeed voiced by Jeremy Dooley. Joe's direction to him was that he thought he was the main character of the story and to just go off with it. He did so for several minutes and Joe had to cut it down, but you can see the full thing in the blooper reel.

Joe didn't want to lock onto a specific place aside form 'somewhere in America' for the city location. But since Grif said he went to Harvard in a PSA, he guesses that it's somewhere in Massachusetts.

Joe has this pet peeve about a truck in the shot as the exact same model was also there when we the place again in Episode 4. Kyle makes a backstory for it about being driven by a dump truck driver who cheated on his wife and was caught, left the truck there, and went on to become president. The truck is now a monument. I am all for this!

They storyboarded Donut putting the guns on the ground... and Joe decided at the last second to just have them flash and appear to not waste time just having him lay down guns for 20 seconds.

Kyle calls Grif a coward for not taking the bullet for Sammie's. That's not nice Kyle!

“Donut uses his shield powers that... never come up again” Thanks Joe...

To get Sarge and Simmons properly on the ground when they land in Egypt, Kyle simply had Josh kill them in-game. They landed perfectly XD

Episode 3

The snow scene with Grif and Doc apparently shows the horizon for the first time in the series due to using very boxed in multiplayer maps. It is also a custom map with the horizon point, which was green-screened, blending into the snow.

Sister and Tucker were green-screened into Halo 3. Apparently it wasn't too bad here, but it was MUCH harder for Halo 2. They VERY much appreciated having a green-screen within Halo 5.

The desert scene with Sarge and Simmons apparently had a shadow in it, so they had to color correct it to make it look more desert-like. Simmons color apparently overlapped with Sarge's a lot.

The storylines were supposed to be about the characters all trying to fix their past mistakes, but only make it worst. This was meant to tie into the season's theme on how fucking up is a part of life. Them not learning it, of course, causes what happens in the end. Joe does mention that it doesn't seem like it worked for everyone watching, however but Kyle mentions how rewatching it can get people to pick up on it more.

The map they used for The Battle of Broken Ridge went through several iterations. They went with one they called White Dwarf which was very detailed tot he point where they fuzzied it up to make it look less so. The rock formations are underwater rocks and have coral textures to them to make them look more alien.

Present!Sarge is wielding a sniper rifle in this scene, not his shot gun. They imply that he shot the previous CO so that his past self would be given the position. GDI Sarge.

Apparently Halo characters do NOT like rough terrain, so recording the soldiers running across it was difficult to make it look natural.

For the PoV shot with Caboose, apparently you can't move the camera much in Halo 5 but you CAN have the character walk closer into it. So Austin and Kyle Moran did so to get the shot and was one of the first they did on their own.

Lopez couldn't be color corrected apparently. They had to go with a shade nearly identical to Grif's because otherwise he looked onto much like Master Chief. As such he looks different in every scene. Thanks Halo 5.

Episode 4

Joe wanted to use all the main locations (Blood Gulch, Valhalla) at least once. He was able to use Halos 2 and 3, but didn't get around to using Halo 4, so we didn't get Chorus aside form the one we saw last season.

The Tucker and Sister storyline was the most changed. Originally, it was going to be about Tucker trying to stop himself from getting laid with all the women that got him a lawsuit last season. He succeeded... but his present self got seduced anyways. This however created a bit of a paradox (I assume since it was clear that Tucker remembered it last season) so he decided he wanted to do something more personal between Tucker and Sister.

Joe wanted this, Episode 5, and Episode 6 to feel more episodic. Hence why he get a major focus on Tucker and Sister here, Sarge and Simmons in 5, and Grif and Doc in 6.

Joe apparently cockblocked himself once. Oops.

Kyle wants to use a time machine to go back and mess with himself when past!him was working in a check out line. Joe would use it to go see old movies and bands when they opened up.

The Broken Ridge map made all the visors green.

Hammerspace exists in the RvB verse due to all the weapon shifts.

The machinima team used the PC version of Halo 2 (the same one used for the Blood Gulch remaster) due to technical reasons. The problem is all the servers, services, etc that were available when doing the remaster no longer exist in 2018. While they have copies of the game, to do what they need they had to use fan hacks, a laptop, and Joe's home computer to make the scenes properly.

Lindsay Jones (VA for Kimball) plays one of the three kids using her Space Kid voice form Camp Camp. Kyle thought one of the actors was the VA for Qrow in RWBY (Vic Mignogna) but it wasn't.

They had a lot of fun macinimating Grif's freakout and Joe outright called Geoff's performance Oscar worthy. They considered submitting it XD

The guy left the truck (form Episode 2) on this very day XD

Tucker asking Sister if she turned off her radio was a reference to O'Malley since at this time, he was still around and going through different people's heads. It was important to make sure that he paid attention to continuity in the time he was going to mess with. Since he felt that this was a memorable event in Blood Gulch, he wanted to go back to it and make sure that he wasn't accidentally messing up anything.

This is the third time they've gone back to this in RvB's history as Josh previously directed a S14 episode written by Barbara Dunkleman (VA for Jensen) about O'Malley in different headspaces. Wow, they must love this scene XD

Joe made Nico (one of the composers and part of Trocadero) make porno music for the cave pond scene. He said “On it Joe!”

Joe liked making Tucker dense when it comes to sex, especially in this scene.

There were talks about if Tucker and Sister should still be in Halo 5 armor when time travleing or if it should change. They ultimately decided to stick to the Halo 5 armor, which Joe felt was the right choice since he was no real reason to have them in the game's default. RvB14 had a similar philosophy where whatever time period the story is taking place, ti had to match that version of Halo.

Episode 5

The map used at the very beginning was a user-made map that's meant to be reminiscent of a Halo 3 map.

Using John Wayne was apparently a pain in the ass. They couldn't refer to him as John Wayne and several other names like The Duke due to legal reasons. It was at the point where they had to have Gus and Matt frequently come in to do re-recordings due to all the changes. They finally settled on Private John... and they hope that they don't get sued for saying it in the commentary.

To remake Desert Gulch, they had to use all the characters at the same time and do several different shots for several reasons.

George Washington was voiced by Todd Womack, a Creative Producer for Broadcast at RT. He also voiced the Simmons knight in Episode 1.

Chris Kokkinos, a Lead Audio Engineer for RT Animation, played Alexander the Great. They did ten minutes of Google searches to put together a voice that sounded accurate enough to what Ancient Masadonian (I think) would sound like.

There's a radio effect in the movie filming scenes where, if you listen close enough, you can hear someone trying to find the bestboy. When I rewatch this with commentary off, I am ging to listen HARD to find those lines.

Kohan Wooter, the producer Jax torments, was voiced by RT's 3D Animation producer Koan Wooten. Joe jokes that he's a 'pathetic ball of anxiety' so he based the character on him. Don't worry, he actually loves Koen XD Koen produced Seasons 13, 14, and 15, but 16 has a new producer, Greg who we'll hear in Episodes 6-10 commentary.

Apparently in Halo 5 (Kyle isn't sure if this was an update or he just never saw it there's an option to max character speeds. So when Jax, Simmons, and Sarge are walking through the set, they were able to set all three to the same speed without it looking like they're sprinting, something that is normally difficult to do in machinima.

In S15, Joe wanted Jax to get successful at some point... and then fall back down off his horse due to his ego. So he did it here!

They wish that they showed Jax's version of S15, though we do get a sample in Episode 12.

Austin and Kyle Moran worked on the scene where Sarge and Private John are doing lines.

For this scene, Matt was late for a CEO meeting so he had to do all of his lines in one take in quick succession. He nailed every single one of them.

I think most know this, but just in case, Atlus is voiced by SungWon Cho aka ProZD. Joe was a big fan of him and was really excited to cast him.

All the Gods we see who aren't Atlus, Kali, Genkins, and Burnstorm are Minor Gods and this is the only time we get to see them all. Kyle says one is the God of Anxiety XD

Kyle made Atlus' throne and used spaceship parts to make it. It was also a chore to decide on all the Gods guns.

Episode 6

Jason wrote Episodes 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, and 14 (Joe confirmed the latter four on Twitter).

Joe says that Grif and Doc are somewhere in Calabria, Ancient Italy. It is known as 'The Boot of Italy'.

Greg previously on a 2D show at another company (I couldn't make out what he said it was) before arriving at RT and being put on RvB. Since machinima is treated more like live action when filming, it was a very different experience along with storyboarding the animation. He had to learn a lot about what can and can't be done in machinima.

Billy previously worked on a live action RvB short (I assume the RvB14 finale but they didn't specify) and before this worked on RWBY and RWBY Chibi. He works on both lighting and composition.

Billy really liked working on the lens flare shots XD Which are also apparently hard to render despite how easy it looked at first.

Jason wrote most of Sister's dialogue, which had to be cut down a bit. Apparently one line he wrote was Sister saying “I want Lancelot to slay my p***y like a Dragon”. This once got cut because Microsoft told them to, which is a VERY rare occurrence.

Genkins was the one going crazy with the airhorn during Atlus' intro. They used up all their airhorn budget for that one XD

Joe credited Jason for Atlus' portrayal. Jason feels that Atlus is very human and fragile on the inside and the kind of characters that he likes to write.

They all laughed at Tucker and Sister being blown up, which they tried to reuse form other stuff, but Joe refused. They joke that they just got it off the internet.

Joe feels that he could have done this episode better as he didn't feel anything for Doc at the end like he had intended.

They have an animator specifically for O'Malley's finger motions. He'll be in the 11-15 commentary and is reffered to as 'The Fingerer'

Episode 7

Since this is an episode that mixes live action, they started working on this even before Episode 1. They were excited at first... until they finally started doing it.

Gus Sorola (VA for Simmons) played the Cyclops as well as his wife.

Joe knows that some people weren't happy with this episode, but he still liked it cause Tucker and Sister got to fight a giant cyclops. They do admit it is one of the stupidest thing they've ever done though XD

They went over budget doing the scene and had to go all the way up to Matt to get more. At RTX, Matt said that he allowed it when they said that Gus was going to be uncomfortable for several hours. Best CEO XD Joe brought in Koen to convince help him.

Huggins had several different animators, but most of the credit goes to an animator named Owen for giving a glowing sphere so much energy with the animation.

Gus' scenes were shot in one day, but because they had to change the lighting so much to correspond with Halo, it took a LOOOOOT of hours.

When the cyclops bit into the Tucker armor, Joe had it in the script that Gus just pulled the head off. Gus asked if he could eat it, which Joe allowed. Joe had to paint it the day before the shoot after Greg went and got it. They used a toy since animating Tucker in Gus' hand would have been too much work to get right.

Joe did a lot of the work on the scenes while listening to an audiobook, so now he just hears it whenever watching the episode. Fortunately, he has a lot of work with green-screen XD

David Levy composed the music for the scene and Joe had him listen to stuff from Jason and the Arganots and such things to give him an idea of what to do.

Tucker jumping to hit the Cyclops'... privates...w as a reference to Independence Day apparently.

Joe wished that, when we see the location again in the finale, he just showed the Cyclops' corpse rotting away... so I guess that confirms that he's dead. He thought of it after the fact however so he couldn't.

Joe deliberately told the Art Department about the female cyclops at the last second so that they would buy a shitty costume for Gus to put on. Greg was confused. The shot later for Episode 15 was a surprise shot Joe did since he was writing the finale around this time, so he wanted it just in case he wanted to use it... which he did XD

Episode 8

The map with the Chorus towers were a Live Map. IDK what that means, but apparently they can't use. So the machinimators had to go around it and take various shots of the towers to put them in the opening scene. It got several accounts banned as a result XD

After the last episode used so many different things (animation, machinima, live action), the fact that they were able to get an animation sequence into this one had Joe feeling good about the production flow for the season since the previous one would normally go over deadlines. Fortunately, the production went through seemlessly.

The animation team is mostly from RWBY Chibi.

Originally Carolina and Dr. Grey's talk was in Grey's office. Miles said that it wasn't weird enough to fit Grey though, so Joe change the setting to a morgue. The dialogue stayed the same though! The feet of the body were apparently hard to render XD

Joe wished that Carolina was holding some guy's intestines to further show how creepy it is.

With the cyclops, Joe apparently wanted him to have a giant, hanging dong cause he things it would be Tucker's worst nightmare. Greg immediately shot that down since no amount if pixilation would be able to hide it.

Joe wanted to give Grif a magic fairy companion, ehnce why we got Huggins and the two would learn form each other.

Huggins is based off of her actress, Ashley Spillers, in terms of personality.

Apparently doing shots showing tall buildings like in Chorus is much easier than getting a dead guy's feet in properly. Huh...

Joe got obsessed with doing different shots to make shots of a character just talking interesting and he felt he went a little too crazy.

Joe felt bad that he couldn't use more of Dylan, but he learned last season that RvB has a TON of characters and he needs to break them up when it's necessary. This is part of why the Reds and Blues were split up this season.

Billy did a lot of work on the wrestling scene in the finale due to how much lighting was needed. It also involved a lot of comp due to the amount of shots.

Wash's cat, Loki, is based off a cat Joe had in RL. Many of the same things happened to it and lived for over 20 years. Wow...

Episode 9

Joe makes it clear that he loves Koen and he only made fun of him because he loves him. Greg felt much of Kohan's portrayal hit too close to home XD

Since they used most of the maps in S15, Joe knew that they were going to have to reuse some of them and the filmset plotline was done in order to do so. Considering Wash's state, he felt that it worked well for character.

The Female Frozen Freelancer was voiced by Minni Clark, their Animation Coordinator.

Joe considered what Wash and Carolina would do with a time machine. For a while, he considered having Carolina use it to go to the future, but he felt that could botch future storylines so he decided to not use the future at all.

They liked the campfire map and giving Huggins sparkles. The sparkles got added late into production. Luckily they emphasized that no one was harmed in the making of this production XD

Huggins will only swear when quoting Die Hard. The lens flare in the movie was also Joe's favorite lens flare in film XD

Joe was originally going to have Grif come across Lopez's head after he sank in the titanic. But since Grif was in Ancient Italy, that would not work so it was cut.

Joe also intended for Grif to use a boat to get over the English Channel, but since it would have been a hard set-piece to make and they already had an underwater map, they went with that instead.

The effect to make past!Simmons portal appear/green-screen was apparently fun XD Joe also liked having Sarge stab Achilles in the foot.

This season has the most green-screen used in any season.

Apparently there are a LOT of time travel stories out there with very complicated rules. Joe went with the ones that he felt were the most common.

Joe got very mad because The Covlerfield Paradox came out sometimes before the season starts. He also gets mad in the finale cause Infinity War did what he did essentially XD

Joe found using time travel to test free will interesting as he doesn't recall anyone doing it before.

Matt improved his lines regarding the back and forth on deciding to open the door. He does that a lot XD

They didn't want to add a shot of Simmons pressing the keypad, so they just showed the door opening.

Episode 10

To make Caboose's vacation easier, they decided to go with the slideshow and just use stills. Most were easy to comp, but some like the monkeys were more difficult. It was orignally going to be animated.

With the shot of the RT Founders, they originally had a Halo helmet in the photo. Joe changed it to a bowling ball.

Joe was counting down the days of production and told no one. Greg was very confused when he saw '100 Days' on Joe's calendar.

Jason wrote Camelto and voiced Lancelot/Sir Gryffandor. Joe used all of his first takes XD

Jason writes long scripts, so Joe had to cut them down and he felt bad about it. Jason said that he got rid of the garbage bits XD

There is some kind of cannon by Tucker's shoulder when he meets with Grif. Joe headcanosn that Tucker just demanded that they make a cannon.

Even Joe points out that Grif's trying to push the plot forward now. They joke that it's just so it an end faster.

The reason why Tucker started the war with France they decided was because they ate snails, hence his line “Those fancy f***s eat snails!”

Joe clarifies on what turning into a shisno means. I wrote about this already, but I'll do so again here. It is not a form of corruption or mind control, but people like Tucker giving more and more into temptation and as such, the worst part of them comes out. He felt that them trying to make the past better is a big convenience in time travel and decided that them screwing it up and therefore still trying was an effect of Chrovos. It's not direct mind control however, it just makes your darker impulses stronger.

Joe confirms that Genkins was the PA who lead Wash to the scene recreating where he got shot solely to make him worst and keep the plan going in the right direction.

Joe, having grown up on films like Evil Dead, really likes bloody shots and thinks that his seasons have had the most blood effects XD

They checked over Donut and O'Malley's scene a LOT due to a lot of screw ups and using a large white void.

Billy's favorite thing to have lighted was Chrovos. They were very happy with the gears design.

Joe really liked Chrovos' VA

Episode 11

Phillip played one of the guards that got crushed by the horse in the finale. It is his proudest moment.

Doing work for Huggins was painful since she required several swooshing effects and her animation turned out to be much more work due to Ian deciding to make her more energetic to not make it boring.

Muggins is less energetic due to being older

Joe had to get special permission from Miles and Kerry to use the RWBY moon and now calls it canon... which he honestly isn't all that wrong if you've watched RWBY V6...

Audio liked adding the effects to Atlus' voice, something that ProZD apparently does in his videos.

When he decided to use God sin RvB, Joe had wanted to have a wish granting scene and the one we got is one of his favorites. He also mentions how most Gods go to places, mess with younger races, so he felt like this fit.

The music for this was challenging for David as Joe instructed him to base it on Danny Elfman-esque scores. The guitar rift when Grif makes the sword wish was treated like a sound effect.

Apparently they used a laughing seagull effect to laugh at Tucker. I need to listen for these things more.

They used a sunset map for Tucker and Sister's talk, and while lighting is often difficult in RvB, Joe felt that this worked very well. Using Halo 5 in general was hard, but after last year they had a good grasp on what they could and couldn't do. They'll be us9ig a new Halo next year, which since Halo 6 isn't out I assume is referring to Halo 2 Anniversary

Okay... so this bit is probably gonna be the biggest part. So the whole scene with Tucker and Sister's talk? Originally in the outline, Joe simply had Sister go 'And I don't care!' when she and Tucker realize that their s*xventures were coming to an end. Then he sent it off to Jason, who expanded on it in the script to have Sister's verbal beatdown to Tucker. Joe let it stick, and we got what we got.

Episode 12

This is the first episode of RvB shot in 4K

You know the opening shot where Actor!Wash dips Actress!Carolina? The scene was mo-caped by Joe as Wash an an animator named Harley (she works primarily on RWBY) as Carolina. When they acted it out, Joe tried to catch Harley when she fell back... except that he had recently dislocated his arm. So he ended up just dropping her and he fell over and hit his head. The mocap for it looked really funny though XD

The reason why Joe used 4K for this episode was in order to do wide shots so that After Effects could put in the shaky cam. He did it in one weekend. He's not a fan of 4K however due to feeling it adds too much production time, so he used it for only this episode.

They joke about making an RvB Soap Opera where Church has a twina nd Sarge goes into a coma. I WANT THIS!

Joe had not seen The Office when he went with the interviews idea.

This, and the later episodes, were written during the production.

This episode was the RvB equivalent of a Beach Episode like you see in anime. But because of armor and stuff, he couldn't go all the way. Also apparently if Halo characters hit the water unless it's an underwater map, they die. Huh...

Joe continues to make it clear that he loves working with Koen. Good job on making sure you don't piss your boss off dude!

The Chinese Finger Trap gag with Caboose was improved by Joel. The trap was composed in and they used the Huggins rigs to help with the stretching.

Joe felt he went a little too strong with the color correction in this episode and that the colors came off too strong, especially with Donut.

Joe liked the audio cue used for when Wash has one of his memory blocks.

There was a lot of improve done with the actors for Jax's movie. Phillip also didn't get the Rodney Dangerfield reference. Joe put that specific one in because the Private John actor did one for funsies in his session.

According to Joe, after he gets hit by Atlus' hammer, he forgets all of his movie ideas and is now in the next stage of his life in trying to figure them out. They ask if this is autobiographical for Joe XD

The gold club is an actual weapon in Halo 5 (some kind of multiplayer mode), huh...

In the original take where everyone is saying titles, Joel had Caboose curse. Joe found it funny... but since Caboose doesn't swear to that level (I think in another interview Joe said he used the F word), he decided two days prior to cut it and edit several takes together to get what we got. They added it back in for the Blooper Reel, and I can confirm that it is hilarious.

Episode 13

David used wall to wall music for this episode.

The first drafts for the final three episodes were over 70 pages long. The average is around 12-18 pages, so... yeah... he had to cut it down to 54 within about three days.

Joe didn't get to work a lot with Genkins' VA (Ricco Fajardo since he forgot the name in the commentary) since Genkins had very few lines. He really enjoyed working with him and the other professional voice actors since he can really push them and they love going along with it.

Jason did the script for this episode.

This episode, along with 13, had very little animation due to the finale going crazy with it. So they cut down on it in these two to make up for that time.

Joe's not a fan of exposition scenes, but since Starseat was a unique set design, he felt like it was a good place to do it.

The Cosmic Powers are always green-screened so that they can look much larger.

David wanted to listen to his master work XD

Joe hadn't told mahcinima what swords to give everyone and is happy with the options that they went with.

Burnstorm's VA is a theater actor in Dallas

Joe regretted that he wasn't able to have the Gods in action much and wishes that he was able to fit in one God fight at least. But he had gone over the animation budget, so even if he wanted to he couldn't.

The Neanderthals hair in Caboose's slideshow apparently didn't work at all, so they photoshoped it in.

Joe really enjoyed doing Carolina and Wash's scene, especially with how well Jen and Shannon performed it. He felt so much regret for what he did to these characters XD

Joe did research on brain injuries to make sure that he portrayed Wash's condition as accurately as possible.

Machinima built the room that the Reds and Blues were teleported to. It was originally a hallway apparently.

Episode 14

The intention of the episode was to be a runway into the finale and to be a bit of a cool down after the last one.

Jason once more did the script for this one.

Halo 5 armor in multiplayer apparently can't be black, so in shadows it just glows. Huh, weird.

No one aside from Joe saw the shot of the Fates. Ian never saw them as he handed them to someone else while doing 15, and they did them all without him having to check them.

Joe wrote the demo for The Fates song to give to the singers who auditioned.

Joe thought a lot about Carolina time traveling prior to this, but felt that she was too responsible and smart to use it the same way the Reds and Blues did.

Phillip was kind of glad that Huggins got 'killed' (I'm still denying it) since it meant no more swoosh sounds

The buildup to the... death scene... dropped the ambiance to build up the creepiness factor.

Joe did the black hole effect and went on until it made him too sad and he kicked his computer. You have only yourself to blame.

They like how the Cosmic Powers just become more and more normal acting as time goes on XD

Joe had been very nervous about The Fates and considers it the weirdest sequence in the season. He suggested the orchestral tuning build-up.

Joe explains how The Fates work. The Cosmic Powers are AI/computers, and that includes The Fates. They are like a series of quantum supercomputers who scan the atoms around them to determine the outcome of the future. Their prophecies are mere projections.

Episode 15 (Season Finale)

They call this 'The Beast Episode'

David added 15 minutes of music with no stop. It continues to accelerate as it continues on.

The episode was done more like a music video. All the animation was done first, and then David composed it to the animation instead of before it. He used bits of previous cues and themes as well. It took him two weeks to do.

The room that Carolina and the others hid in had been very bright, so they had to darken it.

This was very tightly edited in order to stay matched up to the music.

The strategy for the Donut vs O'Malley was to treat the finale as two episodes. The fight was done by one team and all the other stuff was done by another.

They like the 'Use what you learned' advice.

Audio used a program called Vocaline to dot he effects for Chrovos' voice and the gear ticking effects.

The edit for the episode was very different from the script as Joe did a lot of re-arranging of scenes to improve the flow. He got advice form Connor, one of the editors, to pace them better.

The pizza is a photoshopped Home Slice Pizzal

If you watch the scene where Caboose hits the Red with his golf club in slow mo, the body flies off but his soul stays put in an extra frame. If you watch it frame by frame, you can see the soul dissolve. Will make a note to do so later.

David wrote three separate tracks for each storyline in the episode (Donut vs O'Malley, Grif vs Genkins, and the others saving Wash) which all blend together as they go on.

The cue playing when Genkins goes on his boredom rant is Joe and David's favorite cue.

Genkin's rant was also much longer and was pretty much Genkins breaking up with the universe. Joe felt that it was losing momentum as it went on however, so he cut it down.

Phillip had a ringing bell sound effect play when Donut hit the plane on the commentary track. All of them lost it XD

The longest scene to animate was Donut jumping after The Hammer.

Each bit of the fight went to different animators. Ian worked on the Blood Gulch part and reference show he's known for being good at finger animation. Hence why we got O'Malley's evil finger wiggling XD They were bummed that they didn't have more time, but with so much going on, they had no choice. Everything was mo-caped and hand framed due to the uniqueness of all the scenes, all of which used no machinima, which normally has to be in a specific view. Joe was happy since he could move the camera around more.

The city for the final part of the fight was stolen taken from Gen:Lock. It's meant to be New York.

Joe has no regrets regarding the fight scene and was very happy with how it all came together.

There's a ticking effect during the episode that accelerates, but during the final part where Grif is running and stuff, the ticking significantly slowed down.

Grif's running was machinimated and they used an after effects plugin to slow him down properly.

Again, Joe was very mad that Infinity War came out during this time XD This happened a lot this season apparently, such as Legion.

The final scene is done in Halo 2 Anniversary. Joe chose this because it looks familiar, yet is different. He did this specifically to not make people think that they were rebooting it... which happened anyways XD

Again, they confirm that they are NOT doing a reboot. Joe tried to put in as many clues as he could (like Church not being voiced by Burnie) to demonstrate that. There is a reason for why things are like this and why the final three shots are in reverse order from the events in Blood Gulch.

Joe watched all of Deep Space 9 while editing the season. All 6 seasons! Two he watched during the cyclops episode!

Apparently the Security part of the credits (which lists pets) hjust gets added onto without chances, so many of them are probably dead... ending on a morbid note then!

This took like... five hours to type up. But I always like listening to behind-the-scenes stuff and I had a lot of fun doing this! To all of those who actually made it through the entire post, thanks for reading! Looking forward to S17!

[autisticblueteam]

RvB16 Theory/Thoughts

Based on stuff from 16x02 and prompted by some post-ep discussion with @herecomesthesniperbutt​

What if Donut’s version of “God” (who by the way clearly cannot be the only “God” despite Donut’s insistence that he is, we have multiple God/ess characters on-screen this is clearly an (alien?) pantheon situation) is actually the bad guy, here?

Not to say that Kali isn’t a villain at all, she’s the goddess of Death, Destruction and all those fun things, but... that doesn’t mean that Donut’s “God” is a good guy whatsoever. This particular God rescued Donut, yes, but then he sent Donut back to the others to call them into what sounds like a “Holy War” which I don’t know about you, but history tells us that generally Holy Wars are not fought for good reasons. Especially when prior to Donut arriving there was no indication of this “Devil King” interfering in... anything. 

And it’s pretty clear that Donut’s “God” is not the man on the throne on the Mercy Map, where Muggins went to. Donut’s God wants them to go to the past whilst clearly, whoever Huggins and Muggins are working for doesn’t. They want to stop the Pizza Quest, if they’d had their way Donut would never have been zapped.

Additionally, Donut says: “And He told me that to save the future, we must fix the past.” 

...which, all things considered... it seems more likely that the Reds and Blues, of all people, are going to cause more trouble in the past rather than fixing anything in the past. Which itself is supported by the way that Huggins and Muggins are acting about this whole affair. Again, they’re trying to stop the Pizza Quest and Huggins in this latest episode said how they were “getting away”; yes, she is watching them and so has to follow, but I’d also say that clearly these guys going into the past is an issue for them. Which, sure, if Huggins and Muggins are somehow connected to the “Devil King” would mean they didn’t want them to fix the past, but something about it feels more like they’re concerned they’re going to do something wrong. Not do something “right”.

In what world does anything the Reds and Blues do go smoothly? In what world would it ever be a good idea to send them to the past with the explicit intention of fixing something, when usually these guys caused more of a mess first before ever succeeding?

Maybe it’s too early to call it, but both knowing Joe’s penchant for plot twists and looking at what we have so far... I don’t think this is as simple as it seems when you take it at face value.

[agent-washingtub343]

RvB 16: Kali Rama Skull discussion

So we all saw the skull she was holding in Episode 2, yes?

Well I looked up the different skulls that are in Halo 5

As well as their meanings (Source)

I’m going to guess, since none of those symbols match the skull in her hand, that the skull has something to do with what’s going to be revealed in the upcoming episode “A Time For Hammers”.

Perhaps it’s going to tie in with the story, having a sort of significant meaning.

Such as back in the Blood Gulch Chronicles, when Church talked about Tex beating Private Jimmy to death with his own skull. And then we saw in S14 what the actual cause of that “memory” was.

I’m really enamored by all the things she’s holding, and curious as to what the meanings behind them are.

If any of you got any ideas you’d like to contribute, I’d love to hear them ♥