Private Michael J. Caboose
From Roosterpedia
Color: Blue
Full name: Michael J. Caboose
Voice actor: Joel Heyman
Red vs Blue character 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 season 1 as a new recruit for the Blood Gulch Blue Team, a group of soldiers engaged in a futuristic civil war against the 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 Donut, the Red Team's rookie.
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Role in the plot
Prior to the series, Caboose was born and raised in a colony on the moon with 17 siblings. He joined the army after mistaking a recruiting centre for college. Caboose first appears in episode 3. Arriving with a tank named Sheila, he soon annoys the Blue Team's self-appointed leader, Church by calling his girlfiend a slut, and is consequently tasked with guarding the flag inside the team's base and waiting for a nonexistent general. Meanwhile, Simmons and 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 guy" 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 O'Malley, an evil artificial intelligence (AI) who transmits himself to Caboose via radio before his original host, a mercenary named Tex, is killed.
Season 2 continues Caboose's character development. Parts of episodes 31–33 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 incorrect mental images of other characters. At the end of the season, Caboose becomes stranded with Sarge in an unknown location when a teleporter malfunctions. In season 3, Caboose and Sarge escape from the 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 The Great Destroyer from 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 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 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 others 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 ep 98 when Church, Tucker and Tex are held hostage by Wyoming, a mercenary hired to kill Tucker, Caboose tries to save them. However, he is gunned down by Gary, who was controlling the tank (Church shows genuine concern for his team mate after this). 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 ep 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 ep 100, O'Malley enters Caboose's mind again, but is chased out by Church. Caboose then has various roles in the episode's ending:
- In an ending where all the characters start killing each other, Caboose teamkills Church again and blasts Donut and the Ghost he was driving with a rocket launcher and thus, manages to outlive all the other characters; but he is soon killed by the falling wreckage of Donut's Ghost while celebrating.
- In an ending where Sarge destroys a giant underground computer and reveals the entire series to be a multiplayer game session of Halo 2, Caboose is seen having -1 in score and apologizes to Church for teamkilling him.
- In an ending where the characters go back to their bases, Caboose has a discussion with Church reminiscent of a discussion between Simmons and Grif from episode 1.
- In the "Where are they now?" ending, Caboose sold his life story to a software company based in Redmond, WA where they based a popular video game on it.
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, however, the crew later orchestrated a long decline in Caboose's intelligence, starting when Sheila is disabled for the first time in ep 9. His mentality is again dealt a blow after O'Malley is forcibly ejected from his system, 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 series 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 ep 82. Sarge notes in ep 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, 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 ep 54, he refers to Simmons as "Simmond", Grif as "Gruf", and the Warthog as the "Boss Hogg" - though in ep 82 he is able to correctly name both Grif and Simmons, but in ep 100, Caboose's mental images of these characters are unnamed and "Simon" respectively. He still suffers from incorrect mental images with at least Church and Tucker, as in ep 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. As late as episode 77, Caboose has referred to Church as his best friend. For his part, Church puts up with Caboose, but often loses his temper at him. However, in episode 76, Caboose implied that he didn't know how pregnancy occurred, though church oferred to teach him. In episode 98, Church seemed to actually show sorrow both times Caboose was killed by Gary, and in episode 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 episode 9, calling Sheila his "friend". He later refers to her as his "girlfriend". When she expresses interest in Lopez in episode 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".
In the 2008 Thanksgiving PSA is it revealed Caboose likes his grandmother very much. She was loved with all soldiers, because of her 'hair pie'.
Quotes
"Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"
"No. No. Wait. Go back! Why are there six pedals if there are only four directions?"
"I think so... That guy Tex is really a robot, and you're his boyfriend. So that makes you... a gay robot!"
"Look, more sleeping people. It must be nap time! But who has nap time now? Nap time comes before pants time, not after. I think these people are just making up times!"
"I have to go to the bathroom now for some reason... Which is odd, because I already went when we were standing in the creek together!"
"Running time!"
"You are a good person, and people say nice things about you."
"My name is Michael J. Caboose, and I hate babies!"
"I will eat your unhappiness!"
"Your toast has been burned and no amount of scraping will remove the black parts."
"See? He is mad. Now he will stare at me until I stop talking. Then, when he thinks I am done talking, then he will start talking, again."
"I think I will call him Crunchbite."
"I think blarg means me. Or apples. *gasp* Apples must be the name of his cat! Alien, is Apples stuck in a tree? I will call the fire department!"
"Do you need a blanket? Tucker, do you want some hot dogs in a blanket?"
"I hope we meet a cleric on the way. We don't have anyone who can heal."
"Just like chiropractors. Ok, so, um, Tucker is the fighter, Crunchbite is the healer and I am the powerful.....and intelligent wizard Mophumax."
"You told me it was another arm..."
"Massachusetts!"
"Church, if I die, I want you to have my orange juice."
"The last time I was shot I got a purple heart. Yeah, I hope this time I get a purple lung. You see, eventually I hope to build an entire purple person. And we will be best friends."
"Hey Chicka Bum Bum."
