Rooster Teeth Shorts

The Rooster Teeth Shorts are a series of live-action shorts that chronicle the adventures of Rooster Teeth studios (a.k.a the guys who make Red vs. Blue). There are currently two complete seasons. The first having twenty episodes, and the second having twenty-two, as well as three episodes of 'Captain Dynamic'. The second season recently finished followed by the immediate start of the 3rd season. The episodes have varying sizes, themes and aesthetics, ranging from the "mockumentary" short Dress Rehearsal, taking place entirely in one room, to Hotel Buddies taking place in a hotel in California and using some chickens, metal bits, and mysterious lights.

Tropes include ...

• Actually Pretty Funny: Burnie doesn't mind Joel's portrayal of him in Super Gus, where he's a greedy bank-robber.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: In Scissors, Burnie has this gem:

Burnie: "Are you seriously suggesting, sir, something sinister-sounding circumstantially surrounding some scissors?" Geoff: "...Can you say that again?" Gus: "Can you not encourage him?"

• AI Is a Crapshoot: Joel's computer when it gains sentience.
• Artifact of Doom: The box with all the devil's souls trapped inside it, the Orb, and The Button
• Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: During the latter part of Paper Cut.
• Ax Crazy: At the end of Pongo the titular puppet pulls a knife on Joel
• Bad Bad Acting: Gus and Geoff in Dress Rehersal (Don't worry it's intentional).

Ben: Geoff, somebody thought that you were hobo that had wandered onto the set, they didn't think you were acting.

• Bad Boss: Burnie leans towards this most of the time, coming up with convoluted schemes or just downright abusing his workers. Examples include stealing Gus's beard (somehow) and attempting to fire a worker for no other reason than to get his sandwich.
• Big No: Steve Rogers lets out an anguised one in the Captain America: The First Avenger (Parody), after getting friend-zoned.
• Big OMG: Or perhaps a ClusterOMGBomb in Paper Cut.
• Bound and Gagged: Gavin's clones (and Ben) in Secret Door.
• Brick Joke: During Chain of Thought, Nathan's thoughts are nothing but an ominous rumble. It's because he's thinking about the wind outside.
• British Accents:

Burnie: Yeah, we can't really tell you guys apart 'cause you both have the same pompous-ass British accent. I can't even tell what you're saying half the time. Gavin: What are you talking about? We don't sound anything alike, I'm from Oxford and he's from Nottingham. Ben: They're totally distinct accents! Gavin: Exactly. Burnie: Yeah, not a word...

• Calvin Ball: Food War

Joel: See that line over there? Jack: ... Yeah ... Joel: See, first you say the name of the food, then you throw it at your opponents face, if the food crosses the line and hits your opponent in the face you get a point. Gus: Unless the opponent catches it in with their mouth in which case you don't. Joel: That's when you enter the double peril zone. In the double peril zone, the point values are doubled, but instead of saying the name of the food you say- Gus: FOOD WAR! Then you get a chance to fire it back at your opponent. Joel: Right, but if you're able to catch that with your mouth you can put your opponent into double danger overtime, I once took Nathan into a fifth round overtime with a dollop of ketchup, but he swallowed it so he was disqualified. Gus: Normally condiments aren't allowed but we were playing by Aussie rules that day.

• Clingy MacGuffin: Geoff can't get rid of the devil's box in CrazyDream, it always comes back to him.
• Clone Degeneration: Hinted at in Secret Door.

Gus: Oh fuck, We need to keep the original out here so we can make another clone. Burnie: Oh right, gotta go from the source otherwise the copy DNA gets bad.

• • And then they grab Ben instead of Gavin.
• Cloning Blues: Geoff, Gus and Burnie found a way to clone Gavin on craigslist.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Geoff and Burnie are probably the most consistent ones, but Joel and Gus get a fair bit of it, too.
• Completely Missing the Point: Chris spends the entirety of the Picture Perfect episode not realizing that Matt does not want dogs having sex at all in the photos of Burnie.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Matt, at least in season 1.

Matt: Black helicopters. Google it.

• Cool Car / The Alleged Car: Jason's ride from New Old Car.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Most prominent in The Button.
• Crossover - With Mega 64
• Deal with the Devil: Apparently Megan Fox made a pact with the devil, if she gave him her soul she'd be "Super-Hot".
  • SUPER hot!
  • Also in "The Button".
• Delegation Relay: Chain of Thought.
• Disappeared Dad: Matt's father went on a business trip to London when Matt was four years old, he never came back.
  • At the end of Catch he comes back. Just in time to inadvertently run Matt over.
• Dump Stat: Lampshaded in The Atari Kid

Gus: Your strength has gone up by 2! Your intellect 3! Your charisma is unchanged but that's useless.

• Easy Amnesia: Played for Laughs in Paper Cut.
• Fan Disservice: Frag Dude. It does end with some Fan Service at the end, though.
  • Gus without his shirt in general.
• Gag Penis: In the Captain America: The First Avenger (Parody) video, after being told that the super serum will enlarge the rest of his body by displacing the part of his body he won't use for fighting (his penis), Steve suggests they reverse the concept and shrink the rest of his body to make his penis really big so he could fight with it "like some sort of battleaxe". The idea is declined.
• Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: Invoked and inverted in Dress Rehearsal.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: If you listen closely you can hear the cast's Red vs. Blue voices coming through. Also particularly recognizable is Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies fame, who plays the titular character in Captain Dynamic.
• Hot Mom: Griffon Ramsey, who has appeared in several shorts so far. While it's never mentioned in the shorts, she is a mother and, well, damn.
• Ho Yay: The Stand Alone episode culminates in Burnie, Geoff and Joel all apparently falling in love with the Gus cardboard cutout, leading to an argument. Gus is revealed to have spent his time away from work creating cardboard cutouts of them also, and promptly throws off his shirt asking "Who wants to play strip poker?!".
  • And a more blatant example in Many Years Ago

Geoff: Congratulations to Joel. Landing that big Hollywood acting gig like that? That's not easy. Nathan: Yeah, it takes a lot of balls to do gay porn.

• Human Popsicle: Geoff and Burnie's time machine is basically a huge box full of ice.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: The Atari Kid.
• Ironic Hell: Shown in Will killing in video games stop you from getting into heaven?, Geoff falling into hell for all the deaths he committed in video games keeps falling due to Loads and Loads of Loading.
• It Will Never Catch On: The entire joke in Many Years Ago...
• Let's Meet the Meat: Food War.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Within the Will killing in video games stop you from getting into heaven? video, very fittingly for a gamer, falling into hell is this.
• Jackass Genie: The magical fish from Fish Wish.
• Just Friends: Poor Steve Rogers, because the super serum works by increasing the rest of his body's size by making his penis tiny.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: Frequently, given how immoral Burnie and Joel are sometimes shown to be. In real life, they're very friendly people.
• Mexican Standoff: In Stalled.
• Mind Screw: Coasting.
• Missing Episode: The DMV Episode has mysteriously disappeared from the website. Word of God says the Texas DMV complained.
• Mood Whiplash: In Super Strength, Chris goes crazy with happiness upon gaining the glowing Orb. Cut to his tombstone after the Orb gave him cancer.
  • Additionally in Starry Night, where Gus goes out late at night to bury a dead body. He runs into another guy doing so, and the two get married.
• Mundane Wish: One short has Geoff catch a magic fish that grants him three wishes. His first is for two strawberry milkshakes. When he spills one of those two milkshakes, his second is to unspill it. His last is to wish it wasn't against the rules to eat a magical fish sandwich.
• Neck Snap: In "Noted to Death", the "twist ending".
• Noodle Incident: The "ritual" that Joel performs in Hotel Buddies.
• One Steve Limit: Invoked in New Employees.
• Only Sane Man/Straight Man: This role varies by virtue of the Sanity Ball. Joel swings back and forth between amoral Cloudcuckoolander and Only Sane Man, other times it's Matt, Shannon, Geoff or Gus.
  • Matt's probably the most consistent straight man among all the shorts.
  • In both his appearances, Jon Graham (the creator of Arby 'n' the Chief) is this. The first short has everybody mistake him for Gary Busey despite the fact they are totally different, and in the second he's almost killed for video game piracy.
• Pixellation: Blur.
• Playing Against Type: To a certain extent. Many of the group often act differently from their Red vs. Blue characters. As noted above, Joel, best known for playing Caboose, often plays the Only Sane Man.
• Take That: During Fight or Flight credits : Music by Rebecca Black.
• The Devil Is a Loser: Who is utterly horrified at Joel's complete apathy about killing off his friends in exchange for money.
  • The above is more akin to the Grim Reaper, but the literal Devil in Crazy Dream isn't any better... or smarter.
• The Pornomancer: Joel in Hotel Buddies

Matt: You should be like, fucking bronzed and put in the Smithsonian.

• Trademark Favourite Food: Burnie and sandwiches.
• Trap Door: Burnie has one that leads straight into the restaurant beneath them, everyone keeps landing in the salad bar.
• Twist Ending: Literally in "Noted to Death".
• Robotic Reveal: Parodied in Captcha'd
• Running Gag: Craigslist. You can buy anything on there.
• Serious Business: Stoppage Time
• Sidetracked by the Analogy: Upon finding the Orb in Super Strength, Chris and Marshall's argument about the Orb's true power deviates into whether Sonic the Hedgehog's superpower is super-strength or super-speed.

Chris: "He's fast, yes, but in order to be fast you must be strong." Marshall: "You're telling me that if you went up to Sonic the Hedgehog, you would much rather race him than try a squat competition?"

• Smoking Hot Sex: Brandon is smoking a cigarette after he has sex with the fax machine.
• Squick: Apparently, how Chris gets the dogs having sex in all of his photos in the Picture Perfect video involves peanut butter. That was Matt's. And he put it all back before Matt realized this and had the peanut butter for lunch.
• Stalker with a Crush: Gus for Kerry.
• Stalker Without a Crush: Joel has some notes for you.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Why would Burnie even want a Henckman Brothers Model 607 Trapdoor?
  • Gus's volunteer trip to the Gulf Coast was totally not a secret vacation to Hawaii.
• Unreadably Fast Text: The credits to "Writer's Balk", which are all lifted from various Asian movies such as Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky and Invasion of Astro-Monster.
• Wax On, Wax Off: Atari Kid.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In the Will killing in video games stop you from getting into heaven? short... Unfortunately for gamers, heaven seems to not discriminate on the matter and will declare you a murderer for all that video game violence.
• You Watch Too Much X:

Geoff: What? I watch a lot of TV.