Greenshirts (G.I. Joe)

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Greenshirts is a term applied to the generic-looking soldiers from the cartoon, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. The Greenshirts are the equivalent of "extras" in that they are in the story to serve merely as background characters and have no speaking parts. Due to the unique look of each G.I. Joe member, it became a problem for Sunbow animators to render the G.I. Joe Team especially when it came to an all-out battle scene. The solution was to create generic G.I. Joe soldiers. This also addressed a problem not brought up in the comics, Cobra would outnumber the Joes. It made sense for G.I. Joe to bolster its forces.

The appearance of the Greenshirts are based upon the G.I. Joe team member Grunt, the Joe Team's infantry squad leader.

The name "Greenshirts" came to use within canon with the release of new G.I. Joe comics from Devil's Due Productions. In this continuity, the Greenshirts were soldiers used as support troops for the main G.I-Joe team. The Greenshirts were broken into three different types, infantry, navy and air force. Some of them have been given personalities and play slightly bigger roles, even becoming members of the team.

However, fans criticize this version of the Greenshirts as being similar to Star Trek's "Redshirt" especially when they are killed off merely to achieve dramatic effect.

Hasbro for many years avoided a producing a Greenshirt figure, as several members of the designing and writing teams didn't want to have "nameless" G.I. Joe figures for various reasons. This was cirvumvented with the 2005 "Infantry Team" figure six-pack, which featured six figures designed to look like the cartoon's Greenshirts. Each figure was given a separate filecard with a blank file name and codename for the buyer to fill in their own details, in essence making them "named" characters.