Bluepill
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In the Matrix universe, a Bluepill and sometimes Blue Pill is a term that describes a human whose mind is unaware of the truth about the Matrix.
The subject may be completely unaware since birth as a pod-born human, or at some point be presented with a choice and chose The Matrix.
In The Matrix, the first feature film of the Matrix series, Morpheus finds a computer hacker who called himself Neo. Morpheus then offers Neo a choice of ingesting a red pill or a blue pill.
“ | You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. | ” |
Others like Cypher who have already chosen the red pill, although maybe idealistic at first, have grown tired of the truth. Harshly disillusioned by the grim existence and following Morpheus and his blind faith, Cypher soon starts to wish he'd never left the Matrix in the first place.
“ | I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here. Why, oh why didn't I take the blue pill? | ” |
This prompts him to strike a deal with the Agent Smith. Cypher secretly meets with Agent Smith betraying Morpheus over to them if the Agents will return Cypher with no knowledge of the Matrix. Part of his new reality includes being rich and famous.
This term also was used at the beginning of the third Matrix feature film, The Matrix Revolutions. When the operator of the hovercraft Hammer searches within the Matrix for Niobe and Ghost, he says:
“ | I got nothing, sir. No sign of Niobe or Ghost. Nothing but bluepills. | ” |
A bluepill is the opposite of a redpill.
[edit] Background
After a catastrophic war where humans lost against a race of intelligent machines that they originally created, humans are grown in massive fields by the Machines and placed in pods where they live out their lives in a virtual reality, unaware that they are living in a dream world. In return for this captivity where actual human bodies are kept docile, the Machines gain the use of the human brains as subprocessing units for the Matrix as well as generating some electrical power from their bodies.
The job of Zion hovercraft crews were to find human minds within the Matrix that questioned its reality and have their minds ejected from the Matrix and their bodies removed from the powerplant. To do this, they met with the person in secret, away from Agents or others who could jeopardize the operation or the safety of the crew.
Based on the events surrounding the central character Neo as seen in the original movie, The Matrix, an authorized member of the crew offers the prospective human a choice of digesting a red-colored pill, which would activate a trace program that allowed the crew to locate the human's body in the Matrix powerplant.
If the person refuses the offer to discover the truth about the Matrix, the person is instructed to take a blue-colored pill, which would likely activate a program jump in the human's mind (similar to what was done to Neo after his interrogation by Agents in the original movie) and return them to their homes or business to return to life in the Matrix.
In the original Matrix movie, Morpheus stated that after one took the blue pill, they would wake up in their bed with all of the current events having been only a dream, a prospect which would easily allow an unready or unwilling person to dismiss everything that had happened as nothing more than a very odd dream.
A story in The Matrix Comics involves a woman who rejects a redpill offered by Morpheus and the depression she experiences as she continues life within the Matrix, trapped by her own fear.