Team Fortress 2/Characters

As a class-based shooter, every character in Team Fortress 2 has a fixed set of equipment and abilities, and a role to play in propelling the team to victory. Each class is distinct in looks, personality, and nationality and has a set of weapons and equipment unique to them.

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The Entire Team

File:Team Fortress 2 Group Photo-smallcropped 8792.jpg

Nine mercenaries have come together for a job. It's the middle-ish part of a century a lot like the one we just had. A simpler time. There are three TV stations, one phone company, and two holding corporations that secretly control every government on the planet. Each corporation administers its half of the world with a multi-disciplined army of paper pushers. For any problem lacking an obvious bureaucratic solution, mercenaries like these are contracted to address the situation through a massive application of force. Now's your chance to Meet the Team.

• Affably Evil/Faux Affably Evil: Entirely dependent on whether or not you're on the winning side.
• Army of Thieves and Whores
• Ax Crazy
• Badass Boast: A mercenary facing an enemy and using the Battle Cry voice command (C -> 2) will give one.
• Badass Crew: See Band of Brothers below.
  • Badass Bandolier: The Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, and Heavy all wear them.
  • Badass Transplant: Their hearts, otherwise they wouldn't survive an Über Charge.
• Bald of Awesome: The Soldier, Heavy, and Engineer wear their hair extremely short — so does the Spy, presuming from the tight fit of his balaclava.
• Band of Brothers: Sure, they're Heroic Comedic Sociopaths at best and Psychos For Hire at worst, but that doesn't stop them from working together like a well-oiled machine of death. The Heavy Weapons Guy in particular believes in "being credit to team", but the heart-warmingly sincere in-game "thank you" commands for getting teleported by the Engineer and healed by the Medic makes it clear the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits are turning into Fire-Forged Friends.
• Battle Cry: Each class has a few, and everyone yells at the beginning of a round.
• Because I'm Good At It: Most mercenaries who feature in the interview-style "Meet the" videos offer this justification for why they do what they do. Even the "Meet The Spy" video, the first to break the interview format, can be considered an inverted version of this trope.
• Blood Knight: All of them love blood, death, and violence.
• Blue Eyes: More common than mere genetics would seem to allow. All of the classes have blue eyes, save for the Demoman (brown). The jury's still out on the Pyro.
• Carnival of Killers
• Cast of Snowflakes: It's uncommon to see a First-Person Shooter with five classes distinguished by anything more than different weapon loadout, let alone nine, viable, completely distinct classes. The amount of work this took to balance could (literally) be summed up as "1 year for each class." According to the game's commentary, the characters were deliberately designed so that they could be distinguished from one another simply by their silhouettes.
• Comedic Sociopathy: The mercenaries kill people for a living and enjoy doing so. They are especially gleeful when dominating someone or getting multiple kills within a short period of time.

Medic: Can you feel the schadenfreude? Scout: He-hey, look, you shapeshifted into a dead guy! Pyro: AH HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHA! Heavy: I am amused by entire eety-beety-teeny team!

• • Also, the Schadenfreude taunt, introduced in the Über Update, allows anyone to take joy in the misery of their enemies.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The Engineer and the Medic are both explicitly credited with refining and inventing their tech, respectively. Between the two of them, they could turn the world on its ear if they ever started selling their technology, a la Saxton Hale. Instead, they're content to be mercenaries.
• Distinctive Appearances
• Everyone Calls Them...
• Evil Laugh: Every class has a few for dominating, revenge, and getting multiple kills. They also all have a Schadenfreude taunt. Examples: Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper, and Spy. Some of the Schadenfreude taunts are examples of Un Evil Laugh.
• Five-Token Band: Team Fortress 2 takes this to ridiculous lengths — the classes consist of a crass teenager from Boston, an older and severely unhinged man from the Midwest, a black Scottish cyclops, a burly Russian, a guitar-playing Texan, a German doctor, an Australian bushwhacker, a French secret serviceman, and someone (or... something) in a hazard suit that's anyone's guess. This is deliberate, as the wildly differing appearance and voices make it instantly possible to identify which class a player is using.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath
• Hired Guns
• Hypocritical Humor: They'll trash-talk any class on the enemy team in their domination lines, but they'll genuinely thank any class on their team with the 'Thanks!' command (or automatic responses, like getting healed by a Medic or teleported by an Engineer).
• Laughably Evil
• Large Ham/World of Ham: Just about everyone in the game, but especially Gary Schwartz, the voice of the Heavy and the Demoman.
  • "CRY SOME MORE! CRY SOME MOOOOOOOORE!!!"
  • "THERE CAN BE, ONLY OOOOOOOOOOOOONE!"
• Legacy Character: Judging by the "Loose Canon" comic, there have been at least three BLU Engineers (counting Blutarch's original Engineer), and at least two of everyone else (again, counting the original team). And assuming Redmond's original team also was comprised of the original nine classes, then that's at least two of all of them as well.
• Multinational Team: Let's see, we have three Americans (of varying regions), a Russian, a German, an Australian, a Scotsman (a Black Scottish Cyclops no less), a Frenchman, and... The Pyro.
• Nice Hat: Many of the unlockables qualify for this.
• Perma Stubble: Half the cast always look like they haven't had a shave in a week. As for the other half: the Scout is physically incapable of growing any facial hair, the Medic always looks like he shaved yesterday, the Demoman's facial hair appears to be a style choice, and the Pyro's is none of your damn business.
• Private Military Contractors: All of the Team.
• Professional Killer
• Psycho for Hire: Some more than others.
  • The Soldier and Pyro appear to be truly insane, the Demoman is very fond of explosions, the Heavy talks to his guns and Sandviches like they're real people, the Scout seems to like hurting people far more than any normal human being does, and the Medic's bio states he has no qualifications for his job and considers healing to be an unintended side-effect of what he does.
• Put the Laughter In Slaughter
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A drawling More Dakka engineer. A big, somewhat dimwitted Russian. A psychotic, delusional soldier. A mouthy, trash-talking speedster. A jerkass German doctor. A smooth-talking French spy. A laid back Australian professional killer. A drunk, one-eyed, black, manic-depressive Scottish nutcase. A pyromaniac of ambiguous sex and/or gender. They Fight Their Other-Colored Clones!
• Required Secondary Powers: According to "Meet the Medic", every class had to have special heart implants in order to use the Über Charge. In the case of the Heavy, his heart had to be replaced with a much larger one after his first heart exploded from the power of the Über Charge implant.
• Rule of Three: When set on fire, every class except the Pyro coincidentally has a "Fire, fire, fire!" response.
• Sociopathic Soldier: Not just the Soldier. They all enjoy killing their enemies and making fun of them.
• Trash Talk
• Trigger Happy: Especially the Heavy.
• True Companions: A very strange example, but an example nonetheless.
• Weapon of Choice

Offense

File:Scout.png

Not Pictured: Humility

The Scout

"Listenin'? Okay — grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people." Voiced by: Nathan Vetterlein

An American, with a Bronx accent, but is really from South Boston. Wears a team-colored t-shirt, a black messenger bag, cleats, dogtags, and handwraps. Looks and sounds exactly like Vince Offer, and to some extent even has a similar personality. The fourth class to receive new equipment. Uses a scattergun, a pistol, and a bat. Meet the Scout!

The Scout provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion: The Scout stole a line from Left 4 Dead's "church guy" as of his update. Obviously, they both share a voice actor.
• American Accents: Boston, although he sounds like he's from Brooklyn (Which is intended).
• Amusing Injuries:
  • Had a dove accidentally sealed inside his chest due to its habit of flying into peoples' open wounds. Occasionally, when gibbing a scout, a dove would fly out of his gibs.
  • Had all his blood punched out, or so he says, in "Meet the Sandvich". An unused line from the video reveals that he would've been hit with his own legbone as well.
• Attention Whore: Several of his lines are some variant of "LOOK AT ME!"
• Badass Boast:

"Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brudda... I hurt people. I'm a force of nature. If you were from where I'm from, you would be fucking dead."

• Batter Up: Being a baseball fan, his default melee weapon is an aluminum bat, and a few of his unlockables are bats as well.
• Body Horror: Has a live bird sealed in his chest on accident during a surgery, that was never removed. On rare occasions, when he gets gibbed, the bird will fly out unharmed.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Just listen to his lines for about 5 seconds.
  • Backstory-wise: he's the youngest of eight children (referred to as "his mad-dog brothers").
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: He has a few lines that only make sense in the context of a computer game:

"Yeah, I dare ya. Rage Quit! Come on, make us both happy."

• Brooklyn Rage: Even though he's from Boston it certainly counts.
• Buffy-Speak

"I am OWNING you, you fat bald fatty fat...fat-fat!" "You'll never hit me! You'll never hit my tiny head! It's so tiny, I've got a fricken'... such a tiny little head!"

• Casanova Wannabe: Not so much in-game due to a distinct lack of females, but in the online comics he hits on nigh-on every woman he sees, with zero success.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: The Scout trained himself to run everywhere, originally so he could reach fights in time to have some fun before his seven older brothers got there.
• Difficult but Awesome: Unskilled Scouts die quickly, but skilled ones rack up the bodies and capture points. His playstyle requires quick reflexes, constant movement, and in-depth knowledge of the map, as well as good aim since he has to keep moving while shooting to stay alive. He is hard to control for many veteran FPS players, due to his ludicrous speed.
  • On the other hand, truly veteran FPS players might get a sense of nostalgia from the quick movement and emphasis on dodging attacks rather than soaking them up.
• Eat My Dust: One of his lines.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Seems to be fond of his. "Look at me, ma!"
• Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: "Extra! Extra! You're frickin' dead!"
• Fourth Wall Observer: One has to wonder where he picked up the word "ragequit". Yes, he actually does tell his domination victims to ragequit.
  • He also recognizes he's a class, and all the "battlegrounds" are maps.
• Fragile Speedster: The most mobile class, but he only has 125 health (110 when using the Sandman).
  • Glass Cannon: His Scattergun can do upwards of 100 damage per shot, meaning with it, he can kill most classes in a couple of shots (though he has to get almost point-blank to the target to deal the most damage per shot).
• Genre Savvy: In the 2011 Smissmas comic, Scout recognized that Old Nick trying to kidnap Jack was going to end badly for Nick. Downplayed, since he also thought Jack was a disguised Spy.
• Handsome Lech: As seen here.

"So how you doin', Miss Pauling? Hey, you ever seen me with my shirt off? Cuz it is awesome."

• • In A Smissmas Story, when the Scout, Soldier, and Spy are sentenced to community service by hosting a "Meet Santa" at a mall, the Scout has people form a line for single moms and one for everyone else.
• Handwraps of Awesome
• Hit and Run Tactics
• Hot Mom: As revealed in "Meet the Spy", his mother managed to keep her youth very well.
  • After having eight kids, no less.
• I Have Brothers: Rare male example.
• Inherently Funny Words: BONK!
• Interface Screw: The Holy Mackerel and Unarmed Combat broadcast how many times he hits someone over the kill ticker, with a new tick being made for each person he's hit. This can effectively block out the kill feed until he's done or the target's killed.
• Keet: He's cheerful, loud, and just plain enthusiastic about his line of work. Unlike most keets, his job happens to be "murderous thug".
• Lean and Mean
• Motor Mouth: Once talked for at least five hours on end.
• Must Have Caffeine: In an early trailer, his motto simply reads "Too. Much. Caffeine." Plus, two of his unlockable weapons are energy drinks.
• Oh Crap: Variations of this when Crit-A-Cola wears off and if he's being hit while trying to chug Bonk! Atomic Punch when his health is in the red.
• Pastimes Prove Personality
• Pet the Dog: In the 2011 Halloween comic, he kneels down to eye level with one of the kids and gives him a tooth that he beat out of someone with his bat.

Hey there, slugger. C'mere. You are gonna love this. You see this bat? Bam! That... is a human molar. From some dummy with a big mouth that used to be fulla teeth. It's all yours, little talkin' France.

• • He is also quick to defend the kids at the mall when Old Nick arrives to kidnap them.
• Psychotic Smirk: Dude, chill...
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "I! EAT! YOUR! SANDVICHES! I EAT 'EM UP!
• Road Runner PC
• The Runt At the End
• Satisfied Street Rat
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: "Wanananana!", "Bonk!", and a bunch after drinking Bonk! Atomic Punch.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: In "Meet The Sandvich".
• Southies
• Too Slow: Some of his lines mock the enemy for being too slow.
• Trademark Favorite Food: That Bonk! Atomic Punch makes him quite hyperactive.
• Unsound Effect: Gets a few in the Mac Update comic. PAINFUL FLEX.
• Wimpification: Has overtaken the Medic as the most frequent victim, due to being the youngest and closest thing the cast has to "pretty boy", despite the fact that in game he'll cackle madly at beating someone's head in.
• You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!: One of his actual lines in the game.
• You Have Researched Breathing: The "Baseball Bill's Sports Shine" is basically Scout without his hat.

File:Soldier.png

Show him your REAL war face!

The Soldier ("Real" name: Mr. Jane Doe)

"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!" Voiced by: Rick May

A Boisterous Bruiser and a Drill Sergeant Nasty. American, thinks Sun Tzu is something of a Memetic Badass, talks like a cross between George C. Scott in Patton and R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, wears fatigues and an ill-fitting helmet in team color. Wanted to "do his bit" in World War II, but was rejected from every service in the American military - -so he self-financed a one-man rampage across Europe, not stopping until several years after the Germans had surrendered. He shared his class update alongside the Demoman, similar to the Sniper and Spy update. It conclusively revealed that he was never in the Army (his personal Berserk Button), as well as the Soldier's lifestyle; he lives in a windowless apartment, ready to kill any visitor who isn't a tomato soup salesman or a rib deliveryman. Uses a rocket launcher, a shotgun, and a shovel. Meet the Soldier!

The Soldier provides examples of:

• American Accents: Drill Sergeant
• Artistic License History: If this post about Abraham Lincoln is part of his interior monologue.
  • A continuation of this article's opening quote:

"Sun Tzu said that, and I bet he knows a little more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it! Then he perfected it so that no man could best him in the ring of honor! Then he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on Earth, then he herded them into a boat and beat the crap out of every single one!

• Armed Legs: The Mantreads, which enable the Soldier to Goomba Stomp enemies by falling from heights that would normally hurt him.
• Awesome but Impractical: Pretty much the Mantreads and Market Gardener. 9 times out of 10 you'd perform far better using the Equalizer and Shotgun, but then you couldn't pull off crazy stuff like this.
• Badass Bandolier: Including two semi-cosmetic frag grenades. You can only use one of them in a suicidal explosion if you've got the Equalizer equipped.
• Berserk Button: Do not call him a civilian.
• The Berserker: While you normally don't want to damage yourself with your own rockets, equipping the Equalizer gives some credence toward not worrying about getting damaged to be potentially able to run at your enemies almost as fast as a Scout with a now-really powerful melee weapon which will kill most of the classes in two attacks. Just make sure they aren't looking at you.
• Blinding Bangs: A helmet, but it works the same way.
  • Played straight with the Battle Bob promotional hat.
• Boisterous Bruiser: "You are not welcome in MY WORLD!"
• Bond One-Liner: Many of his killing spree voice notes qualify. "Time to inform YOUR NEXT OF KIN!"
• Book Dumb
• Captain Obvious: See: his quote, also:

Administrator: Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! RED Spy is in the base! Soldier: A RED SPY IS IN THE BASE?! Administrator: Protect the Briefcase! Soldier: WE NEED TO PROTECT THE BRIEFCASE!

• Cloudcuckoolander: He is notably the character with the loosest grip on reality, as evident by him going on a Nazi killing spree and not ending until four years after World War II ended.
  • Further proven by his update, in which he let himself get fooled by an extremely obvious robotized fake version of the Demoman made by his superiors.
  • He apparently has tea parties with cardboard cutout soldiers, and his first reaction upon finding crash-landed alien weapons is to pick them up and go "pew pew" while announcing he's going to join the Space Marines.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Dominating a Spy will have the Soldier taunt them while generally mentioning their French nationality. One calls the spy a "rifle-dropping coward", another has him say "Your white flag does not stop American bullets". Think not of how the latter would be a war crime, and remember that the Soldier isn't too sane.
  • One of his Achievements is "Geneva Contravention", which literally makes you kill 3 unarmed people. Granted, he's not exactly in the army.
• Colonel Kilgore
• Companion Cube: His enemies' severed heads.
• Crazy Survivalist: The Soldier apparently lives in a windowless apartment with a barricaded door, several hundred cans of army surplus soup and a pile of "Guns and Haircuts" magazines.
  • With a wizard!
• Death From Above: Rocket jumping allows the Soldier to fly to great heights from which he can rain down rockets upon his enemies. The Gunboats greatly reduce the self-damage taken from rocket jumping, allowing Soldiers to perform bombing runs with high frequency, while the Mantreads let him actually land on enemies to damage them.
• Dirty Communists: What he thinks of the Heavy.
• Difficult but Awesome: Rocket jumping. A lot of people see it as just a typical advantage that Soldiers and Demos have, but when you can blast all the way across the map in five seconds (as showcased in the openings to these tutorials) and even beat out the Scout with enough practice, it becomes clear how useful it really is.
  • A good Soldier can also "juggle" enemies in the air with his rockets, making them completely vulnerable to his attacks. There's actually two Rocket Launchers made with this specific purpose, the Direct Hit and Liberty Launcher. However, while the actual act of bouncing someone into the air isn't hard, predicting where they will land and striking it with another rocket is, as well as actually hitting them mid-air. With good practice a Soldier can even solo a Heavy-Medic pair using this technique (mainly because even under the effects of an Über Charge, they can still be bounced and knocked off balance), but the amount of wrist control required is insane.
  • The Direct Hit rocket launcher is very hard, but rewarding to use: it's one of the few weapons able to one-shot light classes and easily destroy Engineer nests.
  • Using the Market Gardener effectively also theoretically falls into this category. If you can get good enough at rocket jumping (which is highly difficult to master in and of itself, particularly airstrafing) and learn all the niche areas of a map, it's possible to drop in on enemies with absolutely no warning and land a One-Hit Kill on 7 out of 9 classes, then be gone before they can react (or continue mopping them up with your Rocket Launcher).
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Very similar to Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, and even more psychotic than his team.
• Dumb Muscle/Genius Ditz: At times he's far more concerned with killing than any sort of tactics. When asked if he knew what a "conflict of interest" was, his response was "a breed of dog". On the other hand, one of his taunts is remarkably erudite: "You're like the Cyclops of Greek myth — except you're Scottish, and I HAATE you!" He also appears to have read The Lord of the Rings, although he seems to have Australia and New Zealand confused since he calls the Sniper many different variations of "Bilbo Baggins". Or, he just doesn't care.
  • "You just got dominated, Barble Bapkins!"
  • He also seems to understand the relationship between England, Scotland and the UK and uses it to taunt the Demoman. "Scotland is not a real country. You are an Englishman in a dress!"
• Eagle Land: The Soldier marinates himself with Flavor #2.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: The Soldier will declare that Scotland is not a real country, and thus the Scottish Demoman is actually "an Englishman in a dress".
• Friend to All Children: He's tough, but he took three kids trick-or-treating on Halloween, and didn't hesitate to defend the children of Teufort from Old Nick.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Somehow he went from being rejected by every branch of the military, having no training, and being unable to locate Poland on a map to personally killing over 6000 people during and after WW2.
• Gender Blender Name: His name is apparently Mr. Jane Doe.
• General Ripper
• Glass Cannon: Can become this with the Equalizer, which gets stronger as he takes damage.
• Goomba Stomp: Perform these by wearing the Mantreads and landing on someone from a massive height.
• Hot-Blooded

"You cannot burn me. I am already ablaze with passion for war!"

• Hypocritical Humor: A Pyro domination line goes, "Fire is for cooking s'mores, son; get a REAL GUN." This coming from the guy whose primary is a rocket launcher (not technically a gun) and whose secondary is a shotgun (the same as the Pyro).
  • See Moral Myopia below.
• Irony: The Soldier has made his disdain towards hippies and long hair (read: anything longer than a buzz cut) clear. There's also a promotional hat in the form of unusual-looking long hair for the Soldier.
• It's All About Me: Capturing points or intelligence noticeably has him stress in his lines that they are his.
• It's Raining Men: If you're wearing the Mantreads, landing on an enemy negates any fall damage that you might take. Said fall damage is tripled, and the enemy takes it instead.
• Jack of All Stats: The Soldier simply isn't included in most counter cycles, and his weapons and stats are fairly straightforward. That, and his weapons might make him comfortable to Quake arena players.
  • This is not to suggest he's not a valuable player; the Soldier is a vital staple in competitive play, and considered a highly important class throughout even the highest levels.
  • For people really good at Rocket Jumping, he's more of a Lightning Bruiser.
• Misery Builds Character: As the Soldier says, "Pain is weakness leaving the body!"
• Moral Myopia: Two of his achievements, War Crime Spybunal, as well as War Crime and Punishment, are clearly named in a way as if it was punishing a war crime (killing a Spy just that backstabbed an ally, and killing three enemies that attacked the Medic who is healing you, respectively. The latter would also be technically not a war crime, since you are still a visible combatant.) He also has an achievement which requires him to kill three players after the match has been won, in which they are visibly defenseless (though there are ways around it), which is a war crime. There is also the mentioning of killing surrendering Frenchmen under Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys higher up (and... killing visibly surrendering enemies is definitely a war crime).
  • In short, to the Soldier, it's only a war crime if the enemy team does it.
  • Being as every government is secretly controlled by the two companies in this version of our world, the only war crime may consist of "not killing enough innocent civilians today."
• No Indoor Voice
• One-Liner, Name. One-Liner.: When the Tin Soldier set is equipped, upon getting a Revenge Kill, the Soldier may say:

"Beep boop son, beep boop."

• One-Man Army: He was (or, at least, claimed to be) one of these during (and a few years after) World War II.
• Parrot Exposition: See Captain Obvious above.
• Patriotic Fervor: Taken to the extreme for Rule of Funny.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In this Halloween comic, if the Soldier's line about being on the lam with the kids is an attempt to get candy, it's quite touching to see the merciless military man putting on a goofy costume and taking some kids trick or treating with him. If it isn't, he's still trying to keep them fed.
  • In an outtake of Meet the Medic, the BLU Soldier holds a dying teammate in his arms.
  • Like the Scout, he saves the kids of Teufort from being kidnapped.
• Phony Veteran: Contrary to his claims, he has never served in an army, and all those medals he has are self-awarded. However, he did acquire a fly to Poland and fought in World War 2 on his own initiative, though most of the years in Europe were spent killing civilians because he didn't know the war was over. Just don't mention that he's a civilian to his face.
• Pitiful Worms: He sure loves to call people maggots and spineless worms.

"You are a spineless worm! You are a mistake of nature! You are walking vomit!"

• Powerful Pick: The Equalizer.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: He does this quite a bit.

"Stand! On! The! Point! Numbnuts!" "I! Am! On! FIRE!!!"

• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Sometimes, especially when he's on a kill streak. Also, if he has the Tin Soldier costume set on, he goes "Beep beep boop" and occasionally "Robot noises!" while firing a weapon.
• The Scourge of God: "If God had wanted you to live, he would not have created me!"
• Sergeant Rock
• Shaggy Frog Story: From "Meet The Soldier":

"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little bit more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it, and then he perfected it so that no living man could best him in the ring of honor. Then, he used his fight money to buy two of every animal on earth, and then he herded them onto a boat, and then he beat the crap out of every single one. And from that day forward any time a bunch of animals are together in one place it's called a 'zoo'! (Beat) Unless it's a farm!"

• Shovel Strike
• Serious Business: Almost to the point of being the team Stop Having Fun Guy.
• Smarter Than You Look: The Soldier is more eloquent in his blog posts than one might expect from someone who can't spell "heads" right.
• Sociopathic Soldier:
• Suicide Attack: His Kamikaze taunt has him pull the pin on one of the hand grenades on his chest but not throw it, the explosion killing him and any enemy within a six foot radius.
  • Can be used as a way of circumventing the "No attacking after defeat" mechanic, and an amusing way to inflict a little post-defeat payback if you have good timing and/or are lucky.
• Testosterone Poisoning: According to the Soldier, true men get haircuts, yell, eat ribs, do pushups, and defend hills. Any person who doesn't do these activities every waking moment is a pansy.
• Trademark Favourite Food: Captain Dan's army surplus soup. And ribs.
• Whip It Good: The Disciplinary Action.

File:Pyro.png

Some say he used to drum for the Kaiser Chiefs, and that he wears all his clothes backwards. All we know is, he's called The Pyro.

The Pyro

"Mmfmff!" Voiced by: Dennis Bateman

Race and nationality unknown, as the Pyro dresses in head-to-toe fireproof suit in team color, and a face-obscuring gas mask which muffles their voice. Since the Pyro's appearance is completely obscured by their suit, the Pyro could actually be a woman. Second class to have received new achievements and weapons. Uses a flamethrower, a shotgun, and a fire axe. Meet the Pyro... later this year!

The Pyro provides examples of:

• AFGNCAAP: Nobody has ever seen what the Pyro looks like under that suit.
• Air Guitar: His melee weapon taunt.
• Ambiguously Gay: The pink, flowery purse he keeps in his locker and the rather sassy pose he makes after losing a round have lead some players to believe this.
• Ambiguous Gender: The Pyro is either a man, a woman, or a robot.
  • In Matt Hazard: Blood Bath & Beyond, there is a specific level that has Shout Outs to numerous video games, primarily TF2. In the middle of the stage, there are two outhouses in the background, one for the men, and one for the Pyro.
  • Early concept art, however, shows the Pyro as distinctly male.
  • Valve has officially stated that they do not have an answer for "Is the Pyro a boy or girl?".
    • A past update would display random challenges on the title screen for the player to perform with the monicker, "Give him a shot!" referring to the class the challenge was about. When a challenge was issued for the Pyro, the pronoun "Him" could randomly change to "Her" or "It".
• An Axe to Grind/Ax Crazy: Depending on whether the person you ask subscribes to the Psychopathic Manchild interpretation above.
• Barrier Warrior: The Pyro's compression blast generates a small reflective shield in front of the nozzle.
• Cute Mute: In the Austrialian Christmas comic, at least.
• Difficult but Awesome: While the straightforward W+ M1 Pyro is looked upon with contempt by other players, Pyro users who manage to master the compression blast find themselves with an axe-crazy pyromancer who can reflect projectiles back at opponents (including arrows fired from Snipers and Medics), use opponent's rockets to Rocket Jump themselves up, disarm sticky bombs, neutralize Über Charged Medics and separate them from their teammates, as well as putting out fires on teammates. Just see this.
  • Most players overlook the "ambush" aspect of playing a Pyro. A single Pyro, even an inexperienced one, unexpectedly flanking his foes and setting them all ablaze is an effective, if sometimes suicidal tactic. And if coupled with the Axtinguisher, the Pyro becomes a close range assassin, setting unaware foes on fire, and then swiftly whipping out the Axtinguisher to finish them in a single blow. The flame and axtinguish combo is commonly referred to as the "Puff 'n Sting".
  • Mastery of the Flare Gun can result in Pyros out shooting Snipers from halfway across the map.
• Dissonant Serenity: In True Meaning, the Pyro doesn't appear to be too shaken by a rocket that crashed into the Engineer's house, barely missing the two.
• Drop the Hammer: The Homewrecker.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"/No Name Given: To an even greater extent than the other classes. Even when off duty the Engineer (Dell Conagher) calls him/her Pyro.
• The Faceless: Nobody knows what's under that mask... yet. (In the character model, the Pyro's head is the mask.)
• Foil: To the Sniper. While the Pyro deals damage over a wide area at close range with the flamethrower, the Sniper deals precise damage to single targets at long range with the sniper rifle.
  • Also, the Sniper is a cold professional. Pyro would appear to be... less so.
• Heterosexual Life Partners: Apparently Engineer and Pyro live together. When a rocket crashed into their house he joked that they may have just adopted a super baby. This mirrors their relationship in-game; no Engineer is complete without a Pyro.
• High-Class Glass: Part of the Pyro's miscellaneous item, the "Whiskered Gentleman".
• Idiot Savant: Variously described by the others as a "mutant", a "whack-job", a "mumbling abomination" and a "mental deficient", the Pyro inspirationally makes up for whatever he may lack in social skills by being an expert at inflicting burning agony upon others.
• Improbable Weapon User: Some of his melee weapons. He has the usual selection of axes and sledgehammers, such as the Axtinguisher and the Homewrecker, but the Pyro also uses improvised weapons like a gardening rake, a car battery attached to a car jack, and, giving new meaning to the word "hotmail", a a mailbox.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Methods for putting out fire have increased in number by the day, making afterburn not even half as menacing as it used to be. To this date, 5 out of 9 classes have items that immediately put out a fire (the Scout's Mad Milk, the Pyro's airblast and Manmelter alt-fire, the Heavy's Sandviches, the Sniper's Jarate, and the Spy's Dead Ringer); the Medic has intrinsic health regeneration that almost neutralizes the afterburn, his Medigun renders it irrelevant on the healed teammate, and activating a normal Über Charge extinguishes fire; the Demoman's shields give him great resistance to fire; and the Spy's Spy-cicle makes him outright immune.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His ability to set people on fire while charging forward has many new players scrambling to pick this class.
• Lethal Joke Character: The Pyro is the stereotypical noob class, and playing him can result in derision from veteran players. He's also been heavily nerfed repeatedly and other classes surpass him in virtually all areas . Yet see Difficult but Awesome above for a taste of what a skilled Pyro can do.
  • In terms of counter cycles, the Pyro is mostly used for spy checking but can also completely neutralize enemy Soldiers and Demomen.
• Lightning Bruiser: Has the highest health/speed balance of all the classes. 100% of baseline speed, with 175 health; only three other classes meet or exceed the Pyro's health level, and they're all slower than Pyro. Couple with the major damage that Pyro can do with the flamethrower (albeit at short range, hence the speed), and you have this.
  • Pyros however have abysmal range, only some of his secondaries give him any range at all, and that's pitiful damage too. The other three classes on par with the Pyro's health have very high damage rates and can easily shred a Pyro in seconds. So despite having a surprisingly large amount of health, it tends to get eaten up pretty quickly.
• Limited Wardrobe: Is never seen without the asbestos suit. His trading card bio infers he wears it constantly.
• Kamehame Hadoken: One of the Pyro's taunts. Is also capable of an instant kill on multiple enemies if you are lucky enough.
• Kill It with Fire
• MacGyvering: A running theme with the aesthetic to the Pyro's items. A few of his hats are things that aren't really hats.
  • His Degreaser is a flamethrower made with a gas pump, a car muffler, an exhaust pipe, a fire extinguisher and a stove top burner.
• Master of None: With the right unlocks, he can fulfill most roles on a team, but those roles are better performed by more specialized classes (able to pick targets like a Spy with the Axtinguisher, ambush like a Heavy, return explosives from Soldiers/Demomen, etc.). His potential resides in his versatility and the difficulty for an opponent to figure out a Pyro's loadout and tactics before it's too late.
• Mysterious Past
• Not So Different: The Backburner Pyro has to sneak around and punishes enemies from behind. Kind of like a Spy...
• OC Stand In: Due to his lack of screentime and no canonical backstory, face or set gender. This will presumably stop once Meet the Pyro comes out.
• Ornamental Weapon: Those napalm grenades are apparently just a style statement.
• Playing with Fire: While his weapon is the flamethrower, the Hadoken has some... interesting implications.
• Proud to Be a Geek: The Pyro's hats would suggest this, coupled with the game's time period (the 60s) being a hotbed of sci-fi B-movies and Silver Age comics.
• Pyromaniac: Of course!
  • In the Medic's "Meet The" video, Pyro is shown playing with a lighter while he waits outside the infirmary. The Pyro is also the disguise least often picked by Spies - because "if you're playing Pyro, you're either setting the other team on fire, checking for Spies by setting your team on fire, setting mines on fire, or you're a Spy."
• Required Secondary Powers: The Pyro is fireproof. If he wasn't, he wouldn't be able to run forwards and fire his flamethrower at the same time.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: While taunting with a melee weapon.
• Skill Gate Characters: When using the aforementioned W+ M1 strategy. A charging Pyro is pretty hard to beat if you can't react fast enough, but it's a minor threat to more skilled/lucky players.
  • He can actually be a lot tougher than people think, especially since Soldiers often forgo their Shotgun in favor of other items.
  • The "Puff 'n Sting" Axtinguisher combo when airblasting requires enemies to be too disoriented in the split second they're in the air to fire and aim at the Pyro, which rarely works against sufficiently skilled players.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Just about every W+M1 Pyro will be this, constantly chasing down any enemy they see (including other Pyros) until they're a pile of char.
• Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Forms a very firm one with Spy and Engineer. A Pyro is the best counter for a Spy, who is the bane of the Engineer, who can easily dispatch the range-challenged Pyro.
  • This means when a Pyro has the patience to stay with an Engineer, the security of the Engineer becomes a lot better. It helps too that the Pyro can neutralize incoming explosives, meaning only enemy Snipers and Heavies pose a threat, under ideal circumstances.
• The Spook: Nobody knows who this person is, where he came from, or even his gender.
• Trickster Archetype: Wild Mass Guessing has the Pyro pegged down as this due to the beanie (an old symbol of the tricky little kid), meaning that possibly all hints of the Pyro's femininity are merely his attempts at screwing with the rest of the team.
• The Unintelligible: Perhaps a comm line in the mask would help...
  • It's stated that the asbestos-lined suit has contributed to the ravaging of the Pyro's lungs and thus obscuring of his voice as much as the mask itself.

Defense

File:Demoman.png

HE'S drunk. You don't have an excuse!

The Demoman (Real name: Tavish DeGroot)

"One crossed wire, one wayward pinch of potassium chlorate, one errant twitch, and KABLOOEY!!" Voiced by: Gary Schwartz

Black Scottish cyclops. Characterized as a Drunken Master and wears bandoliers of grenades on his black vest, worn over a team-colored suit. Apparently considers the Loch Ness Monster his mortal enemy, may have lost an eye in an attempt to slay it, and accidentally killed his first set of adoptive parents. On account of his lack of an eye, and blood heritage, he considers himself something of a Last of His Kind. He shared his class update with the Soldier, much like the Sniper and Spy. The update revealed the Demoman's lifestyle; along with working three jobs, he lives in a mansion in New Mexico with his blind mother. Uses a grenade launcher, a stickybomb launcher, and a bottle. Meet the Demoman!

The Demoman provides examples of:

• Afro Asskicker: When he has his afro.
• The Alcoholic: Ever wonder why the Demoman drinks? 1968 was an especially bad year to be a minority.
• Angry Black Man: Unless it's his morning off.
• Badass Boast: "So... t'all ya fine dandies, so proud, so cocksure, prancin' aboot with yer heads fulla eyeballs... come and get me, I say! I'll be waiting for ya with a whiff of the ol' brimstone! I'm a Grimm bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!"
• Bilingual Bonus: His family motto is "In regione caecorum, rex est luscus." This is a famous Latin quotation from Desiderius Erasmus. The meaning? "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." (However, the seal seen on this page misspells "regione" as "regionem".)
• Boisterous Bruiser: "Oh they're gonna 'ave to glue yew back togeth'r, IN HELL!"
• Brave Scot: When he's on your side.
• Brown Eyes: The only team member (except maybe The Pyro) to have them.
• Buffy-Speak: "Awww... There's a new angel in heaven... IN HELL!"
• Cluster F-Bomb: "Imma Black Scottish Cyclops. They got more (extended bleep) than they got the likes o' me."
• Continuity Nod: The old Demoman model in Team Fortress Classic also had an eyepatch and knit cap.
• Difficult but Awesome: In public servers, a Demoman can usually get away with just laying some clever traps, and may even fare well in direct combat. In competitive play, Demomen have to learn all the potentially useful sticky jump locations on a map and be able to execute them perfectly (and thus be able to get to the central control point faster than the enemy Scouts), has no hit-scan weapon and so must rely on prediction, has low mobility without the aid of sticky jumps. However, in the right hands, his trap laying and insane damage output make him possibly the most powerful unit on the field because of his area denial abilities - for instance, at mid on Badlands, if a Demoman can arrive fast enough he can set traps all about the enemy's side and also fire grenades behind the enemy medic, preventing an escape while the soldiers jump above to fire down on him. In a game of territorial control, a scout picking off the enemy demoman is often the perfect opportunity to push forward and advance.
  • Note that this trope does not apply to sticky mines, which require less effort to get more reward when compared to the grenade launcher, which is the core complaint about the class.
• Disproportionate Reward: Inverted. According to the Demoman's mother, his late father didn't get much for some of the jobs he did.

"Yer da walked fifteen miles in the rain to blow up the Queen of England for a nickel!"

• Drinking on Duty
• Drunken Master: He does carry a bottle of alcohol at all times, and his bottle taunt involves drinking out of it, even if it's broken.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He has tea with his blind mother every day in the mansion he bought for her.
• Eyepatch of Power: He's a "Black Scottish Cyclops."
• Eye Scream: He was said to have lost his eye in an explosives accident. He says himself that he lost it to a wizard who removed it to remove the bragging rights of an evil spirit.
• Fan Nickname: Demopan
• Foil: As of the War update, he's revealed to be pretty much the anti-Sniper. Cold Sniper vs. Boisterous Bruiser . Camper van vs. mansion. Estranged from his parents who dislike his profession vs. living with and doting on his aging mother, who approves of his profession to the point of being worried when he's got a day off. And it doesn't stop there: the Demoman only has one eye, meaning he has very poor depth perception, while the Sniper is a Sniper, and thus likely has excellent depth perception. The Sniper comes from Australia, which is in the southern hemisphere, whereas the Demoman comes from Scotland, which is in the northern hemisphere. Furthermore, the Über update reveals that while Sniper spent years in the Australian Outback, the Demoman hasn't even been to the beach.
  • In-game, the Demoman is a highly versatile class that fares well at close-to-medium range with attacks that deal area of effect damage. By comparison, the Sniper is a highly specialized class that solely focuses on the precise elimination of targets at long-range.
  • This even extends to the players, who would much rather have a demoman than a sniper, regardless of player strengths. A team with 4 or more demomen would be considered near-unstoppable, while anywhere more than 1 sniper on anything other than defense usually meant someone would be raging over allchat.
• Golf Clubbing: The Nessie's Nine Iron.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: He never saw his real parents until they came to visit him at an orphanage after he lost an eye and his adoptive parents honing his demolition skills. Allegedly, it's a tradition among the Highland Demolition Men.
• Improbable Weapon User: That scrumpy bottle somehow does as much damage as an axe or kukri.
  • To say nothing of the Ullapool Caber, which we reiterate, is a grenade that you're using as a melee weapon.
  • Not to mention the Nessie's Nine Iron and Frying Pan of Doom (which used to be exclusive to him and Soldier).
• In a Single Bound: Can be invoked with the Sticky Jumper, a sticky bomb gun which does absolutely NO DAMAGE. This weapon is meant for the purpose of practicing sticky-bomb jumping, but since the weapon does no damage, wheres you could only use up to two (possibly three if being healed by a medic) bombs without killing yourself, you can sticky jump with EIGHT STICKY BOMBS.
  • Players often combine the Sticky Jumper with the Ullapool Caber to become a flying Action Bomb!
• In the Blood: His affinity for explosives, as explained by his retconned bio.
• In Vino Veritas: The Demoman seems quite reasonable when he's sober, as in his update comic. Presumably he's always drunk during the game itself then.
• Last of His Kind: Despite still having a mother that's black, Scottish, and alive, he remains of this trope since he has one eye while his parents lost both.
• Mad Bomber
• Major Injury Underreaction: "Oh, that smarts."
• Man in a Kilt: Not in-game, but the Demoman wears one in his family portrait, and an opposing Soldier may mock him for being "an Englishman in a dress".
• Nice Hat: His trademark beanie.
• Not So Different: One of his domination lines toward Snipers is "I hate you bloody campers! EVERYONE bloody hates you!" Yet defensively-minded Demomen tend to lay stickybombs at crucial chokepoints and then sit there, waiting for a ripe opportunity to detonate them.
• Race Lift: The Demoman's Team Fortress Classic counterpart was white.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: "Ka-BOOOM!"
• Scary Black Man: On the enemy team.
• Self-Made Orphan: As explained on his trading card, but then thoroughly Retconned. The updated bio on the "Meet the Demoman" now states he managed to kill his adoptive parents and that his real parents only took him in when he discovered his love for explosives, reasoning that they decided to abandon him until his abilities finally aired.
  • This Retcon is more like Flip-Flop of God - when "Meet The Demoman" originally came out, he allegedly blew up first set of his adoptive parents in an attempt to destroy Loch Ness Monster. With the website redesign, the current canon uses this original version.
• Throw Down the Bomblet
• Trap Master
• Twofer Token Minority: "I'm a black Scottish cyclops! They got more &#%$*@!@&#&!#*$ than they got the likes of me."
• Violent Glaswegian: Also conforms to a startling Venn diagram of stereotypes by being black, an expert in demolitions, an alcoholic, and occasionally prone to appearing in a fro.
  • Subverted in that he has three jobs and lives in a mansion.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy/Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Despite his seven figure salary, Demoman's mother disapproves that he only works three jobs (his dad had twenty-six jobs) and hasn't yet lost more than one eye, since every other member of his clan has lost both of their eyes long before him.
• Your Wife: "Dominated! An' I've been shagging your wife!"

An ingredient in his sandvich, honestly...

The Heavy

"Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe... Maybe. I've yet to meet one that can outsmart bullet." Voiced by: Gary Schwartz

A massive Slavic man with a shaved head and Perma Stubble. Rather than The Heavy as you might expect, the Heavy provides examples of The Big Guy or The Brute (depending if they're on your team). Wears a team-color shirt, a Kevlar vest, and an ammo belt across his chest. Named his miniguns "Sasha" and "Natascha", and a machinegun "Tomislav". He's a pretty stoic guy outside of battle, but he really hates it when other people touch his gun. Perhaps the closest thing to a main character in the game, in how he is often featured "front and center" due to his size in artwork (in one splash screen, in the game's box art, in the selection lineup and in the promotional team lineup) and him getting the first class-centric video (and appearing first in both trailers and foremost in "Meet the Sandvich"). The Heavy was the third class to be updated with fun new toys. Uses a minigun, a shotgun, and his own fists. Meet the Heavy!

Interestingly, The Heavy also makes an appearance along with Max, Strong Bad and Tycho in Poker Night At the Inventory by Telltale Games.

The Heavy provides examples of:

• Acrofatic: It's surprisingly easy for him to sneak by an entire team and punch them to death.
• Angrish: His AAANNGGHHH YAAAA DAH.
• Atop a Mountain of Corpses: Gets to do the pose in "Meet The Medic".
• Awesome Yet Practical: As of the time of writing, Heavies are considered one of the most dangerous and effective classes when played well, and can rack up high body counts with ease. They're also very, very, fun to play!
  • This has led to people who believe that players who use the Heavy a lot lack the skill needed to play other classes and thus have a low opinion of players who frequently use him.
• Bald of Awesome
  • Bald of Evil: If he's on the enemy team.
• Berserk Button: He doesn't take too kindly to people touching his weapons.
• BFG
• Big Eater: "SANDVICH MAKE ME STRONG!" (He even earns an achievement for scarfing down 100 Sandviches, and before it was nerfed he could eat them one after another without stopping if he felt like it.)
• Big Fancy House: Big Fancy Cabin, really. We only see how big it is through one photo in "Meet the Director", but it's pretty impressive.
• The Big Guy / The Brute: Depends on whether or not he's on your side.
• Big No: "OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
• Bilingual Bonus: The songs the Heavy sings while pushing the bomb cart are Russian working songs.
  • "Dalokoh's" is the Russian word for chocolate (shokolad) backwards.
  • He comes off as smarter in the Russian version of his video (link here) ... and even more awesome.
  • Unintentionally invoked with his occasional Angrish: "AAANNGGHHH YAAAA DAH" sounds very much like the Japanese words for "OH NO!"
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: "Ho, hohoho, oh that slaps me on the knee!"
• Boisterous Bruiser: "Is good time to run, cowards!"
• Buffy-Speak
• Cargo Ship: In-Universe, according to the Director update comic, as it shows the Heavy as having bought a bed for his mini-gun, and he sleeps next to it. In game, a dominating enemy Scout will taunt the Heavy about taking Sasha out for a nice steak dinner.
• Companion Cube: He talks to his Minigun and his Sandvich.

"What was that, Sandvich? 'Kill them all?' GOOD IDEA!"

• Consulting Mister Puppet: Some of the stuff (see above) he says in regards to the Sandvich implies this.
• Continuity Nod: Making the Hound Dog hat official might be a reference to the "hair Heavy", a Heavy with wavy black hair, seen in the Heavy's "Soviet Union" achievement portrait, which itself is a reference to the original concept art of Heavy, which had said hairstyle.
  • The Heavy Doorag helps give him a slight resemblance to the original Heavy from Team Fortress Classic. There's an unofficial reskin for it that also gives him the TFC Heavy's goggles.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Subverted. During the filming of "Meet The Heavy", the director questions the Heavy about his past.

Director: Your father was a counter-revolutionary. When he was killed, you, your mother, and your sisters were transported to a North Siberian gulag. Paint me the picture. Heavy: No. This is my gun. I like to shoot this gun. Is all you need to know.

• Deadly Upgrade: Transplantation of an Übercharged Mega Baboon heart as seen in "Meet the Medic", which allows him to be invincible.
• Difficult but Awesome: The only subversion in the entire team. While everyone else has a bit of a difficulty curve to master the class and become credit to team, Heavies are one of the easiest classes to play and even the best Heavies will still rely heavily on their team to cover their weaknesses (namely being Sniper and Spy bait). In small enough servers, the difference between victory and defeat is often which team remembered to bring a Heavy.
  • Indeed, the Heavy is more or less a hard counter to all but the best Pyros and Scouts. Wily Heavies also are one of the best Spy checking classes (only the Pyro is better). With a good Medic, the only real threat to a Heavy are Snipers and sentry guns.
  • Double subverted, though, in that a skilled Heavy, as a primary target with low speed, knows where to be and what to do to avoid headshots, Spies and ambushes. Depends very heavily on the server you're playing on, but under the right circumstances Heavy benefits a lot from good tactics.
• Dumb Muscle: He acts like a stereotypical example. But that's all right, because he's yet to meet one that can outsmart boolit. And in his native Russian, he's quite a bit more eloquent.
• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: How eloquent? He has a PhD in Russian Literature!
• Everything's Satiating With Sandviches
• Everything's Worse With Big Shaved Bears That Hate People
• Fat Bastard: When he's not on your team.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Poker Night At the Inventory shows us that the Heavy remembers the respawn system of the game as a series of nightmares...

Heavy: Do you ever get the nightmares? Strong Bad: Sometimes I get the Jibblies. Heavy: I am talking about visions of endless suffering. Dead Doctors everywhere. Spy cannot be found. Strong Bad: That sounds like the Jibblies, man. Heavy: I do not like this "Jibblies".

• Finger Gun: One of the Heavy's taunts, and it can insta-kill anyone unlucky enough to be in his line of fire.

"POW! HA HA!"

• Fingerless Gloves
• Gatling Good: Da, Sasha. Gatling VERY GOOD!
• Genius Bruiser: The Heavy's blurb for "Meet the Heavy" video series spells it out--"though he speaks simply [...] the Heavy isn't dumb." In fact, he's more eloquent in his native Russian than in English. In Poker Night At the Inventory, he claims to have a PhD in Russian Literature from the Soviet College of Mines, Farms and Science.
• Genius Ditz: For the things he's passionate about, he's quite knowledgeable. Such as ammo expenses...
• Gentle Giant: Defied in the fluff:

Like a hibernating bear, the Heavy appears to be a Gentle Giant. Also like a bear, confusing his deliberate, sleepy demeanor with gentleness will get you ripped limb from limb. Though he speaks simply and moves with an economy of energy that's often confused with napping, the Heavy isn't dumb, he's not your big friend, and he generally wishes you'd just shut up before he has to make you shut up.

• • This is somewhat played straight at one point in Poker Night At the Inventory, as he recalls a moment from his childhood when he buried a killed sparrow.
  • Also generally played straight in the game itself: He's less angry and more jovial, and tends to enjoy telling everyone else they are "credit to team."
  • In Poker Night At the Inventory, beating him last will cause him to give the player a big smile and assure them that they are credit to their team.
  • In the Halloween 2011 Comic, we get an idea of where he stops being a big shaved bear that hates people and starts being this when he is confronted with a trick-or-treater;

Heavy: Every day Heavy risk life. To earn money. To feed family. Instead, you would have Heavy spend this money. On stupid candy. For you. You presumptuous... lazy... fat... Boy: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Heavy: Oh. Um. Stop. Heavy did not mean this. Little child is not fat. People call Heavy fat. Please stop crying. Here. Here is seven thousand dollars.

• Glorious Mother Russia: Just to give you an idea, here are some of his achievements: Lenin a Hand, Pushkin the Cart, Gorky Parked, Soviet Block, Supreme Soviet, 0wn the Means of Production, Show Trial, Stalin the Cart, the Communist Mani-fisto, the list goes on.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Standard for all characters who get Über Charged, the Heavy gets to demonstrate it in "Meet the Medic".
• Playing Poker With The Heavy: His appearance as a playable character in Poker Night at the Inventory is rather casual when compared to what he usually does.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: He practiced boxing back in school. It was either that or herding goats. He is not good with goats.
• Gratuitous Russian: Not very prevalent compared to the Medic and the Spy, but still noticeable.
• Gun Twirling: With the Shotgun and the Family Business.
• The Heavy: Ironically, not always. But a good player can definitely turn him into one.
• Hidden Depths: The Heavy's a college graduate according to Poker Night, with a PH.D in Russian Literature.
• Husky Russkie
• I Call It Vera: "Oh my God, who touched Sasha? ... WHO TOUCHED MY GUN?!"
• Instant Death Radius: Let a KGB-wielding Heavy get a melee kill in Medieval mode - and he will be able to One-Hit Kill any enemy without problem. Let him rack up a few kills this way - and you've got a one hit killing Berserker Mighty Glacier on the enemy team.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: But to quote the Heavy himself, "THEY ARE MADE OF STEEL!"
  • When you hit a metal wall, sparks fly and they do more damage than his brass knuckles.
• Jack of All Stats: Not as much as a Soldier or Demoman, but still. While still more of a somewhat slow combat class, the Heavy can be seen as a Mario in the same vein as your average RPG-Hero is usually a balanced warrior rather than a Magic Knight. The many unlockables allow him to fulfill various battlefield roles in either offense or defense, buff or heal himself and temporarily compensate for most of his weaknesses, such as lack of speed. All that makes him into a rather versatile class that can survive independently in most situations. It helps that he is the Series Mascot and the closest thing TF2 has to a main character.
  • It's good that his playstyle is simply "point and shoot". While the Soldier is built up as the Mario class for the game, he still requires a modest bit of skill to use, since his rockets are not hitscan weapons (i.e: instantaneous) and rocket jumping takes a lot more skill to successfully master. Due to his size and speed, there is little else for a Heavy to do other than march forward raining lead on his opponents.
• Kevlard: Heavy has both the biggest girth and the most hit points of the nine classes.
• Literal Change of Heart: In "Meet the Medic", his heart is accidentally destroyed and replaced with the heart of a "Mega Baboon."
• Masked Luchador: His Large Luchadore mask, even if he doesn't actually wrestle (to our knowledge).
• Meaningful Name: He named his gun Sasha, which means "defender, helper of mankind". Heavies are a defense class.
• Mighty Glacier
• More Dakka
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong
• Pet the Dog: This comic for Halloween sees the Heavy giving a child trick-or-treating on his doorstep seven thousand dollars, after he mocked the idea of spending his money on candy for someone like the child and insulted the kid until the kid started crying. He realized he called the child fat when he doesn't like how other people call him that.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Despite appearing fairly erudite in "Meet the Heavy" some of his in-game lines suggest things, especially whenever he starts talking to the Sandvich.
  • Some fan Wild Mass Guessing goes that he may actually be schizophrenic, or suffering a similar mental illness.
• Rasputinian Death: One of his achievements, "Rasputin" is earned when he is shot, burned, bludgeoned, and receives explosive damage in a single life.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: The BLU Heavy is pretty much the Butt Monkey of all the Meet the Team videos and the class most often shown getting beat on whenever a new update happens. The RED Heavy inverts this; whenever he's taking center stage, everyone else suffers the most.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: He sometimes mimics his minigun as he's firing.
• Scatting: After destroying a building, he may hum a snippet from Sabre Dance.
• Shouting Shooter: "Waaaaaaaahhh, uwaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!", "Beeeeehhhhh! Uwaaaaaaah!! Wahahahahaha! Cry some more!!"
• Smarter than Boolet: According to Poker Night At the Inventory, The Heavy has multiple lines asking the characters about their respective educations. Tycho plays it off with a lame D&D joke, Max admits he never went to college, and Tiny Heavy... well. Not only that, he chats with Tycho about his favorite book (Tsar Hunger by Leonid Andreyev), because get this: he has a PhD in Russian Literature. That's Dr. Heavy Weapons Guy to you!
• Smoking Barrel Blowout: Done with the Finger Gun.
• Spent Shells Shower: His various primary weapons leave not only carnage in their wake, but a trail of discarded brass as well.
• Spikes of Villainy: His Eviction Notice brass knuckles are spiked as well. Also, some of his hats are outfitted with some vicious-looking pointy bits.
• Stout Strength: His incredible size and girth are matched only by his fearsome strength, and his football helmet references his similarity to an offensive lineman.
• Third Person Person: In the 2011 Halloween comic, and never before or since.
• This Banana Is Armed: His "imaginary" pistol will freaking kill you should you be the one looking at it.
• Top-Heavy Guy: The "Vanguard Party" achievement icon points this out.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Under no circumstances should you allow that Heavy to eat that Sandvich.
  • However, it is also very unwise to try to keep him from it.
• Vodka Drunkenski: Averted, as Poker Night At the Inventory reveals that he is very sensitive to both alcohol and carbonation and that his favorite drink is Peach Bellini.
• Wicked Cultured: Despite being a brawny, bear-like brute, the Heavy has a PhD in classic Russian literature and enjoys Peach Bellini over vodka, according to Poker Night At the Inventory.

He told you not to touch that darn thing.

The Engineer (Real name: Dell Conagher)

"Hey look, buddy. I'm an engineer — that means I solve problems. Not problems like 'What is beauty?' because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems." Voiced by: Grant Goodeve

American, from Bee Cave, Texas. Dressed in coveralls of team color, one welding glove, hard hat, and goggles. Exhibits Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness during the "Meet the Engineer" trailer, but this is markedly absent from his in-game dialogue. Judging by the maniacal laughter he sometimes indulges in (including as one of his taunts), he seems to have a bit of the Mad Scientist to him as well. Has 11 PhDs. Was the last class to receive new weapons. Uses a shotgun, a pistol, a wrench, a building tool and a destroying tool. Meet the Engineer!

The Engineer provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion: Aside from his voice acting work, Grant Goodeve is best known as a musician. Sometime around his first update, Engineer acquired a guitar.
• American Accents: Southern.
• Apologetic Attacker: One of his domination lines to the Pyro is an apology. However, since it's "Sorry, ma'am", it's actually a Stealth Insult... probably.
• Artificial Limbs: The Gunslinger was meant to be for people with stubs at the end of their arms. The TF2 blog implied that the Engineer sawed off his own hand just to use the weapon. Fans think that the Engineer always had a prosthetic hand underneath the glove and the Gunslinger is just replacing it for the moment. Amusingly, the arm is fine when the Gunslinger is not worn.
  • The Short Circuit is a Lawrence Barret-style device disguised as a more natural-looking gloved hand.
• Bald of Awesome/Bald of Evil: When hatless.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Has this to say when Blutarch Mann electrocutes him:

"I appreciate that you're my employer, and an old man besides... but if you don't take your goddamn hands off me I will break you in HALF."

• Bottomless Magazines: The Widowmaker DE:HR promotional weapon uses up building metal as ammunition. Each hit on target returns metal according to the damage done to the enemy, so a engineer that can aim consistently can literally shoot forever without as much as picking ammo crates. Regardless of the method used to recover used up metal, the Widowmaker has no reload animation nor needs one.
• Continuity Nod: A photo from his update reveals that his father was the Engineer from Team Fortress Classic. One of his domination lines towards the Spy is a reference to this.

"That's what my daddy taught me to do to backstabbers."

• Dissonant Serenity/Tranquil Fury: What's to worry about when all you need is more gun? Designed by him, built by him... "and you best hope... not pointed at you."
  • In battle, Engineers can be pretty calm and relaxed just a few feet away from where the rest of their team is getting murdered. But then a spy comes in...
  • Also, in True Meaning, he stays calm during and in the aftermath of a rocket crash into his living room that barely missed him and the Pyro.
• Eagle Land: Pretty much Flavor #1, almost an opposite of the Soldier. Nicest of the bunch, but as of the Engineer Update, he has received somewhat mean-spirited class specific domination lines like the other classes did in theirs.
• The Engineer: Obviously.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Sentries, dispensers, and teleporters, oh my!
• Glass Cannon: The Widowmaker has no need to stop to reload, as it uses Engineer's metal supply. However, it also restocks this ammo upon hitting someone, possibly fully refunding the metal cost. With the effect caused by Kritzkrieg, a surprise Engineer holding the Widowmaker theoretically becomes a wall of endless gunfire for about ten seconds.
• Goggles Do Nothing
  • This is doubled by the Hotrod. The mask is seen to flip down when the Engineer is going to build something, but in real life the smoked lenses of both the goggles and mask would render one unable to see. Ironically the Hotrod is currently the only hat with a practical application: Spychecking. Actual Engineers would only flip down the mask when building things and thus would be holding a toolbox as well. Spies disguised as the Engineer would have the mask flipped down to use the Sapper, caused by the Sapper using the same PDA slot as the the Engineer's build PDA).
• Good Ol' Boy
• Gun Twirling: When drawing his pistol and during his taunt when it's in use.
• Lamarck Was Right: His grandfather Radigan worked for RED and BLU and was also a skilled engineer.
  • It Runs in The Family: And his father was the Engineer from Team Fortress Classic.
• Machine Empathy: Engineer is always aware of his deployables' state even without looking at his PDA. And he really, really cares about them.
• Mad Scientist: If the goggles and the laugh doesn't give him away, the fact that he chopped a hand off For Science! surely does...and he still manages to be the sanest character on the team.
• More Dakka: "Use more gun."
  • His Pistol replacement, The Wrangler, doubles the firing rate of the Sentry Gun. This includes the time it takes for the rockets to reload on a Level Three.
  • However, he goes back on his own statement with the Combat Mini-Sentry:

"Sometimes, you just need a little less gun."

• Mr. Fixit
• Nice Guy: Hands down the nicest person on the team. Doesn't mean it's a good idea to get on his bad side.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Subverted; he's got 11 PhDs, but they're all in various types of mechanical engineering, architecture, and the like.
• Only Sane Man: Even with the Mad Scientist tendencies, he's still the closest thing the team has to a sane person. Of course, you should always Beware the Nice Ones...
• Out of Focus: He was the last class to receive a weapon set, well over two years after weapon sets were introduced, and he didn't receive any new weapons in the Über Update. He has the least amount of weapons out of all the classes. Admittedly, Valve has tried to design and implement some weapons for him, but the Engineer more so than any other class runs the risk of breaking the game in two if his weapons change too much.
• Percussive Maintenance: Even the official Sentry gun manual notes that whacking devices with a wrench makes their deployment faster and repairs and upgrades them.
• Rockers Smash Guitars: The Engineer's Dischord kill taunt has him strumming his acoustic guitar, then smashing it, possibly on an enemy's head.
• Scary Shiny Goggles: Uh, wow.
• Shoot the Medic First: He can repair his buildings with ease when alive, so he's a vital target. Especially when they're carring a Sentry to redeploy.
  • On the other hand, Spies may target an Engineer's turret before the Engineer himself to keep them from being killed while backstabbing the latter.
• Shorter Means Smarter: He's the shortest member of the team.
• The Smart Guy
• Smoking Barrel Blowout: When taunting with his pistol.
• Southern-Fried Genius
• Squishy Tech Wizard: Alone, an Engineer is almost completely disadvantaged. With his sentry, he becomes a brick wall.
  • With the Frontier Justice, a sentry-less Engineer can be a very nasty Glass Cannon (a crit shotgun can deal up to 180 damage per shot, letting him One-Hit Kill anything weaker than a Soldier, and two hit kill anything weaker than an overhealed Heavy).
  • Even more so with a Gunslinger; the most common plan with that is to drop sentries, rack up kills, then use the revenge crits with the Frontier Justice to wreck the enemy team.
  • The Pomson 6000 gives him a unique abilty: the power to drain Über Charges and Spy Cloaks. The former can severely cripple an enemy team especially if the Engie manages to land multiple shots on the Medic. The latter combos well with the Southern Hospitality, resulting in the ability to efficiently Spycheck. Both effects come straight out of left field for an enemy who thinks the Engineer is only good for building stuff.
    • The shots also penetrate, so essentially you can kill more than one enemy with it equipped. So in a strategic location place a teleporter, sentry, dispenser and have Engie with equipped with Pomson and watch him go to town on the enemy, they ill barely be able to attack you and your allies will have cover as they exit.
• The Turret Master
• Un Evil Laugh: He coughs during his Schadenfreude taunt.
• Wicked Cultured: Dell, to Blutarch Mann's personal care attendant, regarding a painting in Blutarch's mansion: "Say, ain't that an original Kicasso?"
• You Have Researched Breathing: The "Texas Slim's Dome Shine" is basically Engineer without his hat.

Support

File:Mediiiic.png

On second thought, I'll walk it off...

The Medic

"Now? {{[[[Evil Laugh]] chuckle}}]... Let's go practice medicine." Voiced by: Robin Atkin Downes

A German Mad Doctor, implied to hail from the Nazi era ("raised in Stuttgart, Germany, during an era when the Hippocratic Oath had been downgraded to an optional Hippocratic suggestion") with team-colored heavy rubber gloves, a Badass Labcoat, and an Awesome Backpack. The TF2 trading cards describe the Medic as madly curious about human flesh and/or pain and healing to be his investment to see more hurting in the future... not to mention that the healing benefits of the medigun were originally just a side effect of whatever he was really shooting them with. He was the first class to receive new weapons. Uses a syringe gun, a Medi Gun, and a bonesaw. Meet the Medic!

The Medic provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: In his "Meet The Medic" video he's shown to be charming and friendly. And crazy of course, but you can't have everything.
  • Evilly Affable: In-game, he's downright sinister.

Medic: Come over here! I promise I will heal you.

• Ascended Fanon: As a matter of strategy, the Medic spends most of his time behind a Heavy, so fans generally assumed that they're awesome buddies (at the least). This was brought to canon in the "Meet The Medic" video, where the Medic chats affably with the Heavy while performing surgery, then works with him to do all that killing.
  • Medic players also have some venom towards Spies (since they're regularly tricked into healing them). This too was referenced, when we see the head of the BLU Spy hooked up to a car battery, begging for death.
• Awesome Backpack/Ammunition Backpack: Provides healing, invulnerability, and steroids.
  • Except in "Meet the Spy", possibly to make it possible for the Spy to support him before the knockout.
• Awesome Yet Practical: ÜberCharges can break almost any defense.
• Back-Alley Doctor

Medic: When the patient woke up, his skeleton was missing, and the doctor was never heard from again! (laughs) Anyway, that's how I lost my medical license.

• Badass Labcoat He's the page's image.
• Blush Sticker: Not him, but the Pocket Medic doll in his likeness.
• Boring but Practical: The vast majority of players flatly refuse to play the Medic, but the Medic is so fundamental to team strategy (and the Über Charge is so powerful) that if one team has 2 Medics and the other has none then, barring grotesque differences in individual player skill, the team without medics might as well not have bothered showing up.
• Bow and Sword In Accord: With the Australian Christmas update, the Medic can now equip the Crusader's Crossbow and the intimidatingly large Amputator.
• But Not Too Evil: The Medic was around during WWII, is German, has a dark past, and like the rest of the team, is a sociopath, who considers his healing an unintended side effect of his real work. But at least he's not a Nazi.
• Combat Medic: His syringe gun and bonesaw never see use as medical tools, and his Medigun is best suited for breakthrough support.
  • There also exists such thing as a "battle medic", a player who would rather fight and often refuses to heal. Woe befall any player that actually tries this with him though. Battle Medics are so despised they tend to get votekicked off even if everyone else on the team are dead.
• Crazy Enough to Work: The ÜberCharge system, as revealed in the "Meet the Medic" video.

Heavy: Doctor! Are you sure this will work? Medic: HA HA! I have no idea! (activates Über Charge with a crazed grin)

• Creepy Good: He is a Deadly Doctor who performs Meatgrinder Surgery, can pull a pretty decent Slasher Smile, and is able to scare even the Heavy.
• Deadly Doctor: "Zat was doctor-assisted homicide!"
• Difficult but Awesome: The Ubersaw allows two Medics to infinitely chain Übers one after the other while dishing out large amounts of damage. However, this requires both of them to have excellent communication (to save Übers when there's no enemy and to instantly switch Übers once one runs out), something many people tend to forgo in this game.
• Disturbed Doves: In his "Meet the Team" video. The Medic keeps several doves as his pets, one of which is named Archimedes.
• Dressed to Heal: Medic wears a white labcoat and gloves. A patch eventually added a Randomly Drops mirror for his head and a surgical mask for his face.
  • In Beta, he had a stethoscope slung around his neck for absolutely no reason. While he no longer carries it with him it can still be seen in his cubby in the respawn room, and another Randomly Drops item allows him to put it back around his neck.
• Dr. Jerk: "Would you like a second opinion? You are also ugly!"
• Einstein Hair: Part of his Halloween 2011 costume.
• Foreign Cuss Word: Fond of insulting people in German.
• For Science!: Progress sounds like hearts exploding, apparently.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Recipients of an Über Charge get them.
• Goggles Do Nothing: The Medic received a pair of goggles called Ze Goggles as a hat option in one update, which he wears on top of his head.
• Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: One of the most popular classes with fangirls, despite looking to be in his mid-50s. There's just something about older men...
• Gratuitous German: Uses the improper pluralization of "dummkopf" and "schweinehund". Correct in the German translation, however.
  • 'Schweinehund' has the potential to be offensive, so it may be a case of Moral Guardians, since he does do very well with other vocabulary.
• Harmful Healing
• Healing Factor: The Medic regenerates health constantly. The Blutsauger reduces it in exchange of draining the life out of stricken enemies. An update introduced the Medieval Medic Set, which boosts the healing rate even further. Specifically, he can heal up to 7 hit points a second - so fast that there's typically no point in running to find health, as by the time you get there you'll have already healed yourself. Coupled with not relying on ammo in normal circumstances, a properly equipped Medic can go indefinitely without any form of external resupply, leaving his allies to fight over ammo drops.
• Herr Doktor: The definition. Fellow Medics even say "Thank you, Herr Doctor!" when they're healed.
• Immune to Bullets: He can grant this ability to a teammate for up to eight seconds. Uses it memorably on the Heavy in "Meet the Medic":

Heavy: I AM BULLETPROOF!

• In Love with Your Carnage: "Ha ha! Vat a bloodbasz!"
• Light Is Not Good: Definitely invokes this; the only team member to wear tons of white, associated with doves and angelic music and yet probably the most sadistic member of the whole team.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Über Charge protects its user and patient from any harm. If the patient is a minigun-wielding Mighty Glacier it no longer looks so peaceful.
  • The patient's heart might not stand the stress of the Über Charge and will explode unless it's been modified.
• Mad Doctor: His "Meet the Team" video displays that the Medic has absolutely nothing even remotely resembling sanity left in his brain - not that the other characters are much better.
• Mad Scientist: Jacked Up to Eleven and beyond in the "Meet the Medic", which is basically how the Medic invented the Über Charge system using the Heavy as his personal guinea pig by replacing the Heavy's heart (which could not stand the Über Charge system. As in, the damn thing exploded) with that of a mega baboon.
• The Medic
• Morality Pet: His pet doves, including one called Archimedes. Though Archimedes has a strange habit of hiding inside the people on the operating table.

Scout, after the operation: Oh man, you would not believe...! (Beat) how much this hurts. Scout's chest: Crrroooo. Medic: Archimedes?!

• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: The only reason he heals his teammates is so that they can kill the other team that much faster. As for the "Doctorate" part, Valve isn't consistent about whether or not he used to have one. "Used to" being the key words - for sure he doesn't have one now.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant
• Noodle Incident: How he lost his medical license, (see Back-Alley Doctor above).

"Vhen ze patient voke up, his skeleton vas missing, and the doktor vas never heard from again! Ahaha!"

• Oktoberfest: The Kritzkrieg taunt.
• Overclocking Attack: "Meet the Medic" revealed that Über Charge is this. Without a heart modification, it would even kill the Heavy.
• Pet the Dog: Despite being a clear Mad Scientist, "Meet the Medic" surprisingly shows him having a bunch of doves he takes care of. One is named Archimedes.
• Regenerating Health: See Healing Factor.
• Slasher Smile: Based on the "Meet the Medic" video, the Medic would be a perfect candidate for a B-list horror movie villain.
• Stat-O-Vision: When you have the Solemn Vow equipped, you can see the names and health of your enemies.
• Stoners Are Funny: Look at his face after inhaling from the Kritzkrieg.

"Ha ha haaa! Oktoberfest!"

• Team Pet: Archimedes and the other doves. He even tells them his secrets!
• Those Wacky Nazis: Averted. Robin Walker stated that it would have been too easy and boring to make him a Nazi. Although it may be because a Nazi character wouldn't be allowed in Germany.
• Turn Your Head and Cough: This is one of the lines that may be spoken when holding a melee weapon, aiming at an enemy player, and choosing the "battle cry" speech.
• Waistcoat of Style: What he wears underneath the labcoat, as seen in "Meet the Medic".
• Worst Aid: It's not clear just how much Medic knows about real medicine. If he invented the uber-heart, he is a genius. Still, you wouldn't want to be on his operating table...

File:Sniper.png

About as close as he'll let you.

The Sniper (Real name: Mr. Mundy)

"Professionals have standards. Be polite. Be efficient. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet." Voiced by: John Patrick Lowrie

An Australian man with a bush hat and khakis, and shooter glasses. Appears to be estranged from his parents to the point his father calls his occupation "crazed gunman". Fancies himself to be something of a Cold Sniper ("You know who has feelings? Blokes what bludgeon their wife to death wif a golf trophy. Professionals have standards."), but in actuality emotes just as much as any other class (except maybe The Faceless Pyro). He had to share his update with the Spy, which led to an Escalating War between the two characters. (As if Snipers didn't hate Spies enough...) Uses a sniper rifle, an SMG, and a kukri. Meet the Sniper!

The Sniper provides examples of:

• Achilles Heel: Scouts. Because of their high speed, it’s hard to snipe them. Ans their Bonk! Atomic Ounch can protect them from being sniped even if you can hit them.

• Affably Evil
• Arrows on Fire: Arrows from the Huntsman can be lit with braziers, the Soldier's Cow Mangler 5000, the Engineer's Pomson 6000, or any of the Pyro's flamethrowers.
• Awesome Aussie
• Being Personal Isn't Professional: His spiel, as shown in his "Meet the Team" video.
• Boom! Headshot!: Lampshaded in "Meet the Sniper" as he flicks a Civilian bobblehead.
• Bow and Sword In Accord: Whenever he has the Huntsman equipped.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: "How many times have you died? I'm actually getting impressed."

"Kill ya again soon, mate." "See you in five minutes." "Where'd I get you that time? The liver? The kidney? I'm losing track."

• Butt Monkey: The BLU Snipers in "Meet the Engineer". They get killed on-screen more than any other class (in rather humiliating ways as well) and the ending reveals that the Engineer's campfire is in fact a BLU Sniper's burning corpse. A BLU Sniper is also one of the RED Spy's victims in "Meet the Spy" and in an early concept of "Meet the Medic", a BLU Sniper dies dramatically in the arms of a BLU Soldier, seconds before the two get run over by a train.
• Cold Sniper/Friendly Sniper: Zigzagged; Sniper is cold, cruel, and occasionally outright gleeful at killing his enemies; but he's also friendly towards his teammates and is very down-to-earth compared to the rest of the classes.
• Consummate Professional: As close as you're gonna get in this game series anyway. It's hard for any character to be overly serious in this series, but the Sniper sure tries his darnedest.
• Cool Shades
• Crazy Prepared: "Have a plan to kill everyone you meet."
• Cute Little Fangs: Watch him talk during "Meet the Sniper".
• Do Not Run with a Gun: The Sniper moves noticeably slower while scoped in, and he's not very fast to begin with. Taken even further with the Cozy Camper, which reduces your speed while scoped even further in exchange for being unable to flinch and reduced knockback while aiming.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: He keeps in contact with his mother via phone calls and postcards.
  • In the "Meet the Director" comic, he's very pissed off when an anonymous source (actually the Administrator) sends him photos of his parents as a threat.
• Every Bullet Is a Tracer: When you're using the Machina.
• Fingerless Glove
• Homemade Inventions: According to its publicity blurb, the Sniper created the Bazaar Bargain from an old bolt-action rifle, a long piece of metal, some bolts, one half of a binocular and a military-grade laser sight, all bought for just under three dinars.
• Hypocrite/Hypocritical Humor: Despite his advice to "be polite" he still throws piss at people as a weapon and his domination taunts are very impolite.
• Jerkass: Generally, the classes' lines of speech insult someone, and the Sniper has more lines than any other class. This trope is also noticeable because of his "be polite" rule.
• Kukris Are Kool
• Land Down Under
• Lean and Mean: Especially in his domination lines to the Heavy.
• Nice Hat
• Not So Above It All: He claims to be polite, professional and have no emotional ties to his work. However, his lines toward enemies are very rage-filled and impolite.
• Professional Killer: Part of the rivalry with the Spy.
• Scars Are Forever: The Sniper (of both teams, no less) has had a scar across his nose, cheek, and ear ever since "Meet the Spy", where the RED Spy cut the BLU Sniper's face with his knife before stabbing him in the back with it.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: In the "Meet the Sniper" video.
• Sniper Rifle: Oh, really?
• Sniper Scope Sway: Averted. When scoped in, all rifles will only move when your mouse moves.
• Sophisticated As Hell: He goes into great detail in the art of assassination. Conversely, he also throws jars of piss at people.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: One of his domination lines towards the Engineer seems to be this.

"Not so smart with your brain outside your head, are ya?"

• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: When equipped with a full Croc-o-Style kit, he cannot be killed by headshots, automatically setting his health to 1. It doesn't matter whether the bullet was charged or how much health he had before.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: His parents do not care for his career choice. He spends quite a bit of the video speaking on the phone to his unseen father, who seems to think that the Sniper's some kind of crazed gunman.
• Verb This: Several of his responses after killing a Spy goes along these lines.

"Sneak around that, ya phony scoundrel!"

• You Have Researched Breathing: The "Ritzy Rick's Hair Fixative" is basically Sniper without his hat.

Totally Not A Spy

The Spy

"Right behind you." Voiced by: Dennis Bateman

French, with a weird accent that seems to take a drunken tour of most of southern Europe. A Badass in a Nice Suit. Upper class, balaclava mask, flower in lapel, wingtips, omnipresent cigarette. Equipment disguised as other stuff. He shared the update with the Sniper, and they'd been trying to constantly kill each other over it. Uses a revolver, an electro-sapper, a knife, a disguise kit, and an invisibility watch. Meet the Spy!

The Spy provides examples of:

• Arrogant Kung Fu Guy: Thinks of himself as very professional and effective. Also a bit of an asshole.
• Assassin Outclassin': When dominating enemy Spies.

"You are an amateur and a fool!"

• Badass in a Nice Suit: My that's an expensive suit. No wonder he gets upset when you get blood on it.
• Back Stab: The Spy's bread-and-butter.

"Surprise!"

• Big No: The Spy, when he gets hit by...

"Jarate? Nooooooooo!"

• • Also done mockingly in an unused taunt:

"They should call you whiners 'Dr. NOOOOOO!'"

• Bond One-Liner: "I never really was on your side...", among others.
• Brief Accent Imitation: In a few of his lines to an enemy Scout and Engineer.
• Butterfly Knife
• Butt Monkey: The BLU Spy was this in "Meet the Sniper", "Meet the Spy" and "Meet the Medic".
• Cast as a Mask: In the "Meet the Spy" video, he is played by the Scout's voice actor until he removes his disguise.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder
• Convenient Color Change: This is part of the Spy's infiltration.
• Difficult but Awesome: The class is, amongst all of the classes, especially the light ones, the most laughable in the hands of a rookie. And yet half the metagame is based off his possible presence. That says it all.
  • That said, the Spy is the only class which can counter any other class with impunity, but unless you're actually good at quickswitching weapons and have the reflexes to use them, you'll be lucky to average 1 kill per lifetime, whereas other classes can easily average an upwards of 5 kills per life.
  • The Cloak and Dagger takes this Up to Eleven. Suddenly you have someone who can appear from almost anywhere, nearly silently, and insta-kill any class in the game. Hard to pull off but worth it when it works.
• Dissonant Serenity: Part of his schtick of being a high class gentleman.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Trope Namer.
• Evil Laugh: Subverted. During the Schadenfreude taunt, he laughs, then begins snorting. See Un Evil Laugh below.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: His seduction of the Scout's mother probably counts.
  • At the end of his video, he calls her "Ma petit chou-fleur" ("My little cauliflower").
• Face Palm: The Spy on any given losing team is seen doing this (unless he's in disguise) during Humiliation.
• Failed a Spot Check: The Spy's flawless disguises actually consist of... a paper mask with a face painted on it. The enemy team must be rolling a lot of ones.
  • This was done so friendlies can see it's their own Spy, but enemy Spies can do the same. Presumably the Disguise Kit is a hologram projector of some description.
• False Friend
• Foreign Cuss Word: One of the Spy's responses for losing a match or going to sudden death is "Ohhhhh... merde." "Merde" is the French equivalent of the expletive "shit".
• French Jerk: Quite condescending towards his enemies.
• Friend to All Children: Maybe not all children, but the BLU Spy seems pretty happy to be giving a kid a piggyback ride in this newspaper image.
• Gratuitous French/Spanish/Italian
• Hand Cannon: His revolvers. One fan roughly computed his Ambassador as having a .668 caliber.
• Hidden Depths: The RED Spy seems to be sincerely in love with the BLU Scout's mother, as apparent from his warm smile when he finds a photograph of them holding hands in a parking lot.
  • In the 2011 Christmas comic, the BLU Spy has a surprisingly tender conversation with a frightened child and even gives him a piggyback ride later on.
• Invisible Jerkass
• Jerkass: More of one than he lets on. When doing particularly well (especially Dominating someone) he tends to drop his suave demeanor and resort to petty name calling and juvenile taunting. He'll also lose his cool if certain things happen to him: one of his responses to Jarate is an amazingly vicious growl of "I HATE YOU".
• Kill and Replace: Spies have an "Identity Theft" achievement for killing the player they are disguised as.
  • Now literally doable with the 'Eternal Reward' - backstabbing automatically disguises you as who you just killed.
• Knife Nut
• Ladykiller in Love: The RED Spy with the BLU Scout's mother.
• Lean and Mean: Just listen to how fond he is of calling Heavies "Fatty" or "Morbidly Obese."
• Luke, I Am Your Father: "Meet the Spy" reveals that the RED Spy is dating the BLU Scout's mother. There is currently an achievement for killing Scouts called "Who's Your Daddy?"
• Major Injury Underreaction: "I do believe I'm on fire" and "I appear to have burst into flames." Interestingly, the third reaction is "Fire, fire, FIRE!"
• A Man Is Not a Virgin: One of his post-domination lines for the Scout is "Here likes the Scout: He ran fast, and died a virgin."
• Man of Wealth and Taste: He's quite proud of that suit, and gets quite angry if you get any of your blood on it.
  • Or milk or urine.
• Master of Disguise: He can even look like an allied Spy disguised as an enemy Spy!
• The Mole
• Not So Above It All: Probably the most professional of the classes, yet when he dominates enemies, he has some very immature things to say to them.
• Not So Different: He has to sneak around and punishes enemies from behind. Kind of like a Backburner Pyro...
  • Spies with the gibus and camera beard are called Spybraham Lincoln. Consider that the Pyro's 1890 counterpart was, and might still be Honest Abe himself... The Pyro also has a misc item that was originally a hat, and they're both fake facial hair. Uncanny.
  • There are only two classes in TF2 with the majority of their faces concealed. Guess which two.
  • That Pyro is a Spy!!
  • During Humiliation, all of the classes but two cringe in surrender. Guess who else merely acts annoyed with their teammates' stupidity?
  • We know all the hometowns of all the classes, except the Spy, who from an indeterminate region of France, and the Pyro, who is from an indeterminate... region.
• Paranoia Fuel: Invoking this trope is most of the point of the class. Your allies? Could be enemy Spies (yes, even the Spies!). The Spy you just killed? Might not be dead. See something in the corner of your eye? A cloaked Spy, waiting for you to pass so he can stab you in the back.
  • The Cloak & Dagger has added a new level of paranoia, though - there could now be a spy ANYWHERE, waiting for a large, confusing battle in which to strike, stab and sap. Meanwhile, the Dead Ringer hardly helps matters - you finally killed that spy that was causing your team no end of misery! Except... maybe you didn't...
• Pet the Dog: Along with the Scout and Soldier, the Spy defends Teufort's children from getting abducted by Old Nick. He teaches one to defend himself and later even happily lets the boy ride on his shoulders.
• Professional Killer: Part of the rivalry with the Sniper.
• Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: One of the Spy's taunts is "Just lay your weapons down and walk away."
  • Considering his archrival is the Australian Sniper, this may well be a Road Warrior Shout-Out.
• Reverse Grip: The Spy normally carries his knife the same way the other classes hold their melee weapons, but will spin it around and hold it this way when backstabbing someone.
• Sensei for Scoundrels: He taught a kid how to stab a man in the neck.

Jack: … I was so scared. BLU Spy: And are you still scared? Jack: Hm. No. BLU Spy: Good. Merry Smissmas.

• Sophisticated As Hell: His default attitude is a cold, collected professional. When he's dominating someone, he instantly switches to a snorting, juvenile pun-thrower with all the elegance of a 12-year old (which he makes up for by being screamingly funny.)

"May I borrow your ear piece?" (in falsetto) 'This is Scout! Rainbows make me cry! Over!'" "Here lies Scout. He ran fast and died a virgin." "What's the matter? Fat got your tongue?" "I'm looking at your X-ray, and I'm afraid you suck!"

• • He also has an unprofessionally goofy grin.
• Spot the Impostor: Bad juju awaits if you happen to bump into the person you are disguised as.
  • Then again, not everyone is so quick on the uptake...
• Stat-O-Vision: He can see the names and health of his enemies.
• Stealth Expert
• Stock Ninja Weaponry: The Conniver's Kunai.
• Tele Frag: Sappers affect both ends of a Teleporter. Find a teleporter entrance, put on a disguise, drop a sapper on the tele, and stand on it. If an Engineer on the other end comes running to fix the exit, and stands too close when he breaks the sapper, you'll instantly teleport into his face and kill him.
• Tuxedo and Martini: Everyone is dressed appropriately for a warzone, except him.
• Un Evil Laugh: If he'd quit smoking, maybe he wouldn't snort in the middle of his Evil Laughter.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: ...Fritalianish?
• Wicked Cultured
• Your Mom: The RED Spy is having an affair with the BLU Scout's mom.

Non-Player Characters

File:Administrator 9140.png

"Overtime!"

The Administrator (Real name: Helen)

"It saddens me that despite my best efforts to instruct and better you, some of you insist on finding new ways to fail." Voiced by: Ellen McLain

The Voice. Also known as the Announcer, The Administrator is the source of the mysterious disembodied voice that announces vital events during the match, angrily berates the team upon failure and congratulates them upon victory. This disappointed and slightly angry Evil Overlord clearly lets you know in the world of Team Fortress, a tie does not mean everyone wins, but that everyone loses.

The Administrator secretly controls both RED and BLU (and, by extension, every country on the planet), supporting each team when necessary. To prevent either team from realizing this, she condemns any friendship between RED and BLU. She has an assistant named Miss Pauling and is also an acquaintance of Saxton Hale, allowing her to influence production of new weapons. The Administrator has an affinity for cigarettes and Punishment Monthly magazine, and occasionally posts on the official Team Fortress 2 blog, usually to berate the players for abusing glitches or exploits to gain unlockable items.

The Administrator provides examples of:

• Large Ham Announcer: But of course.
• Art Evolution/Progressively Prettier: Compare her original design with the picture on the far right.
• Big Bad: Arguably.
• The Baroness: Rosa Klebb variety.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Just read the first paragraph of this blog post.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: In a World where a lot of guys dressed up in red fight a lot of guys dressed up in blue, it's telling that she dresses in purple.
• The Danza: Obviously named for her voice actress. ("Helen" and "Ellen" sound almost identical in most dialects of English).
• Even Evil Has Standards: Fine with murder and deception, but really hates cheating. It robs you of the feeling of superiority you get from you besting your foes!
• Evil Laugh: "The bomb has almost reached the final terminus! Ah-hahahaha!!!" Well... at least she's happy for once...
• Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: Saxton Hale thinks so, calling her a "chain-smoking seductress".
• Green Eyes: In her first appearance in the WAR! comic, her eyes are deep green, which makes her pale skin, dark hair, and heavy makeup more striking.
• Identical Granddaughter: Bears a strong resemblance to Zeph Mann's maidservant, Elizabeth, down to the Skunk Stripe. And whoever entices Radigan Conagher with the Australium some decades later.
• Iron Lady
• Large Ham
• Manipulative Bitch
  • To the point that she is The Woman Behind The Mann.
• Mission Control (Is Off Its Meds): Type 1, for both opposing teams.
• Mysterious Employer
• Promoted Fangirl: Not the Administrator herself, but Big Name Fan Makani posted her version of the (as of then unseen) Administrator, and the folks at Valve liked it enough to buy off her and hire her for other official art and comics.
• Skunk Stripe
• Villainous Cheekbones
• The Voice: Whose tones range from arch triumph to poisonous contempt, depending on how badly you're failing her.
• What Is This Thing You Call Friendship: She has to ask Miss Pauling what friends do together, and she won't stand for it developing across the RED/BLU lines.
• Workaholic: Apparently, her vacation time is one hour per year.
• You Have Failed Me: Plenty of times, usually when your team loses, and hilariously parodied in the WAR! update when she classifies friendship as a personal failure.

File:Misspauling 1939.png

The Loyal Assistant

Miss Pauling

"You know, forgetting for a minute that we don't condone friendship, it's sort of... almost... uh... reprehensible. Totally and completely reprehensible."

The Administrator's young and perky assistant, taking care a variety of odd jobs ranging from secretarial duties to carrying out hits and disposing of bodies. Despite having a much more merciful attitude, she still gets her jobs done efficiently.

Miss Pauling provides examples of:

• Beleaguered Assistant/Cloudcuckoolander's Minder/Only Sane Employee: To every member of the team, including the Administrator. In the Australian Christmas/Smissmas update, she desperately tries to stop the Spy from involving a child in a shopping mall massacre. The Spy outright ignores her, and thanks to him, the child singlehandedly takes out the Humanoid Abomination Old Nick with an icicle to the neck.
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Since she does work for the Administrator, it's only fitting that she also wears purple.
• The Dragon: While she's definitely a nice girl, she's also capable of casual cold blooded murder.
• Even Evil Has Standards/Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Miss Pauling will respect the letter of the law, when doing otherwise would result in bad publicity for her company. In what may be a more genuine example of morals and ethics, she seems truely terrified at the prospect of the BLU Team putting a little boy in danger.
• Hartman Hips
• Meganekko
• Manipulative Bitch: Miss Pauling will lie, turn friend against friend, and put a bullet through her fellow employee's brains, all while maintaining a pleasant demeanor and a (relatively) cool head.
• Morality Pet: This blog post suggests she's this to her boss, at least a little.
• One Name Only
• Perky Female Minion/Silk Hiding Steel: Despite breaking friendships and seemingly killing a man, she still comes across as this. Push her too far, though, and that mask of sweetness will slip.
• Punch Clock Villain

File:Saxtonhale 7638.png

Machismo Ho!

Saxton Hale

"Half the time even I don't know why I'm hitting something!"

Testosterone Poisoning personified. Saxton Hale is the rugged Australian CEO of Mann Co., star of the Saxton Hale's Thrilling Tales comic series and an all-around man among men whose favorite pastimes include fighting, drinking and battling with rare and ferocious animals. Identifying features include his exceptional moustache, trademark shirtlessness, rippling muscles, crocodile-tooth lined hat and a patch of chest hair shaped like Australia. Saxton is the latest Hale to take up the reins of Mann Co. since Zepheniah Mann left its ownership to loyal aide and tracker Barnabus Hale in his last will and testament. His boisterous presence is felt in all areas of the company, from the slogan ("We sell products and get in fights") to the customer forms, which include tickboxes for informing product-thieving rivals that he is coming to pummel them to death with his bare hands. His inspiring image also features on numerous Mann Co. catalogs and promotional materials. He is known (and feared) for his belief in handling customer service issues personally, with his official policy being: "If you aren't 100% satisfied with our product line, you can take it up with me!".

Saxton Hale provides examples of:

• Arms Dealer
• Ascended Extra: He started off as a small image in an update page, and later became one of the major storyline characters.
• Awesome Aussie: The MOST awesome.
• Badass Mustache
• Boisterous Bruiser
• Carpet of Virility: In the shape of Australia, no less.
• Generation Xerox: Heavily implied to be a descendant of Barnabus Hale.
  • Barnabus even got into random fights with animals just like Saxton does. As shown in the Loose Canon comic:

Barnabus Hale: Skip me for now, mayor! I like this cougar's pepper sauce!

• Explosive Instrumentation: As shown here, his company's stuff seems to just go on fire, or melt. He claims it to be intentional, because they're products for men. The comic this fact first appeared in was later declared to be non-canon, but the gag itself shows up again in the one year Manniversary catalogue.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The only way of fighting he accepts.
• Honest John's Dealership: He takes pride in selling shoddy products that catch on fire.
• Implacable Man: In the game mod that makes him playable, he's one of these.
• Land Down Under: Which has raised suspicions of a connection between him and The Sniper...
• Large Ham
• Nice Hat
• Remember When You Blew Up The Moon?: The Apple employees are quick to apply a certain incident in which the moon gets blown up to Saxton Hale after it gets announced on a newscast.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: He and anyone associated with Mann Co were "nowhere near the launch site [of the rocket piloted by Poopy Joe], and have nothing whatsoever to do with the tragic explosion that occurred moments later."
• Testosterone Poisoning: He doesn't provide the trope picture for nothing.
  • AN APE WILL DIE ON EVERY PAGE!
  • You will believe a shark can cry!
• Unsound Effect: Tends to show up whenever he shows up in a comic.
  • PROPERTY DAMAGE!
  • BRAVE JUMP!
  • Extends to anything that looks like him, as seen/heard when Soldier gives Old Nick a COMPOUND ELEVATED SKULL FRACTURE! with a statue of Hale.
  • And in the Engineer comic, Barnabas Hale is shown fighting a COUGAR!
• Walking Shirtless Scene
• Who Wears Short Shorts?: Obviously, only the MANLIEST of men.

File:Blutarchandredmond 9150.jpg

Blutarch (top) and Redmond (bottom)

Redmond and Blutarch Mann

"I'm no closer to beating him than I was a hundred years ago!"

The two twin brothers who own RED and BLU, respectively. They are forced into partnership by their father for their constant bickering. Naturally, Blutarch decides to take the land by force by hiring nine mercenaries to perform a land grab; unfortunately, his brother thought the exact same. Thus, a stalemate. Since they could not take the land by force, both decided to simply outlive the other twin, hiring Radigan Conagher to build them a life extending machine.

Redmond and Blutarch Mann provide examples of:

• Always Identical Twins
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Blutarch has died a few times, his life extending machine bringing him back to life every time.

Blutarch's assistant: Give him a moment, dear. He's just dead.

• Identical Twin ID Tag: Their suits are red and blue.
• Missing Mom
• The Nothing After Death: According to Blutarch, who has been continually dying and reviving through the use of the immortality machine.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Blutarch does this twice, once to Radigan, once to Dell.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni
• Sibling Rivalry: And how!
• This Is My Side: In a sense...
• Why Won't You Die?: Blutarch has this to say about his brother:

"I have mounted an epic campaign of leisure against the ravages of time. Waiting for nature to do to my brother what my men could not. And yet here we are at the end. And he... won't... DIE.

File:Zepheniahmann 4845.png

Quite a cheery guy, isn't he?

Zepheniah Mann

"I, Zepheniah Mann, being of sound mind, do hereby vow to haunt the earth as a horrifying poltergeist, until such time as I have quenched my all-consuming thirst for vengeance against the world, and especially against my dunderhead sons."

The above is taken from The Last Will And Testament of Zepheniah Mann, which is about 90% of his entire existence in the game's related media. (Although it seems like he does appear as an angry ghost in the Halloween map.) Patriach of an arms dealing empire who wasted his fortune on worthless land in the Americas, his will sets up a posthumous vengeful scheme to set his sons against each other forever, and sets up the Backstory for this game.

According to his will, he has only given his belongings to five people: his maid Elizabeth who got his personal estate, his tracker Barnabas Hale who took control of his business empire, his sons Blutarch and Redmond Mann who got the land to fight over, and a fifth character whose identity remains unknown as well as what he received.

He appears on the map Harvest Event as a ghost to haunt the mercenaries for waging noisy battles over his grave. Any player who gets too close gets stunned for several seconds.

Zepheniah Mann provides examples of:

• Arms Dealer
• Bedsheet Ghost: His undead form on Harvest Event.
• Call Forward: Tons, not least the 'pit of gravel'.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: He deliberately left the otherwise worthless land to both his sons, so they'd fight over it. He probably didn't predict just where this would lead...
• Posthumous Character
• Rasputinian Death: In his trip to the Americas he apparently contracted over two dozen horrible diseases.
• Trauma Conga Line

File:Radigan 2415.jpg

"..."

Radigan Conagher

"Alright."

The Engineer's soft-spoken grandfather, who was contracted to build an immortality machine for Blutarch Mann so he could outlive his brother Redmond. He was later asked by the Administrator's ancestor to create the same machine for Redmond as well. In exchange for this offer, Radigan was given one hundred pounds of Australium, an element that helped Australia become the world's most technologically advanced nation.

From this amount of Australium, Radigan created a variety of new inventions. However, the Australium's radiation eventually caused Radigan to become Australian; he went from a regular scientist to a muscular, shirtless, mustached scientist with a robotic left hand and chest hair in the shape of Texas.

Radigan Conagher provides examples of:

• Artifact of Doom: The Golden Wrench, implied to have been built from Australium.
• Carpet of Virility: After his transformation into an Australian, he gets one- in the shape of Texas, no less!
• Hollywood Cyborg
• Hotblooded Sideburns
• Posthumous Character
• The Quiet One
• The Stoic
• Viral Transformation

File:Horsemann 1095.png

TF2's Resident Headless Horseman

The Horseless Headless Horsemann

"Rwaa ha ha ha haaa!"

The crazed and powerful spirit of Zepheniah's apparent brother Silas Mann, the Horseless Headless Horsemann is the first boss NPC of Team Fortress 2. He is commonly found haunting Mann Manor.

The Horseless Headless Horsemann provides examples of:

• Alliterative Name: The Horseless Headless Horsemann, and the two items associated with him: the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head and the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker.
• Ax Crazy
• An Axe to Grind
• Camera Screw: The camera shakes when he's nearby. As if everything going dark and the music weren't unsettling enough.
• Damage Sponge Boss: He has at least 3000 HP under his belt, with another 200 added for each player on the server. He also shows up only with a minimum of 10 players are on the server, meaning without cheats he always has at least 5000 HP.
  • Servers normally can hold up to 24 people, with some servers being able to hold up to 32 people. This means that the Horsemann can peak at around 7800-9400 HP. For comparison, the highest HP any player can go is 450, which is an overhealed Heavy.
• Enemy Mine: Aside from passing off aggro and the more serious players, both teams commonly team up to defeat him when he spawns.
• Headless Horseman: He wears a jack-o-lantern as a head, however.
• Implacable Man
• Large Ham: He doesn't even speak, and he manages to chew scenery with the best of them.
• Lightning Bruiser: He is as fast as a scout's normal speed. Fortunately, he can't jump.
• One-Hit Kill: Only two things can survive his Headtaker: A Wrangled Sentry, and a Dead Ringer Spy. And in both those cases, only just (and he'll probably swing again).
• Oxymoronic Being
• Palette Swap: Aside from his entrance, exit, and scaring animations, he's a sized up reskin of the Demoman.
• Slasher Smile

File:Merasmus 6282.jpg

Don't disturb him.

Merasmus the Magician

"Who dares disturb Merasmus the Magician?"

An old magician and an early contractor of the Demoman, partially responsible for the latter's loss of his eye. He is also currently the Soldier's roommate.

Merasmus the Magician provides examples of:

• A Wizard Did It: His existence is as much of a defiance to this trope as a literal example. He actually is (somewhat) responsible for the Demoman losing his eye, unleashing MONOCULUS! upon the mercenaries, and sending them back in time in Medieval Mode.
  • Subtly noted by the BLU Spy as the reason why Soldier was somehow qualified to be a public defender in a court of law.
• Artifact of Doom: Apparently an avid collector of these. Hell, he even tells people to not gaze upon his broom, despite the Demoman actually being forced to do so to do his work (either that or it's a Verbal Tic).
• Black Magic
• Evil Is Not a Toy
• Large Ham
• Monster Roommate: To the Soldier of all people.
• Verbal Tic: If you mention one of his possessions, he'll reflexively tell you to GAZE NOT UPON IT!!

File:Monoculus 4312.jpg

He had his good eye on ya the whole time!

MONOCULUS!

The Demoman's disembodied left eye taken from his body and haunted upon opening a forbidden tome at Merasmus the Magician's castle. After Soldier enrages Merasmus, he unleashes the eye upon the team, setting up the events leading to the 2011 Halloween event.

MONOCULUS! provides examples of:

• Artificial Brilliance: His AI is more complex than the Horsemann, that's for sure. He leads his shots, prioritizes threats, and can juggle combo.
• Berserk Button: Gets really pissed upon taking a critical hit.
• Bold Inflation: His name is officially spelt in all-caps.
• Damage Sponge Boss: Like the Horsemann, he can take an incredible pounding. Helps that he's resistant to miniguns and flamethrowers.
• Death From Above: His main method of attack is to rain down smaller eyeballs which do the same damage as critical rockets on both teams.
• Enemy Mine: Enforced, even more so than the Horsemann. When he appears, the capture point resets and both teams cannot cap until he is either defeated or leaves the map, so there's no point to killing each other, other than being a dick.
• Evil Eye: Well, duh.
• Faceless Eye
• Get Back Here Boss: He teleports around a lot and will only stay around for 90 seconds, though this also makes it easier to defeat him because doing so opens up a portal to an area that if you can exit gives players invulnerability, crit-boosts, overheal, and a speed boost. Buffed players also stun him when they damage him.
• Giant Eye of Doom
• Glass Cannon: In comparison to the Horsemann being an immovable damage sponge, MONOCULUS! is easier to push around. He also has a hideously strong damage advantage, shooting eyeballs that kill most classes in a couple of hits.
• Insistent Terminology: It's not "Monoculus", it's "MONOCULUS!". Valve also insist that upon being killed by him, the player must raise their hands toward the ceiling and scream the name at the top of their lungs. It's just the etiquette. And when the police arrive, be sure to explain!
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: See Turns Red below.
• Taking You with Me: Anyone near him when he dies is coated in Jarate. And since he's no longer around, both teams are going to be focusing on each other again pretty quickly...
• Time Limit Boss: He only hangs around for 90 seconds per appearance, so if you want the achievements for taking him down, make sure to do it quickly and hope the other players want to kill him as well.
• Turns Red: Shooting him with critical hits will make him shoot volleys of faster projectiles that lead their targets flawlessly. He noticeably looks angrier when this happens.
  • Thanks to an update, defeating him causes him to become stronger when he next spawns.