Team Fortress 2/YMMV

A list of some of the Subjective Tropes found in Team Fortress 2 and its audience.

"Heavy: I love this doctor!"
 * Alternative Character Interpretation: Inevitable, since the only characterization the classes have besides the "Meet The" videos are their in-game quotes, blog posts, and official comics. Fan interpretation can range anywhere from "genuinely good folks stuck in a horrible situation" to "amoral sociopaths who take sadistic glee in playing death tag" (the latter is canon for the Soldier, Scout, Spy, and Medic, but that doesn't stop the fanon).
 * There's also the issue of the Pyro's identity.
 * While we are at Pyro. His basic role, choice of weapons and hats seem to indicate a complete lunatic, but the way many players use the class to support team mates including putting out flames or suicide rushing enemy formations to wreak havoc, has created the idea among fans that the character is possibly a good team player too. Similarly, many are drawn to the idea that the "complete lunatic" is the Only Sane Man.
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced: The Manno-Technology update caused this when Engineer finally got some new weapons.
 * Not to mention the Squee when the Engineer and Pyro both got new weapons for Australian Christmas 2011, and a very shippy comic together.
 * And The Pyro Fandom Rejoiced: They're finally getting the long-awaited Meet the Pyro sometime this year.
 * Base Breaker: Soldier. Some love him for being both top tier and being easy to play. Others hate him for the fact that due to being Robin Walker's favorite character, he gets class updates with both higher frequency and quality than any other class (4 at the time of this writing which includes two on the same day getting more stuff than the supposed star of the update). Especially jarring considering that some classes have only received one class update within the same amount of time.
 * This was not aided by yet another weapon pack for him (the primary weapon can disable buildings while the secondary weapon cannot be reflected by Pyros), and ruining the fandom speculation of Meet the Pyro being released. The original being implemented less than 2 weeks later was just salt in the wound.
 * Manniversary Update: Decals and hats (i.e., more ways for Valve to make money) but no weapons at all, along with the unfortunate side effect of constant game crashes afterwards.
 * Broken Base: Although all updates have caused this in one way or another, the Polycount/Mann-conomy update is the most extreme cause.
 * The base is broken to the point where there is animosity between players of various classes. For example, there is animosity between the fandoms of the Soldier/Heavy/Demoman and the Pyro. Pyro fans are very bitter over a perception of being Valve's Butt Monkey due to various over nerfs and other classes getting better versions of their mechanics. Pyro players are hostile towards Soldier and Demoman players over a perceived Parental Favoritism towards the two classes and the fact that they've been over powered since early in the game and not nerfed nearly as hard as Pyro. The animosity between Pyros and Heavies stems over the "W+M1" double standard. Interestingly enough, the fandoms that get along the most are the Pyro and Engineer fandoms, as they more so than any other class have evolved into a lovely synergy.
 * Since summer 2011, the game has been made free to play. Let's just say a lot of fans are annoyed about it and call it a day.
 * The Soldier received the Dr Grodbort's Victory Pack, considerably angering Engineer players, as the update seems far more suitable for the Engineer, made worse by the fact that the Engineer already has very few weapons compared to the Soldier.
 * Subverted with the even more recent Braniac Pack for the Engineer, as part of the Australian Christmas 2011 update. Where not only did the Engineer get new weapons, but ones that are similar in style to the previous Dr. Grordbort Pack. Oh, and Pyro got new stuff with the update too.
 * Fans are very divided on whether or not it's okay to kill enemy players while MONOCULUS! is present. Since the control point can't be captured while MONOCULUS! is around, most people opt to fight MONOCULUS! before continuing with the game, but some players use this as an opportunity to kill everyone else instead. Those who support the latter claim it's for tactical purposes (since the portals MONOCULUS! creates grant a temporary speed boost, health boost, invincibility, and critical hits), but there are some people who just enjoy killing unsuspecting players.
 * Canon Defilement: Really any of the slash ships, especially since only half the fandom actually plays the game, the rest just being in it for the ships. The most popular ship, Heavy/Medic, may be Jossed since a Demoman domination response mentions the Medic has a wife. One of the other popular ships, Spy/Sniper, is also Jossed given that in canon Spies and Snipers hate each other, and the RED Spy is in a relationship with the BLU Scout's mother.
 * Although to be fair, a lot of the Sniper/Spy stuff involves the BLU Spy, who's never been seen with the RED Scout's mother.
 * As well as that...don't you think that the fact that they hate each other MAY be part of the reason why they're shipped?
 * Also any portrayal that shows the members of the team to be secret nice guys; all of the classes take pride in their work and will laugh madly at murdering members of the enemy team. Even the Engineer.
 * Possibly because you can view their behaviour in the comics as being more in line with the Jerk With a Heart of Gold stereotype -- almost every character has at least one Pet the Dog moment. It can be argued, though, that the comics actually combine both of these portrayals -- they CAN be nice, yes, but they're all still insane as hell.
 * Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The community tends to only accept one good loadout for each class and that's it, regardless of how well anyone has gotten any of the other items to perform. For instance, if you don't use the Degreaser and Axtinguisher to puff and sting everyone, then you don't know how to play Pyro. That's right, the Pyro is never supposed to get a kill with fire ever. CGS can be weird sometimes.
 * There are aversions, though. For instance, extending from the above, the differences between the Detonator, Flare Gun, and Shotgun are openly acknowledged to mostly come down to personal playstyle and preference. Other examples are the Soldier's weapons, where pretty much any loadout is "acceptable", except for some weapons that are inferior to other options or just plain bad (ie, Mantreads, Eviction Notice), and the Sniper's loadout, which is much the same.
 * Ask any Spy which watch they use, and about 70% of the answers will be Dead Ringer.
 * Complaining About People Not Liking the Show / Sacred Cow: The response to any criticism of the game is most often some variant of, "Suck Less".
 * Complete Monster: Arguably, Old Nick from the comics could qualify. He abducts naughty children and forces them to construct weapons and hats that are sent to his mansion. Given the nature of the game, this is would normally be Played for Laughs... But in the "A Smissmas Story" comic, he is shown to be perfectly willing to kidnap a perfectly innocent child and force him to construct weapons at the pace of 50 children. Amusingly, his death is actually celebrated.
 * Crack Ship: Sniper x GLaDOS, stemming from their voice actors being married in real life. Sniper's voice actor John Patrick Lowrie even jokingly acknowledged the ship in a reply to a Wheatley-roleplayer's review of a book he had written. And once again mentioned on his Twitter in a Thanksgiving post.
 * Crazy Awesome:
 * The Sniper throws his own piss at his enemies.
 * And with the Huntsman; fighting against an enemy team armed with miniguns, sentries and rocket launchers, with a bow and arrow.
 * With the Sydney Sleeper, Jarate, Bushwacka, and yellow headband, the Sniper can construct his entire loadout around piss and remain viable in a second-line support role.
 * Creator's Pet: Soldier is getting there after the Über Update, and now the uber-controversial laser update. Namely from the fact that including the currently in-beta Junk Yard set, Soldier currently has TWICE as many class sets as most other classes (6 as opposed to 3 for the rest), except Pyro and Engineer, who have two and one class packs, respectively.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome:
 * The musical stings for things like round wins and dominations.
 * DUN-tikka-tik! DUN-tikka-tik! DUN-tikka-tik! DUN-tikka-tik! DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN!!!
 * Intruder Alert
 * Right Behind You
 * More Gun
 * The background music for "Meet the Medic". "A Little Heart To Heart" and the appropriately titled MEDIC! are now songs in the main menu when you start up the game. The Manniversary update added a gentle clarinet rendition of "A Little Heart To Heart", appropriately named "Archimedes".
 * An example from the fandom is Next Time, a beautiful song by Ben Forbes (the Pyrocar guy) looking back on the Saxxy Awards entries.
 * Demonic Spiders: With enough skill, any class becomes this, but here are some specific examples.
 * A well-entrenched Engineer that always halts attempts to destroy its valuable sentry and apparently has a near-psychic ability to know that Spies are there could count. Or, one in a strategic location that seems never capable of falling. And they like to build in groups and protect each other, which means Spies get ganged up on more times than not.
 * Get dominated by a Sniper for the 500th time and you'll see.
 * A good Scout is effectively invincible. They can kill any class (except the Heavy) with two shots from their scattergun and effortlessly dodge all weapons except the conventional bullet firing ones. Not only that, but at any time during a fight, then can simply run away, something that you can't do at all unless you want them to fill you with buckshot in the back, and they move around extremely fast and are hard to hit. The only real counter is to have obscenely good aim with your gun, have a sentry, or confront them in a tight corridor (though, a good Scout will probably avoid tight corridors, so... yeah, you need amazing aim or a sentry).
 * Demoknights can basically run around in a battlefield and mash the attack button, because 2 of their swords essentially make them unkillable except by maintaining range.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: All the mercenaries are Career Killers who show no remorse for the deaths they cause, yet many fans think of them as jerks with hearts of gold instead.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Outside of the main characters, there's SAXTON HAAALE, Miss Pauling, Archimedes and Scout's mother.
 * Even Better Sequel/Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Inevitable, considering that the original was an independent mod made in 1996.
 * Excuse Plot: Two corporations erect fortresses 10 yards from each other and then send waves of men to kill each other to steal a briefcase out of the opposing fort's basement. Alternately, one corporation sends waves of men from an encampment to kill more waves of men sent by another corporation and capture their fortress and related choke points. This has been expanded upon, mostly for humor. Weapons-monger and insane billionaire Zepheniah Mann goes to the US from Europe to harvest precious gravel, but dies -- leaving his twin identical younger sons Blutarch and Redmond to fight each other for all eternity. Meanwhile, he leaves his insane weapons factory to the ridiculously manly Australian Hale family. Hilarity Ensues.
 * The "RED and BLU secretly own every government on earth" bit above seems to have been discarded in light of all that...
 * Eye Scream: MONOCULUS! You have this giant eyeball that shoots explosive eyes that act like critical rockets, see, and you have to attack it, before it kills you. The backstory introduced in the comic explains how Red Demoman lost his eye. MONOCULUS! is his eye!
 * It doesn't help that from the front, MONOCULUS! looks like the average giant eyeball monster, but from the back...
 * Face of the Band: The Heavy. Although those who only know of the game through memes will probably think of The Spy first, as he's the unofficial patron saint of trolling.
 * Fan Dumb: One of the largest and most notable examples of Fan Dumb, considering that they tend to be pretty rampant across the internet and are not subjected to severe Fandom control on most boards. Saying anything negative about the series as a whole will frequently get Complaining About People Not Liking the Show directed at you.
 * Fan-Preferred Couple: Medic/Heavy.
 * Follow the Leader: Got a Chinese knockoff in the form of Final Combat, but fans have accused several other games, including Monday Night Combat, Battlefield Heroes, and Brink, of ripping off the art style and/or class systems.
 * Uberent rejects this in a Take That in their FAQ.
 * Fountain of Memes:
 * The entire team.
 * Saxton Hale.
 * Freud Was Right: The Medic is a source of endless innuendos. Popping an uber too soon is a bit like jizzing in your pants, as seen in this comic. And, Dear Penthouse, I never zhought zhis vould happen to me... So it's appropriate that Freud was the first Medic.
 * Game Breaker: Has its own page.
 * GIFT / Serious Business / and Hypocritical Fandom / No True Scotsman: Like all online games, Team Fortress 2 has had its issues with GIFT-utilizing Griefers. Ironically, you will still hear fans of the game proclaiming that the game is "Serious Business Free" and that "this is the nicest gaming community ever." While one look at the Valve official forums can tell them otherwise, they just ignore this. Woe to the poor newbie gamer (or even pro gamer) that does take this to heart, and run into the Griefers deriding him to "suck less", "cry moar noob", "go back to your kiddy consoles" and such.
 * Goddamned Bats: Servers will inevitably be flooded with one class the day that class's update comes out. Quite literally, when the Scout update came out.
 * One of the driving concepts behind the Sniper update was to release the Spy update at the same time to combat this.
 * Amusingly, the Soldier/Demoman combined update reversed the trend slightly. Since one of the available unlocks would be determined by which class did better in the week preceding the release, the servers became flooded with Soldiers and Demomen even before the release... to the point that servers have crashed because of a limit on dynamic entities within the map.
 * The Engineer update was probably the worst example of this. There were so many Engies that you could barely move without being sentry gunned to death. Most servers would even implement a 2 or 3 Engineers per team limit. On the other hand, good Demomen, Soldiers, and Spies had a field day.
 * With the Polycount Update, this made some people complain about the Goddamn Fish.
 * All future updates will address multiple classes at the same time in order to combat this.
 * There have also been updates that don't focus on any particular class at all, most notably the Halloween updates.
 * Good Bad Bugs: The aforementioned Spycrab and the ability to play as a glitched character called "The Civilian."
 * As of Dec 18th of 2009, all those who were here to know him in his short 24 hours of life will never forget our good friend the Spygineer. Let him forever erect those French dispensers with console command "build 0" in his cheese and wine-laden heaven.
 * On April 29, 2010, the Spygineer returned for one more go -- along with the ability of Engineers to build infinite buildings.
 * R.I.P. "Crazy Legs" Scout.
 * Alas, poor level 3 mini sentry, too cutesy for this blood-filled game.
 * There was also the "rapid airblast" glitch, or the Syringe Gun reload glitch, both of which cause their respective weapons to fire faster than intended.
 * There was an exploit that allowed the Heavy to run at top speed even without having the Gloves of Running Urgently active.
 * Using the Buffalo Steak Sandvich with GRU once resulted in ridiculously fast speed for the Heavy.
 * Due to being able to taunt while stunned, even if it's a kill taunt, two Snipers using Huntsman can have ancient Australian psychic battles.
 * A clipping issue can cause Pyro flames to go through the otherwise impenetrable starter gate before the beginning of a round. Since whoever was standing there was probably taunting, it's pretty funny, and they respawn fast enough to not hinder the team.
 * On the other hand, it also works occasionally through chain link fences, which is a Game Breaker. Then again... why wouldn't flames be able to pass through a chain-link fence?
 * Before the bug was patched, using the Buffalo Steak Sandvich could let the player switch their weapons from melee, resulting in a Heavy spewing mini-crit Minigun bullets.
 * Switching from a Detonator to another weapon and landing a hit on a burning enemy granted full crits before that was patched.
 * The infinite Diamondback crit exploit.
 * The Machina's double-kill fanfare glitches whenever more than 2 people are killed at once -- the effect stacks for every additional kill, resulting in ear rape.
 * Valve's Achievements have their fair share of bugs, but one in particular stands out -- the Identity Theft Achievement is a Spy Achievement that is given for backstabbing the enemy you're disguised as. Stabbing someone with the Your Eternal Reward awards you this Achievement instantly.
 * Using the Director's Vision taunt and pressing the Cow Mangler 5000's alt-fire simultaneously will make the Soldier perform a Hadouken.
 * In 2Fort, in the BLU base a Dispenser in the doorway between the hay room and spiral ramp will completely block enemy players and the Engineer who deployed it. In the RED base, a player can always bypass a Dispenser built in the same place by crouch-jumping over it.
 * The Training Mode was meant to be for single-player, but some people actually managed to get into other people's training modes. Griefing ensued before it was fixed.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight:
 * During the Scout update, Valve added a domination line where the Scout says that he's not even wearing a helmet, played specifically after the domination of a Soldier. Then came the hats, with a baseball helmet for the Scout. You'd expect him not pulling that line while wearing said helmet, but he still does it due to the way the voice response system works in-game. Irony ensues. To add to the irony, thanks to the hats, it's possible that the Scout is wearing a helmet but the Soldier isn't.
 * To a certain extent, the Sniper's line about "blokes that bludgeon their wives to death with a golf trophy" in Meet the Sniper. You can't officially kill anyone with a golf trophy in the game, but as of June 2011, you can bludgeon them to death with a filmmaking trophy... which turns them to Australium. Really.
 * Right before Meet The Medic came out, there was a pre-order bonus for the new Magic the Gathering game. One of the items was a Planeswalker Helm for Medic, with the description "Just tell people it qualifies you for veterinary work". The Medic achievement "Ubi concordia, ibi victoria", which requires the Medic to assist in killing three enemies on an enemy control point, has a picture of a wounded dove.
 * The gameplay footage at the end of Meet The Sandvich is identical to that of the end of Meet The Heavy, only the Heavy is now eating instead of gunning down BLU. The BLU team members are still dropping like flies, however, leading to the conclusion that RED Heavy wasn't actually responsible for any of the deaths in the first video.
 * One of the Demoman's injured noises (most usually from being ignited) sounds identical to the Rabbids.
 * In a comic accompanying the Mac Update, one of the two Apple employees introduces the Heavy to a gun that would set up a blog for him, and update it with a kill count. As of 2011, we now have Strange weapons, most which count the amount of kills made with them.
 * In Meet the Sniper, the RED Sniper headshots the BLU Heavy and also shatters the BLU Demoman's bottle behind him. Then came the Machina, which can penetrate through multiple characters once fully charged.
 * Ho Yay Shipping: A lot of people see a certain "subtext" in the Heavy and Medic's close cooperation.

"Heavy: GET BEHIND ME DOCTOR!"
 * The field day is typically had with:

"Heavy: Medic, I love you!"
 * Calling for a Medic while taunting can sometimes make you say:

""It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand, I beat people up.""
 * Brought back up with "Meet The Medic". Most of the short centers on the two of them, and there's a lot of long glances and smiles between them. Medic even pinches Heavy's cheek at one point.
 * Valve has acknowledged this with the "Beaux and Arrows" Sniper achievement for killing a Medic-Heavy pair with a Huntsman... and then turned around and torpedoed it with the Demoman's Medic-specific domination taunt: "DOMINATED! ...And I been shaggin' yer wife! Ahah!"
 * Except that there's no reason to think he was telling the truth.
 * If this report from Comic-Con 2011 is any indication, Robin Atkin Downes (the Medic's voice actor) is not only aware of the Heavy/Medic pairing, but is encouraging it. That, or he just finds the whole thing hilarious.
 * Not even the Pyro is immune to Ho Yay! The Engineer and Pyro seem to be slowly evolving to work together, a la Medic & Heavy. Some of Engineer's lines reflect this, and he will occasionally apologize to a Pyro he's just dominated. (The Heavy and Medic have no such lines for each other, but class-specific domination lines had not yet been introduced when their updates came out.)
 * And now they're beginning to encourage this ship outside of the game as well, with the Engineer and Pyro apparently living together.
 * The Pocket Medic, originally only for the Heavy, can now be equipped by the Soldier as well. Also, whenever a Soldier shouts "Medic" while looking at a friendly Medic, he will call him "sweetheart", "sally", or "pumpkin". Some fans have noticed. Has resulted in very vitriolic Ship-to-Ship Combat, with Heavy fans acting very resentful towards Soldier fans and pointing out that Soldier sounds very sarcastic and demeaning when he says those lines (as if he's trying to take a potshot at Medic's masculinity), and Soldier fans (or likewise, fans of anyone paired with Medic but Heavy) claiming Heavy/Medic is a popular pairing and therefore dumb, or that Heavy's weight makes him ugly, and ugly people shouldn't have porn drawn of them. It's advised that you tread lightly around this topic if it's ever brought up.
 * HSQ: Meet the Medic. Worlds alone cannot describe the epicness of it.
 * I Knew It!: Some people saved up a lot of duplicate weapons, in case the Polycount weapons had specific blueprints. They did.
 * Internet Backdraft: As Valve put it after announcing item crafting, "Say goodbye to those enjoyable evenings spent complaining on the forums about which item in your inventory was the most useless, spraying anti-Australian racist hate speech all over Robin Walker, his lovely wife, and his beautiful children."
 * Launcher of a Thousand Ships: The Scout, usually with Wimpification or other forms of Canon Defilement.
 * Magnificent Bastard: The Spy. If there was ever any doubt, just watch his introduction video.
 * The Medic, as of his video, is just as bastardly, if not even more so. He even keeps an enemy Spy's severed head in his refrigerator!
 * Memetic Badass: Saxton Hale.
 * Memetic Mutation: Has its own page here.
 * Memetic Molester: Everyone, but the big three are the Spy (always right behind you and will f[bleep] you), the Medic (turn your head and cough! *glove snap*), and the Sniper (keeps his piss in a jar and lives in a van).
 * Memetic Sex God: Again, everyone, sometimes in conjunction with being a Memetic Molester. Again, the big three are the Spy (ladykiller and mankiller), the Medic (dispenses healing... sexual healing), and the Sniper (his fans consider his voice to be pure sex).
 * Most Annoying Sound: The Scout, whose players love to spam "NEED A DISPENSER HERE", or at the beginning of the round, repeatedly bang his bat and/or ball at the gate.
 * A Cloak and Dagger spy, DISGUISED as a Scout, calling "NEED A DISPENSER HERE" in a Scout's voice from... somewhere nearby... but where?!
 * "Medic!" calls tend to be a ear-grating even for non-Medics, especially if you're near someone who won't stop spamming it. Or, really, anybody who mic-spams.
 * The Frying Pan, when hitting another player, or a wall, makes a very loud noise; the same one from Left 4 Dead 2, in fact.
 * Traders spamming trade messages. SELLING FEDORA FOR 2 REF! BUYING BILL'S HAT!
 * Most Wonderful Sound (or, cue Oh Crap):
 * "CHING CHING CHING CHING CHING CHING CHING!" -- an opponent repeatedly receiving mini-crits because you set them on fire or chopped them with a "bleeder" weapon after they were hit with Jarate. (Or "CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM" if you have that retarded sound effect disabled but damage display on.)
 * An allied Soldier playing his bugle.
 * "I AM CHARGED!" -- a Medic ready to unleash eight seconds worth of invulnerability or critical hits.
 * The musical stinger you get for a domination or revenge against someone.
 * The cheer for getting a fully-charged Demoman kill with the Eyelander and Charge n' Targe.
 * A baseball hit with the Sandman. "KERRRR!"
 * "Hooray!" You've unlocked another achievement!
 * "Victoryyy!"
 * The Original's firing sound. Arguably the only reason to use the thing. Oh, the nostalgia...
 * The "vszz POWWWWWWWWWWWW" that plays when the player gets a One-Hit Polykill with the Machina. Everyone on the server hears it.
 * The sound effect when you find a supply closet and heal/replenish ammo.
 * The sound of a medigun in operation.
 * Older Than They Think: The Scout's "Brother, I hurt people" line is loosely based on a quote attributed to Muhammad Ali.

""Possessing no paper in this godforsaken land, I have penned this on my own skin, which has sloughed off in quantity since contracting impetigo.""
 * Pandering to The Base: Valve takes a lot of stuff in TF2 from the community.
 * Paranoia Fuel: Any time you round a corner, you could find yourself face to face with any one of the other classes (or a sentry) out to kill you. At least you can hear them... most of the time.
 * See that little red (or blue) dot darting all over the place? An enemy Sniper, camping who knows where, racking up headshots.
 * As an Engineer, you either start shooting at anyone who so much as glances at your buildings, or you end up with a sapper on your sentry and a knife in your back. It's not the Engie's only worry, though -- another thing to worry about are Snipers, since you don't know where they're camping and you're especially vulnerable when carrying a building before deploying due to the agility drop.
 * Spies can turn invisible and sneak up on you. Also, they are masters of disguises, and are especially scary if they're wielding the "Your Eternal Reward" knife. If a teammate announces over AllTalk or TeamTalk "spy is me" or something to that effect, you'd better pay attention to the name of the teammate making the announcement, and start shooting at that alleged "teammate" if he is nearby.
 * Planet of Hats: Implied for at least some parts of the world as the Demoman is apparently part of a tradition of "Highland Demolition Men," so this may simply be specific to certain communities.
 * Ron the Death Eater: With characters like Medic. He's never seen cackling over working in a death camp, making anti-Semitic or racist remarks, or trying to murder his own team in canon. He's no worse than the Heavy or the Spy or the Scout -- or really any of the other mercenaries -- but that's how some fans depict him. At most, his experiments are dangerous and reckless, but clearly his teammates agree to them in the first place in place for amazing powers like the Über Charge. Also, the Soldier never calls the Medic a Nazi, not even in domination lines to the opposing Medic, yet some fanfics give the Soldier this characterization anyway. He's also never seen being homophobic, but that's the way some slash fics would have him.
 * Ruined FOREVER: A common cry every single time a change is made to the game, no matter how small.
 * Taken Up to Eleven with the announcement that the game is now Free to Play.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: Autobalance.
 * Mann Co. Supply Crates. Full stop.
 * Much of anything to do with the Mann Co. Store, or the Mann Co. Supply Crates in general. Given that many of the items are seen as grossly overpriced (especially Paint, Name Tags and Keys, given what they actually do), a large number of people would simply ignore the store... if items from the store weren't blatantly advertised on the game's menu screen every time a player started up the game. Then there's also the people who swap Bill's Hats, Mac Earbuds, and Max's Severed Heads around like currency, or the ones who pay hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars for Keys and Unusual hats.
 * There's also the dueling mechanic and Map Stamps, to a lesser extent. Sure, getting free items for dueling against someone on the other team isn't such a bad thing in and of itself, and purchasing stamps to donate money to map makers is actually a good thing... were these things not shoved in front of everybody's faces on the loading screens. This means that, whether you like it or not, you're forced to read about which of your friends are the top duelists in the game, or which random player decided to blow a good $980 on Map Stamps just for the World Traveler's Hat effect. Thankfully, mods exist to remove these.
 * Dueling itself is also annoying. Even if you ignore the duel challenges from Munchkins (which can get annoying if they continue to spam you even after you decline the first one), the game feed still notifies everybody whenever someone scores a point in a duel. On top of this, players who are locked in a duel tend to ignore the map objectives and go straight for their opponent at first sight, which can literally cost you the round. This can be especially telling when you're just about to finish capturing the final point with 20 seconds left on the clock, and the Scout who's adding x2 to the capture rate suddenly runs away to shoot at the Sniper on the other end of the map, leaving you high and dry to deal with the swarm of enemies just arriving.
 * The "Instaspawn" and "Alltalk" server settings can be annoying to some people; neither has any place in a serious game (Instaspawn completely blows map balance to pieces, easily resulting in a perpetual stalemate, while Alltalk makes team communication fairly meaningless when the enemy can hear everything you say). While they're completely optional (and non-default) settings, it can often be rather difficult to find a populated (but not full) server which doesn't use them.
 * Scrub: In his domination lines, the Soldier may disapprove of his opponent's class' methods for fighting. The flamethrower isn't a real weapon, the Scout's running around is useless, the Engineer hides behind his toys, and the Sniper should stick to campgrounds instead of battlefields. Strangely, he says nothing of the Demoman's sticky bombs or the Spy's decisively indirect approach to combat, although he frequently insults their nationalities.
 * Sequel Displacement: Obviously, when there's a "2" in the title, almost everybody knows that there was a "1", but you'd be hard pressed to find a TF2 fan who's played Team Fortress Classic, or even knows what it looks or plays like.
 * Squick:
 * Zepheniah Mann's Will is a humorous Humiliation Conga for the unfortunate old man, until you get to the bottom of the first page...


 * The Heavy's surgery, which takes up most of "Meet the Medic". It's in a cartoony style, so it's not that bad, but it's still fairly gross.
 * What's one of the two ways you can craft Mad Milk? Using reclaimed metal and Jarate.
 * Mad Milk's description, by the way, is "it's not milk". In beta, it was called Mann Milk...
 * That One Achievement: There are several achievements that are very difficult to obtain, a few of which require pure luck or staging.
 * "Crockets Are Such BS -- Fire two non-assisted critical rockets in a row." Crits are totally random unless assisted, so hope you get lucky. On the plus side, most players probably earn this one unintentionally.
 * Several achievements involving killing a fully-cloaked Spy, such as the Sniper achievement "Shoot The Breeze" (one-shot a cloaked Spy), or the Spy achievement "Spies Like Us" (bump into a cloaked enemy Spy while being a cloaked Spy yourself), or the Demoman achievement "Shorn Connery" (decapitate a cloaked Spy). Those involve luck or knowing where enemy Spies like to hang out.
 * Almost any taunt kill. "Kill and then taunt" achievements are slightly easier, but they still leave you vulnerable.
 * "Got A Light?", in which the player has to ignite a Spy taunting with his disguise kit. The motion itself is part of another achievement, "For Your Eyes Only", which involves taunting over a dead player. Only an incompetent player would do this intentionally in battle.
 * "Placebo Effect", "You'll Feel a Little Prick", and "Does It Hurt When I Do This?" are among the ones for the Medic that make players cringe the most. "Placebo Effect" requires the player to kill 2 enemies with a full but undeployed Über Charge (it used to be 5 kills). Doing this in battle is likely to result in your death. "You'll Feel a Little Prick" requires the completely counter-intuitive strategy of obtaining 3 kills with an Über Charged Scout (which is one of the least desirable and usable targets, due to their speed). "Does it Hurt When I Do This?" requires that 50 Scouts be killed with the syringe guns -- which translates to "kill an almost impossible-to-hit enemy with an weak weapon with slow projectiles". The difficulty of the Medic's achievements have been cited as one of the major reasons of the change from achievement-based unlocks to the item drop system.
 * Pyromancer: Deal 1,000,000 points of fire damage as a Pyro. That's basically 5,000 Soldiers. There are career Pyros out there that still don't have this one, never mind that Steam's achievement system sometimes forgets progress on progressive achievements such as this one. "Tartan Spartan" is pretty much the same way, as you must deal 1,000,000 points of explosive damage as a Demoman, and "Chief of Staff", for the Medic, requires you to accumulate 1,000,000 heal points.
 * Even more: The Scout's "A Year to Remember." Most lifetime class achievements involve getting 1,000 kills. This one requires you to get 2,004 kills. The Engineer's "Best Little Slaughterhouse in Texas" requires 5000 kills, fortunately by Sentry Gun, so it might be less work than the Scout's.
 * "Local Cinema Star", "Indie Film Sensation", and Blockbuster" require you to make a replay, post it on YouTube, and then get 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 views, respectively.
 * That One Level:
 * For some, The Nostalgia Level 2Fort, nicknamed "Turtlefort" for its easily defended choke points and Sniper nests. It is also the most played Capture the Flag map by a very large margin.
 * Turbine is found to be prone to stalemates by some.
 * Junction is disliked for its ultra-cramped environment.
 * Hydro was all but abandoned from server rotations within a few months of release; considering the game only shipped with six maps, ignoring one of them shows just how widespread the negative reaction was. Sad, since the developers enjoyed dreaming up its partial-map-reuse mechanic.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: After so many updates that provide the community with more hats or new weapons, much of the community erupts in anger whenever another item update comes about; it's to the point where many have begun to switch to a completely vanilla server to get away from it all. The recent "Hatless Update" which is an update that has no new hats or weapons at all and simply fixes balance issues and other small gameplay bits was met with much warmth.
 * Tier Induced Scrappy: Demoman.
 * The Woobie: A lot of people see Pyro as this, whether it's him being the loner on the team to being treated like a freak to his Butt Monkey status and what have you.