Team Fortress 2/Tropes A To G

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A

  • Abandoned Laboratory: Mountain Lab.
  • Abnormal Ammo: No matter how much it was fired, picking up any weapon dropped by a dead enemy will replenish half of all your own weapons' ammo, including picking up revolvers, shotguns, syringe guns, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, baseball bats, knives, broken building parts, and glass bottles, and jars of piss. The only weapon that does not provide ammunition when picked up is the Chargin' Targe.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer/Air Vent Passageway The first being found in the infamous Capture The Flag map, 2fort.
  • Acme Products: Mann Co. and Spytech Industries, subsidiaries of the even larger TF Industries, which also owns RED and BLU and all of their subsidiaries.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The economy fluctuates absurdly rapidly. Just-released items are always three or four times as expensive as they will be in a week or two, and certain items that no longer drop are ever-increasing in price.
  • Alliteration: Blighted Beak, Builder's Blueprints, Barnblitz, Ye Olde Baker Boy, Bazaar Bargain, Badwater Basin, Backwards Ballcap, Black Box, Bonk Boy, Brass Beast, Boston Basher, Brown Bomber, Brain Bucket, Backburner, Blazing Bull, Buccaneer's Bicorne, Backbiter's Billycock, Buff Banner, Battalion's Backup,Brundle Bundle, Berliner's Bucket Helm, Bloke's Bucket Hat, Bushman's Boonie, Battle Bob, Boston Boom-Bringer... and that's just the letter B.
  • Affably Evil: Almost every character in their Meet The Character video is charming and friendly. And psychotic of course, but you can't have everything.
  • Alternate Reality Game:
    • In the weeks leading up to the release of Meet the Medic, the doves from the video could be spotted perched and flying around the maps. They would later appear on the official blog and led to concept art for the video when clicked on.
    • Later, crash-landed smoking rockets called "Grockets" have appeared in the skyboxes, which led to a Weta Workshop tie-in for Soldier items, Engineer items, and Pyro items.
  • Anachronism Stew: Some items are too futuristic for the game's setting, 1968, which may be justified by the Alternate History. Lampshaded with the Boston Boom-Bringer, a "Futuristic Sound Device" (a boombox):

TF2 Team: Most people only know LL Cool J as a rapper, actor, fashion designer, record producer, and author. Now, though, you can add "spooky-ass Nostradamus" to that list, because we've just released a misc slot item for the Scout called "The Boston Boom Bringer" that pretty much exactly matches the lyrics LL penned almost thirty years ago.

  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Some events give the player a cosmetic item or few, such as the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head, Full Head of Steam, and several Halloween costume sets.
  • Animation Bump: While the actual game doesn't look bad at all, the "Meet The Team" videos are all gorgeously animated and use separate, more detailed character models with very realistic facial expressions. The best part? A few console commands and the game replaces the standard character models with the high-quality ones and cranks the environmental details up to 13. It's virtually indistinguishable from said promotional videos.
  • Announcer Chatter: The Administrator runs both sides. When a checkpoint is captured, she's more encouraging to the successful attackers and scornful to the failing defenders, and, if the round ends in a tie, dismisses both sides with a frustrated "You failed!!".
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Unless modded, maps scramble teams after a team loses badly a few times.
  • Anti-Poopsocking: The current drop system has a cap on the amount of playtime in which drops can occur, about 10 hours a week. Playing beyond that cap does not grant the player additional items. Before this system was implemented, the old drop system was tied so closely with playtime that, statistically, the best way to guarantee that items would drop join an "idling" server and ignore the game for hours on end.
  • Arrows on Fire: In Medieval Mode, a Huntsman Sniper can easily make these, since there's torches and the like to set arrows on fire.
    • In other modes, a Huntsman Sniper teaming up a Pyro teammate can set his arrows aflame to kill a foe.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The AI driven bots are capable of Spy checking and single class rushes, and the Medics hide from the action until they think it's safe.
    • Artificial Stupidity: They do, however, have several pathfinding and decision making problems that prevent them from being a threat in small numbers. It's a work in progress.
      • They aren't very good at Medieval Mode, though this may be attributed to the fact that they can't use unlocks.
    • There's also the incredibly annoying bug where bot Medics (often seen on servers that use bots to fill up empty server spaces) don't switch weapons properly, leading to many unnecessary deaths as a burning player calls desperately for a medic... only to have them show up and obliviously start shooting you with their syringe gun instead.
    • Bots, during setup time offline, will taunt the player if s/he looks at them too long. This applies to both teams and may be exploited for humorous effect.
    • Often times in Medieval mode, bot medics will stand by players with their bonesaw, trying in vain to heal them as if they were using a medigun.
  • Artistic License History: The official media in the name of Rule of Funny. The blog once said that Deus Ex Human Revolution is the long-awaited sequel of Aerosmith's Rail Shooter Revolution X, and the comics say that George Washington's main regret was not being able to stay invisible permanently and that Abraham Lincoln invented the stairs, among many, many other things.
    • This appears to be a combination of Unreliable Narrator and Alternate History - although how much of each and which parts correspond to which is left as an exercise for the reader.
  • Ascended Fanfic: It's an official Valve-made sequel to an official Valve-made sequel to a Quake mod.
    • Quite a few of the new weapons use models contributed by the community, along with a few of the theories regarding the Administrator being made official (along with a fan artist who drew her most popular image getting hired by Valve).
  • Ascended Fanon: This popular fanart of the Administrator ended up strongly influencing her official appearance (as revealed in this comic as The Administrator and foreshadowed two months prior with this image of The Clan that everything in the game traces its lineage back to). And now Makani even works for Valve, doing comics/"Choose A Game Mode" illustrations for Team Fortress 2, working on the science fair posters for Portal 2, and drawing all of the Steam Summer Sale front page illustrations for 2011.
    • Many of the expansion items were suggested by fans. Before the Huntsman was released, there had been a 40+ page thread discussing a bow and arrow for the sniper on the official forums. The most requested ones were the Heavy's sandvich and the Scout's Bonk Energy drink. The Spy's Dead Ringer (cloak and leave behind a corpse) was actually programmed in on some fan-altered servers before Valve implemented the idea into the regular game.
    • Several of the hats, such as the Scout's Bonk Helmet and the Pyro's Brigade Helmet, were originally created by a group of highly talented modelers whom Valve took interest in. Although Valve had already planned to include similar hats in future updates, they liked them so much that they based their versions off the custom models.
    • The King of the Hill gameplay mode was originally a custom mod done by the No Heroes TF2 community before Valve implemented a slightly modified version as an official gameplay mode.
      • Similarly, the Payload mode is based on the fan-made map Happycow.
    • Valve has also opened a submission site for custom avatars and items.
    • As of the Über update, the fan terms "Demoknight" and "Pocket Medic" have been accepted into canon.
  • Ascended Glitch: Along with the ancestry of the Rocket Jump, the Spy can also trace his lineage to a bug during the development of the original Team Fortress mod for Quake where players would occasionally see enemies with the wrong team color.
    • When King of the Hill was first released, when Overtime was reached, the Administrator would repeatedly announce "OVERTIME! OVERTIME! OVERTIME!" When the bug was finally fixed, Valve included a server variable to re-enable the bug.
    • Then there was the "Crazy Legs" bug with the Scout's double jump. When it was eventually fixed, Valve wrote an obituary about the supposed "Crazy Legs" Scout.
    • You can taunt using the wrong weapons by taunting and quickly hitting the quickswitch key or a respective weapon key (1, 2, or 3). This results in the Sniper's Jarate or Pyro's flamethrower breaking physics, Heavy eating his minigun, Engie spinning his wrench around his finger, and Soldier performing a 21 rocket salute. During the Polycount/Mann-Conomy Update, this was inadvertently fixed. Robin said they'd reimplement the bug when they got the chance, and have released a server toggle option for leaving it on or off on October 13, 2011.
    • The Spy Crab glitch, where crouching and looking straight upwards with the Spy's disguise kit out looks like a crab walk, was spared being "fixed" like Crazy Legs, and was instead enshrined as a random chance taunt replacement when taunting with the disguise kit out.
  • Ascended Meme:
    • After the Shamwow commercials drew several comparisons between Vince Offer and the Scout, the Scout Update added multiple lines to the Scout that come directly from those commercials.
    • The infamous "FYI I am a Spy" video led to the Medic achievement "FYI I am a Medic" for killing a disguised Spy that called for a medic, using a melee weapon. Earlier, it was for killing a Spy who you have just healed (there's another achievement for that now), and before that, it was five spies instead. Much later with the Spy update, the "FYI I am a Spy" achievement itself (for killing a Medic healing you, like in the video).
    • The Spy-Crab is the term given to crouching with the Spy's disguise kit out, looking straight up and walking around.
      • When the Spy update was released, Valve added an Easter Egg where 1 in 6 taunts with the disguise kit result in the Spy doing his impression of a crab.
      • One of the products advertised in the Spy's issue of "Dapper Rogue" is the "Crab-Walking Kit", saying that it will "change your skeleton", a reference to how the Spy's animation skeleton and logical hitbox are noticeably different from how he is rendered when crab-walking.
    • One of the common jokes about the inevitable Spy update was that Valve would release a few days worth of news, and then it would be revealed as the Spy update when he backstabs the previous class and takes the spotlight. Which is exactly what happened to the Sniper.
      • Not only is the Sniper is one of the most likely classes to get backstabbed, but this happened to him the day after the Razorback was revealed, which is a (single-use) shield that protects the Sniper from backstabs, due to him being fooled by one of the Spy's unlockable items, a cloak that creates a fake dead spy when attacked.
    • Valve referenced the "Gentlemen" meme in the last of the four "Meet the Medic" outtakes, with a mouthful of nails in place of cigarettes.
  • Asskicking Equals Authority: Australians choose their king via kangaroo boxing.
  • Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Several of the hats.
  • Awesome but Impractical: Every class has at least one taunt that will instantly kill anyone unfortunate enough be hit by it, such as the Pyro using a hadouken or the Scout sending someone flying clear across the map with a baseball bat. However, they pretty much require luck and/or a very inattentive/AFK opponent to actually pull off, and take several seconds to complete with an animation that leaves you completely stationary and vulnerable which cannot be cancelled.
    • Some of the weapons, too. The most glaring examples would be the Rift promotional weapons; the Sun-on-a-Stick, which deals extra damage to enemies on fire for a class that doesn't have any fire weapons, and the Sharpened Volcano Fragment, which sets people ablaze on hit for a class that does have other fire weapons.
  • Awesome Yet Practical: Some kill taunts, however, can be worth the risk due to how they work. Heavy's Showdown taunt has a long range that spans about the length of 2fort's bridge, can shoot through tiny cracks, and fires off relatively quickly (and paired with the Holiday Punch, it's even more effective and humiliating). Sniper's Skewer and Medic's Spinal Tap also stun any opponents that are hit by the first motion of the taunt, making them sitting ducks for the actual kill motion (filling up Medic's ubercharge completely in the latter case).

B

  • Back Stab: The Spy class's modus operandi.
    • The handful of counters for the Spy's instant-kill backstabs, such as:
      • The Medic's Über-charge just to make him invulnerable, the Sniper's Razorback shield (which blocks only one backstab and paralyzes the Spy).
      • The Scout's Bonk atomic punch will make him invulnerable.
      • The Spy's Dead Ringer when active can fake a death.
  • Band of Brothers:
    • 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.
    • Metagame wise, a group of players that manage to stick together for a few rounds without getting autobalanced has a very good chance of becoming a Band of Brothers, however temporary.
    • The Soldier can earn an achievement for using the Buff Banner on his Steam friends called "Banner of Brothers".
    • The Spy also gets an achievement for backstabbing his Steam friends...
  • Bash Brothers:
    • Heavies are a force to be reckoned with, but a Medic will pretty much triple their effectiveness.
    • In the same fashion, a Pyro buddy will greatly help Engineers who need to be protected from Spies while working. Valve acknowledged the close relationship between them by giving the Pyro a melee unlockable that can destroy sappers on friendly Engies' equipment, as well as do extra damage to enemy buildings.
  • Beating a Dead Player: It's possible. The ragdoll responds to actions from enemies.
  • Because I'm Jonesy: Spies can be caught by the player whose name they've been assigned. The Halloween events have the Costume Contest achievement for a player who kills a spy disguised as the same class as said player. Even better, Spies get the "Identity Theft" achievement for killing the enemy they're disguised as.
  • Beeping Computers: Just try to hear yourself think in the 2fort basement.
    • Also the sentries beeping louder and more often the more upgrade they are. Listen closely-- some beeps also means it's spotted an enemy.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy
  • Bigger on the Inside: Subtley done for Well, which has bases that are bigger on the inside, though not very much. There's no special trick of non-linear geometry going on (the engine doesn't even support such a thing); they just hid part of the interior behind a Skybox and projected the rest of the building's façade onto it.
  • Big No:
    • The Spy, when he gets hit by...

"Jarate? Nooooooooo!"

"Oh nooooooo!"

    • Similarly, Heavy's incoherent "AAANNGGHHH YAAAA DAH" has achieved meme status among Japanese players -- to whom "aa~ yada" actually means "Oh no!"
    • The Spy, whenever he mocks a freshly-stabbed Medic:

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

      • "Dr. Nooooo" is also the name of an achievement, where the Spy has to backstab a Medic who's ready to deploy an ÜberCharge.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The Spy, Medic, and Heavy all have several lines in their native languages. The Spy also has a few besides French.
    • Oddly enough, one of these, after being hit by Jarate, is the Spy saying "Mon dieu!" which in the French dub is replaced by the English "My god!"
    • There's a well-known Russian idiom "Bullet is dumb"... With this in mind, Heavy's trademark line gets a lot deeper meaning:

"I've yet to meet one that can outsmart bullet!"

  • Bizarrchitecture: Who builds two opposing forts in the same building? There's an All There in the Manual explanation in the Backstory related here. Short explanation: RED and BLU were originally formed by two feuding brothers that were each willed the same land by their father. This practice is Lampshaded in Valve's description of the map Double Cross: "Secret bases concealed behind the unassuming façades of a factory and a farm built next door to each other fool absolutely no one in the area, who sometimes gather around to 'watch all them mercenaries fight over that spy base'." This is actually one of the main reasons Valve went with the cartoony, no-plot style over the previous realistic military style. Take a look at the intelligence room on 2fort sometime. Notice anything? How about the extension cord that goes across the room and plugs into the other wall?
  • Blatant Item Placement
  • Blatant Lies: One of the random bot names is "Totally Not A Bot". Convincing.
    • As well as a Shout-Out to the popular use of sprays utilizing variations on "I Am Totally Not A Spy".
    • A patch note in December simply read "Updating some files, for no reason whatsoever." They actually removed Crate series 3, 4, and 5 from the Random Drop system, and added 6, 7, 8, and 9. Also, 6 is a Festive Winter Crate.
  • Blood Splattered Warrior: Due to the way the game handles blood and bullet hold sprites, they only appear on a player when they are shot by any projectile that isn't an explosive or fire-based, as well as melee attacks. It also has zero indication on actual health because a Medic could be healing that Heavy, meaning he could look like he's covered in his own blood, yet has well over his normal allotment of 300 HP.
  • Bloody Hilarious
  • Blown Across the Room:
    • What happens when players get shot with the Force-A-Nature or a Pyro's airblast.
    • Or the kickback from several other weapons, such as explosives.
    • Or pretty much everything, including the Spy's backstab under certain circumstances.
    • The Home Run Hitter Scout's taunt-kill with the Sandman bats enemies to incredible distances.
    • Any time the corpse ragdoll-izes, interesting things can happen to the player who died, depending on who's watching. Their own corpse will always look like it flies farther than it really does -- for example, a headshot may send the victim flying across the room, but everyone else will see his ragdoll fall.
  • Bond One-Liner: Characters will say something after killing another player enough times to dominate them. It's especially a Bond One Liner with the Spy.

"I never really was on your side..."

    • The Sniper's retort?

"I was never on YOUR side, either! ...wanker!"

    • There's also this:

Spy: You got blood on my suit.
Sniper: You got blood on my knife, mate.
Also has "Aww, did I get blood on your suit?"

  • Bottomless Magazines: The Heavy, Pyro, and Sniper's primary weapons don't use detachable magazines due to the way their weapons are designed (in the Sniper's case, he manually reloads his sniper rifle with every shot, as seen in Meet the Sniper). This also means that a Heavy or Pyro standing next to a dispenser can fire practically forever. Also, the four ray guns have unlimited ammo.
  • Bottomless Pits: Various maps (Lumberyard Arena, Nucleus, and Steel, for example) have pits that, while not necessarily bottomless, are nonetheless fatal to fall into. This is especially evident on Lumberyard, as you can survive much higher falls on other maps (such as Hightower), but since there is no way out of the Lumberyard canyon once you fall into it, it has a kill trigger at the bottom. Often you will see a player fall of the edge only to hug the wall and actually stop the fall just a few inches off the bottom, then die a few seconds later as they realize it's futile to hold on.
  • Bound and Gagged: The Heavy gives the Engineer an enemy Spy wrapped in ribbon in this holiday card.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: With the addition of the Mann Co. store on Sept. 30, 2010, although items can still be crafted or dropped. Needless to say, the fanbase exploded, and is still divided.
    • Also worth noting that there are still several items that cannot be obtained via the store, so that some items can still be prestigiously rare.
    • And that items obtained through the standard means (random drops or crafting) before the opening of the store are marked as valuable by having the prefix "Vintage" permanently affixed to them.
    • Sadly, the "Australian Christmas" update played this straight for the first time in Valve's history, albeit very briefly; several new weapons were only available via the Festive Crates, which could only opened by buying a $2.49 Festive Key (and even then, you had only had a small chance of getting what you wanted). Thankfully, this only lasted about a week, but it left a bad taste in a lot of players' mouths (though some took it a bit harder than they should've).
      • The Australian Christmas 2011 update took this a step further, preventing players from obtaining the new weapons for four weeks. While they could technically have been random crafted or found through Random Drop, the chances of either happening are minuscule (given that there are 100+ potential other weapons that could drop instead), so the only option was to purchase them from the store (for as much as $10 per weapon).
    • One of the games main currencies is Keys- they can only be purchased from the store, and people can and have made bulk key buys to trade for other rarer items.
  • Brick Joke: When the Jarate was first introduced as a mere April Fool's joke, part of its "advertisement" featured a soiled Spy with a word bubble reading, "I HAVE BEEN SHOWN WHO IS THE BOSS!". Months later, when the Jarate was actually implemented in the game along with context-based phrases said by the game's characters, the Spy can actually say this phrase when he is doused with it.
    • Basically, the entire Jarate thing itself, which started out as a clever joke, and then became a full-on weapon.
    • In the days leading up to the Über update doves would occasionally fly out of gibbed Medics and Scouts. Why they came from Scouts seemed kinda weird until the Über update brought the punchline at the end of "Meet the Medic".
    • The initial reason given for why Medieval Mode exists was a Hand Wave of 'The Soldier angered a magician'. Come Halloween 2011, the magician shows up as his own character who was (indirectly) responsible for the Demoman losing his eye, and is currently the Soldier's roommate.
  • Build Like an Egyptian: Egypt and Lakeside.
  • Bullet Sparks: Whenever a bullet hits anything made of metal, sparks will be emitted. Or fists--"THEY ARE MADE OF STEEL!"

C

  • CamelCase: Some words, like ÜberCharge.
  • Camera Perspective Switch: Taunting or losing a round puts the character in third-person for the duration of the taunt or Humiliation.
  • Cel Shading: Subtly, in conjunction with several other shading techniques that give the game its distinctive look.
  • Character Customization: You can customize your loadout, including a completely cosmetic hat and up to two miscellaneous items.
  • Characterization Marches On: The initial portrayal of RED and BLU as shadowy, all-powerful corporations appears to have been more or less dropped in favor of them being run by a pair of feuding brothers of questionable competence and sanity. Now RED and BLU are run by the same shadowy, all-powerful corporation.
  • Check Point: Control points on one-way Attack/Defend maps and check points on Payload maps.
  • Cherry Tapping: Using the Sniper's SMG or the Engineer or Scout's pistol on targets. Melee weapons do almost three to eight times the damage of these guns, depending on the melee weapon.
    • Ambushing and killing small groups of enemies as the Medic is especially humiliating for them.
    • The Spy's knife in non backstab situations has the worst DPS of any weapon, though usually when a Spy makes kills like this, the player has been circling around the enemy, trying to get a backstab.
    • The Scout gets the Holy Mackerel, which is a fish wrapped in newspaper, as an alternate melee weapon. It is rather humiliating for the opposing team to have people being beaten to death with a fish.
  • Circling Birdies: Over stunned players.
  • Classic Video Game "Screw You"s:
    • Bottomless Pits: Many maps, to make the Pyro's airblast a more useful tool.
    • Escort Missions: Payload maps; see below.
    • Invisible Monsters: Spies.
    • No Ontological Inertia: Lag compensation "curving" bullets around walls and into you.
      • Or having the sticky bomb that could have killed that Medic disintegrate in mid-air the instant you die.
    • One-Hit Kill: Several, including a fully-charged sniper rifle headshot, a knife backstab, all attack taunts.
    • Respawning Enemies: The attacking team always respawns faster, at least on sane servers. On attack, particularly when the capture point is set within the defender's spawn area, a wave of defender respawning can torpedo a victory.
    • Spikes of Doom: Saw blades--and if you idle there in Egypt while a point is captured, the spawn room.
    • Tele Frag: An Engineer's worst nightmare when trying to fix a teleporter. Enemy Spies can use the teleporter and telefrag the Engineer, who might be crouching over the exit. Of course, anyone who's experienced knows better than to stand on teleporter exits.
    • Timed Missions: Every official map except the Payload Race and Arena ones (and arguably King of the Hill, whose timers don't start until someone has captured the control point), especially the attack/defend-based ones, where RED's entire strategy is to stall until the timer runs out.
    • Turns Red: Medic and anyone else with an ÜberCharge (substitute BLU if needed). To a lesser degree, Soldier's backpack buffers, Frontier Justice Engineers, Soda Popper Scouts, and Phlogistinator Pyros.
  • Color-Coded Armies
  • Color-Coded Multiplayer
  • Color Contrast: Red and blue, for both the teams and maps. The comics mix it up with purple for the Administrator.
  • Colorful Theme Naming: RED and BLU, obviously. Their original founders (as revealed on a hidden page on the official website) are two twin brothers named Redmond and Blutarch respectively.
  • Combat and Support: Generally
  • Combat Medic: The Medic can be played like this, occasionally to the detriment of the team since he's mainly a support class. There are actually "battle medics" who only heal after they've killed everything they possibly can, disregarding the combat classes around them who do the killing far better. "Stop Having Fun!" Guys are liable to call any Medic who so much as uses their weapons once "Battle Medic."
  • Comically Missing the Point: The Pyro is happy to receive coal.
  • Common Character Classes:
    • Warriors: Soldier (long range), Pyro (short range)
    • Rogues: Scout (speed), Spy (stealth)
    • Ranger: Sniper
    • Support: Medic (healer), Engineer (dispensers heal, teleporters move teammates quickly)
    • Nuker: Heavy Weapons Guy (rapid fire), Demoman (area damage), Engineer (sentry gun defends fixed position)
  • Commonplace Rare: Hats. Some are rarer than others, but any hat is worth at least a week or two of dropped weapons. Hats include such things as wearable Blueprints (which the Engineer pulls out every time he builds something anyway), cheap plastic batting helmets, cheap plastic batting helmets with soda cans attached to them, and the ability to remove default hats.
  • Competitive Balance:
    • Fragile Speedster: The Scout is a classic one.
      • The Heavy has the 'Gloves of Running Urgently' which allow him to run at normal speed, at the cost of a constant drain on his health while they're active.
    • Jack of All Stats: The Soldier, with his somewhat above-average damage and health, somewhat below-average mobility, and his rather average effective range. His only real special ability is the Rocket Jump, which trades his health in for more speed, which the Demoman can do better, but with more self-damage.
    • Mighty Glacier: The Heavy. Ridiculously high damage output and health, limited by his snail-like speed.
      • Emphasized by the Brass Beast, a minigun which does more damage, but reduces Heavy's movement speed while firing to a painfully sluggish pace.
    • Glass Cannon: The Sniper and the Spy, being able to kill in one shot, but have the lowest HP value in the game (125, same as the Engineer and the Scout). Up close, the low-health Scout can kill in 2 hits, and now with the Sandman health penalty he's more breakable than ever.
      • The Equalizer, an unlockable melee weapon for the Soldier, hits harder and boosts his speed the less health he has. Some players deliberately injure themselves before going out in order to play as Glass Cannons or even One Hit Point Wonders. It also makes a wonderful escape tool for the more defensively-minded Soldiers.
      • Crit-a-cola allows Scouts to give out minicrits for six seconds, but also takes them as well.
    • Stone Wall: An Engineer's regular Sentry. A fully-upgraded sentry gun is a key factor in defense, and can kill any class that stays within range for more than a few seconds. However, in position, it can't move (for obvious reasons), and if an Engineer decides to move it around, it takes time to set up, the Engineer can be killed while carrying it, and is massively vulnerable during the set-up phase. In addition, a good Scout can bypass a turret completely. Taken further if the Engineer has a Wrangler, which turns the game into a sort of turret defense game.
    • Squishy Wizard: The Engineer again. He's basically a Scout without the mobility and double jump, but he can heal teammates, refill their ammunition, build teleporters, and create a powerful but immobile sentry gun.
      • The Medic also has less-than-effective weapons, but he is one of the most important classes thanks to his healing and ÜberCharge.
    • Lightning Bruiser: Expert Demoman players invoke this. Normally, he has below average speed, but skilled players can use the sticky launcher to rapidly move around the map. Combining this with his powerful pipe bombs and area controlling stickies makes him a force to be reckoned with. The Eyelander with full buffs quite literally turns him into this trope. The weakness they have to compensate is that they have no hit scan weapons.
      • And with Australian Christmas update, it's the Heavy with Steak and G.R.U., able to chase down any class except Scout.
      • And Pyros tend to be this when they're good and Leeroy Jenkins when they're bad.
      • Gunslinger engineers as well. Their extra hp, mini-sentry, and alternative shotguns give them high survivability and damage output for a 100%-speed class.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Averted. The AI player bots in offline practice modes (and may also be in some servers) are based on the Left 4 Dead bots and cannot see or do anything a human player couldn't. An update even went so far as to give each bot a "virtual mousepad" (complete with delays for re-centering their "virtual mouse" on it) in order to give them imperfect aim and avoid lock-ons.
    • Although the 'death stare' they give to uncloaked, disguised spies (even with your own side's disguises) before firing is a tell-tale sign that they're only being held back by some fairly visible programming. The Snipers on hard are also difficult to beat.
  • The Computer Shall Taunt You: The bots tend to do this. This can be prevented by typing "tf_bot_taunt_victim_chance 0" in the console (now that it's no longer a cheat as of the Über Update).
  • Concealment Equals Cover: Buildings (map architecture) are very hardy. So are Dispensers, since they are impervious to Sentry fire.
  • Concept Art Gallery: Valve added an art gallery to the Team Fortress 2 blog when it had its makeover.
  • Confusion Fu
    • The Spy can pretend to be other classes, of both his team and of his enemies, forcing the enemy team to waste ammo on anybody and being paranoid about everybody. They can also use the Dead Ringer to drop fake body when hit, making it hard to tell if you killed the Spy or he is invisible and about to backstab you.
    • The Scout can double jump. This doesn't sound impressive, but a good Scout is a nightmare to deal with, being able to change direction while in the air and be impossible to hit, or SEE.
    • An increasingly common tactic with the Engineer is to put his mini-sentries in random places that make no sense outside of how unexpected they are, and then put up a new one in a different location as soon as the old one is destroyed.
  • Construct Additional Pylons: The more Dispensers around an Engineer the faster they get metal to build with.
  • Controllable Helplessness: During Humiliation, one team is almost completely defenseless and slowed down, fleeing from the other team, who are faster and crit-boosted. During a Stalemate, both teams are reduced to running around looking embarrassed or cowering.
  • Cooldown: Some weapons have a cooldown period after use before they can be activated again.
  • Cool Train: Lil' Chew Chew, the Payload in Frontier.
  • Cosmetically Different Sides: RED and BLU, obviously. RED is the "canon" side; all the Meet the Team videos are of the boys in red, and loadouts default to RED.
  • Cosmetic Award: The hats, although since each of them is part of the drops, they only really reward you for playing enough to get one by luck.
    • The Polycount update introduced item sets that gave bonuses if all items were equipped, with the first batch including a hat in each set. Future sets didn't include bonuses, as this was widely seen as Bribing Your Way to Victory by the fanbase.
    • Achievements, though they also guarantee you some of the randomly dropping extra weapons when you get enough of them.
  • Coup De Grace/Cool and Unusual Punishment: When one team wins a round, the game pulls players on the losing team into third person to play a character who now runs about with their arms in the air and either poses disappointedly or cowers shamefully while the winning team hunts them down with increased speed and unlimited Critical Hits.
    • On the other hand, the Pyro gets a killer Come at Me Bro pimp stance.
  • Crate Expectations: Mann Co. Supply crates.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Going in hand with the Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors nature of the game, every class is overspecialized to a degree. This mostly shows up as their personal combat ability, or their ability to do damage at certain ranges. Sometimes, creative use of weapons will overcome this. Ultimately the extent to which any class is crippled by their specialization is, though, also a function of the player, the weapon loadout, and the combat situation -- but content updates have introduced new equipment to help mitigate these problems in some classes. However, several weapons fall prey to this, so players may end up cursing their loadout choices. A few examples:
    • The Pyro's Axtinguisher and Flare Gun are practically useless against other Pyros or when forced to fight underwater. In general, Pyros suffer in any area with water nearby, as the enemy can jump in there to douse the flames.
    • The Razorback for the Sniper has exactly one purpose: preventing an easy backstab. But with it, the Sniper will only have his melee weapon to defend himself against anyone else (and a smart Spy can usually kill an unguarded Sniper with a few pistol shots).
      • Even more frustrating is that it was introduced at roughly the same time as the Ambassador, which gives the Spy the ability to Headshot. While it doesn't pack as much punch as a Sniper's Rifle, it will still kill most enemies with two shots. All it needs is the tiny crosshair centered on the victim's head. Given that most Snipers would be camping in a spot most other classes won't visit anyways and their eyes are always in the scope, the shot isn't hard.
    • The Demoknight (officially known as the "Close-Combat Kit") loadout, which gives up the sticky-launcher for a shield with charge attack and complements it with the more risky melee weapons. Deadly in melee, but not as mobile and weak at long range.
      • The Thousand and One Demoknight variant of this kit forgoes ranged weapons entirely, replacing the grenade launcher with a pair of wee booties that gives you better control of your charge, at the expense of having no range weapons whatsoever, and gives you a sword that doubles the regeneration on the Charge Meter while also converting all ammo boxes into health. The last one also makes it so that you are unable to refill ammo even if you had a gun. The upside is, with a good knowledge of the map, a demoknight with this kit can get around twice as fast as a scout, and one-shot a overhealed heavy with a well timed shieldbash + critical sword swing.
    • The Heavy equipped with a Tomislav can easily set up ambushes and cut other classes down, and makes a solid combo with the Gloves of Running Urgently. However, if he runs into any other Heavies equipped with other miniguns, their higher damage output is generally enough to ruin him if the Tomislav Heavy doesn't get the first shot off.
    • There's also the Medic's alternate medi guns (the Quick-Fix and Kritzkrieg), both of which grant a fairly solid alternate charge (increased healing, and guaranteed critical hits) to the standard ÜberCharge, and the former of which heals faster, but aren't nearly as good at clearing out sentry nests.
    • Most classes have at least one option to trade in their secondary weapon for an item with specific purposes. Many of these classes use their secondary weapon to complement their primary or when they run out of ammo. (For example, a Pyro uses his shotgun to finish off a fleeing burning enemy. Doing the same with a flare gun is a lot less reliable).
      • Less reliable, yet more effective: shots with the flare gun on lit targets deal full crits. It's also the only real way a Pyro has to deal with foes at a great distance. In the right hands, it's much more effective than a shotgun.
      • A better example here might be the Soldier's buff items, such as the Buff Banner. These get charged up when you deal damage and have one of several effects for your nearby teammates, such as extra crits or health regeneration. However, the Soldier has to give up his Shotgun to use it, meaning he's vulnerable to anyone who can close inside effective rocket-launcher range.
  • Critical Encumbrance Failure: Before August 13th, 2009, when carrying the Sandman, the Scout could no longer double jump.
  • Critical Existence Failure: You can sometimes be reduced to Ludicrous Gibs from burning to death or even drowning. Some servers blow you to gibs if you die by anything at all, even normal bullets.
    • The Bombnomicon Misc item intentionally invoke this, by blowing you up for dying for any reason, even falling too far.
  • Critical Hit: Tied directly into game balance, with some weapons' advantages and disadvantages relying on an ability to land a guaranteed crit, or the inability to land random crits. "Crockets" (Critical rockets) get hate especially since they can literally gib several people with a single projectile. There are also mini-crits, which deal 35% more damage for a weapon. More details on the Critical Hit page.
  • Crossover: The Heavy plays poker with Max, Strong Bad, and Tycho in Poker Night At the Inventory.
  • Cross Promotion: Valve adds numerous items (usually hats) from other Steam games and vice versa. The Vocal Minority is not happy about this.
  • Crouch and Prone: Crouching slows you down but grants more cover, and by crouching during a jump, you can reach higher places than with just a regular jump.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Almost every class has several lines, but the Soldier's are the most notable.

I am going to claw down your very throat and tear out your very soul!
I am going to strangle you with your own frilly training bra!
Son, you are writing checks your butt will find uncashable! Are you hearing me? Your backside will be escorted from the bank! You will find this humiliating!
My foot will transform into a foot with your ass wrapped around it.

  • Cyanide Pill: Typing "kill" or "explode" into the console (or binding this command to a button) will kill you. This is actually useful in the event you get stuck somewhere. Or for taunting the enemy, especially if said enemy is using the Half-Zatoichi. No full heal for you!

D

  • Dagwood Sandvich: The Medic gives the Heavy one in this holiday card.
  • Damage Discrimination:
    • Friendly fire is off by default. This is for the better because the most effective way to Spy-check is by shooting the suspicious player.
    • Soldier and Demomen projectiles hurt/fling the launcher and enemies but not allies. This also applies in a unique way to the Engineer: his sentry rockets and bullets damage him, though Engineers on the same team are safe. Spies can exploit this, although it's risky.
  • Damage Over Time: The hallmark ability of the Pyro class is the ability to set opponents on fire with their flamethrower. Some melee weapons can inflict a "bleeding" status that also causes damage over time.
  • Davy Crockett: He's possibly the first BLU Sniper.
  • Dead Character Walking: If your character's corpse is still there after you respawn, which tends to happen on instant respawn servers, it can produce weird effects. If your character talks, so does their corpse. C'mere, cupcake...
  • Death by Falling Over: Hitting someone with a weapon that has knockback can push the enemy into an environmental hazard. The Scout and Demoman get an achievement for doing this, while the Medic has one for preventing a death by falling too far.
  • Death From Above: Having the higher ground affords a tactical advantage to pretty much all of the classes, but the Soldier in particular earns an achievement called "Death From Above" by killing enough enemies in that fashion.
  • Death Is Not Permanent: After dying in non-Arena maps, you wait until a running timer respawns you and your teammates into your base.
    • Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Some servers use plug-ins which eliminate this timer entirely. It plays hell with balance on most maps, and sometimes even prevents a player from knowing who killed him (especially if the killing shot was a long-range one). Naturally, said plugin has a Broken Base, especially since some control point maps have the balance backwards, i.e. it takes longer for a winning team to respawn, to give the losing team a chance to recapture the lost control point.
  • Deflector Shields: The Medic can bathe both himself and a teammate in a glowing, indestructible shell for up to 8 seconds.
    • The Scout can drink a Bonk drink for a similar effect, but can't fire his weapons while it lasts.
    • The Engineer's Wrangler, in addition to letting him control his Sentry gun, projects one of these around it.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Most noticeably toward the Irish.

Gentle Manne of Leisure: Ah-ha-ha! You are as PRESUMPTUOUS as you are POOR and IRISH. Tarnish notte the majesty of my TOWER of HATS.


Pomson 6000 description: Being an innovative hand-held irradiating utensil capable of producing rapid pulses of high-amplitude radiation in sufficient quantity as to immolate, maim and otherwise incapacitate the Irish.

  • Demonic Possession: The Demoman has an affinity for haunted items. First, there was the Eyelander (and its later re-skin, the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker), a haunted claymore that had a thirst for decapitated heads. Then, come the 2011 Halloween Update, it was revealed that the reason he lost his eye as a child was due to a book called the Bombinomicon, whose spirit possessed his left eye before being expelled by Merasmus the Magician. It later became the boss of Eyeaduct.
  • Denser and Wackier
  • Department of Redundancy Department:
    • There are hats called the "Vintage Merryweather" and the "Vintage Tyrolean". Therefore it is possible to have a "Vintage Vintage Merryweather" or "Vintage Vintage Tyrolean". Michael Cole would be proud.
    • There's also the Professor Speks, which layer over the Medic's and Snipers' glasses.
    • The item type of the Medic- and Spy-only Dr. Whoa (a bow tie and dress shirt combo) was "Wearable Shirt" before a patch in February 2012 changed it to just "Shirt".
    • The "Scream Fortress Very Scary Halloween Special" implies that the update is a Halloween special of a Halloween special to emphasize just how scary the update is.
  • Descending Ceiling: Rather than handling the case of players standing in a spawnpoint suddenly invalidated by a point capture by teleporting them to the new spawn instead, Egypt takes the approach of slowly re-closing all the doors to the spawn and crushing the player to death.
  • Didn't Think This Through: The Manniversary update made it so that items in the store could be traded and crafted. This change was zapped after less than a single day when people flooded the stores to buy dozens of the really cheap hats to craft together in the hopes of getting the rare and prestigious hats. Now store-bought items can only be traded.
    • Which led to a second instance of this trope, where people in the trading market would often scam others by selling a supposedly craftable hat at full price only for the buyer to find out it wasn't craftable... after the trade was over and the seller left. Valve also fixed this in short order.
  • Dieselpunk/Raygun Gothic: The game's setting is a mishmash of these two styles.
  • Difficult but Awesome: See the cast page for specific class-flavored awesome, but here's one just about any class can do: circle-strafing a sentry faster than it can turn around and meleeing it to death. Works best with Pyros and Scouts, especially since those two classes often have difficulty taking out sentries.
  • Diminishing Returns for Balance: As this blog entry notes, when one team is mostly Snipers and Spies, then they're probably not going to last long.
    • Inversely, an overabundance of Engineers on one side or the other can cause the game to grind to a stalemated halt.
  • Distinctive Appearances
  • Distracted by the Sexy: And promptly backstabbed.
  • Ditzy Genius: Prolonged exposure to Australium has this effect on people. Radigan Conagher, after working with Australium for years, became intelligent enough to make a fully functional prosthetic limb, and dumb enough to saw his hand off to be able to use it, and Australia, the main source of this metal, is the most advanced country in the entire world, yet they elect their king by kangaroo boxing.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • "EAT IT, FATTY!"
    • "GET BEHIND ME, DOCTOR!"
    • The variations of "get on the point!"
    • The Administrator also sounds more...animated than usual on the Payload maps. (See Evil Laugh.)
    • "I AM COMING FOR YOU!!"
    • "Take it like a man, shorty!"
    • "Oh dere's my ball" and "I love my ball."
    • "Now, Doctor, now."
  • Do Not Drop Your Weapon: You cannot drop your weapon unless you die, with the exception of being able to drop a Sandvich with the Heavy.
    • And anything you THROW at enemies. (Jarate, Mad Milk)
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: The Heavy while spinning his barrels and the Sniper while zoomed in or with a readied arrow.
  • Doomsday Device: At least two in the form of the Ray Gun on Gravelpit and the... whatever it is on Nucleus. Also, the big-ass missiles on Granary, Goldrush, etc.
    • To a lesser extent, the eponymous Payload in, uh, Payload mode.
  • Double Agent: Spies can disguise as spies of the opposite side. As of the Spy/Sniper update, Spies disguised as enemy spies get a random disguise to complete the illusion. You might see enemy spies disguised as friendly spies disguised as enemy spies. You can also disguise as your own team. And then there's the Dead Ringer's corpse generation.
    • With some luck, you can disguise as enemy spy disguised as yourself.
  • Double Jump: The Scout's standard movement.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: Many achievements require you to accomplish them in one life or one round, which resets at the end of the round even if your team won, making it occasionally just as hard to get these achievements with a great team as with a bad one. The possibility of stalemates adds another obstacle in these cases.
  • Dronejam: Players can walk through teammates, but not through enemies - valuable for detecting cloaked or disguised Spies.
    • Engineers also can't pass through their own buildings, making it possible for Engineers to reach areas they otherwise wouldn't have access to. Enemy players can't pass through an Engineer's buildings, either; it's common for Engineers to put buildings in tight corridors and doorways to block the enemy from passing through unnoticed.
  • Drop-In Drop-Out Multiplayer: Players can normally come and go as they please. Some servers even replace absent human players with bots.
  • Dummied Out: Here.
  • Dwindling Party: Arena mode, since no one respawns after death.

E

  • Eagle Land: The aesthetic design of the game, which according to Valve is inspired by artists such as J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell, recalls the Type One variation of America. The setting of the game itself is considerably less innocuous however, and the American characters themselves occupy various positions along the spectrum. The Engineer leans closer to Type One, while the Scout and especially the Soldier behave like Type Two.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: Some players don't even remember Territory Control as a game mode, or its map, tc_hydro. Modes added later like Payload and King of the Hill are considered more iconic of the game.
  • Elaborate Equals Effective: The Engineer's Sentry Gun and Dispenser are the most obvious, and all of the pick-upable and craftable weapons are more decorative than usual.
  • Emote Command: Some voice commands have the player say something and accompany it with a gesture.
  • Enemy Scan: Spies and Medics with a Solemn Vow can see the names and health of enemies.
  • Entitled Bastard: Being a multi-player game, there's lots of this. Playing as a Medic means dealing with these people, since there are a lot of people who will always blame you for being killed (even if a Sniper or Spy killed you in one hit; meaning there was nothing you could have done), even if you're on the other side of the map. They may often run right into a place guarded by a couple Pyros and Demomen waiting for a Leeroy Jenkins. And don't expect any actual thanks from them outside of the avatar saying something like "Thank you doctor". And likewise, expect Medics to often yell at you for them to help them when they're going right into danger.
  • Epic Fail: Upon losing in Arena without killing a single opponent, the Administrator berates your team:

"Humiliating defeat!"
"Next time, try killing one of them."
"You didn't kill any of them!"

  • Escalating War: The Sniper and the Spy engaged in this during their combined update--neither wanted to share the spotlight. Later: the Soldier/Demoman war.
  • Escape From the Crazy Place:/Escape Sequence: Post-round Humiliation consists of the losing team, slowed down, trying to avoid getting killed with no defense except their taunt kills, if any. The winning team gets added running speed and 100% criticals.
  • Escort Mission: Essentially what Payload and Payload Race are; you've got to push the Bomb Cart to the end of the track. The defending team has to stop it from happening and are given extra time to set up, like in Attack/Defend Maps. The cart acts as a dispenser for whoever's pushing it, refilling health and ammo, and there's no way to destroy it (it can be moved backwards after some time, though). In races, both teams play both roles; you have to stop the enemy Cart while moving your own along, effectively splitting your forces until the Carts inevitably meet somewhere on the track. It's managed to avoid the usual negative backlash of escort missions, probably because the thing being escorted can't be "killed" and actually heals you while you escort it.
    • Doesn't hurt that it can't run off the track and you always have some idea of where it is at any given time.
      • Although, there are rare moments where it can run off the track, but they all seem to be related to server mods having unintended side effects rather than anything in the vanilla game.
    • If you volunteer to "Coach" new players, when one needs help you'll be invited to their game to give them advice. While you do this, you're in spectator mode, but the player you are coaching is highlighted in a aura that indicates his health. You can point them to targets to attack, places to defend, and places to go.
  • Every Bullet Is a Tracer: With the exception of the sniper rifles (not counting the Machina), every bullet is visible.
  • Everything Fades: Eventually, corpses disappear from the field. If a player dies while on fire, the corpse is extinguished a few seconds before it disappears.
  • Everything's Better with Plushies: Even stickybombs!
  • Everything's Better with Samurai: The Soldier's Killer's Kabuto and, of course, the Shogun Pack.
    • Now the Demoman joins in the weeb fun, with some community made cosmetics, like the Bushi-Dou and Sangu Sleeves, and some of his weapons, like the Half-Zatoichi (which he shades with Soldier).
  • Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: The Demoman's theme, Drunken Pipe Bomb, uses the bagpipes. Also, the end of Meet The Demoman has the TF2 ending riff played on bagpipes.
    • In DeGroot Keep, bagpipes also play in the background whenever the castle door opens; that is when points A and B are captured, and when the castle is successfully defended.
      • The music is the Day of Defeat (a Half Life mod) anthem used when a round is won by the British team.
  • Everything's Worse with Bears: Heavy will kill you with his bear hands. [dead link]
  • Evil Laugh: Kill enough people and your character will begin to snigger, chuckle, guffaw and snort hysterically in some truly hilarious ways. But perhaps the best example is what the Administrator sometimes does if the Payload nears the Final Terminus.
    • The Heavy's is the most common laugh heard, obtained if you slay enough people while keeping your minigun sped up.
    • The Engineer has an evil laugh as a taunt if he's holding his melee weapon, though now all classes can have one with the addition of the Schadenfreude taunt.
  • Evil Knockoff/Robot Me: The Machines are all robotic and evil versions of the mercenaries.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Two teams of ruthless, bloodthirsty mercenaries gleefully blasting the shit out of each other, with only the flimsiest justification.
  • Extreme Omnivore: Taunting with the Frying Pan or Conscientious Objector causes a Demoman to drink from it. ... Maybe he's just that drunk.

F

  • Face Palm:
    • If undisguised, the Spy on a losing team can be seen face palming if he is still alive during Humiliation.
    • The Sniper does the hat version in his "Meet the Sniper" video when he's trying to talk to his father on the phone.
    • In "A Smissmas Story", the Soldier and Spy are the Scout's legal counsel during a trial after the three of them blew up a Mall Santa training facility. When the Soldier confirms the Scout's ridiculous testimony, the Spy facepalms and rests his head against the desk.
  • Faking the Dead: The Spy's "Dead Ringer" causes him to automatically cloak and drop a fake corpse (complete with fake kill message, fake domination message, and real achievements being handed out under the right circumstances) whenever he has it out and has a full cloak bar.
  • Fictional Holiday: Australian Christmas/Smissmas. Every December the 17th, children in Australia make weapons and hats for Old Nick, a crotchety old man who lives at the South Pole. After receiving all of his gifts, Old Nick realizes he received many duplicates of gifts, so he sells them off for incredibly low prices.
  • Final Death: In Arena, there's no respawning.
  • Finger-Poke of Doom: The killtaunts available to the updated classes. They take several seconds to execute (with only a small timeframe being lethal in a rather specific fashion). They are also the only way to damage opponents during humiliation or stalemate.
    • Almost literally with the case of the Heavy, who can kill enemies several feet away by pointing at them.
  • Finger Framing: The Director's Vision taunt.
  • Fingerless Gloves: Worn by the Heavy and the Sniper.
  • Firing One-Handed: The Spy's Revolver. The Engineer also holds his pistol one-handed, but the Scout (who wields an identical pistol, albeit with less ammo in reserve) uses two.
  • First-Person Snapshooter: You can take screenshots and replays at the press of a button. There are a few achievements released during the Replay Update that requires fiddling with the replay and getting a number of views on YouTube.
  • First Person Ghost
  • Flawless Victory: Said by the Administrator in Arena.
  • Foiler Footage: When hats were first announced, people revealed what each class's hat was planned to be by reading the game's string asset files (files which contain every phrase and term used in the game, so that different files can be used for different languages). Valve responded by filling the files with false positives in the future, such as strings for TF2's planned MMORPG functionality and a boomerang for the Sniper (instead of the Jarate that was actually revealed).
    • Not only do the localization files include MMO strings, the game's event system (as exposed to server mode) lists "raid_spawn_mob" and "raid_spawn_squad" events.
  • Foreshadowing: Shortly before the official lead-in to the War Update, a minor bugfix update introduced sounds that would only be heard by Soldiers and Demomen. The next day, a comic (featuring an Administrator similar in appearance to the woman in this image) was posted revealing that the Demoman and the Soldier had become friends. The day after that, the next update was announced, with kills between Soldiers and Demomen determining who would receive the last weapon.
  • Forever War: Over some worthless pieces of land.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt: While recovering from a rocket jumping accident that took both his legs, he perfected Lincoln's plans for stairs, freeing people from the tyranny of the second floor.
  • Freemium: Team Fortress 2 became free to play in summer 2011. Players with free accounts get to store up to 50 items in their backpack, receive items rather than being able to trade or gift, have limited crafting blueprints, and can't get rare or cosmetic items. Otherwise, they can get all of the regular weapons, and all game modes and maps are available to both free and premium accounts. The only requirement to get a premium account is to buy any item from the in-game store. The only difference between a premium account gained from buying the game itself as opposed to something from the in-game store is a Proof of Purchase hat.
  • Friendly Enemy: The BLU Soldier and the RED Demoman right before the WAR! update.
  • Friendly Fireproof: It's impossible to harm a teammate with a player's own weapons in normal gameplay, though some weapons can hurt the user (explosives, sentry guns). The easiest way to spot an enemy Spy is to just shoot everyone once or twice.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: The Pyro. When the game was first released, he was easily one of most useless classes in the game. Several updates over several years later, he's now one of the most dangerous classes of all.
    • Heavy used to be an easy and sometimes predictable target without a Medic, but with the introduction of the Sandvich to completely heal himself, the KGB to give him chains of crits, and the Tomislav to quietly ambush people, he became a force to be reckoned with.
  • Full Set Bonus: Each class has various item sets, made up of (usually) one primary, one secondary, one melee, and one hat. By equipping all four, an additional bonus is granted (extra health, resistance to fire, etc.). Spies and Pyros also get a slight downside tacked on (extra damage from bullets for Pyro, longer cloak activation for Spy). Not all sets grant a bonus, however. Many of the sets are controversial due to requiring hats.
  • Fu Manchu: He might have been the first BLU Spy.
  • Funny Background Event: Double Cross boasts the same alert panel as the one seen in Meet the Spy, and parts of it light up when the Intel is taken. Thunder Mountain also has a couple of interesting Easter Eggs:
    • Behind the glass of the BLU Spawn in the first stage is a reproduction of the Training Stage, and several BLUs are standing in front of it doing random idle animations (including the Thriller dance).
    • The RED Spawn in the second stage is overlooking a swimming pool, and REDs can be seen swimming and otherwise chilling out.
    • A Sniper is camping on the third stage.
  • Fun with Acronyms:
    • The team names (Reliable Excavation Demolition and Builders League United), in the vein of classic 60's fictional espionage organizations. In-universe, the team names are backronyms, as RED and BLU are named after brothers Redmond and Blutarch, respectively.
    • The Killing Gloves of Boxing, used by the Soviet Russian Heavy Weapons Guy.
    • And the community-made joke weapon, the Tricycle of Astoundingly Nimble Knees.
    • And the Gloves of Running Urgently, beta tested but never added to the official game until Sept. 30, 2010.
    • In Medieval mode, the parser turns "afk" (away from keyboard) into "away, fighting kobolds", "away, fruity knights", "aft, frisking knickers", or "abaft, flailing knouts".

G

  • Game Mod: Several custom gametypes have come up, such as "Prop Hunt", where one team is disguised as random props and the other hunts them down before time runs out; and "Dodgeball", where two teams of Pyros use the air compressors in their flamethrowers to reflect critical heatseeking rockets launched by the environment toward the enemy.
    • Custom content (mostly Models and Avatars) can be submitted to this site, and if Valve likes it enough, it'll be implemented IN-GAME.
    • There's also a game mod that chooses your class and weapons after you die... And the weapons are from other classes, Hilarity Ensues as The Scout uses the Pyro's flamethrower on a Medic with a Soldier's bazooka, among other things, this type of mod is called "Randomizer".
    • There are also mods that change the rules around a bit, like Sudden Death only with melee weapons (which is now implemented into the game) or restricting how many of each class can play on the same team at once (typically to prevent Sniper Wars or turtling with Engineers)
      • Class Restriction is also put into place to prevent spamming of any one class. On Medieval mode, this is critical as most medieval maps devolve into "which team has the most Demomen".
        • Then there are games set to "Highlander mode", in which there can only be 18 players, one of each class. The remaining can only be spectators, or the server will be set to allow only 18 players.
    • Another mod that is gaining in popularity is "hardcore mode", in which crits are completely disabled. This usually means no one hit kills and that a game round would last significantly longer.
    • Also present are mods that disable the respawn delay completely or reverses it, so that the losing team spawn faster. And yes, games on these servers usually ends in a stalemate.
    • Not to mention tons of character model replacements, including various attempts at nude mods, Gender Swap mods, anime mods and more...
    • Vs. Saxton Hale is gaining popularity. As implied, one team tries to kill Saxton Hale (or occasionally Christian Brutal Sniper, Vagineer, Painis Cupcake, and, in two unofficial variations, Cave Johnson (with a box of lemons!) or Captain Falcon[1]).
      • As of September 2011, not only is the entire circus of TF2 Freaks already made into variants of the mod, There are variations of the mod for almost every single fictional character under the sun, ranging from the "mane 6" My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic characters[2][3] to Charmander[4] and The Joker[5]. Even non-fictional personas like Valve CEO Gabe Newell and celebrity Marilyn Manson were not spared!
  • George Washington: He invented America, but his greatest failure was his inability to be permanently invisible. (That's where the Cloak and Dagger come in.)
  • Giant Eye of Doom: During the 2011 Halloween Update, the MONOCULUS! appeared in a new version of the Viaduct map. He's extremely powerful (like the Horsemann), and hovers and teleports around the map while shooting critical eye-rockets. If players manage to defeat him, they'll score an achievement and a free mask based on it. If they go the extra mile, they can also receive a cursed book, the Bombinomicon, to wear.
  • Girls with Moustaches: It's the norm in Australia, due to Australium.
  • Goomba Stomp: The Soldier's Mantreads allow players to take the fall damage that they would normally take, triple it, and apply it to the guy you land on; the higher you fall, the more damage you deal, often enough to one-shot most classes in the game. Of course, managing to actually land on someone is a feat in and of itself, especially while rocket jumping.
    • Some servers have a mod that enables Goomba stomps for everybody, being an instant-kill no matter how you land on someone.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck: Given the game's rating and tone, the characters generally swear less than you'd expect them to, although they all tend to get less-than-professional in their domination lines.
  • Gotta Kill Them All: Pretty much the main objective of Arena mode.
  • Grand Theft Me: While not literal, Your Eternal Reward specifically takes away a Spy's normal disguise kit, but whenever he backstabs an enemy, he immediately takes on that enemy's class and name as a disguise. As the enemy is silently killed and the body disappears almost immediately, unobservant foes won't notice that their friend is now playing for the other team. That said, you can still use voice-chat to announce that a spy had stolen your identity to your team and hope that they can hear you.
  • Green Rocks: Australium.
  • Guide Dang It: There is no manual. You learn to play by watching others play (the game is coded to show you other players of your class on your team when you die), or by reading the Wiki.
    • As of the Mac Update, TF2 now comes with a basic training mode. It includes a simple shooting gallery to teach players how to use and switch between weapons, and a help-guide-filled battle with AI bots to bring newbies up to speed on the core gameplay elements. Currently, training is provided for Soldiers, Demomen, Engineers, and Spies.
    • They also added a Coach mode, where you get paired with someone and they help you out, enforcing the "other players as guides" aspect further. To prevent abuse, players upgrading to premium can give their preferred mentor a Nice Hat.
      • As with time goes on, Valve abandoned updating the Coach mode.
    • Tips on how to play are given out during the loading screen.
  • Guns Are Worthless: Valve has buffed melee weapons so they have a much higher chance of crits, so players would actually use them rather than guns all the time.
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