Characters / Overwatch Damage Part 2

Overwatch | Main Index
HEROES
Tank Heroes
Individual Pages: D.Va | Reinhardt | Roadhog
Damage Heroes: (Part 1 | Part 2)
Individual Pages: Junkrat | Reaper | Sombra | Tracer | Widowmaker
Support Heroes
OTHERS
Non-Playable Characters | Organizations | Junkenstein's Revenge

---

Hanzo - Japan

Hanzo Shimada

^{Click here for his Overwatch 1 appearance}

"Honor is all I have left."

Species: Human
Age: 38 (1), 40 (2)
Birthday: November 3rd
Occupation: Mercenary, Assassin
Base of Operations: Hanamura, Japan (formerly)
Affiliation: Shimada Clan (formerly)
Appearances (shorts): Dragons (focus)
Appearances (comics): "Reflections" (cameo)

"With every death comes honor. With honor, redemption."

Voiced by: Paul Nakauchi (English)^note Other Languages: Dan Osorio (Latin American Spanish), Miguel Ángel Montero (European Spanish), Shuhei Sakaguchi (Japanese), Lionel Tua (French), Reginaldo Primo (Brazilian Portuguese), Lorenzo Scattorin (Italian), Bernd Vollbrecht (German), Hanshin (Korean), Kang Dian-Hong (Taiwanese Chinese), Liú Běichén (Mandarin Chinese), Krzysztof Cybiński (Polish), Ilya Isaev (Russian)

The Shimada family was established centuries ago, a clan of assassins whose power grew over the years, enabling them to build a vast criminal empire that profited from lucrative trade in arms and illegal substances. As the eldest son of the family's head, Hanzo was bound by duty to succeed his father and rule the Shimada empire. From a young age, he was trained for that responsibility, displaying a natural aptitude for leadership and possessing an innate understanding of strategy and tactics. He also excelled in more practical areas: he was a prodigy in martial arts, swordplay, and bowmanship.

Upon the death of his father, the clan elders instructed Hanzo to straighten out his wayward younger brother so that he, too, might help rule the Shimada empire. When his brother refused, Hanzo was forced to kill him. This act broke Hanzo's heart and drove him to reject his father's legacy, ultimately leading him to abandon the clan and all that he had worked so hard to attain.

Now, Hanzo travels the world, perfecting his skills as a warrior, attempting to restore his honor and put the ghosts of his past to rest.

Once a year, he snuck into his old home, which now sends assassins to kill him for his desertion. His goal was mostly to honor the spirit of his brother. Until one day, he was assaulted in the same place by a mysterious Cyber Ninja that lectured him about his actions, or rather, his inaction towards the changing world. The lecture turned into a fierce battle and, to Hanzo's shock, the ninja revealed himself as Genji, saved from death by Overwatch. Genji forgives him, but Hanzo becomes furious after realizing that Genji's survival rendered the Redemption Quest to honor him meaningless, and calls Genji foolish for still believing in childish ideals from fairy tales. Even so, Genji's words left him conflicted about the future and his feelings for his brother.

Hanzo is an archer who excels at stealthily sniping down key targets and providing his team with information and area denial.

• His primary weapon is Storm Bow, a mechanical bow that fires highly damaging arrows at the cost of speed, as each shot must be nocked and charged for optimal range and damage.
• Sonic Arrow releases a sonar pulse that reveals enemies around its landing location, even through walls.
• Storm Arrows, upon activation, charges his bow, allowing him to rapidly fire 6 ricocheting arrows at full charge at the cost of some damage.
• Wall Climb is a passive lets him climb over vertical surfaces.
• Lunge allows him to leap horizontally while in mid-air.
• His ultimate is Dragonstrike, which fires an arrow that summons two massive Spirit Dragons that travel forward from his location, passing through walls and barriers and dealing massive damage to enemies in their path.
  

Previous Abilities

• Scatter Arrow burst on impact with a solid surface into multiple arrows that would ricochet off walls several times.

---

• Air-Dashing: Lunge grants him a burst of horizontal movement, letting him reach all sorts of far-off areas to flank enemies.
• Ambiguously Gay: He doesn't seem to be too into romance, but he does say a line when eliminating himself, Cassidy, and Baptiste indicating he find them attractive.
  Hanzo: Good looks are not enough.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Dragons. On a symbolic level, dragons in some Asian cultures represent prosperity, strength, and good fortune and are typically benevolent creatures, but because the dragon is the family icon of the Shimada clan's criminal empire, the Western depiction of dragons being creatures of evil applies as well.
  • His "Lone Wolf" and "Okami" skins replace it with a wolf motif instead, with wolf pelts, a changed Ultimate that replaces the Spirit Dragons with howling wolves, and his voiceover is updated from mentioning dragons to wolves. Wolves represent freedom as well as family and community, but they also symbolize a lack of trust in others and/or yourself — despite having had broken away from his family after nearly killing Genji, Hanzo still feels a lingering sense of loyalty and duty, and much of his inner conflict stems from his choice of either following in his clan's footsteps or forgiving himself and pursuing the heroic path like Genji did.
• The Atoner: He seeks to regain his honor for both killing his brother and for being a part of a criminal clan that would force him to do such a thing.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He's quite cocky and contemptuous towards his enemies, and openly gloats about his skills in combat.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: His outfit is based on feudal Japanese ninja clothing with modern touches such as futuristic boots and a waist pack. Doesn't stop it from looking awesome.
• Badass Boast: Gives one to Genji in Dragons, mistaking him for an assassin:
  Hanzo: You are not the first assassin sent to kill me. And you will not be the last.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He gets a mildly futuristic, yet awesome suit for his classy, Yakuza-inspired "Scion" skin.
• Balance Buff: Hanzo was first shipped with a Scatter Arrow rather than his current Storm Arrows, which let him fire a Multishot of arrows that would ricochet off into multiple directions at full damage. While Hanzo has always been meant to be played as a somewhat mobile, high-pressure mid-ranged sniper, Scatter Arrow was considered too unreliable for the job (and really easy to cheese with — firing a Scatter Arrow at an opponent's feet usually meant they'd explode point blank under them), and the ability replaced in 2018 with the more skill-dependent, but consistently dangerous Storm Arrows. He also didn't originally have Lunge, which was given to him in the same patch to boost his mobility options (in particular his escapes for if enemies tried to dive him).
• Beard of Sorrow: The mustache and small beard he has now? He didn't start growing it until after he was forced to kill his younger brother Genji.
• Becoming the Costume:
  • Hanzo's "Okami" and "Lone Wolf" skins change a large number of lines, replacing his dragon motif with a wolf one. For example, when launching his Sonic Arrow, instead of saying "Marked by the dragon," he'll say "The wolf marks its prey." His Ultimate line changes from "Ryū ga waga teki o kurau!"^*"Let the dragon consume you!" to "Ōkami yo, waga teki o kurae!"^*"The wolf hunts for his prey!" Additionally, the projectile itself becomes two wolves instead of dragons, the roar sounds become howling, and if it gets any kills, Hanzo says "The wolf is sated," instead of "The dragon is sated."
  • Originally in the game's beta, his "Young Hanzo" and "Young Master" skins had a different recording of his ultimate callout, one sounding appropriately younger-sounding (likely changed for clarity reasons).
  • His "Onryō" skin reimagines Hanzo as a Vengeful Ghost, giving him much more villainous and fury-driven dialogue based on his desire to slay the mortals that wronged him, including changing his ultimate callout to "Let vengeance consume you!"
• Berserk Button: Genji. As if being forced to kill him wasn't enough to leave Hanzo a remorseful wreck, he now finds out that his brother is alive and well and is willing to forgive him for an act that caused him to abandon his family and spend his entire life on an ultimately-pointless redemption quest for something he began to view as irredeemable. Mentioning Genji or bringing up the fact that the two are similar will result in Hanzo furiously and spitefully denying him.
• Boring, but Practical: There are plenty of awesome and creative strategies with Hanzo's ultimate to make the most of its incredibly lethal damage. The most often effective one? Simply shooting it at your opponents' only retreat route or lead your shot to where they will instinctively retreat to when hearing your ult line. Not as flashy as the famous "Grav Dragon" combo, it's probably not going to get a single kill on its own, and you're most certainly never getting Play of the Game with this strat. But the sheer power of simply preventing your opponents from back-peddling to cover, or even splitting the team apart on opposite sides of the dragons will win more fights for your team than any other attacker ult really can. This idea can also be applied to using it to simply force people off the payload on overtime instead of get kills.
• Bottomless Magazines: While played straight in the game itself, in the animated short Dragons, he runs out of arrows during his fight with Genji and has to pick them up from where he fired them.
• Bring It: One of his taunts is a classic "Come and get me" gesture.
• Cain and Abel: After their father's death, tensions rose between him and his brother Genji until he was forced by the clan elders to kill him. Even after his brother shows up alive again, Hanzo has very conflicted feelings about him, despite Genji forgiving him.
  Genji: "It is not too late to change your course, brother."
  Hanzo: "You may call yourself my brother, but you are not the Genji I knew."
• Charged Attack: His Storm Bow is Hold-type; simply tapping the fire button fires a very weak arrow, but holding it down for full power allows it to One-Hit Kill non-tanks with a headshot.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite wearing mostly black, having an evil-looking scowl most of the time, and is not the White Sheep of his criminal empire family, he's far from evil himself, having performed a Heel–Face Turn after (almost) murdering Genji.
• Death Seeker: Implied: he tells Genji to kill him in Dragons and Genji replies that he will not grant him the death he wishes for. There's also his Halloween "R.I.P." victory pose, where unlike everybody else, who is bursting from out of their graves, Hanzo seems perfectly content staying put◊.
• Decomposite Character: He and his brother were originally one cyber ninja in concept named Hanzo, but the design was deemed too unfocused and crammed with too many ninja weapons and gimmicks. Rather than completely scrap the idea, the character was made into two brothers, with Hanzo inheriting the clothes, bow usage, and name the original character had.
• Defector from Decadence: He left his family and the criminal empire that he could have ruled, since it cost him his brother. Downplayed, as a few of his quotes imply that he regrets having left the Yakuza lifestyle.
• Difficult, but Awesome: He's rated 3 stars for a reason. He's difficult in that his arrows require draw time and are projectiles instead of hitscan-based which also avert No "Arc" in "Archery", meaning that actually hitting a target requires consistent aim and prediction, not helped by the lack of a scope making it more difficult to aim precisely. His kit is entirely based around dealing burst damage and getting picks, and if he fails to do so, he might be considered The Millstone by his team. His Dragonstrike ultimate is also difficult to use effectively, as while it has huge damage and AoE, it's a Painfully Slow Projectile that can be easily avoided through experience, meaning that you'll have to get crafty to use it properly. He's awesome in that his arrows' lack of a scope prevents him from suffering tunnel vision, he requires virtually no reloading, he has one of the only abilities in the game that can provide team-wide vision, and his potential mid-to-long-range damage output is absolutely absurd. A well-trained Hanzo can easily shut down enemy teams before they can touch the objective.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In every interaction where Genji shows Hanzo sympathy or tries to give him a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech, Hanzo lashes out and insults Genji.
• Double Jump: His Lunge ability serves as one, though unlike his brother's Double Jump, it only boosts him horizontally and requires a short cooldown before he can use it again.
• Drowning My Sorrows: The Halloween update reveals his canteen is always full of sake. And it's one of the biggest canteens among the cast members who have them. Presumably it's to dull the constant guilt and regret he feels.
• Due to the Dead: It's revealed in Dragons that every year he returns to Hanamura, his former home, to pay tribute to his dead younger brother Genji. Until he learns that Genji is not dead as previously thought.
• The Dutiful Son: While he has renounced his family ties after being forced to kill Genji, pre-match dialogue implies that he on some level regrets his decision and wants to make his family powerful again, as he seems to take interest in Junkrat's "treasure" (which Junkrat will nervously deny). Yet despite this, it is implied that he has some clear standards on how to do it, such as when he turns down Widowmaker's offer to join Talon in exchange for his family's restoration. And part of the reason why Hanzo resents Genji is because of the latter's refusal to toe the line, resulting in their fated battle and causing everything to fall apart. And now that brother is revealed to be still alive, all of that grief and the journey to atone for his sins had been completely for nothing.
• Enhanced Archaic Weapon: His bow boasts a number of Trick Arrow related abilities (such as the sonic arrow, and before it was patched out, the scatter arrow), the standard arrows have some sort of homing ability, and the bow itself is clearly made of far more advanced materials than any existing bow.
• Fatal Flaw: Hanzo refuses to forgive himself for his past actions, or allow others to forgive him. He continues to constantly beat himself, despite the fact that Genji directly forgave him for trying to kill him. He also refuses to accept Genji's forgiveness.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The dutiful, responsible older brother of the foolish, hedonistic Genji, back when both of them were living in Hanamura and their scuffle that led to Genji's cybernetic transformation didn't happen yet.
• Glass Cannon: Can deal high damage with his arrows and ultimate ability; however, he has average health and no mobility-boosting abilities other than wall-climbing and Lunge on a four-second cooldown.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: While the iconic fight scene in "Dragons" looks cool, it's hard not to notice that Hanzo doesn't put up much of a fight (if any) against Genji despite clearly not holding back (sans the fact that he wasn't using a sword, which he's much more proficient with than a bow). This carries over to the game as well; Genji (a hero whose kit is already attuned to having an easier time fighting against damage heroes than most of the cast) will generally win most duels with ease against Hanzo, as his hard-to-aim projectiles vs Genji's second-best mobility in the game is already making things one-sided. Pair that with Genji's ability to reflect every offensive option Hanzo has but his melee back at him and possibly one-shot Hanzo, and it starts to make sense why Hanzo lost as badly as he did.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In-game, Hanzo can only shoot his arrows straight, even if they will eventually fall to gravity. In the "Dragons" animated short, his arrows can make a sideways arc, shoot to the side, and the arrow takes a turn to straight in front of Hanzo.
  • A rare one that benefits the gameplay: "Dragons" shows that Hanzo has a limited number of arrows in his quiver, but in-game, he has an infinite amount.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Hanzo did not leave the life of a criminal behind, seeing as he still carries out assassinations. He did, however, leave the Shimada clan behind, and, even if he expresses regret at doing it, refuses to associate with outright villainous groups like Talon. Best exemplified bythe fact that Hanzo has two lines for fighting in Hanamura: in one of them, he sadly says that it is his home no longer, in another, that it is his birthright.
• Heroic BSoD: Upon learning in the end of Dragons that Genji is still alive (albeit as a cyborg) and has forgiven him for nearly killing him on the orders of their clan elders, Hanzo's response is to continue burning incense as tribute to his brother like nothing happened, as if he's in complete denial. It's suggested that his hostile banter with Genji during gameplay may have stemmed from this.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Usually, his default persona is The Atoner. But, he's usually very nasty to Genji even after what he did, for ill-defined reasons.
• Hitbox Dissonance: Hanzo's arrow hitbox is roughly twice as wide as the actual character model, and just hitting in the upper portion of that giant hitbox counts as a headshot.
• Hunk: Half-shirtless and muscular, with a very extensive dragon tattoo.
• I Did What I Had to Do: He considers his act of killing Genji as something he had to do in order to placate his clan's elders and restore order to his already broken family, but it's clear that he deeply regrets it.
• Important Haircut: He used to have much longer hair in his twenties, and in "Reflections" (which takes place after Dragons), he sports an undercut.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: A good chunk of what he does with his arrows in Dragons, most notably the part where he shoots an arrow which curves to hit and destroy a cellphone when a) he's grappling someone at the same time, b) the cellphone is moving, and c) from where he shoots, Hanzo couldn't possibly see the point where his arrow lands.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: He's shown to be quite versatile with his bow in Dragons, using it as a melee weapon in several instances. In fact, in his fight against Genji, he actually finds more success this way than through firing arrows.
• Mage Marksman: Uses Trick Arrows to fight, and then there's the whole "shooting out two spirit dragons" thing.
• Master Archer: When you're using a longbow in a setting where your opponents have semi-automatic rifles, cybernetic enhancements or superpowers, you'd have to be.
• Master Swordsman: He's actually a master swordsman who's probably even better than his brother. However, because of what happened with Genji, Hanzo put down the sword for good and picked up the bow instead. His old sword can still be found displayed in the Hanamura dojo with a chipped blade.
• Meaningful Name: His name alludes to Hattori Hanzō, one of the most famous Real Life samurai.^*Contrary to popular depiction, Hattori Hanzo was not purely a ninja; his actual job was being a front-line soldier for Tokugawa Ieysu.
• Mr. Fanservice: Handsome face, sexy voice, well-built body, leaves half of his torso and left arm bare, beautiful dragon sleeve tattoo.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Seemingly killing his brother Genji broke his heart and caused him to leave the clan to atone for what he had done.
• My Greatest Failure: The day he was forced to kill his little brother by his clan's elders was this for Hanzo. It's one of the main reasons he became The Atoner.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: When he (apparently) murdered his own brother to appease the clan elders and prevent the family's dissolution, he instead accidentally turned Genji into the hero who would single-handedly dismantle the clan and leave it a pale husk of its former self.
• Ninja: Since the Shimada Clan was a family of ninjas before becoming Yakuza, Hanzo was trained as a ninja himself.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: His Halloween skin basically makes him into a Zombie Ninja Archer.
• Not So Stoic: His in-game lines are pretty chill and monotonous, but mentioning his younger brother (as seen in the Dragons short) makes him rash and angry.
• Perpetual Frowner: Admittedly, for good reason.
• Pinball Projectile: The now-removed Scatter Arrow caused Hanzo's arrow to explode into several more upon hitting a surface, each of which retaining a normal arrow's general damage and the ability to bounce off additional surfaces before expiring. A common strategy for taking out squishy targets was to simply aim one at their feet for multiple arrows to explode under them, but this was considered rather unreliable and frustrating to fight against (also the fact that a fully charged Scatter Arrow did 450 damage if you're [un]lucky and all the fragments hit, which is way more than enough to kill those with average 200 HP and even some tanks), causing it to be replaced following his rework with Storm Arrows. In the January 2022 patch, each Storm Arrow was allowed to ricochet off of one surface, evoking the original idea but in a more consistent, far less messy way.
• Power Tattoo: In the animated short Dragons, his dragon tattoo glows as he unleashes his Dragonstrike. In fact, the spirit dragons seem to appear from the tattoo before being unleashed through the arrow he fires.
• Redemption Rejection: Self-invoked example. He simply won't forgive himself for what he did to Genji and refused to redeem himself with Overwatch even after Genji explicitly forgave him with a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech at the end of Dragons.
• Satellite Character: Lore-wise, his only connection is to his brother Genji. Outside of Talon wanting to recruit him, he doesn't have any ties to other characters. At least until Kiriko is introduced, though again its a very personal connection that has nothing to really do with overall lore in the game.
• See the Invisible: Sonic Arrow can detect a Sombra using Thermoptic Camo.
• Shout-Out: After the decision was made to split the concept of the Japanese ninja hero into two separate characters, the idea of giving them an intense Sibling Rivalry was loosely based on the rivalry between sushi chefs Oni Yoshikaze and Takashi in the documentary film Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
• Sibling Rivalry: Despite wishing to atone for nearly killing Genji, Hanzo still prides himself on honor and looks down upon his brother for his hedonistic lifestyle even after he had become a cyborg and mellowed out. This conversation before a match begins says it all.
  Hanzo: You will never amount to anything!
  Genji: We shall see… brother.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: To Genji in Dragons:
  Hanzo: Real life is not like the stories our father told us! You are a fool for believing it so!
• Splitting the Arrow: His Summer Games exclusive Highlight has him doing this and destroying the wooden target with the same arrow.
• Status Infliction Attack: His Sonic Arrow makes enemies hit by its sound, visible behind walls.
• Summon Magic: He summons two giant spirit dragons to kill anything in their path. No explanation for this magic is offered, except that only a Shimada can control these dragons.
• Tattooed Crook: Has a dragon tattoo on his left arm and was formerly the heir of a powerful Yakuza clan.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: In a world with guns and rockets and robot suits and teleporters, Hanzo uses a humble bow. A technologically enhanced bow, but a bow nonetheless.
• Thicker Than Water: Hanzo is a firm believer in traditional family loyalty and that honor lies in family loyalty, which was why he's The Dutiful Son who didn't seem to mind much about how the criminal activities of the clan are not good deeds, they're still his family, and while he left the clan in shame, he still held some regrets that he somehow wanted to return to his family. This is also why he's rather cross at Genji for his actions to shut down the Shimada clan; he cannot see honor in betraying one's own family, even if it was for the greater good or common morality.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ramen, just like his brother. Thankfully for Hanzo, he's still able to enjoy it, as he's still fully human.
  • He also has a bit of a Sweet Tooth. One of his holiday season lines implies that he's going to systematically eat two entire Christmas cakes.
• Trick Arrow:
  • He's able to use a Sonic Arrow that alerts him to nearby enemies, as well as a Dragonstrike that summons twin dragons to kill everyone in their path. He used to have a Scatter Arrow that would splinter into a miniature Flechette Storm on impact with any surface, but it was removed in place of Storm Arrow.
  • Outside of gameplay, Dragons shows that his normal arrows are apparently electric and homing.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: He wears a kimono, but the left side is not on his body, showing off his left pec, left side of his torso, and an impressive arm-length dragon tattoo.
• Wall Crawl: Thanks to his Wall Climb ability.
• White Sheep: Became this to his clan after he defected out of guilt for killing his little brother on the clan elders' orders.
• Willfully Weak: After killing Genji, Hanzo gave up the blade as part of his atonement. It is heavily implied through various lore sources that his skill with a katana far surpasses his skill with a bow. It also doesn't help that thanks to his Death Seeker status he tends not to fight to his full potential anyway.
• Yakuza: Former heir to the Shimada Clan's criminal empire and still has the tattoo to prove it.

Mei - China

Mei-Ling Zhou

"Come on, Snowball! They need our help!"

Species: Human
Age: 40 (physically 31) (1), Physically 33 (2)
Birthday: September 5th
Occupation: Climatologist, Adventurer
Base of Operations: Xi’an, China (formerly)
Affiliation: Overwatch
Appearances (shorts): Rise and Shine (focus), Zero Hour
Appearances (comics): "Reflections" (cameo)

"Our world is worth fighting for."

Voiced by: Zhang Yu (English and Mandarin Chinese)^note Other Languages:Joana Ruvalcaba (Latin American Spanish), Laura Barriga (European Spanish), Lynn (Japanese), Adeline Chetail (French), Erika Menezes (Brazilian Portuguese), Katia Sorrentino (Italian), Rubina Kuraoka (German), Jeon Sook-kyeong (Korean), Lin Mei-hsiu (Taiwanese Chinese), Marta Dobecka (Polish), Daria Frolova (Russian)

Mei is a scientist who has taken the fight to preserve the environment into her own hands.

Though many blamed the planet's escalating, unexplained climate phenomena on the advent of new technologies, the rapidly growing Omnic population, and drastically increased consumption of resources, the true cause remained unknown. To find a solution, Overwatch established a series of eco-Watchpoints at remote, critical locations worldwide.

Dr. Mei-Ling Zhou (周美灵 Zhōu Měi-líng ^NoteHer Chinese name can be seen in the news ticker found in the Lijiang Tower "Night Market" map) was a member of this multiyear initiative. A peerless climatologist, she had introduced cutting-edge innovations in the field of climate manipulation that protected at-risk areas in Asia and beyond. She was assigned to the program's monitoring station at Watchpoint: Antarctica when disaster struck: a sudden, catastrophic polar storm battered the installation and cut it off from the outside world, leaving the facility damaged and the scientists stranded. As their supplies dwindled, they entered cryostasis in a last-ditch effort to survive until a rescue attempt could be made.

But that rescue never came. It was years later when the team's cryogenics chamber was finally discovered. Mei, still in hibernation, was the only survivor. The world Mei awoke to had gone through considerable changes: Overwatch was no more, the serious climate issues had worsened, and none of the eco-Watchpoints were in operation. Any clues that they had uncovered were lost.

Mei has decided to continue her work on her own. Equipped with a portable version of her climate-manipulation technology, she travels around the world, hoping to re-establish the eco-network and track down the causes of the threats to the planet's ecosystem.

Mei received the recall to join the new Overwatch after Winston reinstated the organization, indirectly awakening her from cryostasis. She has since rejoined Overwatch, becoming the second member confirmed to accept the call.

Mei uses her cryogenic technology in battle to impair and restrict her foes' ability to move.

• Endothermic Blaster is her primary weapon, which fires a short-range stream of frost that damages and slows enemies. She can also use it to fire piercing Icicles as mid-range projectiles that slow enemies on impact.
• Cryo-Freeze encases Mei in a block of ice, making herself invulnerable while rapidly regenerating health.
• Ice Wall allows Mei to raise a large ice formation that has many versatile uses: it can be used to break line of sight, defend against enemy fire, block paths for her foes, and raise her allies and herself to higher ground and creating pathways by shooting below her feet.
• Blizzard, Mei's ultimate, sees her sending out her weather-modification drone to an area, creating a large zone of freezing winds and snow that damage, slow, and eventually freeze enemies caught within.

---

• Abnormal Ammo:
  • Rather than wielding a traditional firearm to shoot bullets or some kind of energy, Mei opts for a Freeze Ray powered by some kind of icy coolant (Rise and Shine shows her MacGyvering the chemical mixture herself, and even she's surprised at how effective it is), which can be sprayed to slowly freeze enemies or directly fired as deadly icicles.
  • Taken to a hilarious extreme in her "Honeydew" skin, where her blaster is loaded with super-cold boba, with tapioca pearls visible as her ammo (milk tea, apparently) depletes, or when you aim upward.
• Action Survivor: She's the only survivor of her team of climatologists and doesn't really have any non-academic training. However, she still managed to improvise a pretty awesome tool/weapon to aid her when she realised the severity of her situation and struck out on her own to get the word out.
• Ammunition Backpack: Carries a large transparent canister, presumably filled with cooling agent. The end of the Rise and Shine cinematic shows that the bulk of it is Snowball's battery charging station.
• The Aloner: Ends up being this after the cryostasis failure on Ecopoint Antarctica.
• Asian and Nerdy: A brilliant Chinese climatologist who is able to correct Winston's calculations on occasion.
• Apologetic Attacker: Some of her lines after a kill are "Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, sorry!" and "Sorry about that!"
• Badass Adorable: Cute as a button, and armed with devices which can freeze the hell out of you.
• Badass Bookworm: She's an excellent climatologist who uses her technology to fight alongside the other heroes.
• Badass Normal: While surrounded by super-soldiers, cyborgs, assassins, robots, and power armored warriors, Mei is a scientist with no known combat training, genetic tampering, or cybernetics. Yet in-game she fights right alongside them with no problem, and in her story she presses on despite massive loss and stacked odds.
• Barrier Warrior: Mei can place Ice Walls to act as barriers, and unlike other barriers in the game, these ones are physical impediments. This means that in addition to blocking incoming attacks, they can physically divide and separate the enemy team (and potentially your own), and completely block line of sight for certain abilities.
• Bayonet Ya: Her Endothermic Blaster has a bayonet attached to it in her Yeti Hunter and Abominable skins, although it is simply ornamental.
• Becoming the Costume:
  • Her "Rescue" and "Firefighter" skins change her hero-change line from "Mei, checking in!" to "Mei on duty," and gives her a bonus "on-fire" line in "I'm on fire! Isn't that against regulations?"
  • Her "Mei-rry" skin gives her a bonus line of her cheerily saying "Happy holidays!" upon killing an enemy.
  • Her "Chang'e" skin (not the "Luna" recolor) gives her the line "Those astronauts never found me!"^note This is a reference to a joking conversation between Houston command and Michael Collins during the Apollo 11 mission, with Collins being asked to keep an eye out for "the bunny girl." He didn't find her. She also has some unique quotes while on the Horizon Lunar Base map, including a simple "Home sweet home."
  • Her "Beekeeper" outfit gives her the respawn line "Ouch, really stings!"
• Big Beautiful Woman: Her "Pajamei" skin shows off Mei's stomach rolls and Hartman Hips even more than her usual heavy winter parka shows. "Honeydew" cranks it up.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: She seems to have a fondness for yetis, with doodles of them in notes found in Ecopoint: Antarctica, her "Yeti Hunter" and "Abominable" skins, and a pair of yeti-themed slippers.
• Big Fun: Downplayed example. Mei's not exactly overweight, but her thermal suit gives her the appearance of such... and she's definitely got the "fun" part down.
• Blatant Lies: In the Yeti Hunter game mode for the Winter Wonderland 2017 event, Mei will call out to the Yeti that "(we) won't hurt you." The only way to win the match is to hurt him.
• Blue Is Heroic: Her winter gear has a lot of blue, and she firmly believes in fighting for a better world.
• Brainy Brunette: Has brown hair, and she's a peerless climatologist.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Beneath her adorable outlook, Mei has a very negative view of bullies. This is why she hates Junkrat and dismisses him in spite of his joyful manner, and she'll proclaim her hatred towards bullies to any villainous characters that she just killed. In Mei's Snowball Offensive, where everyone is Mei and shooting snowballs at each other, she'll sometimes say "I'm putting a rock in this one" while making a snowball. And she gets a very "Time to die" expression on her face when lining up an icicle shot.
• Boring, but Practical: Her moveset is chiefly concerned with slowing down her opponents rather than outright killing them. Since time is a major component on all the maps, delaying the demise of your enemies paradoxically debilitates their assaults more than murder, because it will take them longer to reach the objective (if they survive) or to respawn (if they are killed while frozen).
• Break the Cutie: The Rise and Shine short shows Mei when she first woke up from her cryo-sleep. First, she finds out the data she was collecting is way worse than originally predicted, next she finds she and the team have been asleep for 9 years. Then she finds out Overwatch had been shut down, meaning rescue isn't coming, and finally, she finds out that her whole team is dead except for her. This all happens in just a few minutes. Ultimately subverted in that after getting over the initial shock and grief, she's still as cheerful and optimistic and even more determined than ever to get the word out for the good of the world and to honour her fallen colleagues.
• Catchphrase: "Our world is worth fighting for." Aside from it being her selection quote, the Chinese translation of it is one of her manual voice lines, and when viewing the earth through a telescope on the Horizon Lunar Colony, she'll say "Our world is worth fighting for."
• Chinese Vampire: Mei got a proper Jiangshi skin and hopping emote for Halloween Terror 2017. She even has cute Blush Stickers like Hsien-Ko.
• Cold Ham: Pun not intended. Mei does not raise her voice or shout, but when she expresses an emotion (such as excitement or anger), it carries a weight of emotion all the same.
• Cold Sleep, Cold Future: She spent years in cryogenic sleep, waiting for a rescue from a violent polar storm that never came. By the time she woke up, Overwatch was dismantled, the Earth's climate grew even worse, and all of the established eco-Watchposts were long defunct, leaving much of her co-workers' research lost.
• Costume Evolution: Overwatch 2 changes Mei's hairstyle very slightly into a more feminine appearance with a new hair dec holding it in place, and incorporates elements of a Chinese Qipao into her suit's design instead of the full heavy winter coat.
• Coup de Grâce: Perhaps the most memetic example in the game. Step 1: Freeze an enemy solid. Step 2: Aim an icicle to their head, point-blank range.
• Cute Little Fangs: In her "Jiangshi" skin, the corners of her mouth contain two little vampire fangs.
• Cuteness Proximity:
  • She finds Orisa quite adorable and is happy to let her know.
    Mei: Have you gotten bigger, Orisa?
    Orisa: My dimensions have not changed. Does the javelin make me look taller?
    Mei: A little. But I still think you're just as cute as before!
    Orisa: Oh! That is... thank you!
  • She gets understandably giddy meeting Hammond, who is not amused.
    Mei: Omigosh! A hamster! So cute!
    Wrecking Ball: Do not call the hamster cute.
    Mei: Oops, sorry. (Chinese) But really, isn't he cute, Snowball?
    Wrecking Ball: Tā shuō bì zuǐ. / 他说闭嘴. (He says to stop talking.)
• The Cutie: Very adorable, huggable with big eyes, wears Nerd Glasses, and is ridiculously sweet? Yes, she definitely qualifies.
• Determinator: When she woke up from cryosleep, she learned that basically everything had gotten worse, the destruction of Overwatch leaving no-one aware that her research station needed help, all her coworkers had died due to their cyropods malfunctioning, and eventually even Snowball had to depower temporarily, leaving her utterly alone. She continued soldiering on even if it meant leaving her remote eco-Watchpost on foot, realizing that allowing herself to just quit wouldn't help herself or anyone else. She may not look the part, but her quote above speaks for itself. At the end of Rise and Shine, she's faced with a frozen wasteland that stretches as far as the eye can see, untold miles away from any glimpse of civilization. Her response is to fasten up her arctic gear and just get to walking. Overwatch needs rebuilding and her life's work is endangered, so she is not about to just sit and wait for a rescue. Remember, she isn't a trained warrior or super soldier, she is a just a civilian scientist who worked for Overwatch. One of her unlockable sound clips has the quote in Mandarin.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • Most likely unintentional on Blizzard’s part, but anyone who has ever had a good view of being frozen and promptly killed by Mei would notice that she appears to be concentrating very hard and very calmly on the moment (see the link in Slasher Smile below).
  • One of her lines in Mei's Snowball Offensive when refilling her snowball gun is a chipper "I'm putting a rock in this one!"
• Due to the Dead: She leaves a hot mug at the foot of the cryo-booths of her fallen comrades before leaving the base.
• Elemental Absorption: Zig-zagged. She can freeze herself to restore health, but ice-based projectiles from a Mei on the other team will still injure or kill her.
• Elemental Baggage: Her ammo is (presumably) coolant, and like the ammo used by all heroes, she can reload without limit.
• The Everyman: Was stated by the developers that she was designed to be more relatable to the audience than the other heroes. Indeed, Mei is a Non-Action Guy Science Hero rather than adventurers or super villains like the rest of the cast.
• Fanservice with a Smile: Mei's "Honeydew" skin — which gives her a uniform for a bubble tea shop, complete with some of the stuff in her blaster — is more cute than outright sexy, but nonetheless shows off a lot more skin than any of her other outfits.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Downplayed. She does mention that she has difficulty getting used to the "newer" technology of the present day.
• For Science!: She states this as the reason why she's hunting the yeti in Yeti Hunter: "We just want to study you!"
• Freeze Ray: In the first Overwatch, her primary attack, where her weapon fires a continuous short-ranged stream of frost that slows and freezes enemies in their tracks for a few seconds. Overwatch 2 removed the full freezing effect, but it still does greatly slow enemies.
• Frozen Foe Platform: Players can jump up on top of Mei whenever she freezes herself into an ice block with her Cryostasis ability.
• Gadgeteer Genius: She developed the Endothermic Blaster herself as shown in Rise and Shine, seemingly out of spare parts and chemicals found around the Ecopoint.
• Harmless Freezing: When she freezes herself. It's not just harmless; it actually heals her and makes her Immune to Bullets. Also, her weapon's primary fire is mostly used to slow and freeze enemies, dealing barely any damage; for that, she has giant icicles to the head.
• Hartman Hips: Quite noticeable in her "Pajamei" skin.
• Heal Thyself: When she encases herself in a block of ice, she heals herself for the duration of the ice block, before it breaks.
• Heroic BSoD: Mei suffers one upon learning that the stasis pods of the other scientists all failed. In Rise & Shine, she huddles herself into a fetal position and mourns their loss. A Jump Cut shows her still in that position for an indeterminate amount of time before she snaps out of it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the Rise & Shine cinematic, after the last battery runs out of power, Snowball transfers his own battery power to give Mei just enough to finish building her Endothermic Blaster. Fortunately, he can recharge through solar power.
• Hidden Buxom: According to concept art of her, Mei has a surprisingly large chest underneath her thermal suit. The Rise and Shine cinematic shows she isn't quite as busty as her concept art, but still has around a D-cup size.
• Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: When Mei comments on how cute Hammond is, Wrecking Ball tells her not to call him cute. Mei apologizes in English, but then remarks again about how cute he is in Chinese. Subverted because Wrecking Ball reprimands her again in Chinese.
• Human Popsicle: Her primary fire and Ultimate turns enemies into this, allowing her and her allies to pick them off while they're helpless. She can also do this to herself, encasing herself in a block of ice that lets her avoid damage and heal, but she's totally immobile until the ice breaks.
• An Ice Person: She primarily uses ice for her moves, either by freezing enemies solid, firing painful icicles at them, or blocking them off with a giant Ice Wall.
• An Ice Suit: Wears a thick set of arctic gear. Partly due to Limited Wardrobe (her former job was as an arctic researcher), partly to avoid Hoist by His Own Petard (she wields a Freeze Ray).
• Iconic Outfit: Mei's early concept designs depicted her wearing a blue tank top underneath her heavy coat. It has become just as recognizable as her in-game outfit.
• "Instant Death" Radius: Unless you happen to have an escape ability (or a teammate bails you out), once you get caught by her Freeze Ray, it's just a matter of a few seconds before you're completely helpless and she executes you with an icicle to the head.
• Instant Ice: Just Add Cold!: Not only do her abilities instantly create entire meters-tall ice blocks, any enemy exposed to her primary fire for two seconds is briefly frozen solid.
• Jumped at the Call: In Rise and Shine, after repairing her outpost's communication systems and reconnecting with the comms satellite, Mei received Winston's Emergency Agent Recall transmission. She quietly made a simple yes, immediately geared up (as all vehicles at the station had been rendered derelict), and was last seen traveling to link up with Winston, becoming the second known former member (after Tracer) to return to active duty.
• Jump Scare: Her Halloween-exclusive highlight intro, "Ice Scream", has Snowball (dressed as a Bed Sheet Ghost) pop behind and scare her. She screams and activates her Cryo-Freeze, then falls over while still frozen. Snowball laughs.
• Kill It with Ice: She excels at this, with an Endothermic Blaster that slows and freezes enemies momentarily or shoots icicles for great damage, and an Ultimate that creates a localized blizzard which quickly slows, freezes, and potentially kills anyone who doesn't escape in time.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": She's a fan of Winston's glasses, thinking they are "cute." Winston proceeds to nervously compliment hers.
• Libation for the Dead: In Rise and Shine, before Mei departs from Antarctica at the end, she pours tea for her deceased colleagues and leaves their respective mugs in front of their failed cryo-pods.
• The Load: Played With. Blizzard is very aware that Mei's kit, her Ice Wall in particular, can often hinder her teammates. The Anniversary update added a voiceline that reflects this.
  Mei: I was only trying to help!
• Lost in Translation: Her ultimate quote is "Dòng zhù! Bùxǔ zǒu!" (Chinese: "冻住！不许走！") which literally translates to "Freeze! Don't move!" However, "Dòng zhù!" in Chinese doesn't have the connotations that "Freeze!" has in English (as in "don't move", e.g. a police officer telling you to "freeze"), and thus some of the meaning is lost. Then again, she is telling them to literally freeze. ^note In Mandarin, the term synonymous with "Freeze!" literally translates into "stand/hold still".
• MacGyvering: Mei had to improvise to build her Endothermic Blaster with what she had laying around the base. The main chassis of the blaster is a hair dryer, and the cooling agent is water-based.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: While Mei is definitively marked as a "Damage" hero, in practice, she rests in a unique gameplay niche which merges in elements primarily found in Tank heroes, making her sort of an inverse to Roadhog^note She was originally designed as a "Defense" hero, a category of damage-dealing heroes who were theoretically considered better at guarding objectives, as opposed to "Offense" heroes who were better at directly taking them. The separation was deemed redundant and the two were merged in June 2018 to form the current "Damage" role, taking Mei with them. While she technically does have the power to outright kill enemies, she's short-ranged, has no mobility skills to move her around faster than her normal walk speed, and overall not as reliable in that regard as her "Damage" classification might suggest. Her greater strengths are in impairing enemies through unique means — whether it be through freezing them and creating disruptive physical impediments — which then provide a window for her and her team to wail on them. She herself can also be deceptively durable beyond her 250 health thanks to Cryo-Freeze, which can save her from certain doom and/or buy precious seconds in stalling a fight or keeping on an objective.
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: Unlike most other heroes, she doesn't have the benefits of combat training or military hardware, but that doesn't make her any less badass.
• Nice Gal: She is very kind and friendly.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: While using Cryo-Freeze, Mei is completely immune to damage, allowing her to weather entire Ultimates without an issue. Crouching behind an allied cryo-frozen Mei is an effective last-ditch strategy to survive D.Va's Self-Destruct, assuming the mech landed on the opposite side.
• Older Than They Look: Played straight twice over — not only does she look at least half a decade younger than her listed age of 31, but her listed age doesn't include the nine years she spent in cryostasis, meaning that she's chronologically around 40 years old.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Mei is mainly a climatologist, yet was able to use proper chemistry and engineering to build a fully functional Freeze Ray out of spare parts lying around Ecopoint: Antarctica, and points out how Winston may have some wrong mathematical equations on his chalkboard in Watchpoint: Gibraltar.
• One-Person Birthday Party: This image◊ heavily implies she had one while she was stuck in Antarctica.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Enterprising Mei players can use her Ice Wall to give themselves and their teammates a temporary platform, allowing characters with no special mobility options to access and attack from places they can't reach normally.
• Pink Is Feminine: Mei is a Chinese lady, complete with Silk Hiding Steel. One of her beta skins, "Snow Plum", is pink with green accents.
• The Pollyanna:
  • Mei's cheerful, friendly, and optimistic personality is offset by a dark and depressing backstory, as well as the Crapsaccharine World that she woke up to. This is best demonstrated in the map Ecopoint: Antarctica, where the notes found could qualify as an Apocalyptic Log in any other game, except for the cute and cheerful doodles Mei made on most of them. When visiting the cryopods that her research team froze themselves in, you find a grim scene where all of the pods malfunctioned except one... and that's the one that has fuzzy Yeti slippers sitting right in front of it.
  • This slowly starts to be subverted in later content, starting with the Rise and Shine short. In it, Mei is clearly traumatized by the deaths of her comrades and her fight to survive in the frozen Antarctic. Further, pre-match interactions with Winston and Moira show that the experience is a severe Trauma Button for Mei.
• Pungeon Master: Downplayed. She likes to make puns on her name from time to time. Several of her quotes contain jokes relating to ice and cold as well.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Played for Laughs. In one of her intros, she accidentally shoots an Ice Wall under herself while cleaning her blaster.
• Robot Buddy: A small drone named Snowball, which sits on her back and is used in her ultimate ability and some emotes.
• Science Hero: She's a climatologist, and as shown by Rise and Shine, she built the gear she uses in game.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Her Endothermic Blaster (or "endothermic diffuser") is a relatively mild example, a title that's a few more syllables needed to say "Freeze Ray"^note "endothermic" literally means "heat-absorbing" and can often be interpreted as "heat-reducing". Even in her journal, she notes she needs to "come up with a less science-y name."
• She Cleans Up Nicely: She already looks pretty cute normally, but her "Chang'e" and "Luna" skins put her in a very fancy costume along with makeup and a more elaborate hairstyle, and the effect is spectacular.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: She takes Doomfist to task for his Social Darwinist views and the human toll it's taken. When Doomfist claims that his actions have indirectly saved lives, she calls out how little sense it makes.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She's more energetic than the usual examples, but she's still a polite and soft-spoken woman...who is willing to stare down even Doomfist and call his Social Darwinist philosophy to task.
• Skill Gate Characters: At lower levels, she is an extremely effective ambush character who can easily eliminate lone or closely grouped players, and thus is seen as very annoying to fight against. However, at higher levels, her weaknesses become more apparent, namely her short-range main attack, low damage per second, and ambush tactics being less effective against a closely coordinated team. Having said that, a veteran Mei who masters aiming with her icicles and knowing where to use her Ice Wall is still a considerable threat, and her Blizzard can be a devastating setup tool when timed properly.
• Slasher Smile: Hard to notice, but Mei makes a distinctly sinister grin just as she's about to kill someone.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: She wears glasses and is a spectacular climatologist.
• Sniper Pistol: Her alternative fire creates and shoots an icicle at an enemy with pinpoint accuracy, though it takes a while to charge before it fires.
• Sole Survivor: Of a team of climatologists sent to Antarctica to monitor recent changes in the Earth's climate.
• Status Infliction Attack: Her primary fire and ultimate apply a stacking slow to all affected targets, freezing them after two seconds.
• Stone Wall: Despite being classified as a "Damage" hero, Mei is mediocre at directly killing enemies and is more focused on instead impairing them through other means, mainly by creating literal walls and blizzards to block enemy engagement or catch them out, as well as stalling potential death thanks to her temporary invulnerability and self-healing. While her alternate fire can snipe out enemies, it's unwieldy to use without properly rendering enemies vulnerable first.
• Tranquil Fury: Played for Laughs with her New Years' resolution voice line, where she states that she'll do a better job controlling her temper. Aside from her pre-battle lines with Junkrat, we've rarely even seen Mei visibly annoyed, let alone angry.
• Trauma Button: Mei's cheerful and upbeat personality becomes noticeably bruised whenever someone brings up the Antarctic, or even cryogenic freezing in general.
• Unorthodox Reload: Her Endothermic Blaster has a reservoir of coolant in the back that gradually empties as she depletes her ammunition, and a small canister of (presumably compressed) coolant on the side. Mei reloads by giving the canister a brief twist, pinkie adorably outstretched.

Pharah - Egypt

Fareeha Amari / Pharah

"Strike from above!"

Species: Human
Age: 32 (1), 34 (2)
Birthday: April 15th
Occupation: Security Chief
Base of Operations: Giza, Egypt
Affiliation: Overwatch, Helix Security International (formerly)
Appearances (shorts): Ana Origin Story
Appearances (comics): "Mission Statement" (focus), "Reflections" (cameo), "New Blood"

"I will protect the innocent."

Voiced by: Jen Cohn (English)^note Other Languages:Irina Indigo (Latin American Spanish), Diana Torres (European Spanish), Romi Park (Japanese), Ethel Houbiers (French), Debora Magnaghi (Italian), Marcela Duarte (Brazilian Portuguese), Ghadah Al-Akel, Silvia Mißbach (German), Yeon-jeong Joh (Korean), Feng Youwei (Taiwanese Chinese), Guǐ Yuè (Mandarin Chinese), Barbara Kałużna (Polish), Ghadah Al-Akel (German 1.0.-1.10.), Silvia Mißbach (German 1.10.-), Elena Morozova (Russian)

Fareeha Amari, a girl born in modern Egypt, was born of a bloodline of warriors and soldiers. Honor and justice flow through her veins.

As a child, she dreamed of following in her mother's footsteps, and did so, joining the Egyptian army. Her tactical genius and persistence caused her to rise through the officer ranks, earning the loyalty of all who served under her. She was set to join among Overwatch's ranks, but before she had the chance, Overwatch was disbanded.

After leaving the army with a commendation for distinguished service, she was offered employment with Helix Security International, a private security firm contracted to defend the artificial intelligence research facility beneath the Giza Plateau. The top-secret facility was touted as vital to the safety of not only the region, but countries across the globe. Fareeha gladly accepted the choice assignment and received training in the Raptora Mark VI, an experimental combat suit designed for rapid mobility and devastating firepower.

Under the call sign "Pharah," she works to safeguard the AI installation. Though she mourns Overwatch's passing, she still dreams of fighting the good fight and making a difference on a global scale.

Ultimately, she would get her wish, following the recall of Overwatch. After re-uniting with her mother, she was recruited by Cassidy to join the ranks of Overwatch in order to help battle the rising tide of calamities across the globe.

Pharah, as a damage character, blasts areas with suppressive fire and scatters foes apart from the air.

• Rocket Launcher is her primary weapon, which fires missiles that deal high explosive damage.
• Concussive Blast is a small rocket that she fires from her gauntlet, which knocks enemies and herself away from the area it hits.
• Pharah has multiple mobility options: Hover Jets allow Pharah to elevate and maneuver around the sky, using a fuel meter that recharges when not in use. Jump Jet lets herself quickly launch herself a high distance into the air, restoring fuel and briefly overclocking her fuel capacity in the process, while Jet Dash is a separate ability that instead gives her a quick horizontal boost of mobility.
• With her ultimate, Barrage, Pharah hovers in midair while firing a continuous salvo of mini-rockets from her suit, dealing heavy damage to enemies that remain within their area of explosion.

---

• 24-Hour Armor: Up until the 2016 Winter update, Pharah has never been shown outside of her armor besides her head aside from a single picture of her as a child◊, including her alternate skins and cosmetic sprays; this was particularly funny in the 2016 Summer update, which featured a spray showing her playing basketball in full armor. The 2016 Winter update finally shows Pharah completely out of her armor for the first time, with one of Pharah's sprays shows her going out fishing◊, and she's also shown in casual clothes in the "Reflections" comic.
• Achilles' Heel: Her playstyle is all about taking to the skies to deal damage, but since she's not very fast (outside of extreme vertical bursts of motion from her Jump Jets) and frequently out in the open without cover, heroes with instantaneous hitscan weapons without travel time, such as Cassidy or Widowmaker, can take her out very easily, or at least force her into sub-optimal positions to avoid being shot down.
• Action Girl: She's a woman who flies on a jet-pack and shoots rockets at her enemies. It probably helps that she is descended from a long line of warriors and soldiers.
• Animal Motif:
  • A bird of prey, based on her armor. Most likely a falcon in reference to the Egyptian God Horus, who represented justice, righteous vengeance, and the pharaoh.
  • Two of her skins, "Anubis" and "Jackal", have dog/wolf motifs, also likely to reference Anubis, the canine-headed god of funerals and death who ushered souls into the afterlife, and Wepwawet, who was originally depicted as the god of warfare and hunting and was often described as a white or light gray wolf.
• Animated Armor: Her "Enchanted Armor" skin transforms her into a ghost, where she has no physical body to speak of. Just to emphasize this, her armor shatters to pieces like Bastion upon death.
• Apologetic Attacker: To Reinhardt if she takes him out. She sounds really sincere, too.
• Arm Cannon: Her Concussive Blast works by firing a wrist-mounted rocket on her left arm.
• Armor Is Useless: Downplayed Trope. Though it's done mainly for balance reasons, despite having the Raptora Powered Armor, Pharah only has an average 200 hit points, excluding external armor and shields. It's standard for most non-tank heroes, but she's still less durable than Reaper and Mei despite them only wearing coats. Even if the armor's main purpose was to protect Pharah from G-Forces and sudden impacts from landing, there's no fall or crash damage in this game, anyway.
• Ascended Fangirl: As a girl Pharah grew up idolizing the members of Overwatch and made it very clear she hoped to join them one day, despite her mother wishing otherwise. Sadly by time she was of age Overwatch had been disbanded, still wanting to be a hero Pharah joined the Helix corp, quickly ascending the ranks with her skill and bravery. "New Blood" picks up here, with Pharah at least content with her place in Helix and despite several personal invites is hesitant to join the newly reformed Overwatch, it takes both Cassidy and her returned mother, in order to help her let go of the past and take the position she always wanted as a member of Overwatch.
• Badass Boast:
  • Her line when picked.
  "I will PROTECT the innocent."
  • When she uses her ultimate.
  "Justice rains from above!"
• Badass Family: Both Pharah and her mother Ana are battle-hardened playable heroes, with a long lineage of decorated soldiers in their bloodline.
• Becoming the Costume:
  • When equipped with the "Thunderbird" or "Raindancer" skins, one of her respawn lines as "Raptora systems online" is replaced with "Thunderbird online."
  • Similarly with her "Raptorion" and "Mechaqueen" skins, the line is replaced with "Raptorion systems online."
  • Her "Hades" skin styles her after the Greek god of the underworld, giving her plenty of lines alluding to death and the inevitability of everything. She also features plenty of specific lines made in response to killing other heroes using Greek mythology-inspired skins, including one to "Zeus" Junker Queen: "Let Persephone know if you and Hera can make it to dinner next week."
  • Her "Inarius" skin designs her after the rogue Archangel of the same name from Diablo, with updated dialogue evoking his brutal Light Is Not Good aesthetic. Her intro line changes to "Strike from the heavens," while her ultimate callout becomes "Prophet's barrage incoming!"
• Blood Knight: Downplayed. In her comic, she notes that walking into unknown danger was always what her mother hated most. Pharah, on the other hand, says it's the part that she loves most. Beyond that, however, she's largely a consummate professional.
• Blown Across the Room: The primary purpose of her Concussive Blast. It's useful for knocking opponents into pits, or knocking herself across a distance.
• Blue Is Heroic: Her armor in both Overwatch and Overwatch 2 is blue, and Pharah is firmly on the heroes' side, along with being a decorated soldier.
• Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Her "Thunderbird"/"Raindancer" Legendary skins gives Pharah's armor a Native American theme, more specifically of Pacific Northwest cultures. When asked to confirm whether or not this was indicative of Pharah being half-First Nations, Jeff Kaplan stated "That’s what we’re driving towards. All the hints are there, so we’ll see." Michael Chu would later confirm that this is true, by stating that her father is the man she's having dinner with in the Revelations comic.
• But Not Too Foreign: Pharah has a native Egyptian mother and a Canadian First Nation father.
• Butch Lesbian: She's a tough military gal who is a self identified lesbian. Somewhat lampshaded in the short story "As you Are", where she asks Baptiste if he thought she looked straight, only for Baptiste to reply that he didn't want to make assumptions from just her looks.
• Character Development:
  • "Mission Statement" shows her turning from a by-the-book Consummate Professional who would prioritize a mission's fulfillment over the well-being of her team, to a celebrated protector and paragon of justice and compassion whose mere presence on the battlefield inspires hope in soldiers everywhere.
  • Meanwhile, 2 gives her voice lines and interactions that demonstrate that she's loosened up significantly. She sounds significantly cockier, gushes about her ideas to throw a post-mission party, and is more than willing to call out former idols like Morrison.
• Civvie Spandex: Pharah's "Aviator" skin has her in a fairly casual outfit (white shirt, leather jacket, and jeans) with her Raptora jetpack atop, and the look ends up being canonized in "New Blood". When she, Ana, and Cassidy are ambushed by Talon, she quickly slaps on her jetpack and helmet to blast some mooks apart, and it's enough for her to tank a direct hit from an enemy rocket.
• Cool Helmet: All her helmets have elaborate designs.
• Consummate Professional: In Mission Statement, Pharah emphasized the larger mission over assisting the injured. She reasoned that more lives would be endangered if the team didn't act quickly.
• Deadpan Snarker: Every now and then.
  Pharah: Saleh? You alive?
  Saleh: ...No...
  Pharah: Oh. Guess I'm not buying dinner.
• Death from Above: Her kit in general emphasizes aerial combat, with tools to bombard the enemy with rockets from the sky for as long as possible, including her ultimate, where she'll stay afloat in one spot as she rains down missiles, though savvy opponents can take advantage of this to shoot her down. One of her quotes even has her naming this trope verbatim.
• Fangirl: Pharah comes across as this when interacting with the former Overwatch agents, her childhood idols.
• Fanservice: Her armored outfits doesn't show her skin obviously but starting with her "Lifeguard" skin shows off her toned stomach and nice legs.
• Flying Firepower: She uses her jetpack to deliver rocket justice from the skies.
• Follow in My Footsteps: Subverted. Due to growing up with Overwatch's heroes as a child, Pharah wanted to become an Overwatch agent, but Ana disagreed with it because it meant she'd experience the same horrors that she felt.
• Four Gods: The Year of the Dog Chinese New Year event turns her into Qīnglóng, the Azure Dragon. There is a stylized glowing blue dragon on her chest.
• Fragile Speedster: She has great mobility, excellent damage output and can take advantage of the third dimension to attack from almost any angle, but she still has only 200 HP, meaning that all it takes is one or two hits from an enemy with high burst damage to pluck her out of the sky.
• Glass Cannon: Her missiles can dish out devastating amounts of damage, and her passive Hover Jet as well as her Jump Jet and Concussive Blast give her a tremendous amount of mobility, making her difficult to hit if you aren't able to aim your shots well enough. Score a headshot or burst her down with concentrated fire, though, and she's done for.
• Gun Twirling: Does a very fancy and formal variation of military rifle spinning as an emote.
• Hero-Worshipper: She idolized Overwatch in her youth and wanted nothing more than to join and fight alongside them. In particular, she idolized her mother (fighting alongside whom was her lifelong dream) and also Reinhardt, whom she most closely emulates as The Paragon.
• Having a Blast: Almost all of her abilities fire off a rocket. Of justice!
• Heroic Lineage: Her family was full of military heroes and warriors. Her mother in particular was one of the original members and founders of Overwatch, and one of the best snipers in the world. Word is still out on what military background, if any, her Canadian father has.
• Hidden Buxom: All of Pharah's skins have her wearing power armor, but her Aviator skin shows she's actually pretty stacked.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Pharah knew all along that her mother was buckling under various pressures during her time in Overwatch. Her callousness during Mission Statement could be interpreted as her trying to protect herself so that she doesn't become a Shell-Shocked Veteran like Ana. Also, while she's still fairly polite to the younger members of Overwatch who idolize her mother (such as Winston and Mercy), she reserves some burning comments for Morrison.
  • According to an AMA with Michael Chu, she's also a fan of classic rock music, which carries over into her Air Guitar dance emote. It's worth noting that, at the time the game takes place, most of the genre would be over or approaching a century old. No wonder she gets along with Reinhardt.
• Hope Bringer: After "Mission Statement", she gains her celebrated reputation as a Knight in Shining Armor inspiring hope in soldiers on the battlefield.
• Hopeless Suitor: Implied to have a crush on Angela, who is implied to have a (requited) crush on Genji. And is heavily implied to be very jealous when Angela left Cairo to meet up with Genji at the Recall.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: Downplayed, because she is obviously far from past her prime and has a fulfilling career of her own, but Pharah greatly admired Overwatch and initially wanted to join before it collapsed. She never got her chance due to Ana's insistence. Nowadays, she works with Helix Security International, and some of her dialogue suggests she's still a bit wistful about her missed opportunity, such as when she tells Tracer that the latter was lucky to be a part of the organization. Tracer responds that Pharah may yet get another chance.
• Instrumental Weapon: Her Anniversary emote has her use her rocket launcher as a guitar.
• Jump Jet Pack: Like Winston, Pharah has this ability to help her get to high ledges, named Jump Jet. Unlike him, she can also use it to hover in mid-air.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: A running meme with Pharah's ultimate. Because her ultimate causes her to hover in place in the air, it makes Pharah an easier target than normal, leading to many cases of being killed while shouting her ultimate's line.
  "Justice rains from a-AUGH!"
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!":
  • If she witnesses Reinhardt (her childhood icon) get a kill, she'll cheer him on.
  "Reinhardt, you've still got it!"
  • She'll also tell her mother that fighting by her side has always been her lifelong dream.
  • She also sounds pretty enthusiastic when asking who taught Cassidy how to shoot.
• Knockback: Her Concussive Blast knocks enemies back horizontally from the center of the explosion, which does no damage outright, but is good for knocking them into pits or out of position, or boosting herself for horizontal distance. Her rockets also do a little bit of knockback as well, but this was nerfed in a later patch. Before the nerf, any splash damage also did a little bit of knockback, but after the nerf, the rockets have to be more or less a direct hit.
• The Lancer: She was originally the second in command to her team in Mission Statement, with Captain Khalil as the leader before being killed in action, and promoting Pharah to lead the mission.
• Like Mother, Like Daughter: Originally, she wanted to be like her mother, who was an Overwatch agent and a hero, partly out of being a Hero-Worshipper (helped by growing up with members of the original strike team) and partly to fill in expectations to follow after Ana, whom almost everyone idolized. However, if her pre-match dialogue with former Overwatch personnel such as Winston and Soldier: 76 is to go by, part of her wanted to salvage some sort of connection with her mother, who due to her line of work was probably not there for her as often as both would've liked. She later discovered that Ana actually opposed her goal of joining Overwatch and that Ana's career was giving her tremendous pressure in the forms of guilt and PTSD, something that Pharah came to understand on a personal level after serving in the Egyptian military.
  • This is also used as a voiceline by two other characters: Ana to complement Pharah on getting a kill and Widowmaker when she kills Pharah.
• Logical Weakness: Pharah's greatest strength is her ability to fly above the battlefield and rain down Death from Above safely outside the range of the majority of the game's characters, but this positioning also makes her a prime target for snipers.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Her ultimate ability, Barrage, has her fire a salvo of missiles at her foes.
• Meaningful Name: Her call sign "Pharah", which sounds like "Pharaoh."
• Military Brat: Daughter of one of Overwatch's founding members. Her straight-laced demeanor and somewhat non-egyptian interests, such as classical rock and basketball, and notable lack of an accent and any Bilingual Bonus lines point towards someone who grew up on an international military base rather than her home country.
• Military Salute: She salutes in her hero selection preview and her "Hello" voice command. Both have her using her left hand, even though she should be able to use her right (though to be fair, her right hand is currently holding her helmet or rocket launcher).
• Military Superhero: She used to be a respected officer in the Egyptian army.
• Missed the Call: Was well on her way to finally joining the Overwatch team when the organization was disbanded.
• Missing Mom: Ana Amari's backstory trailer reveals that she's been presumed dead for nearly a decade, which likely plays into Pharah's issues.
• Mommy Issues: Her in-game dialogue hints at some bitter feelings toward her mother. That said, her comic shows that she refers to her mother's old advice for comfort in trying times.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: Downplayed, since she doesn't appear to have spent much time there, despite being half-First Nations. The one time she's been depicted as visiting, there's (of course) a hockey game on.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Her laughing emote has her lose her usual hardened, professional poise and burst into a hysterical fit. Then, she abruptly stops as if realizing how this looks, and quickly returns to her normal posture.
  • Her dance emote: Using her rocket launcher as a guitar, complete with actual guitar sounds, and firing off shoulder rockets like stage fireworks.
• Powered Armor: Wears the Raptora Mark VI combat suit, which allows her to fly and devastate her foes with lots and lots of rockets.
• Refusal of the Call: "New Blood" reveals that while she wasn't directly picked up by Winston's message to rejoin Overwatch, Tracer, Reinhardt, and Brigitte all reached out to her in an attempt to have her come along. She initially refused due to her commitment to protecting Egypt with Helix, as well as her own personal disillusionment in the organization. It takes an in-person reunion with Cassidy and her seemingly long-dead mother, Ana — giving her the encouragement she needs to follow her dreams of fighting for Overwatch — for her to consider changing her mind.
• Rocket Jump:
  • A variation: her Jet Pack is far more useful than her rockets for gaining height, but using her Concussive Blast on herself is her best option for a quick burst of horizontal speed.
  • One of her purchasable voice lines also references this trope:
  Pharah: "Rocket jump"? That sounds dangerous.
• Ship Tease: In New Blood, she has a photo of her, Mercy, and Cassidy in her locker. Her and Angela are linking arms. Further implied in the short where she's revealed to be a lesbian, where she and Mercy are on a first name basis and she is clearly leaving some things about their relationship unsaid.
• Skill Gate Characters: Pharah is relatively easy-to-use character, and her focus on aerial combat can dismantle an enemy team from the relative safety of the air in low-level play, where players are likely to have a harder time shooting her down, especially if she has a Mercy to fly alongside her. However, counting on the poor aim of your enemies becomes increasingly unreliable in higher levels of play, and being in the open air can become a major weakness against enemies who can easily shoot you down. She can be played in higher ranks if she has a team that can divert focus or keep her alive, but it requires some very good game-sense and coordination to properly pull off, and especially requires you to consistently hit with your rockets to be successful.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's almost six feet tall and is quite beautiful.
• Stepford Smiler: It's implied that her desire to join Overwatch was more of a way to manage the expectations of others, who idolized Ana. In truth, she knew that her mother was struggling with personal demons during her stint in Overwatch, and that her mother did not want her to follow in her footsteps.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She looks a lot like her mother back in her prime, with the only difference being their hairstyles.
• This Means Warpaint: Her "Thunderbird" and "Raindancer" skins include red and white, and turquoise and white face paint respectively.
• Three-Point Landing: Does this in one of her highlight intros, complete with Ground Punch.
• Vocal Evolution: Over time throughout the beta, her voice was adjusted to sound much deeper than when she was first introduced.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In "Mission Statement", Pharah receives one from her captain when she leaves an injured civilian to die in favor of fulfilling a mission, who tells her that in order to have her team's loyalty, she must lead by example.
  • After Ana was released and more of Pharah's backstory was revealed, suddenly Pharah's pre-match dialogue with Soldier: 76 became much harsher and more bitter in tone.
    Soldier: 76: Your mother would've been proud of you.
    Pharah: You didn't know my mother very well, then.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Pharah's accent has been noted for sounding odd. Jen Cohn is clearly attempting an accent, but it doesn't sound Egyptian, nor does it sound American, it just sounds weird. A common Fan Wank is that it's some kind of mix as a result of her traveling, operating, and interacting with people from all across the world from a young age.

Sojourn - Canada

Vivian Chase / Sojourn

"You count on me, I count on you."

Species: Cyborg
Age: 51
Birthday: January 12th
Occupation: Vigilante
Base of Operations: Toronto, Canada
Appearances (shorts): Recall (cameo), Ana Origin Story, Sojourn Origin Story, Calling (focus)
Appearances (Archives events): Storm Rising
Appearances (novels): Sojourn (focus)

"We're in this together - all of us."

Voiced by: Cherise Boothe (English)^note Other Languages:Iwona Milerska (Polish - Storm Rising), Agnieszka Matysiak (Polish - Overwatch 2), So-yeong Lee (Korean), Naoko Nokubi (Japanese), Armelle Gallaud (French)

A loyal captain of Overwatch's past, present, and future, Vivian Chase was originally just a child born to an ex-military family, diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease that caused her to spend much of her childhood and adolescence in and out of hospitals. Her case eventually caught the attention of doctors who offered her a highly experimental treatment that involved replacing her failing organs and limbs with state-of-the-art cybernetics. The procedure gave Vivian a new lease on life, and with it, she decided to follow in her parents' footsteps, joining the Canadian military, where she immediately established herself as a tactical ace, a level of skill that she carried with her when she was conscripted into the Special Forces at the start of the Omnic Crisis.

Her daring escapades during the crisis, often played out deep behind enemy lines, saved countless lives, earning her the callsign "Sojourn". She was eventually paired with the nascent Overwatch, working with Jack Morrison, Torbjörn Lindholm, and Dr. Mina Liao to protect Canada from the Omnic hordes. After the war, she would continue serving her country and Overwatch amidst peacekeeping efforts, with her skills and her commitment to the rule of law proving to be a beacon of stability and hope in the post-Crisis world. Unfortunately as time went on, Vivian became dissatisfied with Overwatch's politics, and following a United Nations investigation into Overwatch's conduct, her truthful testimonies about her experiences within the organization proved pivotal to the passing of the Petras Act, in turn, Overwatch's disbandment.

With Overwatch seemingly outlawed, Vivian settled into early, uneasy retirement — one of Canada's greatest heroes, saving the country from threat after threat, seemingly earning herself peace. However, Vivian was never someone who fought for glory — she fought because she was needed. Sure enough, once Null Sector began its attack on Toronto, Sojourn sprang back into action, joining the newly-resurrected Overwatch to save her country — and the rest of the world — yet again.
Sojourn is a simple, but solid Damage hero focusing on precision, mid-range combat and incredible mobility.

• Her primary weapon is the Railgun, which primarily functions as an accurate, rapid-fire machine gun that builds up energy from the damage it deals. Once charged up, she can alternatively fire single, high-impact blasts.
• Disruptor Shot creates a burst of energy that billows in a target area, gradually damaging enemies within its area of effect.
• Power Slide allows her to quickly dash along the ground, which she can cancel early into a high jump.
• Her ultimate, Overclock dramatically increases the charging rate of Railgun's secondary fire, allowing her to fire multiple piercing energy beams in quick succession.

---

• A Day in the Limelight:
  • She received a novel, Sojourn, covering her childhood, her gradual conversion to a cyborg, to her time in the military, to her participation in the Omnic Crisis, joining up with the nascent Overwatch to repel the omnic horde from Canada.
  • She was also the subject of the cinematic short, Calling, a preamble to the "Invasion" PvE event, showing what she's been up to following her retirement right before Null Sector makes their assault on Toronto.
• All of the Other Reindeer: For much of her childhood, Vivian was Delicate and Sickly due to a rare auto-immune disorder and regularly checked in and out of hospitals, making it difficult for her to find friends. Even as she began undergoing treatments to restore her body with cybernetics and became able to return to school, fellow children remained wary of her due to her perceived creepiness, with one passing comment that she's unable to love due to lacking a "real" heart leaving her hiding in a bathroom to cry. It wasn't until she graduated and joined the military, proving herself as a soldier, that she began getting respect and felt more comfortable about being her new self.
• Arm Cannon: While her right arm is occupied with holding her Railgun, she uses a cannon built into her left forearm to fire her Disruptor Shot.
• Arrested for Heroism: Subverted. Sojourn is nearly arrested by Agent Tremblay for violating the Petras Act (despite that she saved the lives of him and his team by doing so), but Null Sector's invasion of Toronto prompts Tremblay to drop the issue.
• Ascended Extra: For many years, she was an insignificant background character making unnamed background appearances in images depicting pre-disbandment Overwatch. Storm Rising finally named her, established her role in Overwatch, and made her the Mission Control, and not only is she set to be Promoted to Playable in Overwatch 2, she's also "right at the center of the story" and a major team player in Winston's reformed team.
• Becoming the Costume: Her "Cyber Detective" skin adds a ton of lines for her, all evocative of classic detective stories and film noir. Some choice cuts: her selection line becomes "Everyone's a suspect. Always." She announces herself to allies as "Detective Chase, at your service," and her ultimate callout becomes "It's gumshoe time!"
• Birds of a Feather: A platonic example: Sojourn and Jack Morrison bonded during the Omnic Crisis over discussions about the circumstances that led to them becoming soldiers, specifically their histories of augmentation (Sojourn and her cybernetic upgrades, Jack and his biological upgrades as part of his Super-Soldier program).
• Canadian Equals Hockey Fan: Subverted; when Lúcio (a Brazilian who is a hockey fan) asks if she has a favorite hockey team, Sojourn admits she's more of a basketball fan.
  Lúcio: Not a fan of your home team, huh?
  Sojourn: Don't put words in my mouth.
• The Captain: Her last known rank in Overwatch was Captain, and during Overwatch's heyday, she stepped up to the plate after Ana's mysterious "death", overseeing the Storm Rising mission as the squad's Mission Control. Following Overwatch's reformation, she's reassumed the role for the team.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: This issue is regularly explored in her dedicated novel, where as Vivian began receiving the treatments that gradually replaced her body with cybernetics, others became wary about her and saw her as unnatural, with some classmates cruelly saying she was incapable of "feeling" due to lacking a "real heart." Even as she gained prestige in the military, she often felt the need to downplay her cyborg nature due to worries that she was going to be seen as not merely less human, but actively an enemy (when the Omnic Crisis began, she briefly got in trouble due to scans being unsure if she was human or a hostile omnic). Things really hit for Sojourn after her failure to save her niece led to her sister calling her out for only acting based on strict, heartless logic, and that in some ways, she really was thinking just like another machine. In the end, this idea is subverted, with Sojourn learning to balance out how she thinks and acts as a soldier based on her humanity and compassion, becoming more content with her cybernetic form in the process.
• Cyborg: All of her limbs are cybernetic, featuring not only a cannon in each of her arms, but additional rocket boosters in her elbows, knees, and calves. Calling also showcases cybernetic eyes and electronic hacking tech in her head. Overwatch 2 confirmed that she got hers voluntarily as part of a treatment for a terminal auto-immune disease. Unlike Genji, she doesn't have any particular angst about this, and during one interaction in Storm Rising, she reassures him that even with his extensive cybernetics, he's still Genji.
  Genji: My cybernetic form came at great cost. But you asked to be changed?
  Sojourn: I learned too young that my body couldn't always keep up with me. Besides, it's hard to turn down rocket legs.
• Depending on the Writer: A minor case: the official bio claims that Sojourn became an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces before the Omnic Crisis, though the Sojourn novel reveals she was promoted to captain (a junior officer rank in the CAF) right when the Crisis began (it's never explicitly stated what rank she was before then, but it's implied she hadn't even made it to sergeant).
• Difficult, but Awesome: Overclock is trickier to consistently get value with than most ultimates, as rather than carrying a utility that instantly imposes pressure (such as Soldier: 76 or Cassidy being able to lock on anyone in sight, or Pharah and Reaper being able to fire indiscriminately high damage across an AoE), Sojourn merely gets a DPS boost for her precision railgun shots. A mediocre shot likely won't achieve much, but well-practiced Sojourn players become terrifying, as a charged headshot deals 200 damage and doesn't even require the scope-in requirement of Widowmaker or Ashe.
• Famed In-Story: In The Hero of Numbani, Efi watches a cartoon loosely based on the organization, and the episode centers around Sojourn and her squad fighting against Talon forces.
• Field Promotion: The Sojourn novel reveals that once the Omnic Crisis began, she received notice that effective immediately, she was being transferred to the Canadian Special Operations Regiment and had been promoted to captain. By that point in time, every Canadian soldier with four years of active service had been granted the rank of captain as the CAF had lost 5% of its forces in the last twelve hours — Sojourn snarks that if she survives another twelve years, she might even reach major.
• Hardboiled Detective: Her "Cyber Detective" skin decks her out in this style, with a snappy trenchcoat and fedora to accompany her cybernetic weaponry, along with a plethora of voice lines where she really leans into the gritty detective role.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Sojourn came to own a rescue dog named Murphy during her Overwatch days, and she remains in her care in the years following the organization's collapse, with the two living comfortably in Toronto together.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: A nonlethal example, but the spirit is there: In the night the Omnic Crisis began, Sojourn, her sister Valentine, Valentine's daughter Bonnie, and their omnic caretaker Julietta were at an amusement park, before out of nowhere, all omnics suddenly turned on the group, and Sojourn's first instinct was to push the offensive and attack their assailants to protect Valentine, realizing too late that during the time, Julietta was attempting to drown Bonnie, with Sojourn passing out before she could make the save. Sojourn would eventually come to and reunite with Valentine and Bonnie — the latter in critical condition, but thankfully still alive — but Valentine would give her sister a massive verbal lashing for prioritizing saving her and not her child, leading Sojourn to realize that she acted entirely out of cold-hard calculus to determine who to fight for beyond actual empathy. In the following months, Bonnie was still on a respirator and it was determined that she may never walk again, and this failure was instrumental to Sojourn being more connected with her sense of empathy and love, paving her path to being one of the most respecting, reliable, and trustworthy figures in Overwatch.
• Jack of All Stats: Probably the most notable example after Soldier: 76, though Sojourn has a bit more offensive potential. Sojourn has great mobility, very good damage output, competent crowd control and can seamlessly switch between tracking fire and hit-scan shots depending on the situation. Her average health pool is easily compensated due to said mobility, and her reliability in fights makes her prime pocketing material.
• Jumped at the Call: Calling shows her double-subverting this: on one hand, she chose to not pick up Winston's recall message to rejoin Overwatch, secretly pursuing local vigilante work in her home city, but otherwise keeping a low profile in agreement with the Petras Act. However, once Null Sector launches a full-scale invasion on Toronto (additionally leaving her to realize that all the hostile omnic behavior was Connected All Along), she throws all caution to the wind and immediately suits up, begins giving commands to escort civilians to safety, and leaps back into action.
• Magnetic Weapons: Her main weapon is a railgun that by default fires like an automatic weapon, but can charge up and blast piercing hitscan bursts as a secondary fire. In the Sojourn novel, it's revealed to have been an experimental weapon she tested out on the field during the Omnic Crisis, with her cybernetics giving her the strength and fortitude to handle it.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: Downplayed; she's not dripping with major Canadian stereotypes (she doesn't have an especially distinct accent nor is she a hockey fan), but her uniform has stylized maple leaves patched onto her shoulders, she has a proud love for her hometown of Toronto (kindly asking her team while spawning in New Queen Street to not blow anything up), and makes use of distinctly Canadian-English vernacular (such as pronouncing "lieutenant" as "lef-tenant" instead of "loo-tenant").
• Older Than They Look: 51 years old by the present day of Overwatch 2, but thanks to her cybernetic augmentations, she doesn't look the part at all, easily passing for someone in their early 30's.
• One-Man Army: In Calling, she ends up rolling through an underground Null Sector cell singlehandedly where the CSIS agents who found them were easily overwhelmed. It doesn't stop the invasion of Toronto, but the swiftness and ease she handled it spoke for itself.
• Red/Green Contrast: Sojourn's weapon and highlight colors are red, and the railgun's blasts and glow are green.
• Refusal of the Call: Calling has her say to Agent Trembley's face that she didn't respond to Winston's signal when he confronts her about violating the Petras Act. However, considering her entire house is a operational command center, it's clear she never rejected the call in spirit from the start.
• Retcon: Briefly; when the Overwatch 2 site added the official ages of the various heroes, Sojourn was initially 47, but was quickly updated to 51 to address some timeline wonk caused by her namesake novel (previously, it would have stated that she joined the military at 15 years old, and would have placed her twin sister as having had her daughter in her teens).
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: While she presents as having fully retired from active action due to the Petras Act, she still does lowkey vigilante work in Toronto. And as soon as Null Sector invades in ''Calling', she dispenses with the pretense entirely, showing her entire house is a secret command center and arsenal, showing she never gave up the call to begin with.
• Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: Sojourn's official bio explains that she was born with a rare and terminal auto-immune disease that caused her body to attack its organs. She spent much of her childhood in the hospital for surgeries and the like, but later received an experimental treatment that replaced her limbs and some of her organs with cybernetics so she could live easier. She later had some of these cybernetics upgraded by Overwatch's own Dr. Liao, which would help her become the badass that she is today.
• Significant White Hair, Dark Skin: She has striking white hair tied in a ponytail to contrast her dark skin. It's implied that her hair color is due to natural aging, since she's around the same age as the elderly Soldier 76, but her heavy use of cybernetic prosthetics causes her to look much younger than she is. However, in Calling, her squad photo with the original team shows her with white hair despite a much younger Morrison and Ana in the background.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Much of Sojourn's power comes from player fundamentals. She has excellent horizontal and vertical mobility and some AoE denial with Disruptor Shot, but the actual meat of her damage comes from simply aiming at enemies and firing away, preferably at their heads. There's not really much else that can hand-hold you through it — not even from her ultimate provides much utility — but blasting enemies in the face with high-damage railgun shots is still a very strong path to success.
• Sour Supporter: Sojourn is persuaded to help lead the resurrected Overwatch, but she doesn't mince words with Winston that for many reasons, she doesn't want to. She knows that Null Sector must be stopped, but she firmly believes that Overwatch ultimately shut down for a good reason, and doesn't want to entertain the idea with Winston and co that they can ever return to their glory days.
• Standardized Leader: She's The Captain to the newly-reborn Overwatch, and as such is a reliable central figure that keeps the squad in check, with the stability and straightforward competence that position requires. Consequently, she's distinctly low on massive personality quirks, mostly coming off as The Straight Man among a very eclectic and colorful cast.
• The Stool Pigeon: Vivian spoke during hearings amidst the UN's investigations of Overwatch's conduct that would eventually result in its forced shutdown, and her testimonies were considered pivotal in that decision being made. She wasn't coerced into it; she simply felt the need to speak truthfully after having seen Overwatch stray so far from its original goal, but while she doesn't regret what she said, she still admits "it was the hardest decision I ever made in my life."
• The Strategist: Sojourn had been learning about strategy since childhood, having been raised on books on military strategy and playing games against her grandfather, which proved to be a valuable asset when she actually joined the military. Once the Omnic Crisis took hold and forces around the world were struggling to deal with their robot threat, Sojourn's observational skills and decision-making abilities were just as strong as her leadership and individual tactics.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: While Jack Morrison is long gone from Overwatch, Sojourn functionally picks up a lot of his traits, being an experienced, central leading figure to the newly-reborn strike team. Even their gameplay has many broad similarities, being accessible, yet challenging run-and-gunners whose power come not from extremely flashy abilities, but from precision shooting and being really good at it. Sojourn even says her name in an accent that makes it sound like "Soldier".
• Video Game Sliding: One of her signature moves is Power Slide, using rocket boosters to dash quickly along the ground for an indefinite length, which she can cancel into a high-altitude jump at any point. She can still aim and fire while dashing, making her a really mobile threat.
• Vigilante Man: On the surface, Vivian Chase retired to a quiet life after Overwatch's forced shutdown, seemingly content to living a civilian life in Toronto. Behind the scenes, she's in fact continuing vigilante work under the cover of night, having taken out Null Sector units the night before they made their big assault on Toronto.

Soldier: 76 - United States

John Francis "Jack" Morrison / Soldier: 76

"Every soldier needs a cause."

Species: Enhanced human
Age: Mid-to-late 50s (1), 58 (2)
Birthday: January 27th
Occupation: Vigilante
Base of Operations: Unknown^note Currently residing in Necropolis, Egypt
Affiliation: Overwatch (formerly)
Appearances (shorts): Cinematic Trailer (cameo), Soldier: 76 Origin Story (focus), Hero (focus), Ana Origin Story (cameo)
Appearances (comics): "Legacy", "Old Soldiers" (focus), "Reflections" (cameo), "Uprising" (focus), "Retribution"
Appearances (short stories): "Bastet" (focus), "Valkyrie"
Appearances (Archives events): Uprising (on comms), Retribution (ending cutscene)

"We're all soldiers now."

Voiced by: Fred Tatasciore (English)^note Other Languages:Carlos Segundo (Latin American Spanish), Ramón Langa (European Spanish), Tōru Ōkawa (Japanese), Patrick Borg (French), Roberto Draghetti (Italian; until his death in 2020), Stefano Alessandroni (Italian, Overwatch 2), Martin Keßler (German), José Augusto Sendim (Brazilian Portuguese) Seung-jun Kim (Korean), Yangshao Wen (Taiwanese Chinese), Liu Yao (Mandarin Chinese), Andrzej Chudy (Polish), Maxim Pinsker (Russian)

Currently the target of an international manhunt, the vigilante known as Soldier: 76 wages a personal war to expose the truth behind Overwatch's collapse.

Soldier: 76 revealed himself in a string of attacks that crisscrossed the globe, targeting financial institutions, shadowy corporations, and secure Overwatch facilities. Though to the outside world his motives are inscrutable, there are those who claim that he is a former Overwatch agent, determined to shed light on the conspiracy that brought down the organization.

While his true identity remains a mystery, he is believed to have been trained as a member of the American "soldier enhancement program." He possesses physical capabilities exceeding those of a conventional soldier's, as well as other augmentations that make him a peerless combatant. In addition, he utilizes a cutting-edge arsenal, much of it stolen in raids on Overwatch installations.

Unrelenting in his search to find those responsible for Overwatch's fall, Soldier: 76 will stop at nothing to bring them to justice.

His identity is in fact the celebrated Overwatch hero and leader Jack Morrison. Formerly just a mere farmer's son from Indiana, Jack joined the military at the age of 18, eventually undergoing a "super soldier enhancement" program alongside his best friend Gabriel Reyes. When the first Omnic Crisis struck, Jack and Gabriel were among the first inductees into the newly formed Overwatch. Jack's kind nature, idealism, and charisma led him to become the main face of Overwatch and its first official commander. Eventually, the Overwatch he helped build started to show signs of corruption, and people began to lose their trust in the organization, regardless of how hard Jack tried to quell their doubts. It all fell apart when Jack and Gabriel came to blows at Overwatch's Swiss HQ; in the ensuing battle, Jack was believed to have perished along with Gabriel when their fighting triggered an explosion that destroyed the facility, and Morrison was officially buried with honors after his apparent death. However, unknown to the public, Jack survived the destruction. Disillusioned with how his idealism got him nowhere in preventing the world from plummeting into darkness and was in fact used to corrupt the organization he protected and cost him some of his dearest friends, he no longer believes in those old ideals, deciding instead to try to focus only on what matters most to him: uncovering the truth behind Overwatch's fall, no matter the cost, how many rules he has to break, and what brutal methods he has to use. After completing various raids to steal cutting-edge technology, including a prototype pulse rifle from a former Overwatch base, he began undertaking vigilante missions, referring to himself only as "Soldier: 76."

Soldier: 76 is a highly versatile hero, having efficient damage, mobility, and self-sustain.

• His primary weapon is the Heavy Pulse Rifle, a both powerful and highly accurate assault rifle when fired in short bursts.
• His secondary fire is Helix Rockets, a quick volley of rockets that explode and deal heavy burst damage on impact.
• Sprint allows him to move at increased speed for as long as he wants, although he's unable to fire while sprinting.
• Biotic Field is a deployable device he can drop on the ground, which heals him and any allies within its range over time.
• With his ultimate, Tactical Visor, Soldier: 76 activates his targeting visor for a few seconds, during which his attacks will automatically aim towards the enemy closest to his crosshairs, greatly improving their accuracy to output reliable damage.

---

• The Ace: Was this as Jack Morrison during the Omnic Crisis and during the early days of Overwatch. He was a charismatic leader and a good soldier, and had the uncanny ability to unite different people from all over the world into a cohesive and powerful force. Under Jack's leadership, Overwatch agents were lauded as heroes and Jack became the "face" of Overwatch, as well as a global symbol of hope. Even after his (supposed) death, Jack was fondly remembered by all.
• The Alcoholic: Implied Trope. A bottle of booze located next to his sleeping bag in Necropolis suggests that he's turned to alcohol to help ease his sorrows. The fact that he has hardly anything else with him besides the drink also lends credence to this. Ana also makes a sarcastic remark about carrying around whiskey just in case she runs into him.
• Always Accurate Attack: His Tactical Visor ability grants very generous aim assist that makes it almost impossible to miss anything in his line of sight, it can blocked though.
• Anti-Air: Being a hitscan hero he can target airborne heroes very effectively to either score kills or force them to take cover on the ground and give up their aerial positions. Tactical Visor takes it up further; any airborne hero will be a sitting duck unless they're being shielded or the ability is interrupted.
• Anti-Hero: While he attempts to do what he believes is right by finding the people that caused the downfall of Overwatch, there is the fact that he raided former Overwatch installations to steal weaponry in order to accomplish that goal. He's also ruthless and brutal when dealing with criminals, and doesn't hesitate to shoot them to death if it means ridding a city of their influence.
• Area of Effect: The healing from his Biotic Field. When deployed on a moving payload, it compliments the payload's healing marvelously.
• Ascended Meme: Soldier: 76 has been referred to as "Dad: 76" by fans. First Blizzard teased it by picking golf for his Summer Games sport (a stereotypical "Dad" sport) and his Halloween spray being a grumpy dad, he later got the below interaction with Tracer, and both dad jokes and Dad fashion (socks with sandals) from his Grillmaster: 76 skin (a stereotypical barbecue dad skin) in Summer Games 2017. The below bit with Tracer has her hint he's Team Dad:
  Soldier: 76: You need to slow down. Think about your actions.
  Tracer: Okay, dad.
• Bayonet Ya: His Formal: 76 skin's weapon has a bayonet afixed to it, but it is just an Ornamental Weapon.
• Beard of Sorrow: Not really, but after Overwatch fell and he lost most of his idealism, it's shown that underneath his mask, he's starting to grow some gray stubble on his face. In Overwatch 2 it's progressed into a more obvious beard, highlighted by his new mask only covering his eyes and ears.
• Becoming the Costume:
  • His "Daredevil: 76" and "Stunt Rider: 76" skins give him a bonus respawn line referencing Evel Knievel: "Bones heal, pain is temporary, scars look good."
  • For "Night Ops: 76" and "Commando: 76," he gets a new respawn line in "Sic transit gloria" ("Thus passes glory").
  • His "Grillmaster: 76" changes a ton of his lines, including replacing all his quotes for deploying Biotic Field (or in this case, a can of Diet HEAL UP), changing his ultimate callout to "Tactical sunglasses activated!" All the while reinforcing his Ascended Meme of "Dad: 76." It also affects a few manual voice lines as well; "Smells like victory" becomes "Smells like freedom", and "Respect your elders" (exclusive to Lunar New Year boxes) becomes "Respect the chef."
  • His "Alpine: 76" skin lightly modifies a few lines, changing one of his respawn lines to "Not on ice yet," and his ultimate callout to "Tactical goggles activated!"
  • His Starwatch-themed "Infinite Guard" skin styles him as a member of the Praetorian Guard to the Infinite Empire, giving him much more brutal and authoritarian dialogue as he serves the will of his Excellency, Galactic Emperor Sigma.
• Blue Is Heroic: Blue features prominently in many of his outfits. While the "heroic" part is a little shaky in the present-day, he was definitely this while being the leader of Overwatch.
• Boring, but Practical: His skill set is far from flashy and can even come across as a little underwhelming compared to some of the other offense heroes, but his long-range precision and burst damage allows him to rapidly take down most non-tank heroes, while his Sprint allows him to rapidly get away from danger, re-position himself in a fight, or get to the front lines much more quickly. His Biotic Field also greatly increases his and his team's ability to remain in a protracted firefight, and his ultimate, Tactical Visor, is basically an aimbot that can quickly stop a push dead in its tracks (and net you Play of the Game). The fact that his play style is similar to other first-person shooters such as Call of Duty and Halo also means he's the perfect hero for beginner players. There's a reason why the basic tutorial is a walkthrough of his abilities. This skillset has also ensured his spot as one of the top-picked Offense heroes in professional play, due to how he's able to cover his team's bases without producing any glaring weaknesses.
• Broken Hero: He was once the Ideal Hero of Overwatch, then the public started turning against him, and he barely survived a bomb attack in their headquarters. Now he is on a quest for vengeance, seeking the ones responsible for destroying Overwatch.
• Broken Pedestal: Many people accused Jack, their former hero, as being part of the Dirty Business Overwatch was revealed to be behind. Jeff Kaplan has stated that part of his downfall was his willingness to "defend Reyes' questionable actions".
• Camera Abuse: One of his highlight intros shows him sprinting towards the camera and straight-up knocking the camera out with the butt of his rifle just because it was in the way.
• Captain Geographic: His "Daredevil: 76" skin, based on the iconic costume worn by motorcycle stunt rider Evel Knievel, gives off a "Captain America meets Elvis Presley" vibe.
• Captain Patriotic: Definitely. Not only does he have an American flag-themed costume that is equal parts Captain America and Winter Soldier but his name "Soldier: 76" is a reference to the year of formation for the United States.
• Civvie Spandex: His gloves and jacket look like they were taken from a hockey uniform or some other sport, especially with the number emblazoned on the back.
• Color Motifs: As Jack Morrison, his outfit was predominately blue with white and silver. After he became "Soldier: 76", his outfit now has more black and red areas than blue, to symbolize how far he had fallen.
• Combat Medic: The only non-support character to have the ability to heal allies.
• Cool Mask: Especially if it has a targeting visor that lets you aim at enemies without even trying.
• Covered with Scars: Whether from the blast in Switzerland or from a long career as a soldier, Grillmaster: 76 reveals that his face, arms, and legs are all covered in various scars.
• Cowboy Cop: In stark contrast to his approach as Commander Morrison, Jack has noticeable shades of this as Soldier: 76. Downplayed in that Soldier isn't an actual cop, or any sort of legitimate law enforcer by that point, and closer to a vigilante. Being previously known for his transparent, by-the-book approach to keeping peace, the significantly more ruthless and violent actions he now carries out unlawfully point to him evolving into this.
• The Cowl: As can be seen in the Hero short, he does his local hero work starting from sundown. And his methods are not unlike Batman, so…
  These! Aren't! Your! Streets! Anymore!
• Create Your Own Villain: Accepting the position of Strike Commander, basically supplanting his former superior commander, Gabriel Reyes, ensured that the downfall of Overwatch and the rise of Reaper was inevitable.
• Cyborg: His "Cyborg" skin turns him into one, with lots of cybernetic implants seen all over his body, namely his feet and arms.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Overwatch's fall into disgrace and destruction, as well as his "death", turned him into a cynical Well-Intentioned Extremist obsessed with catching the people responsible.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not too often, but he has his moments.
  Soldier: 76: I'm the one who does his job. I'm thinking you're the other one.
• Determinator: His respawn line "Knock me down and I'll keep getting back up" invokes this.
• Disease Bleach: One can assume that his near-death experience had something to do with the whitening of his hair.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Downplayed. He can still move at his usual movement speed while shooting, but he cannot shoot while using Sprint.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • He's the guy who's seen holding the hand of a young child in the cinematic trailer.
  • In the Doomfist Preview video, Soldier: 76 could be seen with an unfamiliar skin on his weapon. That weapon skin turned out to be for his Summer Games 2017 skin.
  • The photo of him and his ex-boyfriend, Vincent, was shown in the "Reflections" comic, two years before the "Bastet" short story revealed its meaning.
• Faking the Dead: People thought he died along with Overwatch when its headquarters was blown up by its enemies, when in actuality he survived. He now uses it as a chance to hide his identity until the ones responsible for Overwatch's downfall were brought to justice.
• Fallen Hero: As an in-universe news post says:
  "The Morrison I knew wouldn't hide behind a mask. He wouldn't plant bombs and steal weapons while the world suffered through another year of war and heartache. That Morrison was buried here six years ago. All that's left is the shadow of the hero we once knew."
• Farm Boy: Being an all-American hero type, he naturally grew up on a farm in rural Indiana. The Halloween update reveals that he is specifically from Bloomington.
• Feeling Their Age: After a respawn, he'll complain that he's not a young man anymore.
• Good Is Not Nice: Even as the Fallen Hero, he intends to do what he believes is right, but is known for his skills, cunning, and ruthlessness. He has zero qualms about killing criminals to rid the city of their influence, in other words.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has what looks like a slash mark on his forehead. Underneath his mask, he also has at least a scar across his mouth.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Well, visor. It pinpoints potential targets for him, and seems to be linked to his pulse rifle for aim assist.
• Grumpy Old Man: He comes across as fairly impatient and irritable, and even has a couple of "Back In My Day" quotes, such as, "Young punks. Get off my lawn!" It's hilariously addressed for his Halloween "Trick or Treat" spray, where instead of portraying a child version of himself in a crudely-made Halloween costume like every other hero except Ana (who's instead shown with her daughter, Pharah), he's just an old grump in a sweater sitting on a rocking chair.◊
• Guilty Pleasures: Lunar New Year 2019 gives him an emote where he endulges in playing with a monkey drum before looking around to see if anyone saw him.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: His Origins skin depicted him (as Jack Morrison) with golden blonde hair, yet in early promotional material and the cinematic trailer, his hair was white. After he became Soldier: 76, though, most of his Heart Of Gold went bye-bye.
• Having a Blast: His ability Helix Rockets allows him to shoot explosive, helix-shaped energy rockets from his heavy pulse rifle.
• Heal Thyself: His Biotic Field allows him to heal himself and his teammates in its canister's range.
• Healing Factor: Part of his Super-Soldier treatment gave him some slight regenerative abilities, with wounds able to heal themselves over time, even from a necrotic state. In "Old Soldiers", he gets his back blasted by a close-range shotgun, but not only does he survive, "Bastet" reveals he's already beginning to regenerate from it. That said, he's not invincible and still requires proper treatment for all the abuse his body takes.
• Helmet-Mounted Sight: The Tactical Visor built into his mask can project a holographic aiming reticle. With it, Soldier: 76 can line up expert shots, never missing in gameplay.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Since the fall of Overwatch, he's done so many questionable things in the name of justice that he doesn't see himself as a hero anymore. In the Hero animated short, a young girl named Alejandra asks him if he was one of the heroes her mother told her about. Soldier: 76 stops for a moment before sadly answering: "...Not anymore."
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: He used to be best friends with Reaper before the rift in their relationship formed, sticking with him through pretty much everything (the army, the first Omnic crisis, Overwatch). He even defended most of Reyes' dubious actions which eventually led to Overwatch's downfall.
• He Who Fights Monsters: In desperately chasing after those responsible for Overwatch's fall into disgrace, Soldier: 76 is often seen by the general public as being almost as bad as his targets. He not only knows this all too well, he doesn't contest the opinion. Ironic in that his actions as Soldier: 76 mirrors Reyes' during the golden years of Overwatch. His tactics being on the line and brutal enough to blur the line between him and his targets.
• Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: His "Slasher: 76" skin decks him out in this style, with a bulk of his rifle being made to resemble a chainsaw.
• Hurricane of Puns: His "Grillmaster: 76" skin, which is the strongest ascension of the Dad: 76 meme. His apron reads "raise the steaks", his gun reads "a salt rifle"… The list goes on.
• Hypocrite: A couple of his interactions in Overwatch 2 cross into this territory. It doesn't go unanswered.
  • He accuses Genji of allowing Blackwatch to continue their operations despite knowing their agenda. Genji admits his guilt, but also notes that Soldier: 76 himself didn't do much to stop them either.
  • He's eager to berate Zenyatta for having an unrealistic worldview because he "talks like a pacifist". Zenyatta rebukes him for making prejudicial conclusions about his worldview, which were proven incorrect.
• Hypocritical Humor: Expresses surprise that Ana did not inform him that she's still alive. This, coming from a guy who also faked his own death without telling anyone. Ana, of course, immediately calls him out on this.
• Ideal Hero: Deconstructed and, as more information is revealed, subverted. While Jack Morrison was the pure, idyllic, and charismatic Face of Overwatch, he couldn't do much about problems within his own team. From internal corruption, to Reyes' growing resentment caused by being continually denied recognition, to Ana Amari's deteriorating mental health, Jack could only do so much before it all (literally) blew up in his face.
• I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: He doesn't consider himself a hero anymore. Just an old soldier still fighting a war with no end. However, as the Hero short demonstrates, his heroic ways are still with him. When faced with pursuing enemies or rescuing an Innocent Bystander, Jack chooses the latter.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Tactical Visor gives him this for a brief time.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Morrison's cynical turn could be interpreted as him believing he could have stopped Overwatch's downfall, if his way of thinking had been different at the time.
  • Further implied by equipping the Witch skin on Mercy, where she'll offer him to "undo the choices [he] regrets."
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Before the fall of Overwatch, Jack was in a happy relationship with a man named Vincent, but eventually lost contact. Vincent eventually moved on and married someone else, and Jack says that he's glad he found someone that could give him a life that Jack himself never could — but Ana is unconvinced that Jack is completely truthful.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Years ago when he was one of the leaders of Overwatch, he had a fuller head of hair and was quite handsome. Now his face is scarred, his hair has gone white, and his hairline seems to be receding. He's still quite attractive for his age.
• Jack of All Stats: He's a great all-rounder, competent at almost everything but specializing in nothing. His assault rifle has good long-range accuracy in short bursts, meaning that he can snipe, but not as well as dedicated snipers like Hanzo and Widowmaker. He can heal a team, but not as well as dedicated healers like Mercy and Ana, and his ability to heal means he can tank some damage, but not as much as dedicated tanks like Reinhardt or D.Va. His rockets mean he can do his part to crack dug-in defenders and tanks, but not quite as well as a demolitions expert like Pharah or Junkrat. And his sprint means he can flank, but not quite as well as speedsters like Tracer and Genji.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Not as bad as Reaper or Widowmaker in the "Jerk" part, but he's not particularly nice and comes across as fairly aggressive and dismissive towards his teammates. He does seem to have a soft spot for some of his former teammates, especially Pharah, whom he compliments on her accuracy and positively compares to her mother. He's still on very good terms with Ana, enough so that he actively sought her out to recruit her help in avenging Overwatch's fall. In the Hero short, he has a brief moment of hesitation when he has to choose between pursuing the fleeing Los Muertos gang for his self-assigned mission and saving an innocent from one of their grenades. While he actually begins to run after the gang, ultimately, he turns back to save her.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Soldier: 76 has a very jaded world-view thanks to Overwatch's destruction, but is still trying to do the right thing, even if he's going about it differently than he used to.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Back when he was Jack Morrison, he had a square jawline to complete his all-American hero look.
• The Leader: Even before taking formal command of Overwatch while serving under his friend, Commander Gabriel Reyes, Jack was seen as the more charismatic and inspiring leader. That's why the United Nations appointed him the Strike Commander of the first formal Overwatch team.
• Like Brother and Sister: The narration in "Bastet" mentions that Ana, Jack and Gabriel were like siblings to each other during Overwatch's golden years.
• Made of Iron: A definite benefit to his Super-Soldier treatment, even if it still apparently hurts like hell. In Hero, he's able to take being blasted by a grenade to the back, and in "Old Soldiers", he's also able to survive a shotgun blast to the back.
• Malevolent Masked Men: He wears a face mask (along with a targeting visor) to hide his identity as Jack Morrison. Though he's more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist or Anti-Villain than purely evil.
• Married to the Job: While several members of Overwatch managed to start families during the organization's golden years, Jack was so dedicated to his duty as a soldier and peacekeeper that he ended up rejecting such a life, even after forming a relationship with another man.
  "We both knew that I could never put anything above my duty. Everything I fought for was to protect people like him… That’s the sacrifice I made."
• Meaningful Name: Possibly unintentional, but his real name is Jack Morrison, and there isn't a single other hero in the game who can compete with him for best Jack of All Stats.
• Military Superhero: A super-soldier and a (former) leader of Overwatch.
• Morality Pet:
  • In the Hero short, Alejandra is shown to bring out the human side of him, even when he claims not to be a hero anymore. The fact that he abandons his mission against Los Muertos and saves her life from a live grenade proves that old habits die hard.
  • It's not expanded upon much, but he's portrayed in-game as having a soft spot for Pharah. He tells her that her mother would be so proud of her in an interaction, and he compliments her aim when she gets a kill. Most of his other interactions are cold and distant, if not outright antagonistic, apart from Pharah's own mother, Ana.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He gave Reyes the unofficial okay for the disastrous Venice incident. When it blew up in their faces, he responded by throwing Reyes and Blackwatch as a whole under the bus. This was the beginning of what would be the end of Overwatch.
• Not So Above It All: Soldier: 76 plays the gruff, jaded, no nonsense vigilante, but he's not completely above having a little fun. He had the 3rd highest score in Murky Skeeball in Blizzard World before Sombra came along.
• Old Soldier: One of the founders of Overwatch as a specialized strike team during the Omnic Crisis. As evidenced by his official release, he's still going strong.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Jack is short for John, but nobody called him that before he became Soldier: 76.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Played with; in the Hero short, Alejandra realizes that 76 is the man on the poster she saw, even with his mask on.
• Passing the Torch: His pre-match banter with Winston implies this.
  Soldier: 76: So you think you can do my old job?
  Winston: Someone has to.
• Patriotic Fervor: Invoked For Laughs in his "Grillmaster: 76" skin, which on top of turning him into a stereotypical suburban "barbecue dad", also replaces his "Smells like victory" voice line to "Smells like freedom."
• Pet the Dog:
  • For someone who normally acts cold to others, he has a few unusually soft in-game lines with Pharah, indicating he still has a soft spot. For example, he'll compliment that she got her aim from her mom if he sees her get a kill. He also tells Pharah that her mother would've been proud of her, to which Pharah responds that he must not have known her very well to say that.
  • In the Hero short, he specifically abandons the mission at hand when he could've ended Los Muertos in order to save Alejandra from a grenade that was thrown at her. Even though he no longer views himself as a hero, there are some habits that will never die.
  • If he sees Tracer get killed in battle, he'll say "You won't be forgotten."
  • He has the most civilized interactions with Ana, with all of them being friendly reminders of their past together.
• Pistol-Whipping: 76's melee strike knocks the opponent away with his rifle. In the "We are Overwatch" trailer, 76 knocks out a bank robber's tooth with the butt-stock of his rifle.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Lifelong friends with Ana, who served as his second-in-command of Overwatch. Even now, after Overwatch disbanded and they're wanted by both the law and Talon, they still fight together and look out for each other out of a bond that's lasted decades.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: When using his ultimate.
  "I've got you in my sights."
• Primary-Color Champion: His default outfit is mostly decorated with bright blues and reds with some white and yellow details.
• Punctuated Pounding: Repeatedly bashes a piñata against a thug's head, declaring "These! Aren't! Your! Streets! Anymore!", in the Hero trailer, terrifying the innocent on the scene.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: When equipped with the "Night" skin. Subverted in that he's not evil; just being a Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: He doesn't have red eyes himself (his eyes are blue), but his tactical visor contains a red horizontal slit that he sees through.
• Refusal of the Call: He's shown to be among the more skeptical critics of Overwatch's return, as he bitterly recites this line when spawning at Gibraltar.
  "Bring back Overwatch"? What's the point?
  • The "Valkyrie" short story outright cements this, with him citing that the new Overwatch would simply fall apart once again.
• Rocket Jump: Possible with his Helix Rockets. He still takes quite a bit of damage from it, and it's only a slight vertical boost, so it's not recommended for use in combat, but it can still get him onto some normally out-of-reach places.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: During the London hostage incident in Overwatch's waning days. With the Prime Minister of London denying Overwatch clearance to deal with the situation, Jack finds his hands tied with Director Petras on hold for him in his office. After a meeting with then-cadet Tracer, he has his secretary tell Petras to call back before sending Reinhardt, Torbjörn, Mercy, and Tracer into London anyway.
• Secret-Keeper: Subverted. Morrison was personally involved in Ana's failed mission. Given that he's the Number One to Ana's Number Two, he could have given the order to suppress the information in order for Ana to retire. However, in-game and in "Old Soldiers", he expresses surprise that Ana is alive.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: The destruction of Overwatch was traumatic, and the intervening years haven't been kind.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Once he survived the explosion at Overwatch's Swiss headquarters, he starts making progress to discard his idealism and only cares about results.
• Silver Fox: His "Night Ops" and "Commando" skins shows that he is still quite attractive. He accredits this to whatever the government pumped into him long ago.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Soldier: 76 is the most straight-forward character in the game, with abilities that only require that a player point-and-shoot (or drop right where they are to heal). In the right hands, however, he's incredibly dangerous due to good mobility, decent damage and accuracy, and self-reliability.
• So Proud of You: Will specifically tell Pharah in their pre-game dialogue that her mother would've been proud of her, in a moment of unusual kindness. She responds that he must not have known her very well to say something like that.
• Straight Gay: The short story "Bastet" reveals that, during the Golden Age of Overwatch, Jack had a boyfriend named Vincent, but lost touch with him. Nothing about Soldier: 76's behavior or demeanor had hinted at his sexuality before.
• Sucks at Dancing: For the game's first anniversary, every character received a dancing emote. It turns out that most of the cast are really good dancers… except for Soldier: 76. He performs the most awkward, uncoordinated series of kicks and claps that really needs to be seen to be believed.◊ He tries so hard, though.
• Superhero Paradox: Despite putting an end to the Omnic Crisis, bad guys still keep popping up, and the public started blaming Overwatch and Jack Morrison for failing to keep the peace — even accusing them of causing the trouble.
• Super-Soldier: A member of an American soldier-enhancing program that gives him the standard enhanced reflexes and physical augmentations.
• Terror Hero: The Hero short shows him to be one, using his superior skills and equipment to terrify a bunch of gangbangers and arms dealers into staying off the streets. Other stories establish that while he won't use lethal force on non-criminals shooting at him, he's more than willing to injure them to shut them down.
• Technical Pacifist: Though he is confirmed to use more aggressive and brutal methods than the other heroes and is seen as an extremely dangerous killer by the public, every depiction of Soldier: 76 shows him actively avoiding killing his targets if he can help it.
• That Man Is Dead: He prefers to not answer to the name of Jack Morrison, whom the world long believed to be dead anyway. However, old habits die hard and he still responds when Ana refers to him as Jack.
• This Means Warpaint: His "Night Ops" and "Commando" skins gives him camo paint on his face.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Originally an idealistic leader akin to Captain America, the falling of Overwatch from forces inside and outside of the organization turned him into a cynical, truth-seeking wild card who wouldn't be any different from a '90s Anti-Hero like The Punisher and such. The opposite happened to Cassidy, a former crook and arms dealer who Took a Level in Idealism.
  "Call me a vigilante if you like. The truth is, I'm just a soldier."
• Vague Age: He's the only playable character whose age is unknown. All we know is that he's about two decades older than Cassidy and Hanzo, who are 37 and 38, respectively.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Ana. She is the first person he tracks down to reunite with, and their first dialogue is them joking if Ana would shoot him for ruining her stakeout.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: One of the American characters, and his outfit has a very obvious red, white, and blue color scheme.
• We Used to Be Friends: He was a close friend and teammate of Gabriel Reyes, but nowadays, they're enemies as Soldier: 76 and Reaper.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Downplayed. Despite being one of the playable characters, he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist at best, and his rather questionable methods in dealing with criminals make him an Anti-Villain at worst.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Deconstructed. Jack Morrison worked tirelessly in ending the Omnic Crisis and ensuring global peace. This resulted in Overwatch being destroyed, his teammates reviled as criminals, and Jack becoming a ruthless Fallen Hero Vigilante Man.
• Would Not Shoot a Good Guy: This Atlas News story implies that even after becoming a vigilante, 76 still does his best to not kill any non-criminals standing in his way, even if they're shooting at him. He's still more than willing to inflict temporary injury on them, though.
• You Are Number 6: Often referred to as Soldier: 76, though his real name is Jack Morrison. If Reaper's Soldier: 24 skin is any indication, Morrison chose his new moniker based on his designation when he was inducted in the experimental super soldier program.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: He's the narrator for the Winter 2016 special brawl. He introduced the battleground, how you are selected for the mission because you are the best… and it's revealed to be a one big snowball brawl, and he gave this response. The start of the match also torments him.
  "We're all scientists now… ugh."

Symmetra - India

Satya Vaswani / Symmetra

"From imperfection, we build a new world."

Species: Human
Age: 28 (1), 30 (2)
Birthday: October 2nd
Occupation: Architech
Base of Operations: Utopaea, India
Affiliation: Vishkar Corporation
Appearances (comics): "A Better World" (focus)
Appearances (short stories): "Stone By Stone" (focus)

"The true enemy of humanity is disorder."

Voiced by: Anjali Bhimani (English)^note Other Languages: Carla Castañeda (Latin American Spanish), Silvia Sarmentera (European Spanish), Hitomi Nabatame (Japanese), Tulika Srivastava (French), Sanam Afrashteh (German), Deborah Morese (Italian), Guilene Conte (Brazilian Portuguese), Yun-seon Im (Korean), Zhang Naiwen (Taiwanese Chinese), Zhāng Yù (Mandarin Chinese), Agnieszka Kunikowska (Polish), Karina Dymont (Russian)

Symmetra literally bends reality. By manipulating hard-light constructs, she crafts the world as she wishes it to be, in hopes of engineering a perfect society.

Following the Omnic Crisis, the Vishkar Corporation of southern India began the laborious process of creating new, self-sustaining cities to house the nation's displaced population. One such city, Utopaea, was created using radical hard-light technology that enabled its architects to shape the city's streets, utilities, and living spaces in the blink of an eye.

After she was identified as one of the few capable of becoming a light-bending architect, young Satya Vaswani was plucked from extreme poverty and placed in the care of Vishkar's architect academy, never to return home. Isolated and lonely in her new life, Satya immersed herself in her education and training. She quickly grasped the applications of the technology and was one of the top students in her class. Satya approached hard-light manipulation differently from her peers, with their more procedural, mechanical constructions, instead weaving her constructs in the motions of the traditional dance of her homeland.

Though she was one of Utopaea's top architects, the Vishkar Corporation saw far greater potential in Satya's abilities. Giving her the moniker "Symmetra," Vishkar sent her on clandestine missions around the world to uphold its corporate interests and expand its influence into other countries.

Symmetra believes her actions serve the greater good in society. But there are times when she wonders whether the control and order she desires are truly best for humanity.

Symmetra is a Damage character who can lock down choke points with sentries and projectile spam, as well as assist her team's positioning via teleportation.

• Her weapon is the Photon Projector, which can both fire out a short-ranged beam that ramps up in damage the more it damages a target, and when used against barriers, she regains ammo and shields. She's also able to fire explosive energy balls for her secondary fire, either in rapid succession or to charge them up for heavy damage.
• With Sentry Turret, she can launch turrets at a time that stick to the first surface they hit, each firing continuous lasers that damage and slow down any enemies near them after they deploy.
• Teleporter produces a teleportation pad a long distance away and a second one at her feet, granting her team access to new heights and flank routes.
• Symmetra's ultimate, Photon Barrier, deploys a very durable, map-spanning wall of light that blocks enemy gunfire.

Previous Abilities

• Photon Shield placed a small, flat amount of regenerating shield around an ally, lasting until they died.
• Photon Barrier (different to her current ultimate) was a basic ability that sent out an automatically-advancing shield to block enemy fire.
• Between her December 2016 and June 2018 reworks, Symmetra had two ultimates she could choose from: Teleporter, which connected between her current location and her team's spawn, and Shield Generator, which would grant passive shields to all allies within range.

---

• Always Accurate Attack: Her Photon Projector's primary fire used to fire a beam that would tether to a single foe and continuously damage them. It would continue to damage that target no matter how much they jump around unless they either got out of Symmetra's line of sight, got out of range, or placed a barrier (or a teammate) in range. This was removed in favor of a straight beam like Zarya's after her second rework.
• Anti-Villain: Symmetra is a good-hearted lady, but she works for the Vishkar Corporation, something of a nefarious MegaCorp that has dabbled in plenty of shady practices, while feeding her information that it's all for the greater good. She does have her doubts, but due to having been groomed to be a top enforcer of Vishkar from a young age, she appears unable to turn against the corporation.
• Arch-Enemy: To Lúcio, who stole her organization's technology and ruined their efforts in Brazil, which makes him the epitome of everything in society she despises.
• The Artifact: Much of Symmetra's gameplay identity as a heavily utility-based Damage hero is a result of her foundation, built on design ideas which Blizzard eventually strayed away from. She was originally released as an unorthodox Support whose team-supporting power came through indirect gadgets like turrets and teleporters rather than through direct buffs like healing, but as the regular metagame developed, the ability to heal was deemed to be so vital to Supports that Symmetra only became an unpopular exception. Rather than sacrifice her unique gadgets to make her another healer, Blizzard has since opted to double down on her utility and attempt to make it more palatable, putting her somewhat closer to a heavily zoning-based Damage hero like Torbjörn, and even he has strayed further away from his utility for more personal firepower^note The original plan was for her to move from Support to Defense, a category given to heroes whose theoretical specialty was controlling zones in this way. However, during the move, the Defense and Offense labels were collapsed into a single Damage category (both of them were effectively about dealing damage and were more flexible than suggested, so the separation was deemed redundant), taking Symmetra with them.
• Artificial Limbs: Her left arm is very mechanical-looking and features a palm-mounted device to construct with, and it was confirmed to be an artificial replacement.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: The technology she uses is very sleek and white, namely her Photon Projector, her left arm, and her turrets.
• Balance Buff:
  • She was given a significant kit change in December 2016 in response to complaints that she was too situational (being only effective at point-A defense) and increase her versatility. Among minor changes such as an increased lock-on range for her primary fire^note in absolute terms. Relatively speaking, it was a 40% increase on her old lock-on range. Once locked-on, the beam's maximum range has remained unchanged and being able to put down more turrets and put them down faster, she got an active dynamic barrier in Photon Barrier rather than the tiny "fire and forget" +25 shield buff. She also got a second ultimate in Shield Generator to give her more options alongside her Teleporter.
  • When the first rework ended up creating some problems of its own (mainly exacerbating the "incredibly powerful at low levels, near-useless in higher levels" nature of her kit), she was given a second, even bigger rework in June 2018 to even things out. Her primary fire lost its lock-on feature in exchange for more damage, her secondary fire became an explosive projectile instead of a piercing one, she gained a reduced amount of turrets in exchange for being able to deploy them from afar, her Teleporter was demoted from an Ultimate to a normal, foundationally different ability, she lost her Shield Generator and regular Photon Barrier ability, but gained a completely new Photon Barrier that became her new Ultimate ability.
• Beam Spam: Both her weapon and her turrets fire continuous beams at enemies. There is even an achievement for hitting a single enemy with four beams at once.
• Becoming the Costume:
  • Her "Dragon" skin changes and adds a bunch of lines to revolve around sorcery and dragons, borrowing some lines from The Summoner in Junkenstein's Revenge. Most notably, she refers to her Sentry Turrets as "Sentry Wards" and her Teleporter as a "Teleportation Portal" (before it was removed, she also called her Shield Generator a "Shield Well").
  • Her "Magician" skin has her say "Presto!" and "Just a bunch of hocus-pocus!" after a final blow, as well as "Abracadabra" while placing a turret.
• Bilingual Bonus: Originally, Symmetra only had English lines, but following demand from the fans, several lines in Hindi were added to the game.
• Blind Obedience: While she is stated to have doubts regarding Vishkar, her in-game quotes don't seem to show much of it, something which Lúcio will regularly mock her for.
• Blue Is Heroic: Her default outfit and gear are splashed with light blue; even her light constructs are blue. She's also one of the playable characters, and a Noble Top Enforcer when compared to the much more corrupt co-workers of the company she works for.
• Bollywood Nerd: She's a genius in hard-light technology and incorporates traditional Indian dance in her construction methods.
• Charged Attack: The secondary fire mode of her Photon Projector can be traditionally charged by being held down, making it deal more damage once fired. The primary fire, meanwhile, ramps up in damage if held on a target long enough, increasing up to triple its base for truly monstrous amounts of close-ranged firepower.
• Child Prodigy: She was identified as gifted enough to bend hard-light at a very young age.
• Close-Range Combatant: Symmetra's Photon Cannon has two modes of fire: a Painfully Slow Projectile that's near impossible to aim with accuracy over any kind of range (useful more for denying access to chokepoints with its large size than actually securing kills), and short-range beam that grows in power the longer it's locked on, melting through enemies if she can keep her momentum going and stay alive.
• Combat Stilettos: She wears heels into combat, because Rule of Cool.
• Corporate Samurai: While she's officially an architech, she does occasionally partake in clandestine operations for Vishkar of dubious morality.
• Corporate Warfare: Was recruited to help enforce the Vishkar Corporation's interests.
• Deflector Shields:
  • Her current Photon Barrier creates an absolutely enormous barrier field that spans an entire map and can block off up to 5,000 damage.
  • Symmetra's previous kits also involved shields and barriers, including a previous, smaller-scale iteration of Photon Barrier that projected an automatically-moving shield to soak up to 1,000 damage. One of her ultimates was Shield Generator, which automatically granted 75 shield health to all allies within range, which was itself a ramp-up of a normal ability that let her give nearby allies a permanent-until-death, non-stacking +25 shields buff to their HP.
• Draconic Humanoid: Her 2017 Halloween Terror skin, appropriately named "Dragon". It gives her red and purple-grey skin covered in scales and armor plates, horns, a draconic tail or crest growing from the back of her head and yellow Volcanic Veins along her chest and right arm. It also turns her skirt into a pair of dragon wings growing from the small of her back.
• The Engineer: Her entire kit revolves around mobilizing the team and building additional defenses in any situation.
• Everything Is An I Pod In The Future: Her left hand and gun are smooth and white, resembling the Portal Gun.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Her "Dragon" legendary skin puts two moving ones onto her Photon Projector.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Her entire powerset revolves around her inventions.
• Gender-Blender Name: Satya is a gender-neutral name, and is more often given to men.
• Glass Cannon: With her Photon Projector at maximum power and range, Symmetra can easily rack up a near team kill or at least melt through half of the opposing team. However, despite her small hitbox, she only has 200 HP and initiates the most of her damage at close range, where the majority of the cast can easily drop her.
• Going Native: In "Stone by Stone", Symmetra spends several days with a religious omnic commune in India in order to figure out how to make up for Vishkar's accidental destruction of a sacred statue. With Zenyatta's mentorship, she better understands their faith and humanistic worldview enough to create a glorious reconstruction of the statue, and while she eventually has to leave, she keeps their lessons to heart.
• Good Samaritan: Her mindset — she selflessly works to make sure people can rise above poverty and have better living standards, not for something in exchange. Sadly, her co-workers at Vishkar are majorly Bad Samaritans. In "Stone by Stone", when she's assigned by Vishkar to create a new development as apologies for accidently wrecking a sacred omnic temple, she instinctively dismisses their proposals of luxury retreats and goes out of her way to personally understand what was lost in order to create a meaningful replacement.
• Hard Light: Her entire kit is based around creating turrets and other gadgets with it. In her lore, Symmetra is capable of far more advanced Hard Light manipulation, and is capable of building entire cities with nothing but Hard Light, though the closest she gets in-game for the sake of game balance is her ultimate, creating an entire map-spanning Hard Light wall.
• Hartman Hips: About as wide as her shoulders.
• Horned Humanoid: She received a skin from the 2017 Haloween Terror event that resembles a demonic dragon, with notable horns extending out of her forehead into the back.
• Inspector Javert: She's usually acting like this when it comes to Lúcio. While she is starting to doubt Vishkar's good intentions, what Lúcio did was pretty much theft, making him no better in her eyes. She either condemns him as a criminal, or demands the return of the technology he stole if she manages to score a kill against him.
• Ironic Name: Her cybernetic left arm makes her herself anything but symmetrical.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She comes off as unapproachable and haughty in-game, in part due to her interactions being primarily with Lucio, who professes ideals that are diametrically opposed to her own, and Torbjörn, whom she sees using inferior technology compared to her. However, she does her work for Vishkar out of a genuine belief that she is creating a better world.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: One of her highlight intros features her adjusting the position of the camera.
• Life Drain: A limited form, but following the July 2023 patch, using Symmetra's left-click on shields not only grants her ammo, it also refills the shields in her life bar, allowing her to siphon her way through barrier-heavy teams if left unchecked.
• Light 'em Up: Manipulates hard-light constructs for her attacks and abilities.
• Light Is Good: Played with. She uses Hard Light and her color palette is primarily white and blue, but she works for Vishkar. At the same time, she is shown to be a Token Good Teammate and is canonically aware of their corrupt activities, but doesn't bring it up in gameplay conversations.
• Literal-Minded: The "Stone by Stone" short story shows she takes various sayings like "a drop in the bucket" very literally. She also briefly stumbles on Zenyatta's claim of "building bridges between human and omnics."
• Magical Gesture: She's using Hard Light technology, but whenever she creates something, it always comes with fancy hand gestures evocative of traditional Indian dance and finger-tutting.
• Meaningful Name: Her name "Symmetra" is based on the word "symmetry", which makes sense given her love for order. Her real name, Satya, means "truth" and/or "reality" in Sanskrit.
• Modesty Shorts: She wears a black pair in her "Oasis" skin.
• Ms. Fanservice: Her default outfit shows off her legs, as well as her shapely form. Her Legendary skins, however, are Fanservice-incarnate. Her Hindu-themed skins show off her midriff and even more of her legs by way of a much shorter skirt. Her Halloween "Dragon"-themed skin has her technically naked from the waist up.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Has this reaction after Sanjay detonates Calado's headquarters, killing everyone inside and burning the favela to cinders along with the face of the girl who helped her earlier. It was this incident that caused her to start doubting the true intentions of her own company.
• My Tech Is Stronger Than Yours: She looks down on Torbjörn's more 'traditional' turrets or armor, which are less advanced than the technology she specializes in.
  Symmetra: Armor? How positively medieval...
  Torbjörn: Everyone's a critic...
• Noble Top Enforcer: Symmetra is pretty much one of Vishkar's top enforcers... and is also one of the most morally upright, especially when compared to those that endorse any shady activities as long as they serve the company's interests.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Her "Laugh" emote has her do the hand gesture associated with this, though the actual laugh is much more subdued.
• Obsessively Organized: Symmetra is obsessed with order and perfection, though unlike most examples where it's part of unspecified mental issues, Blizzard specified that it's linked to her being autistic. In one of her highlight intros, she is annoyed when the camera goes askew and corrects it. She has a similar problem during her meeting with the major in Rio de Janeiro, being distracted by a slightly crooked painting. She even questions how it isn't driving anyone else crazy and adjusts it. In-game, Torbjörn tries to use this to tease her, but it backfires because she's probably already checked:
  Torbjörn: Heh heh, there's something on your dress.
  Symmetra: (disdainfully) No. There isn't.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • A very weird one. The "No Healers" warning on the hero selection screen was added because Symmetra was originally considered a Support hero, but one who had (and still has) absolutely no ability to heal her teammates, causing inexperienced teams to run without healers thanks to "No Supports" popping up, who learned the hard way that she is absolutely not a substitute for an actual medic.
  • Eventually, Symmetra's more utility-based support looked more and more out of place in the category, especially as later Supports always provided some manner of healing. With her second rework, it was decided to move her to being a Defense hero, which simultaneously collapsed with Offense into Damage, her current label.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Prior to her second rework, the turrets she creates went down in one hit, but since she could put down multiple in the same place, the enemy could usually expect to shoot a lot of them if they wanted to proceed.
• Order vs. Chaos: Strongly believes that order is the surest way to peace. If Lúcio is on her team, the two may argue over whether freedom or order is better, or they'll quip that they aren't too happy with each other's company. She has this debate pretty much verbatim with Doomfist as well, but he dismisses both stances as simply being a means to an end.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: Her secondary fire used to be this, until it was reworked to be a lot faster and therefore more reliable. It no longer pierces barriers as it used to do, however.
• Prim and Proper Bun: Has this when equipped with the alternative "Vishkar" and "Architect" skins, which fits since she loves order. In the comic short "A Better World", it's confirmed that the aforementioned skin (and bun) is her standard employee uniform when working with her company.
• Rags to Riches: A light-bending architect prodigy, who originally came from an extremely poor family.
• Raised by Orcs: Separated from her parents, she was raised according to Vishkar's beliefs, making her extremely loyal to them. At the same time, she has a genuine desire to do good in the world and is not so indoctrinated as to ignore the morally questionable actions her company sometimes takes, currently leaving her at an impasse where she is doubting her allegiance to Vishkar, but simultaneously does not yet seem ready to break away from them.
• Ray Gun: Her Photon Projector can fire either a medium-range beam and explosive energy balls. Prior to her second rework, her beam's range was shorter and could home in on an enemy, and her energy balls instead pierced through enemies.
• Reality Warper: Symmetra announces "Reality bends to my will!" when she deploys her photon barrier. Considering it's a Hard Light construct that expands infinitely, she's definitely breaking the laws of physics in some way. Lampshaded with one of the unlockable quotes in Summer Games 2019.
  "Reality is my playground."
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Half of her health is allocated in shields, allowing her to heal from all but the most serious injuries in just a few seconds, provided she can stay out of the line of fire long enough.
• Shout-Out: Her legendary "Dragon" skin from the 2017 Halloween Terror event bears a striking resemblance to the Queen of Blades herself.
• Situational Sword: Her Teleporter used to be this, being mostly useful for defending teams in charge of Objective A on Assault and Hybrid maps, as it's a long way to the objective. In most other situations, however, its value was debatable. Blizzard first tried to remedy this by giving her a second ultimate, Shield Generator, but then scrapped it and reworked the teleporter to be a regular ability that is more valuable as a repositioning tool for Symmetra and her teammates.
• Skill Gate Characters: A slighter example than most in the game, since she requires a good knowledge of maps to find the best locations to place turrets and Ultimates. She also tends to not do very well in high-level play since a good flanker or anyone who can get behind her defenses and destroy them can shut her down, and she herself is rather squishy. That said, a good Symmetra can be an absolute nuisance to most players, as her turrets and Photon Barrier interfere with pushes and good use of her teleporter allows her team (or Symmetra herself) to attack from an unguarded angle.
• Smug Super: Due to being the best in her field of expertise (architecture) and being raised by Vishkar in a very elite environment, Symmetra can be very smug towards others, especially if they're using something of a lesser caliber.
• Squishy Wizard: Symmetra has some of the highest utility of any Damage hero, with turrets to divert enemy attention, teleporters for team mobility, a giant defensive ultimate that splits up the map, and even her primary weapon can ramp up into crazy damage numbers with frequent use. Her biggest tradeoff is that she's very squishy, lacks resources to protect herself in the middle of a fight, and lacks range in her damage, meaning she needs to be very careful in how she coordinates her arsenal before going in.
• Stage Magician: Her Anniversary-exclusive "Magician" skin styles her as a classy performer with a top hat, suit, and translucent arm. The skin also indulges in some Lovely Assistant-esque fanservice by showing off her thighs.
• Status Infliction Attack: Her Sentry Turrets fire a laser that both damages and greatly reduces the speed of their targets.
• The Stoic: Regardless of any of the chaos that occurs around her, Symmetra is unusually calm and analytical almost all of the time. Best exemplified if her turrets go down; in contrast to Torbjörn, who acts frustrated or anguished when his turret gets destroyed, Symmetra simply responds with something along the lines of "My turret was destroyed", or "My defenses are weakened", without any hint of tension or even annoyance.
  • Subverted (justifiably) in Retribution where she becomes genuinely incensed if an Assassin pounces her.
    "Get her OFF of me!"
• Stone Wall: Symmetra's first iteration was criticized for being a particularly bad example of this; taking her on Attack was basically throwing the game as all of her abilites, including the Teleporter ultimate, were only suited for Defense (and really only for the first Defense point in Assault). The Sentry Turrets were only really helpful for being, well sentries in catching and alerting the team of stealthy flankers. This was on top of the fact that she couldn't heal, and the Photon Shield was only beneficial to a few Glass Cannon-type characters. Her subsequent reworks downplayed this trope, as while she is still better suited to play defensively, she is decent on Attack.
• Stripperific: Especially evident in her Kali-inspired "Devi" and "Goddess" skins, which give her nothing but a short skirt, some jewelry, and two pieces of cloth on her chest.
• Support Party Member: While technically subverted since her June 2018 rework where she's been shifted to the Damage role instead of Support, Symmetra has possibly the highest potential utility of anyone in the category with her defensive turrets, Teleporter and Photon Barrier. Prior to her second rework, she was categorized as a Support hero, which put her at odds with the others since she was the only one completely incapable of healing allies.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Whenever Symmetra is placed on the same team as Lúcio, she makes it clear that she doesn't like working with him, a sentiment Lúcio shares.
  Symmetra: To think I should have to work with a street ruffian.
  Lúcio: I'm not all that excited about this arrangement either.
• Technical Pacifist: Symmetra dislikes killing and usually puts her weapons on 'Energy Drain' mode to just leave her opponents unconscious, as shown during her mission in Rio de Janeiro. Other Vishkar employees are puzzled by this since they prefer the easy way of just killing anyone standing in their way.
• Thinking Up Portals: One of her abilities is Teleporter, which creates a portal within 25 meters that she, her teammates, and their abilities can travel back and forth through, which can result in all sorts of wacky interactions. Previously, it was an ultimate that would one-way link directly to her team's spawn point.
• Tiger Versus Dragon: The dragon to Lucio's tiger; Symmetra is cold and calculated, she values logic and always treats it as a major factor in her decisions. This is reflected by her teleporter ability and Photon Barrier ultimate, as both require strategy and foresight. This comparison was stronger when she was originally a support class hero with Lucio before being moved to the damage class.
• The Turret Master: She's able to deploy up to 3 Sentry Turrets at a time that can be stuck on any surface and fire continuous beams at intruders.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Falls heavily on the Lawful side, although she's having doubts.
• Token Good Teammate: In-universe, she's the only Vishkar employee shown so far that has good intentions. In-game, she's also the only Anti-Villain amongst the antagonistic characters, with Doomfist, Reaper, Widowmaker, Sombra, Junkrat and Roadhog being more akin to Card-Carrying Villains.
• Trap Master: Compared to Torbjörn's turrets, Symmetra's turrets are more along the lines of traps that are best set within narrow corridors to ambush her foes.
• True Blue Femininity: She wears blue and is one of the more feminine, serene and classy characters in the game. It also represents loneliness due to being separated from her parents and raised in a secluded environment with no actual friends.
• Unorthodox Reload: Symmetra creates a small Hard Light orb and feeds it into the side of her Photon Projector.
• Unfit for Greatness: One of her voice lines for eliminating an opponent has her say that they were "not meant for greatness".
• Weak Turret Gun: A single turret is nothing to write home about, but it slows enemies and can be created in bulk.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She conducts various clandestine and illegal missions for the Vishkar Corporation, which include killing people (though she prefers to avoid doing so if possible), espionage, slander, and blackmail. She justifies these missions to herself as helping Vishkar create a better world, which is something she genuinely wants.
• You Can't Go Home Again: The company Vishkar was responsible for this after seeing Symmetra's boundless potential as a light architect, taking her away from her parents and preventing her from going back. No doubt this had some effect on her. See Raised by Orcs.

Torbjörn - Sweden

Torbjörn Lindholm

"Tools in hand, brain in gear."

Species: Human
Age: 57 (1), 59 (2)
Birthday: September 21st
Occupation: Weapons Designer
Base of Operations: Gothenburg, Sweden
Affiliation: Overwatch (formerly)
Appearances (shorts): Cinematic Trailer (cameo), Recall (cameo), Ana Origin Story (cameo), King's Row Uprising Origin Story
Appearances (comics): "Destroyer" (focus), "Reflections" (cameo), "Binary" (focus), "Uprising"
Appearances (Archives events): Uprising

"Build 'em up, break 'em down!"

Voiced by: Keith Silverstein (English)^note Other Languages:Arturo Mercado (Latin American Spanish), Carlos Ysbert (European Spanish), Binbin Takaoka (Japanese), José Luccioni (French), Mauricio Berger (Brazilian Portuguese), Mario Scarabelli (Italian), Stefan Gossler (German), Jae-beom Lee (Korean), Tong Shaozong (Taiwanese Chinese), Jiǎ Qiū (Mandarin Chinese), Tomasz Grochoczyński (Polish), Alexander Pozharov (Russian)

A Dwarf from Azeroth flung into Earth's future!

Just kidding. Torbjörn Lindholm is a Swedish former Overwatch Engineer who provided it with some of its finest and most effective technological designs. Before the Omnic Crisis, Torbjörn had gained notoriety for designing weapons systems used by countries around the world. However, his belief that technology must serve a better vision for humanity put him at odds with his employers, who desired to control his weapons using networked computer intelligence.

Torbjörn had a deep mistrust of sentient robotic intelligence, and while many of his peers wrote this off as paranoia, his worst fears were realized when the robot populations of the world turned against their human creators during the Omnic Crisis. Because of his engineering genius, he was recruited to join the original Overwatch strike team, and his many inventions proved integral to ending the crisis. In the years that followed, Overwatch became an international peacekeeping force, and Torbjörn remained a critical resource for all of its technological needs and signature weapons systems.

But in the aftermath of Overwatch's fall, many of Torbjörn's weapons were stolen or stashed away around the world. Feeling responsible for his creations, Torbjörn is determined to stop them from falling into the wrong hands and wreaking havoc on the innocent.

Torbjörn was one of the agents that were recalled to serve Overwatch after Winston reinstated the organization. At the time, he was near Moscow, Russia.

Torbjörn is both able to set his turret at key defensive areas, and engage in the frontlines to take down enemies and support his allies.

• His primary weapon, Rivet Gun, can alternate between firing rivets as long range projectiles or shotgun bursts of molten slag.
• His Forge Hammer can be swung as a melee weapon in a pinch, but much more importantly is used to repair his turret.
• With his Deploy Turret ability, Torbjörn tosses one stationary sentry gun that automatically fires at nearby foes; he can use his primary weapon to direct who the turret will focus on.
• Overload, upon activation, gives him a temporary boost to rate of fire, armor, and movement speed, allowing him to better scrap with opponents directly.
• His ultimate, Molten Core, gives Torbjörn the ability to deploy molten slag that pools over terrain, dealing massive damage to anyone who steps in it, with increased damage to heroes with armor.

Previous Abilities

• Scrap Collector was a passive system that allowed him to generate "Scrap" over time, as well as collect from the corpses of defeated heroes. He could then expend "Scrap" to toss out Armor Packs that he or his allies could pick up for extra armor.

---

• Abnormal Ammo: He primarily fires superheated rivets in long-range arcs or molten slag like buckshot.
• Action Dad: Brigitte is confirmed to be his daughter, and the "Reflections" comic shows that Torbjörn is married and had enough kids to produce a lot of grandkids as well.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Believed this would happen when people started building robots with sentient intelligence, but no one believed him. Cue the Omnic Crisis.
• An Arm and a Leg: Lost his left arm during Operation White Dome. It's since been replaced with a cybernetic prosthesis.
• Animal Motifs: He and his family carry a bear motif. Torbjörn's name means "Thor Bear" and his "Viking" skin has his claw resemble a bear; you can also make the claim that his white fur cloak is in reference to a polar bear. His daughter, Brigitte, also carries this motif with her "Shieldmaiden" skin.
• Anti-Armor: With his post-2018 reworked Molten Core, not only does it melt right through enemies standing in the molten slag, it melts even faster if they're wearing armor.
• Artificial Limbs: His left arm is an enhanced industrial cybernetic prosthetic, replacing the arm he lost during Operation White Dome. It's normally equipped with a set of Power Pincers, similar to the smelter gauntlet he used before losing the arm, but as shown in Brigitte's origin trailer, he also has a more domestic model equipped with a regular robotic hand.
• Badass Biker: His "Chopper" and "Deadlock" skins, with his personal forge looking like a motorcycle chopper engine strapped to his back and replacing his hammer with a tire iron.
• Balance Buff: Around late 2018, he was given a large gameplay rework to address his somewhat lackluster and niche kit and make him more of an effective zoner not so reliant on his turret. His Armor Packs and Scrap mechanic were removed, his original Super Mode ultimate was shifted to be a toned-down self-buff ability called Overload, his turret is permanently a "level 2" and can be tossed a distance, and he gained a completely new, much more active Molten Core ultimate.
• Beard of Barbarism: His Viking skin, complete with Braids of Barbarism.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: An amusing meta-example. Originally, Torbjörn had a unique ability to give armor to his teammates, but following his late 2018 rework, this trait was lost, instead giving him the best Anti-Armor ability in the game.
• Becoming the Costume:
  • His "Barbarossa" and "Blackbeard" skins gives him an extra "Hello" line in "Ahoy, matey!" and a new Elimination line in "Shiver me timbers!"
  • His "Santaclad" skin gives him a few additional voice lines, including changing his ultimate callout to "MEEEERRRRY MOLTEN CORE!"
  • His "Viking" skin gives him the line "ONWARDS TO RAGNAROK!" when nano-boosted.
  • His "Starship Engineer" skin gives him a makeover as part of the Starwatch theme, and gives him plenty of dialogue evocative of a grumpy alien engineer who's building spacecraft in addition to turrets, complete with speaking in bursts of an odd alien language that one has to assume is profanity.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: The Little Guy to Reinhardt's Big Guy, being Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Blue Is Heroic: When equipped with the "Blå" (Swedish for "blue") skin, while Torb is undeniably heroic (if somewhat racist towards omnics).
• Body-Count Competition: Before a match, Torbjörn might challenge an ally Reinhardt to this, where the one with the least number of eliminations buys the post-mission drinks. Reinhardt's all too happy to take him on.
• Braids of Action: He has braids in his beard. His "Chopper" and "Deadlock" skins have braids in his hair.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: While he can be grumpy at worst and biased against omnics, he's a loving family man with 8 grandchildren.
• Butt-Monkey: Other people's comments towards Torbjörn are often made at his expense. If Ana witnesses her other friends die, she will make a sad comment, but if it's Torbjörn who dies, she doesn't sound very worried, only saying "Torbjörn, your luck ran out!" D.Va also tells him to back off when he asks for a peek inside her MEKA, and even Mei asks him to keep his hammer to himself if she reluctantly lets him look at her robot. While other Omnic-hating characters will merely express dislike for pro-Omnic maps like Numbani or Nepal, Torbjörn has an over-the-top breakdown each time.
  • He also gets a bit of flack due to his traditional technology. Symmetra considers his armor "positively medieval," and with Pharah, she accidentally highlights just how antiquated his own work is.
  Pharah: Hey, Torbjörn, check out my new suit. Mark IV, state of the art.
  Torbjörn: Ugh, jump jets, concussion rockets. Umm... well... yes, it's looking pretty good.
  • Continued in the Uprising event where characters typically have supportive lines towards one another...except when it comes to Torbjörn.
• Calling Your Attacks: "Molten Core!"
• Captain Ersatz: His defensive, turret-building role is an easy match for the Engineer from Team Fortress 2, right down to whacking his equipment to make it operate faster. He can also collect a supply of scrap metal, though unlike the Engineer, he does not use it to build and upgrade his turret but to make armor packs — which, amusingly enough, was a Team Fortress Classic Engineer skill. Torbjörn also doesn't have any equivalent to Dispensers (due to the abundance of healing sources and the fact all heroes carry infinite clips) or Teleporters (which is Symmetra's ability). After the September 2018, the resemblance is much smaller, making Torbjörn much more of a direct combatant.
• Character Development: In the past and largely up until Null Sector's return, Torbjörn has an intense dislike of anything AI or omnic related. That is, until he meets Bastion, and his distaste for robots begins to soften after bonding with him. In Gothenburg when Reinhardt sees Bastion and moves to kill him, reminding Torbjörn of how many friends they both lost in the Omnic Crisis, Torbjörn stands in front of the furious crusader and says that Bastion has changed, and then says that he's changed as well.
  Torbjörn: Wait! He isn't one of them! It's okay. I've been taking care of him. He may be the last of his kind. Look (chuckles) Bastion won't hurt you!
  Reinhardt: What? Bastion? It's not a pet! It's a killing machine!
  Torbjörn: No...not anymore.
  Reinhardt: How many friends did we lose to these things in the old war? No, now, you put your whole family at risk-
  Torbjörn: Reinhardt...that war was a lifetime ago. I've changed. He's changed! The only one who hasn't changed, is you.
• Companion Cube: His turret is more than just his "baby", he treats it like it's a living companion, up to showing it a photo album in a highlight intro appropriately called "My Baby".
• Cool Old Guy: To the younger Overwatch members. Here's a photo of him and Mercy in Halloween costumes.◊
• Deadpan Snarker:
  Torbjörn: What does this Null Sector want, anyway?
  Mercy: Rights for omnics, so they say.
  Torbjörn: I can't help but think they're going about this the wrong way.
• Diesel Punk: His outfit and turret have this aesthetic. The backpack he wears even has large fire-and-exhaust-spewing mufflers. It helps denote that his tech, while still powerful and effective, is showing its age in a world of advanced cyborgs and hardlight capable of building cities.
• Easter Egg: There's a very rare chance that instead of shouting "MOLTEN CORE!" while using his ultimate, he instead shouts "MOLTEN FLOOR!" (which is even identified as such in subtitles).
• Embarrassing Rescue: Torbjörn was saved by Reinhardt during a mission called operation White Dome. In the letter to his wife Ingrid, Torbjörn still appears to be rough around the edges and jokes about the situation. However, he does show gratefulness towards Reinhardt, such as semi-jokingly allowing him to name his daughter and consider making him her godfather.
• Emergency Weapon: If by some crazy circumstance you find your gun isn't worth switching to, Torbjörn's hammer can serve as a slightly better melee option than the regular Quick Melee in a pinch (55 damage compared to the Quick Melee's 30). The hammer actually used to be significantly more dangerous prior to Sombra's inclusion, where it had a slower attack speed, but did 75 damage per hit — just as much as Reinhardt's.
• The Engineer: One of the greatest weapon designers and builders in history.
• Eye Patch Of Power: Apparently, he somehow lost his right eye and wears a red, metallic-looking eyepatch over it. It gets replaced with a more traditional one in his "Barbarossa" and "Blackbeard" skins.
• Fantastic Racism: He was always distrustful of self-aware AI and the first Omnic crisis justified him, but even in the present day, he's quite racist towards Omnics regardless of their personality, letting off a Rapid-Fire "No!" when the match is in Numbani (a city where humans and Omnics live in peace together) and complimenting the apartheid-esque conditions in King's Row, even saying "the Brits have their heads on straight!". Even when he compliments Omnic teammates, they're still undercut with racist undertones. However, he is still willing to tolerate some Omnics, and in "Binary" he actually protects Bastion when he realizes it's gone against its normal, violent programming and is instead relatively peaceful, to the point that it runs away when shot at. Come Overwatch 2, he's becoming more tolerant, even chiding himself for initially getting suckered into the anti-omnic sentiment as a pre-match quote on King's Row.
• Fire-Breathing Diner: One of his unique intros is to drink some of his molten slag, then belch out some fire a moment later.
• Friendly Rivalry: With both Reinhardt and Symmetra.
  • He and Reinhardt have been friends since Overwatch's earliest days, with Torb being the one who repaired and maintained Reinhardt's armor. They will rib each other (Reinhardt playfully mocking Torbjörn's stature and Torb joking about Reinhardt's bullheaded nature).
  • With Symmetra, it's more one-sided. Torb playfully teases her about tendency towards being The Perfectionist, while Symmetra criticizes his technology as being obsolete. It is mostly centered around their similar roles of area denial and defense boost (Torb's mechanical turrets and physical armor plating vs Symmetra's Hardlight constructs and barrier shielding).
• Happily Married: "Reflections" not only reveals that he has a wife, but at least eight grandchildren.
• Horny Vikings: His Viking skin.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He's actually more fit now than he's ever been, but back when he was younger, he wasn't as bald and he still had two eyes and both his arms.
• Ignored Expert: Was viewed as a very paranoid person when he warned people against installing sentient A.I.s, fearing a rebellion. Then the Omnic Crisis happened. To rub salt into the wound, a lot of people blame him for the destruction they caused, because of his role in creating them (including Zarya, and himself).
• Interspecies Friendship: With Bastion by the time of Null Sector's return, which is part of Torbjörn's character development. He even defends Bastion from Reinhardt in the Gothenburg intro cinematic by saying that he's come to like the omnic, and he's changed.
• It Runs in the Family: Both he and his daughter Brigitte are mechanics.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's not the most approachable person, even to his friends, and his distrust of Omnics colors his view of the world a great deal. Everything he warned about making sentient weapons turned out to be true and the Omnic Crisis wreaked havoc on humanity and still rages on in Russia, to devastating results.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He displays Fantastic Racism and shows himself to be a little condescending and grumpy towards allies and enemies alike, but he's a stalwart defender of mankind and genuinely gave his all to protect the world during the Omnic Crisis, not solely because of a chance to legally destroy the Omnics as he likes. In the comic Binary he overcomes his racism enough to learn that the last Bastion unit is more or less harmless and finally leads it away from the village rather than leaving it to a confrontation with the locals in which first they and then (after military reinforcements) it would die, all the while noting that this doesn't mean they're friends!
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: His Ironclad skin shows him what he looked like before he got his beard. Without it, he's got a rather large jaw.
• Lightning Bruiser: Dishes out good damage, has an ability that temporarily increases his movement speed, health AND damage output, and is one of the bulkier Damage Heroes thanks to the armor added to his base health. Play him well enough, and Torbjörn can be an outright MENACE towards the other team.
• Magma Man: Torbjörn's post-2018 rework Molten Core ultimate has him blast out molten slag from his smelter claw, forming large pools that melt right through any enemies standing in them, especially if they have armor.
• Metalhead: One of his skins. Also counts as Stealth Pun.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: Even accounting for his advanced age, the man is a legal dwarf, barely coming up to the knees of most characters. Similar to Oddjob from GoldenEye, his extremely short stature combined with his multi-ranged weapon can make him more of a pain to deal with than a normal sized character, especially for Tanks.
• My Greatest Failure: While heavily hinted at before, the "Binary" comic confirms that he was the creator of many omnic units that would eventually attack and kill people in the Omnic Crisis, including the Bastion Unit — something that filled him with shame and grief.
  Militia leader: "Don't you have enough blood on your hands?"
  Torbjörn: "Enough for a lifetime."
• Nerf: He's notable in that he has a nerf applied specifically to the console versions. Specifically, his turret does less damage because console controllers are inherently less precise with aiming than mice are, yet the turret is just as accurate as on the PC version.
• Old Soldier: He was one of the original members of Overwatch before it grew from an ordinary strike team into an international superhero organization. He's also a grandfather!
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: He's basically your typical fantasy dwarf with a Swedish accent — no matter how much he tries to deny it. When Overwatch got a bunch of skins based on previous Blizzard games, guess which one Torbjörn got.
• Passing the Torch: In the Gothenburg ending cinematic, he declines returning to Overwatch despite Reinhardt's insistence by citing that he, and the older members of Overwatch, have had their time in the old days, and it's best to give the opportunity to the younger generations now, even looking at Brigitte and Bastion as they bond.
• Percussive Maintenance: Hitting his turret with his Forge Hammer is how he repairs and upgrades it.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Torbjörn really hates Omnics in general and think that the Shambali monastery in Nepal (where Omnic monks gather) is the culmination of his nightmares. However, when an allied Zenyatta scores a kill near him, Torbjörn surprisingly praises him, before backpedalling to 'for a machine' to keep his racist outlook intact.
  • In "Binary", he actually chooses to protect Bastion from the police rather than kill it, because Bastion is peaceful and behaving differently from the cold, mechanical killers from the Omnic Crisis.
  • He has a number of children (one of them being Brigitte), at least eight grandchildren, and a wife that he loves dearly.
• Pirate: His "Barbarossa" and "Blackbeard" skins have him Dressed to Plunder. He even has a few unique voice clips with these skins, including a "hello" in the form of a hearty "Ahoy, matey!"
• Properly Paranoid: Apparently, he was the only one who worried that AIs could rebel. Up until he was proven right with the whole Robot War thing.
• Power Armor: Has a "personal forge" in the form of his mechanical backpack that allows him to build turrets.
• Power Echoes: His voice has a bellowing echo when he activates his Super Mode.
• Power Pincers: His left arm looks to have been replaced by a set of these, acting as a portable smelter to output molten slag and a set of industrial blacksmithing tongs.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Was instrumental in ending the Omnic Crisis and creating Overwatch, but for all his efforts, Omnics still got the rights they wanted from the very start, with several of his teammates outright supporting those rights.
• Racist Grandpa: Torbjörn is the third-oldest member of Overwatch, and due to past experiences with AI-installed robots, he hates Omnics with a passion and doesn't accept the possibility of a future where humans and Omnics coexist in peace. In fact, when put in the Numbani map, he does an agitated Rapid-Fire "No!" when he sees Omnics living together with humans with no problem on both sides. It's Played for Laughs, though. Understandable, if not justified, by the fact that he helped design many of the Omnics that turned on humans without warning before.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": During the early start of the Numbani stage, a city where humans and Omnics co-exist in peace.
  "No, no, nooo! N. O. NO!!"
• Refusal of the Call: After helping save Gothenburg from Null Sector, Reinhardt offers Torbjörn to join the newly-recalled Overwatch, but Torbjörn reluctantly declines, choosing to stay to keep Gothenburg and the rest of his family safe. Fortunately, he's more than happy to see his daughter, Brigitte, and his new friend Bastion to take his place.
• Running Gag: A handful of interactions in Overwatch 2 have characters referring to Torbjörn's unseen creation (or lack thereof) of "robo-horses". Cassidy blames the failure of many of his missions in Blackwatch on Torb's refusal to build him the robo-horse that he asked for, and Lifeweaver suggests to Reinhardt to lean into his old-fashioned Knight in Shining Armor shtick by "[getting] Lindholm to build you one of his big robotic horses."
• Shorter Means Smarter: He's the shortest character of the main cast, yet he was responsible for one of the most advanced weapon systems in the world.
• Spikes of Villainy: His "Chopper" and "Deadlock" skins have studs on his outfit, and his cybernetic arm is loaded with spikes.
• Stone Wall: Torbjörn, before and after his rework, is great at zoning out enemies and defending points and payloads, with his ultimate abilities being the ultimate "Stay Out" signs. On Attack, he's nothing special in his regular and alternate fire. He can toss out his turret to help, but that can be destroyed fairly quickly.
• Super Mode:
  • His Overload ability grants him a temporary, but significant boost to his armor, attack, movement, and reload speed for a few seconds.
  • Prior to his October 2018 rework, Overload's predecessor was his original Molten Core ultimate, which greatly increased his armor, his build, repair, and fire rates, and temporarily transformed his Level 2 turret into a much more durable and aggressive Level 3 turret.
• Swiss-Army Appendage: His arm can eject molten slag to be used to build devices and also serves as a means to reload the ammo-supply for his Rivet Gun.
• True Companions: With Reinhardt; this was cemented after he saved Torbjörn in operation White Dome. Since that day, Reinhardt is a firm friend of the Lindholm family and godfather of Brigitte.
• The Turret Master:
  • Every 10 seconds, Torbjörn can chuck out a stationary turret that automatically fires at nearby enemies, prioritizing whoever Torbjörn is currently damaging himself.
  • Prior to his 2018 rework, his turret was a bigger focus of his gameplay, requiring he level it up from a basic Level 1 (which had half the current iteration's maximum health and damage output) into a Level 2, which could then be further upgraded (albeit temporarily) to Level 3 with Molten Core.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Who'd have thought that dwarf-looking guy would have such an absurdly gorgeous wife? Her name's Ingrid, by the way.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Compared to his rugged looks, his youngest daughter Brigitte seems to take more after her mother, as do his granddaughters.
• Unorthodox Reload: He reloads his Rivet Gun by pouring molten metal into it.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Reinhardt; several of their pre-game interactions have them ribbing each other and competing over elimination count. According to a letter to his wife Ingrid, for saving Torbjörn's life, Reinhardt was repaid by being allowed to name Torbjörn's daughter and was also considered being made her godfather.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: His Summer Games-exclusive "Tre Kronor" (named after the national emblem of Sweden; three yellow crowns on a blue background) skin gives him the colors of the Swedish flag (blue and yellow).
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Overwatch forced Reinhardt into retirement Torbjörn was furious that they would do that to his best friend after years of exemplary service giving his everything to Overwatch. After telling her about it his daughter Brigitte would go on to share his view.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: If he witnesses Zenyatta, Orisa, or Bastion get a kill, he'll say, "Good shot! Well... for a machine."

Venture - Canada

Sloan Cameron / Venture

"Intrepid explorers, it's time to get to work!"

Species: Human
Age: 26
Birthday: August 6th
Occupation: Archeologist, Adventurer
Base of Operations: Nova Scotia, Canada (formerly), Roaming (current)
Affiliation: Wayfinder Society
Appearances (shorts): Venture's Adventures (focus)

"Let's make history!"

Voiced by: Valeria Rodriguez (English)^note Other Languages: Derya Flechtner (German), Nanako Mori (Japanese), Ma Zink (Brazilian Portuguese), Regina Tiscareño (Latin American Spanish), Eva Finkelstein (Russian)

An intrepid and plucky explorer, Venture spends their time exploring and excavating around the globe to satiate their curiosity in discovering what's been lost.

From a young age, Venture had a knack for uncovering lost items. During their childhood, they moved frequently, which fueled a lifelong passion for exploration, with each new locale offering fresh opportunities for discovery. Drawn to the Wayfinder Society—a collective of archaeologists and historians—Venture embarked on a journey of learning and adventure.

Initiating their apprenticeship with the Wayfinders at the age of 16, Venture quickly distinguished themselves as a fearless and resourceful explorer. As their expertise grew, so too did their responsibilities within the Wayfinder Society. Venture was also tasked in securing valuable sites from looters and scavengers. But it was during an encounter with Talon at the ancient site of Ilios that Venture faced their greatest challenge yet. Venture confronted the intruders and was victorious, driving Talon from the site and preserving its secrets.

But still, Venture found themselves haunted by lingering questions. Why and for what purpose did Talon to desecrate these sacred ruins? Venture's innate curiosity couldn't possibly leave this mystery unsolved and pass up the opportunity for a new adventure.

Venture is a highly mobile Damage hero with a speciality in close-range combat.

• Their primary weapon is the Smart Excavator, which fires projectiles that explode mid-air after a set distance or on contact with enemies.
• Burrow makes Venture start digging underground, during which they can travel in any direction and become invulnerable in the process. On command or after a set timer, they emerge from the ground, dealing bonus damage if adequately charged for long enough.
• Drill Dash has Venture charge forward with their massive drill, damaging and knocking back all opponents in the way.
• They passively have Explorer's Resolve, which grants them temporary shields from using abilities, and Clobber, which gives their melee attacks higher-than-average damage.
• Upon activating their ultimate ability, Tectonic Shock, Venture can release up to four large shockwaves in front of them, each damaging and knocking back enemies.

---

• Adventurer Archaeologist: As a member of the freelance archaeology group known as the Wayfinder Society, Venture is an eccentric explorer who goes on daring missions in search of artifacts and secrets. Their willingness to combat potential assailants, especially Talon, makes them incredibly valuable to the group, and as an ally to Overwatch.
  Ana: I happened upon some artifacts in an old necropolis. Would you care to look after them?
  Venture: Would I?!
  Ana: I should warn you: they might be cursed.
  Venture: Ah, even better!
• Apologetic Attacker: Venture apologizes to Reinhardt, Torbjörn after taking them down in-game, as well as Pharah on behalf of Helix Security.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Venture can be awkward and silly, but they were given the job of security for a good reason. They managed to defeat an enitre Talon squad by themselves.
• Bilingual Bonus: Being Mexican-Canadian, Venture also speaks Spanish and has some Spanish peppered in their voicelines. They also speak some Spanish to fellow Latines Sombra and Illari.
• Childish Tooth Gap: Venture has a chipped front tooth, which highlights their youthful and fun personality.
• Close-Range Combatant: Smart Excavator's regular fire is short-range and cannot critical hit, so they will really want to get in close with their other abilities to help confirm eliminations. They receive temporary shields for doing so, encouraging players to keep up the pressure. Their melee even has higher-than-average damage to finish off opponents (70 damage per hit, higher than the 40 for most heroes, but below the 100 damage from Reinhardt's Rocket Hammer).
• Constantly Curious: While they're an adult and have experience as an archeologist, Venture remains extremely curious about every new place they visit, eager to explore through any potential historical sites when the combat is over with.
• Crippling Overspecialization: In a similar vein as Reaper, Venture is a Close-Range Combatant who will shred through health bars up close and is encouraged to stay at close range through the temporary shields they get through eliminations. They'll also be helpless against aerial and long-range opponents and will even have trouble against mid-range opponents. Speedsters like Genji and Tracer can also harass them very effectively.
• Damage Over Time: Drill Dash and their melee attacks deal damage in a staggered rate, not unlike Ana's primary fire. During Venture's playable trial before officially debuting in the game, these two abilities dealt all their damage in a single burst, but were changed to how they presently act to add more counterplay.
• Dash Attack: Drill Dash allows Venture to charge forward in whatever direction they face, damaging and knocking back enemies in their path, acting as reliable burst of mobility and cratering damage, especially when fully charged up. Unlike Doomfist and his Rocket Punch — which is locked to only horizontal movement — Venture can fly towards whatever direction they can face.
• Determinator: They'll always express the sentiment that they can turn any match around if your team is behind.
  "Loss schmoss. This is totally winnable."
  "We can do this. I just know it!"
• Dig Attack: Burrow itself doesn't do damage, but when Venture emerges from the ground, they apply an area-of-effect attack to all enemies surrounding them. It also comes with an optional Charged Attack effect, where by holding down the button, they increase the emerging area, damage dealt, and leap speed.
• Fast Tunnelling: Burrow allows them to drill rapidly through the ground at a speed even faster than normal walking (they can also use Drill Dash while burrowed to gain an additional dash), and when combined with Venture being able to damage enemies by erupting out of the earth when it's finished, it's among their most powerful initiation tools. It's possible to drop from high ground to lower ground below, and Venture will also burrow through that on impact until it's time for them to properly resurface. Oddly enough, they can't pass through areas where there's an Ice Wall or a Tree of Life above.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Venture's usual outfit includes a pair of goggles on their head at all times, even while digging through the earth. Funnily enough, some supplemental artwork shows them wearing goggles while on their usual job, but they can't equip them at all in gameplay.
• Ground Wave: Their ultimate, Tectonic Shock, supercharges their drill to be able to fire up to four energy bursts that travel across the ground in a pretty sizable range. Effectively a damage-oriented version of Reinhardt's Earthshatter, Tectonic Shock doesn't stun people, but it deals plenty of AoE damage and lightly bumps enemies up a foot or so off the ground.
• Keet: They're bursting with optimism and positive energy, on or off the battlefield.
  Venture: (Starting a match) This is gonna be so much fun!
• Logical Weakness: Venture has an excellent ground game, being a digging-based archaeologist and all, so their major weakness would be flying heroes. Burrow can help them avoid them for a bit, but otherwise they're a sitting duck.
• Nerd Action Hero: Venture doesn't have any military training and is primarily an archeologist with a hankering for adventure, but their gameplay enables them to do some crazy and exciting close-range brawling with the help of their trusty drill-cannon. Venture habitually drops dorky puns and nerdy historical references that come to mind regarding the action they get into.
• Nice Guy: They're sweet, bubbly, excitable, brimming with optimism and always cheerful to their teammates — even ones associated with Talon.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: While burrowing underground, Venture cannot be targeted by enemies (or their allies) and is cleansed of any negative status effects.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Venture's energetic curiosity extends to things they know are frightening, and they're outright ecstatic at the possibility into running into something cursed. When asked by Lúcio about their favorite animal, Venture responds:
  Venture: (gasp) I've always wanted to be eaten alive by scarabs!
  Lúcio: Uh... yeah! I can see it!
• Queer Colors: The Wayfinder patch on their left shoulder is in the colors of the non-binary pride flag.
• Running Gag: Whenever they encounter a map with potential archeological significance, they bring up whatever form of archeology sounds to be the most relevant, all of which are apparently "[their] favorite."
  (on Ilios or Colosseo) "Classical archaeology? My favorite!"
  (on Eichenwalde) "Medieval archeology? My favorite!"
  (on Temple of Anubis) "Egyptology? My favorite!"
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Venture's kit and gameplay loop is very reminiscent of Doomfist, back when he was a Damage character for the first Overwatch. They excel at close-range, knock back enemies with a forward attack, have short-range regular fire, gain shields for using abilities, they have a quick escape, etc. They lack the bonus wall-hitting damage and potential One-Hit Kill conditions of Rocket Punch, but they make it up in other ways with their slightly better mid/close-range DPS and more forgiving maneuverability.
• Teen Genius: Sloan had been involved in archeology since childhood, and officially got their start in archeology via apprenticeship in the Wayfinder Society at the age of 16, having stuck with the organization since.
• This Is a Drill: Their Smart Excavator is a drill-like weapon that mainly fires exploding projectiles, but also allows them to drill through the ground, the air, and people. Using it as their Quick Melee also contributes to it dealing higher damage than almost every other hero.
• Visual Pun: They have a pet rock named Rosetta — a literal Rosetta Stone.

---