Olivia Colomar / Sombra

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sombra_portrait.png

"In my world, there are no secrets."

Species: Human cyborg
Age: 30 (1), 32 (2)
Birthday: December 31st
Occupation: Hacker
Base of Operations: Castillo, Mexico
Affiliation: Los Muertos (formerly), Talon (currently)
Appearances (shorts): Infiltration (focus), Sombra Origin Story (focus), A Great Day
Appearances (comics): "Reflections" (cameo), "Masquerade", "Searching"
Appearances (short stories): "What You Left Behind" (cameo), "Code of Violence"

"Everything can be hacked… and everyone."

Voiced by: Carolina Ravassa (English)^note

One of the world's most notorious hackers, Sombra uses her skills to manipulate those with power to get what she wants.

Olivia Colomar was just one of hundreds of children orphaned by the Omnic Crisis. In order to survive in the world, she learned how to hack and manipulate people to get what she wants. She eventually joined Los Muertos on their rebellion against the government. After a while, she thought she was at the top of the world until she discovered a conspiracy that has spread out globally — and the conspiracy noticed her. Knowing that she was in danger, she erased all traces of her existence and re-emerged into the world as the woman named Sombra.

With her new identity, she launched a wide-spread string of hacks in order to figure out the truth about the conspiracy, which led her to be noticed by many people, including those within the ranks of Talon. She eventually joined Talon, and has assisted them on multiple attacks against organizations with ties to the government. But in reality, she is using Talon as a way to help her get what she wants.

Sombra specializes in using stealth to disrupt her foes and ambush weakened enemies.

Her weapon is a fully-automatic Machine Pistol, best used at close range.
Using Hack, Sombra can target and channel onto an enemy, marking them if left uninterrupted. Hacked enemies are briefly prevented from using their abilities are revealed across the map to Sombra and her team. Hack can also be used on health packs, temporarily only allowing Sombra and her team to use them while increasing their respawn rate.
Her passive, Stealth, turns Sombra invisible and gains bonus movement speed after a few seconds of being out of combat, lasting until she attacks, Hacks an enemy, or is damaged.
She can throw out a Virus which deals damage over time to the first enemy hit. Virus will deal damage faster against Hacked enemies.
Translocator is a fast, throwable beacon that she teleports to after a brief delay. Teleporting also reduces the cooldown of her Stealth.
Her ultimate, EMP, releases an electromagnetic blast that damages all enemies around her by a large percentage of their current health and Hacks them.

Previous Abilities

Sombra's old passive, Opportunist, let her deal bonus damage to Hack victims, while also personally allowing her to detect enemies at least than half health through walls.

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A-H

Achilles' Heel: Sombra's ability to turn invisible and sneak behind enemy lines is useless when the enemy has ways to detect invisible enemies… like Widowmaker's Infra-Sight or Hanzo's Sonic Arrow. Especially Hanzo, as Sonic Arrow is not an ulti, and can be spammed with impunity. Downplayed however, for Sombra players who prefer a more direct playstyle, using the Translocator as a substitute for Flash Step to outmaneuver the enemy and riddle them full of holes.
A Hero to His Hometown: Despite her working with the Nebulous Evil Organization Talon, she is revered in her hometown of Dorado as a hero.
The Alcoholic: It's only implied, but she was seen in the same bar as Cassidy (where it's implied that she drunk him under the table) in the "Reflections" comic, she has a respawn quote that translates to "I'm ready for that drink now"^original"Ya estoy lista para ese trago", and has "I need a drink" as an Anniversary voice line.
Alternate Reality Game: The lead-up to her reveal was an ARG which started from July 2016 and lasted up until her announcement in November. Sombra had placed clues across official Overwatch trailers which led to numerous decryptions, separate websites, and a lot of waiting.
Ambiguously Evil:
- She technically works for Talon, but it's obvious to anybody who has seen her short (and even other members of Talon itself) that she's using them for her own ends. The most evil thing we see her do is blackmail Katya Volskaya, and she's apparently in direct opposition of the conspiracy. However, we don't know whether her motives for opposing them are benevolent, selfish, or even if she's trying to take them down at all. That said, she still seems to have no problem with using lethal force against anyone who gets in her way, and she seems to have no problem with carrying out Talon's agenda when it doesn't immediately clash with hers, as shown in Masquerade. And her pre-fight conversation with Hanzo has her actually try to recruit him; so even if she isn't Talon's most loyal operative, she at least doesn't appear to be bothered by their agenda.
- In "Searching", it's revealed that Sombra is regarded as a hero in Dorado, and if her conversation with Zarya suggests anything, Sombra is actually preparing herself for a greater threat and that she is using Talon for this. This makes her either an Anti-Hero or an Anti-Villain depending on your view point and her true ulterior motives.
Ambiguous Situation: She supposedly tries to unravel a massive conspiracy, represented by an Eye, which has its fingers in every major organization in the Overwatch world, ranging from Talon and Overwatch to Vishkar and Oasis. However, she is also an Unreliable Narrator and not nearly as smart or clever as she thinks she is, so it is possible that she has blown the conspiracy way out of proportion.
Anti-Frustration Features: While under stealth, Sombra can still get her cover blown by accidentally bumping into enemies or being revealed by enemy abilities such as Hanzo's Sonic Arrow. Even if the player never sees it being used, the screen will helpfully flash "DETECTED!" in red text to let them know they've been spotted.
Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: A Downplayed example: She uses a very modern looking machine pistol that goes at odds with the more futuristic and complex weapons used by other characters.
Arc Number: During her Alternate Reality Game, 23. On top of being a reference to the fact she would be the 23rd playable character in the game, the number 23 was also used for multiple rotating ciphers to crack many of the codes.
Arch-Enemy: As of the "Searching" comic, she has been set up as one to Zarya, as she is the only character who knows her real name, Olivia Colomar, the very thing that would threaten her position again if it were ever exposed.
Ascended Meme:
- During her ARG, fans obsessed over a suspicious, but ultimately irrelevant not-clue in the form of circular artifact in Dorado's sky nicknamed the "skycode." In the final product, the skycode is one of Sombra's unique sprays, and her "Amused" emote has her generate one, then laughing at it. It even includes musical tones as a reference to a fan's suggestion to decode it by making music from it.
  Sombra: Do you ever just take a moment and just... look up at the stars? I'm told you can find all sorts of things there.
- Another minor one also from the ARG revolved around Bastion being an espresso machine^Explanation. It was first referenced in her Archives-exclusive "Espresso" spray, and later referenced in an interaction between her and Bastion where she'll comment how "You would make a good barista."
Badass Boast: Her selection quote, "Everything can be hacked… and everyone."
Bait-and-Switch: Her "Hacking" highlight intro in a nutshell, where it initially presents someone else's intro, only for it to be suddenly interrupted by Sombra.
Balance Buff:
- Sombra was given a pretty hefty rework in anticipation of Overwatch 2, toning down (while not outright eliminating) her incredible disabling utility while upping her damage potential. Her Hack and EMP only disable enemy abilities for one second, but as a tradeoff, hacked targets are revealed to Sombra's team for a much longer duration, Sombra herself deals bonus damage to hacked enemies, and EMP also deals its own burst of percent-health damage (specifically 40% of an enemy's current health). Sombra was also allowed to now use Hack without being completely decloaked from stealth, though her health-pack hacking is also much more reduced, and EMP no longer goes through or shatters shields.
- Sombra received another rework in October 2023 in order to further streamline her gameplay as a proper Damage hero, toning down some of her more unintuitive and/or annoying elements in the process. Translocator could previously be plopped down wherever and grant Sombra an instant escape button out of most situations (something that was especially annoying in Overwatch 2 due to the broad reduction of crowd control that could stop her), and it was changed so that the ability teleports her on a set timer, streamlining her maneuverability while encouraging more active use along with her team rather than the simple "drop near a health pack, engage enemy solo, instantly escape, rinse and repeat" strategy of before. Her Opportunist passive was removed in exchange of making her Stealth into an automatic passive, and the new damaging utility from her hacking ability came in the form of a new ability: Virus, a damage-over-time ability that steroids her individual damage, but enables enemies just enough time to notice and defend against an enemy Sombra popping out from stealth and trying to kill them.
Barefoot Loon: In keeping with the (complete absence of) style with the one and only Radical Edward, Sombra ditches shoes and goes fully barefoot in her Ed skin for the Cowboy Bebop collaboration. Though it's also a subversion, though only very slightly, in that Sombra's soles - much like the rest of her body - are artificial augments, likely made of a skin-like carbon fiber and are visibly more gray than the rest of her skin. That said, for her, she's basically completely unshod, and unlike with Ed who's had her entire life to toughen up her feet, not so much the case for Sombra!
Bayonet Ya: Her machine pistol has a bayonet attachment in her Talon skin, although it is simply ornamental.
Becoming the Costume:
- Her "Tulum" skin has her use surfer's slang such as "Hey dude" and "Aloha".
- Her "Demon Hunter" skin gives her a few miscellaneous, but spooky lines, the most notable changing her ultimate callout to "¡La oscuridad te espera!"^Translation"The darkness awaits you!"
- Her "Agent Colomar" skin transforms her into a more outright benevolent Playful Hacker and one of Overwatch's top operatives. She's still got a bit of an edge to her but her dialogue is noticeably more professional and less Jerkass-y.
Beware the Silly Ones: Most of the Talon leaders, especially Doomfist and Reaper, regard her as a silly annoying incompetent jokester and not much of a threat, when she would inevitably betray them. However, her actions so far of helping Baptiste to evade Talon's capture has directly led him to join Overwatch, Talon's arch enemy, as well as keeping secrets about the survival of Ana Amari and Jack Morrison, both of whom are actively doing everything they can to bring Talon down.
Blackmail: She does this to Katya Volskaya. All she wants is a "friend", but if she doesn't comply, she'll reveal to the public that their greatest new weapon to fight the Omnics was supplied to them by the Omnics themselves, including an implied threat aimed at her daughter. This backfires on her when Katya sends Zarya after her.
Boring, but Practical: Her weapon is nothing more than a low-tech machine pistol, similar in appearance to an H&K MP7. What makes her stand out is that the guns of other characters who use regular bullets are all highly stylized and even futuristic looking. Cassidy's revolver, Reaper's shotguns, Ana's sniper rifle, and especially Soldier: 76's assault rifle all have futuristic styles to them.
Boyish Short Hair: Sombra gains one such hairstyle with her "Talon" skin, where she also has dyed her hair red to better fit in with Talon's color motif.
Broken Masquerade: She uncovered a conspiracy running deeper than Overwatch, Talon, or any other group in the setting.
Calacas: Health packs and enemies hacked by Sombra display electronic sugar skulls, and she also wears calavera face paint in her Los Muertos skins.
Child Prodigy: She's been a hacker since she was a young child, using her talents to get into the Los Muertos gang.
Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Sigma, due to his mental state, often forgets things and gets easily distracted. Sombra takes the time to keep him in check and is completely patient with him, much to the ire of other Talon members.
Sigma: Hm... Why does this place feel familiar?
Sombra: We've been here, viejito! This is where Max lives.
Sigma: Ah, yes, Maximilien! His collection of Greek sculptures is quite charming.
Color Motifs: More blatant than almost any other hero, her outfit, abilities and sprays have a purple/violet coloring theme. Sombra fits the wisdom and exoticism bills of the interpretations. Like how purple is interpreted as being poisonous, Sombra's hacking abilities can be seen as such. Her skull theme and her association with the Los Muertos Gang also fits the colors' association with death.
Combat Pragmatist: Sombra's direct combat capability is rather lacking, but boy, does she make it up for it with extremely dirty tactics. Sneaking behind enemy lines to disable their medipacks, preying on critically-wounded enemies thanks to her passive, setting up Translocator as an instant escape route when things get hot, disabling their key player's ability… The list goes on.
Confusion Fu: Sombra's specialty, and what contributes to her Difficult, but Awesome status. Most other Offense characters can thrive in a direct firefight, using their mobility skills to set up flanks or reach high-priority targets. While Opportunist and Stealth certainly allow Sombra to pick off low-health opponents, plenty of other characters (including the rest of the Offense line-up) can out-damage her in a straight fight. Sombra's specialty lies in making her enemies' lives a living hell; sneaking into their back lines with Camo, Hacking med-kits or Supports to prevent healing abilities, or blasting the enemy team with a well-placed EMP to leave them sitting ducks, then blinking back out with Translocator before they can retaliate.
Cool, but Inefficient: While being able to disable an enemy's usage of abilities is undeniably awesome (and sometimes crippling if used properly), newer players might be tempted to use her hacks during the middle of the fight. Ignoring the fact that her hacking process resets upon taking damage, making a mid-fight hacking extremely risky, as well as the fact that even if she's successful, enemies can still shoot and kill her, even then you have to consider: "Is hacking this guy going to do me any better than simply riddling his head with bullets?"
Cute Monster Girl: Her "Bride" skin turns her into a Bride of Frankenstein lookalike.
Cutscene Power to the Max: When she was first added, her Translocator in the game only lasted for 15 seconds (this was patched about a year later to make it last indefinitely, but the trope certainly applied for long enough). In the short Infiltration, it lasts long enough for Sombra to chase down Katya, take out her bodyguards, and directly blackmail her.
The Cracker: Naturally, since she's a hacker.
Cyborg: She has cybernetic implants along her spine and in her skull to aid her hacking.
Dark Action Girl: Just like Widowmaker, if not even more so, for several reasons. The first being that she's a close-range combatant compared to Widowmaker being a long-range sniper. The second reason is that, unlike Widowmaker who was brainwashed into being evil and had no choice in the matter, Sombra has a completely free will and commits all of her evil actions fully willingly and with pleasure.
A Day in the Limelight: She's the protagonist of the Infiltration short.
Deadpan Snarker: When not taunting somebody (which is almost always), she just settles for short dry remarks.
Reaper: Try to stick to the plan, Sombra.
Sombra: Look, someone has to be ready when all your careful planning doesn't pan out.
Death of a Thousand Cuts: The damage of her machine pistol's individual shots is very low, but its very high rate of fire and high magazine capacity compensate for it.
Delighting in Riddles: The Overwatch community ended up playing a drawn-out ARG in the leadup to the release of Sombra, with many of the clues originating from the character herself. These included ciphers, dead ends, a fake website, red herrings, and a months-long countdown — all peppered with teasing hints and encouragements in Spanish. When she was finally introduced in the Infiltration short, Sombra was shown to be exactly as much of a troll in-universe as her teasing during the ARG indicated her to be.
Delinquent Hair: She sports a long mohawk with purple tips, a fashion choice necessitated by the fact that the sides and back of her head have cybernetic hacking augmentations running across them. Her "Los Muertos" skins gives her a punk mohawk.
Didn't See That Coming: When confronted by Zarya in "Searching", Sombra tries to make her escape with her translocator, but Lynx gives Zarya enough advanced warning that instead of making an escape, Sombra ends up trapped in Graviton Surge. Then Zarya drops Sombra's real name to top it off.
Didn't Think This Through: Sombra thought she was free and in the clear when she wiped out all records of her identity and scampered off into hiding, but she neglected to account for one crucial detail. As Searching demonstrates, if you continue to frequent places of business in the town where you grew up, and you have a feature that is immediately distinguishing, someone is going to remember you.
- Psst! Hey, Sombra, maybe if you wanted to keep your identity a secret, you should have changed your haircut and not gone out in public in the place where you grew up.
Difficult, but Awesome: Her profile currently puts her at three difficulty stars, and for good reason: Sombra's only damaging ability has terrible range and a mediocre damage rate even at point-blank, while her Hack ability has a substantial 8-second cooldown. This is, however, balanced by Hack being an incredibly powerful shutdown tool, restricting the enemy team from using anything from medkits to even Ultimates, and Sombra has all the tools to be obnoxiously evasive. Her EMP is easy to activate… but at the cost of requiring you to have situational awareness to get into position and keeps track of which critical enemies to be hit as well as requiring your teammates to follow up, since it only lasts for 6 seconds. A Sombra player that makes their Hacks and EMP count while staying alive can virtually control the fight, but it requires a lot of timing, quick-thinking, and team coordination to make her more than a flashy but ultimately impractical hero. This is evident in the massive difference in her pick and win rate in ladder (where she is generally regarded as a terrible pick until the very highest level) and tournament (where she is regarded as a solid to crucial pick in any team composition).
Dirty Coward: Downplayed, because she's still willing to put herself at risk in order to achieve her goals… but usually from a safe vantage point. At her core, Sombra is a bully and an opportunist who shuns fighting fair in favor of striking from the shadows while depriving others of their talents, and her fallback strategy whenever things don't go her way has always been to run away and hide in the company of something tougher, whether gangsters or terrorists.
Dueling Hackers: Can be done with both hacking and bullets if Sombra is played on both teams.
Early-Bird Cameo:
- Aside from her Alternate Reality Game, she was hinted at in a Dorado newspaper in-game asking "¿Quién es 'Sombra'?", and in Numbani a generic newsreel with an added-in headline: “Lumerico reports massive breach at Dorado power plant, latest attack in global hacking spree,”◊, which represented events happening in the ARG.
- In the Doomfist Preview video, Sombra could be seen with an unfamiliar skin on her weapon. That weapon skin turned out to be for her Summer Games 2017 skin.
Easter Egg: She has a unique death animation that also counts as a Shout-Out: If she's killed as she's bumped into while under stealth, slightly revealing her, she'll die in a similar fashion to this scene from TRON.
EMP: Her ultimate, which shatters shields (both physical barriers and life-bar passives), shuts down turrets, and stops players from using their abilities.
Enigmatic Minion: Despite being a Talon operative, she clearly has her own agenda and will even sabotage operations if she thinks she can gain something out of it.
Everyone Has Standards: She's exceptionally manipulative and isn't above taunting her own teammates. Not to mention keeping an extensive library of information on everything and everyone if she needs to blackmail them, but notably is the only member of Talon who is nice to Cloudcuckoolander Sigma, despite his fractured mind and unstable powers. With others she's snarky, sarcasitc, and crass, but with Sigma she's patient and understanding. When he mentions that Moira plans to run more experiments on him, Sombra turns protective and tells him to get her if they "try anything".
Everything Is Online: She's able to hack anything from enemy abilities to first-aid kits. Even her own gun has Wifi, judging by the Wifi symbol embedded in it on her "Azúcar"/"Los Muertos" skins.
Evil Tastes Good: She truly loves her unscrupulous occupation, and admits that she's addicted to hacking and data manipulation.
Faux Affably Evil: She has a playful personality with an impish streak that makes her come off like a mischievous teenager. She keeps it at all times, such as when threatening Volskaya's daughter with her Blackmail.
Femme Fatalons: On her gloves, but the general effect is visually the same. Her "Los Muertos" and "Azúcar" skins give her very long, painted nails for a similar effect.
Firing One-Handed: She holds her SMG in one hand, leaving the other free to hack. this might be why it has such a large bullet spread.
Flashy Teleportation: Sombra can toss a translocator that she can teleport back to at any time, including while it's still in flight, with visual effects to show its use, but it becomes invisible if used with her Invisibility active.
The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Her "Hacking" highlight intro involves her hacking the Play of the Game from another player.
Fragile Speedster: Sombra has average health, but she gets a speed boost when she activates her Stealth and teleports across the map with her Translocator, allowing her to infiltrate nearly any location for as long as she isn't caught in the crossfire. It also makes her excessively hard to pin down if her Translocator is ready, since she can easily hop over a wall or obstacle once cornered before turning invisible and walking away.
The Friend Nobody Likes:
- Despite Sombra having a close working relationship with them and considering them "friends" to a degree, most of her Talon colleagues offer no positive or even neutral interactions with her. Being consummate professionals who stick to coordinated plans, Sombra's tendency to play fast and loose with the agenda while pushing everyone's buttons along the way gives them plenty of reasons to find her insufferable. Reaper and Doomfist at least seem willing to tolerate her antics for the sake of the mission despite considering her an annoyance, but Widowmaker implicitly threatens her.
  Sombra: Ah, my favorite spider. I wonder what sort of web you're spinning now.
  Widowmaker: It'd be a shame if something happened to you on our next mission. A real pity.
- In general, she rarely gets along with anyone if pre-game interactions are to be believed, mostly due to her constantly messing with people and rummaging through their personal details in her spare time. Just about the only exceptions are Baptiste (maintaining a decent friendship even after he long defected from Talon), Sigma (being perhaps the only Talon member she feels personally protective towards), and Cassidy (sporadically hanging out and drinking together).
Gameplay and Story Integration:
- She's a Troll in-universe, and it reflects in her playstyle, which, while lacking in direct combat, makes her extremely obnoxious and disruptive. So you as Genji just retreated due to low health and no healer close by... wait, that medpack's been hacked, so you can't use it to recover your health. Then you hear a familiar blinking, and shortly after, your abilities have been disabled, and here she comes for the kill without you being able to Deflect her shots nor running away. You try to fight back, and managed to get the upper hand and almost kill her, but then she just used Translocator right onto the hacked medpack, heal herself to full, and lands the killing blow on you. And to top it all off, you think you got Play of the Game when you did that 3-man Dragonblade? Yeah, she just hacked your PotG and replaced it with her own, too...
- A Great Day sees Sombra infiltrating a Null Sector ship, placing her Translocator outside for her to teleport back to for an instant escape, but unlike in Infiltration, it fails to work as it gets damaged in an explosion, forcing her to escape manually, with her making it onto the escape ship as it takes off by hurling her Translocator at it and teleporting to close the gap. This short was released in late 2023, around the same time of a gameplay update where Sombra's Translocator was reworked to behave in the same way.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: In her gameplay, hacking a Hero stops their active abilities and nothing else. In-story, it should be much more effective on some characters, and much less on others, but that would be completely unworkable balance-wise. Notably Averted with Ashe and B.O.B, as if B.O.B is doing something and Sombra hacks him, he stops what he's doing (that is, serving as an auto-piloting Assist Character) and just slumps until the hacktime ends.
Girls Love Stuffed Animals: In her room in Castillo, she has a teddy bear on her bed, which according to one interaction is named Arturito.
Hack Your Enemy: Sombra's in-game specialty, having the unique and valuable power to disable an opponent's abilities for several precious seconds at a time.
Hacked by a Pirate: No crossbones, but the general symbol for representing something being hacked is a skull.
Hidden Agenda Villain: Is ultimately just using Talon for her own benefit, to unknown ends. Notably, "Masquerade" reveals that Reaper is completely aware of the fact that "she's been up to some extracurricular activities," but still, nobody has any clue as to what exactly she's planning.
High-Tech Hexagons: Her hack animation generates hexagons and the icons in her conspiracy web are hexagonal.
Highly-Visible Ninja: For a character with a sneaky and stealthy kit, Sombra parades about in very noticeable shades of bright purple. During "Code of Violence" — where she was wearing her white/red "Talon" skin — Reyes took mental note of this among other traits of hers that scream "liability".
Hit-and-Run Tactics: Not unlike Tracer, she's also capable of this (fitting, as her Translocator is basically reverse-engineered from Tracer's tech). Drop a Translocator, pick a fight with an enemy somewhere else to whittle their health, then teleport back. Rinse and repeat until enemy is dead (assuming they don't get healed, but you can also hack the medkits around the map to deny them healing too). This doesn't work as well against healers, as they could always heal themselves. Unless you hack their healing abilities.
Hollywood Hacking: She can hack just about anything, no matter how mundane; from factory lifts to someone's ability to sprint. Even her method of hacking is incredibly unrealistic (though admittedly cool-looking), mostly just by using her glove device to activate or deactivate anything she wants. Her most egregious "hacks" in-game is somehow hacking things that are ostensibly biological, not mechanical (Soldier 76's sprinting and Reaper's Wraith Form come to mind), as well as not entirely shutting down fully-mechanical opponents, such as Zenyatta, Orisa, and Bastion, which should stop them from attacking (or moving) altogether.

I-Z

Impossible Genius: Sombra's so good with computers and other machines that she can hack not only computers, but mechanical devices in general and even people.
Injured Vulnerability: Sombra's Opportunist passive allows her (but only her) to see enemies at critical health through walls, allowing her to know when to sneak up and finish the job. Scavenging kills like this is encouraged in her playstyle, as her low damage output discourages straight fights, while her multiple movement skills and ability to restrict medkits makes it easy for her to corner and kill weakened opponents. This is especially prominent in free-for-all Deathmatch mode, where she can effectively monopolize the primary source of healing on the map and simply steal kills from others while keeping herself topped up all the same.
Interface Screw: A minor auditory version occurs when she hacks opponents — among other ailments, hacked targets lose their directional audio, an ability you never really appreciate until it's gone and you can't tell which direction Sombra's running off to.
Interface Spoiler: If the Play of the Game segment begins with Sombra's "Hacked" intro, it's a dead giveaway that that particular Sombra player is being used to set up another Sombra's PotG, as a "Hacked" intro never appears by itself in a PotG.
Invisibility: She's capable of completely concealing herself from enemies using her Stealth, although attacking and being attacked disables it. Also, she can still be picked up by vision-granting abilities (like Widowmaker's Infra Sight) and Soldier: 76's Tactical Visor will still lock onto her. (If a friendly Zarya shields her while cloaked, the shield bubble will be visible. If you see an empty Zarya shield running through the battle zone, pay heed.)
It's All About Me: Whether or not she's honest, whether or not she's loyal, one thing about Sombra that is certainly not ambiguous is that she is not a team player. A lot of her pre-fight banter revolves around musing about what all she can steal and mess with, and in Infiltration, she's perfectly willing to throw the mission under the bus, lie to her allies, and threaten a woman's — and, by implication, her child's — well-being, all for the sake of her own personal benefit.
- Heck, she even manages to pull this off on a meta level. Hero takes place in her hometown, features Los Muertos gang members as the antagonists, and its Supporting Protagonist Alejandra later returns in Searching to give Zarya a lead on Sombra's identity, which retroactively makes it more relevant to Sombra's character than to Soldier: 76.
Jerkass: Maybe not quite to the same degree as some of her Talon compatriots, but she gets a kick out of needlessly antagonizing those around her, tends to view people less like individuals and more like tools to help her get what she wants, and if she ever has any kind of leverage over someone or knows something they don’t, boy howdy, does she ever love to lord it over them.
Knight of Cerebus: Her origin video hints that there's much more at stake than Talon and Overwatch settling their old reignited feuds, and Infiltration is the first animated short where human beings are actually killed on-screen with several being murdered by Sombra herself.
Knowledge Broker: As a hacker and computer expert, Sombra is able to blackmail people into subservience. She is aligned with Talon as their technologist and chief informant on vital targets but she's not as evil as them.
Lack of Empathy: She has no problem with threatening people's well-being, livelihoods and loved ones to get what she wants, and her propensity to smirk while on the job suggests she even enjoys it.
Laser-Guided Karma: In Infiltration, she's willing to implicitly threaten a woman's young daughter in order to force her into compliance. In Searching, another young girl plays an instrumental role in compromising and exposing her identity.
Makeup Is Evil: While Sombra is not the only female Hero to wear makeup, hers is easily the most noticeable and striking in the game, including heavy purple eyeshadow and lipstick as well as nail polish on some of her skins.
Manipulative Bitch: Her Origins video establishes her as someone willing to manipulate people like she manipulates machines.
Man of Kryptonite: While every character has/are specific counters to other heroes, Sombra's Hack makes her this to everyone. She can turn heroes who are dependent on mobility into sitting ducks (Tracer, Winston, Pharah), disable self-healing heroes (Roadhog, Soldier 76, Ana), and her EMP instantly shuts down all barriers (including Lucio's Sound Barrier) and shields, temporarily leaving heroes such as Symmetra and Zenyatta at half health or less.
Meaningful Name: "Sombra" means "Shadow" in her native Spanish, fitting considering her status as The Sneaky Guy.
Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Sombra is the only character with a true stealth ability, and can interact with the map differently than any other character by hacking health packs to deny their use to the enemy and cause them to respawn more quickly for her team. She's also the only character that can directly lock other characters' abilities so they can't be used at all, as opposed to stunning the character altogether or physically blocking or otherwise countering them.
Minored in Ass-Kicking: A hacker without the same training and combat background that most of the other characters have, but can still put up a fight nonetheless.
Mysterious Purple: Though she formally works for Talon, Sombra (whose signature color is bright violet) is, and has been from her character introduction, Ambiguously Evil. She secretly sabotages Talon's mission to assassinate Katya Volskaya in favor of blackmailing Katya to feed her information for her own gains, whatever they may be. She helped Baptiste leave Talon and is lauded in her hometown of Dorado as a hero. She even gets treated by her Talon colleagues as The Friend Nobody Likes because of her fairly obvious duplicit nature.
Negated Moment of Awesome: Enemies that get hacked can't activate their ultimates, and if certain enemies are in the middle of using their ultimate, getting hacked during it will immediately end it.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Sombra is not a good person by any means, but the world of Overwatch has a really twisted sense of humor. So, naturally, it's the one legitimately good and honest thing she has done — being a reliable patron to a small local business in her hometown — that comes back to bite her in Searching, as Alejandra, who works there, is able to recognize her picture and give Zarya a lead that potentially compromises her carefully hidden identity.
No Item Use for You: Sombra can hack health packs that temporarily cannot be used by the enemy team.
Nonconformist Dyed Hair: She has dark hair with bright pink extensions in her default skin. She's a former member of the Mexican gang Los Muertos and has been a rebellious Hackette since.
Not in This for Your Revolution: She is aligned with Talon, however, her reasons for joining are a bit more complex. She joined them for protection from an unknown threat, she helped Baptiste escape from Talon, and her targets (i.e Katya Volskaya and Guillermo Portero) appear to have had it coming for their corruption and treacherous behaviour. Interestingly, she's regarded as a hero in her home town despite being an international cyberterrorist.
Not So Above It All: Sombra has always had a playful side, but has mostly relegated her hacking abilities to actual business that matters in terms of her own personal goals or for Talon's sake. She even seems somewhat baffled when D.Va accuses her of being the "Cheating in video games" type of hacker, even though she isn't a gamer. Then we see the maxed-out high score of 9999 on the skeeball game in Blizzard World, where "SMB" has permanently knocked "DVA", "JRT", and "S76" into 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place. She also live hacks the Azmodunk basketball games when she approaches them.
Not So Stoic: Her mannerisms are calm, cool, and collected in all of her appearances. At least until toward the end of Searching, when she visibly freaks out at hearing Zarya say her real name. She manages to recover herself by the end, but by that point, her smirking demeanor is less "I'm in control of this situation" and more "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."
Not the Intended Use: When Sombra was initially released, hacked health packs granted her ult charge whenever she or an ally were healed by them. When combined with their increased regeneration rate, a strategy was formed in making her a quasi-healer, with allies taking damage then retreating back to a hacked health pack to rapidly build up her EMP, allowing her to wreck shop much faster than normal. This strategy was so unintended that Blizzard patched this feature out in early 2018, requiring her to work harder for her ultimate.
Odd Friendship: With Sigma, who is the only member of Talon she seems to genuinely care about. She is aware of his mental fracturing and is nothing short of patient and understanding and goes out of her way to make sure he's stable (as much as he can be). When she hears that Moira plans to run some tests on him, her demeanor turns protective. She even affectionately refers to him as "viejito", which is spanish for "old man", and is clearly meant as a term of endearment.
Sombra: The boss was talking to Moira the other day. Kept looking over at you.
Sigma: Ah, yes! He wanted the doctor to run some "non-invasive" tests.
Sombra: Ay... You come to me if they try anything, okay?
Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction when Zarya reveals she knows her real name.
Older Than They Look: Her appearance would suggest she's in her late teens/early twenties, but she's actually thirty.
Only Known by Their Nickname: Initially, "Sombra" was her only title, as she had to wipe out her real identity, even rendering her name as "██████████" in her official bio. Later on in "Searching", Zarya refers to her as "Olivia Colomar", which she reacts to with a bit of shock.
Only Sane Man: She's a troll who's addicted to hacking, but she's not completely unstable like Widowmaker or Reaper.
Pay Evil unto Evil: The closest thing she has to a selfless quality is that she seems to be willing to broaden her conniving shenanigans to people who actually deserve it, such as the executives of large corporations who profit from the suffering of others, including those affected by war in her native Mexico^note. Although, if we're being completely fair, her most vocal group of supporters is still a collection of unapologetic criminal thugs.
Pet the Dog:
- For what it's worth, she does seem to like that bakery. Alejandra even asks if Sombra has done anything wrong when shown her picture, which would imply she has otherwise been a perfectly honest customer. Of course, just abstaining from being a lying thief isn't exactly a high benchmark.
- With her vast hacking ability, it's been periodically suggested that Sombra occasionally uses it for altruistic purposes. Searching reveals that some people in Dorado actually see Sombra as their Stepan Razin for her conquests against the rich.
  Sombra: Let's order some pizza for the neighborhood. And pay their rent. (Gasp!) And all their debt!
- Sombra seems to be the only Talon member that's concerned for Sigma's well-being. While her colleagues mostly treat him as merely a Living Weapon with a screw loose, Sombra — seemingly aware of how they manipulate him — addresses him like a friend, and is willing to protect him from further questionable treatment.
- In addition to serving as an informant and confidant for Illari, Sombra also expresses concern on a very personal level.
  Illari: Did you see my last information request?
  Sombra: I did. (sighs) Aren't you taking on too much, chica?
  Illari: That's for me to decide, not you.
  Sombra: Ugh, I'll send you the relevant details.
Playful Hacker: While she does use her talents for blackmail and villainy, she also isn't above using them to troll Reaper.
Power Nullifier: Her Hack ability renders an enemy's abilities unusable for a brief period of time. Her Ultimate, EMP, hacks all nearby enemies in addition to breaking shields and barriers and hacking all health packs in range instantly.
Pragmatic Villainy: Having the most powerful woman in Russia in your back pocket is far more useful than simply killing her. While he's still in the shadow of exactly what she plans on doing with her, Doomfist (who didn't approve of the plan to assassinate Volskaya) thinks it was a good idea to keep her alive.
Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: When activating her EMP, depending on her skin:
"Apagando las luces!"^Translation
"La oscuridad te espera!"^Translation
Psychopathic Womanchild: A more subdued example in that she isn't kill-happy in the same way Reaper and Widowmaker are, but she's definitely not above hurting and making life difficult for people to further her own goals, usually smirking every step of the way. She's also an unrepentant mischief-maker who gets a kick out of childishly taunting and mocking her opponents (or even her own allies for that matter), and she apparently sleeps with a teddy bear.
Purple Is Powerful: She wears a lot of purple in her outfit and hair, and most of her technology is purple. She's also a very talented and competent hacker.
Removing the Earpiece: During Infiltration, she does this when she meets up face-to-face with Katya Volskaya in order to have a private conversation from Reaper so she can personally blackmail her. It ultimately did her no good, because Reaper still knows what she did.
Rock Beats Laser: A non-combat example. Sombra is a tech wizard who went to exhaustive lengths to ensure that any trace of her identity was wiped clean before she went into hiding. Despite her efforts, her identity winds up coming to light anyway in Searching thanks to the one thing she could never hope to control: her fellow townsfolk's memories of her.
Small Name, Big Ego: Sombra may be a very dangerous hacker whose deeds have made international news, but she's hardly special in a world where the entire cast does that regularly. Sometimes she's prone to not being as clever as she thinks she is either, particularly when sabotaging the mission to assassinate Volskaya for her own gain. Despite her planning, Reaper still figured her out and seems to have had little trouble with keeping tabs on her ever since.
Sigil Spam: Sombra's skull logo appears in almost everything associated with her, from a tattoo on one of her skins to a spray to an ultimate symbol.
Signing-Off Catchphrase: Sombra appears to have a habit of saying "Boop" when signing off, even playfully tapping the person they're leaving if they're in person. She says it during the "Misdirection" string message during the ARG, and she says it twice in Infiltration, once to Katya Volskaya, and another to the camera.
Slasher Smile: In her "Pulse" highlight intro, she flashes the viewer a menacing smile before using her EMP.
Skeleton Motif: Sombra is commonly associated with a calavera-style skull that◊ appears several times during the◊ Alternate Reality Game, and appears in-game as a recurring insignia, including as her EMP ability's icon.
Smug Snake: Not nearly as bad as Widowmaker, but Sombra's penchant for stealth, interference and blackmail often grant her an edge over others in ways she knows cannot be conventionally countered. She is very aware this puts her in the most advantageous position, and she is more than ready to bask in it. She has all the hallmarks of someone who thinks she is untouchable.
The Sneaky Guy: In addition to her hacking skills, she's also capable of stealthing with her… Stealth, making her the only hero capable of flat-out Invisibility.
Spicy Latina: She may not be Ms. Fanservice, but she's got the playful part of this trope down.
Status Effects: Her in-game hacking is functionally the same as a typical silence, blocking enemies from using their abilities.
Stealthy Teleportation: Her teleporter, which is Flashy Teleportation normally, but all effects are removed when it's used with her Invisibility effect, making that case, this trope.
String Theory: She has a digital web of connections◊ set up in her hideout to help her uncover an unknown conspiracy.
Sweet Tooth: Actually a plot point in "Searching", as her predictable visits to the local bakery allows Alejandra to drop dimes on her.
Tattooed Crook: While it's most likely body paint, she features some glowing body art in her "Azúcar"/"Los Muertos" skins much like other members of the Los Muertos gang that fits the general image.
Technopath: What most of her "hacking" turns into. Best demonstrated in Infiltration, where she uses her hacking to hoist an operational lift and even a giant mecha hand to catch her fall and boost her to higher ground simply through touching them.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: No one likes working with Sombra. Not even Reaper and Widowmaker, her colleagues. Reaper is particularly distrustful of her (he even says as much to Widowmaker in a pre-battle interaction added in April 2020) and Widowmaker is even more antagonistic, openly thinking about offing her. It doesn't help that she intentionally brings up stuff she did in the past to piss them off, such as her stealing Tracer's chronal accelerator technology, or calling Reaper "Gabe" because it drives him up the wall. She genuinely seems to care about Sigma's well-being, but this only makes a further enemy out of Moira, who considers Sombra an annoying interference with her "experiment".
Time Master: Not nearly to Tracer's extent, but given that her translocator is a heavily modified chronal accelerator, it most likely functions by bringing Sombra through time to a different location.
Tricked-Out Gloves: She just has to touch something to hack into it.
Troll: She loves having a laugh at others' expense.
- In Infiltration, she messes with Reaper by opening a door for him, then closing it just as he's about to slip inside. She does this just to annoy him.
- She also had a habit of doing this to the fans during the Alternate Reality Game, with most of the codes being included with playful comments to whoever managed to decode them. The most notable of which was when fans got a little too analytical with a strange artifact in the Dorado map sky (which gave birth to the memetic suggestion to try and make it into music.) It turned out to be just a Red Herring, and in the next part of the ARG, Sombra uploaded a datamoshed picture of Dorado that when decoded read:
  "Por que estan mirando al cielo? La respuesta no esta sobre sus cabezas, esta detras de ustedes. A veces, necesitan analizar sus logros previos."^Translation
- This extends to the game, itself: her "Hacking" highlight intro shows the intro for another player before Sombra hacks it to show it's an intro for her!
- She also tries to make coy, taunting remarks to her teammates in her upcoming pre-battle banter. Tracer^note, Zarya^note, and Reaper^note can hardly stand her. Genji, on the other hand, completely shrugs her off.
  Sombra: You wouldn't believe what I learned about you… Sparrow.
  Genji: I am at peace with who I was. Your threat does not concern me.
Tron Lines: She forms several on objects she's hacking, and she even has a few forming a design on her back.
Understatement: Played for Laughs when an enemy team is capturing a point.
"They're taking the objective. We should probably stop that."
Unperson: She did this to herself, erasing all traces of her former life and identity once she caught the eye of a powerful conspiracy. Not even the official website knows her real name. Makes it all the more impressive that Zarya found it out. Olivia Colomar.
Unreliable Narrator: Described as such by the game devs.
Unusual Eyebrows: She has a shaved streak in both her eyebrows.
Vagueness Is Coming: In "Searching" she gives Zarya ominous warnings of a greater threat than Talon and Overwatch.
Villainous Friendship: According to word of god, she considers her fellow Talon operators to be genuine friends.
Villain Protagonist: Naturally, since she's a playable Talon operative. She's also the protagonist of the Infiltration short.
Villains Out Shopping:
- Suggested in one of her pre-game lines in Dorado, in stark contrast to other maps where she has more insidious plans:
  "Back home... I should go drop by the bakery."
- She's seen in "Reflections" celebrating Christmas by drinking at a bar along with a passed-out Cassidy.
Villain with Good Publicity: The people of Dorado, particularly her old friends in the Los Muertos gang, seem to regard her as a Robin Hood-esque figure who looks out for the little guy despite how she knowingly aids and abets the world's most notorious terrorist organization which openly kills innocent people for no reason other than to instill conflict. Downplayed, because outside of her hometown she's regarded with exactly the kind of suspicion and hostility you would expect.
Weak, but Skilled: She is very likely to lose against all other Damage heroes in direct combat, due to her mediocre damage output, even point-blank. She compensates for this with her abilities making her very evasive and making life hell for her enemies, allowing her to prey at them when they're vulnerable.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: If she truly cares about ending the conspiracy for the good of all, she is willing to join an unambiguously evil group and murder innocent lives to get what she wants.
Walking Techbane: If she wants to be one, she can create an EMP with her body.
Wild Card: While she does work for Talon, she appears to have her own goals, since she sabotages an Assassination Attempt that would've further disrupted human-omnic relations if it had succeeded.
Would Hurt a Child: Implied when she threatens to blackmail Katya Volskaya. While making her threat, she holds up a picture of Volskaya's daughter, but whether that means the blackmail would get her involved or if Sombra would also hurt her if Volskaya didn't cooperate is up in the air.
Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: In "Searching", it's revealed that Sombra is regarded as a hero in Dorado despite being a wanted cyber-criminal and aligned with the terrorist organization Talon.

Characters / Overwatch: Sombra

Olivia Colomar / Sombra

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Olivia Colomar / Sombra

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