Characters / Team Fortress 2: The Scout

Main Character Index
Offense Classes (The Scout | The Soldier | The Pyro)
Defense Classes (The Demoman | The Heavy | The Engineer)
Support Classes (The Medic | The Sniper | The Spy)
Non-Player Characters

The Scout

Real name: Jeremy

"Think fast, chucklenuts!'"

Voiced by: Nathan Vetterlein (English), Dani Albiac (Spanish), Alexander Fisenko (Russian), Stefan Günther (German)

"You listenin'? Okay — grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people."

The Scout (real name Jeremy) is an American hailing from South Boston, but somehow has a Bronx accent. A narcissistic braggart with an ego the size of the Soviet Union, Scout is always ready to hype himself up with overly-inflated praises and trash-talk his enemies. Moreover, he's an obvious baseball fan, given his baseball cap, bat, and sports-themed accessories. The Scout is canonically the youngest of eight brothers, son of a single mother, and grew up on the streets trying to pick fights alongside his siblings and thus had to learn to run fast to join the brawls first. He coincidentally looks and sounds almost exactly like Vince Offer, and to some extent even has a similar personality. Everyone, Meet the Scout!

The Scout is an Offense character with emphasis on lightning-fast combat. With a piddling 125HP but a staggering 133% base speed, a Scattergun capable of two shotting any class short of a Heavy, and the ability to Double Jump, he's a fragile but fast and powerful class who relies on agility and speed to outmaneuver his enemies and weave around their attacks, making him the ideal class for flanking and objective-pushing. Moreover, because he counts as two people when on map objectives such as the Payload cart or a Control Point, taking them is often a Scout's job. The Scout's arsenal includes the Scattergun, a lever-action double-barrel shotgun with excellent damage for close-up engagements, but must rely on his pistol to do more than Scratch Damage at ranges beyond shoving the barrel up the enemy's nose. Alternatively, the Scout can use a variety of special consumable (or throwable) drinks in his secondary weapon slot to buff himself. His melee weapon is an aluminum baseball bat.

The Scout was the fourth class to receive new equipment.

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A-H

• Achilles' Heel:
  • Engineers. While Scouts might be able to dodge most things the enemy throws at them, an Engineer's sentry gun is not one of them. Combined with the Scout's small amount of health, sentries can lock onto and obliterate Scouts in the blink of an eye, even if it's a mini-sentry. Scouts can drink Bonk! Atomic Punch to make themselves briefly immune to a sentry's ammo, but it only lasts for so long before it runs out.
  • Tight corridors and low ceilings make it much more difficult for Scouts to dodge incoming enemy fire, especially blast damage. Thus, classes such as Soldiers and Demomen — who are normally targets Scout has the upper hand against — can much more easily reduce Scouts to sticky clouds of meat.
  • Heavies. Where the other damage classes have slow projectiles which can be dodged, a Heavy's minigun is both hitscan, and has an effective cone of damage, similar to the Scout's own Scattergun. With good tracking skills and a strong position, a Heavy can mow down Scouts by the dozen while laughing at the little baby men. The Scout can however, mitigate the threat of Heavies with his cooldown-based projectiles like the Sandman or by simply ambushing distracted ones and finishing them off before they can spin around and track them.
  • Pyros. Scout has to get in close to do any real damage, and getting in close to a Pyro means being lit on fire. His low health will cost him his life if he gets even the tiniest bit careless, especially if he has no Mad Milk or Bonk! Atomic Punch to potentially save himself with.
• Actually Pretty Funny: In Expiration Date, after he botches yet another attempt to ask out Ms. Pauling, Spy snidely remarks that he's "asking out that dial tone again". Scout immediately tells him to go to hell, but can't help chuckling a little at the joke after Spy leaves.
• The All-American Boy: Viciously parodied. Scout is a born-and-bred Bostonian who loves baseball, his mom, and breaking heads with a variety of blunt objects.
• Animal Motifs: Rabbits, and to a much lesser degree, squirrels. He's fast, superior to most of the classes when it comes to jumping because of his double jump, and he has buck teeth, as well as rabbit-like screaming. The following domination lines support the rabbit motifs:
  Demoman: "You're like a little bunny… scurryin' around, eatin' up yer lettuce and berries!"
  Engineer: "Just a dead little jackrabbit."
  Spy: "Ooh, you were quick as a little bunny, weren't you?"
• Ascended Meme: After the community-made jokes about similarities between Scout and Jerma985, "The Naked and the Dead" reveals that the two men share the same first name.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Fittingly enough for a baseball enthusiast, the Scout's default outfit just so happens to resemble a typical baseball uniform. It also draws attention to how the Scout succeeds in the same way a batting baseball player does: they both must uphold a strong, aggressive offense by employing their speed and mobility effectively.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: A surprisingly effective strategy for Scouts, just rush at the objective, preferably using the Bonk soda. Works extremely well in Capture The Flag or Payload. The Scout can die and get back into the fight faster thanks to his mobility, and captures things quickly enough that it doesn't have time to reset.
• Attention Whore:
  • Several of Scout's in-game voice lines are desperate cries for attention, especially regarding how effective a mercenary he is.
    "Is-is anyone even payin' attention to me?"
    "LOOK AT ME!"
    "Yo, I oughta' be on a baseball card!"
    "Guys, I'm right here! Of course, we're gonna win!"
  • When the titular Director records him in the "Meet the Director" comic, the Scout blathers on about how great he is until the Director runs out of film. He doesn't realize they've stopped recording until five hours after the fact, and he still has more praises to sing about himself, urging the Director to collect more film and continue their session.
    Scout: ... More of a mentor to the rest of the team, you know? I see how they could be doin' their jobs better? It don't matter how busy I am. I will drop what I'm doin and tell 'em. And why?
    Director: [tired and annoyed] We ran out of film five hours ago—
    Scout: I'll tell ya why. Because I'm a team player. Probably the best team player of the team—
    Director: [more assertively] We ran out of film five hours ago.
    Scout: That's okay, you can go buy some. I got tons more ta say. We'll wait here for ya.
    [Once the Director leaves in a huff, Scout turns his attention to Miss Pauling, who's been taking notes during the recording session. He leans on a fence close to her and flirtatiously eats a sandwich.]
    Scout: Man, what a jackass. So, how you doin' Miss Pauling? Hey, you ever seen me with my shirt off? Cuz it is awesome.
• Ax-Crazy: He's hardly the craziest of the mercs, but he still takes a little too much pride in killing people. In the "Bombinomicon" comic, in lieu of Halloween candy, he offers a trick-or-treater someone's molar — from some poor schmuck he likely batted the brains out of — and proudly explains how he found it.
• The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest out of eight brothers, and probably the youngest member of the team, assuming Pyro is older than him. (Of course, that's assuming Pyro is a human to begin with.)
• Badass Boast: In "Meet the Scout":
  "Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother...I hurt people. I'm a force of nature. If you were from where I'm from, you would be f***ing dead."
• Balance Buff: Not directly onto him, but via the Medic: the Meet Your Match update changed all Mediguns to match the speed of their heal target, whereas in previous versions this trait was unique to the Quick Fix. This turned Scout from one of Medic's worst patients to one of his best; Scout no longer needs to tether himself to the spot if he wants a Medic's heal, Medics can tag Scout to rollout or escape faster, and having a source of constant regeneration and overheal from a Medic that can keep up nullifies Scout's primary weakness in his fragility.
• Bastard Bastard: Or Heroic Bastard, given the Spy's affair with his mom, and the fact the Spy seemed to abandon him when she got pregnant, it's all-but-stated that Scout is an illegitimate child. Naturally, whether or not he's the former trope or the latter depends on if he's on your team or the enemy team, with the bulleted trope falling under the later. By default, he's another one of the Mercs' motley of Blood Knight Anti-Heroes.
• Batter Up!: Being a baseball fan, his default melee weapon is an aluminum bat, and he also has various unlockable bats, which have varying stats. It's even the name of one of the Scout's achievements (Perform 1000 double jumps).
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: There's more to him than just being narcissistic...
  • Is the brattiest and half-pintiest of the bunch, but loves his ma dearly. Though he doesn't like talking about it, he wants to find out the nature of his Disappeared Dad, and the reveal from Tom Jones^note actually Spy in disguise that he's his father relieves him greatly.
  • Some of the Scout's lines hint that he may be smarter than he lets on: He seems to know about the Hippocratic Oath ("Where's ya precious hippo-crates now?") and has at least heard of H. P. Lovecraft (he calls Merasmus "H. P. Dumb-craft").
  • He seems to be a rather decent artist, with his boredom-fueled scrawls showing he has a rather steady hand, and the art itself isn't too bad.
  • Despite supposedly possessing a 'fourth grade reading level', his actual reading speed seems to be proportionate to his running speed; during the Hard-Work Montage in "Expiration Date", he goes through a large stack of books within 72 hours.
  • Despite his often all-pervading selfishness, he is actually aware of how out of his league Ms. Pauling is, and how while he occasionally does score with a girl, he is absolutely hopeless when it comes to well-educated, classy girls, to the point that he seeks out the help of Spy to win Miss Pauling's heart.
  • One of the "Meet Your Match" lines reveals that he considers his teammates as "Best Friends"; coming out of a narcissist, that really means something.
  "Hey, I'll just say it. Everyone else here is too scared to say it, but I'll just say what everyone's thinkin'! We're all best friends. We are all dear, dear friends! Birthday party at my place this weekend, by the way. Nobody showed up last weekend so I figured, no big whoop, I'll just have it again."
  "Go team, everybody! Six trained killers, am I right? Best of da best! And best friends. We don't say it a lot, or at all, but we're all feelin' it here. In our hearts, you know? The frien-the friendship."
  "That is how a team of best friends wins the game!"
  • He actually had the foresight to try and invest his earnings instead of blowing it all like one might expect. He invested it poorly — the same comic that introduced this quality, "Unhappy Returns," shows that he's been stockpiling not money, but Tom Jones memorabilia to sell when Jones dies — but points for trying.
• Big "OMG!":
  • In "Meet the Sandvich" when the enemy Heavy is charging towards him.
  • When receiving rare items on Mann vs. Machine mode, he will sometimes say this.
• Bizarre Beverage Use: Scout can recover health from the Mad Milk, but not by drinking it. Instead, he throws the bottle at enemies as a projectile (though the impact itself doesn't do damage), covering them in the substance, and whatever damage they take gets returned to Scout as health.
• Blood Knight: He considers using enemies' heads as baseball practice his only purpose in his whole existence.
• Blown Across the Room: The Force-A-Nature, in addition to slapping fat stacks of damage, also applies a lot of knockback to enemies proportionate to distance, which can potentially send them off cliffs or into hazards.
• Body Horror: Has a live bird sealed in his chest after surgery, that was never removed. On rare occasions, when he gets reduced to chunky bits, the bird will fly out unharmed.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Just listen to his lines for about 5 seconds. It's a fair guess that he's meant to sound annoying, being the youngest one of the mercs.
  • Backstory-wise: he's the runt of eight children (referred to as "his mad-dog brothers"). Apparently, he trained up his speed so he could get into fights before his brothers could join in and take away all the fun.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Of all the members of the team, he takes the biggest chunks out of the Fourth Wall. Especially on Competitive Mode:
  "I spec'd these guys earlier. They look ugly. I didn't want to say it, but they do. Their hats are terrible, their faces aren't very good or attractive..."
• Brooklyn Rage: Even though he's from Boston, it certainly counts.
• Buffy Speak: In his domination lines toward Heavy and Sniper:
  Scout: (to Heavy) I am owning you, you fat bald fatty fat… fat-fat!
  Scout: (to Sniper) You'll never hit me! You'll never hit my tiny head! It's so tiny, I've got a fricken'… such a tiny little head!
• But Not Too Foreign: Since Spy is heavily implied to have an affair with his mom, he is half-French on his father's side.
• Cannot Spit It Out: He's got a hell of a crush on Miss Pauling, but just can't work up the guts to ask her out, much to Spy's amusement.
  Spy: Asking out that dial-tone again, I see?
  Scout: Go to hell, Spy.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: While he's got plenty of one-liners for single mothers and whatever girls he comes across, attempting to ask out Miss Pauling leaves him faltering and stammering.
• Casanova Wannabe: Not so much in-game due to a lack of female characters on the battlefield, but in the comics he hits on nigh-on every woman he sees, with varying success.
  • One of the pages for the Halloween 2012 update includes a dating advert that's obviously written by the Scout — the gratuitous amounts of self-praise mean it couldn't have been made by anyone else.
  • In "A Cold Day in Hell", he passes up what's probably one of the few chances he'll get to have sex with a decent woman (Heavy's sister, Zhanna) because he's convinced Miss Pauling will like him if he keeps waiting.
  • A cutaway in the short "Expiration Date" shows he actually can score girls, and has before; however, said girls are implied to also not be very… classy girls.
    Scout: We both got buckets of chicken. You wan' do it?
    Girl: [shrugs] Eh, okay.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: The Scout trained himself to run everywhere and anytime, originally so he could reach fights in time to have some fun before his seven older brothers got there. By the game's scale, he's running at about 17 miles per hour ^note He runs at 400 Hammer Units, each one three-quarters of an inch, per second. This translates to 25 feet per second, or 17.05 MPH. — perpetually. And that's not taking into account his jumping abilities.
• Characterization Marches On: Initially, Scout's interest in Miss Pauling was treated as nothing more than macho posturing by him that was ignored by her out of disgust. This was supported by mentions of other attempts by him to pick up chicks, such as on the description for The Fast Learner. Then "A Cold Day In Hell" hinted that Scout's crush on her might actually be sincere, followed by "Expiration Date" recharacterizing their relationship. The end result was that Scout actually likes her as a person but doesn't know any other way to ask her out other than hitting on her like any random stranger, and Miss Pauling isn't against dating him and merely didn't notice his feeble attempts to ask her out.
• Charge Meter: The Soda Popper has a charge that builds up by dealing damage while wielding the gun. When the meter is full, Scout can activate it and have the ability to quintuple jump for about ten seconds (like Double Jump, but 2.5 times better!).
• The Chew Toy: Tends to get smacked around A LOT in the shorts and comics, especially by his own teammates.
  • In "Expiration Date", the Soldier's first reaction upon learning he can't teleport bread anymore is to choke-slam the Scout against a nearby table. The Scout did nothing to provoke this reaction, other than being in the same room. Hell, Soldier's first appearance in the short is pushing his hand into Scout's face.
  • In the comics, Soldier has strangled Scout not once, but twice in a court of law in both "A Smissmas Story" and "Unhappy Returns". According to "Ring of Fired", Soldier broke BOTH of Scout's arms for an unspecified reason (possibly accidental), sometime after the team was laid off.
  • In the "Gargoyles and Gravel" comic, Soldier's first reaction to learning there will be no pizza is to suggest they all eat Scout. And then he later strangles Scout again.
  • When the mercenaries are set to be executed in Teufort, Scout's the one who came closest to actually being hanged.
  • Also from "Expiration Date," Spy gets in a lot of slaps during his date training with Scout.
  • Most of Scout's screen time in "Jungle Inferno" is spent getting dragged and thrown around by Saxton Hale—about half of that time is spent being used as a human baseball bat.
  • BLU Scout gets in on the action offscreen in "Meet the Sandvich", getting severely beaten to a pulp by Red Heavy.
• The Chosen One: Apparently, God chose Scout to lay with all of the women on Earth. Scout agrees with this, but he's dead just right before this information got to him. So Scout has a Bargain with Heaven to continue the "commitment" until he's truly dead in December 4, 1987. Then again, that could be a posthumous hallucination just like Sniper went through; or alternatively, if it was Heaven, God might have just been playing along with Scout's ego because that's exactly what Scout's version of Heaven would entail.
  • The thing is It likely WAS heaven, because Tom Jones (who was killed much earlier), was there. Considering he'd just seen what he thought was Tom Jones not minutes earlier on Earth, he wouldn't likely have imagined him in heaven, much less getting neck-snapped a second time. While already dead.
• Close-Range Combatant: Scouts only have pistols, the Flying Guillotine, Wrap Assassin and the Sandman for mid-long range harassment, but none are really suited for actual combat. The bulk of their damage will be happening up close, and most fights can end with two blasts from the Scouts primary weapons provided they can aim well.
• Companion Cube:
  • He became very attached to the Haunted Hat during the 2013 Scream Fortress event, even talking to it and treating it like a friend and teammate.
  Just you an' me, scary hat.
  • A few of the "Meet Your Match" lines have him talking to his bat.
• Cool Board: His Boston Boarder taunt makes him spawn a Bonk-themed skateboard. Two cosmetics also have Scout carrying a snowboard and similar Bonk skateboard.
• Cool Helmet: Fitting his baseball and Speed Demon theme, the Scout has the most helmet cosmetics of any class. And they all look cool.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's an egotistical, loud-mouthed braggart who also just so happens to be a highly-skilled and dexterous soldier-for-hire that can run at 17 MPH constantly, and kills people with the likes of baseball bats, fish, or a dead man's arm.
• Deadly Dodging: A Scout under the effects of the Bonk! Atomic Punch drink can use his bullet-dodging state to kill Engineers with their own Sentry Guns, and to kill explosive-using classes by forcing them to take self-damage.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Unskilled Scouts can often be seen dropping off like flies, but experienced ones can easily rack up the bodies, capture points, and generally posing a serious menace to the enemy team. His playstyle requires quick reflexes, constant movement, and in-depth knowledge of the map, as well as good aim since he has to keep moving while shooting to stay alive. He is hard to control for many FPS players, due to his ludicrous speed, low health and considerable up-close firepower. On the other hand, truly veteran FPS players (especially those who are used to the classic 'run n' gun' shooters) might get a sense of nostalgia from the quick movement and emphasis on dodging attacks rather than soaking them up.
• Disappeared Dad: In "Blood in the Water", Scout brings up the fact that Heavy's dad is dead, which he has in common.
  Scout: Yeah, mine disappeared.
  Heavy: Yes, your father disappears often.
  • This brief dialogue above is foreshadowing to Spy being confirmed to be Scout's father in the comics. Hence the "disappears often" line.
• Double Jump: One of his special abilities. Certain equipment can improve this skill, giving him a third additional jump (which used to come at the cost of some health), a Recoil Boost, and increased jump height.
  • Soda Popper's Hype meter, when charged by hitting enemies, can grant the Scout a quintuple jump. However, this takes up the same slot as the aforementioned Force-a-Nature and doesn't stack with the Atomizer.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Too many Scouts, or an all-Scout team, makes the team a literal seven-men blitzkrieg that can easily punch a hole through undefended chokepoints in the blink of an eye and overwhelm most enemies, but can quickly come to a screeching halt in the face of Sentry nests, which Scouts usually struggle to overcome, and Sentry Guns, which Scouts aren't equipped or expected to take out by themselves. An effective response to a Scout swarm is to stack some Engineers to cut a chunk of the map away because of this.
• Dumb Blonde: The red shade he's depicted within the comics is very light, and many people consider lighter reds to be shades of blonde, and as mentioned below his in-game models hair could be considered ash blonde.
• Eat My Dust: One of his lines.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: In "Meet the Scout", he kills the enemy Heavy and eats his Sandvich. In-game, he can get an achievement for doing this ("Dodgers 1, Giants 0").
  • Picking up a Sandvich as a Scout will also restore 75 points of health, whereas other classes only get 50 HP back from doing so.
• Easily Impressed: In "Expiration Date", he's impressed by the fact that Ms. Pauling can read.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Seems to be fond of his. "Look at me, ma!"
• Evil Laugh: While every class has an impressive array of sinister laughter, Scout is one of the handful who starts laughing maniacally if he goes on a killing spree in a short amount of time. It's not uncommon to hear good Scouts blow away a group of enemies and hear the Scout laugh his ass off after the second or third kill.
• Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: "Extra! Extra! You're frickin' dead!"
• Fiery Redhead: Some of the comics depict him with red hair, while his in-game model has mousy brown or ash blonde hair. In-game, on the other hand, his hair cosmetics, when painted with the Team Spirit paint can, can make him a proper redhead, as well an inversion of Shy Blue-Haired Girl.
• Flexing Those Non-Biceps: In "Meet the Scout". "Aw man, that's beautiful," he says. Sure thing, Scout. Sure thing. Unless he counts the natural bicep contraction to be a flex.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: One has to wonder where he picked up the word "ragequit". Yes, he actually does tell his domination victims to ragequit.
  • He also recognizes that he's a class, and that all the "battlegrounds" are maps.
  • He uses the term "cap" at least once in any Control Point match.^note Except that he uses it wrong. While "cap" is short for "capture", i.e. the act of claiming a control point, Scout instead refers to the control points themselves as "caps".
  • And he's aware of the existence of critical hits as well, as proven when dominating an enemy Soldier.
  • Painting The Fourth Wall: He pokes the camera in "Meet The Scout", slams into the "camera" (which turns out to be a window) in "Meet The Medic", and knocks the camera over again in "Meet The Pyro". Not a canonical Fourth Wall Break, since those cameras do exist in-universe (as shown here), but still fitting of the Running Gag. Literally.
    • Further, while all the other Meet the Team interviews/sketches seem to take place in actual locations, Scout's interview takes place on the title card of his own video.
• Fragile Speedster: Of the four classes^note Sniper, Spy, and Engineer are the other three with only 125 HP, Scout is the only one made for direct confrontation, but he more than makes up for this with blinding speed and agility. His Scattergun does over 100 damage point-blank in a game where only one class has more than 200 health.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: It's generally hinted that the other mercs, understandably, find him obnoxious to be around. Scout himself reveals that nobody went to his birthday party despite inviting them all a week earlier, and his sincere claims of friendship go completely ignored and Pauling usually sounds a little annoyed when handing out missions to him. The only person who can enjoy being around him is, unfortunately for him, the Soldier, and he's been horribly injured and embarrassed by him many times because of it. On the other hand, Expiration Date shows that Spy, Sniper, Demoman and Pyro were willing to spend their last days alive to help him score a date with Ms. Pauling - presumably because him admitting that Spy is better than him on a loudspeaker is an astronomically rare and humble thing to come out his mouth.
• Glass Cannon: Scout’s primaries are among the most powerful burst damaging weapons in the game, capable of killing a non-overhealed Heavy in 3 shots if all pellets connect. However this comes at the cost of having only 125 HP and being required to get up close to do deal any noteworthy damage.
  • The Crit-A-Cola doubles down on this. When it is active, you deal and (after attacking) take mini-crits. ^note  +35% Damage So while you can kill your foes even faster, most classes can kill you just as quickly.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: He can use the Unarmed Combat, an arm torn off an enemy Spy.
• Had to Be Sharp: He's the youngest of eight brothers, and as a result would often not have time to get any shots in during a fight before it was over. He pushed himself to be faster than his siblings in order for him to be able to actually participate in brawls.
• Handwraps of Awesome: Wears white bandages around his wrists and palms.
• Heroic Bastard: As explained under Bastard Bastard, he's this whenever he's on your team due to the Spy's affair with Scout's mother.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: A not-moving Scout is a dead Scout. Oftentimes, the best course of action (especially against bulkier enemies) is to run in, get several meat-shots on a target, then get out of there before they can take aim on you. Rinse and repeat.
• Hopeless Suitor: For Miss Pauling in "Expiration Date", if one can even consider him a suitor to her at all. Though she seems to turn around to the idea in the end.
• Hot-Blooded: Has a very fiery attitude and is quick to act without thinking beforehand.
• I Fell for Hours: One of his responses for falling into the pit in the Halloween version of Lakeside.
  Scout: (Overly long scream) (Beat) Holy crap, this goes on forever.

I-Z

• I Have Brothers: Rare male example. He's the youngest of his family's eight children, all sons. Apparently, according to his bio, he got his talent for speed by learning to be the first into the (many) fights his brothers got into so he wouldn't miss out.
• Improbable Weapon User: Quite a few Melee weapons:
  • The Wrap Assassin is a roll of wrapping paper and a Chri—I mean, Smissmas Ornament that causes the target to bleed.
  • The Candy Cane, a large candy cane that causes Scout's victims to drop health packs.
  • The Unarmed Combat, which is actually the Spy's severed arm used as a bludgeon.
  • The Fan O'War, a large Gunbai war fan that deals small amount of damage, but hitting an opponent with it will inflict the Marked For Death debuff, causing all damage they take to be mini-crits.
  • And, to top it off, there's the Holy Mackerel, which has no special effects, but as the item description puts it, "Getting hit by a fish has got to be humiliating." That is, it keeps a hit counter in the killfeed, and if you get killed by it, the killfeed shows a "FISH KILL!" next to who killed you.
• Inherently Funny Words: BONK!
• Ink-Suit Actor: He looks a lot like his voice actor, Nathan Vetterlein◊. And with the official comic stating that the Scout is in his mid-to-late 20's, they were even the same age when Vetterlein first recorded his lines back in 2007!
• In the Back: The Back Scatter. It is specially adapted to ambush and hit-and-run playstyles as the shots deal mini-crits when the Scout shoots an enemy's back.
• Irony: The Scout is one of the better classes for discovering and killing Spies (besides the Pyro), due to his movement speed, and the character himself has a particular dislike of the Spy. Yet Scouts can make terrifyingly effective assassins themselves by showing up out of nowhere, blowing away key targets with their scattergun, and escaping before anyone can retaliate (and all the better if the target is alone). Perhaps not so surprising, considering who his father is...
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In his Meet The Team video, he constantly licks his own shoes and generally acts like a gigantic narcissist. The comics show sometimes he's not the nicest guy even to his own teammates either, like when he rats out Soldier in the Smissmas comic or jeers at Heavy for giving Sasha her own bed. At his best though, he's shown to be surprisingly thoughtful of those around him and has many moments of acting on it.
• Ladykiller in Love: Towards Miss Pauling, as of "A Cold Day In Hell". Though, 'Ladykiller' is a stretch.
• Laser Blade: He has the Batsaber, which resembles the iconic swords from the Star Wars franchise in bat form. It functions the same as the normal bat except enemies killed by it get vaporized.
• Lean and Mean: Like the Spy, he's thin as a stick and loves to mock, tease and trash-talk his enemies, given the chance. He especially plays it up in his Domination lines against the Heavy:
  Scout: Nice hustle, tons-a-fun! Next time, eat a salad.
  Scout: I am owning you, you fat, bald bastard!
  Scout: Hey, lard-fat! Those hard arteries don't stop bullets, do they?!
  Scout: [melee kill] EAT IT, FATTY!
• Leitmotif: Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, a fast-paced piece of music with speedy bongos.
• Lethal Joke Item: The Fan O'War, a promotional item introduced when Total War: Shogun 2 was made available on Steam. Since it's a fan, it has -75% damage penalty, which makes it deal even less damage than the standard Bat (itself already the least-damaging of all primary melee weapons) but marks enemies for death, causing all attacks on the target to be mini-crits. It is somewhat useful if the teamwork is on point but extremely dangerous as the Scout has to go into melee range.
• Life Drain: The Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol heals 3 health every time he hits an enemy with it. It increases the survivability of the Scout especially when he's forced to play far from his Medic, but its smaller clip size make it less-than-ideal in a heated firefight.
• Lightning Bruiser: In Mann vs. Machine, the Scout gains 20-50 health every time he picks up a pile of money. The limit on how much health this can add is rather absurd; it's not uncommon to see a Scout running around with more health than an overhealed Heavy.
• Like Father, Like Son: Shares some traits with his canonical father, the Spy, including being a good choice for surprising and eliminating key targets and their penchant for biting personal insults when dominating an enemy; Scout even gets a sidegrade Scattergun, the Back Scatter, which deals mini-crits to targets from behind. Both are also shown to have an inflated ego that masks their insecurities and on a more humorous note they're the only 2 mercs who react with borement when they fall into the bottomless pit on Halloween, down to having the same kind of reaction process (screaming followed by snarking that the fall is taking too long).
• Limit Break: Some of the Scout's weapons give the Scout a temporary boost once certain conditions are met. With the Baby Face's Blaster, the Scout's speed goes up to 173% once he deals enough damage. The Soda Popper functions similarly as it grants a temporary mini-crit when the Scout runs enough.
• Loony Fan: Of Tom Jones, at least in the comics. In addition to the usual knickknacks and memorabilia, he has a tattoo of Tom on his chest! He even believes Tom Jones to be his father, when in reality the Spy is.
• The Man They Couldn't Hang: He gets subjected to neck trauma a lot in the comics, almost to the point of a Running Gag. It comes to a head in "Unhappy Returns", where the Scout is the closest captured mercenary to being hanged — his platform had already dropped by the time Ms. Pauling swoops in to save him. He can barely choke out his encouragements for her to keep holding him up.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: He grew up with seven older brothers.
• Motor Mouth: Scout almost never stops talking, even when asked to do so. During his interview in "Meet the Director," Scout talks so much about himself that the titular director runs out of film. five hours before this point in Scout's interview.
• Must Have Caffeine: In an early trailer, his motto simply reads "Too. Much. Caffeine." Plus, two of his unlockable weapons are energy drinks.
• Narcissist: Scout shows lots of arrogance in "Meet the Scout", making himself seem like a bigger deal than he probably is. This trait is very much apparent in-game, where he boasts and shouts about how awesome he is while putting others down.
  "What did we learn? I always win!"
  "You knuckleheads ain't even worth the effort."
  "How's that feel, wimp?"
  "'Ey, is somebody keepin' track of my heads batted in?"
• Never Learned to Read: Depending on the Writer. "The Naked and The Dead" has him struggle to read "sub-machine [gun]" on the side of a weapons crate, but in "Expiration Date", he's shown going through a lot of books incredibly quickly — although it's still debated on whether he's reading or faking it. (In the same video, he also acts impressed by the fact that Ms. Pauling can read, possibly implying that he himself cannot.)
• Nigh-Invulnerable: The Bonk! Atomic Punch renders him utterly invulnerable to damage at the cost of being unable to use any weaponry for the duration and being forced to operate from the third person. However, he is still subject to knockback, meaning that skilled Pyros, Demos, and Soldiers will often juggle inexperienced Scouts into corners before finishing them off.
• No Full Name Given: Only his first name is revealed.
• Not the Intended Use: The Boston Basher is such an enormously high-risk, moderate-reward weapon — a melee weapon that will inflict bleed damage on hit, but will damage Scout himself if it gets nothing — that it's almost never used as an actual offensive tool, especially since like many of Scout's melee weapons, his trademark Scattergun makes them redundant. Despite this, the Boston Basher is extremely common in competitive circles as the self-damage allows friendly Medics to charge up Uber faster, as well as create a mini-Recoil Boost as an extra half-jump to reach unexpected places.
• Nutritional Nightmare: Taken to the point of absurdity, where the cans of Bonk! Atomic Punch and Crit-a-Cola Scout likes to drink are proudly boasted to be radioactive and contains several hundred times the recommended daily sugar intake.
• Oh, Crap!: He utters variations of this when Crit-A-Cola wears off and if he's being hit while trying to chug Bonk! Atomic Punch when his health is in the red.
• Older Than He Looks: Many fans guessed that the Scout was around 16-20. According to the description for the Track Terrorizer jacket, he's at least 23. In "The Naked and The Dead"◊, his father mentions he was conceived twenty-seven years before.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Whenever Scout receives Godlike Loot at the end of a Mann Up tour, he's so gobsmacked at what he's received that he flat-out admits that he's at a loss for words. Considering how much of a Motor Mouth the guy has, that's no small feat.
  • In Meet the Pyro, the RED Scout immediately asserts that he's not going to say anything about their team's Pyro, which is quite unlike a guy who can spend hours talking about just about anything. He's also noticeably tense and not at all like his normal cocky self, and tries to get out of the room within seconds.
• Other Me Annoys Me: Some of his Domination lines toward his opposite-team counterpart show that even the narcissistic Scout looks down on his doppelgänger.
  "I am the Scout here!"
  "Hit the road, Bozo. Let a real Scout get to work!"
  "This map here ain't big enough for the two of us."
• Pastimes Prove Personality: He plays baseball, as reflected by his bat melee weapon and his general theme.
• Pet the Dog: Scout's got more than a few cases where he's been unexpectedly nice.
  • In the 2011 Halloween comic, he kneels down to eye level with one of the kids and gives him a tooth that he beat out of someone with his bat.
  "Hey there, slugger. C'mere. You are gonna love this. You see this bat? Bam! That… is a human molar. From some dummy with a big mouth that used to be fulla teeth. It's all yours, little talkin' France."
  • He's also quick to defend the kids at the mall when Old Nick arrives to kidnap them.
  • Additionally, in "The Naked and the Dead", after he dies and ends up in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, and subsequently finds God upset with the fact that Scout, "His gift to women", was still a virgin, the big man is ostensibly angry enough to cause an Apocalypse How. Scout's answer? A no-hard-feelings "nah, don't do it", followed by a very succinct summary of a "Humans are good" philosophy. It's Played for Laughs, but still a heartwarming little moment.
  God: Of all the ungrateful... ooo, that does it. I am gonna send a plague, or a flood, or... oh, why even be clever? I'm just going to blow up the Earth.
  Scout: (reassuringly puts a hand on his shoulder) Aw, come on, God. Don't destroy humanity. They're good people at heart. Just a buncha dum-dums tryin' their best.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Being the youngest member of the team doesn't stop him from bashing in an enemy merc's head with his Sandman or blowing their brains out with the Scattergun. It helps that he packs some of the most damage up-close.
• Power-Up Magnet: The Auto Innate type in Mann vs Machine, which helps the Scout contribute by collecting credits efficiently, as Scouts don't tend be good on defense.
• Psychotic Smirk: Chill out, Scout…◊
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "I! EAT! YOUR! SANDVICHES! I EAT 'EM UP!"
• Radiation-Induced Superpowers: His Bonk! Atomic Punch energy drink is described this way in his update:
  "Bonk! is fulla radiation, which as we all know is pretty great for givin' people superpowers."
• Ray Gun: The C.A.P.P.E.R is a gun that functions identically to the pistol, but fires lasers instead of bullets.
• Recoiled Across the Room: The Force-A-Nature deals a lot of Knockback to enemies shot, but also to the Scout himself, which can hinder precision, but offers a potential mobility bonus because they can shoot downward to give themselves a semblance of triple jump.
• Required Secondary Powers: Good Scouts can dodge and land their scattergun shots, but great Scouts know maps thoroughly enough to know all the best flank routes, and how fast they can get to places they're needed before they're needed. It's also a good idea to know where all the out-of-the-way Medpack spots are, since Scouts generally operate away from friendly lines.
• Roadrunner PC: As mentioned previously, his speed makes his style of combat reminiscent of early First-Person Shooters where you're faster than anyone else, except with lower health and fewer-yet-stronger enemies.
• The Runt at the End: He's the smallest member of the team, and as the youngest of 8 brothers, he was presumably always the smallest. He's also on the very leftmost end of the character selection screen to emphasize this.
• Sanity Ball: Scout has to act as the Only Sane Man to Soldier and Pyro in "A Cold Day in Hell".
• Satisfied Street Rat: Grew up as the youngest of eight boys, had to learn to run fast to pick fights first, and now serves as a mercenary.
• Savage Spiked Weapons:
  • The Boston Basher, a spiked wooden bat that deals bleeding to enemies, but hits and inflicts bleeding to himself with it if he misses.
  • The Sun-on-a-Stick, a mace with spikes on a glowing orb that crits enemies who are on fire.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: "Wanananana!", "Bonk!", and a bunch after drinking Bonk! Atomic Punch. He also says "Bonk!" in one of his taunts.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: The Scout's primary weapon is a sawed-off shotgun and most of the alternative weapons are also variations on a shotgun. Since Shotguns Are Just Better, the Scout can deal tremendous damage, but only at short range.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: In "Meet The Sandvich" and one of his responses to a ghost. And again in "The Sound of Medicine".
• Self-Deprecation: One of his responses to getting a rare gun drop in Mann vs. Machine mode:
  "For the first time in my life, I'm at a loss for words."
• Short-Range Shotgun: All of the Scout's Scatterguns are only really useful in close range, being able to annihilate certain classes in a single clip, but fall off dramatically in effect in even moderate range. The only exception in terms of primary weapon options is the Shortstop, which fires fewer bullets but has a narrower bullet spread, and is thus more useful in medium range.
• Shout-Out: His name, Jeremy, is based off of ex-TF2 streamer Jerma985, who is also named Jeremy. The comparisons go further though, as Jerma is also fast-talking white man from Boston, and the two are noted to share similar appearances◊.
• Signature Headgear: His default black cap and headset.
• Simple, yet Awesome: His weapon set is comparable to the Engineer's, but while Engineer supplements his weapons by being capable of putting up multiple buildings to set up a defensive hold, Scout has... 33% faster movement and a Double Jump. As it turns out, though, that increase in mobility promotes Scout to be one of the best classes in the game; using it to get to places faster and reach difficult-to-access areas is obvious, but it also improves Scout's survivability by letting him dodge projectiles and escape dangerous situations, in addition to bolstering his offensive prowess by letting him flank and enter close range easily, where his weapons are most effective.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Curses a lot.
• Situational Damage Attack: The Sun-on-a-Stick. It has a -25% damage penalty but does crit damage versus burning players. It synergizes quite well with allied Pyros, but is usually too dangerous to use since it requires the Scout to go into melee range.
• Skill Gate Characters: Or Skill Gate Strategy, in this case. Back capping. It's not too difficult to pull off — just sneak and flank your way to the second capture point on an attack/defend map (Bonk! helps in bypassing the first defensive line), hide until the second point becomes available, and then capture it before the enemy can react or fall back. Easily shut down by an Engineer putting a sentry on the second point in advance, or being called out by attentive enemies while he's bum-rushing past them.
  • In general, a Scout that flails around on his keyboard becomes a distressingly difficult target for beginners, whereas more experienced players, even those in classes the Scout counters such as Pyro and Demoman, can learn to abuse his predictable trajectory after a double jump, his vulnerability to splash damage, and limited range to take him out more reliably.
• Small Name, Big Ego: The Scout's childhood being filled with nosebleeds and broken bones greatly inflated his pride. And it doesn't seem like it'll ever stop growing, thanks to his bombastic, egocentric personality as an adult. None of his coworkers take him seriously beyond his combat prowess, however. As shown throughout the comics, Pauling takes Scout's advances with a grain of salt at best (or straight-up ignoring them at worst), the Soldier is all too willing to drop everything and choke him, the Heavy is perpetually annoyed by his extroversion, and the Spy barely tolerates him for his mother's sake.
• Smarter Than You Look: The Scout seems like an archetypical hooligan idiot from the looks of it. In truth, while he's far from the brains of any operations, he's clearly not stupid. His domination lines with Medic makes apparent he knows of the Hippocratic Oath, and dialogue with Merasmus has him allude to H.P. Lovecraft. Even out-of-universe, much of high-level Scout plays requires a great deal of map knowledge and prediction games to do well, implying that while the Scout is The Ditz, he wouldn't be as good at guerilla warfare as he is if he were even dumber.
• Southies: He's supposed to be from Boston, but sounds like he's from Brooklyn (which is intentional).
• Status Infliction Attack: When equipped with the Sandman bat, the Scout can hit a mildly damaging baseball at enemies as a secondary function. For its first few iterations, the baseball could stun, slow, and disable weaponry for opponents for a brief period, effectively forcing the victim to act as they would when they lose a match. However, if hit from a long enough distance, a Sandman ball could force a victim to stop in place entirely for the duration of the effect. The Jungle Inferno Update changed the Sandman to its present-day state: now, the ball merely slows opponents, with distance only determining how long this single effect lasts.
• Street Smart: The comics and certain Valve-written item descriptions make it clear that the Scout never finished high school and is in general pretty stupid and/or ditzy. He is full of "brilliant ideas" that sometimes turn out to work more out of luck than planning (like using his mercenary money for buying Tom Jones memorabilia). His ego, though, leads him to think he knows everything.
• Stock Shoutout: The Scout's symbol is the winged sandals of Mercury, and even one of Scout's many cosmetic items is called 'Hermes', the god of thieves and a Trickster God.
• Stone Wall: Scout's playstyle, which is built around one-on-one combat and Hit-and-Run Tactics, doesn't gel well against the vast robot hordes of Mann vs. Machine. Thus, it's common for Scouts to eschew offensive upgrades for defensive ones, which ensure he can survive long enough to collect cash and apply debuffs that his teammates can better capitalize on.
• Super Serum: The Crit-a-Cola is a purple soda can which contains an unknown drink that enable the Scout to deal mini-crits. On the other hand, the Scout is marked for death after any attack he deals.
• Support Party Member: In Mann vs Machine, Scout is the designated cash grabber of the team, and is often considered mandatory. He has the unique attribute of gaining health whenever he picks up cash, which helps him stay alive while surrounded by bots that would otherwise evaporate him instantly. Scouts often run Mad Milk, which can be upgraded to slow enemies inflicted with it, and can heal him and his team for alot when they're focusing down a giant, while the Fan O'War drastically increases the damage Scout's team deals to giants when he marks them with it.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Forms a triangle with the Demoman and Engineer. Scouts get shredded by sentry guns the second they're in range, but can exploit the Demoman's lack of hitscan weaponry to close the distance and scattergun him (meanwhile, Demomen are far, far better at dealing with sentries by means of indirect burst damage). Although a lone Engineer without a Sentry nearby is dead meat to a Scout, unless he gets lucky with a melee crit or has mini-sentry available.
  • Forms a secondary triangle with the Heavy and Sniper. The Heavy's superior effective range, powerful hitscan weapon, and massively greater health allow him to bully the Scout at mid-range and kill him if he presses the issue^note Though the Heavy either needs to stay diligent on zoning the Scout out or get help doing that- a good Scout that manages to get close has a significant advantage., but on the other hand, the Sniper's reliance on single precise shots makes hitting a scout closing in on him relatively difficult, and the Scout's ability to get in to point blank range and superior weapon at that distance makes quick work of the Sniper, who of course, counters the Heavy's durability and slow speed with precise headshots from outside the latter's effective range.
• Team Spirit: Ironically for someone as narcissistic as he is, Scouts are vital to team play thanks to their speed and innate passive that lets them capture objectives twice as fast as everyone else. There's rarely anyone better suited to carry the intelligence in CTF, can quickly swarm control points to either capture them faster than other characters or to be the first to stall the enemy's capture long enough for backup to arrive. Mad Milk and the Force-a-Nature also open up new opportunities to support a fight, with the former granting a hefty health-on-damage buff and the latter being reliable for shoving threats out of CQC with its huge knockback.
• Too Slow: Some of his lines, usually after drinking Bonk! and going into enemy gunfire, mock the enemy for being too slow.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • That Bonk! Atomic Punch makes him quite hyperactive.
  • As of "Expiration Date", the Scout has shown to be fond of fried chicken as well, even using a bucket of fried chicken as a taunt.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • The Back Scatter trades out accuracy and a few shots per magazine in exchange for the ability to deal mini-crits to enemies when firing at their back in close range. Sounds like a perfect tool for flanking Scouts... until you realize that Scouts are already exceptionally deadly in close range with other scattergun options, and thus a weapon that forces them into a single optimal means of approaching enemies at the cost of other valuable stats like magazine size can be a full-on handicap for very little tradeoff.
  • The Fan O'War is a melee that turns down the already-puny damage of his standard bat to practically nonexistent (a whopping 9 damage point per hit, 26 on a crit), but allows him to mark an enemy he hits with it for death, causing them to receive mini-crits from all incoming damage sources. While this on paper can lean Scout into a useful support position, his Scatterguns and their ability to near-instantly vaporize many classes in precisely the same intended range makes this power virtually redundant (though it does have a niche use in MvM in amplifying damage against Giant Robots).
• We Need a Distraction:
  • Enemy push too much to handle? Have a Scout start capturing an unguarded point behind them and that'll get someone's attention really quickly.
  • In competitive, the mere presence of a good Scout is a threat to call out because of how much damage they can do to the Medic or Demo, even if they are deliberately feinting.
• With Friends Like These...: With Soldier, who almost always manages to get the Scout in more pain and trouble than if he had gone alone.
  • When the BLU Scout, Soldier and Spy are in the court for blowing up a mall santa training facility, the Scout makes the mistake of getting the Soldier to act as his lawyer. Once Scout decided to shift the blame to Soldier, he instantly broke composure and started strangling Scout right in front of the judge. Later in Unhappy Returns, this occurs again, except Soldier was so jealous that the Scout got an actual lawyer that he murders the lawyer and starts strangling Scout in front of everyone.
  • When helping Scout move out of his home, Soldier somehow managed to shatter both of his arms.
  • When trapped in the Siberian tundra Soldier completely denies the group's attempts to get coats to survive the winter; particularly Scout, who just has his usual t-shirt and later a hot dog costume. Later, when Soldier gets naked and covers himself in honey to wrestle a bear, he implies he's done this before on a double date with Scout once.
  • In Expiration Date, for no reason whatsoever, Soldier chokeslams the Scout and strangles the life out of him when he thought he couldn't teleport bread anymore.
  • Gargoyles & Gravel has Soldier chokeslamming and strangling Scout again when the latter berates him for repeatedly getting them all killed by a deadly Amulet in the titular game... which Soldier somehow interprets to mean he hates America, with predictably violent results. Afterward, Soldier then suggests eating Scout—who's wearing the Deep-Fried Dummy costume—when the person he thinks is the pizza delivery guy turns out to be Merasmus and the Russian Mafia.
    Miss Pauling: [without even looking at the dice roll] The Amulet kills all of you.
    Scout: [furiously yelling] STOP PICKIN' UP THE FRICKIN' AMULET!
    Soldier: We might be pretending we're in Fairy Land, M'lady, but we are still playing in America! You can stop me from getting killed by that Amulet when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!
    [Soldier chokeslams Scout against the playing table.]
    Soldier: SAY IT! ADMIT YOU HATE AMERICA!
    Scout: [choking] You are- the worst- at this stupid game-!
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: One of his actual lines in the game, as a negative voice command.
• You Have Researched Breathing: The "Baseball Bill's Sports Shine" is an item that removes Scout's baseball cap and headset, revealing his short haircut underneath.
• Your Days Are Numbered: If God's parting words in "The Naked and the Dead" are to go by as Scout leaves Heaven to go back to the world of the living, Scout's actual death date is December 4th, 1987. Not that he minds hearing that, however:
  Scout: (as cheery as ever) It's a date. Later, guys!
• Verbal Tic: The words "yo" and "frickin'".

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"If you were from where I was from, you'd be f**kin' dead!"

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