Fanon / Overwatch

• Many fan works depict Roadhog as a Cloudcuckoolander's Minder for Junkrat, treating his employer like a hyperactive kid in need of babysitting. This is even acknowledged in-game where before a match Roadhog often tells Junkrat to, "not make a mess this time" and Junkrat assures him that he'll be on his best behavior.
  • Roadhog is officially stated to be from Australia, but many fans believe it makes more sense for him to be a New Zealander, likely of Māori descent. His real first name, "Mako," is Māori for "shark," and his "Toa" and "Islander" skins that bring to mind traditional Pacific Islanders. He also has a Dummied Out voice line of "If I wanted to go to the wop-wops, I could have stayed at home," "wop-wops" being decidedly Kiwi slang for the boondocks, the middle of nowhere, etc.
• Fanon dictates that Jack Morrison/Soldier: 76 was apparently very Adorkable before the fall of Overwatch, often with depictions like◊ this.
• It's popular to interpret many of the characters as amputees whose tech armor serves as Artificial Limbs (for example, Hanzo and Lúcio's legs, Cassidy's arm, or all of Pharah's limbs). Likely to stress that the human heroes are similar to the Omnics.
• See those two dots in the forehead area of Reaper's mask? Some people theorize that those are bolts hammered in so the mask will stick.
• Many fans believe Pharah is a Copt who's probably also fluent in the Coptic language. She's extremely patriotic, her alias sounds similar to the Pharaonism movement which valued and emphasized pre-Islamic Egyptian culture — an important aspect of Coptic identity. There also many who believe Pharah's father was Canadian First Nations — specifically an indigenous man of the Pacific Northwest Coast, because of her "Thunderbird" and "Raindancer" skins. The "Reflections" comic confirms this by showing her dining with her father in Canada.
• Fans have decided that Pharah's father must have been an Overwatch member and, furthermore, had to be one of her four fellow founding members. The two candidates most picked are Jack, for his status as The Hero, the fact that he'll compliment Pharah in-game despite being cold to almost everyone else and for having a close relationship with Ana as shown in their comic Old Soldiers, and Reinhardt — as he and Ana have a dialogue prompt which is very flirty and thus adds fuel to the shipping fire. Further, he also seemed to have Pharah's attention more than any other person on the team. These theories have quieted down somewhat after the appearance of Ana's new spray in the Uprising event, which depicts a previously unknown man who appears to be Pharah's father.
• Several fan interpretations of Reaper play up his Hispanic heritage, which isn't really addressed in-game, other than a pair of cosmetic Day of the Dead/Mariachi themed-skins.
  • It is also common to attribute a Hispanic heritage to Cassidy, often mixed into a perceived father-son relationship between Reyes and Cassidy.
• Despite Bastion being officially referred to by devs as genderless and referred to as "it", there's an increasingly popular interpretation that Bastion has female programming. Despite having no real physical Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, fans like to compare its curious, wide-eyed mannerisms and friendliness towards nature (complete with little bird companion) to a typical Disney Princess that also just so happens to be a robot that turns into a gatling gun turret with nasty PTSD. This may also be due to the fact that those speaking languages with feminine/masculine nouns such as Sombra in Spanish or Ana in Arabic refer to it with feminine nouns (though admittedly, is mostly attributed to those languages not having gender-neutral nouns and and 'bastion' is considered a 'feminine' noun for both of them).
• Mei's snowsuit conceals her actual body shape, so fanart often portrays her as buxom and curvy, ranging from just hourglass-shaped to outright Big Beautiful Woman. Rise and Shine finally put it to rest by showing that she is thick, but not out of shape.
• Fans really like the idea that Pharah is a biker when she's not flying, presumably as a reference to Top Gun. The trend seems to have started with a certain piece of fanart. This was made canon in 2020, with the "Aviator" Pharah skin added during the Archives event, which looks almost exactly like that fanart.
• Thanks to her unique "Graffiti" skin and the omnipresent graffiti in her home stage of King's Row (even if most of it isn't exactly what you'd call "creative"), some fans have latched onto the idea that Tracer has an artistic side and has done some (presumably more fair-minded) work as a graffiti/spray brush painter.
  • Since she was also apparently a pilot of such caliber to warrant Overwatch's attention at nineteen, fans have generally held the assumption that she was raised in a military family (most likely the Royal Air Force) to explain how she earned her wings so young.
• Since Cassidy is shown to still have his biological arm during Uprising, two years before Overwatch was shut down, fans often speculate when and how he lost his left arm. The most common idea is that he lost his arm with the destruction of the Overwatch HQ in Switzerland.
• It's very popular for fans to depict Genji as promiscuous even in non-shipping works or works that don't focus on him. This is because he was described as a playboy before his cyborg transformation, and most of his most significant relationships, interactions and Fan Preferred Couples are with Zenyatta, Cassidy and Mercy (an Omnic, a man and a woman).
• Moira, as a result of several inexplicably blatant references to classic anime and general anime memes in her design, is often depicted by fans as being a weeaboo to some degree.
• Ashe is widely assumed and interpreted by fans to be albino due to her red eyes, pale skintone and white hair.
• It's widely assumed that Zenyatta was one of (or at least close to) the leaders of the Shambali. His closeness with Mondatta, the fact that "Tekhartha" is a title not his name, and his white sash appearing to look like the same material to Mondatta's robes can all lead to that conclusion.
• Ever since the game launched, due to the high quality of her skins, it's been interpreted that Mercy is something of a cosplay/dress-up enthusiast.
• The only fact about the Shimada brothers' dragon-like powers is that only a Shimada can control the dragons, leaving it up to the imagination on any finer detail. The most prevalent theory is that the dragons are a kind of supernatural Bond Creature, each one individually choosing and merging with a Shimada. Sometimes they're shown to manifest outside of combat, and sometimes they're shown to be able to influence Genji or Hanzo's emotions or instincts.
• Given Reaper's many impressive outfits and the fact that he made his own elaborate Halloween costume in the comics, fans assume Gabriel is a skilled tailor as a hobby. This leads to the theory that he personally made his Reaper costume and some or all of the other Talon agents' outfits.
• Overwatch fics often portray Lena Oxton aka Tracer as a bisexual woman rather than a lesbian as in canon.

---