Overwatch / Tropes D to L

Main Page | Tropes A-C | Tropes D-L | Tropes M-Z

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D

• Damager, Healer, Tank: The game originally classified heroes into Offense, Defense, Tank, and Support. With the Symettra 3.0 rework patch in June of 2018, Offense and Defense have been consolidated into "Damage", and the support group consists only of healing characters.
• Darker and Edgier: Retribution is this compared to Uprising, the previous story event. Uprising puts you in control of some of the cast's most unambiguously good characters to carry out a genuinely noble mission to rescue innocent civilians from omnic terrorists and manages a defiantly hopeful tone throughout despite the circumstances. Retribution follows the far more morally nebulous and pragmatic agents of Blackwatch on a mission that becomes an assassination and scramble for personal survival against human adversaries (albeit Talon agents). Uprising is about Overwatch's capacity for good even during its decline; Retribution is about the beginning of the organization's end, and consequently carries an angrier, more frustrated tone.
• Darkest Hour: Where the present story begins. Talon has already won, Overwatch has been disbanded, made illegal, and those involved are scattered, while the whole organization is treated as a social pariah. Terror reigns over the world, as Talon is free to Kick the Dog as they please with no real resistance to stop them. One of the central themes of the story is failure - and rising up in the face of it. This ends one fateful day, when Talon went too far and attempted to murder all former Overwatch members in a raid led by Reaper to extract their locations, only to be thwarted by Winston in a very close call. In response Winston officially reinstated Overwatch. Later that same day, Widowmaker was sent out to assassinate Shambali leader and prominent advocate for human-omnic peace Tekharta Mondatta. Unfortunately, she is successful despite Tracer's intervention. However, as a silver lining, this act may have very well been the catalyst to further solidify Overwatch's return by making it clear the world is more in need of heroes than ever.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • "Recall" focuses on Winston debating on whether he should summon former Overwatch agents or not when he is attacked by Reaper and a group of Talon soldiers.
  • "Alive" focuses on Widowmaker's mission to assassinate a prominent Omnic figure while Tracer attempts to stop her.
  • "Dragons" focuses on Hanzo and Genji meeting for the first time since their duel in the backstory, and Genji revealing his survival to his brother.
  • "Hero" focuses on Soldier: 76 as he deals with a gang smuggling weapons as well as a teenage girl caught in the crossfire.
  • "Train Hopper" deals with Cassidy and his attempts to stop a group full of soldiers from hijacking a train full of civilian passengers.
  • "Dragon Slayer" focuses on Reinhardt during one of his travels after Overwatch's fall, and his attempt to save a town from a villainous motorcycle gang.
  • "Going Legit" focuses on Junkrat and Roadhog's first foray as professional Hired Guns which ends badly when they realize the CEO who hired them is a Corrupt Corporate Executive scumbag who set them up to take the fall for an insurance fraud scheme.
  • "A Better World" focuses on Symmetra's attempts to help the Vishkar Corporation give the poor people of Brazil a better way of life as well as Symmetra's growing doubts towards her company's true intentions when the Vishkar Corporation sets fire to a favela.
  • "Mission Statement" focuses on Pharah's dilemma of either save lives or complete the mission.
  • "Destroyer" focuses on Torbjörn's quest to shut down a colossal Omnic that's going on a violent rampage through the country of Kurjikstan.
  • "Legacy" focuses on Ana's supposed final mission and what exactly transpired that day.
  • "Old Soldiers" focuses on the conflict between three of the founders of Overwatch in the present day: Soldier: 76, Reaper and Ana.
  • "The Last Bastion" focuses on Bastion, reactivating in a forest many years after the end of the Omnic Crisis.
  • "Infiltration" focuses on Sombra, as she joins Reaper and Widowmaker in assassinating Katya Volskaya. Sombra actually has other plans in mind. Zarya makes a cameo appearance in The Stinger.
  • "Reflections" focuses on Tracer's attempts to get a Christmas gift for her girlfriend, and Winston's preparations for a Christmas party. Pharah, Zenyatta, Genji, Mercy, Hanzo, Torbjörn, Reinhardt, Cassidy, Sombra, Reaper, Ana, Soldier: 76, and Widowmaker make cameo appearances.
  • "Binary" focuses on Torbjörn's attempts to protect a small Swedish town from a rogue Bastion unit (namely, the one in the main game and "The Last Bastion").
  • "Uprising" focuses on Tracer's first mission in Overwatch with the strike team of Torbjörn, Reinhardt, and Mercy, as well as Jack Morrison's attempts to navigate the London Omnic Uprising. Reyes, Cassidy, Winston, and Genji make cameo appearances.
  • Doomfist's intro trailer focuses on the fight between him, Genji, Tracer, and Winston that led to his arrest. It ends with him breaking out of prison, and "Masquerade" follows shortly thereafter, where he, Sombra, Reaper, and Widowmaker work together to redirect the goals of Talon.
  • "Junkertown: the Plan" focuses on Roadhog and Junkrat's plan to get back into Junkertown.
  • "Rise and Shine" focuses on Mei's escape from Ecopoint: Antarctica following the failure of all the facility's cryo chambers except hers.
  • "Wasted Land" focuses on Roadhog and how he met and recruited Junkrat.
  • "Searching" focuses on Zarya and an Omnic named Lynx Seventeen, shortly following the events of "Infiltration", as they search for Sombra on the orders of Katya Volskaya. Efi and Orisa, and Alejandra, the little girl from "Hero", make cameo appearances.
  • "Reunion" focuses on Cassidy's confrontation of Ashe and her gang in the pursuit of a mysterious crate in her possession, which turns out to be a deactivated Echo.
• Death of a Child: The "Are You With Us?" trailer implies that children were among the victims of the Omnic Crisis. Narrowly avoided in the comic "A Better World" where a young girl Symmetra befriended is caught in a fire caused by the Vishkar Corporation; Symmetra saves her in time, but the young girl's face is burned and permanently disfigured.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: A few heroes' primary weapon deal minuscule per projectile (2-9 damage), coupled with high fire rate (such as Tracer or Sombra), or expelling a lot of projectiles in a single shot (such as Reaper or Roadhog). In Roadhog's case, it's even enough to One-Hit Kill anything that's not a fellow Tank.
• Deface of the Moon: The moon in the Overwatch universe has a visible settlement on it reminiscent of Crop Circles.
• Deflector Shield: Many heroes use translucent-white shields in different ways, most of them as physical impediments to protect from fire, and each with different effects, attributes and uses. Some abilities can specifically go through shields, though they tend to be slow or have high cooldowns.
• Delinquent Hair: One security guard working for the Shimada clan in "Dragons" sports a "Regent"-style pompadour that is popular among Japanese gangsters.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If Soldier: 76 is selected multiple times in a custom game match, each one's number will go up. From 76 to 77, 78, and so on.
  • In The Horizon Lunar Colony Map, entering Winston's room will make the PA system announce that Winston is not currently in the room. If Winston enters the room, the PA System says nothing.
  • Ashe's ultimate, B.O.B, counts as "another player", meaning he can be healed and nano-boosted just like everyone else. He also counts towards Wrecking Ball's Adaptive Shield ability, can help cap a point, and can even be hacked by Sombra. If you wave at a friendly B.O.B., he even waves back!
• Die, Chair, Die!: There are a lot of very minor environmental elements, from display screens, to pottery, to fire extinguishers that serve no purpose other than to be shot and destroyed. There usually tends to be a lot of them in the Attack-side spawn room of Attack/Defend maps, since those players are stuck there during preparation time and will usually not have much to do other than just randomly shoot stuff anyway.
  • The Hanamura spawn room has multiple stories of arcade cabinets and vending machines just waiting to be destroyed before the game starts.
  • The Junkertown spawn room has Roadhog's bike, just waiting to be dismantled piece by piece just like the Street Fighter II bonus round.
  • Railings are prime targets for being destroyed by defenders on capture point maps,
• Disneyesque: The art style is very reminiscent of Pixar CGI.
• Doctor's Disgraceful Demotion: Moira's backstory is that she is a scientist who garnered infamy by publishing a controversial paper about genetic manipulation. Many thought her work was inherently unethical and questioned her methodology. It ruins her reputation and forces her to seek underground funding for her projects, which is why she accepts the offer to join Overwatch's covert ops division Blackwatch by Reaper, who she later experiments on, giving him the supernatural abilities he is now known for and that are similar to her own, as well as the mental instability his character is known for. When Overwatch is disbanded, her continued search for underground funding leads her to join the villainous group Talon.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Junkrat's, er, reaction to lighting the fuse for the final time in Junkertown - The Plan.
• The Dog Bites Back: Winston had been contemplating the idea of reinstating Overwatch many times, only for Athena to stop him by pointing out that the PETRAS Act makes all Overwatch activity illegal. He may have never reinstated Overwatch, had it not been for Talon attacking soon afterwards, led by Reaper, who wanted to extract the locations of all former agents so they can kill them. Winston thwarted their plans, but came close to death and the locations were nearly leaked. After all was said and done, Winston decides that enough is enough, and reinstates Overwatch, giving rise to Talon's biggest adversary once again. If the ending of Alive is anything to go by, this might further solidify the need for Overwatch, as Talon left unopposed has gone too far.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: One of the movie posters during the Winter Wonderland is "Love Hacktually". Looks like a wacky Christmas romantic comedy where a young woman hacks a male Omnic into loving he-wait, what?
• Downer Beginning: The start of the story in a nutshell. Talon has already won, Overwatch - once hailed as Earth's heroes - have long since disbanded following reports of corruption and infighting, wars wage across the world with the Second Omnic Crisis going on in Russia and threatens to expand, while the few heroes that remain are unable to make a difference. But the world needs more heroes, and when push comes to shove, Overwatch is reinstated to put an end to threats around the world, legality be damned.
• Downer Ending: Hope in the face of dark times is one of the game’s major themes. Unfortunately, hope for a brighter tomorrow is meaningless without a dark today, and some days are darker than others.
  • Alive goes out on a pretty bleak note. Mondatta, who only wanted to peacefully spread tolerance and acceptance in a volatile area, is dead, and along with him so are any hopes of peace in the area where he was speaking, which just so happens to be Tracer’s home. Tracer herself is devastated and desperately pleads for just an explanation from Widowmaker, the perpetrator, who laughs in her face and escapes, using her grappling hook to throw Tracer into a wall in the process. Tracer ends the short lying defeated and injured in an alley, having suffered likely the most crushing defeat in her life within her own home while Widowmaker walks away completely unharmed and smiling. And as if that weren't enough, later materials such as Masquerade reveal this to all be a calculated move on Talon's part to stoke tensions between humans and omnics into a new world war. The only comforts that can be taken are that Tracer, though beaten, survived and that the whole sordid affair might have indirectly contributed to a more uplifting turn of events in the long run. Talon may have gotten their way for now, but after years of running amok unchecked, murdering a peaceful religious leader in cold blood combined with the assault on Watchpoint: Gibraltar as depicted in Recall may have proven to be the final straw and served as the impetus for Winston to galvanize Overwatch's comeback.
  • Legacy doesn’t fare any better. Ana, momentarily distracted upon realizing the identity of the mysterious new Talon agent, hesitates on taking the shot and gets her eye shot out by Widowmaker (noticing a pattern here?), which takes her out of the fight, leading to the mission’s failure and likely the deaths of several hostages. Ana is presumed dead and driven into hiding for years, which, as additional materials expound, snowballs into Reinhardt’s forced retirement and the eventual total collapse of Overwatch itself. Fun times.
  • In A Better World, the Vishkar Corporation decides to stop messing around and bombs a favela they had previously been trying to negotiate with over a new construction project. Symmetra is shocked, and although she manages to save the young girl she had befriended earlier from the fire, her face is disfigured, and she’s likely lost all of her trust for Symmetra and her company forever. We then skip ahead to the opening ceremony of Vishkar’s new project, with company representatives going on about how it will improve the lives of everyone in the area right in front of an attending crowd of the very survivors displaced by the bombing, including the little girl. It ends with Symmetra looking absolutely miserable while trying to convince herself it’s all for the sake of a better world.
  • Masquerade serves as this for everything in the main conflict that has happened up until the point of its release. Doomfist's breakout negates everything Winston and Tracer accomplished in the cinematic trailer, and Reaper is revealed to have acquired a substantial amount of information from the Gibraltar terminal, retroactively applying a degree of this to Recall as well. All of the heroes' efforts we've seen are invalidated as Talon regains one of its leaders and sits down to work toward its main goal of plunging the world into a cataclysmic new conflict while Overwatch remains just as broken and disenfranchised as ever. We even get a one-panel flashback that shows us the aforementioned assassination from Alive at a different angle like some kind of "Talon's Greatest Hits" mixtape.
  • Retribution has the Blackwatch strike team technically succeed in their objective to avenge their fallen comrades and Gérard's injuries. But in doing so, they've exposed Blackwatch to the public and set the stage for Overwatch's decline from the inevitable backlash. And by allowing his anger and frustration to motivate his actions, Reyes has unknowingly taken his first steps down the path that will lead to him betraying Overwatch and becoming Reaper, and both he and Moira will eventually become loyal members of the very organization they've spent the mission fighting. Any setback Talon might have endured in the incident is ultimately inconsequential, as Overwatch's fate is still a Foregone Conclusion, as is Gérard’s. If Uprising and Legacy depict Overwatch's ball rolling downhill, then Retribution marks the point where it cleared the edge of the hilltop.
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: Downplayed in most modes including Quick Play, in that you can drop in and you can drop out mid-game, but do it too often and you'll get stuck with -75% XP deductions; additionally, you'll receive a 400 XP "Backfill" bonus if you're dropped into the middle of an ongoing game. Completely averted in Competitive mode, where players who leave will be punished as they will not be substituted, potentially crippling the entire team if they don't reconnect.
• Dying Race: No new omnics have been created since the Omnic Crisis. And thanks to old hatreds from the war, the omnic race has been dwindling down closer to extinction. This plight inspired Ramattra to found Null Sector and push back against humanity to ensure a future for omnics.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Mei's holiday ornament shows her wearing a red robe with gold decorations, and D.Va's shows her wearing a pink and blue hanbok. Both were previews of their Chinese New Year outfits.
  • Before D.Va was revealed as a hero, she appeared on a poster in Hanamura.
  • Moira also made an appearance before her release, in the shadows of a panel in the comic "Masquerade".
  • The Horizon Moon Colony map was first seen in the short "Recall", although it did not become a map in-game until over a year later.
  • Although some heroes are not known before their release, others have been key figures in the lore long before they become heroes.
    • Not much was known about Sombra before her launch, leading some to believe that the masked sniper who would eventually be revealed to be Ana was Sombra.
    • Shortly before Orisa's release, destroyed OR-15s were found in the Numbani airport.
    • Doomfist's gauntlet appeared in the Cinematic trailer and on Numbani before he was revealed to be a hero. Furthermore, a museum exhibit in Numbani labeled him as "the Successor", although he was cloaked in shadow. Orisa's release involved an attack on Numbani by the Successor, which spurred the creation of the OR-15A.
    • Reinhardt's squire Brigitte appeared in comics and shorts alongside Reinhardt before she took up arms and became a hero herself.
    • When Horizon Lunar Colony was released, there were two references to Hammond: another opened cell and a spacesuit with his name on it that was missing. Over a year later, the hamster became a playable character.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The first Cinematic Trailer has some oddities as a result of the game being in pre-alpha as it was made, most notably what characters were in the original Overwatch team. Lúcio, Bastion, Pharah, and Zenyatta were seen as active members in its heyday, and there is nary a mention of Jack Morrison aside from a shot of an unnamed statue of him.
  • Season 1 of Competitive mode had significantly different mechanics from subsequent seasons:
    • Instead of a 1-5000 skill rating system divided into six tiers, there was a 1-100 rating system.
    • Players' ratings rather than tiers were shown by their nametags.
    • In situations on non-Control that would be declared a draw from Season 2 onwards, the game instead went into sudden death: a coin was flipped, and the side it landed on determines which team would attack with a short time limit; whichever side succeeded in their objectives won the match.
    • Multiples of the same Hero could be chosen; the limit-1-of-each-hero rule was imposed about a month into the season and has been standard Competitive (and later, Quick Play) behavior since.
• Easter Egg:
  • In the first cinematic trailer, Symmetra's Photon Projector◊ makes an appearance at about 3:40.
  • KOTH maps have the players spawn within transport aircraft that carry basketball hoops and basketballs that can be shot at or melee'd. While it is exceptionally difficult to do so, if one manages to successfully score in the basket, confetti will dispense along with celebratory arena sounds.
  • Doing the Konami Code on the official site (replacing the Start for Enter) will make D.Va recite it and cause a bunch of D.Vas will appear. Originally it was bunch of Hanzos instead of D.Vas.
  • On the Busan map, there exists a working DanceDanceRevolution-style machine where not only can you track the arrows by moving on its steps, using an actual dance emote with any character will cause you to flawlessly track all of them. Yes, even with Reaper's edgy foot-tapping. The opposing spawn on the main spawn has a karaoke machine, which Cassidy, Reinhardt, Torbjorn, Zenyatta, and Genji can use.
  • It's well-known that the first attack-side spawn in Dorado features a few bells that produce ringing tones if you shoot them. However, if you shoot them as Wrecking Ball to play the main fanfare of the game, Hammond will actually sing along.
  • There are fully-functioning pianos scattered across Paris. Every key pressed will play its appropriate note when you shoot it, so if there's a song you want to play, go for it.
  • References to certain heroes can be found on some maps. Aside from the obvious (D.Va's posters plastered everywhere in Hollywood and Hanamura or Junkrat and Roadhog's houses outside Junkertown), these include Junkrat's detonator and Roadhog's gas can in the bank vault in Dorado, Cassidy's hat on Castillo, Ana and Morrison's weapons in Necropolis, and Reinhardt's name carved into a bar in Eichenwalde.
  • Wrecking Ball is the ball itself in Lucio Ball games. You'll hear Hammond squeaking inside every time the ball gets hit.
• Eerie Arctic Research Station: "Ecopoint Antarctica" was set up by Overwatch to study climactic anomalies in the region. Its staff put themselves into cryostasis after nearly running out of supplies during a severe storm; Mei was the only survivor. The location is the basis of two maps: "Ecopoint Antarctica", a small-scale map made for arena-style game modes, and the "Antarctic Peninsula", a much more detailed Control map that presents not just more of the base and laboratories, but also some of the caverns and a massive icebreaker, all left in a decrepit state following the near-decade of abandonment.
• Emergency Trainee Battle Deployment: Uprising event mode is a playable version of Tracer's first mission (along with Mercy, Torbjörn and Reinhardt filling the rest of the playable character slots); liberating King's Row (which is either her home, or very nearby) from an Omnic terrorist group. Downplayed, as she was explicitly said to be just about qualified for active duty, and was deliberately sent in because she convinced Morrison to intervene despite the British government's wishes (and perhaps because she would have plausible deniability for being there anyway).
• End of an Era: The Overwatch's golden era started after they quelled the Omnic Crisis, but the bad news surrounding it which culminated to its downfall marks the end of that era, as Overwatch became reviled by the public, and its key members either went away or faked their deaths. However, Winston is trying to bring back the era of good old heroes in the new age.
• Enemy Mine: The usual gameplay makes it possible or even likely that the team will contain characters that are diametrically opposed lore-wise. Sometimes, they synergize extremely well - for example, Lúcio's speed boost can make sure Symmetra arrives at a disputed area ahead of the enemy team and has enough time to conjure her turrets before the fighting starts. Many characters also comment when paired with their rivals.
• Even Evil Has Standards: It's a bit ambiguous just how evil Symmetra is, but even her most charitable interpretations still involve her supporting the Vishkar Corporation's agenda and harboring open disdain for people like Lúcio who stand up for themselves against it. But even she recognizes the threat Talon poses to the world and the need to stop them. Given how incompatible Talon and Vishkar's respective goals are, it's open to interpretation if this is genuine goodwill on her part or just antipathy for another perceived obstacle.
• Every Bullet is a Tracer: Hitscan weapons will leave brief colored trails of light in the air so that players can locate shooters and distinguish between friendly and enemy fire. Widowmaker's sniper shots leave trails that last for a particularly long time to help enemies locate her.
• Evil Counterpart: Overwatch and Talon mirror each other on an almost uncanny level while being on opposite ends of the moral spectrum, to the extent where Talon could essentially be considered the anti-Overwatch. Both are international organizations with access to much of the same cutting-edge technology and near-superhumans at their disposal, but one was set up to keep peace and the other is a terrorist organization.
• Evil Is Angular: On an iconic level. Compare the sigils of Overwatch and Talon; Overwatch's is circular, looking like a futuristic peace icon. Talon's is a High Tech Hexagon with a three-pronged pointed talon in the middle.
• Excuse Plot: There is a fairly complex plot, in-depth world-building and intricate backstories for each character. However, every single bit of it is superfluous to the actual gameplay, which is technically non-canon within its own setting. The backdrop just serves as an excuse to justify all the crazy powers and personalities of the playable characters. With the exception of short character blips and limited-time special events, the story is never even told to you in-game.
• Experience Booster: Bonus experience is awarded to the player's first win of the day, playing in a group, playing consecutive matches, and joining an in-progress match.
• Experience Penalty: Constantly leaving in-progress matches will result in a 75% reduction in experience for any completed matches, which only stops after a certain number of matches are played to completion.
• Expository Pronoun: Omnics (sapient robots, who rebelled and started a Robot War in the backstory and are an oppressed minority in the present) use different gender pronouns to help drive home the fact that they're essentially on the same level as humans. Zenyatta and Orisa go by "he" and "she" respectively. Others, like Bastion, one of the "Bastion"-line of Mecha-Mooks in the aforementioned war, gained full sapience after being offline for decades and goes by "it", with the non-playable Lynx17 using "they" (with Word of God clarifying that they identify as non-binary).
• Extremely Short Timespan: The shorts Recall and Alive are confirmed to take place on the same day, which makes sense as that would mean Reaper and Widowmaker were sent out by Talon on their assignments at roughly the same time. What makes slightly less sense however, is the implication that Dragons also takes place within this timespan despite being largely unrelated and completely coincidental. The implication comes at the end of Recall, which shows Genji close to Japan (keep in mind that he is currently based in Nepal), most likely traveling to Hanamura to confront Hanzo.
• Eye Scream: Happened to multiple characters:
  • In her origin story, Ana gets her eye shot out by Widowmaker and is shown in an immense amount of pain afterward, clutching her face while writhing on the ground. She's actually presumed dead because of this, but, of course, turns up alive and playable years later, now sporting an eyepatch.
  • Reinhardt is noticeably scarred over one eye, which appears to be blind. Honor and Glory gives us a firsthand look at what happened.

F

• Face Death with Dignity: In the Dragons short, when Genji's blade is at his throat, Hanzo simply tells him to do the deed, showing no fear. The reason Hanzo seemingly has no fear of death is that he believes he deserves it. Genji even calls him out on this while sparing him.

  Genji: No. I will not grant you the death you wish for.

• Faceless Goons: Most of the Mooks that get gunned down in the animated shorts wear something that obscures their faces. Best demonstrated by Infiltration, in which every Russian soldier killed is wearing a balaclava, while the unmasked soldier and technician both survive.
• Failed a Spot Check: Players on defending objectives will usually call out to their team if it's being contested by their enemies... and if they can see them. On payload maps especially, it's not entirely uncommon for the defending team to be in an over-extended 6v5 brawl and fail to realize one of their enemies have quietly pushed the payload to the objective until it's too late, a practice nicknamed "back-capping". Even high-division competitive players and professionals can fall victim to this.
• Failure Hero: Let's face it: Overwatch has a commendable in-story pedigree, but their on-screen track record has been less-than-stellar. Cumulatively, their efforts have had little to no impact on the greater scope of the conflict, and all of their actions have been either ineffective or short-lived in both achieving their own goals and in preventing the villains from achieving theirs. They always try their best, but ultimately Overwatch is still in ruins, its legacy is one of futility, their losses outnumber their gains, Talon has come out ahead in each of their encounters, and its agents have been left broken as shells of who they once were, twisted into outright villainy or struggling just to stay above the rising tide. Examples include:
  • Jack Morrison was unable to keep order even among his close friends as the organization he founded and led collapsed and fell apart. Most of his screentime during this period of his life tends to show him waffling on how to handle a dilemma until someone else effectively decides for him. Meanwhile, he's been reduced in the present to an old, bitter vigilante who is also a wanted criminal, and both times we've seen him in action as Soldier: 76 have ended with his quarry escaping and him not really achieving anything.
  • Gabriel Reyes technically achieved his goal to exact retribution on the Talon commander who bombed Blackwatch HQ, but, out of anger, he did so in the most needlessly conspicuous way possible, which gave his team away and turned Venice into a war zone as a simple extraction became a mad scramble for survival. In the process, Blackwatch was exposed to the public and outrage mounted against Overwatch, signaling the beginning of the end for both the organization and his own humanity. This means the dire situation he and everyone else now find themselves in is at least in part due to Reyes being unable to control his temper at the worst possible time.
  • Tracer failed to prevent a murder in her own neighborhood, which undid her previous success with resolving the London Uprising, and her only other victory in the cinematic trailer was also undone by the release of Doomfist, whom she along with Genji also failed against during the incident that led to his initial capture.
  • Cassidy basically let the Talon agents have what they came for on the train, even if he did so for the right reasons.
  • Ana's hesitation with Widowmaker failed to save either of them and ultimately resulted in the complete ruination of her life, the failure of a mission that likely cost the lives of several hostages and, ultimately, Overwatch's initial collapse (which was due more to its own internal problems than external sabotage).
  • Symmetra is more of an Anti-Villain than a hero, but she's largely sympathetic for the purposes of A Better World, in which she doesn't accomplish anything other than witnessing a disaster, having the image of the people she works for shaken, and saving a single girl from a fire, which still leaves her scarred and likely fearful of both her and the company she works for. She ends the comic trying to convince herself it's all for the best, but judging from the look on her face, she's failing at that, too.
• Famed In-Story: All of the Overwatch heroes are famous, as evidenced in one animation featuring a museum dedicated to them. However, D.Va and Lucio are also celebrities on top of being heroes. They exchange requests for autographs as their pre-game patter, and Reinhardt will also asks for D.Va's autograph, "for a friend." Their likenesses on products and ads for their works can be seen in several maps and sprays.
• Fanservice: Overwatch is filled to the brim with attractive men and women and does not shy away from emphasizing their aesthetically pleasing qualities in both their default and unlockable outfits. Noteable examples include:
  • Widowmaker, the game's resident Ms. Fanservice. Her default attire is the most obvious example, consisting of a skin-tight bodysuit with a Navel-Deep Neckline, but she also has her "Côte d'Azur" skin, which is basically a two-piece swimsuit with sarong.
  • Mercy's default skin emphasizes her bust due to how form-fitting it is, but her "Winged Victory" and "Witch" skins really dial up the fanservice, drawing attention to the doctor's long legs in particular.
  • D.Va also has a few form-fitting outfits in her wardrobe, including her default skin and the "B.Va" / "Junebug" skins. Her Junker and Scavenger outfits have a bare midriff and her cat outfit gives her a positively fetishistic black schoolgirl outfit with ponytails. Her Play-of-the Game animations are all sexualized in some form.
  • Tracer isn't as blatantly sexualized as some of the others, but she does have a very well-maintained athletic figure that we can observe very nicely through her leggings, and one of her victory poses accentuates her backside while her legendary "Sprinter" and "Track and Field" skins put her in tight runner's clothes that show off her legs and midriff.
  • Cassidy's "Lifeguard" skin, which shows off his pecs and torso.
  • Doomfist, who is perpetually topless and very muscular.
  • For those in the community who are into older men, Soldier: 76 and Reinhardt both have skins that remove their headgear, and 76, in particular, has a few skins that roll up his sleeves to show off his well-kept forearms, not to mention his 2017 Summer Games skin which gives him the same kind of treatment as Cassidy.
  • Who is the male character with the most squealing fangirls (and boys)? Why, it's Genji! Yes, even though he's partly machine, encased in a metallic shell and keeps his face sealed away behind a visor at all times (and the few glimpses we've caught of what's underneath do not offer a pretty sight), he still has a very toned musculature which is defined even through his armor and complimented nicely by his graceful body language. His sympathetic backstory and identity as someone earnestly trying to make peace with himself and those around him also go a long way.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Anti-Omnic sentiment is a major theme present in the game's world, bleeding into some heroes to varying degrees, namely Zarya, Torbjörn, Junkrat, and Roadhog. King's Row is especially tense about this (with bits of hate graffiti sprayed around), as it was built on Omnic labor and Omnics are still being treated as second-class citizens, not helped by the Uprising event and Null Sector years ago and the assassination of a major Omnic figure in the present.
  • The comic short "Going Legit" implies that some people use the excuse of an Omnic threat to cover up their own wrongdoings as Junkrat and Roadhog found out.
  • In the animated "Hero" teaser (featuring Soldier: 76), a group of thugs are seen assaulting a lone defenseless Omnic, and they try to coerce a young girl who happened to be walking by into joining in.
  • In a non-Omnic vein, Reaper constantly mocks Winston for his appearance and refers to him as a "monkey" in a pejorative manner. While other characters do make light of the fact that he's a gorilla, none have speciesist undertones such as what he says. Even the other villains, such as his counterpart Widowmaker, haven't shown to have speciesism towards gorillas like him.
• Fastball Special: During the cinematic trailer, Tracer teleports into Winston's hand so that he can throw her across the room at Reaper and Widowmaker.
• The '50s:
  • D.Va's "Cruiser" skin is based around this era, with her MEKA resembling a 1950's Buick while she wears clothing akin to that decade.
  D.Va (Hello): Hey, Daddy-o!
  • The attacking team's spawn room on Route 66 is a rundown diner that looks like it could have been a set piece from American Graffiti, complete with tacky tiling and a jukebox.
• Flying Firepower: Pharah, who uses a jet pack in accordance with a rocket launcher. Her ultimate ability has her unleash a Macross Missile Massacre while floating in the air.
• Foil: Enough to have its own page.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: King's Row has a bell in a Clock Tower that gongs ominously several times when the attacking team takes the first control point and transitions to the payload. It's also incorporated in the map's theme as heard in the loading screen.
• Follow the Plotted Line: Assault maps have red and blue lines leading from each side's spawn points to the initial control point, and Escort maps show a blue line leading the defense to the payload. The lines disappear when the match proper begins and the attackers' spawn point opens.
• Food Porn: Reunion opens with Cassidy sitting down at the Route 66 diner, with the camera focusing on an incredibly detailed and tasty-looking pie. He only gets two squishy cuts out of it before leaving to take care of the nearby train heist.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Reaper made his debut carrying what looked like an upside-down Overwatch symbol on his belt. It was later revealed that Reaper is the villainous identity of Gabriel Reyes, who was a member of the strike team that became Overwatch and was the former commander of Blackwatch, Overwatch's covert ops division.
  • One of Reaper's lines when killing an enemy Sombra is "You never fooled me." It's later revealed in Masquerade that Reaper knew about Sombra's part in the failed assasination attempt on Katya Volskaya all along.
  • One location introduced and formally named during Lifeweaver's introduction to the game was the Atlantic Arcology, an autonomous city-state located in the Atlantic Ocean. Its existence was nodded to beforehand in Midtown and Esperança, featuring signage around hyperloop stations that listed the "Atlantic Arcology" as a stop (during Overwatch 2's beta, Midtown instead called it the "Pan-Atlantic Arco...").
  • Overwatch: Declassified (released in November 2023) is in-universe a report on Overwatch following the organization's disbandment, authored by an Adventurer Archaeologist named Carrie Andrews, who had been previously affiliated with Wayfinder Society. This same organization would also become the origin faction of Venture, who (barring an early preview at BlizzCon) wouldn't be officially announced and released for a few more months.
• Forgiveness: At the end of "Dragons", Genji tells Hanzo that he had forgiven him for nearly killing him, and advises his elder brother to forgive himself.
• Friendly Fireproof: Played straight for the most part, though Pharah, Tracer, Soldier: 76, and Zarya are capable of blowing themselves up with their own explosives (prior to balance patches, most of Junkrat's explosives and D.Va's Self-Destruct could harm themselves). However, Genji's Deflect can invert this, sending his enemies' fire back at them as it does nothing to his allies.
• From Bad to Worse: Overwatch was already long gone and its agents struggling with the aftermath of its collapse while Talon continued to cause trouble and leave the heroes reeling at nearly every turn. Then, right when things start looking up with the recall of all agents, Talon throws some water on that candle by breaking out one of their leaders and setting in motion their plans to plunge mankind into a new world war while the heroes are barely any closer to their goal than before.
• Funny Background Event: You can find random jars of peanut butter spinning in place in the vacuum outside the Horizon Lunar Colony.

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• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • There was a nasty bug in the Ecopoint: Antarctica map that allowed Mei to be able to Ice Wall and clip through the world geometry, making the enemy unable to touch them but them able to attack from the walls/ceiling, or worse, do nothing and force games into long draws. It had existed in the map for an unknown period of time before it started gaining traction, with many Youtubers actively showing how to replicate it, and as such, Blizzard took notice, considering it an exploit to be fixed and dropping the banhammer on anybody that used it on the grounds of cheating.
  • The first phase of the Overwatch 2 beta found a pretty bizarre one with Wrecking Ball^note It's worth noting that in the transition to 2, he did not receive any significant rework, where if players looked directly down and launched Grappling Claw while mid-air, everyone in the match (save for the Wrecking Ball player) would experience a server crash.
  • Shortly after the launch of Overwatch 2, a huge bug was discovered with Bastion's new ultimate, Configuration: Artillery, where by inputting multiple attack commands at once, Bastion's usual maximum of three shots could be bypassed, allowing him to fire infinite airstrikes with impunity. The sheer chaos from this discovery got Bastion disabled from play for several weeks before the bug could be properly fixed.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Invoked by Blizzard themselves, Overwatch is intended to be a multimedia project that includes more than just a game and a few specially-made promotional trailers. And it's just as well; it's a little difficult to justify the game's gameplay with the rest of Overwatch's lore, so the game lacks any kind of story as a consequence of the medium. The lore behind the game involves several characters working together for a common cause, with a few of the playable characters being the villains that caused Overwatch to form up to begin with. However, the game itself has these same characters murdering each other for no real reason, often working alongside people whom they hate and wouldn't work with under any circumstance. This is given a nod in the game whenever certain characters happen to be on the same team, such as Widowmaker saying "It looks like we'll be working together," and Tracer replying "Don't think I'm happy about that!"
  • While it hasn't happened yet, Jeff Kaplan stated that Overwatch heroes might die in the future lore. However, he also stated that they'll still be playable regardless.
• Gilligan Cut: Zarya states pretty firmly in Searching that Lynx Seventeen is most certainly not coming with her to Mexico on her search for Sombra. Cut to the office of LumeriCo's CEO, and lo and behold who's standing right next to her.
• Global Warming: Climate change has grown severe over the years, and based on the view from the Horizon Lunar Base, it's taken its toll on the earth; a large portion of Brazil and Florida have become deserts (most of the Atlantic Forest is gone), the Great Lakes/Hudson Bay seem to have risen and consumed several states, Greenland appears to have no ice, and Cuba seems to be completely missing. It's implied there's some unknown, much bigger cause than just expanding industrialism and the rising Omnic population that's causing the phenomena, and it's Mei's mission to restart the world's eco-points to find out what it is.
• Godlike Gamer: D.Va is Blizzard's love letter to the professional StarCraft community. As such she's a pro-gamer whose skills at a mech combat game have been transferred to piloting a Mini-Mecha to fight an Omnic Kaiju which attacks South Korea every few years. Notably, she holds all the high scores in every map set in an Arcade (beating out Genji's old scores, and discounting Sombra's questionable ones).
• Good Prosthetic, Evil Prosthetic: Overwatch is chock full of examples played straight and otherwise. Of the characters with confirmed prosthetic limbs, we have:
  • Doomfist, a mercenary/ terrorist whose arms are both prosthetic, but his primary weapon is the massive gauntlet that he wears over his right arm. Doomfist is one of the few confirmed antagonists in the game, and his gauntlet is twice as large as his left arm, decked out with spiked knuckles, and features a prominent set of horns on the shoulder.
  • Genji, a former yakuza and current Cyber Ninja under the employ of Overwatch whose injuries were so severe that 3/4 of his limbs and most of his torso had to be rebuilt with cybernetic prostheses. Genji is a rogue operator, but ultimately he strives to atone for his past actions. While undoubtedly mechanical-looking, his body maintains basic humanoid proportions.
  • Cassidy, a former teenage arms dealer and gang member who was taken in by the titular organization. His bulky (but proportionally sized) mechanical hand and forearm are decorated with a prominent skull, hearkening back to his criminal past.
  • Junkrat, an Australian scavenger and international criminal. In keeping with his chaotic nature, his prosthetic arm and leg appear to be cobbled together out of scrap metal and discarded parts. His peg-leg also forces him to walk with a distinctive limp.
  • Torbjörn, a brilliant but jaded engineer who worked for Overwatch. His left arm appears to have been replaced by a set of Power Pincers, and his right eye is covered by a mechanical looking eye patch.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Some characters will sometimes speak their native language and pepper their dialogue with it to varying degrees (Russian by Zarya, Mandarin Chinese by Mei, Korean by D.Va, Swiss German by Mercy, Arabic by Ana, French by Widowmaker, Latin-American Spanish by Sombra and Illari, Irish Gaelic by Moira, Swedish by Brigitte, Japanese by Genji, Hanzo and Kiriko, Dutch by Sigma, Haitian Creole by Baptiste, Thai by Lifeweaver, Samoan by Mauga and after a patch, Brazilian Portuguese by Lúcio and Hindi by Symmetra). Foreign languages also serve as a giveaway to whose ultimate is activated - if a character says their Pre-Asskicking One-Liner in English, it's a friendly ult; while if they say it in their native language, it's a sign to get out of the way.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Mondatta's security team in Alive is aware that there's a shooter on the rooftops surrounding his rally and correctly have him leave the area immediately. However, instead of simply going back into the building Mondatta emerged from at the start of his speech, they opt to escort him out through the crowd to a waiting car. Predictably, the crowd slows Mondatta's departure because they don't want him to leave and because he stays out in the open Widowmaker is able to snipe him.
  • Doomfist enacted his escape from prison by punching the same spot on his cell wall over and over again until it gave way, presumably over the course of several years. In all that time, did the guards just never notice the occasional rhythmic pounding or perform routine cell inspections?

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• Halloween Cosplay: Reaper, Ana, Soldier: 76, Mercy, Junkrat, Roadhog, Symmetra, Pharah, Zenyatta, Reinhardt, and Bastion all get in the Halloween spirit with their skins during the 2016 Halloween update. 2017 gave Cassidy, Mei, Torbjörn, and Zarya Halloween costumes as well. 2018 added ones for Doomfist, Hammond, Moira, and Sombra, and gave proper ones for Soldier: 76 and Pharah as well.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Reinhardt's alternative skins "Bundeswehr", "Lionhardt", and "Stonehardt" reveal that his left eye is blinded and scarred. Doesn't stop him from hammering his foes to death.
  • Junkrat, despite having a mechanical prosthetic right leg and arm, is able fight on par with the other playable characters and kick their asses, too. In the comic short "Going Legit", he was able to execute a Three-Point Landing from high ground as he and Roadhog infiltrate a warehouse from a rooftop opening, with him only commenting that his artificial leg "didn't break this time" after doing so.
  • Cassidy, Torbjörn, and Symmetra each have a prosthetic arm. Genji uses prostheses as well, though it's unknown exactly how much of his body is prosthetic.
  • Tracer is detached from time, and the large device she keeps strapped to her chest is what's keeping her anchored in the present.
  • Ana lost her right eye to Widowmaker, but her newfound lack of depth perception has not hampered her skills as a sharpshooter.
• Happy Ending: Few and far-between, given the state of the world, which just reinforces the themes of hope and heroism when they somehow find a way to happen.
  • The cinematic trailer. Tracer and Winston succeed in driving off Reaper and Widowmaker with no casualties (unless you count Winston’s glasses), the Doomfist is safely secured, and Tracer commends and salutes the two boys before she leaves, leaving the older brother awestruck and the younger brother cheering that he got to see two of his favorite heroes in action. And, as one of the in-story news articles covers, this event confirms Overwatch is back in action after years and people are hopeful again. Sadly, Doomfist gets his gauntlet back anyways, meaning they only postponed Talon acquiring it.
  • Recall: Winston prevents Talon from extracting the locations of the former Overwatch agents, and defeats Reaper in the process. Then he recalls all Overwatch agents, meaning that Overwatch is back in business.
  • Dragonslayer: Reinhardt dons his old equipment after a touch-up and succeeds in driving the gang members out of the town. He is now back in the game as a modern-day wandering knight, complete with his trusty squire in tow, who gives a little girl’s teddy bear a makeover in the style of Reinhardt’s armor, which she loves.
  • Shooting Star is a standalone adventure free from the baggage of the main conflict in which D.Va successfully defends the city from a surprise omnic attack. Yes, she might have broken her leg and been forced to destroy her mech to take out the last drone due to charging ahead without reinforcements, but everyone is safe, she and her friend have some peaceful time off together while she recuperates, and they both seem happy, so it all ends on a positive note.
  • The Hero of Numbani: While Doomfist is still out there somewhere, the combined forces of Efi, Orisa, Lúcio, and their friends successfully repel him and Talon away from Numbani. Some while later, an excited and upgraded Orisa bursts into Efi's school to pick her up as someone very special (an unidentified "she") wants to meet them...
  • Zero Hour and New Blood present happy endings that mark a new beginning. In the former cinematic, Winston, Tracer, Mei, Genji, Mercy, Reinhardt, Brigitte, and Echo converge onto Paris, saving the city from the newly-formed Null Sector. In the latter series, Cassidy has been on a journey to appoint new blood and has amassed the likes of Pharah, Baptiste, Zarya, and D.Va to fight off Talon, Null Sector, and Gwishin squads across the world. With both groups making their presence known to the world and heading back to headquarters in Gibraltar, the message is clear: Overwatch is back, and it's here to stay.
  • Kiriko sees the titular character saving an elderly man and young girl from Hashimoto gangsters. In the process, her mother discovers that Kiriko indeed carries the guardian Fox Spirit of their family's bloodline, proudly proclaiming "My baby is a superhero!"
• Happy Ending Override:
  • The cinematic trailer where Winston and Tracer successfully secured the Doomfist gauntlet and kept it out of Talon's clutches. It ultimately didn't matter, as Doomfist got his gauntlet back later after Reaper broke him free from prison, elevating Talon into being an even bigger threat than before.
  • "Masquerade" retroactively confirmed that Reaper managed to extract data on some of the Overwatch agents in Recall, meaning that Winston didn't save everyone from being hunted down and killed by Reaper and Talon. Also mentioned (for a given definition of "happy") is that despite technically failing the mission to assassinate Volskaya due to sabotage from one of their own in Infiltration, Talon has been able to work with the outcome to turn it to their advantage anyway.
  • Uprising retroactively makes Alive this. In the former, an Overwatch strike team helps relieve a major crisis in London — Tracer's hometown — after tensions between humans and omnics sparked an urban warfare situation. In the latter, Widowmaker kills one of the hostages Tracer had previously worked to save, which plunges her home into another period of turmoil which dialogue in Masquerade outright says hasn't been so bad since "the uprising."
• Heal Thyself: In addition to heal kits scattered around the maps (with the typical instantly-fixing-you-up-the-moment-you-step-on-them behavior), some characters have abilities to restore their health in one way or another, most notably Supports who have a job to heal others.
• Helmet-Mounted Sight: Soldier 76 wears the Tactical Visor. When activated for his ultimate, a red holographic display shows him exactly where to aim for the best shots, making all of his attacks in-game hit the target regardless of aim.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: The public turned against Overwatch, eventually making any activity associated with the organization illegal.
• Highly Specific Counterplay: Torbjorn was reworked in 2018 with a new version of his Ultimate "Molten Core" that dealt more damage to any characters with armor. The catch was, while some characters do have natural armor, there had previously only been two characters with the ability to give out armor to teammates: Torbjorn himself, and his daughter Brigitte. Following Torbjorn's rework, he lost that ability and so Brigitte became the only character that Molten Core could get such high value from (again, aside from the minority of characters with natural armor).
• Hitbox Dissonance: Zigzagged in multiple ways. During the game's beta and for a few months after release, many character hitboxes were larger than their models, making them much easier to hit and get headshots for, including with Hanzo's infamous Huntsman-esque arrows, though they were shrunk down after enough fan complaints were made. The actual hitbox detection on various hero abilities vary on accuracy, with Hanzo's arrows and Roadhog's hook having disproportionate hitboxes, Reinhardt and D.Va's barrier abilities being very accurate, and Ana's Biotic Rifle having larger hitboxes when healing allies but standard hitbox sizes for enemies. It's generally perceived that these were designed for the purpose of not being frustrating to players rather than dead-on accuracy.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • In the comic short "Going Legit", the CEO who tricked Junkrat and Roadhog into aiding in his insurance scam gets strung up by them and then blown to bits.
  • Junkrat's concussion mine, in a more literal sense.
  • Pharah, Tracer, Soldier: 76, and Zarya can blow themselves up by their own explosive weapons (and so could Junkrat's explosives and D.Va's Self-Destruct before they were balanced out).
  • Genji can deflect any projectile in the game - one of the reasons that he's frequently used to counter Bastion is that he can activate his deflection skill and decimate it with its own damage. The same goes for Pharah's barrage, Tracer's pulse bomb, and even Hanzo's Dragonstrike!^note To do this, he has to actually deflect the attack while it's still an arrow, and it's less Hoist on himself and more on any teammates behind him.
• Holiday Mode: Some maps are updated during holiday-specific events to fit the mood better, such as Hollywood, Chataeu Guillard, and Eichenwalde, becoming darker and spookier during the Halloween event, King's Row and Hanamura getting fresh snow during Christmas, and Lijang Tower being decorated for the Lunar New Year.
• Hollywood Hacking:
  • In the comic "Mission Statement", one of Pharah's team members uses this to stop the Anubis AI from uploading itself.
  • Sombra revels in this trope, with much of this trope being integral to her character and playstyle.
• Hope Springs Eternal: This seems to be one of the game’s central themes. The Omnic Crisis may be over, but the world is still far, far away from being at peace. Times are grim, villains are running amok unchecked, and the heroes don’t always win. But there are still heroes. And for every one of them that continues to fight and refuses to let reality grind them into nothing, the world comes that much closer to a brighter tomorrow.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Downplayed from what we know about the Omnic Crisis. The Omnics aren't Killer Robots out to Kill All Humans - they're second-class citizens and slaves who want to be recognized as people. Unfortunately, they can also be hacked by the true AIs and turned into killers. Graffiti on walls at King's Row, statements by otherwise heroic characters about peaceful Omnics like Zenyatta and Bastion and reactions to the flourishing and open-minded city of Numbani don't paint a pretty picture of humanity. Then again, factions like Null Sector and the Omnic Talon council member Maximilien indicate Equal-Opportunity Evil.
• Hunting the Rogue: After defecting from Talon and going on the run, Baptiste became a target for the organization to track down due to his knowledge of its inner workings. So far, he's been on the run for years, although the Talon-aligned characters make sure he knows he's still being hunted.
  Widowmaker: Hello, Baptiste. Think you can hide from Talon forever?
  Baptiste: You can send your people to find me. But I'll find them first.

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• I Die Free: The Pharah-centric comic Mission Statement features an omnic merc named Okoro as part of Pharah's squad. During the mission to infiltrate Helix's facilities, the newly freed Anubis god program takes over all the nearby Omnics, and as Okoro realizes this he swiftly warns his teammates, apologizes for not being able to help, and blows his own head off to prevent being used against his will.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: D.Va and several other professional gamers were explicitly picked by the Korean government to pilot a Mini-Mecha because of the reflexes they developed playing video games.
• Implied Death Threat: One of the pre-game interactions between Junkrat and Reaper either implies that Reaper wishes to enlist Junkrat's services, or Reaper is threatening Junkrat in a rather implicit and witty way.
  Junkrat: You look like a guy who needs someone blown up.
  Reaper: A candidate just came to mind.
  • Widowmaker gives Sombra the whole "It'd be a shame if something happened to you" routine when the latter gets a bit too chummy with her in-game. Which should give you an idea about how well Sombra is regarded by her colleagues, since Widow doesn't even threaten Tracer or Ana when she interacts with either of them.
• Improbable Age: Mostly averted in present events, with most of the characters being appropriately aged for combat-ready fighters, the majority of whom at least in their mid-20s to 30s — and that's considered "young", as many more of them are older than that. The sole exception to this among the human cast is D.Va, a 19-year-old professional gamer-turned-soldier, but this doesn't stop her from kicking ass like the rest of them. Even the omnic characters are primarily in the same age range as the humans, except for the 1-month-old Orisa. That said, some heroes had this trope in the past:
  • Mercy was already studying medicine at university by 17, and ended up running a prominent Swiss hospital by her mid-twenties, with the justification being that she's that smart.
  • Cassidy, who is the same age as Mercy, is a darker spin on this. He was an infamous outlaw in his teens before being recruited to join Overwatch.
  • Soldier: 76 is around his mid-fifties while Overwatch was founded to deal with the Omnic Crisis around 30 years ago, meaning he'd been declared in charge of the prestigious paramilitary organization at around 30. Granted, Jack's significant part in basically saving humanity from robots trying to kill everyone would no doubt lend clout to his selection.
  • Tracer was one of the most skilled pilots in Overwatch and handpicked to test out the (ill-fated) Slipstream when she wasn't even twenty.
  • Orisa's creator, Child Prodigy Efi Oladele, certainly counts, since she built Orisa when she was 11.
• Improbable Aiming Skills:
  • Soldier: 76 and his Ultimate "Tactical Visor" allows him to pin-point targets and guide his shots straight to them. In his short "Heroes", he uses this against three thugs... while mid-fall... with three shots.
  • Cassidy ultimate "Deadeye" similarly allows him to target and dispose of multiple foes quickly and with perfect precision.
• Infinite Supplies: All heroes have an unlimited amount of ammo, and special abilities are limited by a cooldown period rather than a limited resource. Other abilities, such as D.Va's Defense Matrix and Bastion's self-repair ability, have a limited amount of usage that automatically regenerates over time. Torbjörn and Moira also have abilities (armor power-ups and healing sprays, respectively) that draw on a resource that slowly builds over time and can be augmented by by attacking/defeating enemies.
• Insult Backfire: Well, less an insult than an announcement of distrust. Zarya will occasionally tell Zenyatta that she's keeping an eye on him. Zenyatta's reply? "And I will watch your back in turn", either accidentally or deliberately turning around her intent.
• Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Blizzard apparently wants to invoke a variation of this trope with its Healers. Mercy has some of the strongest normal healing, but she has very little utility aside from that. Lúcio and Zenyatta can't heal as much (outside of their Ultimates), but have lots more utility and lethality. Subverted when Ana came out, as she had both the highest healing and utility in the game, though this was somewhat compensated by her mechanical difficulty and subsequent nerfs.
• Irony:
  • Reinhardt was forced into retirement by the UN because, after Ana's "death" in Egypt, his age was viewed as a liability and losing another founding member might have led to a drop in morale. Reinhardt was also the only person in Overwatch with both the heart and the seniority to hold it together as internal tensions escalated. His departure only succeeded in hastening its downfall.
  • The place Tracer calls home is King's Row, a dirty, rundown and oppressive neighborhood that is constantly broiling with tension that occasionally escalates into violence. In other words, the exact kind of place someone like her shouldn't even look twice at. On the other hand, it might actually suit her just fine.
  • One of the gentlest characters who is most in tune with nature is Bastion, a man-made industrial war machine.

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• Karma Houdini: Talon has had free reign to pursue their campaign of plunging the world into chaos and war for years (both in-story and verging on out as well), and none of the characters associated with it have faced any punishment for their on-screen misdeeds. The heroes' job is to get back together and pool their resources to change that, but for various reasons, they have yet to meet with much success. Doomfist presumably got the stuffing beaten out of him by Winston for hurting his friends and then locked up for tearing up Numbani, but since we don't actually get to see it and he broke out anyway right as we were learning any of this even happened, it's hard to think any of that matters.
  • The executives at Vishkar responsible for bombing the favela to make room for their public works project in A Better World also ended the comic not by facing consequences, but by holding a sickeningly self-congratulatory opening ceremony, and it's heavily implied that the company has been engaging in this kind of behavior for a long time.
• Keeping the Handicap: Mercy says there are procedures she could use to restore the eye Ana lost in a Sniper Duel against Widowmaker. Ana is grateful for the offer but declines, saying that she's comfortable with who she is now and that her missing eye is a good reminder to push forward in life.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Talon's abduction and transformation of Amélie Lacroix into a cold, remorseless killer is already considered to be possibly the most morally reprehensible action in the game's canon, but they also gave her the codename "Widowmaker" because her first victim was her beloved husband Gérard. In other words, they gave her the name because she made a widow out of herself. Lovely people, those Talon folks.
  • Widowmaker herself has a propensity for this:
    • Her killing of Mondatta was horrible, yes. But that was just her assignment. Her laughing about it in a distraught Tracer's face when all she wanted was an explanation? That was entirely on her. And while she needed to make her escape, personally injuring Tracer by swinging her into a wall was probably unnecessary.
    • Her response in the cinematic trailer to the sound of a child calling out? Activating her visor. You know, the one she uses to help her kill people.
    • She even does this to the player. Her "Under the Mistletoe" highlight intro from the 2016 Winter Wonderland event has her beckoning to the camera presumably for a kiss… only to knock it to the ground once it's in close and then literally kick it while it's down.
    • Depending on what map she's on and her team composition, she might take a moment in-game to recount her past killings or rub her teammates' failures in their faces. Notably, she can mock Ana about ruining her life directly to her face, and she might gloat about killing Mondatta at the spot where it happened on King's Row while Tracer, Zenyatta or both are right beside her.
  • The Shimada Clan forcing Hanzo to kill his younger brother Genji because he didn't want to take part in their illegal activities. Though Genji survived, it was only because Overwatch rescued him and made him into a cyborg.
  • Reaper does this in the cinematic trailer by crushing Winston's glasses as he moves in to finish him off. This backfires spectacularly, since doing so triggers Winston's Berserk Button.
  • Sombra threatening a woman with blackmail into being her own personal benefactor in Infiltration probably would have scored her enough brownie points around Talon's water cooler even if she didn't feel compelled to drag her daughter into it.
  • When Tracer begins flickering out of time in Doomfist's origin story trailer after he rips her chronal accelerator off her back, notice how instead of just finishing her off or turning his attention onto Winston while he's distracted with watching in terror, he just stands there and lets it play out. He wanted her to suffer, and he wanted to make sure her friend saw it.
  • The news report on Junkrat and Roadhog features them committing their various crime sprees, including robbing an arcade for toys while Junkrat steals a kid's soda.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: If a hero starts to announce something through the radio from a distance but then dies, the message will be interrupted by their death scream.
• Kill the Host Body: Okoro, who is an omnic, is nearly hijacked by Anubis, a God Program, but performs a Heroic Sacrifice of shooting himself to prevent Anubis from using him to harm his teammates.
• Konami Code: Typing the code on Overwatch's official website (replacing Start with Enter) causes miniature D.Va's (originally Hanzos) to start raining down in the website. In addition, D.Va will say what the code is loudly.
• Lag Cancel: All characters (except Reinhardt and Brigitte) have the ability to instantly strike out with a melee attack immediately after firing their main gun, with the downside being that you have to wait for the melee animation to reset before you can start firing again. A skilled Mei can finish off a 200 HP character by freezing them in place, firing an icicle at their head, and finishing them off with a punch in the same moment that the headshot registers. Roadhog can hook enemies to bring them in, fire their gun and then finish with a melee. This combo used to be a One-Hit Kill in most situations before the hook itself was nerfed.
• Land of One City: Numbani is described as a single city in Africa, but it's not listed as residing in any country beyond that, pre-existing or not. It's described as being close to Nigeria, but otherwise, Numbani seems to be recognized as its own state, identified in-game with its own unique flag.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Barrier abilities like Zarya and Winston's bubbles and Reinhardt, Orisa, and Symmetra's shields have an HP value after which they break, but they always absorb the entirety of the attack that breaks them. This makes them good for defending against ultimate abilities that deal their damage in a single massive explosion, like Junkrat's Riptire and D.Va's Self-Destruct. The latter does 1000 points of damage to an unprotected target, but if there's even 1 hp worth of barrier in the way, it does nothing.
• Leeroy Jenkins:
  • An unfortunately common practice with many players, referred to by the community as "trickling." Many players' first impulse upon getting killed and respawning is to immediately dive back into the exciting battle alone, instead of waiting to group up with their team for full-on teamfights, usually getting themselves killed all over again simply due to a numbers disparity.
  • Bad Reinhardt players can be notorious for this. His skill Charge has a chance to instantly kill someone, but also very easy to miss. It's very often that Reinhardt players forego their role as the team's shield and instead choose to Charge attempting to kill a target, fail, get shot down to death, and then their team members die unprotected. This is surprisingly a similar scenario with the Trope Namer himself and fits entirely with young Reinhardt's persona before he got some character development.
  • Happens with distressing regularity in quickplay, where the majority of the player base would immediately pick DPS heroes upon match start and not tanks or healers. DPS players then throw themselves at the enemy with reckless abandon until they either time out, or the other team cave somehow. DPS heroes being, well, DPS heroes, life expectancy is usually measured in seconds, especially if the other team has a Bastion, or worse, plays properly to counter this weird strategy.
• Legacy Character: Doomfist, which is both the name of the gauntlet and the wielder. So far we've had Adhubu Ngumi (the Savior), Akinjide Adeyemi (the Scourge) and the current holder Akande Ogundimu (the Successor).
• Libation for the Dead: Mei commemorates the deaths of her colleagues in Rise and Shine by placing mugs of hot cocoa at the foot of each of their chambers, using each person's favourite cup.
• Life/Death Juxtaposition: Moira is a support hero who can heal her allies with her left hand and rip her enemies apart with her right. Both her hands are visually distinct, with her right hand appearing corrupted and necrotic with long, clawlike nails.
  • In a narrative sense, Alive is about an assassination that brings about mass unrest and, potentially, a future conflict, and it immediately follows Recall, which is about Winston setting the stage for Overwatch to be reborn and make its comeback.
• Lighter and Softer: The game as a whole to the rest of Blizzard's normal output. It seems to bum some of its aesthetic from Pixar films, and has since its original announcement been compared to Team Fortress 2 in terms of both gameplay and style. In terms of lore, it is much lighter than the Crapsack World Blizzard usually puts out; while bad and depressing things have happened, the lore remains more hopeful than negative.
  • It seems the characters also tend to be fourth wall breakers who know that they are in a game or a universe in which combat is Lighter and Softer than what their abilities represent. Otherwise, for example, Tracer making a wisecrack about Christmas while attaching a sticky bomb to an opponent (which in actual combat would give them instant PTSD and then blow them into a bloody mess) would be quite horrific.
• Limit Break: Each character has a powerful ultimate ability that builds over time or by dealing or healing damage.
• Lingering Social Tensions: The setting takes place a few decades following the Omnic Crisis, where Omnics around the world suddenly turned on humanity, which was quelled thanks to the formation of the titular Heroes "R" Us. Much of the remaining Omnic population has become content with peace and coexisting with mankind, with the general attitude of peaceful integration as equals becoming increasingly accepted, but it's not perfect as fresh scars still remain. Many characters — even some largely heroic ones like Zarya and Torbjörn — remain distrustful of Omnics on principle, and many countries are more accepting than others — Numbani is an egalitarian Shining City in Africa where human and omnic successfully coexist in harmony, but King's Row in England (home of the Series Mascot and All-Loving Hero Tracer) remains a social hotbed where Omnics are treated as slaves and are visibly not happy about it. Ramattra originally sought spiritual enlightenment and harmony following the Crisis, but the seeming lack of meaningful progress shattered his faith, leading him to believe based on humanity's continued cruelty towards his race that they can never truly coexist, and thus started the violent revolutionary group Null Sector to grant omnickind the world they deserve by force.
• Logo Joke: Junkertown: the Plan has Junkrat singing the Overwatch fanfare over the logo at the end.
• Loot Boxes: Overwatch originally implemented these as its form of Microtransactions, and it's considered one of the most definitive examples of the mechanic in the modern age (or at the very least, what launched the term "loot boxes" into the mainstream gaming lexicon). Loot boxes contain various cosmetic goodies of varying levels, and could either be gathered through levelling up your player level (in turn playing enough games for the requisite XP), accomplishing Arcade milestones, or through purchase in bulk, with certain items being exclusive to seasonal event lootboxes, and duplicates granting a fraction of total value in raw coins which could be used to directly purchase cosmetics on demand. After serving as the game's core method of long-term monetization for years, loot boxes would be abandoned with Overwatch 2 — likely due to shifts in the game going free-to-play, as well as pressure from the grey legality of loot boxes with respect to gambling laws — instead featuring a Rewards Pass à la Fortnite and Valorant.
• Luck-Based Mission: The "Mystery Heroes" Brawl, in which each player gets a random hero picked for them every time they spawn. Depending on how the RNG feels, your team might get a competitive-standard composition, or a team that would be considered a joke even in Quick Play. Certain characters like Bastion which would be easy to counter by picking another hero are rather more deadly in this mode.

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