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    M 
  • MacGuffin: Whatever that strange device in Train Hopper was, those Talon agents sure wanted it really badly. Also, whatever Junkrat found in the Australian omnium, which, judging by his pre-fight banter with other characters, he tries to avoid talking about. We most likely have not seen the last of either of these.
  • MacGyvering: Roadhog and Junkrat's arsenals are cobbled together with random junk and car parts. Even Junkrat's prosthetic leg seems to be homemade.
  • Mathematician's Answer: When asked whether Winston prefers smooth or chunky peanut butter, the official Overwatch Twitter answered with "All of the Above."
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The vast majority of the characters use advanced tech that would be seen in soft sci-fi or a superhero comic, but some have abilities even that can't explain. Hanzo and Genji summon giant ethereal dragons, Kiriko summon a blue fox spirit, Zenyatta briefly ascends to a higher plane, and Reaper can become ghostly and pick up "soul orbs" from his defeated enemies to regain health, though the latter two are non-canon elements that primarily exist for gameplay.
  • Meaningful Background Event:
    • Several maps, especially ones directly relevant to certain heroes, are littered with tons of visual hints that when not simply for flavorful Worldbuilding, sometimes directly fill holes or provide some insights on heroes' pasts. Some examples include the various notes scattered around Ecopoint: Antarctica documenting everything preceding Mei and her crew going into cryosleep, or the various disturbed objects in the apparently-abandoned Château Guillard, hinting at some of Widowmaker's history and recent activities.
    • The chronology of Shooting Star is never put at the forefront, but around 6:42, the news broadcast can be very faintly heard saying that "Former Overwatch agents have been appearing around the whole world" (the voiceover is more audible in other language dubs like in German and French), meaning not only does the short take place after Recall, but the media has taken notice of Overwatch's return.
  • Mecha-Mooks:
    • Bastion, originally as "SST Laboratories Siege Automaton E54, 'Bastion'" comprised a large part of the omnic forces during the Crisis. Damage to its programming has allowed it to transcend this state, however.
    • The Suit in Going Legit tries to ambush Junkrat and Roadhog with these as a part of a plan to get an insurance write-off.
    • The Anubis AI uses these in the slightly more terrifying version of hacked Omnics.
    • All of the enemies in Uprising are robots.
  • Medium Blending: Trace & Bake is a cute little short about Tracer('s model) baking a cake in celebration of the game's second anniversary, which is portrayed by combining animated versions of her and Reaper's models with live action footage of someone's desk and kitchen.
  • Membership Token: An Overwatch coin is prominently featured in "Honor and Glory". Balderich received it as an invitation to join the new organization, and before he dies, he hands it off to Reinhardt.
  • Mirror Match: The entire purpose of Mystery Duel. In each round, both players are assigned the same random Hero.
  • Mirror Universe: The Mirrorwatch event is a What If? scenario built on several good guys being on the side of evil, and vice versa, with Evil Costume Switches and Good Costume Switches all around. Among the forces of Overwatch are "Strike Commander" Doomfist, "Captain Lacroix" Widowmaker, and "Agent Colomar" Sombra, while on the side of Talon are "Vengeance" Mercy, Ana "Arch-Commandant Amari", "Fallen Knight" Reinhardt, and many others, including "Gwishin" Bastion" and "Junker" Genji. The associated brawl also features bits of dialogue alluding to further changed elements: Gérard Lacroix is still alive, Ramattra was an emissary for peace who was tragically assassinated by Tracer, and Zenyatta is alluded to as being the head of Null Sector.
  • Mission Creep: In the backstory, Overwatch was formed to deal with the first Omnic Crisis. Afterwards, it became a general peacekeeping organisation, but it also gained a secret "Black Ops" division. When these operations were revealed, public opinion turned on it and infighting between the two sections began. Culminating in both of its top leaders apparently Mutual Killing each other after a confrontation, and the UN disbanding and outlawing it.
  • Monster and the Maiden:
    • Ashe can summon her robot companion, B.O.B as her ultimate, who acts as a stationary turret and a temporary seventh/sixth team member. Outside of gameplay, B.O.B serves Ashe as her bodyguard and butler.
    • Winston is a hyper intelligent gorilla, who is sometimes deployed on field missions with fellow Overwatch members. He technically creates this kind of setup with any female Overwatch member he's fighting alongside with at the moment, but in-lore he seems to be the closest with Tracer and Mei.
  • Mood Dissonance: Wrecking Ball’s origin story begins with an audio log by the scientist Harold Winston, musing about the genetically enhanced apes that are always getting into trouble in the Horizon Lunar Colony… which is narrating over a still of the apes’ uprising not long after, in which they kill every scientist on board, including Harold Winston himself.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • In the Alive short: Yes! Tracer's dodged Widowmaker's shot... No! She got Mondatta! With the same shot! In addition, Alive is confirmed to have happened later the same day as Recall — the same short that ends on a high note where Winston reinstates Overwatch! Talk about a Tone Shift.
      • Alive in general is this compared to the rest of the, generally more hopeful and lighthearted, lore-related materials. It’s grim, humorless, ends with a completely unambiguous victory for the villain, and what little levity exists is of the "set you up for a fall" variety. Despite taking place on a much smaller scale and impacting only a relative handful of lives, it rivals the end of Brood War for sheer underlying dread and bleakness in a Blizzard cinematic, and it's sandwiched right between the uplifting Recall and the bombastic Dragons. It even contrasts with the other villain-centric cinematic, Infiltration, which plays out more like a conventional thriller.
    • The Last Bastion opens with Bastion waking up and walking around the forest, admiring the beautiful scenery and helping a little bird build a nest on its shoulder. Then it hears a woodpecker, which triggers its memories of combat and throws it into a panic.
    • The Winter Wonderland-exclusive "Yeti Hunter" mode. Despite it being an asymmetric hunt-or-be-hunted mode with quiet, winter-y ambience, it starts off rather innocently, with a cute-looking intro animation and playful banter between the Hunters that just want to study the Yeti... until the Yeti gets four pieces of meat, where he then becomes a hulking, red-eyed Lightning Bruiser that can near-instantly slaughter your character, turning everything into a deadly game of cat and mouse as primal drums play in the background.
      Mei: Don't be afraid, we don't hurt you! (ROAR) Run for your lives!
    • A meta example: Masquerade may represent the most dire point we've reached in the story so far. One of Talon's leaders is free, many of the heroes' accomplishments are undone, Overwatch remains broken, and the villains are unified and uncontested in their goal of plunging the world into another cataclysmic war. A couple weeks after its release later: "Hey, everyone! Have some fun in the sun for the 2017 Summer Games event with these new beach-themed skins! Including one for this cold-blooded assassin you just saw kill someone."
  • Mook Horror Show: The "Hero" short shows the weapon smugglers being brutally attacked by Soldier: 76, leaving them and an innocent bystander terrified by the assault.
  • Morality Kitchen Sink: On the surface, the main conflict appears to be a straightforward case of heroes versus villains, and that's true to an extent since Overwatch are clearly presented as the good guys and Talon as the bad guys, but even within and outside that conflict, the cast provides enough variation to run through the entire moral spectrum.
    • Right at one end, we have a collection of thoroughly, unambiguously good and heroic characters like Tracer, Mercy, Mei, Winston, Lúcio and Reinhardt who are wholeheartedly committed to making the world a better place, compassionate toward all people, and unwaveringly devoted to their ideals in spite of their hardships.
    • Then, we have a grayer niche of heroism occupied by characters like Soldier: 76, Torbjörn and Zarya: definitely on the side of good and working to improve things, but soured by their experiences enough to engage in harsher tactics, and some carry a chip on their shoulder that hinders them from being wholly heroic to everyone all the time.
    • Solidly neutral parties like Bastion and Hanzo skirt the edge of the main conflict and prefer to deal with their own problems without getting involved in anything greater or infringing upon anyone else.
    • Symmetra is an Anti-Villain with good intentions who occupies a nebulous area toward the middle and can slide further up or down the scale depending on the situation. She genuinely does want the best for humanity, but her warped definition of "best" and her general disdain for those who don't share her views prevent her from being genuinely heroic.
    • Junkrat and Roadhog are a pair of selfish, marauding bandits; solidly immoral, but ultimately more interested in crime, saving their own skins, and having a good time at others' expense than in pursuing any kind of sinister agenda.
    • And finally, we have unambiguously evil and malicious villains represented by Talon and its agents, who are actively pursuing a campaign of death and destruction for their own nefarious ends. They have their reasons for being who they are, so even at this point you can still find some measure of humanity, but at the end of the day, they're still hurting and killing innocent people without remorse in order to stimulate a conflict more or less for its own sake.
  • Motion Blur: Overwatch uses cartoon-like and smearing for the characters animations, in place of more traditional motion blur techniques.

    N 
  • Near Victory Fanfare: Played straight or inverted depending on whether one is attacking or defending:
    • For defending players, a tense track plays when the timer is down to less than 30 seconds, which also the attacking team's cue to hurry up.
    • For attacking players on Escort maps, a dramatic track plays when the payload is almost at the end of the line, which is also the defending team's cue to get their crap together.
  • Nebulous Evil Organisation: Talon, a recurring foe for Overwatch both directly and as The Man Behind the Man. Their motives have become increasingly clear as the backstory comes out, going from seemingly acting For the Evulz to a strong Social Darwinist ideology.
  • Negated Moment of Awesome: Encouraged; you get points for "Ultimate Shutdown" by killing enemies who just activated their ultimate, thus negating a potential Play of the Game by the enemy.
  • Never Say "Die": Played with. Kills and deaths are referred to as "eliminations" so that assists can be counted as well, but many characters, most notably Reaper, have dialog that talks about death and killing.
  • New Old West: The Deadlock Gang, Ashe, B.O.B and Cassidy's whole schtick, justified by the fact that according to Michael Chu, by the time of the game's present, the American Southwest is considered "lawless." The animated short Reunion plays out like a western movie.
  • Nice Guy: There are several genuinely nice people in the game, and it doesn't stop them from kicking ass. This stands in contrast to other characters who are cynics, jerkasses, or outright villains.
    • Zenyatta is a Omnic monk who only wants peace, and his many lines have nothing but nice things to say (though he does get a quip here and there).
    • Lúcio acts very friendly and upbeat, and even praises the team dynamic in-game (regardless of how bad it actually is).
    • Mei is very friendly to everyone around her (except for Junkrat, hoo boy), which comes across as odd as she is freezing people to death.
    • Mercy hates violence, cares deeply for her teammates, and dedicated her life to saving as many lives as possible. Even though she abhors Overwatch's methods, she still wants to help them and keep them all safe.
    • Winston doubles as this and Gentle Giant. He's a very friendly gorilla who only wants to help others out, having invented Tracer's chronal accelerator out of the goodness of his heart. Best not to call him a monkey or step on his glasses, though.
    • Tracer is kind, helpful, places the needs of others above herself, and remains steadfastly committed to the public good even when faced with great personal adversity. She has her limits, though.
    • Widowmaker is a more tragic take on this, believe it or not. Amélie Lacroix was a perfectly sweet and innocent civilian whose only connection to the main conflict was through marriage. Then Talon got ahold of her, and nothing's been the same since.
    • Lifeweaver is one of the nicest character in the entire game and is friendly towards everyone, be it Overwatch, Talon or omnic. Despite being wanted by Vishkar and vaguely threatened about it by Pharah and Junkrat, he remains calm and affable towards them.
  • Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: Zenyatta is a robot monk! Torbjörn is a cyborg dwarf! Winston is a scientist gorilla from the moon! Genji is a Green Cyborg Ninja Dude!
  • Nonindicative Name: Eichenwalde is German for "oak forest", but the map does not feature any oak trees, only pines.
  • Non-Lethal Warfare: Cinematic trailer, full stop. Tracer fires hundreds of rounds, but never hits anybody. Widowmaker and Reaper return the favor, but only manage to disable Tracer's equipment and knock Winston down for all of twenty seconds. Handwaved by the minimal number of visitors at the museum during the assault.
  • No Biochemical Barriers: All abilities that affect another Hero will have the same effect regardless of whether the target is an organism or mechanical in nature, unless the target has a unique ability to reduce or negate the effect. For example, Ana's weapons, both designed to be harmful or helpful to flesh-and-blood humans, can poison, heal, or put to sleep Omnics, cyborgs, and mechs as well.
  • No Experience Points for Medic:
    • The Play of the Game mechanic favors scoring a lot of kills in a short period of time. Thus, very rarely will the Play of the Game feature a Support hero, unless it's a Lúcio blasting the enemy team into a bottomless pit, a Mercy rezzing her whole team (before her kit was reworked), or a Zenyatta using Transcendence to save teammates from immediate death.
    • Experience points themselves are no problem for solo healers, because earning a medal results in an extra chunk of EXP proportionate to the quality of the medal, and the only dedicated healer on a team is almost certain to earn a gold medal for highest healing output.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Talon's brainwashing of Widowmaker. The ability to turn a random person into an utterly loyal living weapon, and one of the worlds most dangerous people, seems like something that would be useful more than once. The Retribution mode, however, shows that Widowmaker wasn't the first person to undergo the procedure, as the three Elite units (Sniper, Heavy Assault, and especially Assassin) are all brainwashed and programmed as well, though it left them psychotic, laughing mad, and hungry for carnage. Widowmaker is the first 100% successful result of the procedure.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: The game shelves the lore of Overwatch in favor of PVP gameplay, so those wanting to know more about the characters and the world will have to look into the rest of Overwatch's media to scratch that itch. At the very least, knowing the lore will help shed some light on some of the more specific character interactions that the game provides (such as Soldier and Reaper, or Lúcio and Symmetra).
  • Non-Powered Costumed Hero: Played with. Very few characters have actual 'powers' but all of them have some form of tech that grants them unique abilities. It really comes down to whether or not you consider, say, D.Va's Mini-Mecha to be a super power or not.
  • Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Several characters from different nations speak with American accents for no discernable reason, these being Lucio (who's from Brazil), Roadhog (who's from Australia), and Brigitte (who's from Sweden). D.Va has a slight hint of an accent at times, but mostly speaks with an American accent.
  • "Not So Different" Remark:
    • Zenyatta, about Hanzo and Genji:
      Zenyatta: I sense within you the same rage that once consumed your brother.
      Hanzo: We are nothing alike!
    • Reaper uses this in the comic short "Old Soldiers" by telling Ana that Overwatch screwed her over as much as it did him, reminding her of the failed mission where she was left to die instead of receiving immediate medical aid when Widowmaker pulled a Scope Snipe on her. Though he's not accurate on the details, as Ana deliberately chose to stay behind.
    • One of interaction has Winston telling Soldier: 76 that someone will put a stop to his illegal activities. To that, Soldier: 76 retorts that Winston and his friends are doing the exact same thing by reinstating Overwatch after the PETRAS Act made it illegal.
  • Not Wearing Tights: The characters have yet to explicitly be called superheroes, probably because they use guns and have mostly technology-based abilities. However, they do have unique appearances, backstories, and powers that would not be out of place in a comic book.

    O 
  • Odd Friendship: The game's roster is chock-full of diverse, colorful characters from just about every conceivable walk of life, so any combination that develops a rapport is bound to qualify, with some particular standouts:
    • Tracer and Winston. You'd be hard-pressed to find a friendship more unlikely than one between a hyperactive lesbian fighter pilot who's been displaced from her own timeline and an intelligent, talking gorilla scientist from the moon, yet they're remarkably close and have one of the strongest friendships of any two characters in the game.
    • Reinhardt is a sexagenarian German body builder who fashions himself as a quixotic modern-day knight errant, complete with a suit of armor and a massive hammer, and his taste in music is just as archaic. D.Va is a trash-talking Korean teenager whose career is split between being a celebrity gamer and a mech pilot, but they still get along great in-game, with the former outright asking the latter for her autograph.
    • Bastion is a traumatized, semi-amnesiac Killer Robot whose struggle to adapt in a world it finds unfamiliar is aided by its best friend: an ordinary songbird called Ganymede. In-game, it also has a pretty chummy rapport with Lúcio, a bombastic celebrity musician who champions the cause of society's disadvantaged.
  • Offhand Backhand: During the firefight between Cassidy and Ashe's group in Reunion, Cassidy shoots the sniper omnic without even looking at it.
  • Official Couple: There are two official couples among the main cast: Tracer and her girlfriend, Emily; and Torbjörn and his wife, Ingrid. In the past, there was also Ana and Sam (Pharah's father) but it's unclear if they still have feelings for each other.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: A meta example: since the "Play of the Game" kill cam is restricted to the player's viewpoint, for characters with indirect source of damage like Torbjörn, their play can consist of, say, their construct getting a triple kill while the cam shows your dead body. Patches have allowed the Play of the Game to use other cameras for a better view of the action, but it still happens sometimes.
  • Old Soldier: Most of the founding members of Overwatch are in their 50s and 60s, but still kick ass. And of course, this is Soldier 76's whole shtick.
    • Reinhardt is the largest member of the whole cast (larger than the gorilla and Mini-Mecha!), wields a gigantic hammer which he can use to let off blasts of fire or cause small-scale tremors, and is capable of taking lots of damage with his "Crusader" Power Armor. He is also 61 years old.
    • Torbjörn, The Smart Guy of Overwatch, and like Reinhardt, Morrison, and Reyes, one of the members of the original Overwatch strike team. He's 57 years old.
    • Soldier: 76, too. Like Reinhardt, Strike-Commander Jack Morrison was one of the members of the original Overwatch team 30 or so years ago during the first Omnic Crisis. Morrison volunteered for the US Soldier Enhancement Program when he was 18 years old, meaning he should be pushing 50 now. Despite that, he's still able to hold his own with the rest of the cast.
    • Gabriel Reyes (Reaper) co-founded Overwatch with Jack Morrison and inducted Cassidy into Blackwatch. He's likely a similar age to Soldier: 76.
    • Never Mess with Granny: Ana is the second oldest character behind Reinhardt, being 60 years old as opposed to his 61, and she hasn't aged quite as well as he has either. She's also one of the world's best snipers and was doing combat operations well into her 50s before she lost her eye to Widowmaker, and even that hasn't slowed her down.
  • The Olympics: The annual "Summer Games" originally debuted and ran during the same time as the real deal, using a lawyer-friendly Olympics-esque logo and loot that have country flags and sports themes. It also features the Brazilian character Lúcio prominently on the title screen, and a special 3 on 3 brawl mode called Lúcioball, which is basically Rocket League with everyone playing as him.
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • Averted via Bilingual Bonus. We have Aleksandra Zaryanova, and from the "Hero" short film, a little girl named Alejandra. Both are female forms of Aleksander (Russian) and Alejandro (Spanish), respectively, and equally related to the Greek name Alexandros. Lampshaded in the "Searching" comic when the two meet.
    • Also averted via a gendered variation. There is Gabriel Reyes, now known as Reaper, and the minor/currently unseen character Gabrielle Adawe, who was responsible for the formation of Overwatch.
    • Additionally averted by Hana Song, the playable character D.Va, and Hanna, a minor character in "Dragon Slayer."
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Most characters have a defined personality, so when they act differently from what you'd expect, it's serious.
    • Tracer is normally one of the game's most upbeat characters, but she takes her commitment to protecting the world very seriously, which tends to be most evident when lives are at stake, especially when Widowmaker is involved. The most notable examples are the ending of Alive, which shows her visibly overcome with grief upon realizing her failure and reaching her lowest emotional point, and Uprising, in which she gives a short but impassioned speech to Commander Morrison about her reasons for enlisting when she sees nothing being done about the titular uprising in London. Her voiceover that leads into the event proper is a somber overview of what's at stake in which she sounds gravely concerned and anxious to do something.
    • Widowmaker herself has a few small but noteworthy moments where her humanity resurfaces from beneath her sadism, such as taking offense to hearing her husband Gérard be insulted, sighing his name upon being revived, and visiting his grave to privately mourn. One of her emotes also has her practice ballet, which she used to perform as a civilian. It's here that we see she has retained some of her former identity and isn't as unfeeling as she appears, at least as far as her own grief is concerned.
    • D.Va has a voice line on Eichenwalde and Volskaya Industries where she takes the situation seriously.
      The destruction caused by the omnics here, it reminds me of home.
      • D.Va's animated short, "Shooting Star," highlights the contrast between her "in-character" gamer celebrity persona, and her "out-of-character" persona, where she obsessively prepares for the next fight, motivated partially by shell-shock.
    • Reinhardt laments the sacrifice of The Crusaders on Eichenwalde, in a tone that sounds nothing like his normal self.
  • Opposing Combat Philosophies: Many of the Heroes have differing approaches to both combat and how to improve the world.
    • Perhaps best demonstrated with Mercy and Reinhardt. Reinhardt is a Blood Knight who rushes into a fight, Mercy dreads fighting but understands that it's sometimes the only way.
    • Soldier 76 will chastise D.Va by saying, "War isn't a game!" D.Va will retort, "Are you sure life isn't a game?"
  • Orgasmic Combat: Downplayed by the voice actors themselves, who revealed in an interview that the characters' death cries could get "too sexy" and had to make sure it didn't get too out of hand.
  • Out of Focus:
    • Ironically, Overwatch itself; or at least the issue of its return. In the time since the release of Recall, it has been referenced primarily through a few background easter eggs and some sparse lines of dialogue. It took seventeen months of real world waiting for Rise and Shine to confirm Mei as the first agent other than Winston or Tracer to acknowledge the recall order, and Honor and Glory added Reinhardt to the list a couple months after that. In both cases, however, the matter of the recall itself is confined to the background in favor of showcasing their origin stories.
    • Due to the number of characters, several have received very little screen time in the supplemental animations and materials. For example, in spite of being an original release character with a consistently high selection rate, D.Va has only appeared for a few seconds of a montage in the game's teaser trailer and once barely visible on a tv screen in the background of a single panel in Reflections (until Shooting Star, that is), Hanzo plays no further major role in the lore after almost killing Genji (he's the protagonist in Dragons, but that only serve as a reveal to him that his brother is still alive) and the most Lúcio has is an interview that's pure text and lasts only a handful of paragraphs, as well as an in-universe commercial for Lucio-Os.
  • Out-of-Genre Experience:
    • Of course this being Overwatch, most of the stories have a flavor of your typical superhero genre, from the cheery and colorful good guys fighting off the black-clad villains, to vigilantes that work in the dark. Then "The Last Bastion" comes along, a dialogue-less short about an omnic reawakening in a forest untouched by man, evoking works such as WALL•E.
    • With the official introduction of Sombra, Overwatch has dipped into Cyberpunk— Sombra's character wouldn't be out of place in Shadowrun or Deus Ex, having cybernetic augmentations, Hollywood Hacking skills, and being noticed by a massive conspiracy during the early days of her career as a hacker, leading her to erase her identity entirely, and getting the attention of Talon as to uncover how deep the conspiracy goes. She even spares Katya Volskaya, instead opting to blackmail her in exchange for information regarding the conspiracy.

    P 
  • Painted-On Pants: Many of the women in Overwatch have this. D.Va, Mei, Sombra, Tracer, Widowmaker, and Mercy all have very tight clothing in just their default skins.
  • Palette Swap: The skins to varying degrees act like this; "rare" skins will only change either the main colour of the character's costume (Like D-va's bodysuit and MEKA) or certain highlights/accessories (Mercy's skirt and sleeves), "epic" skins change all the colours in character's clothing while "legendary" skins will change the look of the character entirely; however, each character started with four legendary skins, excluding preorder bonuses — but they are actually only two skins with two colour options each.
    • Overwatch 2 introduces a higher tier than Legendary: Mythic skins. Apart from drastically changing the character look, it also gives tons of unique lines during gameplay, new sound effects, and fully customizable with different colour pallettes along with armor/weapon design at any time. Some Mythic skins such as Cyber Demon Genji and A-7000 Wargod Ana also changes the voice inflection to be more deeper/distorted.
  • Past Experience Nightmare: "The Wastelander" starts with the Junker Queen dreaming of being kicked out of Junkertown into the wasteland as a child when Mason Howl took over.
  • Permanently Missable Content:
    • Only the top 500 players of each competitive season will ever see a special player icon to prove how skilled they really are. The rest of the player base will never earn them.
    • Averted with the holiday material. Unlike most games, which add new rewards each year and make the old ones unavailable to anybody who wasn't there, each season unlocks the ability to earn all of the previous years bonuses, as well as new ones.
  • Player Elimination: The game features two hard elimination game modes (3v3 and 6v6) where players that die are permanently out of the match until the next round. However, eliminated players are in a limbo state if a teammate is playing Mercy, who can resurrect eliminated teammates.
  • Play Every Day: The first match you win each day nets you a substantial XP bonus.
  • Playing Card Motifs: The Overwatch Anniversary sprays for each character depict each of them as a different playing card. Junkrat and Roadhog are the Joker cards.
  • Playing Games at Work: In the cinematic trailer for the game, a guard at the museum can be seen playing Hearthstone on his tablet instead of monitoring the security cameras. Hearthstone can also be found on various tablets and monitors throughout the maps, mostly at research stations and consoles where important work should be being conducted.
  • Plot Armor:
    • Widowmaker's helmet was broken by Ana's sniper round, but not only did she survive, she wasn't even injured. She also survived being hit with Doomfist's gauntlet, which is said to be able to level a skyscraper.
    • Winston shrugs off shots from both Widowmaker and Reaper, withstands electrocution, and survives having a multi-ton machine fall on top of him. He is a heavily-armored gorilla, but even that should have limits.
    • Both Soldier: 76 and Reaper survived an explosion that led everyone to assume they had died. All Soldier got from it was a scar, but Reaper only survived mortal injury thanks to an experimental medical procedure (although he might wish he hadn't).
    • Genji survived being on the losing end of a sword duel thanks to being conveniently saved by Overwatch, but was wounded enough that the only way to permanently save him was to turn him into a Cyborg.
    • In an attempt to escape Mauga, Baptiste causes a massive explosion, with Mauga being gone when Baptiste checks the aftermath. Despite this, Baptiste himself suspects that Mauga survived, which is later confirmed by Sombra.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: Zarya and Torbjörn, who are anti-Omnic, although they have their reasons (Zarya is fighting a brutal war against the Omnics, and Torbjörn helped design many of the machines the Omnics would later use against him).
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Subverted, as although the Omnics are meant to be viewed sympathetically and Roadhog and Junkrat are semi-villainous, Talon is composed of both omnics and humans (although they would like to see the two groups go to war again).
  • Power Armor: Lots of 'em.
    • Winston wears armor with back-mounted jets which allow him to do extremely long jumps.
    • Pharah has her "Raptor"-model armor, complete with jets allowing her to glide and do long jumps, wrist-mounted concussion blasters, and Macross Missile Massacre functionality.
    • Reinhardt uses his "Crusader"-model armor, which essentially makes him a futuristic version of a Knight in Shining Armor. Heck, his entire order of Crusaders uses them!
    • Torbjörn's armor apparently contains a "Personal Forge", allowing him to create armor for his team on the battlefield as long as he has scrap metal to use.
    • Mercy uses the "Valkyrie swift response suit", allowing her to fly around the battlefield and swiftly aid any companion in need.
  • Practice Target Overkill: One of Hanzo's highlight openings shows him not only Splitting the Arrow, but splitting the entire target as well.
  • Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Most heroes have a specific line they say when they activate their ultimate ability.
  • Private Military Contractors: Helix Security is a mercenary/private military company that appears to have stepped in to fill the void left by Overwatch's collapse, but they don't have the same pedigree or celebrity factor, and they're a bit shadier with their protocol. They ran the prison facility that held Doomfist until his breakout, and Pharah — who wanted to join Overwatch but never could due to her mother’s insistence — is currently palling around with them, presumably because they're the next-best thing.
  • Punctuated Pounding: In the Hero short, Soldier:76 repeatedly bashes a piñata against a thug's head, declaring "These! Aren't! Your! Streets! Anymore!".
  • The Purge: The Masquerade comic has Doomfist and his allies conduct one on Talon, bringing the rest of the organization more in line with Doomfist's vision for it.
  • Putting the Band Back Together:
    • The main plot of the current story is kicked off when Winston reinstates Overwatch after having decided that "enough is enough", when Talon attempted to kill all former agents and coming close to death himself against Reaper. Who all will be members of the newly reformed Overwatch is anyone's guess, but the ending of Recall suggests that Tracer, Cassidy, Genji, Mercy, Torbjörn, and Reinhardt are going to be members alongside Winston, as they were among the many agents (the rest unidentified) being recalled at the end (the formermost even Jumped at the Call)
    • Said word for word by Cassidy to Echo when he reactivates her.

    Q-R 
  • Queer Colors: The short story "As You Are", which reveals Baptiste as bisexual, has page headers and footers in the colors of the bi pride flag, and the illustration of Baptiste and Pharah shows the sky behind them in similar colors to the flag.
  • Quick Melee: With the exception of Reinhardt and Brigitte (whose primary weapons are already a melee attack), every character has access to a swift melee strike that deals a small amount of damage, usually in the form of a pistol whip or punch. Though its actual damage output is (usually) negligible, it can be thrown out in a split second regardless of most other circumstances, making it occasionally useful as a finishing strike, or in Genji and Roadhog's cases, a core part of their devastating combos.
  • Raised Hand of Survival: The Halloween exclusive RIP Victory Poses, mainly of Heroes clenching their weapons, though with some exceptions like Widowmaker's variant has her legs sticking out and Reaper's has him raising himself from his grave.
  • Random Number God: Loot Boxes, earned from leveling up, randomly drop four prizes, including skins, sprays, player icons, emotes, voice lines and in-game currency used to buy them in the Hero Gallery.
  • Raster Vision: Raster lines appear as an overlay on kill screen playbacks.
  • Real Robot Genre: The MEKA. They are used by pro gamers drafted in by the South Korean army to fight off Omnic invaders. However, they aren't even close to being the end-all-be-all in terms of combat abilities, just another contributing factor to the World of Badass that is Overwatch.
  • Real Fake Door: A number of maps have walls with a closed door or window on one side and a solid wall on the other side, or elevators that have no other floors, to the point that it may well be a running gag.
  • Reclaimed by Nature: "The Last Bastion" animated short shows that Bastion himself started off like this. After the Omnic war, he was shut down in the middle of a forest, and was soon overtaken by lichen and moss until Ganymede landed in front of his sensor and woke him up. One of his game skins features the moss and dirt clumps still on his body.
  • Recurring Extra: Dragons featured a nameless Japanese gangster with a goofy pompadour getting attacked by Hanzo. Said gangster appears again in Kiriko (revealed via leaked workprint to be internally named "Pompamoto"), revealing his affiliation with the Hashimoto clan before he gets kicked in the face by Kiriko.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning:
    • The Talon agents who attack Winston's hideout in the "Recall" short have helmets with glowing red eyepieces.
    • When entering Wraith Mode, Reaper's eyes give off a menacing crimson glow. Some of his skins also give him perpetually glowing eyes.
    • One of Bastion's alternate skins colors its vertical eye slit red. Appropriately, it's titled "Omnic Crisis". Bastion is generally depicted as having its "eye" turn from blue to red when entering a hostile mode.
    • While Soldier: 76 himself doesn't have red eyes (his eyes are blue), his tactical visor does, albeit in the form of a single horizontal red slit through which he sees.
    • When he enters Beast Mode, Winston's eyes glow reddish-orange and exude lightning bolts.
  • Reduced-Downtime Features: While most heroes feature primary weapons with a finite capacity and thus require reloading, all heroes have infinite reserve ammunition. This is so players won't have to scour for ammo packs, something that will take them out of the fight, as well as to put focus on a hero's abilities. What's more, Torbjörn or Mercy can switch between their weapon and tool, and when they equip the latter, their unequipped weapon will automatically reload itself after a short time.
  • Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Regular health is restored by specific sources of healing (though in Mercy's case this includes a passive self-heal), but shield health regenerates on its own after a few seconds without being damaged. Only four characters have shields by default; Zarya and Symmetra have shields making up half of their total health pool, Zenyatta's shield makes up three quarters of his health pool, and Lifeweaver's shield makes up between a fourth and a fifth of his health pool.
  • Rejecting the Inheritance: Hanzo got into a fight with his brother Genji, and believes him dead: so Hanzo abdicates from his inherited position as clan leader out of shame. Genji comes back as a cyborg and forgives his brother. This is related to a Japanese story that might be the ur-example, about two dragon brothers.
  • Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: A pretty large running theme in Overwatch, it seems.
    • Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes are assumed to have died in the destruction of Overwatch HQ in Switzerland, but both survived, and are actually Soldier 76 and Reaper, respectively]
    • Ana Amari was presumed dead after Widowmaker shot out her eye.
    • Amélie Lacroix aka Widowmaker herself was thought to be dead after the murder of her husband Gerard. Naturally, it was quite the shocking revelation to learn that not only was she alive, but actually the one responsible for Gerard's death and is now a Talon operative. The heartbreaking part however, is that they don't know the true reason behind it and assume she did it all For the Evulz.
    • Lena Oxton was presumed dead after the incident with the Slipstream before she began to phase in and out of existence.
    • Genji was presumed dead after Hanzo was forced by the elders of the Shimada clan to kill him, but Overwatch saved him by giving him a new cyborg body. The revelation of Genji's survival years later shuts down Hanzo emotionally.
  • Retcon:
    • There are numerous notes that Mei wrote and left scattered around Ecopoint: Antarctica. If you take them into consideration with the "Rise and Shine" short, there are some inconsistencies and details that were omitted in favor of telling a more straight-forward and dramatic story.
      • Her notes imply that she was the one who suggested that the team used the cryo-stasis chambers to hibernate, but her video log at the beginning of the short shows her using Air Quotes when she says "Hibernation", meaning that she's just going along with someone else's idea, supported by the fact that the others have to tell her that she's holding them up.
      • One note shows Snowball being upgraded to gradually freeze the surrounding area, just as her Ultimate functions. It's unknown just when she thought up the idea, but probably wasn't after he gives up his remaining power to help Mei finish building her freeze ray.
      • Another note right next to Snowball's upgrade indicates that repairing the communication antennae was on the To-Do list for some time]], though the short may have just omitted her writing the note.
    • Originally, it was said that Soldier: 76 joined the military prior to the Omnic Crisis and only planned to serve a brief stint before heading home, but his work ethic and courage caught the eye of military brass which led to him earning a position in the Solder Enhancement Program; all of this before the crisis even broke out. However, in the Uprising comic, Soldier: 76 instead claims that he only joined the military following the crisis starting so he could help fight, with him additionally claiming he signed up for the Soldier Enhancement Program himself, rather than being selected by military brass.
    • Zenyatta was originally listed as being 20 on the original website biography when the game was first released, but by the time of Overwatch 2, he was updated to being 33 (2 takes place merely 2 years after its predecessor, making this a very pointed jump in time). The new lore of 2 properly established him as having been alive and active prior to the Omnic Crisis, which would have otherwise been impossible with his original age given the Crisis happened thirty-something years ago.
  • Retraux: At the end of a match on Hollywood, the usual Team Shot of the winning team features a film reel effect and the caption "Fin." at the bottom, in a style similar to early 20th-century films.
  • The Reveal: After Sombra's animated debut short, it looked like she managed to fool her team into thinking she tried and failed to kill Katya Volskaya. Come the Masquerade comic and it turns out Reaper knows what she did, he just hasn't acted on it yet.
  • Rewards Pass: Implemented as of Overwatch 2 as the main method of obtaining loot following the discontinuation of Loot Boxes. Like most examples, the Battle Pass sets up a list of loot available per multi-month season that can be unlocked by grinding XP, granting some freebies to all players, but providing substantially more content to those who purchase the Premium pass. Levels can also be directly advanced using Overwatch Coins.
  • Robosexual: There seem to be a few human-Omnic couples in the crowd seen in the "Alive" short, with the woman who reacts to Mondatta's death standing next to an Omnic who has his arm draped over her shoulder. Those same two characters are seen in the original announcement trailer, the woman helping the injured Omnic while both are being protected from rioters by Reinhardt's shield.
  • Robotic Undead: "Zomnics" exist within the fictional story that is told in the annual Halloween Terror event, Junkenstein's Revenge. They are "twisted abominations" that are neither living nor dead and built mainly out of machine parts. Their names are a pun on "Zombie" and "Omnics" (what sentient machines are called in the setting of Overwatch). Also, in the actual Overwatch universe, there are various posters for a film called Rise of Zomnics, which show robotic zombies rising from graveyards or shambling like zombies.
  • Robot War:
    • In an event that would later be called the Omnic Crisis, robots made by humanity turned against it, causing Overwatch to be formed in order to fight them and put an end to it. However, it was a long time in the past, and man and omnic are now starting to integrate. On the other hand, a second Omnic Crisis is happening in Russia and the recent assassination of Tekhartha Mondatta, a prominent Omnic monk, might make things worse.
    • The Comic "Mission Statement" is about Pharah and her team attempting to stop the Anubis AI from starting one.
  • Rocket Jump: Junkrat actually has this built into his mechanics, with his Concussion Mine allowing him to send himself high into the air to reach out-of-the-way locations. Some other heroes can do this but to nowhere near as great an extent, see Soldier: 76, Bastion, Zarya, and Pharah, the last of which has a jetpack anyway.
  • Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Taken quite literally in the "Justice Rains From Above" brawl, which restricts players to Mercy and Pharah, leading to all players attempting hit each other with rockets twice before the healer can get to their opponent.
  • Rousseau Was Right: Evil in the world of Overwatch does not exist in a vacuum. The villains are still unambiguously not good nor admirable people, but they have each been molded into who they are now through the environments and circumstances surrounding them, rather than their own intrinsic natures. Many were once good or at least potentially good people whose upbringing or misfortunes have twisted them into villainy. The heroes are similarly good people whose hardships have either worn them down or driven them to prosper through adversity. Good or bad, everyone at the end of the day is ultimately still human.

    S 
  • Scavenged Punk: Junkertown, a city built of scrap metal in the Australian Outback.
  • Scenery Gorn: Eichenwalde, a war-torn map full of destroyed infrastructure and Omnics that have long since been put out of commission, and Junkertown, a Scavenged Punk city in the Australian Outback.
  • Scenery Porn: Every playable area in the game is filled with detail and is beautifully lit, helped by certain maps having different modes for different times of the day. Each one of the maps is densely filled with its own set of unique props and assets that tell the story of where you are and what it's like. Special mentions go to Eichenwalde, which while it crosses over into Scenery Gorn for its history, is still a gorgeous small town and giant castle surrounded by nature, and maps with sunsets such as the CtF version of Ilios and Oasis, both of which have amazing lighting and beautiful scenery.
  • Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink: Overwatch packs as many unique sci-fi tropes as you could possibly fit into the setting, regardless of how different they are from each other. Best reflected with the roster, it includes, but is not limited to: a cyber ninja, a hyper intelligent gorilla, a cyberpunk-like super hacker, a cowboy with a bionic arm, a Super-Soldier, a shadow-casting villain mutated by mad science, two junk-based scrappers who came from the Australian wasteland, a religious robot, a genetically modified Brainwashed and Crazy femme fatale sniper, a teenage mech pilot, a futuristic knight, and a mad scientist bent on improving the world. That still isn't all of them.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: The main plot of the games is kicked off when Winston recalls the Overwatch agents even though the Overwatch program has been officially outlawed and carrying out the activity will make you a target of the United Nations, not to mention Talon. However, as Talon has been left without anyone to oppose them, they have gone too far in their actions, which makes the return of Overwatch (legally or not) a justified action.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • The timeline of the Omnic Crisis is never made completely clear. For the most part, it's mentioned as having occurred around 30 years ago, though when it ended is more unclear. Orisa's old website biography mentions it's been 20 years since the crisis ended, yet shortly after in the Uprising video, Tracer mentions it's been 20 years since the crisis ended, but as Uprising itself is set 7 years in the past, this puts the crisis as having ended around 27 years ago. This latter version would seemingly be picked as the canonical version, as Ramattra's website biography would choose this version.
    • In New Blood #2, Pharah is shown to have a picture of her as a young child riding atop Winston. This would seem to indicate Winston arrived on Earth a long time ago, at least 20 or more years based on Pharah being 32. However, Wrecking Ball's origin story shows how Hammond tagged along and arrived on Earth at the same time, landing near Junkertown and shortly after participating in the Scrapyard; Junker Queen is shown ruling during this, and as her website biography mentions she's been ruling Junkertown for 10 years, indicates Winston and Hammond had to have arrived on Earth within the last 10 years give or take, making it incredibly unlikely Winston could have been on Earth while Pharah was a child.
    • Junker Queen's website biography mentions how she's ruled Junkertown for around 10 years, which would logically put The Wastelander short as occurring 10 years ago. Junkrat and Roadhog make cameos in the video, and while it's believable for Roadhoag to look and sound exactly the same, the same doesn't apply to Junkrat, who should be around 15 or so during the short.
    • During Recall, Winston looks at some old photographs. In one of these, both Ana and Genji are present, however, Genji is shown with the cybernetics he wears in-game, rather than his Blackwatch enchantments, implying the picture was taken around the time of Storm Rising or at some point after. Ana, meanwhile, is shown with black hair, yet later during the Uprising comic, prior to Genji receiving his new cybernetics, her hair is shown as beginning to turn gray.
    • In Old Soldiers, Soldier: 76 says he thought Ana was dead, yet immediately afterwards in Bastet he claims he knew Ana wasn't dead.
  • Self-Deprecation: A very meta one from D.Va, who may say this in the Hanamura map:
    D.Va: Blizzard games? That's so old-school!
  • Shabby Heroes, Well-Dressed Villains: A variant. Just about everyone who isn't a Junker is a pretty spiffy dresser, but the Talon agents are all equipped with professionally engineered, specialized equipment with a unifying aesthetic, clearly benefitting from a shared manufacturer that is active and dedicated to supplying them. Vishkar also affords Symmetra an utterly immaculate garb and some pristine prosthetics. Since Overwatch is long out of commission, the heroes have to make do with what they already have or what they can find, and thus they lack both the cutting edge quality to their gear and any shared consistent visual traits. Tracer wears her personal bomber jacket which is visibly frayed around the edges, Torbjörn trudges about in welder's gear, and Reinhardt's armor had to be reforged on the fly while out in the German boonies. Compare the aforementioned characters' base designs to their unique Uprising skins, which represent Overwatch when it was fully operational.
  • Shaped Like Itself:
    • In the diner on Route 66, there's a sign that says "Credit Chips NOT accepted" next to a QR scanner code that says "Credit Chips NOT accepted."
    • The map "Busan" is located in...well, Busan, something which makes the text on the loading page for the map amusing to read:
      Busan
      Busan
  • Ship Sinking:
    • The reveals in the holiday comic, "Reflections", have made it a lot less likely for some ships to become Canon.
      • Tracer is revealed to have a girlfriend, not only revealing that she's gay (her specific orientation having been confirmed via Twitter) but ending any ships with other characters.
      • Torbjörn wasn't shipped that often, but he's shown to be in a relationship with a young and beautiful woman. Blizzard also confirmed that Brigitte is his youngest daughter and the kids in the Relections comic are his grandchildren.
    • Michael Chu confirmed that Reinhardt was not Pharah's father, shooting down the possibility that Ana and Reinhardt were a couple in the era when Overwatch was formed. Many more holes were shot in its starboard hull by giving her a spray called "Newborn", in which Ana is holding a newborn Pharah, with her clearly NOT-Reinhardt father standing next to her. This also sunk Reaper or Soldier 76 as Pharah's father, but didn't sink the possibilities of a current relationship with Ana with any of the three.
    • The short story "Bastet" sunk any chance of a relationship between Soldier: 76 and Ana, as it revealed that the former was in a relationship with a man during Overwatch's glory days (and was later confirmed on twitter by Michael Chu as explicitly gay).
  • Ship Tease:
    • Valentine's Day themed voice lines hint at a ship between Genji and Mercy, with the two having lines where they exchange chocolates with each other. Genji admits that the chocolates aren't Swiss, but Mercy says they'll have to do. These voice lines can only be heard during Valentine's Day/White Day while playing on Hanamura.
    • In 2018, they added a line where Hanzo considered Symmetra a 'kindred spirit' after hearing her declaration about order and discipline.
  • Shockwave Stomp: Doomfist's Seismic Slam and his and Reinhardt's Ultimates, Meteor Strike and Earthshatter respectively, all involve them striking the ground to damage, stun or move enemies around. To a lesser extent, Lúcio's Sound Barrier starts with him striking the ground, and Winston's Jump Pack causes minor damage when he lands.
  • Shoot the Medic First:
    • While always good policy, this is especially true with Mercy. She can heal characters very quickly and resurrect characters who have died, making her a prime target to kill first, or else she will draw out fights by reversing any kills that are earned. She is good at evading damage by shooting herself toward teammates, taking her towards backup and out of the line of fire.
    • Ana has the similar problem of attracting a serious amount of hate since she heals more than any other healer in the game, her ultimate (Nano Boost) can be game-changing and it charges very fast. In contrast to Mercy though she can defend herself pretty well generally.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Reaper, Roadhog, D.Va and Doomfist all have spreadfire weapons as their main armament. The bullets spread out over range and the damage falls off dramatically, forcing the characters to get up close to do real damage.
  • Shout-Out: Has its own page.
  • Shown Their Work: In one of Hanzo's victory animations where he shoots an arrow towards the screen, the arrow is shown oscillating while in flight. In other words, the same as with real arrows.
  • Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: While having a more extensive background than its precursor TF2, the game, as of its release, has yet to explain why the battles are occurring between this cavalcade of characters.
  • Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Bastion is a low-to-mid Average Joe Android due to being a former war machine who is now a sort of Amnesiac Hero. Orisa is a higher-tier Average Joe Android, possessing intelligence enough to converse with others and possessing a sense of morality, but lacking in nuance when interacting with organics. Zenyatta, being a Religious Robot, is a bit harder to pin down, but he seems to be mid-Nobel-Bot, with his ultimate, Transcendence, boosting him up to near-godlike levels.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: The story is a Cerebus Rollercoaster that explores dark backstory of war, strife, loss and madness while combining it all with silliness like livestreaming gamer soldiers, a peanut butter-obsessed genius ape, and a super-intelligent hamster in a robot hamster ball.
  • Snowball Fight: "Mei's Snowball Offensive" for the winter holiday event. Everyone plays as Mei (while Soldier: 76 narrates), and you only have one snowball to hit your enemies with. You reload by sucking up snow piles found on the ground, and getting hit is an instant kill. Mei's ultimate creates a flurry above her, giving her unlimited snowballs for about 7 seconds.
  • So Bad, It's Good: Invoked by Jeff Kaplan on the forums in regards to Zarya's "Totally 80's" skin.
    Jeff Kaplan: This skin is the single most polarizing piece of content we've ever made. Half our team loves it. Half our team hates it. We told the half that hates it that it's ok to be wrong every now and then.
  • Solar Punk: Numbani, the "City of Harmony", featuring curved bronze skyscrapers and African tribal decorations, where humans and robots live together in peace.
  • Sound-Coded for Your Convenience:
    • Each hero says something specific when they activate their ultimate ability, with important variations:
      • For some, the line depends on which team they're on. For example, when Soldier: 76 uses his ultimate, he says "Tactical Visor activated!" if he's on your team, and "I've got you in my sights!" if he's on the opposing team. The biggest example of this shows with Ana's ultimate callout. Since Nanoboost targets one ally, she has four different ultimate voicelines: Two for the enemy teamnote , one for her teammates, and another for the specific ally who is being buffed.
      • Some characters who aren't native English speakers will say their ultimate lines in their native language - but only if you're either the person playing them or on the opposing team. If you're on their team, they'll say it in English. Hearing a loud line in a non-English language is your cue to get far away from whoever said it as fast as possible. (As some fans put it: "If you hear angry Japanese shouting, run away.")
    • Every hero produces distinct, unique sounds, and recognizing what heroes are out-of-sight but nearby through sound is an important gameplay element. This is especially highlighted with flankers: Enemy footsteps sound much louder than ally footsteps, and as pointed in the tool-tips, the more dangerous heroes tend to have heavier footsteps. Some heroes can get around this by crouch-walking to mute their footsteps (Zenyatta just silently floats), but others can't (Roadhog's chain and heavy breathing can still be heard, and D.Va in her mech is incapable of crouching), and knowing who's capable of hiding and who isn't is an important thing to learn.
  • Space Is Slow Motion: In the "Horizon Lunar Colony" map, there's an airlock you can use to leave the colony and explore the surface. Doing so doesn't cause any actual damage, but it does gradually slow your movement speed to a crawl.
  • Space Opera: The "Starwatch" event of season 4 of Overwatch 2 is themed as one of these, featuring skins and an in-game brawl that pay loving homage to the likes of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. The story of the event and its brawl pits the ragtag La Résistance of the Watchers storming the base of the Infinite Empire, ruled by Galactic Emperor Sigma.
  • Springs, Springs Everywhere: Jump pads were found on Estádio das Rãs, a map only played during the temporary Lúcioball brawl, allowing players to boost themselves up to high altitudes (they were also present on Sydney Harbor Arena and Busan Stadium which had different locations, aesthetics, and time of day but were functionally identical). Later on, a single jump pad was made a permanent fixture in the Oasis map, with Blizzard saying it's an element they wish to experiment with, as it has meta-changing potential for several heroes. There are also jump pads found on the deathmatch maps, Chateau Guillard and Petra.
  • Squee: A quiet one in the cinematic trailer, when the younger kid reacts to Tracer dropping her Catchphrase in front of him. He doesn't say anything, but his smile says it all.
  • Stat Overflow:
    • Brigitte's ultimate, Rally, gives her and all of her allies temporary armor at a rate of 15/second, capping at 100. The armor is lost after 30 seconds.
    • Doomfist's passive ability gives him 30 temporary shields each time he hits an enemy with an ability (or seventy-five if that ability is his ultimate). These temporary shields are capped at 150 and decay at a rate of 3/second.
    • Lúcio's ultimate, Sound Barrier, gives him and all of his allies 750 temporary shields that decay over the course of 6 seconds.
    • Sigma's Kinetic Grasp gives him temporary shields based on how much damage he absorbed with the ability, and the shields start to decay at a rate of 7/second three seconds after he gains them.
    • Torbjörn's Overload gives him 100 armor that lasts for the duration of the ability, then is lost.
    • Wrecking Ball's Adaptive Shield ability gives him 100 temporary shields, plus 100 for each enemy near him. This ability lasts for 7 seconds.
  • Stats Dissonance: In this game, everything is heavily based on context, with a virtually incalculable number of circumstances that can alter how much health someone has or how much damage they can take. For example, most characters' damage drops sharply with distance, meaning an attack that would normally be a One-Hit KO may be easily survived at the right range. Also, some characters have abilities that allow them to soak up more damage than expected; although Lucio is generally considered a Fragile Speedster due to only having 200 HP, he also possesses a constant health regeneration which can be temporarily boosted to make him more resilient. Thus, in a real match, it's almost impossible to take into full account exactly how much damage it will take to put down a character, which is why high level players generally opt for "burst" damage, as it has the highest chance of killing a character before they can be healed or protected.
  • The Stool Pigeon: Sombra acted as this when she was with the Los Muertos gang. Using her hacking skills, she uncovered dirty information and released them to the public world. This caused the CEO of LumériCo to step down after (false) evidence of his shady money dealings came to light and sparked a revolution in Mexico.
  • Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: "Control Mode" involves battling over "checkpoints" scattered around the map by fighting off the other team and standing on the point. Capturing a point gives a team +1% to it's score, which goes up every 1.2 seconds. When a team reaches 100%, they win the round, and teams must win twice-in-a-row to win the match.
  • Studiopolis: The Hollywood map takes place in a facsimile of the famous tinsel town, with the first part of the map being a Chinese theater and the entrance of a movie studio. Upon getting into the next section, both teams then do battle in a fake Old Western town, with high-tech equipment and lighting hidden throughout. Then, the final phase of the map starts in the back end of the studio, with old props and other things stored aside. The end goal (for the attacking team) is to reach the director's trailer that's parked right outside another theater.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Falling off the map into the water is an instant death.
  • Superhero Prevalence Stages:
    • The days before and immediately after Overwatch formed was a lot like the Golden Age of comics, with heroes operating independently until they were united in a war against a much bigger and global enemy.
    • The peak of Overwatch's power was like the Silver Age, with a more formal organization to run the world's heroes, and very few enemies or threats that actually posed a threat to them.
    • Overwatch's fall, and beyond, is like the Bronze Age of comics, with heroes now fighting each other, corruption setting in, and villainous groups gaining the power and ability to defeat or even kill noteworthy heroes.
  • Super Mode: Some ultimates are this, altering the hero's abilities in different ways, from stat changes to more drastic effects. Ana's Nano Boost grants this to someone else, increasing their damage and defenses. God help you if they use their own while doing so.
  • Surveillance Station Slacker: In the cinematic trailer, the guy who is supposed to guard Overwatch's museum plays Hearthstone instead.

    T 
  • Take That!:
    • The prices in Hollywood seem very much like this, given how movie theatres in Real Life notoriously overcharge for refreshments, as well as how some bottled water costs more than sodas.
    • The animated short Honor and Glory is a meta one to all of the players who don't play Reinhardt as intended. The younger Reinhardt repeats all of their mistakes to a tee, charging blindly into the enemy and getting themselves in trouble, leaving their teammates without a tank character to protect them.
    • In one pre-match conversation, Lúcio asks if Sojourn (a Toronto native) has a favorite hockey team, to which she admits she's more of a basketball fan. Lúcio teases her for not being a fan of her home team, which she doesn't deny, which is likely a jab towards the Toronto Maple Leafs and their reputation for being the most chronic failures in the NHL (this could also make the aforementioned basketball reference a more flattering Shout-Out to the Toronto Raptors).
  • Tattered Flag: The graphic of the ruins of the bombed-out Overwatch HQ shows a ragged Overwatch flag standing amidst the debris.
  • Tattoo as Character Type: A portion of the cast has tattoos, namely Pharah, Ana, Junkrat, Roadhog, Widowmaker, Hanzo, Torbjörn, Zarya, and Lúcio. Cassidy used to have a tattoo, but that belonged to the arm that he lost and was replaced with a cybernetic. In each case, the tattoo means something to indicate their character:
    • Ana's eye tattoo represents her patriotism for her Egyptian heritage, while Pharah has a similar tattoo to show her (struggling) connection to her mother. (Pharah notes in Mission Statement that the tattoo symbolizes protection. She thought at first that it would protect her, but she realizes at the end of the comic that it marks her as the protector.)
    • Junkrat is a criminal with a skull tattoo on his right arm, a good indicator that he's a bad guy. His partner-in-crime Roadhog also fits, but his also shows his affinity with pigs.
    • Widowmaker has three tattoos, namely a giant spider tattoo on her back, French spider-themed tattoos on her right forearm, and a Talon tattoo on her left thigh which show that she identifies with spiders and is a Talon agent. It's also to show the dissonance between her current self and her past self before she was brainwashed, as back when she was the innocent Amélie her skin was devoid of tattoos.
    • Hanzo has a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm, which show that he was once part of a yakuza that he was set to inherit before leaving the clan.
    • Torbjörn has a gear-themed tattoo on his left arm, to show he's a mechanic. His daughter Brigitte has a matching one.
    • Zarya has her weight record (512) tattooed on her left arm, showing that despite being a sergeant in the Russian Defense Forces, she still enjoys bodybuilding.
    • Lúcio has a frog-themed tattoo on his left arm, representing his theme around them as a professional DJ.
    • Cassidy formerly had a tattoo of the Deadlock Gang on his left arm, which he was once a part of before joining Blackwatch. Since the arm has since been replaced by a cybernetic, he no longer has tattoos.
    • Mauga has loads of tattoos based around a mix of traditional Samoan "tatau" and original designs. Tatau are a significant element in Samoan culture (as well as an extremely painful one given they require traditional tools), representing family lineage and origins, collectively helping represent Mauga as a badass exemplar of a Samoan who loves his people and culture.
  • Team Shot: At the end of a match, the winning team is shown standing together before the Play of the Game/Match. They're arranged by size, with the largest team members in the middle and then getting smaller to each side. Players can acquire different Victory Poses to change the pose of their character during this shot.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Some combinations of Heroes on the same team (particularly Overwatch and Talon) lead to conversations where it's clear that the involved Heroes are not too thrilled about having to work together:
    • Widowmaker and Tracer:
      Widowmaker: It looks like we will be working together.
      Tracer: Don't think I'm happy about that.
    • Symmetra and Lúcio:
      Symmetra: To think, I would have to work with a street ruffian.
      Lúcio: I'm not all that excited about this arrangement either.
    • Torbjörn and Bastion:
      Torbjörn: I hate working with these talking tin cans!
      Bastion: *sad beeps*
  • Teleporters and Transporters:
    • Tracer uses a chronal device that lets her hop around like a bunny on steroids. She can also revert to where she was three seconds ago.
    • Sombra can throw a Translocator anywhere and warp back to that point anytime within 15 seconds. Voice chatter implies it has some connection with Tracer's abilities.
    • Symmetra is able to create two-way portals for her (with a maximum distance between them being 25 meters) and her team mates to use throughout the map.
    • Reaper can mark a location in his field of sight and teleport there.
  • Temporary Online Content: The various seasonal character skins and goodies are only obtainable from their respective lootboxes. Once a given event is over, its contents cannot be unlocked again until it reruns the next year, or until the annual Anniversary where all seasonal items can be purchased with credits, or gotten from lootboxes.
  • Tempting Fate: Can be invoked in a few circumstances if the character makes a Badass Boast and then gets Killed Mid-Sentence.
    Reinhardt: I am capturing the objective! Try and stop—AAAAAHHH!
    D.Va: I'm capturing the point! Don't worry, I got t—UUUGGGH!
    Junkrat: Tick, tock, tick, tock. Weeeee're gonna wiiiiiin....RAAAGH!
  • Theme Park Version: All of the stages (with the exception of Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Numbani, and Oasis) are theme park versions of their respective countries, loading as many traditional and idealized hallmarks as possible. Some specific aversions include:
    • Dorado, was inspired by an image the team found of a colorful Mexican town on Google Images which actually turned out to be of Riomaggiore, Italy.
    • Having never seen Hollywood, the map artists made the map according to their imagination of Hollywood. After their location visit, they started to change the map to more like reality, and had to be told to stop.
    • Deliberately averted with Oasis, with the team wishing to give a country that would usually be depicted as rather dreary (Iraq) a rather beautiful map, in recognition of the "see it for what it could be" philosophy followed by the developers (which is also a recurring theme in the lore), which favors rich imagery over gritty realism.
    • Played straight in terms of Blizzard World, a literal Blizzard theme park. One would imagine that the games represented would have to be toned down to fit in a family theme park.
  • Thrown Out the Airlock: Implied to be how Dr. Harold Winston and the other scientists on the Horizon Lunar Colony met their deaths.
  • To Be Lawful or Good:
    • Pharah's internal conflict revolved around this trope in the comic short "Mission Statement", choosing whether to save lives or complete the mission at any cost. She chooses the former.
    • Symmetra is a loyal employee of the Vishkar Corporation who believes in their good intentions to bring order to the world, but she has doubts if doing it by force is a good idea, which started when the Vishkar Corporation set fire to a favela when its residents refused to have their homes "improved", resulting in civilian casualties.
  • Token Non-Human: Of the original 21 heroes, only three weren't human. Bastion and Zenyatta were the Omnic representatives, while Winston is a sentient gorilla. As the roster expanded, they added another Omnic with Orisa and another non-human with Hammond, a sentient hamster, but there are still five times as many humans than non-humans.
  • Two Lines, No Waiting: So far, the focus is mainly about reuniting Overwatch and bringing back everything good that came with it, but many of the stories also are more about exploring the characters' arcs and Worldbuilding, including Soldier: 76 and Ana trying to figure out how Overwatch fell in the first place, Bastion's reawakening, the confrontation of the Shimada brothers, the Order Versus Chaos struggle between Symmetra (under Vishkar) and Lúcio, the general 'terror spree' of Junkrat and Roadhog, and so on.

    U-Z 
  • Uniqueness Rule: The game developed a couple of uniqueness rules over time to help with balancing issues in competitive play:
    • During the beta and at launch, it was possible to actually play multiples of the same hero in the same match, leading to memes of seeing 6 Winstons leaping on one character or 6 Bastions destroying through the other team. This was soon removed and each team could have only 1 of the same hero on it, though this did not extend to hero classes, allowing for a team to run multiples of the same class (tank, damage, support).
    • In the transition from Overwatch 1 to Overwatch 2, role-queue (which enforced a 2-2-2 team composition across the 3 classes) was changed, such that each team could only have a single tank hero, making what once was a 6v6 into a 5v5. This was done to better match the player base (tanks were the least played role in Overwatch 1) and to avoid some of the more controversial metas like "Double Shield", which were made possible by the presence of two tanks on the same team.
  • United Nations Is a Superpower: The UN not only unilaterally formed Overwatch, it also disbanded it and enforces the global prohibition against vigilante activity. After Overwatch is disbanded, the UN funds Helix Security, a private security firm, to act as a worldwide peacekeeping/paramilitary organization. Justified by the global nature of threats in the setting making it infeasible for most individual countries to deal with problems on their own, as well as the general trend of globalization.
  • Units Not to Scale: Not noticeable in first-person normally, but going third-person (either by emoting or just by watching other players) will show that the characters models aren't to scale with the rest of the world. (For example, a table will be as high as Tracer's chin, the transformaters are bigger than any characters, etc...)
  • Universal Poison: Any weapon with a chemical component to it will work on its victim regardless of whether the victim is flesh-and-blood, mostly-cyborg, a mech, or an Omnic. Lampshaded when Ana's sleep dart is used on D.Va when she's in her mech suit: It's the mech that gets put to sleep, and you can see D.Va frantically waggling the joysticks in the cockpit to try and get it to move.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Reversed in the Junkertown: The Plan short. Junkrat develops a cunning plan to sneak back into Junkertown: Put on inconspicuous disguises, push a cart full with money and explosives to the Queen's place, reveal their deception, detonate the explosives. At Roadhog's urging, he amends the plan with "run like hell" and "grab some of the gold on the way out", repeating the plan every time. When they put the plan into action, he immediately announces themselves as "Junkrat and Roadhog"...
  • Victory Pose: Each hero has a pose for when they appear on the victory screen as well as an victory animation for when they get the Play of the Game (or any highlight reel). Both versions have a standard "Heroic" pose, 3 or 4 unlockable poses, and (usually) a few event-exclusive victory poses.
  • Video Arcade: Some maps have arcade machines in the Attack spawn. Hanamura's Attack spawn in particular is a full-on game center; Genji remarks how he used to spend his days there.
  • Villain Episode:
    • Alive is shown largely from the perspective of Widowmaker, as she goes about her assassination of Mondatta while Tracer tries to stop her. She is successful.
    • Infiltration is about Reaper, Widowmaker, and their ally Sombra (who serves as the protagonist) as they try to assassinate Corrupt Corporate Executive Katya Volskaya.
    • Masquerade takes the above guys and girls and adds Doomfist to the mix as he returns and sets out to bring Talon in line with his own vision.
    • "Code of Violence" details Reyes' first mission with Talon some time after the incident at the Overwatch HQ, paired with Sombra and Widowmaker to extract a catatonic, gravity-warping man named "Subject Sigma", all while describing Reyes' permanent fall from heroism and transformation into Reaper.
  • Villain Protagonist: Reaper, Widowmaker, Junkrat, Roadhog, Sombra, Doomfist, Moira, and Ashe are playable "heroes," but are villains and criminals in one way or another in the lore. Symmetra could be considered an Anti-Villain Protagonist.
  • Villain World: The present setting of Overwatch is only one step away from this. With Overwatch out of the way, Talon has been busy reshaping the world as it desires, largely with great success. The only thing that prevents this from being ironclad is the fact that Talon's leadership was split between being content with their power and profit, or upholding the original goal of pushing the world into a massive conflict. Doomfist's return marked the end of that split, and a return to its true motives.
  • Wake Up Fighting: In "The Wastelander", the Junker Queen wakes up from a nightmare and immediately draws a knife, holding it in a defensive pose, panting, and looking around anxiously until she gathers herself.
  • The War Just Before: The titular organization was formed to fight a war with the Omnics, and after the war ended, Overwatch was disbanded. Now, a new conflict looms on the horizon, and Overwatch is being called back into the field.
  • Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Many of the Summer Olympic skins bear the flags or the flag's colors of their respective characters' home countries. Cassidy seems to be literally wearing a tattered American flag as a poncho in his.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist:
    • The Vishkar Corporation and its employees truly believe that everything they do will ultimately improve people's lives and bring order to the world. Dubious acts such as child-kidnapping (Child Prodigy Symmetra was taken from her family without their permission), taking over poor neighborhoods and running them like police states while calling it "improvement" (they did this to Lúcio's neighborhood in his backstory), and blowing up and setting a Brazilian favela on fire when people start opposing the company's plans for their homes (in the comic short "A Better World") were all done for the greater good.
    • From the tie-in comic "Destroyer", we have Sven, a fellow robotics engineer and former partner of Torbjörn. He piloted a giant-sized Omnic he and Torbjörn created to lay waste to the country of Kurjikstan because he believes it'll stop Kurjikstan from building deadly weapons that will be used to devastate the Earth in a nuclear war. Torbjörn thinks Sven's only doing it because he was paid to.
    • Sombra's storyline reveals that the Los Muertos gang (the same guys who beat up an Omnic and were chased after by Soldier: 76 in the animated short "Hero") is pissed at the government for favoring the rich and powerful, so they decided to incite violent revolution by any means possible.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: There is Fantastic Racism toward Omnics, even extending to some of the player characters like Torbjörn, Zarya, and Roadhog. On a meta level, the animated shorts don't let humans get killed on-screen (although they almost certainly get killed) but are perfectly fine showing Omnics getting headshot, arrows through their chest, and beaten with a baseball bat, and in Uprising, they're just hordes of Mooks to kill. Also, Bastion is the only hero that gets completely destroyed when it dies while the more human-like Zenyatta and Orisa simply cry out in pain but collapse intact.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The sapient primates on the moon colony who killed all the humans and took over are not seen during the flashback sequences of Recall and have yet to make any appearance or be given any reference outside of Winston's backstory. With the addition of the Horizon Lunar Colony as a new Assault map, the Attacker side can see several paused screens of the apes (including two chimpanzees and an orangutan) monkeying around and making a ruckus, but the apes themselves are absent, with Winston remarking that they don't seem to come to the battle area much and are in another part of the colony (a map of the main Horizon building where the stage is set shows that the apes are scattered about the colony ring but are not close to the section of the building the teams are fighting for contol of).
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The exact locations of most stages within their countries are not known. Even for Route 66, Lijiang Tower and Eichenwalde, exactly where the stages are located on the highway/river/forested mountain range is not known; at least Eichenwalde is said to be located in the "middle" of the Black Forest. note  The exceptions are Watchpoint: Gibraltar (located on the Rock of Gibraltar), Hollywood (where the attacking team starts out on Hollywood Boulevard), and King's Row (where you can see London's Big Ben tower).
  • Whispering Ghosts: The vast, catacomb-like interior of the Petra map has some unusual whispers throughout the creepy ambient sound. This is likely a nod to the fact the actual Petra in Jordan is believed to be haunted, with reports of similar whispers being heard at night.
  • With Catlike Tread: A major gameplay element is that enemies make more distinct sounds than allies, particularly footsteps, even through walls. As pointed out in tooltips, the more dangerous heroes to be flanked by such as Reaper (who wears heavy boots) and Winston (who's a giant gorilla) tend to have louder footsteps to alert their enemies, but this can be negated by crouch-walking (Zenyatta, who simply floats, has no footstep sounds at all, though he should usually use this more for getting away rather than setting up ambushes).
  • World of Badass: Goes without saying that the world of Overwatch is populated by badasses, and they come in a variety of different ways.
  • World of Ham: Glory be! Overwatch has the heart of a Pixar movie and the soul of a comic book, and it revels in its two-fisted inspirations. The presentation all around is deliciously grandiose, with the visuals, sound design, the cast and even the direction, framing and choreography of the story materials all engineered to wrench as much emotion from the characters and the audience as possible. From the young lady who will happily dance and flip her way through a hail of live gunfire on foot while giggling to the old knight who will rally his comrades at the top of his lungs as he roars across the battlefield in his rocket-propelled armor, every character is bombastically over-the-top, and each of them is brought to life through lovingly exaggerated, cartoonish animations and some very enthusiastic voice acting. Even the stoic Widowmaker has an air of sinister, breathless melodrama about her, and the ever-tranquil Zenyatta somehow manages to be theatrical about wishing peace of mind upon his friends. The only character who doesn't really mesh is the professional Symmetra, who speaks very clinically and never even raises her voice. On the other hand, you could argue that her fixation with order is so extreme that her dedication to pursuing it comes across as ostentatious in its own right.
  • Would Hurt a Child:
    • The Vishkar Corporation wants to bring order to the world, not caring if even children get hurt because it's all done for the greater good. In the comic short "A Better World", this results in a young girl getting caught in a fire when the Vishkar Corporation blows up her neighborhood favela in order to force the local people to accept their "improvements". While the girl survives thanks to Symmetra's timely intervention, her face is irreparably burnt.
    • The Los Muertos gang in "Hero" throw a live grenade at a young girl to get Soldier: 76 off their backs. It works, as Soldier: 76 runs off to save the girl instead of continuing his ruthless pursuit of them.
  • Wretched Hive: War, unchecked crime, corporate exploitation and virulent tensions have allowed these to emerge even in places that would be considered gentrified in our own world today. A few of them figure into the plot, and many of them are playable as maps.
    • Rio's favelas are still around just like in real life, and they remain an ill-kept squalor for society's destitute. A Better World and Lúcio’s backstory actually deconstruct this notion to an extent, as both show that while the favelas are far from ideal living conditions, the inhabitants are honest, exploited people who are just trying to live their lives and contend with the meager circumstances they've been dealt. It's the Vishkar Corporation's attempts to "improve" the situation without actually taking the citizens' concerns into account that leads to making things worse.
    • The King's Row district of London is a hotbed of tension between humans and omnics, who have almost no rights and are kept under heavy surveillance amid abuse from the human townsfolk. Racial animosity is so bad that it has escalated into outright urban warfare on at least one occasion, and the assassination of a prominent peace advocate has caused tensions in the present to once again reach a boiling point. Even disregarding the race issues, the place appears far from accommodating. The walls are absolutely covered with hateful graffiti, litter is everywhere, most of the average citizens are jerks, and the whole neighborhood sits in the shadow of a huge, smoke-belching factory. Somehow this place was able to produce Tracer, one of the game's kindest, most idealistic and unambiguously good characters, who calls it home and has made helping it become less of a wretched hive one of her primary goals.
    • Dorado certainly appears festive and well-kept in game, but from what we've seen in Hero and Sombra's backstory, the place is a haven for criminal activity, and gangs like the Los Muertos rule the streets once the sun goes down.
    • Junkertown is the most merciless of them all, being the home base of Junkrat and Roadhog. It's a rusted out scrap metal shantytown in the middle of the desolate, war-ravaged Australian Outback and populated entirely by thieves, maniacs and cutthroats.
  • Writers Cannot Do Math: Due to much information not being updated all at once, some timeline issues sprout up as a result of forgetting when certain major events happened, with certain ages being changed when discrepancies are pointed out:
    • When she was initially revealed as the 27th hero , Brigitte's official bio was put on the site showing her as 28 years old. This was quite at odds with an earlier teasernote  which would make Mercy a member (or at least, a known friend/visitor) of the organization at the ripe age of nine years old. According to the lead writer, the age put on site was something he came up with at first and forgot to update when writing the teaser, and was swiftly corrected: she became listed as being 23 (25 as of Overwatch 2), making Mercy 14 at the time of her birth, which while impressive, is at least more believable.
    • When the ages of all characters were revealed by the time of Overwatch 2 in September 2023, Sojourn was initially stated to be 47 years old, which seems reasonable... until one reads her character novel, which has many scenes taking place during the Omnic Crisis "28 years ago", and states that at the time, Sojourn had been in the Canadian Army "for four years", which meant she would have enlisted when she was fifteen (which is completely illegal, as the Canadian Army only accept recruits that eighteen or older) and had some troubling implications with Sojourn's twin sister having a five years old daughter at the time. Two weeks later, Blizzard realized their mistake and bumped Sojourn's age to 51.
  • Xanatos Gambit: In "Alive", Widowmaker blows Tracer off a building with an explosion, then jumps after her and aims a shot at her chestpiece. Tracer warps away, and the bullet keeps going and hits the original target, Mondatta. If Tracer had stayed, her chronal stabilizer would've been severely damaged, putting her out of the fight at best...and giving Widowmaker an uninterrupted shot at Mondatta, who stopped exfiltrating to look at the explosion.
  • Yakuza: Hanzo's and Genji's family runs a criminal empire.
  • Yellow/Purple Contrast: In terms of gameplay, yellow and purple are exclusively coded as representing healing and damage (or anti-healing), respectively. Zenyatta and Moira in particular are able to provide both, and each have abilities with this motif (though with Moira, enemies will perceive her Biotic Orbs as either a conspicuously darker yellow healing orb and red damage orb as to not be confused with those from an allied Moira).
  • Yet Another Stupid Death: There are many, many dumb ways to die, many of which involve explosives, but notable examples include:
    • Pre-patch, deploying Junkrat's RIP-Tire Ultimate and blowing yourself up because you detonated it too close to yourself.
    • Pre-patch, deploying D.Va's Self-Destruct Ultimate and not getting behind cover.
    • Allowing Tracer to remain in the blast radius of her own Pulse Bomb.
    • Using any movement abilities and diving into a pit. Somewhat less embarrassing if you manage to take someone down with you. Reinhardt actually has a not-implemented voice line for charging to his death and taking out an opponent in the process: "IT WAS WORTH ITTTTTTT!"
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
    • Genji to Hanzo in Dragons:
      Genji: Perhaps I am a fool to think there is still hope for you. But I do. Think on that, brother.
    • Alejandra to Soldier: 76 in Hero:
      Alejandra: You're one of those heroes, aren't you?
      Soldier: 76: ...Not anymore.
      Alejandra: I think you are.

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