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  • Abandoned Laboratory:
    • Mountain Lab.
    • Mercenary Park.
    • Several custom maps.
  • Ability Depletion Penalty: If the Spy lets the cloak meter of his invisiwatch run out instead of decloaking manually the sound will be louder, making it easier for the enemy team to notice him.
  • Absurdly-Spacious Sewer: This is found in the famous Capture The Flag map, 2Fort. Apparently, both bases need massive sewers despite not actually having any waste to put in said sewers.
  • Accent Adaptation: In the Swedish version of the game, many of Scout's weapons and items are written in Young Old Swedish dialect — an uncommon dialect today, but is often used to indicate someone from some backwater place or village.
  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
    • Even if the building you're fighting over is a wood and chicken-wire shack, nothing you do can blow it up or burn it down.
    • The Spy's Back Stab works perfectly well on people wearing backpacks, like the Medic and the Pyro.
  • Accidental Suicide: The game will lampshade if a player accidentally dies by fall damage (without another player being the cause) in the form of "X fell to a clumsy, painful death" in the killfeed.
  • Achievement Mockery: The Sniper vs. Spy update introduced the Sniper's "Consolation Prize" achievement for being backstabbed 50 times. This can be especially ironic if the achievement causes you to reach Sniper Milestone 3, which rewards you with the Razorback, a shield that keeps you from being backstabbed.
  • Acme Products: Mann Co. and Spytech Industries, subsidiaries of the even larger TF Industries, which also owns RED and BLU and all of their subsidiaries.
  • Action Bomb:
    • Sentry Busters.
    • Also, Demomen with the Ullapool Caber.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The economy fluctuates absurdly rapidly. Just-released items are always three or four times as expensive as they will be in a week or two, and certain items that no longer drop are ever-increasing in price. Supply crate Keys, the standard unit for buying higher-priced items, have been going up in value rapidly as people who are stockpiling them attempt to make a quick bargain.
  • Added Alliterative Appeal:
    • Blighted Beak, Builder's Blueprints, Barnblitz, Ye Olde Baker Boy, Bazaar Bargain, Badwater Basin, Backwards Ballcap, Black Box, Bonk Boy, Brass Beast, Boston Basher, Brown Bomber, Brain Bucket, Backburner, Blazing Bull, Buccaneer's Bicorne, Backbiter's Billycock, Buff Banner, Battalion's Backup, Brundle Bundle, Berliner's Bucket Helm, Bloke's Bucket Hat, Bushman's Boonie, Battle Bob, Boston Boom-Bringer, Baby Face's Blaster, Beggar's Bazooka, Backstabber's Boomslang, Burning Bongos, Battery Bandolier, Bolted Bushman, Bearded Bombardier, Boo Balloon, Heavy's Bottomless Bass, Medic's Blood Curdling Bellow... and that's just the letter B.
    • Many of the mission names (Quarry is an exception) for the Mann vs. Machine maps start with the same letter of their respective maps — Crash Course, Cave-In, CPU Slaughter, Ctrl+Alt+Destruction, Cataclysm, and Caliginous Caper for Coaltown; Doe's Drill, Doe's Doom, Day of Wreckening, Disk Demolition, Disk Deletion, Disintegration, and Desperation for Decoy; Mann-euevers, Mean Machines, Mann Hunt, Mech Mutilation, Machine Massacre, and Mannslaughter for Mannworks; and Benign Infiltration, Bone Shaker, and Broken Parts for Bigrock. The mission names for Mannhattan and Rottenburg don't follow the pattern exactly, but still are alliterative: Big Apple Barricade, Empire Escalation, and Metro Malice; and Village Vanguard, Hamlet Hostility, and Bavarian Botbash, respectively.
  • Adjustable Censorship:
    • The vaguely realistic and unsettling giblets players turn into when introduced to explosive weaponry can be turned into balloon animals, cheeseburgers, et al via command-line option "-sillygibs". This does not remove the blood, however, nor decapitation kills.
    • Another option is equipping the Pyro-vision goggles (or in Pyro's case, the Rainblower and/or Lollichop).
  • Advanced Tech 2000:
    • One of the Soldier's primary weapons is the Cow Mangler 5000.
    • The Engineer has a primary weapon called the Pomson 6000.
    • The Spy's disguise kit is called the Spytron 3000.
    • Per the Sentry Gun operating manual, the Dispenser is a Dispense-O-Matic 9000 Provisions Dispenser.
    • The board of alerts in "Meet the Spy" and the map Double Cross is called the Alarm-O-Tron 5000.
    • The heart monitering device in the operating room in "Meet the Medic" is called "CARDIOSCAN 2000".
    • A miscellaneous item released in the Mann vs. Machine update is a little robot called RoBro 3000, and a hat for the Engineer is called the Tin-1000. In the same vein, one of the Mann vs. Machievements is called T-1000000.
  • Affably Evil: Almost every character in their Meet The Character video is charming and friendly. And psychotic, of course, but you can't have everything.
  • Affectionate Parody: Of its predecessor, Team Fortress Classic, and FPSs in general. The objective of the land war is seemingly completely pointless, the setting is gleefully demented, and each of the nine classes are Player Archetypes painted with a very broad brush and ten coats of crazy.
  • Air-Vent Passageway:
    • The map Turbine has air vent passages which are so large that they are practically treated as hallways.
    • Hellfire has even bigger vents than Turbine. Even more egregiously, they seem to exist for no other purpose than to invoke this trope.
  • Aliens Steal Cattle: The map koth_probed features alien saucers that periodically swoop in and abduct the wooden cow cutouts seen in the background.
  • All-Stereotype Cast: The Heavy is a Husky Russkie, the Medic is a German Mad Scientist, the Sniper a "Crocodile" Dundee Expy, the Engie a Good Old Boy from Texas, the Demoman a Violent Glaswegian, the Soldier an uber-patriotic Eaglelander, the Spy a French Jerk, the Scout a Brooklyn Rager, their boss Saxton Hale is an Awesome Aussie, and the Pyro is... the Pyro.
  • All There in the Manual: The game's lore is probably some of the most fleshed out of any Valve game, though you're not going to see any of it just by playing the game. The story is all explained through comics and animated shorts that are published online.
  • Alternate History: The TF2 world is based on ours, but there's quite a few spots where it diverges considerably, especially for Rule of Funny purposes. Amongst the changes:
    • Abraham Lincoln was the original 1800s Pyro. Yes, you read that right. He also invented stairs, and loves Arena mode.
    • Amelia Earhart crash-landed in Siberia, had a flying hot-dog business, and a sweet tooth for honey.
    • Australia is the most technologically advanced country on the planet, since the whole country rests on a deposit of Australium, a metal that gives super-intelligence on exposure. 1800s Melbourne looks like something out of a Flash Gordon pulp.
    • Computer technology is more advanced than what was available in 1968, and Gray Mann even creates robotic soldiers.
    • Zoos did not exist until they were created by Charles Darling, and their purpose is not for wildlife preservation, but to break animals' spirits through confinement.
    • New Zealand was moved to an underwater dome to keep away from the Australians (who were the polar opposite of New Zealanders). It was eventually flooded after an escape rocket punctured a hole in the dome.
  • Alternate Reality Game:
    • In the weeks leading up to the release of Meet the Medic, the doves from the video could be spotted perched and flying around the maps. They would later appear on the official blog and led to concept art for the video when clicked on.
    • Later, crash-landed smoking rockets called "Grockets" have appeared in the skyboxes, which led to a Weta Workshop tie-in for Soldier items, Engineer items, and Pyro items.
    • Starting with randomly dropped items such as goldfish, banana peels, and damaged capacitors, among others, there was another in the summer of 2012, this time focusing on the Pyromania Update. These had extracts from a Sherlock Holmes story called "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", a hint at the horrifying fate of the two feuding Mann Brothers.
    • The damaged capacitors and new bloodstains on the official website are part of a new ARG in August 2012. They led up to Mann Vs. Machine.
      • There were also the mysterious blue tanks that appeared in the backgrounds of 2Fort, Badwater Basin, Double Cross and Granary. These turned out to be Carrier Tanks for the robots in Mann vs Machine.
    • A mysterious article on voodoo, Merasmus the Magician and a homeless Soldier, and the Spy's Head on the Team Fortress 2 website turning into a Zombie head lead to the 2012 Scream Fortress Update, with Merasmus as the boss, a new map, the Soldier getting kicked out of Merasmus's castle, and special items that made each class look like a zombie.
  • Alt Text: One of the Multiple Choice Form Letters from the TF2 website got alt-texted by Saxton Hale.
  • Anachronism Stew: Some items are too futuristic for the game's setting, 1968, which may be justified by the Alternate History. Lampshaded with the Boston Boom-Bringer, a "Futuristic Sound Device" (a boombox):
    TF2 Team: Most people only know LL Cool J as a rapper, actor, fashion designer, record producer, and author. Now, though, you can add "spooky-ass Nostradamus" to that list, because we've just released a misc slot item for the Scout called "The Boston Boom Bringer" that pretty much exactly matches the lyrics LL penned almost thirty years ago.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Some events give the player a cosmetic item or few, such as the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head, Full Head of Steam, and several Halloween costume sets.
  • Animation Bump:
    • The actual game doesn't look bad at all, and the "Meet The Team" videos are all gorgeously animated and use separate, more detailed "HardWare Morph" character models with realistic facial expressions and a higher poly-count. The "Meet the Team" shorts kept getting better, with every new one released improving on the last. The earlier ones like Heavy, Soldier, and Demoman have less detailed animation and lighting (playing out to their perspective of their life of killing people), while the later ones like Spy, Medic, and Pyro have outstanding animation, with lighting and shading looking equivalent to a Pixar movie.
    • This retroactively happened with the Saxxy Awards. During the First Annual Saxxy Awards, the only official program for making submissions was the in-game Replay Function, which only really serves as a camera recording in-game footage, meaning creators were restricted to the limitations brought out by gameplay with very few options for unique tweaking, and no option for custom animations, and unless you had the skills to go in and extract the replay files into another program (at least one Saxxy winner showed that this was possible), you were limited by the toolset given to you. Fast Forward to the year 2012, and the Second Annual Saxxy awards, with the event coinciding with the official release of "Meet The Pyro", and more importantly, the Source Filmmaker, which gave people much more control over the animation and special effects, on top of being able to import models from other games and mix and match existing model pieces (and much more besides). The end result is that all of the submissions in 2012 were noticeably better than the ones from a year prior.
  • Announcer Chatter: The Administrator talks to both sides. For example, when a checkpoint is captured on Payload, she's more encouraging to the successful attackers and scornful to the failing defenders. In Capture The Flag, if the round ends in a tie, she dismisses both sides with a frustrated "You failed!, stalemate!".
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • It's very easy to identify what class you're looking at even from a distance, as each class has a different silhouette, color palette, voice, etc. Even after items that alter any of these (hats, paints, and spells), every class is distinguishable from at least one of the mentioned aspects.
      • Pretty much everything has some kind of visual cue, or unique sound cue, not unlike the players mentioned above. Sentries beep a number of times corresponding to their level, critical projectiles have team-colored sparks coming off of them (in addition to making an electric crackling sound as soon as they're fired), and different weapons make different sounds.
    • Most game modes have maps that are symmetrical on either side (Payload maps being an obvious exception), meaning your surroundings are very likely to be color-coded to your team, so it's difficult to lose track of where you are. If the mapmaker didn't flat-out Palette Swap the two sides, concrete and steel generally indicates BLU, while wood and brick corresponds to RED. Suijin is a notable exception, as the architecture has red trimmings all over the place (it being an Japanese oriental-themed map).
    • Movable objectives, such as the Payload cart or the briefcases on CTF and Special Delivery, have glowing outlines visible through all terrain.
    • Maps are chock-full of giant, team-colored arrow signs pointing in the direction that you need to go if you ever get lost. Some of the larger maps (mostly ones with spawn-points that move forward/back, such as Badwater and Snowplow) dynamically change the signs as objectives are captured and points of interest move.
    • A common complaint with the Casual system at launch was that waiting took a long time with nothing to do but click your progress badge. 2017's "Jungle Inferno" update made the UI lightweight and works across all menu screens', so queuing for a game can be done while you sort your inventory, craft spare weapons together, heck, you can even play offline practice, or play on a community server while waiting for your casual game.
      • The "Blue Moon" update released in late March 2018 allows you to queue up for another game while already in one, in addition to queuing for multiple games at the same time; for example, you can queue up for a Competitive match and play some Casual while waiting on it. Or play Casual while queuing for Casual.
    • There are multiple in-game voice commands to relay information to your team, and they are surprisingly versatile. There's a command with unique responses for alerting your team when there's an enemy Spy nearby (X-2), and pointing your cross-hairs at a player as you do this creates a unique line that the character says at your suspect the class the Spy is disguised as. There's a command for requesting placement of buildings (X-3 for Sentry, X-4 for Teleporter, and X-5 for Dispenser), calling for help (C-1), and signalling where or when to go.
      • The command for calling for Medic (E) has its own button, with nearby Medics being alerted of the player's position if they aren't already looking in their direction. Players that are at low health or set ablaze have unique indicators to tell Medics that immediate attention is required. There's also a Medic-specific option to automatically see where injured teammates are even if they aren't calling for Medic.
    • Players who are being healed by a Medic are notified of their doctor's health while being healed. Very useful for Sandvich / Second Banana Heavies who need to know when to toss health to their healer.
      • Medic patients are also informed of what Medigun is used and how much charge the Medic has built up; if the Medic reaches full charge, he makes a distinctive electric crackling noise and automatically announces he's ready to deploy an Über. It's as useful to allied teammates (who know now is the best time to make a push) as it is to enemy players (who realize that the Medic must be killed as soon as possible before he can use his Übercharge).
    • If a solid object stands between Medic and his heal target, the connection will still be retained for a moment before the object breaks the link, allowing Medics to continuously heal a person without needing perfectly coordinated movements.
    • The Medic's Übercharge build-up rate is vastly increased while in setup. This was introduced in 2015's "Tough Break" update, and since setup normally lasts a full minute, Medics prior were always expected to have a charge built before the round started. Now, they only need about twenty seconds to build that charge, so they can spend more time doing fun things (like joining that team-wide Conga mob moving around spawn).
      • Similarly, 2017's "Jungle Inferno" update allows Engineers to upgrade buildings twice as fast during setup. The limiting factor of how many buildings one can prepare during setup tends to be ammo respawn rates rather than time, however, so this change exists primarily to make it easier on people who stay at spawn to upgrade Teleporters before changing class and heading out.
    • Lastly for Medic, there's an option to make the Medigun a single-click toggle on teammates, reducing the need to strain one's fingers by holding down the heal button all the time.
    • Spy's Disguise Kit may require pressing the 9 key to disguise. For some, this is a bit of a stretch, having to reach over the keyboard that far if you want to disguise as a Medic. The alternative for that is the "Concise Disguise Kit" option that causes the disguise kit to only use the 1-3 keys (ex. disguising as an Engineer is 2 then 3, disguising as a Medic is 3 then 1, etc). Of course, some people do not like this option since it may take slightly longer to input a desired disguise, which is why it's not the default.
    • Spy also has a specific button to take on the last disguise used.
    • Engineers have unique HUD elements on the left side of their screen, showing the status of all buildings, including level, health, upgrade progress, and ammo. If a building is damaged, out of ammo, or is currently being sapped, a visual notification and an audio cue indicates that it needs attention. Sapped buildings have a unique notification to call your attention to it immediately.
    • Teleporters have a hidden priority mechanic: if you're standing on one alone and it's recharging, the teleporter will reserve its next teleport for you, so you won't need to worry about a teammate hogging the teleporter unless they're dedicated to a self-sabotaging degree.
    • Teleported players leave behind a glowing trail on the ground while they walk. This indicates to enemies that a Teleporter exit is nearby, so they can find and destroy it to curb the number of reinforcements coming in.
    • In the killfeed, any kills that relate to you (ie: you scored a kill, assisted someone, or died) are highlighted in white and linger for longer before disappearing. This is so that you can more easily understand who you killed, or in the case of dying, what killed you.
    • Editing your loadout normally takes time, from fumbling around clicking buttons and searching your inventory for desired weapons. However, four editable presets per class can be switched to with the press of a key, as long as you have access to the resupply cabinet or are waiting to respawn.
    • Blast jumping is an acquired skill earned by hundreds of hours of practice. Weapons like the Rocket Jumper and the Sticky Jumper deal no damage to their user or anyone else, and exist primarily to make those hours easier.
    • The Demoman's Scottish Resistance is made exclusively for laying traps, with its higher active stickybomb count and ability to selectively detonate stickies. The Demoman that fires stickies with this weapon can see their outline through walls, and if they're able to be detonated, the outline changes to a solid team-colored silhouette.
    • Prior to Scream Fortress 2015, trolls would deliberately kill players while everyone focused on the boss who would give special achievements on death. From 2016 onwards, Valve servers now enforce truces while a boss is on the field (MONOCULUS! on Eyeaduct and Merasmus on Ghost Fort). PvP is enabled immediately after the boss' death, so you can still wind up denied the hat because some jerk on the other team killed you off.note 
    • The Two Cities update added the option for players to refund their upgrades in Mann Vs. Machine. This gave players a lifeline if the team configuration needs to be changed for any reason, and prevents players from being completely screwed if they made poor upgrade decisions. While refunds were originally only available before the first wave and then only after collecting a certain amount of credits afterward, it was eventually changed to allow unlimited refunds between waves, letting you change your class and/or swap out your resistance upgrades at will.
  • Anti Idling: When item drops were added, some people decided to use an idling program so they could obtain items without having to play the game. Valve retaliated by removing all of the items people obtained this way and gave everyone who didn't use an idling program a hat called the Cheater's Lament. Valve also changed the item drop system so only a limited amount of items could be obtained per week, then made an additional change where people could only get one item at a time until they accepted the item in-game.
  • Anti Poop-Socking: The current drop system has a cap on the amount of playtime in which drops can occur, about 10 to 11 hours a week. Playing beyond that cap does not grant the player additional items. Before this system was implemented, the old drop system was tied so closely with playtime that, statistically, the best way to guarantee that items would drop was to join an "idling" server and ignore the game for hours on end.
  • Anti-Trolling Features: Players can mute teammates, which is helpful if someone is being loud or harassing someone through voice chat. There is also an option to votekick teammates, where players can vote to kick someone from the server entirely. Unfortunately, votekick is a poor measure against groups of trolls, hackers, and even bots, since they can vote against it then try to votekick the good Samaritan for revenge.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Australium. Exposure makes people hyper-intelligent while also giving them a lethal dose of Testosterone Poisoning, and it's usable as rocket fuel, extending lifespans, making weapons, the power source behind teleportation and invisibility devices, and gold paint.
  • "Arabian Nights" Days: The game had Arab-themed sets for the Demoman, Sniper and Spy (One Thousand And One Demoknights, Lawrence Of Australia and Saharan Spy respectively).
  • Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: One of the Sniper's weapons, alongside a host of various rifles, is a bow-and-arrow set called "The Huntsman". It can be very effective. There's also Demoman's array of assorted shields and swords, all of which can be very useful.
  • Arc Words: "Tobor", found in several hints teasing Mann vs. Machine years before its release.
  • Armed Altruism: In the Mann vs. Machine teaser. When the RED Heavy, Scout, and Engineer find the BLU Soldier and Demoman playing cards, Heavy points a shotgun at them - then turns it around and throws it to Demoman, silently offering to join forces.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Sort of; in Mann vs Machine, Giant Robots are immune to the Spy's Back Stab due to their strong armor, thus requiring upgrades for the knife to inflict a certain percentage of damage upon the Giant Robots by back stabs.
  • Arrange Mode:
    • Medieval Mode is a mode where guns are disabled, and only "Medieval" weapons can be used (all melee weapons, the Medic's Crusader's Crossbow, the Demoman's Boots and Shields, etc.)
    • Mannpower is a modified version of Capture the Flag that gives every player a grappling hook and randomly spawns powerups throughout the stage.
    • PASS Time is a soccer-like mode where two teams compete to get a neutral ball (the JACK) to one of three goals: the Run-In, Throw-In, and Bonus goals. The Bonus Goal, which gives three points instead of one, is activated when JACK Power, increased by passing the JACK to teammates, is full and is usually requires a Jump Pad to access.
    • Player Destruction sees two teams collecting beer bottles by killing enemy players, and then jumping into a UFO to add them to their team's score. The player at each team with the most beer bottles gets an aura that gives health and ammo to themselves and nearby teammates, but their outline and beer bottle count will be visible to everyone.note 
    • Highlander Mode is applicable to any other game mode, and restricts the team composition to one player of each class, for a total of 9 players.
  • Art Evolution: Starting with Lumberyard, maps would experiment more and more with colors that are outside of the official palette, including having locations that'd be difficult if not impossible to represent with the original colors.
  • Art-Style Dissonance: The game appears to be this at first; a group of mercenaries (most of whom have varying degrees of mental instability) are continually fighting a frankly pointless fight over a worthless piece of land thanks to rather ruthless (and somewhat evil) contractors... yet the game has cartoon-y graphics, complete with ridiculous animations and Ludicrous Gibs. This actually turns out to be a bit of a Subversion; during development, Valve was having trouble producing something that would give players a Willing Suspension of Disbelief, so they decided to make it look like a universe where ridiculous things are supposed to happen, such as how certain abilities (like rocket jumping) are possible, or why some seemingly arbitrary rules are in place (such as how, for some reason, you can't jump over a 3-foot-high fence that leads out to sprawling fields), hence the reason why they chose a more "stylized" art direction: So that you won't ask these questions in the first place. This also fits in with Valve's dark, irreverent, and somewhat... silly sense of humour.
  • The Artifact:
    • Random crits, from when the game didn't have much variety due to lacking alternate weapon choices. They seem to be staying, much to the grief of many players, although competitive servers have them disabled. (However, random crits do allow for most weapons that can't score situational crits (such as most of the stock weapons) to have a way to score crits.)
    • As well, the (Achievement Item: Not Tradable) attribute on the alternate weapons gained from class achievement milestones, with the item drop system allowing a player to get more.
    • The initial wave of hats introduced with the Sniper vs. Spy update were retired in early 2013, seemingly paving the way for more older hats to be removed from the store and random drops after a few years for rarity's sake. As of 2022, no other sets of hats have been retired.
  • Artifact Title: The "Meet the Team" videos take their titles from the Mockumentary format of many of them, with the typical formula of these videos involving the featured class being interviewed. With "Meet the Spy" and "Meet the Medic" both completely lacking any sort of in-universe angle where the subjects are being filmed to let them express themselves, the video titles are a little less relevant.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The AI driven bots are capable of Spy checking, single class rushes, and spawn camping (especially in Mann versus Machine mode); the Medics hide from the action until they think it's safe; and you might actually get tricked by an opposing Spy.
  • Artificial Stupidity: They do, however, have several path-finding and decision-making problems that prevent them from being a threat in small numbers.
    • Enemy Spy-bots on the defense suffer from a hilarious bout of stupidity during setup time; sometimes, a Spy or two will run up to the setup gates disguised as friendly players — sometimes even decloaking or disguising right in front of them — never minding the fact that it's impossible for your teammates to be out there already. This works about as well as you'd expect.note 
    • They aren't very good at Medieval Mode, though this may be attributed to the fact that they can't use unlocks. For example, bot Medics will often stand by players with their bonesaw, trying in vain to heal them as if they were using a Medi Gun.
    • There's also the incredibly annoying bug where bot Medics (often seen on servers that use bots to fill up empty server spaces) don't switch weapons properly, leading to many unnecessary deaths as a burning player calls desperately for a Medic... only to have them show up and obliviously start shooting you with their syringe gun instead.
    • Bots, during setup time offline, will taunt the player if s/he looks at them for too long. This applies to both teams and may be exploited for humorous effect.
    • Their behavior has since improved, but BLU bots on Payload used to pile on/near the bomb cart, whereas RED bots would idle in spawn, unable to find the way out; RED bots similarly had many problems negotiating Attack/Defend style maps where the most direct path from the spawn to the front lines was interpreted to be repeatedly ramming themselves against the back wall.
    • Engineers heavily prioritize sentries, and things like dispensers and teleporters are ignored in favor of infinitely turtling behind the sentry. They aren't capable of moving up, either, which results in offense Engy bots setting up a nest in territory absolutely nowhere near the front lines. They also tend to build teleporters that are utterly useless (one in front of spawn, and then the exit is next to the entrance), and their other buildings are right next to their Sentry.
    • Let's just say that Spy Bots are not very good at fooling humans, especially since teams tend to be more coordinated during Mann vs. Machine. However, they are quite good at prioritizing players that are currently distracted, making a significantly greater threat during rounds where a larger threat is drawing everyone's attention.
    • Although in-game, the MvM robots have at least somewhat average intelligence, In-Universe, they are freaking morons. In the comics, they think Soldier, Heavy, and Ms. Pauling are robots simply because they wore some ramshackle robot costumes Soldier made out of cardboard boxes. Grey Mann explains he used up most of the robots' computational power to make the robots worship him.
  • Artistic License – Biology: A crucial part of the Expiration Date short is that the bread teleported by Engineer and Medic is chock full of tumors, indicating that the mercs very likely have terminal cancer. Bread isn't an animal and isn't regenerating its cells, which is how cancer develops, so how the tumors got in it — much less how the tumors turned it into a truck-sized monster — is a mystery.
  • Artistic License – History:
  • Artsy Beret: One of the Spy's hat options is the the Frenchman's Beret, complete with brushes.
  • Ascended Glitch:
    • Along with the ancestry of the Rocket Jump, the Spy can also trace his lineage to a bug during the development of the original Team Fortress mod for Quake where players would occasionally see enemies with the wrong team color.
    • When King of the Hill was first released, when Overtime was reached, the Administrator would repeatedly announce "OVERTIME! OVERTIME! OVERTIME!" When the bug was finally fixed, Valve included a server variable to re-enable the bug.
    • Then there was the "Crazy Legs" bug with the Scout's double jump. When it was eventually fixed, Valve wrote an obituary about the supposed "Crazy Legs" Scout.
    • You can taunt using the wrong weapons by taunting and quickly hitting the quickswitch key or a respective weapon key (1, 2, or 3). This results in the Sniper's Jarate or Pyro's flamethrower breaking physics, Heavy eating his minigun, Engie spinning his wrench around his finger, and Soldier performing a 21 rocket salute. During the Polycount/Mann-Conomy Update, this was inadvertently fixed. Robin said they'd reimplement the bug when they got the chance, and have released a server toggle option for leaving it on or off on October 13, 2011.
    • The Spy Crab glitch, where crouching and looking straight upwards with the Spy's disguise kit out looks like a crab walk, was spared being "fixed" like Crazy Legs, and was instead enshrined as a random chance taunt replacement when taunting with the disguise kit out.
    • With the release of the Jungle Inferno Update came a gift shop with tons of available "War Paints" for your weapons. An oversight caused all War Paints bought from there to be of Factory New quality (the highest quality possible). Valve fixed this a week later so War Paints used all the wear levels, which caused such an upset in the community that they re-implemented the glitch as a feature the following day. Amusingly, the war paints that can be found in the gift shop system that were the most worn out are the ones that are worth the most, due to how rare they actually are to get; The Dragon Slayer war paint is a notable example, as it's your reward for completing the paid contracts.
  • Ascended Meme:
    • After the Shamwow commercials drew several comparisons between Vince Offer and the Scout, the Scout Update added multiple lines to the Scout that come directly from those commercials.
      "If ya order now, I'll throw in a second beatin', absolutely free!"
    • The infamous "FYI I am a Spy" video led to the Medic achievement "FYI I am a Medic" for killing a disguised Spy that called for a medic, using a melee weapon. Earlier, it was for killing a Spy who you have just healed (there's another achievement for that now), and before that, it was five spies instead. Much later with the Spy update, the "FYI I am a Spy" achievement itself (for killing a Medic healing you, like in the video).
    • The Spy-Crab is the term given to crouching with the Spy's disguise kit out, looking straight up and walking around.
      • When the Spy update was released, Valve added an Easter Egg where 1 in 6 taunts with the disguise kit result in the Spy doing his impression of a crab.
      • One of the products advertised in the Spy's issue of "Dapper Rogue" is the "Crab-Walking Kit", saying that it will "change your skeleton", a reference to how the Spy's animation skeleton and logical hitbox are noticeably different from how he is rendered when crab-walking.
      • An in-game kill-assist item Note  that looks like a crab wearing a balaclava was added as an accessory for the Spy, as well as a plush toy available for order.
      • Spy will also do a Spycrab-esque move for his class-specific Mannrobics taunt.
      • In the sixth Team Fortress 2 comic, Spy tells Sniper that the jacket of his suit is a genuine Louis Crabbemarche. "Crabbemarche" roughly translates to "crab walk" in French.
    • One of the common jokes about the inevitable Spy update was that Valve would release a few days worth of news, and then it would be revealed as the Spy update when he backstabs the previous class and takes the spotlight. Which is exactly what happened to the Sniper.
      • Not only is the Sniper is one of the most likely classes to get backstabbed, but this happened to him the day after the Razorback was revealed, which is a (single-use) shield that protects the Sniper from backstabs, due to him being fooled by one of the Spy's unlockable items, a cloak that creates a fake dead spy when attacked.
    • Valve referenced the "Gentlemen" meme in the last of the four "Meet the Medic" outtakes, with a mouthful of nails in place of cigarettes.
    • "Sitting Pyro" from the comic "True Meaning" became popular enough that the meme reappeared in "A Fate Worse Than Chess" and is referenced by a couple of official taunts — the Pool Party and the Yeti Smash both have the Pyro sitting cross-legged, and there's an unused animation of the Pyro sitting in the exact pose for Sitting Pyro.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Australians choose their king via kangaroo boxing.
  • Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Several of the hats.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • Every class has at least one taunt that will instantly kill anyone unfortunate enough be hit by it, such as the Pyro using a hadouken or the Scout sending someone flying clear across the map with a baseball bat. However, they pretty much require luck and/or a very inattentive/AFK opponent to actually pull off, and take several seconds to complete with an animation that leaves you completely stationary and vulnerable which cannot be cancelled. Most people either try to get taunt kills just for fun, use taunt kills with teleporter camping, or use taunt kills to troll Snipers with tunnel vision who don't check their surroundings regularlly.note 
    • Some of the weapons, too. The most glaring examples would be the Rift promotional weapons; the Sun-on-a-Stick, which deals extra damage to enemies on fire for a class that doesn't have any fire weapons, and the Sharpened Volcano Fragment, which sets people ablaze on hit for a class that does have fire weapons, and better ones at that.
      • Most melee weapons that don't have utility purposes or passive effects (and aren't used by the Engineer, Spy, or Demoman) usually fall under this as well. For example, the Mantreads allows you to Goomba Stomp an enemy and reduces knockback from enemies. The idea is that you will navigate yourself mid-air without interference from enemy guns. In practice, trying to hit a moving target with your body is much harder than it sounds.
    • The Cow Mangler for Soldier is probably the biggest instance of this in a non-melee weapon: Its one upside is that it can fire a charged shot that deals a Mini-Crit, sets enemies on fire, and temporarily disables buildings. However, to even fire a charged shot, the Soldier needs to have his clip fully loaded, and firing it uses up all four shots. So for the cost of four rockets, you have the potential to deal a little over the damage of one rocket. The fire damage is irrelevant, the afterburn doesn't last as long as the Pyro's, and the building disable effect only lasts 4 seconds, which itself is irrelevant because even if you hadn't used up your entire clip to disable it in the first place, the weapon deals a drastic eighty percent less damage to buildings. And even if you don't use the charged shot, the weapon is still impractical because it's effectively just a normal Rocket Launcher that can't get critical hits, nor be crit boosted.
    • The Buffalo Steak Sandvich sounds like it'd be amazing on paper. A chunk of meat for the heavy that gives him a speed boost and guarantees mini-crit damage on every punch in exchange for forcing him to use his melee weapon for the whole duration. There's a few problems, though. First, your opponents still have their guns. Second, the heavy is the slowest class by far. Even with the Steak's speed boost, six of the nine classes are always faster than him (and the Demoman can be too with the right loadouts). Third, the Heavy takes 30% more damage under the effects of the steak.

    B 
  • Back from the Dead: The Medic was given the ability to do this in Mann vs. Machine mode with the Two Cities update, bringing his teammates back to life on the spot rather than at the respawn point.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: The Mann vs Machine trailer ends with the six men standing back to back in a circle, firing their weapons in all directions.
  • Badass Boast: Quite a few, mostly from the classes' various domination lines. For example:
    Soldier: If God had wanted you to live, He would not have created me!
  • Bad Santa: The TF2 world's version of Santa, “Old Nick”, an old Australian who kidnaps bad children and forces them to work in his munitions factory. Given the nature of this game, it’s considered humorous. Fast forward one year after he was introduced. BLU Spy, Scout and Soldier are forced to work as shopping mall Santas when Old Nick shows up to steal the kids. These three spring into action to save the children of Teufort, even if the only weapons they have available are an icicle, a roll of wrapping paper, and some christmas ornaments.
  • Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: Quite a few of the weapons. For example, Heavy's primaries — Stock is the balance (overall good), Brass Beast is the power (trades mobility for raw damage), Tomislav is the skill (trades raw damage for mobility), Huo-Long Heater and Natascha are the gimmick (the former creates a wall of fire but consumes ammo faster, the latter has less damage but applies slowdown on hit).
  • Band of Brothers:
    • The Heavy Weapons Guy in particular believes in "being credit to team", but the heart-warmingly sincere in-game "thank you" commands for getting teleported by the Engineer and healed by the Medic makes it clear the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits are turning into Fire-Forged Friends.
    • Metagame wise, a group of players that manage to stick together for a few rounds without getting autobalanced has a very good chance of becoming a Band of Brothers, however temporary.
    • The Soldier can earn an achievement for using the Buff Banner on his Steam friends called "Banner of Brothers".
    • In the Mann vs Machine mode, particularly, the really difficult Tours like Mecha Engine, can take some time while players enter and leave the game when they realize how difficult it is, but once the team really takes shape, and wins, chances are, you're gonna add 5 new people to your friend list, just to be teammates again.
    • The Spy also gets an achievement for backstabbing his Steam friends...
  • Banana Peel: Appears in mvm_mannhattan next to a set of grinders. Anyone who touches it, human or robot, is automatically flung right at the grinders and killed instantly.
  • Bash Brothers:
    • Heavies are a force to be reckoned with, but a Medic will pretty much triple their effectiveness.
    • In the same fashion, a Pyro buddy will greatly help Engineers who need to be protected from Spies and incoming Rockets or Grenades. In return, an Engineer's Sentry will protect a Pyro well and a Dispenser to provide ammo to the ammo-guzzling flame thrower. Valve acknowledged the close relationship between them by giving the Pyro two melee unlockables that can destroy sappers on a friendly Engie's equipment. Engies can also get a Pyro plushie in their pocket.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space: The only official map for the Robot Destruction game mode, Asteroid, is clearly set on the surface of a celestial body (presumably an asteroid) with no clear airtight mechanisms. The mercs have no issue breathing on this map, space helmets or not.
  • Bears Are Bad News:
  • Beating A Dead Player: It's possible. The ragdoll responds to actions from enemies.
  • Beeping Computers:
    • Just try to hear yourself think in the 2fort basement.
    • Also the sentries beeping louder and more often the more upgraded they are. Listen closely— some beeps also means it's spotted an enemy.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: By the truckload:
    • There have been several generations of predecessors to the mercenaries we all know and love, and that the first generation was an... interesting bunch. For instance, the original ensemble included Billy the Kid (Scout), Stonewall Jackson (Soldier), Abraham Lincoln (Pyro), Nikola Tesla (Engineer), John Henry (Heavy), Alfred Nobel (Demoman), Sigmund Freud (Medic), Fu Manchu (Spy) and Davy Crockett (Sniper).
    • Abraham Lincoln is also revealed to have invented stairs, before he was assassinated by John "Tower of Hats" Booth, according to the Engineer update (or, died because he attempted to rocket jump up the stairs, according to the WAR! update).
    • The rocket launcher, the two-story house, America and the stage play were all invented by Shakespearicles, the strongest writer who ever lived.'
    • George Washington's greatest regret was not being permanently invisible. The Cloak and Dagger lets the Spy do just that.
  • Bigger on the Inside: Subtly done for Well, which has bases that are bigger on the inside, though not very much. There's no special trick of non-linear geometry going on (the engine didn't even support such a thing until Portal 2), they just hid part of the interior behind a skybox and projected the rest of the building's façade onto it.
  • Big Head Mode: Played straight and inverted separately; some of the random effects on the Halloween Ghost Fort map give all players big or small heads. Those effects do not change the players' head hitboxes.
  • Big "NO!":
    • The Spy, when he gets hit by...
      "Jarate? Nooooooooo!"
    • There's also The Heavy.
      "Oh nooooooo!"
    • Similarly, Heavy's incoherent "AAANNGGHHH YAAAA DAH" has achieved meme status among Japanese players — to whom "aa~ yada" actually means "Oh no!"
    • A particularly infamous spy line is from whenever he mocks a freshly-stabbed Medic or attacks the enemy team while ubercharged:
      "They should call you whiners 'Dr. NOOOOOO!'"
      • "Dr. No" is also the name of an achievement, where the Spy has to backstab a Medic who's ready to deploy an ÜberCharge.
    • This is Redmond and Blutarch's responses if your team loses the race to Hell at the (first) end of Helltower.
    • In "Meet the Pyro", the BLU Medic screams "NO!" right before RED Pyro incinerates the shed in which he's trapped.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • The Medic and Heavy both have several lines in their native languages. The Spy has a few as well, in various languages.
    • Oddly enough, one of these, after being hit by Jarate, is the Spy saying "Mon dieu!", which in the French dub is replaced by the English "My god!"
    • There's a well-known Russian idiom "Bullet is dumb"... With this in mind, Heavy's trademark line gets a lot deeper meaning:
      "I've yet to meet one that can outsmart bullet!"
    • And the unintentional Japanese one listed under Big "NO!" above.
    • The 'Kong King' map of based of Hong Kong has signs that read comprehensable Chinese texts such as 油炸魚排加炒薯條 (Fish and Chips), (傳統的餐廳 Traditional Restaurant, (紅色藥房 (Red Pharmacy), 酒吧 (Bar), and 土木工程產業公司 (Civil Engineering Industrial Company), and 地鐵 (Underground Railway; a reference to Hong Kong itself). Some contain references as 可靠的開挖破坏 (Reliable Escavacation Demolition) and 建设者联盟联合 (Builders League United). Hong Kong is the city in which Sleeping Dogs takes place, and there's a sign reading 狗的家 (Dog's home).
  • Bizarrchitecture: Who builds two opposing forts in the same building? There's an All There in the Manual explanation in the Backstory related here. Short explanation: RED and BLU were originally formed by two feuding brothers that were each willed the same land by their father. This practice is lampshaded in Valve's description of the map Double Cross: "Secret bases concealed behind the unassuming façades of a factory and a farm built next door to each other fool absolutely no one in the area, who sometimes gather around to 'watch all them mercenaries fight over that spy base'." This is actually one of the main reasons Valve went with the cartoony, no-plot style over the previous realistic military style. Take a look at the intelligence room on 2fort sometime. Notice anything? How about the extension cord that goes across the room and plugs into the other wall?
  • Bizarre Beverage Use: The Scout has a bottle of milk "weapon" called the Mad Milk that can be thrown at enemies, with the Scout recovering 60% of his health from those covered in it for a limited time. The Mad Milk can also be used to extinguish burning teammates or be used to create scrap metal, like any other weapon.
  • Blatant Lies:
    • One of the random bot names is "Totally Not A Bot". Convincing. As well as a Shout-Out to the popular use of sprays utilizing variations on "I Am Totally Not A Spy".
    • A patch note in December simply read "Updating some files, for no reason whatsoever." They actually removed Crate series 3, 4, and 5 from the Random Drop system, and added 6, 7, 8, and 9. Also, 6 is a Festive Winter Crate.
    • The map Decoy is a poorly done attempt to make an abandoned mining town look like Mann co.'s headquarters, done by the Soldier, using nothing but white paint and bad spelling. Yet it fooled the robots.
    • In the Halloween 2012 event, some of the Soldier's lines to his wizard ex-roomate become this, combined with Bad "Bad Acting" for good measure. He pretends that Merlin is here to find a new best friend, that his favorite actor Burt Lancaster is here, that "Gundorf" and the dwarves are here ready to start an adventure, that he has this month's rent, that everyone's dead so he can stop hiding, and "I've got your body. It's not burned. Looks pretty good!"note 
    • In Expiration Date, the Scout sets off the alarm in order to get Miss Pauling to come over. He waits for her right behind the front door, and when she shows up, he greets her with "What an unexpected surprise!"
  • Blood-Splattered Warrior: Due to the way the game handles blood and bullet hold sprites, they only appear on a player when they are shot by any projectile that isn't an explosive or fire-based, as well as melee attacks. It also has zero indication on actual health because a Medic could be healing that Heavy, meaning he could look like he's covered in his own blood, yet have well over his normal allotment of 300 HP.
  • Blood-Stained Letter: One of the hidden pages shows a blood-stained newspaper article about Mann Co. inventing 'Ro-Bots'. In standard in-universe Australian behaviour, the 'Ro-Bots' are designed for violent purposes only, implying the origin of the bloodstain.
  • Bloody Hilarious: A given in a game where Death is Cheap and terrible injuries are played for (albeit very dark) humor.
  • Blown Across the Room:
    • What happens when players get shot with the Force-A-Nature or a Pyro's airblast.
    • Or the kickback from several other weapons, such as explosives.
    • Or pretty much everything, including the Spy's backstab under certain circumstances.
    • The Scout's taunt-kill with the Sandman bats enemies to incredible distances.
    • This happens to enemies who get hit with the Pyro's Scorch Shot. At short range, it can knock people away from the Pyro, at long range, it can send people getting knocked off cliffs (if they're near them, that is.)
    • Any time the corpse ragdoll-izes, interesting things can happen to the player who died, depending on who's watching. Their own corpse will always look like it flies farther than it really does — for example, a headshot may send the victim flying across the room, but everyone else will see his ragdoll fall.
    • This is a specific mechanic with the Demoman's weapon the Loose Cannon — less damage on hit and less explosion radius, but upon hitting the enemy with the projectile and having it explode instantaneously after (which is in the player's control) it is counted as a "double donk", which does immense damage and has the added bonus of throwing even a revved-up Heavy halfway across the map if pulled off.
  • BLU and RED Morality: The mercenaries care much more about their teammates and their personal honor than what polite society thinks of their jobs.
  • Bodyguard Betrayal: Grey learns the hard way that if you hire mercenaries, you shouldn't wave around something more valuable than what you're paying them, especially if you're a frail old man who has no protection should they decide to turn on you.
  • Bond One-Liner:
    • Characters will say something after killing another player enough times to dominate them. It's especially a Bond One Liner with the Spy.
      "I never really was on your side..."
    • The Sniper's retort?
    "I was never on YOUR side, either! ...Wanker!"
  • Bootstrapped Theme: The song that is most readily associated with the Kazotsky Kick actually first appeared in CS:GO's de_train level.
  • Boring Yet Practical: The stock weapons. With the exception of the stock melees (which for most classes have better alternatives), stock weapons are the best for any situation because they have no downsides nor upsides, and stock is always available by default.
  • Boss Rush: Hellstone is capable of spawning the Skeleton King, the Horseless Headless Horsemann, and multiple MONOCULOUS!s all in a single round. Bloodwater from Scream Fortress 2020 also had this for a time, before removing the Horsemann due to complaints from the players.
  • Bottomless Magazines: The Heavy, Pyro, and Sniper's primary weapons don't use detachable magazines due to the way their weapons are designed (in the Sniper's case, he manually reloads his sniper rifle with every shot, as seen in Meet the Sniper). This also means that a Heavy or Pyro standing next to a dispenser can fire practically forever. Also, the four ray guns have unlimited ammo, but must be reloaded by cranking them (so they don't have bottomless magazines so much as immortal batteries).
    • The Widowmaker is kind of a subversion. It's a shotgun that draws ammo directly from the Engineer's metal reserve, which is capped to 200 metal units, and each shot consumes 30 metal, but every damage dealt is returned as ammo and it doesn't need to be reloaded, so as long as each shot with this weapon deals at least 30 damage, it can theoretically shoot indefinitely.
  • Bottomless Pits:
    • Various maps (Lumberyard Arena, Nucleus, and Steel, for example) have pits that, while not necessarily bottomless, are nonetheless fatal to fall into. This is especially evident on Lumberyard, as you can survive much higher falls on other maps (such as Hightower), but since there is no way out of the Lumberyard canyon once you fall into it, it has a kill trigger at the bottom. Often, you will see a player fall off the edge, only to hug the wall and actually stop the fall just a few inches off the bottom, then die a few seconds later as they realize it's futile to hold on.
    • Lampshaded on the some of the Halloween maps, particularly "Ghost Fort" Lakeside re-skin, which changes the original's pit of water into a pit to Hell in the shape of a mouth. It really does go on forever, before killing you and shooting you back out, as some lines attest to.
      Scout: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH- holy crap, this goes on forever.
      Spy: AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! *Beat*...Come on, I don't have all day!
  • Bound and Gagged: The Heavy gives the Engineer an enemy Spy wrapped in ribbons in this
  • Breakout Character: Miss Pauling, the Administrator's Perky Female Minion originally made her relatively-unimportant debut in Meet the Director, but has since become a major player in the comic's story and has made multiple appearances in the in-game contract system.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Modern TF2 averts this, as the game is completely playable without spending a penny. Items that need payment are purely cosmetic, though some things in the past have shown aspects of this trope.
    • With the addition of the Mann Co. store on Sept. 30, 2010, but it's Downplayed in that items can still be crafted or dropped. Needless to say, the fanbase exploded and is still divided.
    • The Polycount Sets offered a Set Bonus if all the items were worn together. Not a bad concept, as weapons were dropped relatively frequently... except the complete item set also included a hat, which were pretty difficult to obtain without buying from the store. Thank goodness an update changed the set bonuses to be purely cosmetic.
    • Free-to-Play playersnote  only store 50 items per backpack at defaultnote , while there are around 100 different weapons. Downplayed since Gift-Stuffed Stockings are given to every player each Smissmas, which contains a free backpack expandernote  each.
    • Also, a patch released on June 16, 2020 disabled text and voice chats and voice commands (such as "E" for calling a Medic) for players who have limited Steam account.note  While the patch is intended to deter bots that spam hate speech and loud music, it harms legitimate Free-to-Play players who have lifetime playtime of hours.
    • Sadly, the "Australian Christmas" update played this straight for the first time in Valve's history, albeit very briefly; several new weapons were only available via the Festive Crates, which could only opened by buying a $2.49 Festive Key (and even then, you had only had a small chance of getting what you wanted). Thankfully, this only lasted about a week, but it left a bad taste in a lot of players' mouths (though some took it a bit harder than they should've).
      • The Australian Christmas 2011 update took this a step further, preventing players from obtaining the new weapons for four weeks. While they could technically have been random crafted or found through Random Drop, the chances of either happening are minuscule (given that there are 100+ potential other weapons that could drop instead), so the only option was to purchase them from the store (for as much as $10 per weapon).
  • Brick Joke:
    • When the Jarate was first introduced as a mere April Fool's joke, part of its "advertisement" featured a soiled Spy with a word bubble reading, "I HAVE BEEN SHOWN WHO IS THE BOSS!". Months later, when the Jarate was actually implemented in the game along with context-based phrases said by the game's characters, the Spy can actually say this phrase when he is doused with it.
    • Basically, the entire Jarate thing itself, which made its first appearance in Meet the Sniper, then became a clever April Fool's joke, and then became a full-on weapon.
    • In the days leading up to the Über update, doves would occasionally fly out of gibbed Medics and Scouts. Why they came from Scouts seemed kinda weird until the Über update brought the punchline at the end of "Meet the Medic".
    • The initial reason given for why Medieval Mode exists was a Hand Wave that the Soldier angered a magician. Come Halloween 2011, the magician shows up as his own character who was (indirectly) responsible for the Demoman losing his eye, was the Soldier's roommate, and is the boss of the Spectral Halloween Special event.
    • In the Summer 2013 update, the Scout got a varsity jacket cosmetic called "Bigg Mann on Campus". In the Smissmas 2023 update, the Heavy got one called "Bigger Mann on Campus".
  • Brutal Bonus Level: Caliginous Caper. It's got Nightmare difficulty for a reason.
  • Build Like an Egyptian: Egypt and Lakeside.
  • Bullet Sparks: Whenever a bullet hits anything made of metal, sparks will be emitted. All melee weapons also cause this: from longswords and frying pans, to fish, wrapping paper, and bare fists.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Being dominated is one of the most infuriating things to happen, because the game goes out of its way to let you know that you've been killed by that goddamned Sniper at least four times in a row, and makes it clear who is dominating you by marking them out with a special icon over their head. By contrast, the person doing the dominating tends not to register that it happened, possibly even getting annoyed with this one particular enemy player going to absurd lengths to go after them.
  • Butt-Monkey: The whole BLU team in the Meet the Team videos.

    C 
  • Camera Abuse: The Zombie Infection tutorial video ends with a zombie Pyro attacking the camera.
  • Camera Perspective Switch: Taunting or losing a round puts the character in third-person for the duration of the taunt or Humiliation. There are also some servers that have a mod that allow people to play in third-person.
  • Carpet of Virility:
    • The miscellaneous item Triad Trinket is a necklace and open shirt, equippable by the Scout, Heavy, Engineer, Sniper, and Spy. The Bear style adds chest hair to everyone but the Scout.
    • Saxton Hale and Radigan Conagher (after his transformation) also possess chest hair in the shape of Australia and Texas, respectively.
    • In the Scream Fortress 2016, Medic got a cosmetic called Burly Beast which rips his coat from his belly button, revealing a muscular and hairy upper body.
  • Cel Shading: Subtly, in conjunction with several other shading techniques that give the game its distinctive look.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: Subverted with the Mann Vs. Machine update, in spite of its mostly dead-serious promotion. Redmond and Blutarch Mann, the very characters who established the universe's Status Quo, are Killed Off for Real, and the nine classes are fighting an army of killer robots hell-bent on world domination... robots that run on piles of money. The bases they're protecting were built with a special chute designed specially to receive enemy bombs for some reason, and Saxton Hale isn't helping them out personally just because he's fighting a yeti for at least the next nine hours.
  • Chain Lethality Enabler:
    • In Arena mode, whoever gets the first kill in a round gets the Crit Boost status, granting them guaranteed Critical Hits on all their attacks for five seconds, and letting them more easily kill more enemies for a short while.
    • If the Heavy eliminates an enemy with the Killing Gloves of Boxing, he gets a Crit Boost for five seconds.
  • Character Customization: Players can deck out the mercs with 3 cosmetic items (hats and the like), an Action item (provides special effects when used), and up to 8 taunts.
  • Characterization Marches On: As TF2 has gradually leaned towards a Denser and Wackier game style, so have some of the characters.
    • The initial portrayal of RED and BLU as shadowy, all-powerful corporations appears to have been more or less dropped in favor of them being run by a pair of feuding brothers of questionable competence and sanity. Now RED and BLU are run by the same shadowy, all-powerful corporation.
    • The Soldier was initially shown as being an eccentric, but nonetheless competent fighter as shown in Meet The Soldier. Over the years, he's since become a dumber and crazier character who really only succeeds because of Refuge in Audacity.
    • Before Meet The Medic came out, the titular character was portrayed as being a serious and dour person who would frequently get upset with his teammates if they were failing at their current objective. In the video itself and shortly after it was released, the Medic would later become more of a gleeful but friendly Mad Scientist who genuinely cares about his teammates.
    • The Pyro was initially seen as The Quiet One in the game's early days, due to a lack of context as to who he actually was, a sharp contrast to his loony Cloud Cuckoolander portayal in future updates and videos.
  • Checkpoint: Control points on one-way Attack/Defend maps and check points on Payload maps.
  • Cherry Tapping:
    • Using the Sniper's SMG or the Engineer or Scout's pistol on targets. Melee weapons do almost three to eight times the damage of these guns, depending on the melee weapon. However, they're generally their best semi-mid/short range weapons, considering the Scout's weapons are close range based, and the Sniper's are long range based, making them actually reliable weapons when the Scattergun or the Sniper Rifle wouldn't be useful. About the Engie, it's good when you're going combat Engie without the Wrangler. But it's actually hard to kill with it. The Engineer however does get 200 bullets in reserve (for a pistol with only a 12 round magazine), compared to the Scout's 48, meaning you can spam it much more liberally.
    • Ambushing and killing small groups of enemies as the Medic is especially humiliating for them.
    • The Spy's knife in non-backstab situations has the one of the worst DPS of any weapon, though usually when a Spy makes kills like this, the player has been circling around the enemy, trying to get a backstab.
    • The Fan O' War has the absolute lowest damage output in the game, dealing out a measly 11 damage for a critical hit. Being killed by this weapon is the ultimate humiliation.
      • The Fan O' War was eventually buffed to deal more damage and deal critical hits instead of mini-crits... and it still deals less damage than the default bat.
    • In a similar vein, there's the Wrap Assassin, which consists of a roll of wrapping paper that is used to launch Christmas tree ornaments at people. The baubles do a respectable amount of damage by causing targets to bleed out; the wrapping paper, on the other hand, does about as much damage as you would expect from a cardboard tube.
  • Circling Birdies: Over stunned players.
  • Cloud Cuckooland: Pyroland, where everything is bright and colorful, screams are giggles, domination is friendship, and so on.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander:
    • The Soldier has a very tenuous grasp on reality, and an even looser grasp on history. However, he's quite lucid, if insulting, in actual combat — most likely because that's what he loves best.
    • And then there's the Pyro; nobody has a clue what he (or she) is saying, but he wears a number of odd hats (including a propeller beanie and one of the Engineer's rubber gloves), wields weapons like a rake and a mailbox, and "Meet the Pyro" shows he views the mayhem he creates as him blowing bubbles in a cutesy Sugar Bowl full of diapered cherub versions of his enemies.
    • The Cuckoolander Was Right: The Soldier in the Expiration Date animated short. In the short, the Engineer and the Medic discover that sending a loaf of bread through their teleporter will cause it to come back filled with horrible tumours. Every mercenary on the team uses the same teleporter on a regular basis. The Engineer asks, gravely, whether the team realises what this means; the Soldier replies — very angrily — that they "Cannot teleport Bread anymore!" At first it seems he's Comically Missing the Point, but by the end of the short, it turns out he was exactly right.
  • Collector of Forms: Normally, a Spy can disguise himself as any class at any time. However, when a Spy is equipped with Your Eternal Reward, the same action consumes a full cloak meter but he can disguise himself by backstabbing someone on the enemy team as that specific player.
  • Colony Drop: The end of a round on Doomsday. The rocket soars into the heavens... then lands with a firey thud on the losing team's base.
    Administrator: Oh no... Gentlemen. This never happened.
  • Color-Coded Armies: A RED Army and a BLU Army.
  • Color-Coded Item Tiers: The game features item qualities for its weapons, hats and esthetic gizmos. Although their rarity is relative and sometimes a vintage or a genuine quality item can be considered being worth less than their common counterpart from the users, Light Grey (default "Stock" items) > Yellow (unique) > Blue (vintage) > Green (genuine) > Purple (unusual) could be considered a relatively canonical order of rarity, with genuines and vintages being very dependant on the item itself. There are also other qualities such as stranges or community made items that can't be placed anywhere precisely within the order by rarity.
    • The Gun Mettle update (and various updates after) plays this straight, with weapon skins and cosmetics obtained from cases being given white (Civilian), light blue (Freelance), blue (Mercenary), purple (Commando), magenta (Assassin) and red (Elite) borders, depending on their "grade".
  • Color-Coded Multiplayer: The two teams are colour coded red and blue.
  • Color Contrast: Red and blue, for both the teams and maps. The comics mix it up with purple for the Administrator.
  • The Colored Cross: Subverted with the Medic. The BLU Medic has blue crosses on his coat and backpack...but only because he's a member of the blue team, not for legal reasons, and thus the RED Medic has red crosses.
  • Colorful Theme Naming: RED and BLU, obviously. Their original founders (as revealed on a hidden page on the official website) are two twin brothers named Redmond and Blutarch respectively.
  • Combat and Support: Classes are divided into Offense (Scout, Soldier, and Pyro), Defense (Demoman, Heavy, and Engineer), and Support (Medic, Sniper, and Spy). Offense classes and most Defense classes are the Combat, getting into the thick of the fight, while the Support classes are, well, Support, as they provide assistance from the sidelines. The Engineer counts for both, as he can lay down covering fire with his Sentry Gun while provide support with his Dispenser and Teleporter.
  • Combat Medic:
    • The Medic can be played like this, occasionally to the detriment of the team since he's mainly a support class. There are actually "battle medics" who only heal after they've killed everything they possibly can, disregarding the combat classes around them who do the killing far better. "Stop Having Fun" Guys are liable to call any Medic who so much as uses their weapons once "Battle Medic."
    • Depending on the Medic, such a statement might be taken as an insult, which means they're liable to let you burn when you need them most.
    • They're especially hated in Mann Up mode in Mann vs Machine. Use your syringe gun even once and you'll invariably get vote-kicked, Mad Milk Syringes be damned.
  • Combos: Pyro's Degreaser flamethrower encourages them, with its faster switch speed exchanged for weaker afterburn damage. The typical choice of weapons to pair with it are the Flare Gun for high burst damage, the Panic Attack for the fastest switch speed in the game and a great source of constant damage, and the Axtinguisher for a powerful finisher move.
  • Comically Missing the Point:
    • The Pyro is happy to receive coal. On the other hand, knowing how the Pyro sees the world, he probably thinks it's something else. Or, hell, maybe what he sees is coal and coal is what he wanted.
    • Everybody receives compromising photos of themselves in the "Meet The Director" comic, including the Heavy, who has been photographed asleep in his bedroom.
      Scout: That's your gun there?
      Heavy: Yes.
      Scout: In a tiny bed. Beside your bed.
      Heavy: Yes.
      Scout: That's pretty embarrassin'.
      Heavy: Yes. I must buy Sascha better bed.
  • The Comically Serious: The Administrator, on maps such as Doomsday. You would never expect names like "Poopy Joe" and "Vladimir Bananas" to be said with such poise and authority.
  • Commonplace Rare: Hats. Some are rarer than others, but any hat is worth at least a week or two of dropped weapons. Hats include such things as wearable Blueprints (which the Engineer pulls out every time he builds something anyway), cheap plastic batting helmets, cheap plastic batting helmets with soda cans attached to them, and the ability to remove default hats.
  • The Computer Shall Taunt You:
    • The bots tend to do this. This can be prevented by typing "tf_bot_taunt_victim_chance 0" in the console (now that it's no longer a cheat as of the Über Update).
    • The robots in Mann vs. Machine taunt both when killing players and when carrying the bomb.
  • Concealment Equals Cover: Buildings (map architecture) are very hardy. So are enemy Dispensers, since they are impervious to Sentry fire.
  • Concealed Customization: A disguised Spy will not have any personal cosmetics showing to neither allied players (who can see through the disguise) nor enemies (who are fooled by it).
  • Concept Art Gallery: Valve added an art gallery to the Team Fortress 2 blog when it had its makeover.
  • Confronting Your Imposter: Spies can be caught by the player whose name they've been assigned. The Halloween events have the Costume Contest achievement for a player who kills a spy disguised as the same class as said player. Even better, Spies get the "Identity Theft" achievement for killing the enemy they're disguised as.
  • Confusion Fu:
    • The Spy can pretend to be other classes, of both his team and of his enemies, forcing the enemy team to waste ammo on anybody and being paranoid about everybody. They can also use the Dead Ringer to drop a fake body when hit, making it hard to tell if you killed the Spy or he is invisible and about to backstab you.
    • The Scout can double jump. This doesn't sound impressive, but a good Scout is a nightmare to deal with, being able to change direction while in the air and be impossible to hit, or even see.
    • A common tactic with Gunslinger Engineers is to put your mini-sentries in random places that make no sense outside of how unexpected they are, and then put up a new one in a different location as soon as the old one is destroyed.
  • Continuity Nod: Gray Mann being the announcer for Versus Saxton Hale mode as well as the new CEO of Mann Co and later firing the mercenaries whether they win or lose the mode is a reference to the first "Mann Co No More" comic "Ring of Fired".
  • Construct Additional Pylons: The more Dispensers around an Engineer the faster they get metal to build with.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity:
    • The Halloween bosses, as well as the Tank from Mann vs. Machine, are all immune to status effects (afterburn, coated with Jarate, slowdown, etc.) and take no increased damage from a backstab. A couple of these bosses, including MONOCULOUS and the Skeletons, are also immune to headshots.
    • Giant Robots in Mann vs. Machine can't be killed instantly by a backstab. In fact, a backstab won't do much damage to them unless the knife is upgraded.
  • Controllable Helplessness: During Humiliation, one team is almost completely defenseless and slowed down, fleeing from the other team, who are faster and crit-boosted. During a Stalemate, both teams are reduced to running around looking embarrassed or cowering.
  • Cooldown: Some weapons and abilities, including throwables and Demoman shield charging, have a cooldown period after use before they can be activated again.
  • Cooldown Manipulation: The recharge duration for Jarate and Mad Milk can be reduced by 20% if they're used to extinguish burning teammates.
  • Cool Train: Lil' Chew Chew, the Payload in Frontier.
  • Corporate Warfare: For the dumbest reasons possible.
  • Cosmetically Different Sides: RED and BLU, obviously. RED is the protagonist side; all the Meet the Team videos are of the boys in red, and loadouts default to RED.
  • Cosmetic Award:
    • The hats, although since each of them is part of the drops, they only really reward you for playing enough to get one by luck.
    • The Polycount update introduced item sets that gave bonuses if all items were equipped, with the first batch including a hat in each set. Future sets didn't include bonuses, as this was widely seen as Bribing Your Way to Victory by the fanbase.
      • As of July 10, 2013, these set bonuses have been swapped out in favor of non-gameplay effecting ones, rendering all hats purely cosmetic again.
    • Achievements, though they also guarantee you some of the randomly dropping extra weapons when you get enough of them, as well as hats for certain maps.
  • Covert Group with Mundane Front: RED and BLU are supposedly demolitions and building companies respectively, but it's just a front. Even some of the townsfolk near the maps the mercenaries fight at know they're fighting over a spy base.
  • Cranial Processing Unit: The robots in Mann vs Machine, like normal players, take critical hits from headshots via Snipers and the Ambassador. Gray Mann was even nice enough to give them functional spines for the Spy to Back Stab.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Going in hand with the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors nature of the game, every class is overspecialized to a degree. This mostly shows up as their personal combat ability, or their ability to do damage at certain ranges. Sometimes, creative use of weapons will overcome this. Ultimately the extent to which any class is crippled by their specialization is, though, also a function of the player, the weapon loadout, and the combat situation — but content updates have introduced new equipment to help mitigate these problems in some classes. However, several weapons fall prey to this, so players may end up cursing their loadout choices. A few examples:
    • The Pyro's Axtinguisher and Flare Gun are practically useless against other Pyros or when forced to fight underwater. In general, Pyros suffer in any area with water nearby, as the enemy can jump in there to douse the flames.
      • A skilled Pyro can still land the Axtinguisher and Flare Gun critical hits on another Pyro provided that they can switch weapons quick enough.
    • The Razorback for the Sniper has exactly one purpose: preventing an easy backstab. But with it, the Sniper will only have his melee weapon to defend himself against anyone else.
      • Even more frustrating is that it was introduced at roughly the same time as the Ambassador, which gives the Spy the ability to Headshot. While it doesn't pack as much punch as a Sniper's Rifle, it will still kill most enemies with two shots. All it needs is the tiny crosshair centered on the victim's head. Given that most Snipers would be camping in a spot most other classes won't visit anyways and their eyes are always in the scope, the shot isn't hard.
    • The Demoknight (officially known as the "Close-Combat Kit") loadout, which gives up the sticky-launcher for a shield with charge attack and complements it with the more risky melee weapons. Deadly in melee, but not as mobile and weak at long range.
      • The Thousand and One Demoknight variant of this kit forgoes ranged weapons entirely, replacing the grenade launcher with a pair of wee booties that gives you better control of your charge, at the expense of having no ranged weapons whatsoever, and gives you a sword that doubles the regeneration on the Charge Meter while also converting all ammo boxes into charge. The last one also makes it so that you are unable to refill ammo even if you had a gun. The upside is, with a good knowledge of the map, a Demoknight with this kit can get around twice as fast as a Scout, and one-shot anything short of a Heavy with a well timed Shield Bash + critical sword swing.
    • The Heavy equipped with a Tomislav can easily set up ambushes and cut other classes down, and makes a solid combo with the Gloves of Running Urgently. However, if he runs into any other Heavies equipped with other miniguns, their higher damage output is generally enough to ruin him if the Tomislav Heavy doesn't get the first shot off.
      • ... and on the other hand, a Heavy equipped with the Brass Beast will almost never get the first shot off. In fact, he'll probably be dead by the time his gun is ready to shoot at all if he tries to use it on the move.
    • There's also the Medic's alternate Medi Guns (the Quick-Fix and Kritzkrieg), both of which grant a fairly solid alternate charge (increased healing, and guaranteed critical hits) to the standard ÜberCharge, and the former of which heals faster, but aren't nearly as good at clearing out sentry nests.
    • Most classes have at least one option to trade in their secondary weapon for an item with specific purposes. Many of these classes use their secondary weapon to complement their primary or when they run out of ammo. (For example, a Pyro uses his shotgun to finish off a fleeing burning enemy. Doing the same with a flare gun is a lot less reliable).
      • Less reliable, yet more effective: shots with the flare gun on lit targets deal full crits. It's also the only real way a Pyro has to deal with foes at a great distance. In the right hands, it's much more effective than a shotgun.
      • A better example here might be the Soldier's buff items, such as the Buff Banner. These get charged up when you deal damage and have one of several effects for your nearby teammates, such as extra crits or health regeneration. However, the Soldier has to give up his Shotgun to use it, meaning he's vulnerable to anyone who can close inside effective rocket-launcher range.
  • Critical Hit: Tied directly into game balance, with some weapons' advantages and disadvantages relying on an ability to land a guaranteed crit, or the inability to land random crits. "Crockets" (Critical rockets) get hate especially since they can gib several people with a single projectile. There are also mini-crits, which deal 35% more damage for a weapon. More details on the Critical Hit page.
  • Critical Hit Class: The Sniper might count, since to do any real damage, you must be zoomed in and charged up. You don't NEED a "crit" to kill others, but if you're trying to use your sniper rifle without the scope, you'll do almost zero damage. The spy relies on being undetected and killing enemies with a single backstab. Alternatively, some pyros use the flare gun and axtinguisher, which deal critical hits on enemies who have been set on fire, such as by a flamethrower.
  • Crossover:
  • Cross Promotion: Valve adds numerous items (usually hats) from other Steam games and vice versa.
  • Crouch and Prone: Crouching slows you down but grants more cover, and by crouching during a jump, you can reach higher places than with just a regular jump.
  • Cue the Falling Object: "Meet the Pyro" ends with Pyro walking away, the BLU team dead, and all the buildings on fire and falling apart.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Almost every class has several lines, but the Soldier's are the most notable.
    "I am going to claw my way down your throat and tear out your very soul!"
    "I am going to strangle you with your own frilly training bra!"
    "Son, you are writing checks your butt will find uncashable! Are you hearing me? Your backside will be escorted from the bank! You will find this humiliating!"
    "My foot will transform into a foot with your ass wrapped around it."
  • Cutscene Power to the Max:
    • In-game, all the classes are more or less balanced, and even the most skilled players will die pretty quickly without team support. In the "Meet the Team" shorts, each class is shown utterly dominating the entire BLU team with ease. For example, in the "Meet the Sniper" video, the RED Sniper kills the BLU Spy with his knife. In the "Meet the Spy" video, the RED Spy kills the BLU Sniper with his knife.
    • In addition, some videos have their featured class doing things that are impossible in the game. For instance, the Engineer has four sentry guns in his video.
  • Cutting Back to Reality: In "Meet The Pyro," it's revealed that the eponymous character sees the world as an idyllic Sugar Bowl: enemy team members are portrayed as cupidlike infants, and Pyro plays with them by feeding them giant lollipops and blowing bubbles in their faces. At various points in the trailer, we cut back to the real world to see that Pyro is massacring the opposing team, with every innocent act revealed as another brutal murder.
  • Cyanide Pill: Typing "kill" or "explode" into the console (or binding this command to a button) will kill you. This is actually useful in the event you get stuck somewhere. Or for taunting the enemy, especially if said enemy is using the Half-Zatoichi. No full heal for you!

    D 
  • Dagwood Sandwich: The Medic gives the Heavy one in this holiday card.
  • Damage Discrimination:
    • Friendly fire is off by default. This is for the better because the most effective way to Spy-check is by shooting suspicious "teammates", and enabling it has a tendency to cause glitches anyway.
    • Soldier and Demoman projectiles hurt/fling the shooter and enemies but not allies. This also applies in a unique way to the Engineer: his sentry rockets and bullets damage him, though other Engineers on the same team are safe. Spies can exploit this, although it's risky.
  • Damage Over Time: The hallmark ability of the Pyro class is the ability to set opponents on fire with their flamethrower. Some melee weapons can inflict a "bleeding" status that also causes damage over time.
  • Damage-Sponge Boss:
    • The tanks in Mann Vs. Machine mode are as slow as a Giant Heavy, with no attacks to back them up... but they can take a lot of punishment.
    • The "Super Giant Heavy" Captain Punch has more health than a tank (60,000) plus 40% damage resistance to all ranged attacks AND 250 health per second regeneration. He can also only punch (though those punches are almost always a One-Hit Kill).
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: There are a number of subtle differences between playing different classes or playing TF2 and other FPS games that will get you killed. Most notably, the Spy class and the idea of spy-checking is one that TF2 shares with very few other games, which is a habit that one needs to temporarily delete. Try spraying a few bullets at an approaching teammate in another shooter and feel very foolish as they ask you what you were thinking or chew you out for team-killing.
  • Dare to Be Badass: Invoked with the Eyelander. The weapon starts you off with reduced health and no random crits. With every kill, your health and speed increases. Thus, it takes effort, but you're eventually rewarded for your long, murderous rampage.
    • Similar weapons include the Bazaar Bargain, a sniper rifle that starts with a slower charge but increases in charge time with every headshot kill, and the Air Strike rocket launcher, which has reduced damage and blast radius by default, but increases in clip size with every kill and also allows a rocket jumping Soldier to spam rockets very fast.
  • Darker and Edgier: The Mann vs. Machine trailer is completely dead serious, especially when compared to the lightheartedness of the rest of the game.
  • Dark Lord on Life Support:
    • The teams' owners, Blutarch and Redmond Mann, are (or rather were) among the closest things to evil overlords in this universe. Both of them are on life support/extender machines to try and outlast each other. Since the machines are about 100 years old, they don't run perfectly, and thus the brothers die every now and then.
    • Gray Mann, the heretofore unknown third brother, has a better working life extender machine embedded into his spine.
  • Dartboard of Hate: In the comic "Death of a Sales-Bot", Gray Mann is shown to use a copy of Hat-Wearing Man magazine with Saxton Hale on the front as a dartboard.
  • Dead Character Walking:
    • Occasionally, if your character's corpse is still there after you respawn (which tends to happen on instant respawn servers), it can produce weird effects, such as you and your corpse talking from hitting the Holler Button.
    • Inverted by anything that produces a "statue" from the corpse after a kill (The Saxxy, Golden Wrench, Freedom Staff, or Spy-cicle), where the statue will not only talk, but also sometimes be subjected to ragdoll physics. A patch sort of solved the problem, but they are still subjected to very, very minor physics when they collapse over.
  • Deadly Euphemism: From "Meet the Medic":
    Heavy: What happens now?
    Medic: Now? (sinister chuckle) Let's go practice medicine.
  • Deadly Force Field: In Mann Vs. Machine mode, one of the Medic's upgrades is an Ubershield, which, in addition to reflecting projectiles such as rockets and grenades, is capable of disintegrating robots that come into contact with it rather quickly, being able to dispatch weaker robots such as Scouts and Spies after only a second or two of contact.
  • Death by Falling Over: Hitting someone with a weapon that has knockback can push the enemy into an environmental hazard. The Scout and Demoman get an achievement for doing this, while the Medic has one for preventing a death by falling too far.
  • Death from Above: Having the higher ground affords a tactical advantage to pretty much all of the classes, but the Soldier in particular earns an achievement called "Death From Above" by killing enough enemies in that fashion.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Some servers use plug-ins which eliminate the post-death timer entirely. It plays hell with balance on most maps, and sometimes even prevents a player from knowing who killed him (especially if the killing shot was a long-range one). Naturally, said plugin has a Broken Base, especially since some control point maps have the balance backwards, i.e. it takes longer for a winning team to respawn, to give the losing team a chance to recapture the lost control point.
  • Death Is Not Permanent: After dying in non-Arena maps, you wait until a running timer respawns you and your teammates into your base.
  • Deflector Shields:
    • The Medic can bathe both himself and a teammate in a glowing, indestructible shell for up to 8 seconds.
    • The Scout can drink a Bonk drink for a similar effect, but can't fire his weapons while it lasts.
    • The Engineer's Wrangler, in addition to letting him control his Sentry gun, projects one of these around it.
  • Demonic Possession: The Demoman has an affinity for haunted items. First, there was the Eyelander (and its later re-skin, the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker), a haunted claymore that had a thirst for decapitated heads. Then, come the 2011 Halloween Update, it was revealed that the reason he lost his eye as a child was due to a book called the Bombinomicon, whose spirit possessed his left eye before being expelled by Merasmus the Magician. It later became the boss of Eyeaduct.
  • Denser and Wackier: Team Fortress 2 had a cartoony yet sophisticated theme at the beginning of its life, and as the years have passed, the developers have emphasized the "cartoony" portion. The original game could pass as being stylized yet grounded, but today's game hardly takes itself seriously, what with elements such as silly hats, Pyroland, magic, and bumper cars being in the game, which was originally based off prominent 1960s Spy Fiction.
  • Department of Redundancy Department:
    • There are hats called the "Vintage Merryweather" and the "Vintage Tyrolean". Therefore it is possible to have a "Vintage Vintage Merryweather" or "Vintage Vintage Tyrolean". Michael Cole would be proud.
      • The same happens with the "Haunted Hat". You can have a "Haunted Haunted Hat".
    • There's also the Professor Speks, which layer over the Medic's and Snipers' glasses.
    • The item type of the Medic- and Spy-only Dr. Whoa (a bow tie and dress shirt combo) was "Wearable Shirt" before a patch in February 2012 changed it to just "Shirt".
    • The "Scream Fortress Very Scary Halloween Special" implies that the update is a Halloween special of a Halloween special to emphasize just how scary the update is.
    • The description for the Rainblower weapon reads "Your friends (enemies) will squeal with delight (be consumed with fire) when you cover them with sparkling rainbows (all consuming fire)."
  • Descending Ceiling: Rather than handling the case of players standing in a spawn point suddenly invalidated by a point capture by teleporting them to the new spawn instead, Egypt takes the approach of slowly re-closing all the doors to the spawn and crushing the player to death.
  • Descent into Darkness Song: "More Gun". It starts off as a calm campfire song but VERY quickly turns harsh and ends up sounding like a western duel song.
  • Destructible Projectiles:
    • The Short-Circuit can destroy Soldiers' rockets and Demomen's grenades and sticky bombs.
    • In Mann vs Machine, the Deflector Heavy can destroy incoming projectiles by shooting them. Likewise, an upgrade for the Heavy's primary weapons allows him to do the same.
    • Huntsman arrows can also destroy projectiles upon colliding with them, including other Huntsman arrows.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • The Gun Mettle update adds decorated weapons (stock reskins), and added an animation to allow you to get a closer look at the design. The shotgun and the pistol reskins have different animations depending on the class wielding them, for example, the Engineer gives the pistol a slight twirl before looking at it, and the Heavy initially looks at the shotgun with only his right hand.
    • The same update added the ability to pick up and use weapons that were dropped. Decorated weapons with designs varying depending on the team will retain the color of the person who dropped it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for normal weapons with different team colors.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • The Manniversary update made it so that items in the store could be traded and crafted. This change was zapped after less than a single day when people flooded the stores to buy dozens of the really cheap hats to craft together in the hopes of getting the rare and prestigious hats. Now store-bought items can only be traded.
    • Which led to a second instance of this trope, where people in the trading market would often scam others by selling a supposedly craftable hat at full price only for the buyer to find out it wasn't craftable... after the trade was over and the seller left. Valve also fixed this in short order.
  • Diesel Punk: The game's setting is a mishmash of this and Raygun Gothic.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: See the cast page for specific class-flavored awesome, but here's one just about any class can do: circle-strafing a sentry faster than it can turn around and meleeing it to death. Works best with Pyros and Scouts, especially since those two classes often have difficulty taking out sentries.
  • Diminishing Returns for Balance:
    • As this blog entry notes, when one team is mostly Snipers and Spies, then they're probably not going to last long.
    • Inversely, an overabundance of Engineers on one side or the other can cause the game to grind to a stalemated halt.
  • Distinctive Appearances: Every class has a unique silhouette, voice, and personality, and the weapons unique to their class are all differently shaped enough that you can tell what they're trying to kill you with even in the heat of battle.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: Happens in "The Naked and the Dead" when Miss Pauling can't stop staring at a naked Zhanna and gets buried under a pile of robots for it.
  • Ditzy Genius: Prolonged exposure to Australium has this effect on people. Radigan Conagher, after working with Australium for years, became intelligent enough to make a fully functional prosthetic limb, and dumb enough to saw his hand off to be able to use it. Australia, the main source of this metal, is the most advanced country in the entire world, yet they elect their king by kangaroo boxing. Bil-Bel turned New Zealand into an undersea Krypton, then spent the rest of his life using his Australium to paint prototype spaceships, most of which crashed.
  • Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Until the Gun Mettle Update, released more than seven and a half years after the game's original launch, you could not drop your weapon unless you died, with the exception of the Heavy's Sandvich and throwables like Jarate or Mad Milk. However, now you can swap out your weapon for others laying on the ground (provided, of course, that your class can use the weapon in question).
  • Do Not Run with a Gun:
    • The Heavy while spinning his barrels and the Sniper while zoomed in or with a readied arrow.
    • Inverted with the Overdose — while held, it'll give Medic a speed increase, though only if he has some Ubercharge prepared.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The story takes place in the 1960s and 70s and centers around two global powers competing for dominance using proxies (in this case, mercenaries). The two powers expend massive amounts of money and resource to compete with each other. The plot of Team Fortress 2 sounds like the Cold War!
  • Doomsday Device:
    • At least two in the form of the Ray Gun on Gravelpit and the... whatever it is on Nucleus. Also, the big-ass missiles on Granary, Goldrush, etc.
    • To a lesser extent, the eponymous Payload in, uh, Payload mode.
  • Double Agent:
    • Spies can disguise as spies of the opposite side. As of the Spy/Sniper update, Spies disguised as enemy spies get a random disguise to complete the illusion. You might see enemy spies disguised as friendly spies disguised as enemy spies. You can also disguise as your own team. And then there's the Dead Ringer's corpse generation.
    • With some luck, you can disguise as enemy spy disguised as yourself.
  • Double Jump: The Scout's standard movement.
  • Double Unlock: A rather devious triple unlock presents itself in the Jungle Inferno update. The Mercenary Park contracts first need a pass to be bought to unlock. Clearing certain contracts, which will involve needing to clear prior ones beforehand, awards the player Blood Money, which can be redeemed in the unique shop for this event. Some of the items that can be bought include crates, which require more expenditure on keys to open, which is the only way to get the rarer weapon paints. Fortunately, the crates are not the only thing you can obtain with Blood Money, and there are still other free contracts starring new weapons for those who don't or can't buy the pass.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: Many achievements require you to accomplish them in one life or one round, which resets at the end of the round even if your team won, making it occasionally just as hard to get these achievements with a great team as with a bad one. The possibility of stalemates adds another obstacle in these cases.
  • Dramatic Drop: In the Mann vs. Machine trailer, the RED Heavy, Scout, and Engineer bust in on the BLU Soldier and Demoman playing cards. The Heavy points a shotgun at the pair, leading the Soldier to let his cigar fall out of his mouth — and then the Heavy throws it to the Demoman so the two sides can team up against the advancing robots.
  • The Dreaded: The Pyro in "Meet the Pyro". Even his teammates fear him.
  • Dreadful Musician: Demoman's "Bad Pipes" taunt; off tune, off key, and full of sour notes Demoman "tries" to play the bagpipes. Strangely, the originally-submitted "True Scotsman Call" taunt is not an example of this trope, and has Demoman playing the bagpipes like a true scotsman as flutes, pipes, and drums play along.
  • Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: Players can normally come and go as they please. Some servers even replace absent human players with bots.
  • Dwindling Party: Arena mode, since no one respawns after death.

    E 
  • Eagleland: The aesthetic design of the game, which according to Valve is inspired by artists such as J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell, recalls the Type One variation of America. The setting of the game itself is considerably less innocuous however, and the American characters themselves occupy various positions along the spectrum. The Engineer leans closer to Type One, while the Scout and especially the Soldier behave like Type Two, but are still likable and able to Pet the Dog on occasion.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The game originally didn't have custom loadouts at all: the only weapons you had access to with any given class were the ones that class started with, and changing weapons as such required you to change to a different class. The version of the game included in the console versions of The Orange Box was never patched beyond this point.
    • Early maps could get very stall-y, some notable examples being 2Fort (no time limit), Dustbowl (Stage 3 has a 20 minute timer and heavily favors defense), and Hydro (due to the way Hydro was designed). Also of note on Hydro - it's the only official Territorial Control map, and it was released on launch. Gamemodes like Payload and King of the Hill didn't even exist on launch, despite being two of the most played gamemodes.
    • On that note, three of the maps the game launched with (2Fort, Dustbowl, and Well), as well as Badlands, the first post-release map Valve made unless one counts the CTF version of Well, are Team Fortress Classic Nostalgia Levels. Every single map made for the game since then has made its debut in TF2.
    • The earliest major updates, like the Gold Rush and Heavy Updates, were rather lacking when it came to new items, usually containing only about 2 or 3 items. Compare this to the later updates, some of which have fifty or more.
    • Related to this, the earliest major updates for the game generally focused on adding new weapons and achievements for one specific class - to the point the first update that wasn't advertised itself as the "First-Ever Classless Update" because the only changes to the classes were the addition of more hats. Even then, the first class-specific update was noticeably different from later ones for a number of reasons, the first and most visible being that it was named the "Gold Rush" update rather than something related to the Medic, the class it focused on; later class-specific updates would be named after the class in question, save the shared one for Demoman and Soldier, which was named the "WAR! Update" owing to the backstory given for the update. The real oddities lie in what came with the update: for one, acquiring all three of the Medic's new weapons originally required you to achieve all of the new Medic achievements, and for two, despite the necessity of unlocking all of them to get all three new weapons, many of the achievements were designed around the idea of Awesome, but Impractical stunts the Medic could theoretically achieve in a game under very specific circumstances, most commonly getting several kills on specific classes with a specific weapon or assisting another class as they do something very specific under the effects of your medigun, and not on what the Medic was actually designed to be doing 99% of the time, which (as is evident by the class's name but was apparently not so evident to the developers in April 2008) is healing people.
    • Many of the weapons and hats released in the earlier updates are just slight alterations of the stock versions. The Backburner is just the normal Flame Thrower with a special muzzle, Natascha is the normal minigun but black and with an ammo belt on its side, and the Kritzkreig is the standard Medi-Gun with a different barrel, to name a few. Then there's the early hats, many of which are just normal hats with some additions (like the Soldier's Stash, Mining Light, and Trophy Belt hats) or removing the class's existing hat. Later hats and items have become much more diverse, to the point of allowing some classes to completely change their identity and playstyle, most notably the explosives-focused Demoman able to become a pure melee swordfighter.
    • On the subject of hats, and despite the game now proudly touting itself as "America's #1 War-Themed Hat Simulator", it did not have hats to simulate for a year and a half: they were added in the "Sniper vs Spy Update" in May 2009.
    • The first three major updates did not include new domination lines for their specific class. For that matter, the Scout's lines for dominating a Spy don't mention the Spy's relationship with his mother, due to it not being introduced until "Meet the Spy".
    • Some people have extracted the original release of TF2 from the Orange Box and are running a server for it, and it can be very jarring to go back to if you're used to the current version. Not even counting the complete absence of cosmetics and unlockable weapons, the Pyro lacks an airblast, the pistol works like its HL2 counterpart where it shoots slowly when the button is held and very rapidly when spam clicked, the Engineer can't move buildings, and quite a few things one would consider rudimentary elements of current versions are totally absent, such as health and ammo kits on 2Fort (which explains the existence of a resupply room in the basement). There is also no option to turn on damage indicators or sound effects, making it rather difficult to tell if you're hitting someone.
    • The first Halloween event map, Harvest Event, feels very lacking compared to later ones; it's more or less just Harvest at night. The only real alterations are the inclusion of the ghost that "scares" players and the pumpkin bombs scattered around the map. Compared to later Halloween maps like Mann Manor and Eyeaduct which feature heavily altered gameplay, map gimmicks, and bosses, it seems really underwhelming by comparison.
    • Prior to the Mac update, the main menu had an extremely basic design in line with the rest of Valve's pre-Left 4 Dead Source Engine games, just with a different font.
    • On the lore front, the Sniper having an Australian accent becomes this when you consider that, while certainly skilled, the Sniper is generally portrayed as a fairly normal human. Later developments in the lore would quickly establish that, in the universe of TF2, all Australians are absurdly buff and borderline superhuman, thanks to the presence of Australium in their biology, traits which the Sniper does not have. The comics would later address this matter by revealing that the Sniper is actually from New Zealand and was adopted and raised by Australian parents. This also extends to the Soldier's domination lines: Two of them suggest that Australia is a wimpy country (since Valve had to censor Left 4 Dead 2 to get it released there), and yet the very next class update shows otherwise.
    • The "Meet the Team" videos began as little more than animation tests adapted into trailers, and you can observe how the videos become more ambitious and technically competent with time. The early ones followed a fairly static formula of the team member being interviewed, which was phased out by the end: "Meet the Spy" and "Meet the Medic" are both completely devoid of the Mockumentary angle, while "Meet the Pyro" reduces it to an opening Framing Device for the reveal of the Pyro's psychology.
    • The central joke of "Meet the Soldier" is that the Soldier is supposed to be considered an idiot for thinking Sun Tzu was behind Noah's Ark and the namesake of zoos. Comics and Easter Eggs introduced in later updates would reveal TF2's universe has a very ridiculous Alternate History, where, among other things, something as mundane as stairs wasn't invented until the 1800s and Rocket Jumping was necessary to go up a floor beforehand, so the short retroactively seems less like Soldier's stupid and more that he's reciting an accurate story in the 'verse's history.
    • The First Annual Saxxy Awards were held in 2011, before Source Filmmaker was released to the public, so they were instead focused around use of the game's Replay Tool, and as such most winners were essentially just gameplay videos - if you wanted any additional effects other than slowdown, you had to add them yourself in an external editing program. The other five allowed the use of Source Filmmaker, allowing for videos with much greater effects, story, animation, and overall quality, whereas replays were limited to a single category for the second one and eschewed entirely for the rest. Compare 2011's Best Overall winner "El Muchacho" (a 30-second clip of creatively shot and edited gameplay footage) to 2017's winner "Agent Gunn: Vulkanite" (a 5-minute, professional quality animated short).
  • Easter Egg:
    • On the official wiki, putting in the Konami Code will result in a little skit where a BLU Spy saps the Wiki's logo, while a (very possibly) RED Engineer complains about it and sorts it out, even saying "Spy's sappin' my wiki!"
    • On the Versus Saxton Hale mode, the Skullcracker and Flippin' Awesome taunts have unique effects if one of the participants is Hale. As one might expect from someone as Testosterone Poisoned as him, the non-Hale player will get launched across the room by Hale's headbutt in the former; if Hale is the launcher for the latter, his partner will be thrown into the sky. Both of these will kill.
  • Edible Ammunition: The festive version of the Crusader's Crossbow fires sharpened candy canes. Additionally, considering the weapons Healing Shiv status, they may also qualify as Power-Up Food.
  • Elaborate Equals Effective: The Engineer's Sentry Gun and Dispenser are the most obvious, and all of the pick-upable and craftable weapons are more decorative than usual.
  • 11th-Hour Superpower: Although there are no in-game mechanics to support this, in the last 20 seconds of an attack/defend map or a payload map, the attacking team will often rush onto the point in an chaotic swarm out of desperation. In public servers, even a rush of unorganized players is enough to tip the scales in favour of the attacking team.
  • Elite Mooks: Two flavors in Mann Vs. Machine mode: Normal-sized robots who nonetheless wield a different weapon than their standard counterpart (such as Demobots equipped with the Chargin' Targe and Eyelander, or Heavybots with the Fists of Steel), and Giant Robots.
  • Emote Command: Some voice commands have the player say something and accompany it with a gesture.
  • Enemy Eats Your Lunch: In "Meet the Scout," the RED Scout eats the BLU Heavy's Sandvich after beating him up with a bat. In-game, you can steal a Heavy's Sandvich by either picking up a dropped Sandvich on the ground like a Medkit or killing them while they are holding it and picking up an ammo pack. Since the Heavy is vulnerable while eating a Sandvich, an enemy catching them can easily kill the Heavy before he can finish his meal.
    Scout (dominating a Heavy): "I... EAT... YOUR... SANDVICHES. I eat 'em up!"
  • Enemy Mine:
    • Players on both teams are expected to unite when fighting the Horseless Headless Horsemann, MONOCULUS!, or Merasmus during the Halloween event.
    • The story of Mann vs. Machine is that RED and BLU have teamed together to fight the robots, but in-game all of the human players are RED. That could be because the sentries distinguish friend from foe by shirt color; the BLUs had to don red outfits to not be shot to pieces by sentries.
  • Enemy Scan: Spies and Medics with a Solemn Vow can see the names and health of enemies.
  • Epic Fail:
    • Upon losing in Arena without killing a single opponent, the Administrator berates your team:
      "Humiliating defeat!"
      "Next time, try killing one of them."
      "You didn't kill any of them!"
    • Additionally, the Administrator is most displeased if you manage to total party wipe against the robots in Mann vs. Machine:
      "Do not all die at once!"
  • Escalating War:
    • The Sniper and the Spy engaged in this during their combined update—neither wanted to share the spotlight. Later: the Soldier/Demoman war.
    • To say nothing or Redmond and Blutarch's 150 year stalemate. It started with 18 thugs in New Mexico, waving revolvers at each other and paid out-of-pocket to fight in a bunch of worthless gravel pits and badlands. Now, it still only has 18 thugs, but it spans the globe, the mercs wield state-of-the-art weaponry, their paychecks run in the 7 digit figures, and the battlefields take place on the testing grounds for doomsday weaponry or in high-tech spy bases.
  • Escaped from Hell: In Halloween of 2011, a second boss monster was introduced called MONOCULUS! who had the power to drag nearby players into the underworld. Luckily the underworld is only about 100 square feet, and if you can reach the exit before your health is drained (or before victims on the other team kill you) you escape back to the mortal realm with full health and temporary invincibility, damage, and speed buffs.
  • Escape from the Crazy Place: Post-round Humiliation consists of the losing team, slowed down, trying to avoid getting killed with no defense except their taunt kills, if any. The winning team gets added running speed and 100% criticals.
  • Escort Mission:
    • Essentially what Payload and Payload Race are; you've got to push the Bomb Cart to the end of the track. The defending team has to stop it from happening and are given extra time to set up, like in Attack/Defend Maps. The cart acts as a dispenser for whoever's pushing it, refilling health and ammo, and there's no way to destroy it (it can be moved backwards after some time, though). In Payload Race, both teams play both roles; you have to stop the enemy Cart while moving your own along, effectively splitting your forces until the Carts inevitably meet somewhere on the track. It's managed to avoid the usual negative backlash of escort missions, probably because the thing being escorted can't be "killed" and doesn't move off-track while you escort it.
    • If you volunteer to "Coach" new players, when one needs help you'll be invited to their game to give them advice. While you do this, you're in spectator mode, but the player you are coaching is highlighted in a aura that indicates his health. You can point them to targets to attack, places to defend, and places to go.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Every Bullet is a Tracer: With the exception of the sniper rifles (not counting the Machina), every bullet is visible.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The mercs are rarely referred to by their given names, usually going with their titles.
  • Everything Fades: Eventually, corpses disappear from the field. If a player dies while on fire, the corpse is extinguished a few seconds before it disappears.
  • Everything's Better with Samurai: There are various samurai-themed cosmetics for the mercs, not to mention the presence of the Half-Zatoichi (a katana) and the Concheror (a backpack, sashimono, and conch shell horn rolled into one).
  • Everything's Louder with Bagpipes:
    • The Demoman's theme, Drunken Pipe Bomb, uses the bagpipes. Also, the end of Meet The Demoman has the TF2 ending riff played on bagpipes.
    • The Demoman also has a taunt where he pulls out some bagpipes and proceeds to play horribly.
      • They played it much better in the original, loopable workshop entry.
    • In DeGroot Keep, bagpipes also play in the background whenever the castle door opens; that is when points A and B are captured, and when the castle is successfully defended.
      • The music is the Day of Defeat (a Half-Life mod) anthem used when a round is won by the British team.
  • Evil Laugh:
    • Kill enough people and your character will begin to snigger, chuckle, guffaw and snort hysterically in some truly hilarious ways. But perhaps the best example is what the Administrator sometimes does if the Payload nears the Final Terminus.
    • The Heavy's is the most common laugh heard, obtained if you slay enough people while keeping your minigun sped up.
    • The Engineer has an evil laugh as a taunt if he's holding his melee weapon, though now all classes can have one with the addition of the Schadenfreude taunt.
  • Evil Only Has to Win Once: In Mann vs. Machine mode, only one bot has to make it past the defenders with the bomb for the entire team to lose.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Two teams of ruthless, bloodthirsty mercenaries gleefully blasting the shit out of each other, with only the flimsiest justification.
  • Evolving Title Screen: The game has a new title screen for each major event, and a special screen for full moons.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Mann Vs. Machine. Not only is the entire point of the game Man Versus Machine, but you fight the robots with Mann Co. upgrades and products, therefore making it literally Mann Versus Machine, rather than just a Punny Name.
  • Expospeak Gag: Some of the Grordbort weapons have this as their item type.
    • The Cow Mangler 5000 is a "focused wave projector." The term "focused wave" calls to mind lasers - it's a laser gun!
    • The Manmelter, Pomson 6000, and Righteous Bison are all described as "indivisible particle smasher[s]." "Indivisible particle" is an archaic definition of the atom, meaning they could be termed "atom smashers." "Atom smasher" is itself a colloquial term for particle accelerators. Yes, these are literal handheld particle accelerators.
  • Excuse Plot: Two corporations erect fortresses 10 yards from each other (and sometimes in the same building) and then send waves of men to kill each other to steal a briefcase out of the opposing fort's basement. Alternately, one corporation sends waves of men from an encampment to kill more waves of men sent by another corporation and capture their fortress and related choke points. This has been expanded upon, mostly for humor. Weapons-monger and insane billionaire Zepheniah Mann goes to the US from Europe to harvest precious gravel, but dies — leaving his twin identical younger sons Blutarch and Redmond to fight each other for all eternity. Meanwhile, he leaves his insane weapons factory to the ridiculously manly Australian Hale family. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Extreme Omnivore: Taunting with the Frying Pan or Conscientious Objector causes a Demoman to drink from it. ... Maybe he's just that drunk. Other things the Demoman can drink from include an Aquila staff, a ham-on-the-bone, a human spine topped with a skull, a railroad crossing sign, and a machete (not the pointy end, thankfully).
  • Eye Scream:
    • MONOCULUS! You have this giant eyeball that shoots explosive eyes that act like critical rockets, see, and you have to attack it, before it kills you. The backstory introduced in the comic explains how Red Demoman lost his eye. MONOCULUS! is his eye! It doesn't help that from the front, MONOCULUS! looks like the average giant eyeball monster, but from the back...
    • In the Meet the Sniper video the Demoman accidently gets his bottle of scrumpy shoved in his remaining intact eyeball. Played for Laughs.
    • Eye Scream in general is a Running Gag with the Demoman.

    F 
  • Face Palm:
    • If undisguised, the Spy on a losing team can be seen face palming if he is still alive during Humiliation.
    • The Sniper does the hat version in his "Meet the Sniper" video when he's trying to talk to his father on the phone.
    • In "A Smissmas Story", the Soldier and Spy are the Scout's legal counsel during a trial after the three of them blew up a Mall Santa training facility. When the Soldier confirms the Scout's ridiculous testimony, the Spy facepalms and rests his head against the desk.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: For Poopy Joe. In Doomsday, a team wins when they deliver a case of fake Australium to Poopy Joe's rocket for launch, but the rocket's engine's always fail and the aircraft will crash onto the enemy base.
  • Faking the Dead: The Spy's "Dead Ringer" causes him to automatically cloak and drop a fake corpse (complete with fake kill message, fake domination message, and real achievements being handed out under the right circumstances) whenever he has it out and has a full cloak bar. And if he's currently in disguise, the Dead Ringer will drop a fake corpse of the class he's disguised as, adding to the Paranoia Fuel.
  • Farts on Fire: Pyro's taunt for the Thermal Thruster has him hold up a match to his rear end, before letting out a blast of fire. Subverted in that he's only turning on the jetpack's thrusters.
  • Fictional Holiday: Australian Christmas/Smissmas. Every December the 17th, children in Australia make weapons and hats for Old Nick, a crotchety old man who lives at the South Pole. After receiving all of his gifts, Old Nick realizes he received many duplicates of gifts, so he sells them off for incredibly low prices.
  • Fight Bell Hijinks: the taunt for certain Heavy melee weapons like the Killing Gloves of Boxing and Gloves of Running Urgently has a bell ring as the Heavy performs some uppercuts.
  • Finger Framing: The Director's Vision taunt.
  • Finger Poke of Doom:
    • The Kill Taunts available to the updated classes. They take several seconds to execute (with only a small timeframe being lethal in a rather specific fashion). They are also the only way to damage opponents during Humiliation or Stalemate.
    • Almost literally with the case of the Heavy, who can kill enemies several feet away by pointing at them and shouting "POW!".
  • Fireball Eyeballs:
    • Demomen who behead enough people with The Eyelander will gain a ghostly green flame where his Eyepatch of Power usually sits.
    • Gaining a high killstreak using certain Professional Killstreak weapons can cause this in any of the mercenaries' eyes (in the case of Demo, it's in his one remaining eye).
  • Fire Means Chaos: The Pyro is shown in his/her/its Meet the Pyro short to be perfectly capable of spreading fear as well as flames. The short eventually employs this trope near the end, in which hapless BLU mercenaries all run around in a blind, terrified panic as everything around them is consumed by fire.
  • Firing One-Handed: The Spy's Revolver. The Engineer also holds his pistol one-handed, but the Scout (who wields an identical pistol, albeit with less ammo in reserve) uses two.
  • First-Person Ghost: Especially evident in replays, as changing the camera to third person view just shows a ghostly floating gun.
    • Averted with the console command cl_first_person_uses_world_model 1. This makes your first person camera show the animations that are played to everyone else. It has a nice side effect of being able to see your hats in first person.
  • First-Person Snapshooter: You can take screenshots and replays at the press of a button. There are a few achievements released during the Replay Update that requires fiddling with the replay and getting a number of views on YouTube.
  • Flawless Victory: Said by the Administrator in Arena, if every player on the winning team survives. Inverted with the losing team, who gets "FLAWLESS DEFEAT!"
  • Foreign Sounding Gibberish: The Medic's cosmetic items from the Summer 2013 Update have mock German names (e.g. Das Feelinbeterbager and Das Metalmeatencasen).
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Shortly before the official lead-in to the War Update, a minor bugfix update introduced sounds that would only be heard by Soldiers and Demomen. The next day, a comic (featuring an Administrator similar in appearance to the woman in this image) was posted revealing that the Demoman and the Soldier had become friends. The day after that, the next update was announced, with kills between Soldiers and Demomen determining who would receive the last weapon.
    • Prior to the Über update, Scouts and Medics would have doves flying out of their corpses when they died. This made no sense to anyone until "Meet the Medic" came out.
    • The Halloween update before Mann vs. Machine mode was unveiled, the Soldier dressed as a robot ( revealed as the same Paper-Thin Disguise he used to infiltrate Grey's holdings and warned about how robots were going to take their jobs.
    • The "Expiration Date" video was preceded by an update that caused teleporters to occasionally teleport in bread when used, which is an important part of the short. The update also included an unused file alluding to a bread monster, which also appeared in the video.
    • In "Meet the Spy," the BLU Scout calls for help in opening the door to the room where the team's briefcase is kept, instead of entering an access code on its keypad. He's apparently forgotten the code, but he actually doesn't know it — he's a RED Spy in disguise and needs someone to let him in so he can get the case. In addition, several of the BLU Spy's actions throughout the short imply that he's already deduced that it's the Scout, such as handing the knife he found in the Sniper's back to him, or slapping compromising photos of him and his lover on the table to show he's been tracked for god knows how long.
  • Forever War: Over some worthless pieces of land.
  • Forged Letter: Sending a "tear stained letter" each to both his brothers is how Grey Mann convinced his two brothers to meet and reconcile, so he could reveal himself to them and recruit them to retake Mann Co. Spending a few minutes with them quickly convinces him to kill them both.
  • Fractional Winning Condition: To turn in a contract, you only need to complete the main objective of getting 100 Contract Points, even if you did it only by grinding out its simplest objective. Checking off the harder Bonus Objectives is not necessary for rewards, but does help advance the main objective faster and grants you extra Stars to help unlock the more restrictive contracts.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Spread out over the nine classes.
    • The Scout: Sanguine. Boasts a lot, quick on his feet and energetic.
    • The Soldier: Choleric. Sees himself as the leader, screams commands and is always up for a fight.
    • The Pyro: Sanguine. Though we don't know much about the Pyro, his version of the world seems to be a rainbow land where he happily 'plays' with the other mercs.
    • The Demoman: Choleric. Enjoys blowing stuff up and drinking hard.
    • The Heavy: Sanguine. Loves his miniguns like children, gives them all names and is a wrecking ball on the battlefield.
    • The Engineer: Phlegmatic. Lets his buildings do most of the work for him, is almost always calm and occasionally has a beer in the midst of combat (using the Rancho Relaxo taunt).
    • The Medic: Sanguine. Generally a mad scientist, invents crazy machinery and is always enthusiastic about testing it out - on real people.
    • The Sniper: Phlegmatic. Is polite, likes to sit around in the backlines of the fight, and takes his time with shots.
    • The Spy: Melancholic. Among the smartest mercs, doesn't mess around and rarely smiles.
  • Fragile Speedster:
    • The Scout combines this with elements of Glass Cannon, being the fastest class in the game, having very low health, but also possessing close-range firepower to kill most classes in 2 to 3 shots.
    • The Powerjack lets the Pyro run faster but take more damage while active.
    • The Heavy has the 'Gloves of Running Urgently' which allow him to run at normal speed, at the cost of his maximum HP plummeting over time, to a minimum of 100.
    • The Escape Plan makes the Soldier faster the lower his health is.
  • Freemium: Team Fortress 2 became free to play in summer 2011. Players with free accounts get to store up to 50 items in their backpack, receive items rather than being able to trade or gift, have limited crafting blueprints, and can't get rare or cosmetic items. Otherwise, they can get all of the regular weapons, and all game modes and maps are available to both free and premium accounts. The only requirement to get a premium account is to buy any item from the in-game store. The only difference between a premium account gained from buying the game itself as opposed to something from the in-game store is a Proof of Purchase hat.
  • French Accordion: "Petite Chou-Fleur" is a cheerful accordion theme that plays while the Spy (who is distinctly French) is reminiscing about his time with his sweetheart, the Scout's mother.
  • Friendly Enemy: The BLU Soldier and the RED Demoman up until the WAR! update.
  • Friendly Fireproof:
    • It's impossible to harm a teammate with a player's own weapons in normal gameplay, though some weapons can hurt the user (explosives, sentry guns). The easiest way to spot an enemy Spy is to just shoot everyone once or twice.
    • This does not carry over into the Meet the Team videos.
    • The alternative is so much worse that the command to activate friendly fire was actually removed in an update shortly before the game was released and not reintroduced for several months. And even with friendly fire enabled, certain weapons (such as the Pyro's flamethrowers) still do not hurt allies.
    • Averted in contracts for the 2017 Jungle Inferno update, where players on a given server can help others with such contracts.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare:
    • The Pyro. When the game was first released, he was easily one of most useless classes in the game. Several updates over several years later, he's now one of the most dangerous classes of all.
    • Since then, he's been dummied down a little, but in the right hands, a Pyro can still be incredibly dangerous.
    • Played with in Meet the Pyro. Pyro is still The Spook (a nobody), but he's now also The Dreaded (a nightmare), even to his own team.
    • Heavy used to be an easy and sometimes predictable target without a Medic, but with the introduction of the Sandvich to completely heal himself, the KGB to give him chains of crits, and the Tomislav to quietly ambush people, he became a force to be reckoned with.
  • Funny Background Event:
    • Double Cross boasts the same alert panel as the one seen in Meet the Spy, and parts of it light up when the Intel is taken.
    • On Probed, you may occasionally see a flying saucer swoop in and abduct one of the wooden cow props.
    • Thunder Mountain also has a couple of interesting Easter Eggs:
      • Behind the glass of the BLU Spawn in the first stage is a reproduction of the Training Stage, and several BLUs are standing in front of it doing random idle animations (including the Thriller dance).
      • The RED Spawn in the second stage is overlooking a swimming pool, and REDs can be seen 'swimming' and otherwise chilling out.
      • The RED Sniper is literally camping on the third stage, with his van and a campfire nearby.
  • Fun with Acronyms:
    • The team names (Reliable Excavation Demolition and Builders League United), in the vein of classic 60's fictional espionage organizations. In-universe, the team names are backronyms, as RED and BLU are named after brothers Redmond and Blutarch, respectively.
    • The Killing Gloves of Boxing, used by the Soviet Russian Heavy Weapons Guy.
    • And the community-made joke weapon, the Tricycle of Astoundingly Nimble Knees.
    • And the Gloves of Running Urgently, beta tested but never added to the official game until Sept. 30, 2010.
    • In Medieval mode, the parser turns "afk" (away from keyboard) into "away, fighting kobolds", "away, fruity knights", "aft, frisking knickers", or "abaft, flailing knouts".

    G 
  • Game-Breaking Bug:
    • There have been a lot of nasty glitches over the years, but the Scream Fortress VI event caused a rather bizarre but problematic glitch to hit Mann vs. Machine. The robots didn't attack and were all stuck in the reference pose, Engineers would be unable to switch weapons once they built a building, and players could easily enter "civilian" mode.
    • If the item servers are down, and you try to change/view your loadout and simply exit the screen using ESC, you may get stuck when you try to chat. You can move and shoot, but you can't change which direction you're looking, and trying to change class or team will bring up a non-functional UI. Most keybinds work except for going into the menu using ESC and the developer console. Using hud_reloadscheme on a keybind does get you unstuck, but it's a temporary reprieve, as ESC still doesn't work and trying to chat gets your viewpoint locked again.
    • In the beta game mode "PASS Time", an Engineer with the Short Circuit could actually destroy the jack. Some community servers that ran this mode tried to prevent it by threatening any Engineer that uses the Short Circuit, no matter what purpose, with a ban. Valve patched this glitch the day it was found, the same day that "PASS Time" was added to the game.
    • In July 2019, it was found that, for unknown reasons, certain older Mann Co. Crates were bugged to guarantee unusual hats upon unboxing. The end result was mass mayhem: unusuals ended up popping up at an absolutely alarming rate, and their prices on the Steam Community Market took a severe nosedive, while the crates thought to be bugged were put up on the market for hundreds, even thousands of dollars, meaning people were profiting immensely from crates that were otherwise worth mere cents and had just been sitting in their inventories for years. The game ended up having its highest peak of players in months because of this, reaching as many as 93,245 players. The Team Fortress 2 economy ended up severely damaged because of this, so much that Valve has made the unusuals unboxed from the bugged crates untradeable in an attempt to limit the damage and look into the bug.
    • In late March of 2020, a group of aimbots started appearing on the servers. This wasn't unusual, but when the legit players tried to kick them, they could lag the server to the point that it would straight up crash. Throughout early April, it was common for matches to contain at least one of these aim/lagbots, and the players had to either live with it or risk the server getting ruined. This was fixed on April 8th.
    • Narrowly averted in late April 2020. Someone managed to leak a source code that dates back to around the Jungle Inferno update, and mass hysteria ensued, with people believing anyone who plays on an official server was at risk of getting viruses and malware just from playing. Read more here. After looking into it, however, Valve determined the source code leak was very limited in power due to dating back to late 2017/early 2018, and reported that playing the game was still safe.
  • Game Lobby: The game uses lobbies for Mann vs. Machine mode.
  • Game Mod: Several custom gametypes have come up.
    • "Prop Hunt" has one team disguised as random props and the other hunts them down before time runs out; "Dodgeball" has two teams of Pyros use the air compressors in their flamethrowers to reflect critical heatseeking rockets launched by the environment toward the enemy.
    • Custom content (mostly Models and Avatars) can be submitted to this site, and if Valve likes it enough, it'll be implemented IN-GAME.
    • There's also a game mod that chooses your class and weapons after you die... And the weapons are from other classes, Hilarity Ensues as The Scout uses the Pyro's flamethrower on a Medic with a Soldier's bazooka, among other things. This type of mod is called "Randomizer".
    • There are also mods that change the rules around a bit, like Sudden Death only with melee weapons (which is now implemented into the game) or restricting how many of each class can play on the same team at once (typically to prevent Sniper Wars or turtling with Engineers)
    • Class Restriction is also put into place to prevent spamming of any one class. On Medieval mode, this is critical as most medieval maps devolve into "which team has the most Demomen".
      • Then there are games set to "Highlander mode", in which there can only be 18 players, one of each class for each team. The remaining can only be spectators, or the server will be set to allow only 18 players.
    • Another mod that is gaining in popularity is "hardcore mode", in which crits are completely disabled. This usually means no one hit kills and that a game round would last significantly longer.
    • Also present are mods that disable the respawn delay completely or reverses it, so that the losing team spawn faster. And yes, games on these servers usually ends in a stalemate.
    • Tons of character model replacements, including various attempts at nude mods, Gender Swap mods, anime mods and more...
    • That's not even mentioning the imfamous Multiply a Weapon's stats by 10 mod. What this one stands out of the rest is simple. It's standard Team Fortress 2, but with every single stat change listed multiplied by 10 and then some. In general it's every unique aspect of a weapon cranked up to eleven. Beggar's Bazooka? Macross Missile Massacre up to eleven. Panic Attack? More Dakka up to eleven. Power Jack? Fragile Speedster up to eleven. Ambassador? Boom, Headshot! up to eleven. Conniver's Kunai? Life Drain and Glass Cannon up to eleven. And all of this from a single Gmod Video. Some servers crank it up to x100, or even x1000. And as for the stock weapons that don't have stats to multiply? Some of them just got various features cranked up instead.
      • Unfortunately, the stat change applies to every weapon's negatives, too: Several weapons are completely useless because their damage penalties negate all damage, their clip size penalties prevent them from firing a single shot, or even both; some weapons will leave you unable to move due to their speed penalty; the Beggar's Bazooka's massive rocket spread and lack of explosion radius means that your Macross Missile Massacre won't be doing much damage (unless you fire it at point-blank range)note . Additionally, if you don't have the Manntreads or the Gunboats equipped, your barrage of rockets will most likely kill you.
    • Balloon Race, which is basically a variant/hybrid of Payload and Capture Point in which the two teams must attempt to stall the opposing team while getting their blimp around the course, setting off capture points in the progress. The game automatically ends if one team has captured more points at the end of the last point, or if the map has an equal amount of points and the capture count is tied, the team that makes it back to the starting point wins.
    • Vs. Saxton Hale is gaining popularity. As implied, one team tries to kill Saxton Hale (or occasionally Christian Brutal Sniper, Vagineer, Painis Cupcake, and, in two unofficial variations, Cave Johnson (with a box of lemons!) or Captain Falcon[1]).
      • As of September 2011, not only is the circus of GMod Monsters/TF2 Freaks already made into variants of the mod, There are variations of the mod for almost every single fictional character under the sun, ranging from the "Mane 6" My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic characters to Charmander and The Joker. Even non-fictional personas like Valve CEO Gabe Newell and celebrity Marilyn Manson were not spared. The website for servers hosting the most advanced version of this mod can be found here.
    • Zombie Fortress, which basically only allows RED players to be a scout, heavy or spy, and only allows said team to use Melee. However, they're allowed instant respawn. BLU, on the other hand, are allowed the remaining 6 class with no weapon restrictions. BLU members that are killed are respawned as RED Zombies.
    • Death Run is a variant of VS Saxton Hale in that the chosen player (as Saxton Hale or one of the Freaks) must set off meme-inspired traps placed along the game course and eliminate all the remaining players before any one of them reaches the finish line. However it hasn't caught on as well as the original VSH has.
    • Parkour Fortress is a mod made by MechaTheSlag which is heavily inspired by Mirror's Edge, even borrowing the game's general art style. Everyone is limited to using The Scout (for obvious reasons) and utilize various parkour moves like wall runs, vaults and zip lines to get from A to B in the quickest time possible. After the players reach the finish, they'll spawn back at the beginning to repeat the journey. Naturally, players are encouraged to beat their time, as well as the top 5 quickest times. There's also a map where instead of being a standard time trial, you work with your teams to retrieve a pair of intelligence (which can be picked up by both teams) and bring them together to win. You can pick up one of three weapons (the standard pistol, the powerful single shot Winger, the Machina which can be fired without scoping) scattered around the map to help fend of enemies pursuing the intel or kill one who is carrying it. Alternately, you can bash their heads in.
    • Another lesser known mod is the TF2Ware mod, which in summary, turns the game into a very violent version of WarioWare.
    • The Class vs Class mod, where each team has to play as one class or the same class. The former can sometimes lead to very unfair matches, such as Engineers vs Scouts or Pyros vs Medics or Heavies vs Snipers.
    • One more popular mod as of late is the jump mod. In this mod, players are confined to only using Demoman or Soldier, and are required to sticky-bomb jump or rocket jump respectively to clear the course. It is definitely a Nintendo Hard mod for those who don't rocket jump or sticky-bomb jump much.
    • The Uber Upgrades mod allows players to upgrade all their weapons and themselves. If enough time passes, the upgrades build up to a ridiculous amount. This results in things like: Soldiers that fire rockets that deal thousands of points of damage with immense blast radius; Engineers with pistols that fire hundred of bullets per second that act as a beam of destruction or mini-sentries that inflict and take stupidly high amounts of damage with detection radius that extends past the map boundary; Spies with over a thousand HP that run at Mach speeds that take 95% less damage from anything while attacking with a knife that strikes dozens of times per second and hits several feet away; and Medics that can cause stalemates just by standing on the point with an Ubercharge that lasts for minutes. It can also be played in Mann vs. Machine, which is even more ridiculous: There are over 33 waves, each of which has 100 robots at the least that gain in strength to incredible levels. Have a minigun with 3000%+ damage that fires at the maximum firerate, heals the user their full health upon a kill, and slows down opponents? It won't be enough by the halfway point. This mod is that ridiculous.
    • A Mario Kart-esque mod has been made mere days after Scream Fortress 2014 introduced vehicles in the form of Bumper Car Madness, complete with spells as power-ups.
    • Stop That Tank! is a fusion of Mann vs. Machine and Payload. While the action takes place on normal Payload maps, Gray's robot army serves as the BLU fighters. The normal payload bomb has been replaced by a tank that moves without needing to be pushed but can be destroyed. Once it's gone, the robots must deliver the bomb just like in MVM - stand above the hatch for a few seconds without dying or being pushed away and the robots win! In addition, players can become giant robots or Sentry Busters to make things more interesting. It also has a special version for Payload Race: Each team has its own tank replacing the payload and all players are robots. However, these tanks cannot be destroyed, only slowed down through dealing damage. After a certain amount of time, two players from each team become giant robots and the cart's motion temporarily stops.
    • Team Fortress 2 Classic mod was made to return the game back to its original roots pre-Sniper vs. Spy Update, albeit keeping certain mechanics like airblasting and carrying buildings. The mods Death and Taxes update added new weapons to play with, and some returning or cut weapons like the Nailgun for Scout or Demoman's Dynamite Pack. Also including the VIP mode from Team Fortress Classic with a playable Civilian class designed in TF2's style.
    • Open Fortress is a mod that allows a customizable Mercenary class where you can change his look and loadout, and includes a free-for-all Deathmatch. It also contains Shout-Outs to Doom and Quake.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration:
    • Many of the official videos take place on in-game maps or tweaked versions of them. Meet the Heavy is on Dustbowl, Meet the Scout starts on Well before transitioning to Granary for his fight against the Heavy, The Sound of Medicine takes place in Rottenburg which debuts in the same update it was revealed, etc.
    • In Meet the Spy, the RED Spy slashes at the BLU Sniper's cheek. Following the update that featured this video, the Sniper's in-game model was altered to include the scar made by the Spy's knife.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • The set-up for Mann Vs. Machine mode is that the RED and BLU mercenaries team up to fight Gray's robots. In actual gameplay, for the sake of identification, the players are all RED and the robots use BLU in their visual effects and in the killfeed.
    • Sniper's domination quotes can be seen as this. In all mediums outside the game show sniper is a calm collected man who is very professional and doesn't let emotion and pride temper that professionalism, not even bothering with shit talk when he kills the classic sniper, just pointing out to spy that if he was good at his job he would have just taken his shot at spy and gone back to his perch instead of drawing it out to monologue. In-game, however, he's just as much of a dick to his opposition as the rest of the mercs; in fact, he's probably only beaten by Soldier and Spy for most hurtful. This is probably just because Sniper would be kinda boring compared to everyone else if he wasn't smack talking people with his domination quotes.
    • According to canon, the map Doomsday takes place before the Soldier earned his Equalizer and the Demoman his Eyelander (in fact, those weapons are inside the rocket you're trying to launch). In-game, there are (thankfully) no restrictions on these items whatsoever.
    • Despite the Heavy's claim that it costs $400,000 to fire his weapon for 12 seconds, the achievement "Heavy Industry", which requires the player to fire $200,000 worth of Minigun rounds without stopping, takes 2 minutes to obtain rather than 6 seconds. This is because of another example of this trope is being taken into consideration: The Heavy also claims the Minigun fires ten thousand rounds per minute, when in reality it fires closer to 500 rounds per minute.
  • Gender-Blender Name: The Soldier's legal name is Jane Doe. Whether this is his real birth name or an alias carried over from a Noodle Incident is left as an exercise for the reader.
  • Gendered Insult: Many lines directed at the Pyro are this:
    Soldier: Ha! You fight like a girl.
    Demoman: Go home, lassie. Men are fightin' here.
    Engineer: Sorry, ma'am.
    Sniper: You know what you and Jane Austen have in common? You're both dead women.
    Spy: Good lord! You fight like a woman!
  • Giant Eye of Doom: During the 2011 Halloween Update, the MONOCULUS! appeared in a new version of the Viaduct map. He's extremely powerful (like the Horsemann), and hovers and teleports around the map while shooting critical eye-rockets. If players manage to defeat him, they'll score an achievement and a free mask based on it. If they go the extra mile, they can also receive a cursed book, the Bombinomicon, to wear.
  • Girls with Moustaches: It's the norm in Australia, due to Australium.
  • Glass Cannon:
    • The Sniper and the Spy, being able to kill in one shot, but have the lowest HP value in the game (125, same as the Engineer and the Scout). Up close, the low-health Scout can kill in 2 hits, and now with the Sandman health penalty he's more breakable than ever.
    • The Equalizer, an unlockable melee weapon for the Soldier, hits harder he less health he has. Some players deliberately injure themselves before going out in order to play as Glass Cannons or even One Hit Point Wonders.
    • Crit-a-Cola makes the Scout dole out and receive 25% extra damage.
  • Glitch Entity: Since its removal in an early patch, the Civilian. Through cheating and bugs, players can enter the "reference pose" of the Civilian (standing with feet shoulder width apart, arms at sides).
  • Glowing Eyes:
    • Übercharged players gain these in a yellow color.
    • The effects of Professional Killstreak weapons can induce this, but usually with secondary effects: your Heavy doesn't just have glowing pink eyes, he's shooting pink aurora lights from them.
    • Glowing Mechanical Eyes: Most of the Mann vs. Machine robots have bright, blue ones.
  • Goggles Do Nothing:
    • Ze goggles. They do nothing.
    • The Engineer has goggles, which do nothing gameplay-related.
    • Most cosmetic items have no effect on gameplay except to distinguish different players from one another. There are also actual non-functional goggles, two of which that lampshade this trope: the Medic has a pair of mad scientist goggles that sit on his head, and their description consists of just one word: "NOTHING"; and the Soldier has a World War II helmet with a description that reads, "After complaints that obstructed vision was affecting his performance, Soldier slapped some goggles on a helmet and charged back into the fray. His performance did not improve, but on the upside, everyone has stopped expecting anything from him."
    • Averted with the Pyrovision Goggles, which does do something to your audio, and in some maps, your vision as well.
    • Downplayed with the Hotrod. It flips down when Engineer is using the Build PDA, which seems useless....until you remember that the Spy's Sapper uses the same loadout slot as the Engineer's Build PDA. This means the Hotrod will flip down when a Spy has a Sapper in-hand, but Spies don't get the same toolbox Engineers do when about to place a building, so the Hotrod makes Spies easy to find if you know what you're looking for.
    • In the same vein as the Hotrod, several cosmetics have the option of the player choosing their "style"; for instance, keeping the helmet on an Engineer hairstyle cosmetic. When Spies disguise as someone having a cosmetic with a modified style, their disguise's cosmetic always has the default style up, a giveaway to any attentive player. The style differences are often very subtle though, so not everyone is going to catch onto this.
  • Goomba Stomp:
    • The Soldier's Mantreads allow players to take the fall damage that they would normally take, triple it, and apply it to the guy you land on; the higher you fall, the more damage you deal, often enough to one-shot most classes in the game. Of course, managing to actually land on someone is a feat in and of itself, especially while rocket jumping.
    • Some servers have a mod that enables Goomba stomps for everybody, being an instant-kill no matter how you land on someone.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Despite the game's M rating, the characters generally swear less than you'd expect them to in keeping with the game's "retro" theme, although they all tend to get less-than-professional in their domination lines.
  • Gotta Kill Them All: Pretty much the main objective of Arena mode.
  • Grand Theft Me: While not literal, Your Eternal Reward specifically takes away a Spy's normal disguise kit, but whenever he backstabs an enemy, he immediately takes on that enemy's class and name as a disguise. As the enemy is silently killed and the body disappears almost immediately, unobservant foes won't notice that their friend is now playing for the other team. That said, you can still use voice-chat to announce that a spy had stolen your identity to your team and hope that they can hear you.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • There is no manual. You learn to play by watching others play (the game is coded to show you other players of your class on your team when you die), or by reading the Wiki.
    • As of the Mac Update, TF2 now comes with a basic training mode. It includes a simple shooting gallery to teach players how to use and switch between weapons, and a help-guide-filled battle with AI bots to bring newbies up to speed on the core gameplay elements. Currently, training is provided for Soldiers, Demomen, Engineers, and Spies.
    • They also added a Coach mode, where you get paired with someone and they help you out, enforcing the "other players as guides" aspect further. To prevent abuse, players upgrading to premium can give their preferred mentor a hat.
    • Good luck finding out about Arena mode outside of videos. There are no official servers running it, and it's not even available from Quickplay.
    • There are many, many hidden mechanics that can improve your skill in a class, but it's really difficult to find out they're there without actively looking for those mechanics. Uber build ratenote , Crit healsnote , the headshot delaynote  and many of the finer points of Rocket Jumpingnote  are all mechanics that are unintuitive to learn without a guide, but are critical to understand for high-level play.
  • Guns Are Worthless: Valve has buffed melee weapons so they have a much higher chance of crits, so players would actually use them rather than guns all the time. This didn't work out as much as they wanted: players dislike random crits due to their element of chance and gravitate towards weapons that provide crits when something is done (like the Bushwacka) or even better a melee weapon that acts as a utility (such as Soldier's Disciplinary Action for faster movement).

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