Team Fortress 2 / Tropes Q to Z

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You can view the main article HERE!

Tropes A-G HERE!

Tropes H-P HERE!

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Q

• Quad Damage: Critical hits, which deal three times as much damage as a normal attack and have no damage falloff, making them deadly at any range. The Phlogistinator provides 10 seconds of crits once the Pyro deals enough damage, the Kritzkrieg allows the Medic to buff someone else with crits once their Uber meter fills, and the winning team gets permanent crits during the end of rounds to slaughter the losing team.
• Quick Melee: The Shortstop is unique in that it has an alt-fire melee attack, though it doesn't remove Scout's normal melee attack. Right clicking makes the Scout reach out and push an enemy away. It pushes enemies away on hit making it more useful for getting enemies out of your face than for dealing damage. It still deals a single point of damage though, so it's more humiliating to be killed by this than by a normal melee but it won't credit you with the kill.

R

• Radiation-Induced Superpowers: Bonk! Atomic Punch's ingredients: Water, radiation, sugar. "...which as we all know is pretty great for givin' people superpowers."
• Ragdoll Physics: Starting with the Spy vs Sniper update, certain characters in certain situations can die with a combination of this and animation.
• Ragequit:
  Scout: Yeah I dare ya, ragequit! C'mon, make us both happy!
  • The Pyro has the "BarbeQueQ" achievement for making someone ragequit.
  • Quitting during humiliation or after becoming dominated is announced by some servers as "RAGE QUIT!"
  • As of October 17, 2012, repeatedly quitting from official servers under certain circumstances ^{Which are:} Leaving an official Mann Up server, leaving without completing or losing a single wave, and if the server is full when the player leaves. All three criteria must be met for the game to consider a disconnect an abandonment. See this for more details. will cause the matchmaking system to place the user under "low priority," meaning longer matchmaking times.
  • Leaving a Competitive match will lock the player out from participating in future matches for a while. This escalates if the player continues to do this. The penalty previously existed in Casual, but was quickly cut after constant complaints from the community, though Casual still convinces the player to stay if they don't need to go by saying that once you leave, you can't come back on purpose.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Team Fortress mercs are this, especially in the comics. Turns out the Administrator had at least three other teams that were considered more competent: Team Echelon, Team Citadel and Team Vanguard, but all were hunted down and killed by the Classic Team.
• Railing Kill: Where map design meets Knock Back and Ragdoll Physics, you can see this on any map where railings are incorporated, such as the turbine point in Hydro, the bases in Badlands, and the top floor balcony in the final rooms in Fastlane. Sometimes, railing-killed ragdolls can get... peculiar.
• Railroad Tracks of Doom: The trains in Well, Freight, District, Snowplow, and Frontier. The final stages of Cactus Canyon and Banana Bay involve pushing the bomb into the path of a full-sized train and waiting for it to run the bomb over.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Since set bonuses have since been changed to have purely cosmetic effects, even a non-joke loadout can be pretty much anything that a class can wear, and can be painted any color manageable. Some Scout players even go out of their way to paint their items the most garish color imaginable (usually lime green or bubblegum pink) as a way to be more distracting (given the more muted colors of most maps, these colors stand out like a sore thumb) and for bragging rights ("I'm so good, I can have [insert color here] gear and nobody can touch me!"). War Paint and weapon skins add another dimension to this by letting your weapon also be a garish color.
• Raising the Steaks: Some of the undead pet cosmetics, such as Demoman's Polly Putrid or the Soldier's Lieutenant Bites the Dust.
• Random Drop: The current method of gaining unlockable weaponry, hats, and crates. Hats, in particular, appear very rarely, and with the wide variety of them, it's highly unlikely you'll get what you want.
• Random Loot Exchanger: You can use Item Crafting to break down weapons and items into scrap metal, which can be turned into random cosmetics after combining enough of them. You can also do the same thing with most any two cosmetics.
• Randomized Damage Attack: The game has this applied to most weapons by default (10% more or less), with the exception of Critical Hits, which always do the same amount of damage, and mediguns, which heal at a fixed rate. This can be turned off by typing "tf_damage_disablespread 1" into the Developer's Console (only applied to your own server). This was switched off in the Gun Mettle Update.
  • Shotguns also experience this trope with their pellets traveling in a random spread when fired. This adds some variance when trying to get good damage with it, as your next shot is just as likely to have half its pellets miss the target's hitbox as it is for all of them to connect. Competitive games have this random spread disabled.
• Rasputinian Death:
  • Heavies who get shot, stabbed, set on fire, bludgeoned, and take explosive damage in a life are awarded the appropriately-named "Rasputin" achievement.
  • Posthumous Character Zepheniah Mann died of putrid fever, bilious fever, blackwater fever, green fever, spotted fever, womb fever, superfluous uterus, white plague, marasmus, sweating sickness, deplumatious tumors of the eyelids, pleurisy, membranous croup, scarlet rash, brain itch, stomatitis, blood poisoning, falling sickness, walking sickness, stationary sickness, shingles, jaundiced spine, skull bloat, and scrivener's palsy.
• Raster Vision: Used on the screens of Dispensers.
• Rated M for Manly: The Saxton Hale comics parody the "Man's Life" magazine from the forties.
• Ray Gun: The Pomson 6000, the Phlogistinator, the Cow Mangler, and the Righteous Bison.
• Real Is Brown: Originally, in the development cycle, Valve intended to go with modern realism but trying to make the gameplay equally realistic was proving difficult, so they went with the stylized cartoon look. With the Mann-Conomy update, you can buy paint of various colors.
• Real Men Wear Pink: The mercs are all pretty manly, especially Soldier and Heavy. They all can also wear a cutesy unicorn hood and have unique voice lines for getting into character, naturally. Heavy also has a fairy outfit which also has unique voice lines.
• Real-Place Background: Some of the maps are based on, or at least named after, real locations:
  • Borneo is named after the large jungle island found in Southeast Asia,^note divided between Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia and the map reflects that by being in a jungle.
  • Brazil is named and themed around The Amazon Rainforest although the latter features what is clearly an Expy of the Arecibo Observatory dish (Found in Puerto Rico, not Brazil).
  • Yukon is named after the Canadian territory of the same name.
  • Rottenberg is named and themed after the village in Germany.
  • Rumford is inspired by a paper mill located in the town of Rumford, Maine, USA, which is close to the Canadian border, and both the map and the real life location has signs transcribed in both French and English.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: As per FPS tradition, this is present and accounted for. You have a primary, secondary, and a melee option.
• Recognizable by Sound: The game has distinct voices for each of the 9 classes, further facilitated by their unique accents based on their country/state of origin (even though they are not accurate representations of real life accents). Voice commands here. Responses to specific situations here.
• Recoil Boost: Rocket Launchers, the Detonator, the Force-A-Nature, grenades, stickybombs, Sentry Gun rockets, and pumpkin bombs can aid in a jump, though all of them except the Force-A-Nature will damage the player.
• Recoiled Across the Room: The Force-A-Nature has the power to launch the Scout across the room if fired. This can be used to quickly escape engagements, or, if fired directly down, to perform a triple jump (as the scout can regularly perform Double Jump's).
• Recurring Riff: Several of the songs on the title screen, which are taken from the "Meet the Team" trailers, use the bass line from the game's original theme, which itself is the sound cue for dominations and revenges. It's changed up quite a bit, ranging from obvious (as in "Intruder Alert," where it's played clearly on brass) to difficult enough to spot that you only realize it's there later (as with "More Gun," where it's played during the minor key portion of the song, but very slowly and in 3/4 time, giving it a totally different feel from the other versions).
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: ÜberCharged team members whose eyes are visible will have glowing red (or blue) eyes and be invulnerable until the charge wears off. To quote the Heavy: "Is good time to RUN, cowards!"
  • Also MONOCULUS! from the 2011 Halloween update, when he's pissed off.
• RED Oni BLU Oni: The names and primary colors of the teams. RED is a demolition company, BLU is a construction company.
  • The Spy can equip an Oni mask, which is, appropriately enough, red or blue depending on which team he's on.
  • Strangely enough, the general roles are reversed. On Attack/Defense maps, RED is the defender, and is more likely to dig in and build machines to defend them, while BLU are the attackers, more likely to bomb everything in sight to advance.
• Red Shirt: Ironically, the BLU Team, at least in the "Meet The Team" videos. If they reversed the colors, a lot of color-based tropes would be doubly funny.
• Real Soon Now: "Valve time" on many of the game's updates. Sometimes, they literally say "soon" or "when it's done".
• Required Secondary Powers:
  • The Pyro is wearing a fireproof suit. Without this, the Pyro would not be able to run forward and fire at the same time without getting damaged.
  • The Sniper (in the comic advertising Jarate) specifically says "Those Saxton Hale Jarate pills tripled the size of my kidneys, and thanks to my Saxton Hale Pain Tonic, I can barely even feel my organs shutting down! He thought of everything!" Otherwise, a normal human body won't produce so much urine so quickly.
• Respawn Point: Barring Arena mode, killed players later respawn in the locker rooms.
• Resurrective Immortality:
  • Redmond and Blutarch, CEOs for RED and BLU, respectively. In an attempt to try to outlive the other brother, both have a machine built for them to prevent them from dying, with obvious results. It does not grant immortality in the normal sense, but it does resurrect them immediately after dying.
  • In a related vein, respawning in-game appears to be part of canon and not just a gameplay mechanic, given that some classes comment on it, and it is mentioned in the comics.
    Sniper: How many times have you died? I'm actually getting impressed.
    Sniper: Kill ya again soon, mate.
    Heavy: I am coming for you, again!
    Scout: I will never... stop... killing you.
  • The very existence of Domination and the Vita-Saw suggest that respawn is canonical.
  • Lampshaded with the "Meet the Medic" video, where several dozen identical (minus the hats) Soldiers are seen, implying they're probably re-cloned every time they die.
  • In Expiration Date the team's reaction to being told that they'll die in three days, due to the Engineer's teleporters apparently causing cancer is mostly indifferent and only a little stunned at first, suggesting that they're already used to dying repeatedly.
  • Comic #6, The Naked and The Dead, manages to justify respawn: The Medic is a Soul Jar for the other eight mercs. He uses their souls to maintain control of himself after he sold his to the devil, with the side effect of making them immortal in this way. However, by the end of the comic, the Medic has given one of their souls to the devil to cheat his own death, and it shows that both whoever's soul he gave and himself are not resurrectively immortal for eternity.
• Regenerating Health: This is one of the Medic's innate abilities, but it only heals 3 HP per second, increasing up to 6 HP per second after ten seconds without being attacked. Considering how high priority the Medic is and how often teams field only one, this is far from a bad thing.
  • The Blutsauger (an alternate Medic syringe gun) lowers the Medic's innate regeneration by 2 points, to 1 HP per second (or to a maximum of 4 HP per second while not under attack), but grants you additional health from shooting an enemy (3 HP per hit, which at an attack interval of 0.1 second can net you 30 HP/second if all 10 syringes are hits).
  • The Amputator melee slot unlock passively increases the Medic's innate regeneration by 3 points at the cost of dealing 20% less damage, giving him 6 to 9 hp per second recovery (or 4 to 7 if you're using the Blutsauger as well)
  • Snipers with the "Cozy Camper" also regenerate a little health, but effectively gaining only 1 HP per second. The item also increases all incoming damage by a small percentage though. This was upgraded to up to 4 HP per second in the Tough Break update.
  • In Mann vs Machine, all classes can purchase an upgrade to regenerate up to 10 HP per second. This stacks with other sources of regeneration, such as the Medic's passive health gain.
• Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: In "Meet the Spy", the BLU Soldier has killed the BLU Spy because the latter was "obviously" the RED Spy.
  BLU Soldier: Watch, he'll turn red any second now. ... Annyyy second now...
• Repurposed Pop Song: For Meet the Pyro, they used Lovin' Spoonful's hit "Do You Believe in Magic".
• Retraux: Gang Garrison, a 2D "demake" of Team Fortress 2.
  • Team Fortress 2 itself is retraux compared to Team Fortress Classic, being set in a cartoony 60's style.
  • Team Fortress Arcade, an demake that puts the characters in a retro arcade-style beat-em-up.
• Revenue-Enhancing Devices:
  • The "Mann Co. Emporium" allows players to buy in-game items with real money that can also be found for free by playing enough. Many of these are hats.
  • Additionally, cross-promotional items become being wanted for rarity's sake, but not for actual gameplay value.
• Revolting Rescue: Jarate can be used to extinguish teammates on fire. The comic the developers published along with its introduction, essentially an ad for the weapon, noted that those you rescue will be grateful, but will never want to talk about the time you saved their lives with a jar of your own piss.
• Rewarding Inactivity: The game (currently) has no way of telling if the player is actually, well, playing. One can join an "idling" server or play offline, then minimize the game and do whatever else he wants while still enjoying the same chance to get drops every week as an active player.
  • As of the April 10, 2010 update, the use of idling has been reduced by the introduction of a weekly item drop cap. Amount of drops is no longer directly related to hours spent in the game. The system has a cap on the amount of playtime in which drops can occur. This cap has been estimated to be 10 hours each week. Playing beyond the cap will not yield additional items.
  • A third update around September 2013 also made it so that if an item drops but no response to the notification comes, the game effectively "halts" your hours and no further items will drop until you respond. This effectively means you have to be actively playing to get more than 1 item.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Territorial Control, Ornament Armament, Cold War Luchador, Fruit Shoot, and Brundle Bundle.
• Riddle for the Ages: Examining the full Mann family portrait reveals that someone was removed when the photo was torn in half. Their identity has never been commented on or otherwise explained, leaving exactly who it is unknown.
• "Risk"-Style Map: Territorial Control's main map, Hydro, is split into several different territories which BLU and RED have to attack/defend in a series of individual battles.
• Robot War: The Mann Vs. Machine update is this. It's six people versus an entire robot army with the intent of blowing Mann Co. buildings to bits! Granted, it's only a worldwide war in the sense that said Mann Co. facilities are spread sparsely around the world, but still...
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Moment-to-moment battles are very fast, with most classes having the potential to kill almost all of the other classes in two shots. Servers with an "all crit" mod turn this up to eleven as everyone is prone to getting instantly killed from any distance.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: An actual taunt in the game. If the loser is from the opposing team, they explode.
• Roof Hopping: Any class can do this, but usually those with special jumps (rocket jump, sentry jump, etc.) can run on roofs more often.
• Rousing Speech: Parodied on the World War Wednesday page of the Über Update:
  "Men! This is a speech! If you are hearing it then we are at WAR! You will most likely DIE in that war! This speech will make you feel better about that! Remember! We will fight them on the BEACH! We will fight them on the SEAS! We will fight them in a MOAT! We will fight them on a BOAT! WE WILL NOT EAT GREEN EGGS AND HAM! Do you maggots remember the speech from Braveheart? Start thinking about it now! MISTER GARPABARP, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL! Dismissed."
• RPG Elements: More than normal even for an FPS: Critical Hits, optional damage count displays, (cosmetic) weapon levels, Item Crafting, Status Effects.
  • Taken even further with the Mann Vs. Machine mode, which allows players to upgrade their weapons and characters using money collected from the robots.
• Rule of Fun: The realization of the insane premise that presupposed the game's fundamental elements caused a shift from the original concept of a serious military-styled action game toward the game's exaggerated and unrealistic theme and presentation.
• Run, Don't Walk: The characters cannot walk unless they're crouching or using certain weapons.
• Running Gag: Scout tends to get choked quite often. Usually by Soldier.
• The Runt at the End:
  • Backstory-wise, the Scout is the youngest of eight boys, and he used this as motivation to train his running speed.
  • Gameplay-wise, it's usually the Engineer, always last to the front lines because he's too busy setting up and upgrading his buildings.

S

• Savage Spiked Weapons: The game has some examples unlockables.
  • "The Boston Basher", a nail-covered baseball bat the cocky and fight-loving Scout can use, which causes bleeding in addition to damage with every hit, but with every miss Scout hits himself.
  • The large, muscular Heavy, who uses his Good Old Fisticuffs for melee combat, can obtain a pair of spike-covered brass knuckles called "The Eviction Notice". Ironically, this actually does less damage than his normal punch attack, as a tradeoff for swing speed and a slight speed boost when hitting an enemy.
  • The warmongering, Ax-Crazy Soldier and the Violent Glaswegian Demoman can equip "The Pain Train", a very savage-looking Improvised Weapon consisting of a cracked piece of wood with several nails and a railroad spike jammed through it, held together by duct tape.
• Saw Blades of Death: The Sawmill map features a central objective in which two giant sawblades alternate back and forth. Anyone who touches the sawblades (even the sides) will die instantly, even if they're Ubercharged or equipped with the Dead Ringer, so knocking the target back into the saws^e.g. with the Pyro's compression blast, the Scout's Force-a-Nature, explosives, etc. is a common strategy.
• Schmuck Bait: Sprays can have surprising uses. One of their uses? Fanservice sprays placed by Spies (and maybe Demomen with carefully placed stickies) as a trap for anyone who is stupid enough to stop in their tracks to look at the boobies, allowing the Spy to easily backstab them.
  • One of the more creative variants. A disguised Spy tricks an enemy Medic into healing him and sprays "FYI I am a spy" on the wall. While the Medic reads the spray, the Spy backstabs him.
  • Sprays do backfire on occasion, since eventually when the opposing team sees the spray, they may start whaling wildly, as if they know there's a Spy hidden.
    • Even this can be exploited by putting sprays positively everywhere and let your team take care of the enemies that are hunting for non-existent Spies.
  • There also have been attempts at creating distraction sprays showing a sentry or player. Since it's possible to make sprays that change based on proximity, this can be fairly effective in the right place.
    • Spies sometimes put down sprays of friendly players and move them around from time to time while staying completely cloaked, which distracts their enemies into not watching their backs.
  • Also works for some decal-customization-capable melee weapons, for example the Conscientious Objector. A demoman wielding a customized one and a Chargin' Targe or Splendid Screen and Ali Baba's Wee Booties (and maybe any weird hat as well for good measure), can confuse certain noobs long enough for one to execute a charge-kill. At point blank if the noob is really new to the game, natch.
  • Clever Heavies can use their Sandviches as Schmuck Bait. Simply throw the Sandvich somewhere where an enemy is likely to notice it, wait for the schmuck to take the bait, then pump 'em full of minigun lead. Works especially well with the Tomislav. And God help the little schmuck if a Pyro or another Heavy are in on the act.
    • Sandvich baiting with hilarious results.
  • Another way to use the Sandvich as bait is to, ironically, not have it at all. Many players expect Heavies to be equipped with Sandviches as their secondary, so they're inclined to chase down a Heavy that flees around a corner due to being wounded or out of minigun ammo, expecting them to be trying to heal. A tricky Heavy will feign this when out of minigun ammo (or just at all), ducking around a corner. The opponent chases the Heavy, rounds the corner... and finds himself staring down the barrel of a Shotgun. Has a surprisingly high rate of success.
  • The Pyro's Armageddon taunt may count too, particularly right after the Pyromania update when it and the Rainblower were first introduced and everyone was wearing Pyrovision goggles. In Pyroland, the Pyro is surrounded by sparkly rainbows and the Balloonicorn, which tempted even some enemy players to join in on the fun or go for an easy kill only to be burned alive. Those without the Goggles are instead adequately warned with ominous-sounding music coming from the taunt.
  • Another excellent Schmuck Bait-based tactic is to have a Sniper stand somewhere obvious, and a Pyro hiding nearby, and then to light up the incoming stream of Spies.
  • Some Engineers intentionally leave non-functioning Teleporter Entrances or Exits near their nest to alert them to enemy positions. Many enemy players can't resist attacking a defenseless building.
    • Similarly, some players intentionally refrain from attacking a functional Teleporter Exit and instead taunt-kill the enemies coming out of it.
• Scenery Gorn: This is what happens to most RED bases in the aftermath of Payload, when the bomb cart creates a massive explosion to ruin the days of anyone who has to work there. Helltower also has an odd tendency to turn into an utter wreck as the battle commences. But the ultimate example has to be 2Fort Invasion.
• Scissors Cuts Rock: Under normal circumstances, certain classes are considered to counter others. Traditional wisdom holds that Heavy counters Pyro, Scout counters Sniper, and Spy counters Engineer, for example. That said, the tables can always turn if circumstances give one class an unusual advantage or if one player has a significant skill advantage over the other. An unrevved Heavy who encounters a Pyro in close quarters is basically dead, a good enough Sniper can one-shot a Scout at a moment's notice, and a bad Spy is basically just free metal for a competent Engineer.
• Score Screen: After each round, there's a list of the top three most valued players, and the player with the longest killstreak that round. After the map timer runs out and the server is about to switch to another map, the screen will show the scoreboard, which displays player information, server name, team scores, etc. Information about each player is shown, including Steam ID, team affiliation, points, and class. This scoreboard can also be accessed by pressing Tab on the PC while playing in a round, though it won't show much information about the enemy team, of course.
• Scoring Points: Points are used to determine who the most valuable players in a particular round are and otherwise don't do anything unless the server settings are such that it determines the winning side based on points under certain circumstances. Other servers have a separate ranking system that's just there for the bragging rights.
• Scout-Out: The Saxtonettes. Originally (in-universe) the comic was called Boy's Adventure with Saxton Hale, but the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency complained that it taught boys moral turpitude, arson, vandalism, hippie assault, tax fraud, the Heimlich Maneuver, et cetera. Mann Co. changed the name to Girl's Adventure With Saxton Hale, as it was commonly thought (in-universe) that girls couldn't do anything, so any lessons taught to them would be harmless.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Getting scared by either Zepheniah Mann's ghost or the Horseless Headless Horsemann results in a very unmanly scream. Also, one of Scout's voice clips for the Halloween 2012 update has him shrieking like a girl and yelling, "I'm so scared!"
  • Also, Scout at the end of "Meet the Sandvich", and Sniper at the end of "Meet the Pyro".
• Seadog Peg Leg: The Demoman's "Swashbuckler's Swag" outfit includes a peg leg. It's a reskin of Ali Baba's Wee Booties, which bizarrely means having a pegleg increases the Demoman's mobility while charging and health.
• Secondary Fire: Every class has at least one weapon with this function (barring the Spy, whose secondary fire is always used for whatever cloaking watch he has equipped). Certain classes also have common secondary fire functions for most, if not all, of their weapons: the Medic uses his for deploying his medigun's Übercharge, the Sniper's is for zooming in on his rifle, the Demoman can either charge (if equipped with a shield) or detonate his stickies, the Pyro can airblast with any primary other than the Phlogistinator, and the Heavy can spin up his minigun.
• See the Invisible: A cloaked enemy Spy can be revealed by bumping into him, igniting him, covering him in Jarate or Mad Milk, or hitting him with a weapon that inflicts bleed damage.
• See You in Hell:
  • "Meet the Demoman" has a slightly modified version, after the eponymous explosives expert blows several enemies to bloody chunks:
    Demoman: Ooh, they're goin' to have to glue you back together... IN HELL!
    Demoman: Awww, there's a new angel in heaven... IN HELL!"
  • It also appears in several domination lines. Among others:
    Spy: I'll see you in Hell... You handsome rogue!
    Spy: Go to Hell and take your cheap suit with you!
    Demoman: Go to Hell, and tell the Devil I'm coming for him next!
  • In an unused (robotized) domination line from the WAR! Update that was left in the game's files during the Mann vs. Machine update:
    Soldier: DOMINATED! I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL! Bye! See you soon!
  • Parodied during the 2013 Scream Fortress update, during which the each Mann brother is literally trying to send the other to hell.
    Redmond: "I'll see you in hell, brother!"
    Blutarch: "Only one of us is going to hell, Redmond!"
    Redmond: "Then I suppose I won't see you in hell, brother!"
    Blutarch: "I'm afraid I'll be the one not seeing you!"
    Redmond: "We shall see."
    Blutarch: "I won't!"
• Self-Damaging Attack Backfire:
  • Your team mates are immune to your splash damage. You are not. Rocket Jumping takes advantage of this. If you don't blow yourself up trying.
  • The sentry gun fire is similarly damaging to the building engineer.
  • Scout's Boston Basher has the helpful description of "On Miss: Hit yourself. Idiot."
• Self-Deprecation: For the Team Fortress 21st anniversary, the TFTeam adopted a baby, named her "Team Crabwalk Rocketjump Fortress", and said that "so far all she does is poop, cry and code, which is making the other TF2 team members jealous, because up until now that's mostly been their job."
  • A tongue-in-cheek write-up about making the Meet the Sandvich short is pretty much several paragraphs and some pictures showing the TF2 Writing Staff are lazy, shameless plagiarists obessessed with Predator so the actual short's "writing" was done by the voice actors improvising, that of course the TF2 Writing Staff wrote about themselves.
• Self-Plagiarism: The Gun Mettle update is this with regards to Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Let's see, repainted weapons with varying degrees of weapon rarity and exterior damage, first-person inspect animations for said repainted weapons, StatTrak kill counters featured on the weapons themselves and viewable in real time^Note While CS:GO did do StatTrak weapons first, those were based off of the Strange weapons that TF2 did before, a buyable pass that allows players to complete challenges for the weapons, and being able to pick up the weapons of defeated players.
• Sequel Escalation: The original game (as Team Fortress Classic) had nine basic models with one voice, weapons mostly shared with Half-Life and Quake, and a text-heavy interface. TF2 gave each class its own silhouette, voice, nationality, personality, game mechanic, personal HUD elements, and weapons (only two stock weapons are shared between multiple classes - Soldier, Pyro, Heavy and Engineer all have a Shotgun, and the Scout and Engineer share the Pistol) fitting into an all-encompassing art style.
• Series Goal: The goal is to reign supreme over the other team. Depending on the mode, that goal can entail anything from capturing all of the points, to capturing the enemy's briefcase, to just killing the other team until they're completely gone.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: The Medic's standard melee weapon is a bonesaw and another, the Amputator, has serrated edges as well. In addition, one of the Sniper's alternative weapons is a wooden knife with a serrated spine which does less damage than his kukri but causes bleeding.
• Set Bonus: The Polycount contest item sets. The cause of much uproar in the fanbase was how the gameplay bonus depended on the ultra-rare hats (before it was possible to craft them). The gameplay-affecting set bonuses have since been distributed among the weapons of the set as of July 10, 2013, and the set now just bestows an additional cosmetic feature.
• Sexposition: Different mechanism, same broad idea in the comic "A Fate Worse Than Chess". Saxton Hale explains something he dubbed "Explosition" where you have to make the exposition more interesting. He proceeds to make a video where he describes the current situation to the Mercenaries while wrestling with a Yeti.
• The Shadow Knows: Inverted; the shadow of a Spy will show his disguise's weapon rather than his own.
• Shared Universe: With The Adventures of Dr. McNinja and Atomic Robo, In the sense of you can find them playing cameos.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product:
  • The Chinese game title Final Combat neatly plagiarizes TF2 (and Battlefield Heroes) down to some of the character models. They even swiped Ellen McLain's voice clips!
  • In-universe, there's Mann Co's "Bestralium", a synthetic Australium which is not unstable and was not responsible for the tragic death of Poopy Joe.
• Shooting Superman: Largely averted; while stock Ubercharge makes the Medic and his units invulnerable to damage, they are not invulnerable to knockback. Most players will either use something that can disrupt or delay the Ubercharge push (airblast, explosives fired at feet, etc.) to buy time for their teammates to pull back, or just leg it out of there. Note that this does not stop certain players, who do enthusiastically plink away away at the glowing enemies and wonder why they're not inflicting any damage.
• Shoot the Bullet:
  • Although it does not involve fighting bullets with bullets, the Pyro's flamethrower's alternate fire shoots out a gust of air that can deflect a projectile, bouncing it right back where it came from. Critical projectiles and arrows destroy other projectiles. Flares can destroy enemy flares.
  • In Mann Vs. Machine, Heavies can purchase an upgrade for their minigun that lets them destroy enemy projectiles mid-flight. Robot Deflector Heavies do the same thing against the projectiles coming from your own team.
• Shoot the Mage First:
  • Snipers tend to go for enemy Snipers first, even if there are other ways of taking out said Sniper, as an uninterrupted Sniper can pick everyone else off at their leisure.
  • The firepower and perfect aim of a Sentry is so good at area denial that enemies often attempt to destroy Sentries on sight, even if it means burning up an Ubercharge. Crafty Engineers can exploit this mentality by using a stray Sentry as a decoy to distract enemies from the rest of their team.
• Shoot the Medic First: Origin of trope namer. Medics are immensely powerful in that the presence of one makes everyone in his immediate vicinity much tougher to kill, but they themselves have a low health pool and are unable to defend themselves and heal someone at the same time.
  • Also goes for Engineers. It's hard to destroy a sentry when it's constantly getting repaired.
  • Taken to new extremes in the Mann vs. Machine mode on the later waves where Super Heavies (who already have a stupidly high amount of health) can have up to five Medics following them, each of which is healing and/or charging uber several times as fast a normal Medic. Needless to say, taking them out first is essential.
• Shop Fodder: Duplicate weapons and hats are often used in crafting or trading to make sure they don't take up space in the backpack.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: The Spy and The Sniper in-universe are fierce enemies, partly because Snipers are a prime target for quick Spy kills. The Spy's weapon is a knife used for instant-kill backstabs, while The Sniper specialises in long-distance headshots.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Almost every attack deals less damage at long range, excluding the Sniper's primary weapons (which are intended to be used at long range) and anything that's dealing critical damage. Firing explosives right at your feet is a viable tactic to dealing with fast Scouts in close range; due to the game's Rocket Jumping mechanics, damage is reduced for you, but not for your enemy.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The various shotguns in the game do heavy damage up close, but are practically useless against targets at a distance. This isn't because of the pellet spread, which is actually pretty reasonable, but because of the aforementioned damage falloff that makes EVERY firearm (sans the Sniper Rifle) useless at long range. However, the Shotgun as a secondary weapon works better than the primary at long range:
  • Soldier's Rockets, while still dealing a good damage at range, are slower projectiles that are easier to dodge.
  • Pyro's Flamethrower is a close range weapon that is easily outranged by any non-melee weapon.
  • Heavy's Minigun has too wide of a spread to be useful at long range.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page
• Shows Damage: Blood decals appear on players who are shot or bludgeoned, and their expressions become increasingly worried as they take damage. Buildings will smoke, then ignite the more they are damaged.
• Sickening "Crunch!": When you take fall damage.
• Sigil Spam: The Team Fortress Logo tends to appear quite often. To list a few: it's the timer for capture points and intelligence resets, it appears as the default image for the Conscientious Objector and the Flair!, there's an unusual effect called Circling TF Logo, instructional videos and blackboards use the logo to represent objectives, and all of the rank medals for Casual use the logo as a base. Hell, koth_nucleus (with the bridges out) and arena_watchtower both resemble the TF logo when viewed from above.
• Silliness Switch: tf_birthday (for bleeding balloons and exploding into presents), or -sillygibs (for normal blood, but exploding into cheeseburgers, balloon puppies, clocks, boots, gears, unicycles...).
  • It is worth mentioning that -sillygibs is, in fact, the standard "violence-reduced" setting for German players which cannot be changed, a mode which also includes altering blood so that it looks yellow and eliminating all bloodsplatter on characters' clothes, walls and floors. And that despite the fact that in Germany the game is rated 18+ (for adults only), not 16+ as in most other countries. Even some of the Meet the Team videos (Meet the Soldier for example) have been altered this way in the German dubbed version. Given that the voice acting in the German dub is horrible, most German players usually run their game with audio setting set to English.
  • In Pyroland, some maps have been turned to what the Pyro sees in Meet the Pyro, switching from the standard muted colors of normal TF2, to one that heavily favors pastel pink, blue, and green, befitting a Sugar Bowl. Weapon projectiles trail bubbles, explosions are replaced by confetti, fire becomes rainbows, players bleed balloons, and the pitch of everyone's voice is raised. When players take damage and die, they laugh.
• Silly Reason for War: All of the game modes. You're not given any motivation other than "kill the guy colored differently from you before they kill you and/or achieve your side's objectives before they can achieve theirs".
  • We also have the Soldier-Demoman war over an unlockable pair of boots, with the accompanying comic giving the story reason that the Administrator feared the friendship between RED's Demoman and BLU's Soldier would lead them to talk about their job and make them realize that the fake war was run by the same person (Helen, the Administrator) staying in power by playing both sides against each other. Thus the Soldier and Demoman were bribed with new weapons and lied to to destroy their friendship. Prior to the Mann versus Machine storyline, fraternization between members of the RED and BLU teams was forbidden by their contracts.
• Similar Squad: The teams are identical except for uniform color.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • The Medic's default Ubercharge. It provides full invulnerability to the damage from enemy players and nothing else, but in a game where everyone goes down in 2 to 3 shots, being able to run roughshod all over the enemy team without the threat of retaliation makes Uber incredibly powerful.
  • In Mann vs. Machine, the Increase Dispenser Range upgrade at first doesn't sound too exciting compared to increased Sentry firing speed or building health, but it takes only 300 credits to max out, and lets you and your team benefit from the Dispenser's healing and ammunition within a much larger area.
• Single-Palette Town: Each team's area of the map will be colored to match. Maps as a whole also tend to have very limited palettes.
• Single-Use Shield:
  • The Sniper's Razorback protects him from a single instant-kill backstab, at which point he has to go back to the resupply room to get a new one. A patch later made it also regenerate after 30 seconds.
  • The Spy's Spy-cicle melts to protect him from being set on fire while also providing him from further fire damage for a short duration afterward, with the tradeoff of leaving him without a knife afterward. Hitting a resupply locker or waiting around for a bit allows the Spy-cicle to regenerate, and collecting ammo boxes will speed up the refreeze. However, in Medieval Mode, the Spy-cicle refreezes instantly to prevent the Spy from being left without a weapon.
• Sinister Whistling: In the conclusion of the "Meet The Pyro" trailer, the Pyro can be heard whistling a Dark Reprise of "Do You Believe In Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful as he departs the battlefield, leaving the bodies of the entire BLU team in his wake.
• Situational Damage Attack: The Medic's Crusader's Crossbow does damage based on distance; the further the distance, the more damage (or healing if the syringe hits a teammate) done.
• Skybox: One of the maps is a train yard called "Well" and uses the skybox to conceal the interiors of the teams' bases, which are Bigger on the Inside. The top half of the buildings' façades are 3D miniatures projected onto the skybox. Generally, this is not feasible in the game's engine, since the technique requires that there not be a direct line of sight to any part of the area being hidden.
• Slow Doors: The doors between points A, B, and C on Steel and the spawn point doors on Egypt.
• Sniper Scope Glint: Sniper Rifles will always show a red/blue (depending on the team) colored glint where they're aiming shown in walls as a dot, making it possible to see if there's one awaiting if you look well. Unlike most examples where it's an external light source providing the glint, here it's the result of the built-in Laser Sight used in the rifle's scope.
• Socialization Bonus: There are some achievements for playing with your Steam friends.
• Soft Glass: The Demoman's bottle will break on a successful critical hit with a target, though whether it's broken or not makes no difference to damage output. The Sniper's Jarate and the Scout's Mad Milk always break on contact with something but never do any damage.
• Soft Water: Falling from a distance that would normally damage you into a body of water of nearly any depth negates the damage. In fact, a pool of water not even high enough to cover your feet will do the job perfectly well.
• Solo Class: Some of the classes can do their job on their own (for example an Engineer can set up a sentry nest and a Sniper can find a good vantage point, while a Spy can infiltrate on their own). Of course the game is deliberately designed so that having a teammate back them up always helps (e.g. a Pyro to guard an Engineer or Sniper from a Spy, or a group of offensive classes to rush the enemy when the Spy begins sapping their sentries).
• Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: Every stock primary weapon and most secondary weapons have a unique sound effect. For example, the stock Minigun sounds pretty distinguishable when revved up. The Brass Beast, which is slower than the Minigun in most aspects, makes noises similar to the Minigun but noticeably lower.
  • Every team member has their own, easily-distinguishable voice acting. Similarly, Sentries make audible "-beep" noises often, so a player can tell in advance if there is a Sentry around the corner. The number of beeps also correspond to the level of the sentry - for example, a Level 3 Sentry will make three quick beeps in succession.
  • When hitting a friendly building with the Wrench, healing/upgrading/speeding up construction will create a distinct "-tang" noise. If your wrench hit has no effect (full health, full upgrades, full ammo, no metal in reserve) the hit instead makes a higher-pitched "-tink" noise.
  • The Buff Banner, Battalion's Backup, and Concheror all play different sound effects depending on which team you're on and which backpack is being applied.
  • You can set custom hitsounds to play in the options menu, as well as set the pitch to change based on how much damage your attack dealt. You can also set a different hitsound for landing the killing blow.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The soundtrack in the Pyro's mind as he is bringing about fiery apocalypse? "Do You Believe In Magic?"
• Spinventory: While choosing an item on the loadout screen, you can spin the character model to see how he looks.
• The '60s: Takes place during the late sixties - there's a heavy 60s espionage/industrial motif.
• Spies Are Lecherous: The Spy is perhaps the biggest ladies' man of all the mercs, who's introduced in his official Meet the Team short to have bedded the Scout's mom and later shown in "Expiration Date" teaching him how to talk to women, Hilarity Ensues.
• Spiteful Will: The setting exists as a result of Zepheniah Mann giving each of his dunderheaded sons half of the land he owned. Not a sentence goes by in his will without him throwing curses at his brain-defective sons.
• Splash Damage: Rockets, grenades, stickybombs, and some of the Pyro's flares. This attribute when used well can strike threats around corners, juggle people, or simply annihilate a group of enemies.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion: Type "explode" into the console mid-game and see what happens.
• Spot the Imposter: A gameplay usage. A team who has difficulty identifying a Spy among them is going to find their buildings sapped and their critical players backstabbed.
• Sprint Meter: There are various meters, depending on weapons in one's loadout.
• Sprint Shoes: A few items can increase the speed of a class:
  • As a Soldier's health decreases, if he's holding the Escape Plan, his speed increases. At 1-40 HP, he can almost keep up with a Scout.
  • A Pyro with the Powerjack active gets a 20% speed boost.
  • The Heavy gets the Gloves of Running Urgently, which give a speed boost when wielded at the cost of a maximum health drain while they're active. He also gets a speed boost for 15 seconds after eating a Buffalo Steak Sandvich, at the cost of being restricted to melee.
  • As of the Gun Mettle update, the Eviction Notice gives a speed boost when he hits an enemy.
  • The Demoman's Chargin' Targe, Splendid Screen, and Tide Turner allow him to charge forward for a few seconds, which can be used as either a mobility boost or an attack buff (or both). Having heads on an Eyelander, Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker or Nessie's Nine-Iron increases his running speed, but not his charge.
    • Equipping Ali Baba's Wee Booties or the Bootlegger along with any shield also raises his base movement speed, making them a literal example of this trope.
  • The Medic can run at Scout speed as he heals a Scout with any Medi Gun. With the Overdose active, his speed increases based on ÜberCharge built, maxing out at 20% faster than his usual speed with a full Über built.
  • A Scout using the Baby Face's Blaster, though having an minor initial speed debuff, can gather boost to move 30% faster than his usual maximum speed.^note The scout is slowed to 120% of normal speed, and full boost brings him up to 173% normal speed. Normal Scout speed is 133%.
  • The Soldier's Concheror, in addition to granting passive health regen, also gives 10 seconds of Life Drain and speed boost to all allies in range when deployed. The Disciplinary Action grants a similar temporary speed boost to both him and the ally he whips.
• Spy Cam: The camera beard parodies this by being incredibly obvious and bulky.
• Spy Versus Spy: Both the general term and a more literal fashion. In fact, it may even remind some people of Spy vs. Spy.
• Standard Snippet: The Heavy will sometimes sing The Volga Boatmen's Song while pushing the cart, and Sabre Dance while mowing down enemies. ("Kaaaa-BOOOOM! Kaaaa-BOOOOM!")
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: It's not quite clear how team affiliation works.
  • The BLU Soldier and RED Demoman are Fire-Forged Friends, and in-game portrayals don't care about specific classes on specific teams, so the RED Soldier and the BLU Demoman have the same relationship, breakup, and conflicted feelings. Neither of them seem particularly buddy-buddy with their own team's Demoman and Soldier, however.
  • Similarly, the RED Spy is the father of both the BLU Scout (from Meet the Spy) and the RED Scout (in The Naked and the Dead); the BLU Spy is not depicted as this for either one of them.
• Stat-O-Vision: Players can see their allies' health, the health of allied buildings, and the ÜberCharge meter of allied Medics. Medics always see the health of their patients, and ÜberCharge level if the teammate's a Medic. Spies can also see the names and health of enemy players and buildings. A Medic with the Solemn Vow equipped can also see enemies' names and health.
• Stat Overflow:
  • The Medic can use his Medigun to heal other characters to 150% of their maximum HP. When the Medic stops using the Medigun, their health will slowly degenerate to its default max value over the course of 15 seconds.
  • The Pyro's Powerjack can give overheal upon a successful kill.
  • The Spy's Conniver's Kunai steals the enemy's health on a successful backstab, allowing the Spy to get up to 210 points of overhealing.
  • In Mann vs Machine mode, Scout can gain overheal upon collecting credits.
  • In Mann vs Machine mode, weapons can be upgraded to give the user health on kills, potentially overhealing depending on their HP.
• Status Buff: Like the status effects, these also stack.
  • Overheal: Medics can heal teammates to 150% of their starting health. The Heavy's Dalokohs Bar increases the eater's max HP by 50 for 30 seconds.
  • Critbuffed:
    • When a Medic activates an ÜberCharge with a Kritzkreg.
    • When the intelligence is captured in a CTF map.
    • Granted in Arena mode to the player that scores the first kill.
    • The Scout's Crit-A-Cola grants him mini-crits against all enemies and provides a speed boost. It also causes any attacks against HIM to mini-crit, so it's a rather risky buff.
    • The Heavy's Buffalo Steak Sandvich (Bread not included) does the same thing and makes him run faster, with the added risk-factor of only being able to use melee weapons. So, it can turn the Mighty Glacier into somewhat of a Fragile Speedster, even a Glass Cannon with the Warrior's Spirit (increases your strength by 30%, heals 50 after each kill, but with a 30% bonus damage penalty when active).
    • Upon filling the Mmmph meter of the Pyro's Phlogistinator, a small taunt will activate the buff until the meter runs dry.
    • The Soldier can cause allies within range to always mini-crit for a short while with his unlockable Buff Banner.
    • Escaping the Underworld on Eyeaduct grants the player critical hits, as well as a speed boost, 200% overheal, and invulnerability.
    • Mann Vs. Machine, if you use a Canteen with Crit Boost loaded.
    • Finally, being on the winning team during Humiliation grants the player critical hits until the period ends.
  • Invulnerable: the standard Medi Gun's ÜberCharge, Übercharge canteens in Mann vs. Machine, and escape from the Underworld.
  • Damage resistance: when the Soldier has the Battalion's Backup active, nearby allies take reduced damage from attacks and suffer no extra damage from crits or mini-crits.
  • Healing Factor:
    • The Quick-Fix gives a 300% to health regen and as an added bonus, prevents all movement debuffs and knockback.
    • A Soldier's activated Concheror grants every ally in range, including the Soldier himself, a 35% Life Drain on all their weapons when the buff is active, as well as passively healing the Solder 4 health per second.
    • The Scout's Mad Milk is thrown like Jarate but soaked enemies instead have 60% Life Drain applied to all damage they take.
  • Speed boost:
    • Whipping teammates with the Disciplinary Action boosts both their and the user's speed for three seconds.
    • The Heavy's Buffalo Steak Sandwich gives him a speed boost in exchange for a melee-only restriction while active.
    • The Soldier's Concheror, in addition to granting passive health regen, also gives 10 seconds of Life Drain and speed boost to all allies in range when deployed.
    • Killing an enemy with the Big Earner, or triggering the Dead Ringer, gives the Spy a temporary speed boost.
• Status Effects (many of them can stack):
  • Fire (Pyro's, Flare Gun, Detonator, Scorch Shot Manmelter, Sharpened Volcano Fragment, and the flames from Heavy's Huo Long Heater): causes about 60 damage over 10 seconds (3 points every half-second). Afterburn from flamethrowers is just as damaging but the duration is based on how long you were in the Pyro's flame. Reveals cloaked and disguised Spies. Can be extinguished in a variety of ways.
  • Bleeding (Sniper's Tribalman's Shiv, Scout's Boston Basher, Three-Rune Blade, Wrap Assassin's alt-fire and Flying Guillotine, Engineer's Southern Hospitality): Similar to being on fire, but deals 4 damage per tick and the durations are all shorter (it still usually comes out to more total damage). Small health packs, Dispensers and Medi Guns heal the victim, but will not stop the bleeding. Reveals disguised and cloaked Spies.
  • Full stun (The Scout's Sandman at long range and the first moments of some Taunt Kills): rendered immobile.
    • Partial stun (Sandman at closer ranges): halves the victim's speed and puts them in third-person Humiliation stance, and prevents them from attacking (with the exception of taunts), crouching, and jumping.
    • Scared (Ghost/Headless Horsemann on Halloween maps): same as partial stun, with different special effects. The game counts this as a stun towards achievements.
  • Attack disabled (The Sniper's Razorback temporarily disables the Spy from attacking, cloaking, or switching weapons when stabbed, and the whole losing team loses their weapons during Humiliation).
  • Covered in Jarate (Sniper, with Jarate or Sydney Sleeper): Incoming damage to the victim is registered as mini-crits (that is to say, multiplied by 1.35 and ignores damage falloff). Reveals cloaked and disguised Spies. Can also extinguish teammates. Can be removed by going underwater or being healed for some time.
  • Covered in Milk (Scout's Mad Milk, or in MVM, Medic's syringe gun if that upgrade is purchased): If you're covered, every enemy who shoots you counts as having 60% Life Drain. Can be removed by going underwater or being healed for some time. Reveals disguised and cloaked Spies.
  • Covered in Gasoline (Pyro's Gas Passer): The next hit that the victim receives removes the debuff and causes them to ignite. An upgrade from MvM can cause enemies to detonate as well.
  • Marked for Death (being hit with Scout's Fan O'War, or if he hits a robot with an upgraded Sandman ball, pulling out the Gloves of Running Urgently or Escape Plan (and 3 seconds after holstering it), hauling buildings picked up by Rescue Ranger's alt-fire): The victim is marked with a floating skull and crossbones and all damage taken from the enemy register as mini-crits. Goes away after around fifteen seconds or by death. The mark can be concealed by cloaking or disguising as the Spy.
• Status Effect-Powered Ability:
  • The Pyro's Flare Gun, Dragon's Fury, and Detonator deal Critical, 400%, and Mini-Crit damage, respectively, on a target that is already ignited.
  • The Pyro's Axtinguisher and Neon Annihilator deal Critical damage if the target is already ignited or wet (i.e., hit by Jarate or Mad Milk, or been in a body of water), respectively.
• Stealth Expert: The Spy in particular, but any class can be played in a sneaky fashion (yes, even the Heavy Weapons Guy).
  • Stealth is suprisingly useful for Scouts, as attacking an enemy from the back is rather effective, while attacking them from the front will probably get you turned into Swiss-cheese.
• Stealth Pun:
  • The briefcase in CTF probably contains very bureaucratic documents. Of course it has a paper trail.
  • The Sniper has an apricot-scented air freshener hung up in his van. "Apricot" is slang for the cerebellum, which controls functions like breathing and heartbeat, and thus considered an ideal sniper target.
  • The Pyro's Degreaser refers to solvent degreasing, a process typically involving spraying a machine or other appliance with a degreaser to remove contaminants and prepare the object for another process. The Degreaser sprays enemies with fire, and its fast switch speed makes it ideal for using it to prepare enemies into a combo.
  • The Buff Banner, when activated, makes Ragecrits.
  • The Sniper Rifle from the Deus Ex: Human Revolution Promotion is called "The Machina."
  • The Pyro can wield the Postal Pummeler, a mailbox that has flames painted on it.^note "hotmail"
  • In the Mac Update trailer, the Sniper looks at two objects through his scope. First, a window. Second, an apple.
  • The use of Tom Jones in the comics got some chuckles, as one of his signature songs ("It's Not Unusual") is quite popular among fans who open a lot of crates.^note It easily describes a majority of unlucky pulls.
  • During Halloween events, small health packs are replaced by candy bars with the logo simply being the word "Health."^note It's a health bar
• Stock Control Settings: They can be changed.
• Stock Food Depictions: The Sandvich is half of a sandwich made up of 2 triangular slices of white bread, lettuce, Swiss cheese, ham, and a green pimento-stuffed olive pinned on with a toothpick. This is the favorite food item of the Heavy, who can eat it to restore health. Other food items available to the Heavy include the Second Banana (a generic half-peeled yellow banana), the Dalokohs Bar (a generic half-unwrapped chocolate bar), and the Buffalo Steak Sandvich (a generic raw ribeye steak).
• Stop Poking Me!: Looking at bots during Setup Time for a few seconds will make them taunt at you.
• Strange Secret Entrance: Various flank routes are difficult to access normally, and are intended to be exclusively used for one team. That doesn't stop a player from the other team from accessing it via explosive jump.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Soldier rockets, Demoman grenades, Engineer buildings, Payloads, the player characters...
• Stylistic Suck: Why the accents and foreign grammar are sometimes incorrect—the game was modeled on American World War-era propaganda posters, or the view Americans have of other countries in the 60s.
• Suddenly Obvious Fakery: The spies appear with a literal Paper-Thin Disguise consisting of a mask of whoever they're disguised as to their own team. The other team just sees the character model of their disguise, but see the spy normally if they force them to lose their disguise or kill them (which leaves the mask on the dead spy).
• Sugar Bowl: The Pyro sees the world around... them as this. Contrasting their perspective with reality turns it into a Sugar Apocalypse.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Since drowning is resolved in the game mechanics as taking persistent damage until the player dies or goes up for air, one can invoke this by being in the range of a friendly Medic or Dispenser. Since few people expect underwater sentries, Engineers can use this to their advantage.
• Supervillain Lair: Word of God states that the RED and BLU bases were designed with this idea in mind: a seemingly innocuous facade on the surface to hide the true sinister purpose of these buildings. This is even lampshaded in the description of the map Double Cross.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The Spy’s evaluation of Scout’s dating skills in Expiration Date.
  Spy: Final question: You have a dinner date for seven. What time do you arrive?
  Scout: Seven. AM. Case the restaurant, run background checks on the staff. Can the cook be trusted? If not, I gotta kill him, dispose of the body, replace him with my own guy, no later than 4:30.
  Spy: ...You're ready!
  Scout: Really!?
  Spy: No. Everything you just said was insane, and we are out of time. Congratulations! You're a failure.
  • During Mann Vs Machine and the comics set in the mode, the mercenaries made it clear they were only helping Saxton Hale defend Mann Co from Gray Mann and his robot army due to wanting to be paid for their efforts with Saxton Hale making it clear that he wasn't paying them and the money came from Gray's robots. Once Gray Mann manages to take over Mann Co, the mercenaries appear to willingly turn against Saxton Hale in the Versus Saxton Hale mode simply because Gray was paying them at the time to get rid of Saxton Hale.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: During the WAR! update, it's revealed that American Monkeynaut Poopy Joe was given the Eyelander, Buff Banner, and Equalizer before his journey into space. Mann Co. claims they were nowhere near the launch site of Poopy Joe's aircraft and had nothing to do with the explosion that occurred moments later, and those three items were obtained in entirely innocent circumstances. Also, the company's seemingly rushed sale of a high-precision rocket launcher was not in any way connected with Poopy Joe's tragic death.
• Sweet Seal: The Summer 2023 Update added Selbyen, a community made Player Destruction map that has the mercs fighting each other to feed fish to one of these. Don't worry, the seal is invulnerable to all attacks.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Many of the capture-the-flag maps are basically military outposts disguised as something innocuous. Minus the multitude of mercenaries, they have the worst security measures ever. Besides having all the doors left wide open and the intelligence just sitting in an empty room, there are lit-up signs pointing towards the intelligence.
• Sword and Sorcerer: (Insert Class Here) + Medic, Heavies being designed as the priority Medic-buddy, though individual Medic players will have different preferences, depending on the their and their teammates' loadouts. For example, Kritz Medics tend to favor Demomen and Soldiers, while Uber Medics can also perform well with Pyros too.

T

• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: In general, if a class counters you, you probably counter one of their counters.
  • Incoming Pyro? Deploy a Sentry. Sentries giving you trouble? Get a Spy to sap them. Spy sappin' your stuff? Use Pyros to weed them out. There's even an achievement for backstabbing somebody who then switches to Pyro before they respawn.
  • A Demo can take out sentries very easily by attacking from behind cover. Sentries are excellent defense against squishy Scouts. Scouts excel when fighting a Demo, who lack reliable close range ability.
  • Spy is good against Sniper, as a Spy can sneak up on a scoped Sniper easily before disposing of him. Snipers are good against Heavies, who are slow targets for a headshot and cannot attack from far away. Heavies are good against Pyro, as Heavies out-damage Pyros at all ranges and can eat Sandviches to heal afterburn. And Pyros are good against Spies, as mentioned before.
• Take That!:
  • Two of the Soldier's Domination lines towards the Sniper has him mocking the Australian censorship of Left 4 Dead 2.
    The Soldier: Aw, am I too violent for ya, cupcake?
    The Soldier: Your country did not prepare you for the level of violence you will meet on MY battlefield!
  • In a Saxton Hale comic after the Mann-Co update, Saxton's butler comes in concerning their customers, to which he responds, "What are those sniveling babies crying about now?" a take that towards the complaints about the Mann-Co store.
  • If the Heavy wears the Grand Duchess set, he will sometimes shout "Friendship is stupid magic!", and Magical Mercenary hat will have the mercs mock the say show, one way or another. Though it's perhaps more of an affectionate ribbing, as Gabe Newell is apparently a dedicated fan of the show.
  • In Meet the Sniper, there's a billboard that reads, "FOAD: Camping fun all year 'round!" "Campers" is a term for gamers that wait in one area for a kill, and "FOAD" stands for "Fuck Off And Die".
• Taking You with Me: One of the Soldier's taunts has him suicide bombing himself with a grenade. An achievement requires using this taunt to kill another player.
  • A few Soldier and Demoman players partake in this when something suddenly pops in from around corners.
  • Pretty much the whole point of Targe+Caber. Need to demolish that large group of enemies that just steamrolled your team? Charge in, Caber them all, buy your team time.
  • The most favored Pyro playstyle is to rush into a group of people and set them all on fire. Even if the Pyro dies, the afterburn can do enough damage to kill (earning the Pyro an achievement) or at least severely cripple the enemy.
• Talking Weapon: The Eyelander and its reskins whisper "Heads!" regularly and when making a kill.
  • As of Ring of Fired, it turns out The Eyelander is capable of saying complete sentences and holding conversations. It also, strangely, likes churros.
• Tap on the Head: Getting hit with a baseball from the Scout's Sandman will temporarily stun an enemy, rendering them unable to defend themselves and slowing their movement speed. The effect increases the further away the enemy is, up to the point where the victim is completely immobilized for about 7 seconds.
• Taps: The Soldier's Shotgun Taunt is him doing a Three Gun Salute while Taps plays.
  • When Rick May, the voice actor for the Soldier, passed away in April 2020, the main menu music was replaced with a full rendition of Taps, titled "Saluting the Fallen".
• Taunt Button: The "taunt" key, obviously. You can even kill with some of them (and doing so earns you an achievement).
  • The characters will also taunt each other via voice clips after dominations and high Kill Streaks.
• Team Shot: Notably at the end of the "Meet The Team" movies and general promotional artwork.
• Team Spirit: There's a reason this game is called Team Fortress 2. There's also a color of paint called "Team Spirit".
• Technicolor Fire:
  • Depending on the player's team affiliation, players will also glow red or blue when set aflame. Critical fire particles also get glowing embers of their owner's team color.
  • In Pyroland, Rainblowers spew rainbows and multicolored sparkles. All players and corpses that are on fire will emit sparkles and rainbows, along with glowing their team color.
• Technology Porn: A Sentry going from toolbox to level 3 is a pretty awesome sight◊. The two other buildings also build themselves once deployed.
• Tele-Frag: What happens if an enemy stands on a teleporter as someone uses it.
• Teleporter Accident: What creates the giant mutant bread monster in "Expiration Date". Well, that and the Solider and Spy being careless.
• Teleporters and Transporters: The Engineer's teleporter pair. Too bad it only transports one way, unless you buy the Two Way Teleporters upgrade in Mann vs. Machine.
• Telescoping Robot: All the buildings automatically unpack themselves from a relatively small toolbox, but the sentry gun is this especially. The cylindrical drum that sits behind the barrel of the gun in its level 1 form has triple duty as ammunition housing, storing the rocket salvo for its level 3 form, and still has room for an internal power supply.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • Between when Valve implemented the "Delete" button for unlockable items and the new method for unlocking items, there was no way to get unlockable items back after deletion.
  • The website describing the "Classless Update" had a hidden page that awarded a medal to the first 11,111 players who found it (the medal itself is just a Cosmetic Award for the Soldier). Players who missed that secret will never be able to get the award, so it is truly lost forever.
  • The Soldier/Demoman update featured the Soldier and Demoman fighting each other for one week. At the end of it, the Soldier class won the fight and received boots that dampen their own splash damage, which the Demoman will never receive. Valve has since gotten into the habit of offering something for a limited time for doing something that usually has nothing to do with the game itself (such as preordering Left 4 Dead 2, and later having Left 4 Dead 2 by a certain date).
  • The Golden Wrench, which led up to the Engineer Update, was only obtainable by a rare chance when crafting. Only 100 in total were given, not including the six drops.
  • All the items from the Japan Charity Bundle cannot be crafted or traded. Since April 6, 2011, they are never available again.
  • Notice how long the list of "All Class" hats is? Notice how cheap the crafting cost is compared to class-specific hats? That's because of that entire list of items, only a few are actually craftable. Namely, all of the ones you can craft under normal circumstances (i.e: not event or promotion related) can literally be counted on one hand (there are 5 craftable ones as of this entry, as opposed to the 30 in total, 33 if you count the prize versions of the three Tower pile of Hats.). The rest are all promotion or event related, and are quite possibly lost forever. This has been altered greatly, with the introduction of giving items in Genuine quality for taking part in promotional material, and releasing basic (yellow-name) versions of the item into the drop and crafting system about a week later.
  • Actively enforced as of January 10, 2013. Certain hats are now being "retired" meaning the item server will no longer give them to you from random drops and crafting, and there are plans to retire more hats as time goes on.
  • Certain items have received the "Limited Quantity" marker, which refers to items that cannot be obtained any more through random drop, crafting, store purchases, or promotions. This includes the Golden Wrench, bread weapons, Festive weapons, many of the aforementioned items, any cosmetic items from the Limited Late Summer Pack, and several promotional items. Here's the list.
• Tennis Boss:
  • In an update, the Pyro was given the ability to reflect most projectiles. Crazy Enough to Work tactics and playstyles have been generated since.
  • The airblast has inspired game modes. Namely, pyro dodgeball.
• "Test Your Strength" Game: One is featured as the center piece of the 2014 Halloween map.
• That Poor Cat: The 2010 Halloween Update included noisemakers you can set off that play Halloween-themed sounds to the entire map. One of them is "Black Cat". In theory, it's supposed to be creepy. In practice, considering all the offscreen gunshots and explosions that occur during any given round, it devolves into this trope very quickly.
• That Russian Squat Dance: The Kazotzky Kick taunt. It's actually all-class, and not exclusive to the russian Heavy.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Averted in normal gameplay. The AI player bots in offline practice modes (and sometimes also in some servers) are based on the Left 4 Dead bots and cannot see or do anything a human player couldn't. An update even went so far as to give each bot a "virtual mousepad" (complete with delays for re-centering their "virtual mouse" on it) in order to give them imperfect aim and avoid lock-ons.
  • The game mode Mann vs. Machine, on the other hand, is a little more complicated. Most robots can carry objectives while invulnerable, can see through detonated-Sentry-Buster smoke clouds, and know where an attack is waiting in order to evade it. It's a good thing, then, that they will always be fooled by Spies, even when disguised players bump into them or sap them. The game also compensates for some of the cheating aspects: standard Sniper-bots have an easy-to-spot blue laser that shows their current aim and gives away their position, and Spy-bots occasionally let out a low, creepy chuckle, alerting observant players to their proximity; in addition, Sniper-bots do not get critical hits on headshots, or at all. On top of that, most robots only have a single weapon, and several are melee-restricted. Contrary to popular belief, most non-melee robots do have to reload their weapons, and will reload the entire clip before resuming fire; however, they will never run out of ammo.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  Spy: "Here's what I have that you don't! A functioning liver, depth perception, and A PULSE!"
  • Every Domination quote, basically. Especially entertaining are the ones from a member of one class to a member of the same class.
  • The Scout has one of the most epic and mind blowing speeches of all time:
    Scout: "Hey buddy! You. Suck."
• There Can Be Only One: The mp_highlander 1 console command on any game mode restricts 9 players to each team, and only one of each class per team.
  • There are also two similar sound clips for the Demoman, where he may say just that when getting a kill with a melee weapon such as the Eyelander. One of them is the trope name; the other...
    'THERE CAN BE ONLY OOOOOONE! ...eye.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: A successful backstab deals twice the victim's current health. Furthermore, since the backstab is a Critical Hit, this number is further multiplied by three, resulting in six times the victim's health.
  • Fully charged headshot: 450 damage (only ranged weapon that can one-shot a Heavy with full Overheal), 518 with the Machina.
  • Backstab: Anywhere from 750 (Scouts, Snipers, Engineers, other Spies) to 2700 health (overhealed Heavy). Truly, there is no kill like overkill.
  • Taken to truly absurd levels in the TF2x10 mods. Every weapon has its stats multiplied by ten. Both positive and negative stats. A normal melee swing does a whopping 650 damage. A backstab does an absolutely terrifying 27,000 health.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Meet The Pyro, and anyone in Pyroland. Played very much for laughs.
• Tiebreaker Round: If a round ends with neither side winning, servers have the option to go to Sudden Death, where all health packs are removed from the map and respawn is disabled. Teams can win either by accomplishing the objective or eliminating the other team.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: The giant robots that appear periodically in Mann Versus Machine have disproportionately small heads in comparison to their massive size.
  • Can also happen to the Heavy if he gets Tiny Head on the Ghost Fort's Wheel of Fate.
• Title Drop: Ms. Pauling drops the name at the end of "The Naked and the Dead", made complete by having the actual Team Fortress logo on her speech bubble. It's also used as part of The Reveal that "Fortress" is literally their team name after several other teams were defeated by the original Classic team.
  Ms. Pauling: I don't know what to tell you. But either way... We're Team Fortress, and you're dead!
• Toilet Humour:
  • One of the Sniper unlocks is Jarate, a jar of pee he can use to throw at enemies. It also extinguishes teammates that are on fire from an enemy Pyro. In reference to this, the Steam forums word-filter "piss" into "jarate".
  • A few days before and during the Über Update, the website was updated to have Medic's pigeons perched on the logo banner, with pigeon poop splattered all over it.
  • On the server The Snack Shack, they have a map called "Poodoo", which is Hoodoo with one major difference: Everything is made of poop. The ground is poop, the water is diarrhea, and you are pushing a cart of poop. Also, it's very common to hear people playing The Great Mighty Poo song through their mics when you are on this map.
  • One of Merasmus's lines is "POOP! POOP IN YOUR PUMPKIN PANTS!!!"
• Too Dumb to Live: Bots, or players controlled by the computer, when the player is playing as a Spy (especially on the Easy or Normal difficulties). It's most notable on servers where very few players are on or in the game's Training mode. As long as the player is disguised the Bots won't question even the most simple concepts such as "Why is that player unusually close to me," "Why is that player coming from the wrong direction," and "Why did one of my teammates come out of that enemy spawn?" Most of them won't even call "Spy" unless the player happens to run into them, and even if the team does become aware to a Spy's presence the Bots won't do more than increase the numbers of Pyros on their team. ... Which makes the team incredibly weak if the Spy is skilled enough to get the majority of them to switch over to Pyro, considering how Pyros fit into the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors.
  • Ever since Quickplay has been removed, the chance of encountering game-controlled Bots during normal gameplay has drastically decreased. Now the only place players can find them is as Training Dummies or in the offline practice mode, which makes their Too Dumb to Live tendencies a little bit more justified since you shouldn't know many of the more advanced mechanics if you're a new player.
• Trail Of Breadcrumbs: Exiting a teleporter makes the player leave a glowing team-colored trail for a while, so the enemy may find out the location of the teleporter. A player holding the intelligence has a shorter team-colored glow in the air, while the briefcase leaves a paper trail.
• Travel to Projectile: The Magic Spell Shadow Leap fires a smoke-like ball that teleports the caster to where it lands.
• Trial by Friendly Fire:
  • Spy-checking via attacking one's teammates is a good tactic to practice, since everyone on the same side is Friendly Fireproof.
  • A somewhat literal example: the Pyro is especially good for this. Not only will the spy light on fire, making him stand out to begin with, but he'll burn in his team's color.^note A pocket Pyro is good for keeping an Engie's building clear. All he has to do is run circles around the dispenser and burn everything in sight: People, buildings, empty spaces, people, dark corners, people... The Homewrecker and Neon Annihilator can also remove sappers from buildings just like the Engineer's Wrenches.
  • The Engineer's Southern Hospitality wrench will make enemies bleed for a few seconds. If you hit a disguised enemy spy with one of these, it will be obvious right away.
• Trigger-Happy: In-Universe, the Heavy and the Demoman; in-game, any class depending on the player, but especially the Pyro.
  • Snipers who can manage to pull this off with accuracy are called "Quickscopes".
• Troperiffic
• 21-Gun Salute: The Soldier's taunt with the Shotgun or Reserve Shooter has him doing this.
• Two-Faced Aside:
  • In "Meet the Medic", after accidentally snapping off a rib, the Medic reassures the Heavy that ribs grow back. Then he turns to a dove and whispers, "No they don't." True to his word, if you advance frame by frame you can see the rib indeed does not regenerate.
  • In the inventory screen, the Rainblower, Lollichop, Burning Bongos, and Infernal Orchestrina are described like this.
  • All of the unused WAR! Update domination lines that surfaced during the Mann vs. Machine update are an example of this trope.
    Demoman: EVERYBODY! I DON'T LIKE THIS MAN! HE IS A SOULLESS MONSTER! I do like you; it's just for show.
    Soldier: DOMINATED! Call me later. We can talk about our day.

U

• Unexpected Gameplay Change:
  • The 2010 Halloween event spawned the Horseless Headless Horsemann, a raid boss.
  • The 2011 Halloween event gave players MONOCULUS!, which put a whole new spin on the Horsemann's basic premise.
  • The 2012 Halloween event gave players Merasmus, another much more difficult and complex twist on the Horsemann's premise.
  • The Australian Christmas event in 2010 introduced Medieval Mode.
  • There are also custom game modes that put a spin on "kill everything not on your team".
  • The Mann vs. Machine update has both teams joining up to fight waves of robots.
  • The 2014 Halloween update introduced bumper cars. After the normal round is over, players have to drive bumper cars to complete minigames like soccer/football or collecting ducks. Unlike the previous entries, this one is completely different than the normal gameplay.
• Unified Naming System: Builders League United (aka BLU) vs Reliable Excavation and Demolition (RED).
• Universal Ammunition: Boxes of it are scattered around the map, and are dropped by players on death. Destroyed buildings and sappers can also provide ammunition.
  • Previously, the weapons players drop on death themselves were used to provide ammo - Minigun ammo could be restored using candy canes and jars of piss. In the Gun Mettle update this was changed to players dropping a medium ammo crate on death, while their weapons could be picked up off the ground by any class who could normally equip it.
• Unflinching Walk: Discussed in the description for the Demoman's Dangeresque, Too? shutter shades:
  "When things aren't just Dangerous, they're Danger-esque, block out UV rays with Homestar's killer shades. Remember, when walking away from an explosion, it's totally uncool to turn around to look at the carnage."
• Unobtainium:
  • The highest rank for the World Traveler's Hat.
  • Australium weapons, which are given out very, very rarely. Sufficiently difficult Tours of Duty have a low chance to give any Australium reskin as a reward, but the crown jewels of rare weapons are the Golden Frying Pan, which has an even lower chance to drop from a Tour of Duty, the Saxxy, which is obtained from contributing to a winning submission for the annual animation contest — of which five animation teams can win — and the Golden Wrench, of which a total of only 101 have ever existed, and at least 22 of those have been destroyed.
  • Speaking of which, Australium itself, a metal that turns anyone who is in contact with it into a mustachioed, muscle-bound body builder (even females), and was responsible for Australia's current global dominance. It's also exceedingly rare outside of Australia, as all the Australium in America could neatly fit in a small briefcase and the Australians themselves are secretive about the material to keep themselves the most advanced nation on the planet.
• Unorthodox Reload: Every class has at least one unusual reload animation. See that page for details.
• Unstable Equilibrium:
  • On Control Point maps, the side that controls more points gets more of the map to use as an extension of their base, as well as quicker respawn times, while the enemy team is herded into a confined area and respawns slower. The developers do not like stalemates.
    • Control points at the end of the map — the last a team needs to capture to win the round — also take a very short time to capture, so that a team that is rapidly losing ground on their last point will find it very difficult to stage a reversal.
  • Capturing the intelligence in CTF maps rewards the capturing team with guaranteed crits for several seconds, to encourage them to make another push for the intelligence.
  • Even the Critical Hit chance formula shows signs of this. Critical rates gradually increase (to a cap) as the player does more damage in a life. Well-performing players will enjoy slight to significant increases in critical chance, depending on the weapon being used, and can continue on a killing streak.
  • In Mann vs. Machine, a team that makes sure to collect all the cash not only gets more money to spend, but a bonus if they got it all. This means more upgrades to make the later waves easier. Teams that forget to get the cash are stuck with stock weapons that will rarely be sufficient to carry the team more than two waves in, making the mission unwinnable if enough of a gap is formed.
    • Also in this game mode, because every person counts, most groups would be hesitant to start a wave if they don't even have a full team of 6. However, as the team spends more time waiting for a good 6th member to join, existing members can get impatient and leave, making it even harder to complete the team and leading to longer waiting times. At worst, a whole team will fall apart when everyone ends up leaving.
  • In occasions where there is no autobalance (either as a server feature or shortly after the release of the Meet Your Match update), if a team is losing badly, it will prompt players to Rage Quit, resulting in an even smaller team size which makes it a lot harder to turn the tables. Many players who opposed the concept of autobalance were quick to realize how unsatisfying this experience is, and quickly changed their tone.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Used to be played straight, now it's zig zagged. At first you could only collect the enemy weapons for ammo no matter what weapons they were, but the Gun Mettle update made it so that players drop ammo boxes on death, and their weapon can be picked up by anybody of the same class and used until death, while different classes cannot interact with them anymore.
• Unwanted Assistance: When you're a Medic, it's a bad idea to heal friendly Spies. You'll blow his cover like that.
  • It's not unheard of for unskilled Spies to keep dying to a Übersaw-wielding Medic. Congratulations, you're giving the enemy team free Übercharges...
• Unwinnable: There's a glitch with the original version of pl_hoodoo where the cart will start moving on its own, with no one on RED able to stop it, and BLU never having to lift a finger. On the other side of the spectrum, there's a rare glitch with multi-phase payload maps that causes the cart to derail and become a freefloating prop.
  • On certain Attack/Defend servers, RED loses automatically when the Server Time is up, regardless of the current progress. Likewise, on Gravel Pit, if the BLU team did not capture Point B before going into overtime, they will lose when overtime is over, regardless of whether or not they've captured Point B during overtime.
  • Also, on Territory Control (and custom maps that feature territory control style C Ps), there is no Overtime mechanic; once time runs out, whichever side has captured all of the points wins, or Stalemate mechanics kick in, even if the point(s) were under contention.
• Useless Accessory: The hats. The only ones that have a use (albeit very specific ones) are the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head and the Saxton Hale Mask, which protect the player from being stunned by the Horsemann; and the Hotrod: a Spy disguised as an Engineer who is wearing one will have the hat flip down over his face when the Sapper is held, which can be used to detect Spies. Normally the mask flips down when the Engineer is using a PDA.

V

• Vapor Ware: As Gabe Newell said in the first words of each map's commentary:
  "Welcome to Team Fortress 2. After nine years in development, hopefully it will have been worth the wait."
• Victory Pose: Inverted; the losing team is forced into poses that look sufficiently frightened and/or annoyed, and they can't do anything but flee or taunt. Of course it can also be played straight by using the taunt command yourself: some achievements are even unlocked by taunting after killing enemies in certain circumstances.
• Video Game Caring Potential: As an airblasting Pyro or a Jarate-carrying Sniper, you may put your burning colleagues out, if you're feeling so inclined.
  • The sincerity of the "thank you" commands (some of which are automatically used when using a teleporter or getting healed) are probably made that way to invoke this for a Medic, who otherwise would be very tempted to leave his teammates to die and go Combat Medic with another Medic.
  • Heavies can drop a Sandvich or Buffalo Steak Sandvich to act as a medium health kit for their allies (or their enemies), which, since it's technically a medkit, also puts out fire.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The top page quote is this between-maps tip:
  "As a Pyro, you can often set enemies on fire and retreat, leaving them to die from the burning."
  • Don't forget Jarate. It can seriously affect the target's mental health.
    Spy: "I HAVE BEEN SHOWN WHO IS THE BOSS!"
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Zig-Zagged with Pyro's flamethrower.
  • Averted in public servers where the flamethrower is a beast, the default one sporting a rather hefty 150 damage per second at close range and the ability to hit multiple enemies. It can also deflect projectiles, push away enemies, and extinguish teammates. General lack of communication between team members means that it's easy for a Pyro to sneak in and kill many enemies at once, while less support classes means that afterburn damage isn't easily stopped.
  • Played straight in competitive play. Teams generally being more competent and having better communication diminishes the strength of a sneaky Pyro, while the limited range of the flamethrower means that a Pyro can barely put up a fight against mid to long-range spam. More prominence of Medics extinguishing afterburn makes its damage seem piddling as well. At most, the Pyro is reduced to just an airblast class, doing nothing but reflecting projectiles away from their teammates.
  • Prior to the Jungle Inferno update, the flamethrower suffered from inconsistencies with its particles — Players may find themselves on fire despite being nowhere near the flames, while other players can pass through the flames without taking a scratch. This added a large amount of variance to a Pyro's performance until the update changed its particles to be consistent with what the players see.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: If you see somebody use a spray or a Conscientious Objector, 9 times out of 10 it will be pornography.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • Dropping explosives at your feet to take out a Scout, or charging into a hail of gunfire to set someone on fire as a Pyro, rocket/sticky jumping. The description for the Ullapool Caber, a "potato masher" grenade that the Demoman uses to strike enemies, even lampshades this by saying a sober person would throw it.
  • Anything the Scout does counts. Running and jumping around during a gunfight is a great way to lose a few limbs at the least.
  • The Boston Basher is a weapon that, if you miss with it, you hit yourself. The Medi Gun builds Ubercharge faster if the Medic is healing someone who isn't at full overheal. Thus, in coordinated teams, whenever the Scout and Medic both have downtime, expect the Scout to purposely miss with the Boston Basher to build the Medic's uber faster.
  • Spychecking. In order to find a disguised Spy, you have to shoot at a suspected teammate. If the teammate is friendly, they won't be hurt because they are Friendly Fireproof. If they are a Spy, they will be, since only enemy players can be damaged by your weapons. Expect to see a friendly Pyro attempting to immolate its teammates all the time. This was lampshaded in "Meet The Spy".
• Viral Unlockable:
  • The Ghastly Gibus was given to anyone who visited a semi-secret web page. Anyone who missed this chance can still unlock it by dominating another player who is wearing the hat.
  • The Pyrovision Goggles were given to players who launched the game within a certain timeframe. They can also be unlocked by dominating a player wearing them.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Along with the weapons in the loadout, there are three cosmetic item slots, an action slot, and eight taunt slots. Those slots allow customization of a character's appearance and actions.
• Visible Invisibility: Players on the same team as a cloaked Spy will just barely be able to discern their transparent form. Players on the other team will see it only if they bump into the Spy, or will barely be able to make out a Cloak and Dagger-wielding Spy who hasn't let the charge on his watch build back up.
  • Emerging from water, being on fire, Bleeding, drenched with Mad Milk, and splashed with Jarate also reveal affected Spies partially. New items have been known not to work properly with cloaking, giving away a Spy using them or disguised as a player using them while cloaked, but are fixed eventually.
  • Invisible and/or disguised Spies using the voice chat on servers with all-talk enabled also risk giving themselves away due to a giant speech bubble appearing out of nowhere.
• Visual Pun: Carry the Intelligence in a Capture the Flag game, and you'll constantly drop some documents which will hang around for a few seconds before disappearing. You'll be leaving a literal paper trail.
  • The Sniper lives in a camper van.
• Voice Grunting: For those who don't want to or can't use the mic to voice chat, there are a lot of voice commands to choose from.

W

• Wacky Racing: Payload Race. Both teams are trying to deliver a bomb to the other team's base and detonate it.
• War for Fun and Profit: For Saxton Hale, Mann Co.'s business has been booming because RED and BLU are both sinking millions of dollars in weapons, resources, and hats.
• The War Room: Appears occassionally. Coldfront has a type 3 example, while 2Fort has a type 1.
• Waving Signs Around:
  • The Conscientious Objector, a picket sign used to bludgeon people.
  • In "A Smissmas Story", someone in the background during the trial is holding a sign that demands RED and BLU leave Teufort.
• Weak Turret Gun: Zigzagged. Sentry guns aren't affected by damage falloff, which means that a pistol shot from long range will deal the same damage at point blank. Most classes can sit at long range and pick off an unattended Sentry with their bullets. However, a sentry with an Engineer repairing it is a deadly force, able to heal any damage to a sentry at an alarming rate, healing almost half the health of a fully upgraded sentry per second. Dealing with an attended sentry nest usually requires an Ubercharge or lots of Spies.
• Weaponized Car: The bomb carts in Payload.
• We Wait:
  • With the Random Drop item system, this is one way you can unlock items: just join a server and wait. There are even dedicated "Idle" servers where that's all you do. Changes to the Random Drop system made it so that only the first few hours of gametime each week can grant items, but at a quicker rate than before, reducing the incentive of staying in an idle server for long.
  • The Spy's Cloak And Dagger gives him unlimited invisibility, but only while standing still. This allows you to set up an ambush any time and almost anywhere. Now all you need is something to make the opponent stand still long enough to backstab him… like the sexy picture sprays mentioned under this page's Shmuck Bait entry.
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: Each class has both weapons and personality that reflect their gameplay. Some of these border on absurd, with weapons such as shovels, pickaxes, bonesaws, makeshift guns using pressurized air to shoot syringes, a bottle of Whiskey, real bear paws tied to the user's fists, jars of piss and milk (separate, of course), a rake, a letterbox/mailbox, a giant striped candy cane, a giant pink lollipop, a human skull attached to a spine, a whole smoked ham with bone (as the handle) used like a club, and, best of all, a FISH. The great variety often ends up with a weapons mashup.
• Weird Currency: The player-based economy is based around the primary currency of metal and keys. Certain hats also saw use as high value currency: this included Earbuds, Bill's Hat, and Max's Severed Head.
• Weird Moon: Before a patch removed most of them, Double Cross inexplicably had seven moons in its skybox.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • When Mann Co. was introduced, TF Industries was the main company providing the mercenaries with weapons and gadgets, and Mann Co. was only its subsidiary. Not long after this introduction, however, Mann Co. and the Mann family became much more prominent than the company Mann Co. was supposed to be a division of in the first place, with comics, Easter Eggs on update pages, etc. centering around Saxton Hale, Mann Co., and the Mann family more than TF Industries. However, Valve did put TF Industries' logo on the Dueling and 119th Update badges despite being released after Mann Co.'s introduction.
  • The first hints that Team Fortress Classic shared a universe with its sequel involved two pictures on the Engineer Update page,◊ one of which involves its older player models, and one featuring the newer TFC Engineer patting what is presumably the young TF2 Engineer on the back. The comics have only featured the newer TFC classes, never implementing the old player models into TF2 canon. And the Team Fortress 1 classes are ignored completely, possibly due to being from a Game Mod for a game Valve doesn't own.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Whoever really runs the teams probably is no hero, but Heavy's "What sick man sends babies to fight me?" quip fits the bill.
• What the Hell, Player?: Given that TF2 is an online multiplayer game, one can undoubtedly count on encountering this at one time or another. Reactions can vary from a Precision F-Strike to a full-on Cluster F-Bomb.
• Wham Episode:
  • The "Blood Brothers" comic. Redmond and Blutarch are revealed to have a long lost brother named Gray, who murders them and now has his sights set on Mann Co. The two teams have to pull an Enemy Mine to save the world and their jobs from an endless horde of killer robots.
  • Then there's the first issue of Team Fortress Comics, Ring of Fired. It begins with Hale losing Mann Co to Gray and the reveal that Gray has a daughter, followed quickly by the team being broken up, and ends with another reveal, this time that Spy and Scout are due to be hanged.
  • Fifth issue: Classic Heavy murders Gray Mann slowly and takes over his corporation. The mercs kill three of his squad in turn.
• Wham Line:
  • Played for laughs, sort of, in "Expiration Date":
    Engineer: So we're fine, as long as nobody teleports any bread!
    Soldier: Question.
    Engineer: What is it, Soldier?
    Soldier: I teleported bread.
    ...
    Engineer: How... much?
    Soldier: I have done nothing but teleport bread for three days.
  • At the end of "The Naked and the Dead", a despondent Engineer taking care of an ailing Administrator hooked up on a Life Extender Machine declares an Awful Truth:
    The Administrator: How much do we have left?
    Engineer: Uh... well, this. (while holding a small vial) This here is the last bit of Australium on Earth, ma'am.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The land under contention by RED and BLU is somewhere in the American Southwest, but aside from possibly Badwater it's not clear exactly where the bases are located; additional official and community maps imply a much more global conflict.
  • Its actually stated several times that the desert areas are all in New Mexico, although New Mexico is a rather large state (slightly larger than Poland).
• William Fakespeare: Shakespearicles, the strongest writer who ever lived, along with inventing the stage play, America, the two-story building, and the rocket launcher (to get to the second story, as he never mastered the concept of stairs).
• William Telling: Invoked in the achievement "William Tell Overkill", though to achieve that, the Sniper must pin an enemy Heavy's head to a wall with an arrow. On May 3, 2012, a "Fruit Shoot" headwear item was added for the Sniper, which is an apple with an arrow through it.
• A Wizard Did It: The in-universe explanation for "Medieval Mode" - literally.
  How did the manly men of Team Fortress appear at a tenth century battlement? Simple. The Soldier angered a magician.
  • Specifically, this magician: Merasmus
  • A lot of the Demoman's backstory, told in comics, is also linked to Merasmus and to the Bombonomicon, a talking book that contains the ancient mystical secret of how to make bombs.
  • The Smissmas Comic implies that everything that doesn't have some sort of outrageous explanation within the TF2 universe is Merasmus's fault, since when Miss Pauling asked how the Soldier of all people managed to become a defense attorney, the Spy simply answered:
    Spy: It's a long story, but Part One, his roommate is a magician. Should I continue?
    Miss Pauling: You know what? Never mind.
    Spy: Thank you.
  • Also, the Gunboats page of the WAR! Update mentions how the shoes work:
    "What is the science behind these miracles of technology? Magic, probably."
• World of Badass: Practically everyone is seeking a fight, such as the entire population of Australia thanks to their supply of Australium making them into nigh-invulnerable Genius Bruisers.
• Wrestler of Beasts:
  • One of Saxton Hale's hobbies is fighting endangered beasts. He's even caused a number of them to go extinct, since many of them are the Last of Their Kind.
  • In his "Meet the Soldier" video, The Soldier claims that Sun Tzu used money he won from fights to buy two of every animal in the world just so he could beat them up.
• Wretched Hive: Downtown Teufort. Crime is rampant, and the city has a sewage and methane problem, and no fire department.
• Wutai: The Suijin map in King of the Hill, complete with pagodas and cherry blossoms.

X

• X Days Since: Signs like this are placed on walls in some maps. All of them are marked "This job has worked <0> days without an accident". In at least one map, some of the signs have the 0 permanently painted or embossed into the sign rather than being on a digital or ticker display.

Y

• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Medieval Mode does not only force the players to use medieval-style weapons, it also wordfilters the text chat to sound more akin to the pop cultural image of how people talked back then.
  • The April Fool's Day 2013 event (on April 1, 2013, which coincided with Easter Monday) added "support for Pirate language" as part of the fake "Eastralian Update" patch. For one day all content in the game was changed to pirate language, including altered game menues, voice commands, and renamed in-game items and buttons in the Mann Co. Store.
• You Always Hear the Bullet: You're liable to hear a loud, meaty THWACK when someone gets a critical hit on you.
  • Or a POW, especially with the Heavy's kill taunt.
  • You can turn this on to ensure that your character's hit something, which is signified by a bell ding^note The default sound; you can change it and its pitch as you desire with each strike. Especially useful for Engineers and blind-firing Demomen.
    • Particularly entertaining as a Pyro; it's not uncommon to light someone on fire, then die and wait the full respawn time only to come back and still hear that lovely dinging as your afterburn continues to damage your prior target.
  • Certain weapons will also cause a "whoosh" to be heard if they just miss your head.
• You Bastard!: Several revenge lines counts as this, specially if the other player that you're dominating got a revenge kill on you. By the way, if you've been taunting after every kill and this happens, YOU got what was coming!
  Scout: Still think you're funny, funny-man?
  Engineer: I'm done playin' games with you, boy.
  Sniper: What goes around comes around, ya' snotty little nance!
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The Mildly Disturbing Halloween Mask "appears as a moldering, eldritch veil of such manifold depravity, the human eye will not process the sheer enormity of its malevolence, and out of self-preservation will merely show you a brown paper bag with a team colored face painted on it."
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Many attack/defend maps are (possibly intentionally) designed to invoke this — due to faster respawn times and shorter travel distances, unless the attacking team is supremely incompetent, they will almost always make it to the second-to-last control point.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: in the 2013 Halloween event, once the mercenaries take the corpse of Redmond/Blutarch to hell, the remainder will send everyone to hell so he doesn't have to pay them.
• You Have Researched Breathing:
  • Three hats in the game are just the Scout, Engineer and Sniper without their default hats, and there's a Spy miscellanous item that is his suit jacket, unbuttoned.
  • Players can purchase (or find) the ability to point and laugh at their enemies.
  • The High Five! action item lampshades the trope in this page, where Saxton Hale claims he invented high-fiving and that before, people could only punch each other in the face.
• You Mean "Xmas": "Australian Christmas".
  • Later, "Smissmas".
    "Australian Christmas? Or Smissmas?" Both! Read this comic to find out what happens when holidays collide! Two special days enter the squared circle! ONLY ONE LEAVES!"
• You Require More Vespene Gas: The Engineer's metal, required for construction and upgrading.
• Your Mime Makes It Real: Heavy's taunt for his fists has him miming a Finger Gun that, if an enemy is in the finger's line, he'll die instantly.
• Your Mom: One of the Spy's unique post-kill taunts against the Scout is "Well! Off to visit your mother!" In addition, in the Meet the Spy trailer, when the BLU Scout jokingly asks if the BLU Spy was part of the RED Spy's fan club, the Spy replied: "No. That would be your mother!"
  • The comics follow up on this by repeatedly implying that Spy is Scout's real father (which Scout refuses to even acknowledge as a possibility, or is in permanent denial). As of The Naked and the Dead, Spy is confirmed to be Scout's legitimate father.

Z

• Zerg Rush: Stacking a team with Scouts is usually done in CP and CTF matches; Engineers are required to counter this.
  • Mann vs. Machine thrives on Zerg Rush, especially with Scouts. In fact, several rounds consist of nothing but Scout Zerg Rushes.
  • The addition of the Pain Train for the Soldier and Demoman that gives them additional capturing power in exchange for increased vulnerability to bullets may start shifting the Metagame.
  • You can conceivably rush with any class, or any combination of classes, but some are only for comedy, like Medic or Sniper rushes.
  • Since both teams usually start with all their players present (barring explosive stupidity), it is fully possible to rush with a whole team of Heavies. While not fast, it usually guarantees victory unless the enemy team has a competent spy. This is especially effective on Payload, where the cart can provide an endless stream of bullets while moving just a smidge slower than the actual movement speed of a revved up Heavy (meaning speed isn't a priority).
• Zombie Apocalypse: The mission "Wave 666" on Halloween!Coaltown. "Apocalypse" is putting it mildly — it is by FAR the hardest Mann Vs Machine mission, with over eight hundred zombies crammed into a single wave, and the zombies are actually slightly stronger than the robots.
  • The Zombie Infection game mode added in Scream Fortress 2023 counts since the BLU team are zombified mercenaries with melee only attacks and unique abilities for each individual class. The RED team are normal mercenaries who need to hold off the zombified mercenaries from infecting them until the round ends.

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