One class is a known smoker: the Spy. This increases to 5 with some hats (to be exact, the classes are the Soldier, the Demoman, the Sniper, and the Medic). The Pyro carries a lighter, but probably for a differentreason.
When the Engineer is gibbed with the Gunslinger equipped, his right hand will still be the normal gloved hand.
Similarly, if a player wearing an unlockable hat is gibbed, the regular hat gib may still spawn.
The Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head and the Saxton Hale Mask have an unspecified bonus. Specifically, they protect against the Horsemann's Scare taunt.
The Horseless Headless Horsemann doesn't do damage in the normal way. His attacks are treated as environmental kills, much like getting run-over by a train in other maps or falling down a pit. You can see this if you look at the console after he kills people. This prevents his attacks from being survivable in most normal ways.
Fake Nationality: None of the characters is of the same nationality and region as their voice actor, except maybe the Pyro.
Chet Failzek, writer: We wanted to make it sound like what Americans in the '60s would have imagined these people sounded like, not what they actually sounded like.
A Demoman wielding his melee weapon and shield is referred to as a "Demoknight" or "Sword and Board". "Targelander" and "Targe Demo" are also considered acceptable parlance for one with the Chargin' Targe and Eyelander. Likewise, a Demoman with a frying pan, Bounty Hat, shutter shades, and targe is called a Demopan.
Bitter players have taken to calling the Pyro "W+ M1" (forward movement + attack) due to the (alleged) notion that the only thing you need to do to win as Pyro is charge forward.
Pick the Huntsman as your primary and prepare for the barrage of "Cuntsman", "Huntspam", or "Lucksman".
Same for "Fail-a-Nature" for Force-a-Nature.
The Direct Hit has been called the "Direct Shit" on occasion for its general lack of effectiveness in all but the right hands.
In similar fasion, the Loch-and-Load has become the "Lucks-and-Lolz" to some for it's similar directy-hit-only damage style.
A Soldier with the Frying Pan and Stainless Pot may be called a Kitchen Warrior.
A Pyro with the Gas Jockey's Gear set and Detonator is a Det Jockey, while one with that set and the Flare Gun is a Flare Jockey.
An Engineer with the Frontier Justice and Gunslinger is a Revengineer, named for his ability to deploy Mini-Sentries quickly, get some kills, then kill opponents with "revenge crits" after the sentry has been destroyed.
Soldier: The Soldier is voiced by Rick May, the voice of Wolf, General Pepper, Leon Powalski, and Andross in Star Fox 64.
Pyro/Spy: Dennis Bateman also voiced the helicopter pilot who picks up the Survivors at the end of No Mercy; he recorded a set of unused lines for that character which would have added storyline continuity between the missions.
Demoman/Heavy: Gary Schwartz also voices the radio voice at the airport runway in Left 4 Dead.
Engineer: For the Nintendo players out there, the Engineer is voiced by Grant Goodeve, also known for Star Fox Assault Wolf.
When you're playing First Encounter Assault Recon, you'll eventually realize that Harlan Wade is one seriously disturbed Genetic Engineer.
Sniper: John Patrick Lowrie does Sniper and most of the random male characters in Half-Life 2. And he's married to Ellen McLain, who does the Overwatch, Announcer, and GLaDOS (as stated below). Definitely Valve's go-to couple — one or the other of them has been in every game Valve have put out since HL2.
Announcer: One wonders if the same computer powers the Combine overwatch, GLaDOS, and the team loudspeaker announcement system.
Put this way: One wonders if the Administrator worked for Cave Johnson as a secretary, and then went crazy after her personality was copied into GLaDOS, and to cover things up, Johnson had her "sold" to already crazy brothers Redmond and Blutarch. And then the Combine simply copied her personality when they invaded Earth much later.
The game itself underwent many, many, MANY different iterations before the development team settled on the current gameplay and visual design. (For example, it was originally pitched as a combination FPS/RTS with a realistic art style, with a class specializing in commanding the other units around somehow.)
Character design similarly had a lot of changes:
The Heavy once had a mullet.
The Medic, Engineer, and Spy wore their class badges on armbands.
The Scout's apparent age and toughness bounced all over the place.
The Demoman was just plain stereotypical Scottish (kilt and all).
The Soldier looked more like he actually fought in the army.
There were a few more ideas for Meet the Medic which didn't make it in due to killing the pacing and/or it not really meshing with The Verse's general aesthetic (BLU Spy's still living severed head is a nod to one of the scrapped ideas). Finally, they settled on THE iconic image (a Medic ÜberCharging a Heavy) and built the story around that.
Meet the Sandvich had many scrapped lines. Some of which are:
Scout: Give me back my leg bone! *whack* Don't hit me with it!
Soldier: You cannot hurt me! Pain does not hurt! *crack* I stand corrected!
Scout: He's like a bear! He's like a big, shaved bear that hates people!
