Note: If you're looking for Team Fortress Classic, go here.Team Fortress 2 has exactly the kind of story elements a multiplayer-only shooter should have: interesting settings, awesome character classes, and an Excuse Plot that stays All There in the Manual. The above paragraph, quoted from the official website, is literally the extent of the in-game story (Several special events have started to flesh out the characters, with more to undoubtedly come).The Excuse Plot, in its entirety, is "The other side is the enemy. Shoot their asses off." It really doesn't get any more complicated than that. Each character class has a distinct personality and can be easily recognized just by their silhouette.A sequel to a classic mod originated in the days of Quake, Team Fortress 2 is about some mercenaries. Some of them work for a heroically-evil demolition company called RED (Reliable Excavation & Demolition), founded by Redmond Mann; some work for the evilly-heroic BLU (Builders League United), a construction company founded by Redmond's twin brother, Blutarch. Both companies are, of course, fronts for two opposing intelligence organizations. Worryingly, the two organizations are supplied with weapons by a single company, Mann Co. (which the twins' father left to the Australian Hale family) and given combat intel by the same person. They fight. A lot.It was released by Valve in October 2007 as the multiplayer component of the Orange Box, which also includes Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Portal. It is now also available as a separate retail product on all three of its platforms. However, because it was first announced in 1998, it was regarded as Vapor Ware for the longest time.Since multiplayer shooter games have a tendency to devolve into slapstick and comedy even when they're ostensibly a realistic military game, the Team Fortress 2 developers decided to cut the middleman and make their game a living cartoon. The environments and music have a sixties spy movie theme to them, and the characters look like they stepped out of a very violent Pixar movie. Both RED and BLU teams use the same models, with only Palette Swapping to show team affiliation. The characters were intentionally designed to be distinctive as possible, from visual appearance to voice acting, even giving each class its own distinctive accent. Thus, it is easy to identify another player's class, current weapon, and team affiliation in short order. Maps are likewise designed for easy navigation, with RED and BLU having different construction philosophies (BLU incorporate concrete and steel; RED with wood, brick and sheet metal) and being textured primarily in their respective colors.Despite its Excuse Plot, the blog posts and comics included with major updates have been providing some backstory, involving two feuding brothers with color-themed names, a muscle-bound Australian weapons dealer, and a chain-smoking woman in purple who seems to be masterminding the entire conflict, all in a Thanatos Gambit by the brothers' deceased father as punishment for their imbecility.There are six basic gameplay types: Control Point, Capture the Flag, Payload, Arena, King of the Hill, and Medieval Mode.
The Control Point gametype works on the premise of seizing territory to shift the focus of battle. Both teams compete for control points—large immovable metal pads — which must be captured by standing on them while no enemies are around. The team who forces their enemies into submission and captures all the points wins. In most control point maps, the points need to be captured in a linear fashion, but some allow a more open-ended approach.
Variants include Territory Control, where the map is divided into mini-maps with two control points each, and Attack/Defense, where RED owns all the control points from the start, and wins if time runs out before the other side captures all the control points. This isn't always as simple for RED as it sounds, because they can't retake control points that BLU has managed to capture, plus BLU gets time extensions for every point they capture.
In TF2's take on Capture the Flag, the flag is a large briefcase containing "enemy intelligence," which trails papers behind it when an opposing player carries it. Unlike many other games, one can score while their own team's intel is not in the base, and touching dropped friendly intel won't immediately send it home. Instead, it must be defended in place until a timer elapses, during which any opponent can pick it up again.
In Payload, a mine cart with a bomb on it sits on a track. Attacking players (again, virtually always BLU) crowd around the cart to push it along the track towards the enemy's base. The more players present, the faster they can push. The cart must pass through several segments of the map for the attackers to reach the end point. If the attacking players fail to push the cart for 30 seconds, it will slowly move backwards until it is pushed again or reaches the last checkpoint passed. The defenders win if they can manage to hold back the cart for a certain length of time, though unfortunately for them, the attacking team gets a time extension for every checkpoint reached.
Payload Race is a variation of Payload, introduced in the Sniper/Spy update, that basically is Payload times two: Both teams have a bomb, and the first team to get their bomb to the other team's base wins. Things get crazy when you factor in the little fact that each team can interfere with the other's progress. This has a tendency to stall when the two carts get to each other (they travel in opposite directions on parallel lines), especially if this happens at an easily defended bottleneck, like a tunnel with few or no alternative routes. Furthermore, unlike in standard Payload, the carts won't roll backwards regardless of how long they're unattended, unless the cart is going uphill (in which case it rolls to the bottom if not constantly pushed).
Arena puts the two teams in a much smaller map, with little-to-no health packs or water, and no respawns. Last team standing wins. After one minute, a single control point in the center of the map activates, and the round ends when it's capped if the other team hasn't been killed yet. Fast, frantic fun.
King of the Hill is arguably a variant of Arena, using similar small maps built around a central control point, where the teams work their way up to the middle of a map to a point that is initially locked. After a short amount of time, it becomes available and the team that captures it has to defend the point for 3 minutes. If the enemy team recaptures the point, the other's timer freezes; it counts down again if once again recaptured from that time. Unlike Arena, players can respawn.
Medieval Mode is an alternative Control Point map set in a castle in the distant past (the Soldier angered a magician). What makes this mode special is that, like in Terminator, guns (and other weapons too futuristic for the 10th century) can't be brought back in time. Thus, all characters can only fight with melee weapons (with the exception of arrows and the like). Unlike Terminator, clothes can be brought back in time because Robin Walker wanted hats to be in the game mode. He wants hats everywhere. Currently, there is only one map in this mode.
In any game mode, a player has a chance to score a Critical Hit on any given shot. The crit chance rises with the amount of damage dealt recently, to encourage aggressive playstyles, and some weapons have a higher chance. For instance, all the comedic melee weapons have an elevated chance to crit, giving players a legitimate reason to choose them when they are in range. Some weapons replace random crits with the ability to crit or mini-crit when certain critera are fulfilled, but usually only for a short time (for example, the Scout's soda popper, which charges up a "hype" bar while moving around and scores guaranteed mini-crits for a few seconds after the bar is filled).So far, eight of the nine characters (In the following order: Heavy, Soldier, Engineer, Demoman, Scout, Sniper, Spy, and Medic) and one delicious food item (Sandvich, released between the Sniper and Spy videos) have been introduced in comedic, masterfully-produced "Meet the Team" videos. The final video is due to be released sometime 2012.Meet the Team here.From April 2008 to July 2010, Valve provided themed updates for each of the classes. Each update added (along with features such as new maps and gametypes) a class-specific set of achievements and alternate weapons that can be either unlocked through set numbers of these achievements or, as of the Sniper/Spy Update, given out at random intervals according to playtime. Once the new weapons are unlocked, the player can choose between them and the original weapons in the Loadout menu. The Sniper/Spy Update also introduced Hats, which drop the same way but at a much lower rate. They used to not do anything but look cool, but with the addition of the Mann Co. Store, five new hats were added that give players bonuses when used in conjunction with other weapons. Luckily, Bribing Your Way to Victory doesn't work, as the weapons never have extreme damage bonuses and tend to have an equal number of disadvantages to advantages, thus depending on intelligent use to give major advantages (although they can change the roles of classes — for example, the Huntsman, a bow for the Sniper, allows him to work closer to the front lines), giving balanced, but still rewarding and enjoyable, gameplay.Valve now regularly adds unannounced user-contributed hats and variant weapons. Now if only Microsoft would allow Valve to give all that to 360 players for free. It's quite possible, however, that it will be available on PS3. On June 10, 2010, Valve released Team Fortress 2 for the Mac, completing the conversion of all of the Orange Box to be Mac-compatible. In the usual Valve style, they released an accompanying short film, a training mode for new players, and an in-game pair of earbuds.As of June 23, 2011, the game is officially free-to-play.There is also a Steam group made by (and populated with) Tropers, in addition to weekly matches. Additionally, there are now private US and EU Team Fortress 2 servers, just for Tropers. Feel free to drop in and join!Now has its own drinking game.
Supplemental Material, for tropes found in the "Meet the Team videos", the update pages and comics, The TF2 Blog posts, and other Team Fortress 2 work Valve produces outside of the game itself.
Items, for tropes found in the loadouts of each class.
Abnormal Ammo: No matter how much it was fired, picking up any weapon dropped by a dead enemy will replenish half of all your own weapons' ammo, including picking up revolvers, shotguns, syringe guns, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, baseball bats, knives, broken building parts, and glass bottles, and jars of piss. The only weapon that does not provide ammunition when picked up is the Chargin' Targe.
Acme Products: Mann Co., a subsidiary of the even larger TF Industries, which also owns RED and BLU and all of their subsidiaries.
Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The economy fluctuates absurdly rapidly. Just-released items are always three or four times as expensive as they will be in a week or two, and certain items that no longer drop are ever-increasing in price.
Added Alliterative Appeal: Blighted Beak, Builder's Blueprints, Barnblitz, Bazaar Bargain, Badwater Basin, Backwards Ballcap, Black Box, Brass Beast, Boston Basher, Brain Bucket, Backburner, Blazing Bull, Buccaneer's Bicorne, Backbiter's Billycock, Buff Banner, Battalion's Backup, Berliner's Bucket Helm, Bloke's Bucket Hat... and that's just the letter B.
In the weeks leading up to the release of Meet the Medic, the doves from the video could be spotted perched and flying around the maps. They would later appear on the official blog and led to concept art for the video when clicked on.
Amateur Photographer: You can take screenshots and replays at the press of a button. There are a few achievements released during the Replay Update that requires fiddling with the replay and getting a number of views on YouTube.
And Your Reward Is Clothes: Some events give the player a cosmetic item or few, such as the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head, Full Head of Steam, and several Halloween costume sets.
Announcer Chatter: The Administrator runs both sides. When a checkpoint is captured, she's more encouraging to the successful attackers and scornful to the failing defenders, and, if the round ends in a tie, dismisses both sides with a frustrated "You failed!!".
Anti-Poop Socking: The current drop system has a cap on the amount of playtime in which drops can occur, about 10 hours a week. Playing beyond that cap does not grant the player additional items. Before this system was implemented, the old drop system was tied so closely with playtime that, statistically, the best way to guarantee that items would drop join an "idling" server and ignore the game for hours on end.
Artificial Brilliance: The AI driven bots are capable of Spy checking and single class rushes, and the Medics hide from the action until they think it's safe.
Artificial Stupidity: They do, however, have several pathfinding and decision making problems that prevent them from being a threat in small numbers. It's a work in progress.
They aren't very good at Medieval Mode, though this may be attributed to the fact that they can't use unlocks.
There's also the incredibly annoying bug where bot Medics (often seen on servers that use bots to fill up empty server spaces) don't switch weapons properly, leading to many unnecessary deaths as a burning player calls desperately for a medic... only to have them show up and obliviously start shooting you with their syringe gun instead.
Bots, during setup time offline, will taunt the player if s/he looks at them too long. This applies to both teams and may be exploited for humorous effect.
Artistic License - History: The official media in the name of Rule of Funny. The blog once said that Deus Ex Human Revolution is the long-awaited sequel of Aerosmith's Rail ShooterRevolution X, and the comics say that George Washington's main regret was not being able to stay invisible permanently and that Abraham Lincoln invented the stairs, among many, many other things.
This appears to be a combination of Unreliable Narrator and Alternate History - although how much of each and which parts correspond to which is left as an exercise for the reader.
Ascended Fanfic: It's an official Valve-made sequel to an official Valve-made sequel to a Quake mod.
Quite a few of the new weapons use models contributed by the community, along with a few of the theories regarding the Administrator being made official (along with a fan artist who drew her most popular image getting hired by Valve).
Ascended Glitch: Along with the ancestry of the Rocket Jump, the Spy can also trace his lineage to a bug during the development of the original Team Fortress mod for Quake where players would occasionally see enemies with the wrong team color.
When King of the Hill was first released, when Overtime was reached, the Administrator would repeatedly announce "OVERTIME! OVERTIME! OVERTIME!" When the bug was finally fixed, Valve included a server variable to re-enable the bug.
Then there was the "Crazy Legs" bug with the Scout's double jump. When it was eventually fixed, Valve wrote an obituary about the supposed "Crazy Legs" Scout.
You can taunt using the wrong weapons by taunting and quickly hitting the quickswitch key or a respective weapon key (1, 2, or 3). This results in the Sniper's Jarate or Pyro's flamethrower breaking physics, Heavy eating his minigun, Engie spinning his wrench around his finger, and Soldier performing a 21 rocket salute. During the Polycount/Mann-Conomy Update, this was inadvertently fixed. Robin said they'd reimplement the bug when they got the chance, and have released a server toggle option for leaving it on or off on October 13, 2011.
The Spy Crab glitch, where crouching and looking straight upwards with the Spy's disguise kit out looks like a crab walk, was spared being "fixed" like Crazy Legs, and was instead enshrined as a random chance taunt replacement when taunting with the disguise kit out.
After the Shamwow commercials drew several comparisons between Vince Offer and the Scout, the Scout Update added multiple lines to the Scout that come directly from those commercials.
The infamous "FYI I am a Spy" video led to the Medic achievement "FYI I am a Medic" for killing a disguised Spy that called for a medic, using a melee weapon. Earlier, it was for killing a Spy who you have just healed (there's another achievement for that now), and before that, it was five spies instead. Much later with the Spy update, the "FYI I am a Spy" achievement itself (for killing a Medic healing you, like in the video).
The Spy-Crab is the term given to crouching with the Spy's disguise kit out, looking straight up and walking around.
One of the products advertised in the Spy's issue of "Dapper Rogue" is the "Crab-Walking Kit", saying that it will "change your skeleton", a reference to how the Spy's animation skeleton and logical hitbox are noticeably different from how he is rendered when crab-walking.
One of the common jokes about the inevitable Spy update was that Valve would release a few days worth of news, and then it would be revealed as the Spy update when he backstabs the previous class and takes the spotlight. Which is exactly what happened to the Sniper.
Not only is the Sniper is one of the most likely classes to get backstabbed, but this happened to him the day after the Razorback was revealed, which is a (single-use) shield that protects the Sniper from backstabs, due to him being fooled by one of the Spy's unlockable items, a cloak that creates a fake dead spy when attacked.
Valve referenced the "Gentlemen" meme in the last of the four "Meet the Medic" outtakes, with a mouthful of nails in place of cigarettes.
The Heavy Weapons Guy in particular believes in "being credit to team", but the heart-warmingly sincere in-game "thank you" commands for getting teleported by the Engineer and healed by the Medic makes it clear the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits are turning into Fire-Forged Friends.
Metagame wise, a group of players that manage to stick together for a few rounds without getting autobalanced has a very good chance of becoming a Band of Brothers, however temporary.
The Soldier can earn an achievement for using the Buff Banner on his Steam friends called "Banner of Brothers".
The Spy also gets an achievement for backstabbinghis Steam friends...
Heavies are a force to be reckoned with, but a Medic will pretty much triple their effectiveness.
In the same fashion, a Pyro buddy will greatly help Engineers who need to be protected from Spies while working. Valve acknowledged the close relationship between them by giving the Pyro a melee unlockable that can destroy sappers on friendly Engies' equipment, as well as do extra damage to enemy buildings.
Because I'm Jonesy: Spies can be caught by the player whose name they've been assigned. The Halloween events have the Costume Contest achievement for a player who kills a spy disguised as the same class as said player. Even better, Spies get the "Identity Theft" achievement for killing the enemy they're disguised as.
Beeping Computers: Just try to hear yourself think in the 2fort basement.
Also the sentries beeping louder and more often the more upgrade they are. Listen closely— some beeps also means it's spotted an enemy.
"Dr. Nooooo" is also the name of an achievement, where the Spy has to backstab a Medic who's ready to deploy an ÜberCharge.
Bilingual Bonus: The Spy, Medic, and Heavy all have several lines in their native languages. The Spy also has a few besides French.
Oddly enough, one of these, after being hit by Jarate, is the Spy saying "Mon dieu!" which in the French dub is replaced by the English "My god!"
Bizarrchitecture: Who builds two opposing forts in the same building? There's an All There in the Manual explanation in the backstory related here. Short explanation: RED and BLU were originally formed by two feuding brothers that were each willed the same land by their father. This practice is lampshaded in Valve's description of the map Double Cross: "Secret bases concealed behind the unassuming façades of a factory and a farm built next door to each other fool absolutely no one in the area, who sometimes gather around to 'watch all them mercenaries fight over that spy base'." This is actually one of the main reasons Valve went with the cartoony, no-plot style over the previous realistic military style. Take a look at the intelligence room on 2fort sometime. Notice anything? How about the extension cord that goes across the room and plugs into the other wall?
Blatant Lies: One of the random bot names is "Totally Not A Bot". Convincing.
As well as a Shout Out to the popular use of sprays utilizing variations on "I Am Totally Not A Spy".
A patch note in December simply read "Updating some files, for no reason whatsoever." They actually removed Crate series 3, 4, and 5 from the Random Drop system, and added 6, 7, 8, and 9. Also, 6 is a FestiveWinter Crate.
Blood-Splattered Warrior: Due to the way the game handles blood and bullet hold sprites, they only appear on a player when they are shot by any projectile that isn't an explosive or fire-based, as well as melee attacks. It also has zero indication on actual health because a Medic could be healing that Heavy, meaning he could look like he's covered in his own blood, yet has well over his normal allotment of 300 HP.
What happens when players get shot with the Force-A-Nature or a Pyro's airblast.
Or the kickback from several other weapons, such as explosives.
Or pretty much everything, including the Spy's backstab under certain circumstances.
The Home Run Hitter Scout's taunt-kill with the Sandman bats enemies to incredible distances.
Any time the corpse ragdoll-izes, interesting things can happen to the player who died, depending on who's watching. Their own corpse will always look like it flies farther than it really does — for example, a headshot may send the victim flying across the room, but everyone else will see his ragdoll fall.
Bond One-Liner: Characters will say something after killing another player enough times to dominate them. It's especially a Bond One Liner with the Spy.
Bottomless Magazines: The Heavy, Pyro, and Sniper's primary weapons don't use detachable magazines due to the way their weapons are designed (in the Sniper's case, he manually reloads his sniper rifle with every shot, as seen in Meet the Sniper). This also means that a Heavy or Pyro standing next to a dispenser can fire practically forever. Also, the four ray guns have unlimited ammo.
Bottomless Pits: Various maps (Lumberyard Arena, Nucleus, and Steel, for example) have pits that, while not necessarily bottomless, are nonetheless fatal to fall into. This is especially evident on Lumberyard, as you can survive much higher falls on other maps (such as Hightower), but since there is no way out of the Lumberyard canyon once you fall into it, it has a kill trigger at the bottom. Often you will see a player fall of the edge only to hug the wall and actually stop the fall just a few inches off the bottom, then die a few seconds later as they realize it's futile to hold on.
Bound and Gagged: The Heavy gives the Engineer an enemy Spy wrapped in ribbon in this◊ holiday card.
Bribing Your Way to Victory: With the addition of the Mann Co. store on Sept. 30, 2010, although items can still be crafted or dropped. Needless to say, the fanbase exploded, and is still divided.
Also worth noting that there are still several items that cannot be obtained via the store, so that some items can still be prestigiously rare.
And that items obtained through the standard means (random drops or crafting) before the opening of the store are marked as valuable by having the prefix "Vintage" permanently affixed to them.
Sadly, the "Australian Christmas" update played this straight for the first time in Valve's history, albeit very briefly; several new weapons were only available via the Festive Crates, which could only opened by buying a $2.49 Festive Key (and even then, you had only had a small chance of getting what you wanted). Thankfully, this only lasted about a week, but it left a bad taste in a lot of player's mouths (though some took it a bit harder than they should've).
The Australian Christmas 2011 update took this a step further, preventing players from obtaining the new weapons for four weeks. While they could technically have been random crafted or found through Random Drop, the chances of either happening are minuscule (given that there are 100+ potential other weapons that could drop instead), so the only option was to purchase them from the store (for as much as $10 per weapon).
Brick Joke: When the Jarate was first introduced as a mere April Fool's joke, part of its "advertisement" featured a soiled Spy with a word bubble reading, "I HAVE BEEN SHOWN WHO IS THE BOSS!". Months later, when the Jarate was actually implemented in the game along with context-based phrases said by the game's characters, the Spy can actually say this phrase when he is doused with it.
Basically, the entire Jarate thing itself, which out as a clever joke, and then became a full-on weapon.
In the days leading up to the Über update doves would occasionally fly out of gibbed Medics and Scouts. Why they came from Scouts seemed kinda weird until the Über update brought the punchline at the end of "Meet the Medic".
The initial reason given for why Medieval Mode exists was a Hand Wave of 'The Soldier angered a magician'. Come Halloween 2011, the magician shows up as his own character who was (indirectly) responsible for the Demoman losing his eye, and is currently the Soldier's roommate.
Bullet Sparks: Whenever a bullet hits anything made of metal, sparks will be emitted. Or fists—"THEY ARE MADE OF STEEL!"
Camera Perspective Switch: Taunting or losing a round puts the character in third-person for the duration of the taunt or Humiliation.
Cel Shading: Subtly, in conjunction with several other shading techniques that give the game its distinctive look.
Character Customization: You can customize your loadout, including a completely cosmetic hat and up to two miscellaneous items.
Characterization Marches On: The initial portrayal of RED and BLU as shadowy, all-powerful corporations appears to have been more or less dropped in favour of them being run by a pair of feuding brothers of questionable competence and sanity. Now RED and BLU are run by the same shadowy, all-powerful corporation.
Check Point: Control points on one-way Attack/Defend maps and check points on Payload maps.
Cherry Tapping: Using the Sniper's SMG or the Engineer or Scout's pistol on targets. Melee weapons do almost three to eight times the damage of these guns, depending on the melee weapon.
Ambushing and killing small groups of enemies as the Medic is especially humiliating for them.
Or having the sticky bomb that could have killed that Medic disintegrate in mid-air the instant you die.
One-Hit Kill: Several, including a fully-charged sniper rifle headshot, a knife backstab, all attack taunts.
Respawning Enemies: The attacking team always respawns faster, at least on sane servers. On attack, particularly when the capture point is set within the defender's spawn area, a wave of defender respawning can torpedo a victory.
Spikes of Doom: Saw blades—and if you idle there in Egypt while a point is captured, the spawn room.
Tele Frag: An Engineer's worst nightmare when trying to fix a teleporter. Enemy Spies can use the teleporter and telefrag the Engineer, who might be crouching over the exit. Of course, anyone who's experienced knows better than to stand on teleporter exits.
Timed Missions: Every official map except the Payload Race and Arena ones (and arguably King of the Hill, whose timers don't start until someone has captured the control point), especially the attack/defend-based ones, where RED's entire strategy is to stall until the timer runs out.
Turns Red: Medic and anyone else with an ÜberCharge—substitute blue, er, BLU, if needed.
Combat Medic: The Medic can be played like this, occasionally to the detriment of the team since he's mainly a support class. There are actually "battle medics" who only heal after they've killed everything they possibly can, disregarding the combat classes around them who do the killing far better. "Stop Having Fun" Guys are liable to call any Medic who so much as uses their weapons once "battle medic."
Commonplace Rare: The former Random Drop system. About every four hours (of in-game time) a player had a roughly three percent chance to acquire an extremely rare item. The item in question? A hat. Or, for some classes, the ability to remove a default hat. The randomization system has been revamped because many people were going weeks without an item drop. It now randomizes the next time you receive a drop, with controls for how often one plays so avid players don't get gobs and oodles and casual players can still get them at an appreciable rate.
Jack of All Stats: The Soldier, with his somewhat above-average damage and health, somewhat below-average mobility, and his rather average effective range. His only real special ability is the Rocket Jump, which trades his health in for more speed, which the Demoman can do better, but with more self-damage.
Mighty Glacier: The Heavy. Ridiculously high damage output and health, limited by his snail-like speed.
Emphasized by the Brass Beast, a minigun which does more damage, but reduces Heavy's movement speed while firing to a painfully sluggish pace.
Glass Cannon: The Sniper and the Spy, being able to kill in one shot, but have the lowest HP value in the game (125, same as the Engineer and the Scout). Up close, the low-health Scout can kill in 2 hits, and now with the Sandman health penalty he's more breakable than ever.
The Equalizer, an unlockable melee weapon for the Soldier, hits harder and boosts his speed the less health he has. Some players deliberately injure themselves before going out in order to play as Glass Cannons or even One Hit Point Wonders. It also makes a wonderful escape tool for the more defensively-minded Soldiers.
Stone Wall: An Engineer's regular Sentry. A fully-upgraded sentry gun is a key factor in defense, and can kill any class that stays within range for more than a few seconds. However, in position, it can't move (for obvious reasons), and if an Engineer decides to move it around, it takes time to set up, the Engineer can be killed while carrying it, and is massively vulnerable during the set-up phase. In addition, a good Scout can bypass a turret completely. Taken further if the Engineer has a Wrangler, which turns the game into a sort of turret defense game.
Squishy Wizard: The Engineer again. He's basically a Scout without the mobility and double jump, but he can heal teammates, refill their ammunition, build teleporters, and create a powerful but immobile sentry gun.
The Medic also has less-than-effective weapons, but he is one of the most important classes thanks to his healing and ÜberCharge.
Lightning Bruiser: Expert Demoman players invoke this. Normally, he has below average speed, but skilled players can use the sticky launcher to rapidly move around the map. Combining this with his powerful pipe bombs and area controlling stickies makes him a force to be reckoned with. The Eyelander with full buffs quite literally turns him into this trope.
And with Australian Christmas update, it's the Heavy with Steak and G.R.U., able to chase down any class except Scout.
And Pyros tend to be this when they're good and Leeroy Jenkins when they're bad.
The Computer Shall Taunt You: The bots tend to do this. This can be prevented by typing "tf_bot_taunt_victim_chance 0" in the console (now that it's no longer a cheat as of the Über Update).
The Spy can pretend to be other classes, of both his team and of his enemies, forcing the enemy team to waste ammo on anybody and being paranoid about everybody. They can also use the Dead Ringer to drop fake body when hit, making it hard to tell if you killed the Spy or he is invisible and about to backstab you.
The Scout can double jump. This doesn't sound impressive, but a good Scout is a nightmare to deal with, being able to change direction while in the air and be impossible to hit, or SEE.
An increasingly common tactic with the Engineer is to put his mini-sentries in random places that make no sense outside of how unexpected they are, and then put up a new one in a different location as soon as the old one is destroyed.
Construct Additional Pylons: The more Dispensers around an Engineer the faster they get metal to build with.
Controllable Helplessness: During Humiliation, one team is almost completely defenseless and slowed down, fleeing from the other team, who are faster and crit-boosted. During a Stalemate, both teams are reduced to running around looking embarrassed or cowering.
Cooldown: Some weapons have a cooldown period after use before they can be activated again.
Cool Train: Lil' Chew Chew, the Payload in Frontier.
Cosmetic Award: The hats, although since each of them is part of the drops, they only really reward you for playing enough to get one by luck.
The Polycount update introduced item sets that gave bonuses if all items were equipped, with the first batch including a hat in each set. Future sets didn't include bonuses, as this was widely seen as Bribing Your Way to Victory by the fanbase.
Achievements, though they also guarantee you some of the randomly dropping extra weapons when you get enough of them.
Cosmetically Different Sides: RED and BLU, obviously. RED is the "canon" side; all the Meet the Team videos are of the boys in red, and loadouts default to RED.
Coup de Grâce/Cool and Unusual Punishment: When one team wins a round, the game pulls players on the losing team into third person to play a character who now runs about with their arms in the air and either poses disappointedly or cowers shamefully while the winning team hunts them down with increased speed and unlimited Critical Hits.
On the other hand, the Pyro gets a killer Come at Me Bro pimp stance.
Crippling Overspecialization: Going in hand with the Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors nature of the game, every class is overspecialized to a degree. This mostly shows up as their personal combat ability, or their ability to do damage at certain ranges. Sometimes, creative use of weapons will overcome this. Ultimately the extent to which any class is crippled by their specialization is, though, also a function of the player, the weapon loadout, and the combat situation — but content updates have introduced new equipment to help mitigate these problems in some classes. However, several weapons fall prey to this, so players may end up cursing their loadout choices. A few examples:
The Pyro's Axtinguisher and Flare Gun are practically useless against other Pyros or when forced to fight underwater. In general, Pyros suffer in any area with water nearby, as the enemy can jump in there to douse the flames.
The Razorback for the Sniper has exactly one purpose: preventing an easy backstab. But with it, the Sniper will only have his melee weapon to defend himself against anyone else (and a smart Spy can usually kill an unguarded Sniper with a few pistol shots).
Even more frustrating is that it was introduced at roughly the same time as the Ambassador, which gives the Spy the ability to Headshot. While it doesn't pack as much punch as a Sniper's Rifle, it will still kill most enemies with two shots. All it needs is the tiny crosshair centered on the victim's head. Given that most Snipers would be camping in a spot most other classes won't visit anyways and their eyes are always in the scope, the shot isn't hard.
The Demoknight (officially known as the "Close-Combat Kit") loadout, which gives up the sticky-launcher for a shield with charge attack and complements it with the more risky melee weapons. Deadly in melee, but not as mobile and weak at long range.
The Thousand and One Demoknight variant of this kit forgoes ranged weapons entirely, replacing the grenade launcher with a pair of wee booties that gives you better control of your charge, at the expense of having no range weapons whatsoever, and gives you a sword that doubles the regeneration on the Charge Meter while also converting all ammo boxes into health. The last one also makes it so that you are unable to refill ammo even if you had a gun. The upside is, with a good knowledge of the map, a demoknight with this kit can get around twice as fast as a scout, and one-shot a overhealed heavy with a well timed shieldbash + critical sword swing.
The Heavy equipped with a Tomislav can easily set up ambushes and cut other classes down, and makes a solid combo with the Gloves of Running Urgently. However, if he runs into any other Heavies equipped with other miniguns, their higher damage output is generally enough to ruin him if the Tomislav Heavy doesn't get the first shot off.
There's also the Medic's alternate medi guns (the Quick-Fix and Kritzkrieg), both of which grant a fairly solid alternate charge (increased healing, and guaranteed critical hits) to the standard ÜberCharge, and the former of which heals faster, but aren't nearly as good at clearing out sentry nests.
Most classes have at least one option to trade in their secondary weapon for an item with specific purposes. Many of these classes use their secondary weapon to complement their primary or when they run out of ammo. (For example, a Pyro uses his shotgun to finish off a fleeing burning enemy. Doing the same with a flare gun is a lot less reliable).
Less reliable, yet more effective: distance shots with the flare gun on lit targets mini-crits. It's also the only real way a Pyro has to deal with foes at a great distance. In the right hands, it's much more effective than a shotgun.
A better example here might be the Soldier's buff items, such as the Buff Banner. These get charged up when you deal damage and have one of several effects for your nearby teammates, such as extra crits or health regeneration. However, the Soldier has to give up his Shotgun to use it, meaning he's vulnerable to anyone who can close inside effective rocket-launcher range.
Critical Encumbrance Failure: Before August 13th, 2009, when carrying the Sandman, the Scout could no longer double jump.
Critical Existence Failure: You can sometimes be reduced to Ludicrous Gibs from burning to death or even drowning. Some servers blow you to gibs if you die by anything at all, even normal bullets.
The Bombnomicon Misc item intentionally invoke this, by blowing you up for dying for any reason, even falling too far.
Critical Hit: Tied directly into game balance, with some weapons' advantages and disadvantages relying on an ability to land a guaranteed crit, or the inability to land random crits. "Crockets" (Critical rockets) get hate especially since they can literally gib several people with a single projectile. There are also mini-crits, which deal 35% more damage for a weapon. More details on the Critical Hit page.
There are Promotional hats that come from several different games/other forms of media.
Cross Promotion: Valve adds numerous items (usually hats) from other Steam games and vice versa. The Vocal Minority is not happy about this.
Crouch and Prone: Crouching slows you down but grants more cover, and by crouching during a jump, you can reach higher places than with just a regular jump.
I am going to claw down your very throat and tear out your very soul! I am going to strangle you with your own frilly training bra! Son, you are writing checks your butt will find uncashable! Are you hearing me? Your backside will be escorted from the bank! You will find this humiliating! My foot will transform into a foot with your ass wrapped around it.
Cyanide Pill: Typing "kill" or "explode" into the console will kill you. This is actually useful in the event you get stuck somewhere.
Death By Falling Over: Hitting someone with a weapon that has knockback can push the enemy into an environmental hazard. The Scout and Demoman get an achievement for doing this, while the Medic has one for preventing a death by falling too far.
Death from Above: Having the higher ground affords a tactical advantage to pretty much all of the classes, but the Soldier in particular earns an achievement called "Death From Above" by killing enough enemies in that fashion.
Death Is Not Permanent: After dying in non-Arena maps, you wait until a running timer respawns you and your teammates into your base.
Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Some servers use plug-ins which eliminate this timer entirely. It plays hell with balance on most maps, and sometimes even prevents a player from knowing who killed him (especially if the killing shot was a long-range one). Naturally, said plugin has a Broken Base, especially since some control point maps have the balance backwards, i.e. it takes longer for a winning team to respawn, to give the losing team a chance to recapture the lost control point.
Deflector Shields: The Medic can bathe both himself and a teammate in a glowing, indestructible shell for up to 8 seconds.
The Scout can drink a Bonk drink for a similar effect, but can't fire his weapons while it lasts.
The Engineer's Wrangler, in addition to letting him control his Sentry gun, projects one of these around it.
Demonic Possession: The Demoman has an affinity for haunted items. First, there was the Eyelander (and its later re-skin, the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker), a haunted claymore that had a thirst for decapitated heads. Then, come the 2011 Halloween Update, it was revealed that the reason he lost his eye as a child was due to a book called the Bombinomicon, whose spirit possessed his left eye before being expelled by Merasmus the Magician. It later became the boss of Eyeaduct.
Department of Redundancy Department: One of the in-game tips. "As a Spy, hit B to disguise as the last disguise you previously disguised as."
There are hats called the "Vintage Merryweather" and the "Vintage Tyrolean". Therefore it is possible to have a "Vintage Vintage Merryweather" or "Vintage Vintage Tyrolean". Michael Cole would be proud.
There's also the Professor Speks, which layer over the Medic's and Snipers' glasses.
Development Hell: The last four Meet The Team videos (Sniper, Spy, Medic and Pyro). The other five classes had been released relatively early on, but then it took 2 years to finish both Sniper and Spy, another 2 just to do Medic's, and another year for Pyro.
Didn't Think This Through: The Manniversary update made it so that items in the store could be traded and crafted. This change was zapped after less than a single day when people flooded the stores to buy dozens of the really cheap hats to craft together in the hopes of getting the rare and prestigious hats. Now store-bought items can only be traded.
Which led to a second instance of this trope, where people in the trading market would often scam others by selling a supposedly craftable hat at full price only for the buyer to find out it wasn't craftable... after the trade was over and the seller left. Valve also fixed this in short order.
Difficult, But Awesome: See the cast page for specific class-flavored awesome, but here's one just about any class can do: circle-strafing a sentry faster than it can turn around and meleeing it to death. Works best with Pyros and Scouts, especially since those two classes often have difficulty taking out sentries.
The Administrator also sounds more...animated than usual on the Payload maps. (See Evil Laugh.)
"I AM COMING FOR YOU!!"
"Take it like a man, shorty!"
"Oh dere's my ball" and "I love my ball."
Doomsday Device: At least two in the form of the Ray Gun on Gravelpit and the... whatever it is on Nucleus. Also, the big-ass missiles on Granary, Goldrush, etc.
To a lesser extent, the eponymous Payload in, uh, Payload mode.
Double Agent: Spies can disguise as spies of the opposite side. As of the Spy/Sniper update, Spies disguised as enemy spies get a random disguise to complete the illusion. You might see enemy spies disguised as friendly spies disguised as enemy spies. You can also disguise as your own team. And then there's the Dead Ringer's corpse generation.
With some luck, you can disguise as enemy spy disguised as yourself.
Do Well, But Not Perfect: Many achievements require you to accomplish them in one life or one round, which resets at the end of the round even if your team won, making it occasionally just as hard to get these achievements with a great team as with a bad one. The possibility of stalemates adds another obstacle in these cases.
Drone Jam: Players can walk through teammates, but not through enemies - valuable for detecting cloaked or disguised Spies.
Engineers also can't pass through their own buildings, making it possible for Engineers to reach areas they otherwise wouldn't have access to. Enemy players can't pass through an Engineer's buildings, either; it's common for Engineers to put buildings in tight corridors and doorways to block the enemy from passing through unnoticed.
Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: Players can normally come and go as they please. Some servers even replace absent human players with bots.
Dwindling Party: Arena mode, since no one respawns after death.
Eagleland: The aesthetic design of the game, which according to Valve is inspired by artists such as J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell, recalls the Type One variation of America. The setting of the game itself is considerably less innocuous however, and the American characters themselves occupy various positions along the spectrum. The Engineer leans closer to Type One, while the Scout and especially the Soldier behave like Type Two.
Early Installment Weirdness: Some players don't even remember Territory Control as a game mode, or its map, tc_hydro. Modes added later like Payload and King of the Hill are considered more iconic of the game.
Emote Command: Some voice commands have the player say something and accompany it with a gesture.
Enemy Scan: Spies and Medics with a Solemn Vow can see the names and health of enemies.
Entitled Bastard: Being a multiplayer game, there's lots of this. Playing as a Medic means dealing with these people, since there are a lot of people who will always blame you for being killed (even if a Sniper or Spy killed you in one hit; meaning there was nothing you could have done), even if you're on the other side of the map. They may often run right into a place guarded by a couple Pyros and Demomen waiting for a Leeroy Jenkins. And don't expect any actual thanks from them outside of the avatar saying something like "Thank you doctor". And likewise, expect Medics to often yell at you for them to help them when they're going right into danger.
Epic Fail: Upon losing in Arena without killing a single opponent, the Administrator berates your team:
"Humiliating defeat!" "Next time, try killing one of them." "You didn't kill any of them!"
Escalating War: The Sniper and the Spy engaged in this during their combined update—neither wanted to share the spotlight. Later: the Soldier/Demoman war.
Escape from the Crazy Place:/Escape Sequence: Post-round Humiliation consists of the losing team, slowed down, trying to avoid getting killed with no defense except their taunt kills, if any. The winning team gets added running speed and 100% criticals.
Escort Mission: Essentially what Payload and Payload Race are; you've got to push the Bomb Cart to the end of the track. The defending team has to stop it from happening and are given extra time to set up, like in Attack/Defend Maps. The cart acts as a dispenser for whoever's pushing it, refilling health and ammo, and there's no way to destroy it (it can be moved backwards after some time, though). In races, both teams play both roles; you have to stop the enemy Cart while moving your own along, effectively splitting your forces until the Carts inevitably meet somewhere on the track. It's managed to avoid the usual negative backlash of escort missions, probably because the thing being escorted can't be "killed" and actually heals you while you escort it.
Doesn't hurt that it can't run off the track and you always have some idea of where it is at any given time.
If you volunteer to "Coach" new players, when one needs help you'll be invited to their game to give them advice. While you do this, you're in spectator mode, but the player you are coaching is highlighted in a aura that indicates his health. You can point them to targets to attack, places to defend, and places to go.
Every Bullet is a Tracer: With the exception of the sniper rifles (not counting the Machina), every bullet is visible.
Everything Fades: Eventually, corpses disappear from the field. If a player dies while on fire, the corpse is extinguished a few seconds before it disappears.
Evil Laugh: Kill enough people and your character will begin to snigger, chuckle, guffaw and snort hysterically in some truly hilarious ways. But perhaps the best example is what the Administrator sometimes does if the Payload nears the Final Terminus.
The Heavy's is the most common laugh heard, obtained if you slay enough people while keeping your minigun sped up.
The Engineer has an evil laugh as a taunt if he's holding his melee weapon, though now all classes can have one with the addition of the Schadenfreude taunt.
If undisguised, the Spy on a losing team can be seen face palming if he is still alive during Humiliation.
The Sniper does the hat version in his "Meet the Sniper" video when he's trying to talk to his father on the phone.
In "A Smissmas Story", the Soldier and Spy are the Scout's legal counsel during a trial after the three of them blew up a Mall Santa training facility. When the Soldier confirms the Scout's ridiculous testimony, the Spy facepalms and rests his head against the desk.
Faking the Dead: The Spy's "Dead Ringer" causes him to automatically cloak and drop a fake corpse (complete with fake kill message, fake domination message, and real achievements being handed out under the right circumstances) whenever he has it out and has a full cloak bar.
Finger Poke of Doom: The killtaunts available to the updated classes. They take several seconds to execute (with only a small timeframe being lethal in a rather specific fashion). They are also the only way to damage opponents during humiliation or stalemate.
Almost literally with the case of the Heavy, who can kill enemies several feet away by pointing at them.
When a Spy dominates a Spy, one of the things he might say is "I'll see you in hell... you handsome rogue!" It's probably a case of narcissism given that opposing people of the same class look exactly alike.
The Spy and the Sniper also have a very intense rivalry. The fans noticed.
After the "War" update, the Soldier and the Demoman (the BLU Soldier and the RED Demoman in particular) can't ever be friends again. There are six unused Soldier responses in the game's files, two of which are obvious Foe Yay material:
Soldier: You were good son, real good... maybe, even the best.
The Demoman has a few of these, too. One of his files has him mumbling something to the effect of "I love you, man", and then there's this heartbreaker:
Just bought two tickets to the gun show, an' I'm not givin' them to ya! I'm goin' with YOUR tickets!
The Engineer got some fairly Foe Yay-tastic domination quotes with his update.
(To the Spy) I just beat on your sneaky ass like a mule, boy!
Foiler Footage: When hats were first announced, people revealed what each class's hat was planned to be by reading the game's string asset files (files which contain every phrase and term used in the game, so that different files can be used for different languages). Valve responded by filling the files with false positives in the future, such as strings for TF2's planned MMORPG functionality and a boomerang for the Sniper (instead of the Jarate that was actually revealed).
Not only do the localization files include MMO strings, the game's event system (as exposed to server mode) lists "raid_spawn_mob" and "raid_spawn_squad" events.
Foreshadowing: Shortly before the official lead-in to the War Update, a minor bugfix update introduced sounds that would only be heard by Soldiers and Demomen. The next day, a comic (featuring an Administrator similar in appearance to the woman in this image) was posted revealing that the Demoman and the Soldier had become friends. The day after that, the next update was announced, with kills between Soldiers and Demomen determining who would receive the last weapon.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: While recovering from a rocket jumping accident that took both his legs, he perfected Lincoln's plans for stairs, freeing people from the tyranny of the second floor.
Freemium: Team Fortress 2 became free to play in summer 2011. Players with free accounts get to store up to 50 items in their backpack, receive items rather than being able to trade or gift, have limited crafting blueprints, and can't get rare or cosmetic items. Otherwise, they can get all of the regular weapons, and all game modes and maps are available to both free and premium accounts. The only requirement to get a premium account is to buy any item from the in-game store. The only difference between a premium account gained from buying the game itself as opposed to something from the in-game store is a Proof of Purchase hat.
Friendly Fireproof: It's impossible to harm a teammate with a player's own weapons in normal gameplay, though some weapons can hurt the user (explosives, sentry guns). The easiest way to spot an enemy Spy is to just shoot everyone once or twice.
The alternative is so much worse that the command to activate friendly fire was actually removed in an update shortly before the game was released and not reintroduced for several months.
From Nobody to Nightmare: The Pyro. When the game was first released, he was easily one of most useless classes in the game. Several updates over several years later, he's now one of the most dangerous classes of all.
Full Set Bonus: Each class has various item sets, made up of (usually) one primary, one secondary, one melee, and one hat. By equipping all four, an additional bonus is granted (extra health, resistance to fire, etc.). Spies and Pyros also get a slight downside tacked on (extra damage from bullets for Pyro, longer cloak activation for Spy). Not all sets grant a bonus, however. Many of the sets are controversial due to requiring hats.
Funny Background Event: Double Cross boasts the same alert panel as the one seen in Meet the Spy, and parts of it light up when the Intel is taken. Thunder Mountain also has a couple of interesting Easter Eggs:
Behind the glass of the BLU Spawn in the first stage is a reproduction of the Training Stage, and several BLUs are standing in front of it doing random idle animations (including the Thriller dance).
The RED Spawn in the second stage is overlooking a swimming pool, and REDs can be seen swimming and otherwise chilling out.
The Killing Gloves of Boxing, used by the Soviet Russian Heavy Weapons Guy.
And the community-made joke weapon, the Tricycle of Astoundingly Nimble Knees.
And the Gloves of Running Urgently, beta tested but never added to the official game until Sept. 30, 2010.
In Medieval mode, the parser turns "afk" (away from keyboard) into "away, fighting kobolds", "away, fruity knights", "aft, frisking knickers", or "abaft, flailing knouts".
Custom content (mostly Models and Avatars) can be submitted to this site, and if Valve likes it enough, it'll be implemented IN-GAME.
There's also a game mod that chooses your class and weapons after you die... And the weapons are from other classes, Hilarity Ensues as The Scout uses the Pyro's flamethrower on a Medic with a Soldier's bazooka, among other things, this type of mod is called "Randomizer".
There are also mods that change the rules around a bit, like Sudden Death only with melee weapons (which is now implemented into the game) or restricting how many of each class can play on the same team at once (typically to prevent Sniper Wars or turtling with Engineers)
Class Restriction is also put into place to prevent spamming of any one class. On Medieval mode, this is critical as most medieval maps devolve into "which team has the most Demomen".
Then there are games set to "Highlander mode", in which there can only be 18 players, one of each class. The remaining can only be spectators, or the server will be set to allow only 18 players.
Another mod that is gaining in popularity is "hardcore mode", in which crits are completely disabled. This usually means no one hit kills and that a game round would last significantly longer.
Also present are mods that disable the respawn delay completely or reverses it, so that the losing team spawn faster. And yes, games on these servers usually ends in a stalemate.
Not to mention tons of character model replacements, including various attempts at nude mods, Gender Swap mods, anime mods and more...
As of September 2011, not only is the entire circus of TF2 Freaks already made into variants of the mod, There are variations of the mod for almost every single fictional character under the sun, ranging from the "mane 6" My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic characters[2][3] to Charmander[4] and The Joker[5]. Even non-fictional personas like Valve CEO Gabe Newell and celebrity Marilyn Manson were not spared!
George Washington: He invented America, but his greatest failure was his inability to be permanently invisible. (That's where the Cloak and Dagger come in.)
Giant Eye of Doom: During the 2011 Halloween Update, the MONOCULUS! appeared in a new version of the Viaduct map. He's extremely powerful (like the Horsemann), and hovers and teleports around the map while shooting critical eye-rockets. If players manage to defeat him, they'll score an achievement and a free mask based on it. If they go the extra mile, they can also receive a cursed book, the Bombinomicon, to wear.
Gosh Dang It to Heck!: For something M-rated, the classes either swear pretty mildly or not at all, to keep with the tone of the game.
Grand Theft Me: While not literal, Your Eternal Reward specifically takes away a Spy's normal disguise kit, but whenever he backstabs an enemy, he immediately takes on that enemy's class and name as a disguise. As the enemy is silently killed and the body disappears almost immediately, unobservant foes won't notice that their friend is now playing for the other team. That said, you can still use voice-chat to announce that a spy had stolen your identity to your team and hope that they can hear you.
Guide Dang It: There is no manual. You learn to play by watching others play (the game is coded to show you other players of your class on your team when you die), or by reading the Wiki.
As of the Mac Update, TF2 now comes with a basic training mode. It includes a simple shooting gallery to teach players how to use and switch between weapons, and a help-guide-filled battle with AI bots to bring newbies up to speed on the core gameplay elements. Currently, training is provided for Soldiers, Demomen, Engineers, and Spies.
They also added a Coach mode, where you get paired with someone and they help you out, enforcing the "other players as guides" aspect further. To prevent abuse, players upgrading to premium can give their preferred mentor a Nice Hat.
Guns Are Worthless: Valve has buffed melee weapons so they have a much higher chance of crits, so players would actually use them rather than guns all the time.
The game provides a freezecam shot of who killed you, and if gibs are on and any of your body parts are in the shot, it very helpfully points out which parts they are ("Your spleen! Your pancreas! Your torso! More bits!")
Especially funny if -sillygibs is on; see Silliness Switch below.
If it's a domination or revenge kill, your opponent's character may also make fun of you. (The Medic and Pyro are the only ones who don't.) And on rarer occasions, they will even if it's not.
Several classes have special achievements for taunting during the enemy's deathcams, sometimes more than one. The Sniper can either doff his hat at the enemy (basically, paying respect), or wave (to mock them). The Soldier has one where he taunts over at least three pieces of the enemy's remains, and the Medic has one for taunting over an enemy's ragdoll.
Heal Thyself: In the event that a Medic is low on health and there are no medkits or other Medics present, the Sniper vs. Spy update introduced a taunt to the Kritzkrieg where the Medic will take a great huff of the health gas from the barrel to restore 10 health.
The Blutsauger Syringe Gun side-grade also allows a Medic to self-heal... by leeching health from his enemies.
Headless Horseman: During the 2010 Halloween update, the Horseless Headless Horsemann appeared about every eight minutes in the new "Mann Manor" map. He's extremely powerful, and prances around the map gleefully with an axe decapitating all in his path. If a player actually manages to defeat him, they'll score an achievement and a free hat. If they go the extra mile and land a hit with a melee weapon near his dying moments, the player may get an extra rare crafting item as well.
Heroic Sacrifice: Whoever pushes the cart during the last elevator push in PLR_Hightower. Someone must be with the cart to the very end of the elevator rise until it explodes to achieve victory.
High Pressure Blood: Gibs have particle emitters attached for the first second or two after death.
Hoist by His Own Petard: An Engineer can be killed by his sentry if he stands in front of it as it shoots, and a Demoman and Soldier can gib themselves with their own projectiles if they're too close to the blast. Scouts who can't aim with a Boston Basher/Three Rune Blade might bleed to death, and a Detonator-wielding Pyro can damage himself from the explosives.
Hold the Line: RED team's job on Payload and the Attack/Defend style CP maps.
Holiday Mode: "Party Mode", which was set to activate on the anniversary of the original game's release. A Halloween event was started in 2009 featuring a special map, two hats (one with "Holiday Restriction: Halloween and full moon"), and five achievements. 2010's Halloween event added four more achievements, another special map (one of the Art Pass Contest winners), several hats (some with the restriction, and some that could only be bought during the 2010 event), and an exclusive weapon. The 2011 Halloween event added 9 achievements, some hats and miscellaneous items, and a new map with MONOCULUS!
The Australian Christmas Update has made it official with Christmas themed crates, weapons, and hats. Although it lacks a holiday related map, unlike the Halloween updates.
Hyperactive Metabolism: The Heavy's unlockable lunch item, the Sandvich, must be laced with Human Growth Hormone. It regenerates all of the big lug's health. Should he drop it by dying, it will heal 50 points of health to anyone who picks it up. However, if he drops it with right click, they will get half health recovered.
The Scout is the exception, receiving instead 75 points of health for a stolen Sandvich. This is an allusion to Sandvich's first appearance in Meet The Scout, where the Scout physically wrested it from the Heavy.
Speaking of which, his drinks also take effect immediately.
Hyperspace Arsenal: Like many First Person Shooters, most weapons that are not equipped do not appear. However, they still take up inventory space (the Scout and Heavy cannot carry lunchbox items and sidearms at the same time). The current exceptions are the Razorback and Chargin' Targe shields and the Buff Banner backpack (but not the trumpet).
The Medic also carries his backpack around all the time, supposedly holding much of the machinery that powers his medigun. Same for the Pyro's oxygen tank.
Hypocritical Humor: Some of the Engineer's domination lines against the Sniper insult his tendency to camp, despite the Engie being designed for much the same purpose.
Similarly, the Demoman has lines about the Sniper camping, yet defensive Demos lay out carpets of stickybombs and wait for long periods of time.
The Sniper will also insult his headshot victims for "standin' around like a bloody idiot", despite a Sniper's own tendency to do the same thing.
The Engineer, the shortest of the mercenaries, has the line "Take it like a man, shorty" when killing someone with his wrench. Also, he has a domination line that calls the Soldier a Yankee, when he's from the United States as well.
I Banged Your Mom: The Spy's Domination lines to the Scout, derived from the plot of "Meet the Spy".
Spy: Well, off to visit your mother!
The Demoman also claims to be shagging the enemy Medic's wife in domination taunts.
I Call It Vera: With the addition of Name Tags, players can now call their weapons and hats whatever the hell they want. Even stock items.
And the Heavy's miniguns, Sasha and Natascha.
I Love Nuclear Power: The aim of the attacking side on Payload maps is to detonate a bomb in the enemies' atomic fuel dump. This being a reasonable approach to nuclear waste disposal.
Bonk! Atomic Punch's ingredients: Water, radiation, sugar. "...which as we all know is pretty great for givin' people superpowers."
In The Style Of: The art style is based off of J.C. Leyendecker.
Incendiary Exponent: The "on fire" status effect. Exploding players with this will now result in burning gibs.
Infinite Supplies: The Engineer's dispenser provides limitless ammo to anyone standing near it. Pyros and Heavies can fire an unending stream of pain this way, even from a level one.
The Dispenser also gives any nearby friendly Engineers more metal to build with. Nobody's really quite sure where the metal comes from.
Instructional Film: The original release maps (as well as a few more recent maps) are introduced with a black-and-white instructional film explaining the map's objective and, sometimes, unique elements of its topology.
Getting hit with the Sniper's Jarate causes the screen to go yellowish and warped until the effect wears off.
The Scout's Holy Mackerel causes the killfeed to broadcast whoever he's hitting with the fish until he stops or kills the target.
The Spy's Dead Ringer screws with the enemy's kill feed and, in some cases, gives out completely legitimate achievements.
I Shall Taunt You: Each class has a wide variety of taunts. Vocal taunts are triggered automatically as the result of kills, while taunt animations can be triggered manually at any time. Certain taunts can even kill other players if they stand right in front of the one doing it.
In the literal sense, the Scout's Holy Mackerel is simply a fish that players use to whack people with, with the same stats as the regular Bat. It is also level 42.
Unknown to many people, attempting to kill a Spy with the Holy Mackerel will reveal whether the Spy is really dead or faking his death: Each successful hit on an enemy with the Holy Mackerel will show up in the killfeed (top right of the screen) as "Player 1 (icon) x# Player 2", with # going up on every hit. A kill with this weapon will make it say "FISH KILL!", but only if the enemy is actually dead. If it looks like you killed an enemy but the killfeed does not say "FISH KILL!", that means it was a Spy who faked his death. The same goes for the [http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Unarmed_Combat Unarmed Combat]], added during the 2011 Halloween update: striking a Spy who fakes his death will not get the "ARM KILL!" message.
There's also the Candy Cane, which is a huge candy cane that you can bludgeon enemies with. Also, on getting a kill it dumps a small med pack that can help you heal a few points of damage. Like the Holy Mackerel and Unarmed Combat, the Candy Cane may be useful for Spy-checking, since the health pack doesn't drop if the Spy's a Dead Ringer.
Just Add Water: You can take unwanted items and smelt them into scrap metal, which then gets combined into reclaimed and refined metal, which then can be made into weapons and hats. Specific recipes exist to craft specific other items and weapons without having to wait for the random drop system to give them to you. There are many recipes that make little sense (metal + wrench = wrapping paper, metal + 8 jars of piss = marble bust) among some that do (metal + backpack = another backpack, batter's helmet + 2 cans of soda = batter's helmet with 2 cans of soda attached).
Just for Pun: Many of the achievement names, some of which would not be out of place on this wiki. ("Tartan Spartan", anyone?)
Kaizo Trap: After a success for BLU on Payload or either team for Payload Race, don't think you're sure to get some free kills in humiliation, as the detonation can still kill you. Of course, some people enjoy throwing themselves into the explosion or the pit of death that it leaves behind.
Kill 'Em All: During Humiliation, the winning team gets a 10% speed boost and crits for 15 seconds so they can kill the losing team, who have been slowed to 90% of their normal speed and stripped of their weapons.
Kill Streak: Some achievements require this, albeit with restrictions, like using a certain weapon. Most classes also have increasingly enthusiastic responses when they kill a number of enemies within a short period of time. Also, killing the same player four times without being killed by them in between (doesn't have to be in a single life) results in a Domination.
Laser Sight: The sniper rifle has one, purely for the benefit of the targets since the weapon itself already has a scope with a crosshair. Sentries controlled with the Wrangler have one that shows the entire beam (to distinguish it from the rifle as well as to reveal its position).
Last Lousy Point: The grind-based achievements, particularly Pyromancer (1 million points of fire damage as a Pyro), Tartan Spartan (1 million points of explosive damage as a Demoman), The Best Little Slaughterhouse In Texas (5,000 kills with sentry guns), and the Replay achievements.
Also frustrating are achievements that require players to get a number of something (kills, points) within a life.
If you want to obtain all the items by crafting only, have fun getting the Rocket Jumper, Sticky Jumper, and Solemn Vow. The former two can only be crafted by luck, using the "fabricate class weapons" option. There's a 1/5 chance of getting a Rocket Jumper and a 1/4 chance of getting a sticky jumper, respectively. Then the Solemn Vow requires 8 Jarates, which is beyond what the average player might find in their lifetime. That's not counting the reskinned promotional items.
Lead The Target: Required of some slower projectile-based weapons, such as the Syringe Gun and Huntsman.
Spy: "Right Behind You", "Petite Chou-Fleur" (although that could arguably be Scout's Mother's theme, too)
Medic: "A Little Heart To Heart", "MEDIC!", "Archimedes"
Pyro doesn't have one as of yet, but most likely will when s/he gets his/her "Meet The" short.
Lethal Joke Weapon: All the melee weapons have a much higher chance to do Massive Damage by Critical Hit (except for the knife, which works differently due to its design around Backstabs, and all weapons that register headshots), including the bottle, the shovel, and especially (from a gameplay standpoint) the boxing gloves.
The Sniper has an unlockable jar of a certain yellow liquid that causes anybody within the "blast radius" of where it's thrown to take 35% more damage for 10 seconds.
All of the kill taunts also count as Lethal Joke Weapons. They are slow to play out and often have very limited range, but they usually instantly kill on contact. The Lethal Joke is most especially funny with the Heavy, who can kill people by pointing at them. Surprisingly, that taunt can kill from a damn good distance.
The Ullapool Caber is an unlockable melee weapon for the Demoman; all it is is a German WW 2 stick grenade that explodes when it hits an enemy or a non-friendly solid object, dealing 100 damage to the Demoman and launching him high up in the air, likely to be finished off by fall damage. But it's capable of dealing upwards of 180 damage to any enemies caught in the explosion, and, if combined with the Chargin' Targe for a guaranteed melee critical... 400+ easily. Your team not able to keep the cart back? Just charge in and clear out the entire thing and buy them some time.
And now the sticky jumper has been changed so the user no longer suffers increased damage, restoring its status as a lethal joke weapon.
Level Grinding: Somewhere from a half to a third of the Achievements to unlock new weapons are based on merely doing fairly common things several times, like running or double jumping. The Pyro has one for causing a million damage. The Medic has one for healing a million damage.
Complaints about this brought Valve to formulate a new mechanic for weapon unlocking for the Sniper Vs. Spy Update. It backfired and introduced the easiest form of grinding ever.
In response to these complaints, the achievement method was reintroduced with much lower requirements, making it fairly easy to get the alternate weapons without any of the excessive achievements. Good luck with getting Hats, though.
Like a Badass out of Hell: In the 2011 Scream Fortress update, the boss MONOCULUS! occasionally teleports around the map; and leaves behind a portal to the underworld, which grants the effects of Über, Kritz, and a speed boost to your character upon escaping it.
The doors through which the superpowered characters reemerge onto the map are labeled Warning: Dead End.
Limit Break: After filling his ÜberCharge meter, the Medic can unleash a devastating attack where he and one teammate are invincible (or, with the Kritzkrieg, have unlimited Critical Hits) for ten seconds. The soldier's backpack-type weapons work in a similiar fashions: the Buff Banner fills as he does damage and gives all nearby allies guaranteed mini-crits (+ 35% damage); the Battalion's Backup allows him to protect nearby allies from critical hits and severe injuries (-35% to damage taken) — but is charged by taking damage, rather than giving it;. the Concheror fills rage both ways. Upon activation, it negates crits like the Battalion's Backup and everyone affected by it receives 20% of the damage they deal as healing.
Shooting Superman: Even when the Medic's ÜberCharge is activated, many people keep firing out of desperation. It makes more sense with rockets and grenades, though — ÜberCharge does not protect from being thrown around. (In fact, a properly aimed explosive or a Pyro airblast can essentially ruin an ÜberCharge rush; even if the two aren't separated, they won't get their momentum back before the charge ends.)
Snipers even have an achievement for getting a killing shot on an Über Duo right as their charge wears off.
Loading Screen: The game's loading screen on Valve-made official maps shows the map you're going to, your stats, and a random tip. On community-created maps, instead of stats, there's a list of top donors, players who bought the most stamps that represent the map.
Locomotive Level: The custom Capture the Flag map Convoy takes place on and within two team-colored trains.
Valve removed hats and other items from people who farmed items by idling and/or using other exploits. Valve rewarded players who didn't do this by giving them a halo hat as proof. This caused even more drama where people made fun of people who got the halos or even banned people from their servers outright from having it.
There are only 100 Golden Wrenches handed out during the Engineer Update. To get one you had to be either super-lucky while crafting.
Lost Forever: 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 havingLeft 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 recently, 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.
Ludicrous Gibs: Not only will characters who die from explosions explode into their component parts (which will be identified if they're in frame when the game shows who killed the player), but the game also offers a second set of gibs (developed for markets like Germany that prohibit high amounts of violence) where you explode into things like hamburgers and rubber ducks. Ludicrous gibs, indeed.
The Birthday mode made them even more ludicrous, turning the gibs into presents. If only you could find hats in said presents.
M-N
Macross Missile Massacre: Frequent during the WAR update, when nearly everyone was playing Soldier or Demoman. The first five seconds of any game were a blistering hail of explosive ordinance from both sides.
Level 3 sentries send a barrage of missiles to their target in a spiraling inward fashion.
Made of Explodium: An update on June 8th, 2011 introduced doves into 21 of the maps. They explode rather violently (for no damage) when you shoot them. Or use your melee attack on them. Or just touch them.
The Bombonomicon introduced in the Very Scary Halloween Special, when found, can be equipped as a badge in the miscellaneous slot. When equipped, it causes the wearer to die in a glorious, flashy purple explosion no matter what their cause of death was.
Made of Plasticine: The game was originally going to take this literally, with all of the mercenaries replaced by claymation models of themselves.
Man on Fire/Incendiary Exponent: Any class who falls victim to the walking inferno that is the Pyro. Pyros themselves are an exception; while they still take damage from fire directly, their heavy asbestos suits and chemical filter masks prevent them from being set ablaze.
Martial Arts Headband: The game has two Hachimakis. The first of which was a tie-in with Homefront. The second one was part of the Japanese bundle, where the sales from the item were donated to help with the Japanese relief efforts.
Medal of Dishonor: There's an achievement for the Sniper called "Consolation Prize" that requires the player to get backstabbed 50 times.
The Missingno.: Since its removal in an early patch, the Civilian. Through cheating and bugs, players can enter the "reference pose" of the Civilian (standing with feet shoulder width apart, arms at sides).
Mistaken for Spies: Any sufficiently competent team will treat every living thing as a Spy and act accordingly.
Mobile Shrubbery: The mod PropHunt turns one team into map objects, and they must hide in the scenery from the "hunters". This frequently happens while the props find somewhere to hide or flee from the enemies.
The Pyro can set enemies on fire, which does damage over time. This means that it's possible for someone to die from the burning even after they've killed the Pyro. The Pyro update includes two achievements for killing enemies this way.
The Huntsman fires relatively slow-moving arrows, which can kill a target even after the death of the Sniper who fired them. In one instance, two Snipers, one using the Huntsman, the other the normal sniper rifle, headshotted each other.
The WAR! update gave the Soldier an achievement for killing a Sniper with a rocket after he kills him first, aptly named Mutually Assured Destruction.
There are a few weapons that cause bleeding, also damaging the opponent over time.
This can happen to classes with splash damage weapons. If you're playing as Soldier, are badly wounded and fire on your attacker point blank, you can expect a shower of both your and your opponent's chunks. Can also happen with Demomen, and Engineers if they're foolish enough to stand between an enemy and their own turret.
Similarly, its quite common for an Engineer to die getting metal, only to watch their own sentries avenge them on death cam seconds later.
Named Weapons: The Heavy has some named miniguns, and naming one's items is possible thanks to the Name Tag.
Near Misses: A Scout under the effects of Bonk! Atomic Punch will dodge every attack until the drink wears off. Also, when an enemy shoots at you and narrowly misses, you can hear the bullet/flare/dart whiz by you.
Necro Cam: When you die, the camera shows you a still of whoever dealt the fatal blow (or his corpse/gibs), his health, and the weapon he currently has on hand. If your ragdoll appears in the shot, it may be labeled 'You!' If you were gibbed, your body parts are marked with humorous labels such as 'Your head!', 'A bit of you!', 'More bits!', and so on.
Never Bareheaded: Five of the nine classes wear hats by default. Four of them can be made hatless by obtaining hat-free items equippable in the headwear slot. However:
The Soldier can only have his hat replaced by other hats.
The Spy and Pyro can't have their balaclavas and gas masks removed, either.
Nice Hat: The unlockable hats introduced in the Sniper/Spy update began the madness, featuring nifty headwear of every possible size and shape, including several hats that are just hats stacked on top of hats.
They will also go down as one of the most base-breaking elements in video game history. Especially that goddamn halo.
Reporting that the Retraux "demake" Gang Garrison 2 has been updated, the TF2 blog says "it's pretty much better than TF2 in every possible way now. Except for the total lack of hats. Guess we know who the real pros are around here."
In one of the Halloween 2011 blog posts: "...Were debating taking all of the scares out of this year's Halloween Special. For instance, one playtester thought the Pyro was a little scary, so well probably remove him as a class. Someone else swore he remembered reading something about somebody getting hurt by a gun once. And that sounded scary. So probably no more guns, either. Then Dracula called from the hospital. "Hey guys," he said, "hats are pretty scary." Well, now, that must have been the morphine talking. So were adding more hats just to be safe." Valve tends towards a lot of Self-Deprecation when it comes to hats.
No Fair Cheating: "This server is VAC-secured. Cheating will result in a permanent ban." Cheating on VAC-secured servers can permanently ban your entire Steam account from VAC servers in any game.
Noisy Guns: Every weapon makes a distinct noise when you select it in the Backpack, or switch to it during gameplay.
No Name Given: Ignoring team affiliation, the Scout, Pyro, Heavy, Medic, and Spy's names haven't been revealed.
A fairly funny example is the map "Gorge", whose eponymous land feature according to a blog post is not a gorge but "a large-ish hole not big enough to meet the U.S. Geological Surveys standards for a gorge, disguised as a by-the-book, nothing-to-see-here gorge."
The unlockable Heavy secondary "The Buffalo Steak Sandvich" is not a "sandvich", just a steak. ("Who needs bread?")
What the team names are acronyms for, Reliable Excavation & Demolition and Builder's League Union, are rather the opposite of what the teams tend to when both sides don't have the same goal: RED is defense, while BLU is offense.
Killing a Demoman in will cause all the explosive traps he's laid to disappear. There's even an achievement for the Heavy for removing a certain amount of traps by killing the Demomen that set them.
Similarly, killing an Engineer during Sudden Death and Arena mode will make all his buildings explode. Note that this does not happen in any other game mode, where the Engineer can then respawn and go back to his hopefully still standing buildings. If the Engineer switches to another class, all of his buildings will disappear. If he switches melee weapons (but not classes), his buildings will be destroyed, presumably because of the differences between build time of the Jag and different sentries for the Gunslinger.
Nostalgia Level: 2Fort, Badlands and Well, though they've been redesigned somewhat.
Notice This: Everything about the game's art direction is designed so you can figure out what's going on at a glance...
Each class has a unique silhouette, uniform, and character quirk. Valve wanted the characters to be immediately distinguishable by their physical build and their way of running.
The uniforms are the most brightly colored around the head and chest, to aid in the identification of the weapon each player is carrying.
The bases are uniquely themed with both color and architectural design, and you get color-coded arrows pointing you to the map objective.
The cart on Payload/Payload Race and the Intelligence on Capture The Flag have glowing outlines that can be seen through any obstacle. (Valve added this feature after something similar was successfully implemented in their Left 4 Dead series.)
Characters that are dominating you have a large icon over their heads.
No OSHA Compliance: Two out-of-control sawblades on the aptly-named 'Sawmill' map stand between the competing teams and the Control Point.
A few maps are also home to numerous Bottomless Pits that can be the death of many players, especially if the control point sits over one.
Parodied with faux-safety warnings put in the levels. RED's building on the ctf_2fort map, for example, has "building condemned" notices plastered on the front.
No One Could Survive That: With the introduction of the Dead Ringer cloaking watch, your opponents will probably be thinking this quite often. Watch as a Spy takes a direct hit from a critical rocket (something only two fully overhealed classes can survive), bursting into gooey bits... only to appear behind the Soldier who fired it.
Incidentally the same item inverts the trope. Given that the Dead Ringer can activate when you suffer any damage, no matter how minuscule, be sure that enemies will be suspicious when you die from a single pistol shot.
No Recycling: Averted, as the Engineer can earn back most of a destroyed construction's metal by running over the scraps.
Not So Harmless: Several classes that are usually meant to stay behind the lines/not get directly involved are actually devastating if they catch you by surprise thanks to their melee weapon's high crit rates.
Not the Fall That Kills You: The Scout can fall/jump from high places and double jump before a landing to negate any fall damage. The Soldier has a pair of tanker boots that also negates fall damage, but only if he's landing on an enemy from the jump. Other classes will take damage from a long fall, and at low health, can die from it. The kill feed will notify everyone of the player's clumsy, painful death. There's an achievement for the Medic for healing a player in the air that would've been killed from a fall.
Numbered Sequel: The original game wasn't even a standalone game until Team Fortress Classic, which came out much closer to the original mod than the sequel.
O-R
One Bullet Clips: Played straight or averted, depending on the weapon. Some weapons like the pistol and syringe gun replace the entire magazine. Others like the shotgun and rocket launcher reload one shot/rocket at a time. Miniguns and flamethrowers don't have a reload function, they just need an ammo supply to keep them loaded. The only weapon that doesn't reload like the others is the double-barreled Force-a-Nature; if you have one round in the barrel and reload, that unused round is lost.
One-Hit Kill: Headshots, backstabs and killtaunts. While those attacks deal more damage than even a overhealed Heavy can take, they are survivable under some conditions, usually a Dead Ringer. Tele Frags, however, always kill.
A plugin called "Roll the Dice" has Instant Kill as one of the possible results. Predictably this is best used with the Heavy, which can spray 1-hit kill bullets everywhere.
One Nation Under Copyright: Reliable Excavation and Demolitions controls one half of the world. Builders League United controls the other half. The woman officiating the war between the two companies is the CEO of both of them.
Only Sane Employee: The BLU Engineer. While not the Only Sane Man, as the Spy and Sniper seem more profesional than psychotic, the Engineer's primary job in missions where BLU is on the offensive is to get his allies to the front lines quickly and keep them healed and stocked with ammo.
Organization With Unlimited Funding: TF Industries controls the world, utilizes armies of paper-pushers to solve problems, and has enough money to finance death rays, doomsday devices, bombs, and rockets, and outfit their mercenaries with guns that would be impossible today - in particular, they can resurrect the dead and build ammunition and health dispensers that defy the laws of thermodynamics, on a whim. In the sixties.
Overdrawn At The Bloodbank: The mercenaries lose a lot of blood when shot, especially if the weapon has a bleed effect. Coupled with the healing provided by a Medic, one can lose a lot of blood in a life.
Pacifist Run: The the Medic class achievement "First Do No Harm" entails reaching the top of the scoreboard in a game of six or more players on a team without killing anyone, instead relying on assist kills while healing others.
The Scout has a similar achievement called "No Hitter", where you take the intel and bring it back without firing a shot (the icon is even a dove holding an olive branch above an intel case).
Painting the Fourth Wall: In the Mann Co. store, you can click on the item and get a preview on what it looks like, both alone and on the character. Except for the Spy. This was probably a Good Bad Bug, and was fixed in short order.
Paper-Thin Disguise: To their teammates (or supposed teammates, if a Spy disguises as the enemy Spy), Disguised Spies use this trope literally, wearing a paper mask with the face of the class they are impersonating (see the trope's page image).
Inexperienced spies can also result in this in-game. The easiest way to catch a Spy is to find one that isn't using their weapon. Medic and Pyro disguises pretty much give themselves away. The other, more combat-oriented classes make better disguises.
Hilariously and heavily lampshaded in the Sentry Operating Manual, where detailed instructions are given for sentry maintenance and upgrading, all of which boil down to "just keep smashing it with the wrench."
Personal Raincloud: One of the particle effects available for an Unusual hat.
Pimp Duds: The Hustler's Hallmark, an unlockable team colored pimp hat for the Demoman. For bonus points, the Demoman can pimpwalk by looking up and crouching while moving straight forward.
The Points Mean Nothing: It doesn't matter how many points you get as long as your objective is done, though it's an indicator of how well you're helping your team and how balanced the teams are.
Practical Taunt: every class has at least one with the right weapon.
Prank Injuries: There's a hat that appears to be a butcher knife stuck in the mercenary's head. It's unclear whether this is a real knife or not.
Premature Encapsulation: The first update to two simultaneous classes was named the "Sniper Vs. Spy Update". The next update, where kills between the two classes actually determined the results of the update, was known as the "WAR!" update.
Preorder Bonus: Not for TF2 itself, but items have been given out as pre-order bonuses for other games, including non-Valve ones. To date, they've given out Bill's Hat for pre-ordering Left 4 Dead 2, Max's Severed Head and replicas of Sam's and Max's guns for Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse, a Worms-style hat for the Soldier, complete with nonfunctional Holy Hand Grenades, for pre-ordering Worms Reloaded, and a poker visor for the Heavy for pre-ordering Poker Night at the Inventory.
Press X to Die: Pressing the taunt key as a Soldier with the Equalizer on hand will make him perform a taunt kill that blows him to gibs. However, it'll also gib anyone within 6 feet. Also, typing "kill" or "explode" into the console will result in just that.
Pretty Little Headshots: Exaggerated with most weapons, as headshots deal no extra damage at all. Played straight with the Spy's Ambassador and any of the Sniper's primaries.
Promoted Fangirl: Makani, a popular fan artist, created a very popular fanart of the Administrator, which eventually became her official design. She was later hired by Valve, and draws most of the comics that Valve releases these days.
Promoted Fanboy: Tony Paloma (AKA Drunken F00l), creator of the immensely popular SourceOP plugin and the infamous idling program, as well as (unjust) crafter of a Golden Wrench. He ended up being VAC-banned. Fast-forward to present day: Tony is now working for the TF2 team, after being hired by Valve last summer.
Valve often features fan works on TF2's main blog as well.
The Soldier, firing/swing his weapon while standing on a control point will yell, "Stand! On! The! Point! Maggots!", and when ignited, might shout, "I am on fire!"
Parodying There Will Be Blood, the Scout has, "I. Eat. Your. Sandviches! I eat 'em up!"
Punny Name: Bots with certain names will tend to favor certain classes - for example, CreditToTeam usually spawns as an Engineer (the Heavy, upon being teleported, will declare: "Engineer is credit to team!").
It also affects their behavior slightly. A bot that takes the name of Weighted Companion Cube tends to just stand in spawn unless attacked.
Ragdoll Physics: Starting with the Spy vs Sniper update, certain characters in certain situations can die with a combination of this and animation.
Ragequit: Mocked by the Scout in one of his voice clips.
The Pyro has the "BarbeQueQ" achivement for making someone ragequit.
Quitting during humiliation or after becoming dominated is announced by some servers as "RAGE QUIT!"
Railing Kill: Where map design meets Ragdoll Physics, you can see this on any map where railings are incorporated:
The turbine point on Hydro.
The bases on Badlands.
The top-level inner circle on Nucleus.
Around point E on Steel.
The top floor balcony inside the final rooms on Fastlane.
In "Meet the Spy", the RED Spy kills a BLU Sniper, who falls over the railing behind him.
Heavies who get shot, stabbed, set on fire, bludgeoned, and take explosive damage in a life are awarded the appropriately-named "Rasputin" achievement.
Rated M for Manly: The Saxton Hale comics parody the "Man's Life" magazine from the forties.
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 to make your accessories Rainbow Pimp Gear.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Dominate opponents with some of the characters, and they will deliver these to their target.
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 the except the Force-a-Nature will damaged the player.
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. 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 members of the BLU team, whose eyes are visible, will have glowing red eyes and be completely immune to enemy attacks 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.
And now 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 Class" 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 fireproof. Without this, the Pyro would not be able to run forward and fire at the same time.
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!"
Respawn Point: Barring Arena mode, killed players later respawn in the locker rooms.
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.
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.
Risk Style Map: Territorial Control, definitely, but maps like Granary also could count.
Roof Hopping: Any class can do this, but usually those with special jumps (rocket jump, sentry jump, etc.) can run on roofs more often.
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.
Sprays do backfire on occasion, since eventually when the opposing team see the spray, they may start whaling wildly, as if they know there's a Spy hidden.
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.
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.
Score Screen: After each round, there's a list of the top three most valued players. 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.
Screams Like a Little Girl: Getting scared by either Zepheniah Mann's ghost or the Horseless Headless Horsemann results in a very unmanly scream.
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.
"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!
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!
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 2 weapons are shared between 3 classes) fitting into an all-encompassing art style.
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 serrated knife 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 since the gameplay bonus depended on the ultra-rare hats (before it was possible to craft them).
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. However, the Sniper's arrows can break if they hit another projectile.
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.
Sigmund Freud: He appears to be the original BLU Medic.
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...).
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-Demo war over an unlockable pair of boots, with the story reason being that RED and BLU do not tolerate friendships.
Slow Doors: The doors between points A, B, and C on Steel and the spawn point doors on Egypt.
Socialization Bonus: There are some achievements for playing with your Steam friends.
Soft Glass: The Demoman's bottle can break on a hit with a target, though whether it's broken or not makes no difference to damage output. The Sniper's Jarate always breaks on contact with something but never does any damage.
Soft Water: Falling from a distance that would normally damage you into deep water negates the damage.
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 team mate 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).
Spinventory: While choosing an item on the loadout screen, you can spin the character model to see how he looks.
The Sixties: Takes place during the late sixties - there's a heavy 60s espionage/industrial motif.
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.
Spread Shot: A lot of hitscan weapons that would make contact via a bullet-based hitbox (guns) work like this, which is why weapons like shotguns do less damage at a range. The pellets don't all hit the target.
Sprint Meter: There are various meters, depending on weapons in one's loadout.
A Pyro with the Gas Jockey's Gear set (Degreaser, Powerjack, and Attendant) gives him a speed boost. The Heavy gets the Gloves of Running Urgently, which give a speed boost when wielded at the cost of 6 health per second, the Demoman's Chargin' Targe allows you to charge forward once every 10 or so seconds, which can be used as either a mobility boost or an attack buff (or both), and the Medic with the Quick-Fix can run at Scout Speed as he heals a Scout with it.
Spy From Weights And Measures: RED and BLU are supposedly demolitions and building companies respectively, but it's just a front. Even some of the townsfolk near the maps the mercenaries fight at know they're fighting over a spy base.
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!")
Fire (Pyro's Flamethrower and Flare Gun): Causes about 60 damage over a 10 seconds. Reveals cloaked and disguised 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 speed and disables attacks and other special moves.
Scared (Ghost/Headless Horsemann during Halloween): same as partial stun, with different special effects.
Attack disabled (The Razorback temporarily disables the Spy's knife when stabbed, and the whole losing team loses their weapons during Humiliation.)
Covered in Piss (Sniper, with Jarate or Sydney Sleeper): Temporary increase to damage received and cloak disabled.
Bleeding (Sniper's Tribalman's Shiv, Scout's Boston Basher and Three-Rune Blade, and Engineer's Southern Hospitality): Similar to being on fire, but only lasts for 6 seconds. Small Medpacks, Dispensers and Mediguns will heal you, but will not stop the bleeding.
Covered in Milk (Scout's Mad Milk): After hitting an enemy with it, all allies that attack the victim will receive 60% of the damage back as healing. Can be removed by going underwater.
Marked for Death (Scout's Fan O'War): After getting by the fan, you are marked with a floating skull and crossbones and all damage taken is in mini-crits. Goes away after around fifteen seconds, by death, or if the scout marks someone else for death. The mark can be concealed by cloaking or disguising as the spy.
Stat-O-Vision: Players can see their allies' health, the health of allied buildings, and the charge level of allied Medics. Medics always see the health of their healing target, and charge level if the teammate's a Medic. Spies can see the names and health of enemy players and buildings. A Medic with the Solemn Vow equipped can also see enemy names and health.
Status Buff: Like the status effects, these also stack.
Overhealed: Medics can heal teammates to 150% of their starting health. The Dalokohs bar increase the eater's hp by 50.
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.
One of the Scout's secondary-slot unlockables is an energy drink that grants him mini-crits against all enemies. 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 Glass Cannon or, with the Warrior's Spirit (that increase your strength by 30% BEFORE the minicrits), a GlassLightning Bruiser.
The Soldier can cause allies within range to have mini-crits for a short while with his unlockable Buff Banner.
Finally, being on the winning team during Humiliation grants the player critical hits until the period ends.
Invulnerable: the standard medigun's ÜberCharge.
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 new Medigun, The Quickfix, gives a 300% bonus to health regen and as an added bonus, prevents all movement debuffs and knockback.
Stealth Expert: The Spy in particular, but any class can be played in a sneaky fashion (yes, even the Heavy Weapons Guy).
Stealth Pun: The briefcase in CTF probably contains very bureaucratic documents. Of course it has a paper trail.
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.
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.
Many of the expansion items were suggested by fans. Before the Huntsman was released, there had been a 40+ page thread discussing a bow and arrow for the sniper on the official forums. The most requested ones were the Heavy's sandvich and the Scout's Bonk Energy drink. The Spy's Dead Ringer (cloak and leave behind a corpse) was actually programmed in on some fan-altered servers before Valve implemented the idea into the regular game.
Several of the hats, such as the Scout's Bonk Helmet and the Pyro's Brigade Helmet, were originally created by a group of highly talented modelers whom Valve took interest in. Although Valve had already planned to include similar hats in future updates, they liked them so much that they based their versions off the custom models.
The King of the Hill gameplay mode was originally a custom mod done by the No Heroes TF2 community before Valve implemented a slightly modified version as an official gameplay mode.
Similarly, the Payload mode is based on the fan-made map Happycow.
Valve has also opened a submission site for custom avatars and items.
As of the Über update, the fan terms "Demoknight" and "Pocket Medic" have been accepted into canon.
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 occured 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.
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 fin 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. (For example, Kritz Medics tend to favor Demomen.)
Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Sentries giving you trouble? Get a spy to sap them. Spy sappin' your stuff? Use Pyros to weed them out. And so on and so forth.
There's even an achievement for backstabbing somebody who then switches to Pyro before they respawn.
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 uptate, 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.
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.
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 to Himself: The Heavy and the Demoman share the same voice actor, while the Spy and the Pyro share another.
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.
Teasing Creator: Valve on the gender of the Pyro and on the timing/content of future updates.
Technicolor Fire: Depending on the player's team affiliation, when set on fire, he'll glow red or blue.
The airblast has inspired game modes, too. Namely, pyro dodgeball.
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.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Averted. The AI player bots in offline practice modes (and may also be 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.
Although the 'death stare' they give to uncloaked, disguised spies (even with your own side's disguises) before firing is a tell-tale sign that they're only being held back by some fairly visible programming. The Snipers on hard are also difficult to beat.
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.
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 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 used when decapitating an enemy Demoman.
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). Backstab: Anywhere from 750 (Scouts, Snipers, Engineers, other Spies) to 1800 health (Heavy). Truly, there is not kill like overkill.
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.
The Unfavorite: The Engineer from a developer stand point. Is the only class to only have one class update and also has the least amount of hats. Lampshaded by Valve during the Über Update when they actively trolled the Engineer fandom by rubbing their nose in the fact that they were the only class to get nothing during the update.
Unexpected Gameplay Change: The 2010 Halloween event spawned the Horseless Headless Horsemann, a raid boss. The 2011 Halloween event gave players MONOCULUS!.
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".
Universal Ammunition: Picking up dropped weapons gives your current weapon more ammo and Cloak, if you're a Spy. Destroyed stickybombs, buildings, and sappers also provide ammunition.
In the supplemental comics, there's also Australium, a metal that turns anyone who is in contact with it into a mustachio'd, muscle-bound body builder (even if female), and was responsible for Australia's current global dominance.
Unorthodox Reload: Every class has at least one unusual reload animation. See that page for details.
Unstable Equilibrium: Teams doing good on Control Point maps not only get more of the map to use as an extension of their base, they also get quicker respawn times, as well, while the enemy team gets slower respawn times. The developers do not like stalemates.
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.
Useless Accessory: The Hats. The ones that provide set bonuses have a use by proxy, but no singular effect. The only other hat that has a use (albeit a very specific one)
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."
Vendor Trash: Duplicate weapons and hats are often used in crafting or trading to make sure they don't take up space in the backpack.
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.
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.
"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!"
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.
Virtual Paper Doll: Along with the weapons in the loadout, there's a hat slot, two misc. slots, and an action slot. 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 shoot or 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.
Fire, Bleeding, Mad Milk, and 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.
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.
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.
Anti-Poop Socking: 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. One can also idle by simply starting a map on their own computer and joining any team, including Spectator.
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.
Weapon of Choice: Each class has both weapons and personality that reflect their gameplay.
Improbable Weapon User: Some of the classes use weapons such as shovels, pickaxes, bonesaws, a bottle, real bear arms tied to the user's fists, jars of piss and milk (separate, of course), a rake, a giant candy cane and, best of all, a FISH.
Weekend Warriors: These players exist of course, though they probably might not want to admit it. There's also a badge called Mercenary that used to be called Weekend Warrior, for any players who started playing the game a year after its initial release and onward. The implication that players played only on weekends or didn't have a lot of play time was seen as derogatory, so Valve changed the name.
Weird Moon: Before a patch removed most of them, Double Cross inexplicably had seven moons in its skybox.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Cosmetic?: When Team Fortress 2 first released alternative weapons, the only way to get them was to complete various achievements for the class in question. The achievements system is still in place, but the items can now drop, and you can trade, craft, or just buy them.
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.
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.
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.
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 "It's a long story, but Part One, his roommate is a magician".
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".
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.
You Always Hear The Bullet: You're liable to hear a loud, meaty THWACK when someone gets a critical hit on you.
You can turn this on to ensure that your character's hit something, which is signified by a bell ding 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 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 - unless the attacking team is supremely incompetent, they will almost always make it to the second-to-last control point.
"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!"
Zerg Rush: Stacking a team with Scouts, usually for CP matches. Engineers are required to counter this. Heavy + Medic teams were - and still are - feared by all.
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