WMG / Team Fortress 2 Miscellaneous

As a Wild Mass Guessing subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Assorted Tinfoil Hat Ramblings

Team Fortress 2(the game and the comics related to it)is a Steven Universe AU

One in which Gems are an extinct race, Pyro is actually Pyrite(the last Gem who hides herself in a suit to prevent human from discovering that she's an alien), and Australium is either Gem technology or the product of a Gem's inherent magical powers.

Baby Face's Blaster is loaded with birdshot.

It would explain both the damage penalty(good luck actually killing anything with it) and the tighter spread of its pellets.

• As of the recent Two-Cities Update, it has been buffed to normal damage, at the price of only 4 bullets per clip, so note that WMG is only applicable to pre-buff BFB.

The Intelligence is actually a Porn Stash

It would explain why everyone fights to defend it with their lives, because there's 8 guys(Pyro aside) all cooped up together in the desert with no female contact other than an angry lady yelling at them over the intercom.

The Intelligence is nothing of importance

Not since the beginning, of course (back when the game was new, and the story was just "two companies make their decisions by fighting"), but once we actually learned about the Gravel Wars, The Mann Brothers, and the Administrator's interest in keeping them at an eternal stalemate, it only stands to reason that she'd conjure up excuses for more pointless battles.After all, it's not like Redmond or Blutarch still had any tricks or advantages that the other hadn't outright copied. What secrets are left to steal?

• Paradoxically, the fact that the intelligence is pointless. In other words, it's important only because the administrator says it's important.

Gordon Freeman exists in the TF2 universe...

...but since Australia holds a monopoly on the world's technological development, he's a grizzled old airboat captain who offers tourists rides. There's a sign saying "Freeman Airboat Tours" on the Mountain Lab and Lakeside maps. Clearly many people come from near and far to see the classes blow each other up.

• Someone also found something interesting in the Mann vs Machine comic.
  • Alternatively...

Freeman's Mind is the Team Fortress timeline version of Half-Life.

Incompetent workers and soldiers? Less-than-ideal but still entertaining hero? Ridiculous architecture? Just give it a splash of TF2 paint and it matches!

Medieval Mode isn't actually set in medieval times

The map is just an amusement park that the teams stumbled upon. Being largely a a collection of lunatics, they merely assume that they're in the middle ages, and think that using guns will cause some sort of present-day-altering butterfly effect.

• Y'know, my brother played Medieval Mode and found a computer. Or whatever that thing is. Y'know, one of those computer-things that are everywhere in 2Fort. If you want to see it yourself, it's behind a half open door in the RED spawn.
• To support the amusement park idea: Around DeGroot Keep, there are a total of three computer terminals visible, there's a portrait of the Demoman's family, the signs are in modern English, there are sirens and control points and modern-day ammo pickups, and there's even a ticket booth model in the game's files, all suggesting the teams are in some medieval simulation.
• Probably they were sent to the medieval times for real but found their way back to the 1960's. They enjoyed their experience during the medieval times so much, they decide to (somewhat wacky and off) re-enact their adventures at one of the De Groot family castle which has now since become both a tourist attraction and a secret base for RED.

Every G Mod video and YTPMV actually happened in-universe.

Maybe they have too much free time. Maybe I have too much free time.

The battles are entertainment in-universe

Of the gladiatorial variety. The whole "two corporations secretly ruling the world" thing is just a storyline cooked up by the fight organizers. Seriously, it's pretty hard to keep a pitched gunfight secret, not to mention the mercenaries themselves—no sensible person would hire people that crazy.

• Well, a number of the maps are in far-off, abandoned locations, and the official description for one actually mentions people going out to watch the teams fight. As for the mercenaries themselves... well, do the brothers Mann really seem like sensible people to you?

The game shares a universe with The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Inspired by these links. It certainly would explain the Fantasy Kitchen Sink being gradually added to the gameplay.

Doc Brown is responsible for the Anachronism Stew in TF2.

Poker Night at the Inventory features a cameo by Trixie Trotter from Telltale's BTTF game, thus confirming that (at least in the Inventory continuity) it's in the same universe as TF2. Doc Brown became friends with Engineer and Medic, and brought them back trinkets they'd possibly find useful, like iPods.

During spectator mode, you are playing the Announcer.

Or, since you can't issue orders, you could be playing Miss Pauling.

• As of recent events, it could be Gray Mann.

The Christmas cards are canon

Every Christmas(Smissmas?) the teams, perhaps coerced by their Engineers, call a truce between RED and BLU for the day and celebrate it together. The Administrator doesn't know about this which is why it keeps on happening, though it usually doesn't last more than half a day before they start trying to kill each other again.This guess incidentally means Sniper actually knows how to knit jumpers.

• Alternatively, the Christmas cards happened when the teams were all fired then re-hired to fight the robots.

If Valve HAD put in female versions of the classes, they would've had their own specific personalities, rather than being gender-swapped versions of the original males.

Just check out T03nemesis' DeviantArt page and search for "Team Fortress Fan Girls" to see what they may have looked like.

• Actually, here, I'll give links:
  • Scout◊
  • Soldier◊
  • Pyro◊
  • Demowoman◊
  • Heavy Weapons Gal◊
  • Engineer◊
  • Medic◊
  • Sniper◊
  • Spy◊
  • And here's all of 'em together!◊
    • See if you can put personalities to their appearances!

Little Jack from the Christmas comic will grow up into a badass mercenary

He's already seen the BLU team in action, had a conversation with Spy and killed a man. Perhaps he'll grow up to be a hired gun, even a Spy specifically!

• Expanding on this theory, the kids from the Merasmus/Monoculus comic will also become mercenaries, inspired by the gifts of tremendous amounts of cash/delicious life-affirming nicotine/human teeth.
• If we're adding all the kids in the canon, these girls◊ will become Pyros.

Pyro and Engie don't actually live together

When Engineer's house gets cleaved in half, he says they 'owe him a new house', not 'owe us' a new house. Maybe Pyro was just visiting for Smissmas.

• Considering a Solemn Vow was on the mantel, one Gunboat was hanging from the fireplace, and the reindeer-antler tree had Sniper's knives and Soldier's grenades on it, and the fact that the mercenaries have been seen living in one place before, it's a safe bet that the rest of the mercs live there too, but they were all elsewhere, or asleep.
  • When had they all been seen living in one place before? Even though I tend to think they live at their base, the comics never seem to show that. In my opinion, they were all just visiting for Smissmas, thus explaining the presence of their belongings, but had all gone to bed. Pyro was too excited about Smissmas to sleep, so Engie was reading him/her a bedtime story.
    • I might've been wrong, but I was going by the Meet The Director comic, where the Sniper, Soldier, Spy, Scout, and Heavy are all seen together in what I assumed was a RED barracks, and the Heavy mentions in Poker Night at the Inventory that he lives in a RED barracks.
    • Meet the Director takes place during Meet the Spy, which explains why they were all in the RED barracks. They were still on the job.
    • Given that supplemental comics also claim that the Soldier was Merasmus' roommate (and now possibly, though against his will, The Spy's) and that The Heavy lives in a big house with Sascha, presumably they live in the barracks while fighting and their own house/condominium/camper van when on break.
• If we’re going with the clone theory, this is just an abandoned house RED engie found, and one day, RED pyro came to visit.

Underneath the Pyro's gask mask and Spy's balaclava...

They wear a balaclava and a gas mask, respectively.

tr_walkway is the RED team's training mode

While the BLU team's training map is small and strict, the RED team's training map is large and open-ended.

There is going to be a video focusing on the BLU team.

When they're not being shot to smithereens, that is. The Announcer mentioned at the end of 'Meet the Director' she would hire another director to talk to the BLU team, so maybe we'll get a Meet the Team video where the BLU team defeats the RED one via the power of teamwork. (okay, maybe not that far)

• There has been one, sort of: the Mac Update video. That's the only video where the BLU team clearly don't lose. Yet. I posit that the whole RED team winning thing is a reference to Windows being represented by RED while Mac is represented by BLU. It totally makes sense.
  • Valve come off as pretty bipartisan when it comes to the PC/Mac/Linux thing. They wouldn't pick sides.

In the Team Fortress 2 universe, milliners live the high life

Either worshipped like gods or as high class aristocrats.

• And they're smart enough to invest their earnings by putting it into trust funds to help train espionage agents and mercenaries. The wheel of commerce keeps spinning.

Some of the characters have had dealings with magicians in the past.

We already know Merasmus exists and that he can send people back in time. But magic could also explain some of the cast's unnatural abilities, such as Medic's Regenerating Health, Pyro's Hadoken and the fact Heavy can kill people with his finger gun- they made deals with wizards. Or threatened wizards. Or are wizards. Or Pyro is Merasmus.

All the strange stuff in game can be explained using Australium

Basically, most of the things that are brought up in both this section and the Headscrater's one can be explained through the use of the wonder metal Australium.Though it's only been mentioned once (in the Loose Cannon comic), and it's barely explained there, what little we know of it points it to be psyco-mimetic; meaning, basically, whatever you want it to do, it will do. It also is apparently slightly radioactive, and this radiation causes physical changes in those who are exposed (most prominently the growing of impressive moustaches, huge muscles, and a patch of hair on their chest that's shaped like their homeland, as shown by Saxton Hale).Basically, my theory is this; everything in the merc's world (weapons, tool, the landscape, even the merc's themselves) either have Australium as part of their construction or have been exposed to a low level of Australium radiation.This explains;

Being able to get ammo from any dropped weapon by walking over it (Australium can change whatever material it's infused with into something else, instantly)

How the Engineer builds/repairs his buildings with his wrench (Austrailum can be "set" through focused thoughts, meaning that any exposure to more Australium will cause whatever it's in to revert to whatever state it was "set" in. In this case, the Engineer's "metal" is raw Australium, and as he hits his buildings he adds more to it, reverting the building back to it's original state. This is how upgrading works as well; Austrialium can have mutilple "sets", depending on how much Austrialium there is. More metal, it goes to a higher set.)

How the Dispenser, Medi-gun, and Bomb Cart work (the beam is basically Australium radiation, which (as above) sets it's target back to a "set" state, physically, mentally, and equimentally. Which is why the cart and dispenser can't overheal but the Medic can (he simply increases the output of radiation to move the patient to a higher "set", just like upgrading a building). Of course, they can't go beyond this second "set", which is why the medi-gun won't heal the Demoman's missing eye.)

Ubercharge (The Uber-device attached to each class's heart runs on Australium radiation, fed to it by the Medi-gun, and, when activated, covers the medic and patient in a "shell" of Australium radiation. This is why it takes time to charge up. The medic COULD theoretically force-feed the full radiation burst all at once...but the result would be similar to what happened to the Heavy's original heart, but on a full-body scale.)

Critical Hits (All weapons used by the merc's have Australium in them. Sometimes, the latent radiation will transfer to the ammunition, causing additional damage. They can also be created intentionally by feeding radiation into the ammuniction, as in the case of the Frontier Justice and Manmelter.)

The Sniper's rifle "Charge" (Basically, as the Sniper stays zoomed in, the rifle slowly feeds radiation to the round in the chamber, increasing the reactiveness of the gunpowder inside it. This results in a faster round, which does more damage)

Respawn (Upon death, the Australium content of the deceased merc is forcefully removed from the corpse by the machines inside each spawn point, and refromed according to (again) a "set".)

• To your credit, it WAS explicitly mentioned in 'Loose Canon' that cloaking and teleporting technologies were created because of Australium.

Team Fortress 2 is the Distaff Counterpart of Touhou Project

They both contain a mostly one gender cast of questionable sanity, have more stuff flying around than world war 2 and breeding pools for countless meme's.

• Also, hats.

How payload and control points work

The payload cart works as follows:

1. To move it forward, an operator (determined by fingerprint scan) simply presses a "forward" button. Each time the button is pressed, the cart moves forward a bit. During payload matches, the characters each remember to press the payload button every second or so, which, added together, causes the cart to move forward. The scout, being the hyperactive type he is, tend to jab the button much more often, increasing the speed at which he can move the cart.

2. When the cart is near an "enemy" it does not respond to commands to avoid accidents (explaining why it stops when an enemy is nearby.)

3. If the cart has not been given orders for some time, it moves back to a "safe spot", to avoid damage or accidents until further orders.

The way a control point works is similar, but instead involves pressing in a series of numbers to lock control and access to a particular group. The scout, being more hyperactive, is able to do this more quickly, and the point also "logs out" after a time a=to avoid accidents, identity theft, and such.

• Alternatively, Payload Carts and Control Points require Uber hearts to run. Carts have a dispenser, but instead of a regular healing/ammo dispenser, the healing runs on a weakened version of a Quick-Fix. Know how Ubercharge is built by healing people? Instead of the charge going to making whoever it heals invincible, the charge goes straight to powering the cart to move. When more people are near it, it can heal more people, get more charge, move faster. The scout, being incredibly quick, also has the Quick Fix's secondary effect apply to the cart-the cart speeds up to match his pace. Additionally, the reason why the cart automatically stops when an enemy gets too close is a safety precaution-you wouldn't want to accidentally heal the enemy team. Control Points work similarly, but the actual healing effect is far, far weaker, too weak to actually make a gameplay difference.

Mann Vs. Machine is a Batman Gambit by The Spy, The Administrator, and possibly The Engie to create a true Forever War.

In rough order of events:

• The Engineer begins developing a "mobile sentry", as evidenced by the robot head. It goes through several phases - a standard sentry that moves on its own, an automated spy-checker, etc. - before eventually ending up as a prototype Tenth Class.
• In the Blood Brothers comic, Redmond and Blutarch are negotiating a truce that they may produce heirs. But the heirs may not be as bloodthirsty and stupid as the brothers, meaning a possible end to the war.
• The Administrator, having found out about this in advance, sends The Spy to disguise himself as the nonexistent Gray Mann. She also has Miss Pauling falsify the birth certificate and will to "prove" Gray's existence.
• Once the brothers have been offed, the Tenth Class prototype is retrofitted into the various robots. Engie also whips up a quick tank design - but since it's so rushed (and to make sure the mercs stand a chance against it), it has no weapons.

The result? The Administrator moves from her cushy position at RED and BLU to a cushier position at Mann Co.; Spy, Engie, and all their friends get to keep fighting forever; and careful embezzlement and money laundering sets up an infinite feedback loop of money from Mann Co. to the conspiracy to the mercs to Mann Co. again.

The next Mann vs. Machine Map will be The Maze...

Think about it; Mann Co. is a huge company, that can't only have 3 areas that need defending, right? And we haven't seen any Engineer Bots yet, right? Well, here's what I am thinking the next level for Mann Vs. Machine will be;

Gray Mann is actually winning this war. Sure, he failed getting Coal Town and Mannworks, but really, he has so many robots, that the odds are, he has more territory then Mann Co. currently has. Not only is Gray winning, he's securing his winnings with Engineer Robots (Which explains why they haven't appeared at Mannworks and Coal Town and Decoy). What can Saxton do to reclaim his losses? Why obviously, blow them to kingdom come!

If Mannworks and Coal Town have bomb holes, then so do his other areas. The next maps will be a reverse of how Mannworks/Coal Town/Decoy have worked; Instead of waves upon waves of Robots coming to kill you and you defending the territory, your carrying a bomb to destroy territory Gray has already taken!

Of Course, the area that Gray actually took over can't be a cake walk to win. Since all the maps have been in a desert, this new map will be set in a Gorge; a crazy long gorge with dozens of dead ends and false exits. At the end of every dead end will be an Engineer with a Sentry ready to blow your brains out! And worse still, Special Offensive Engineers, known as "Tin-1000 Engineers" (With Frontier Justice, Gunslinger, Lugermorphs, and Mini-Sentries), will be patrolling the gorges and coming after you in waves.

However, if you don't go the wrong way, and you survive long enough to carry the bomb straight to the actual factory, be prepared to fight Tin-1000 Engineer Robots, Sentries and Mini-Sentries, Giant Engineers who use extra-powerful Short Circuits ('Shocking Discovery Engineer'), and Modified Tanks that shoot at you and charge for your base of attack (Basically Spawn Camping you). If you manage to throw a bomb down into the base, however, the Robots will be forced to retreat, and you can claim all the bounty within the now ruined base; Including some new Engineer weapons that Mann Co. was working on!

The reason Medic and Heavy sound odd…

They are both terrified of robots, having both been exposed to them in childhood. Medic’s parents where kidnapped to provide “brains” for a Nazi-funded robotics program. Years later, the Soviets would attempt the same thing with Heavy’s mother and three sisters. However, Heavy was able to protect his family but Medic could not. Seeing the Robots again inspire fear in Medic and pure rage in Heavy. Painful memories are being pulled up for both of them, but they deal with them differently.

• Further Proof comes in the “Mann vs. Machine” video. Heavy is the first to head out to fight the robots because he knows that is he does not stop the robots, no one else will. Medic only gains to resolve to join up once he sees everyone else doing it. Heavy also seems to have the angriest face while waiting for the robots to attack, he’s out for their blood… or oil if the case may be.
  • Their cash. The robots run on piles of money.

Soldier KNEW about the robots coming.

His Halloween costume wasn’t just a fun getup, it was his disguise if he needed to escape! He tried to tell the other team members, but no one believed him because, well, he’s Soldier. Only when Spy got into the “TOP SECRET” room and saw the photos for himself did he realize the robots were coming.

• Plus, the "TOP SECRET" room doors are being guarded by Soldiers.

The Alternate Reality Game is not done yet...

The ARG that started in Pyromania is not done yet. 6 Of the Items were burned during Pyromania, and the Damaged Capacitor has shown the world the horror of Robots as of Mann vs. Machine. But there still remains one item that we have not been able to piece into the puzzle just yet. The Secret Diary still has not been opened, still has not revealed what lies within its contents, and Valve wouldn't throw in a completely useless item for no reason (Even the Goldfish, the thing that had no real connection to the Pyro or Monkeynaught Poopy Joe or Robots, served it's purpose as ashes). The Diary will open up soon... But what is in it? Will be up for Valve to decide... —Dingo Walley

Something has happened to Australia and its cash of Australium.

In Loose Canon, we see Australia as it was some 70 years before the game setting. We see that it is a futuristic industrialized utopia where everyone -including women- are big muscled macho-men with mustaches. This of course is attributed to their exposure to Australium.Now, fast forward to the modern day TF2 setting. Notice how the only Australians we see (Sniper and his parents) are neither ripped or moustachioed. Nor is what we see of present-day Australia extremely futuristic or even really industrialized. Plus, the director claims Australians are "victimized" or at least discriminated against, something that would be unlikely if Australia was still a huge world power.So what happened exactly? Perhaps a war? Or did they just run out of it?

• Saxton Hale probably gets a pass since TF2 industries apparently owns a supply of Australium. Plus genetics.
• It's possible that only Sniper is "victimized", because he's kind of a misfit and a runt compared to other Australians. The Director's comment about "the role society has shackled you with as an Australian" could easily be taken to imply that Sniper's problem is just that he doesn't fit the expectations for Australians, not necessarily that Aussies have a bad lot in life generally.

The Final Boss of Mann Vs. Machine will be Gray piloting a giant Saxton Hale robot.

At some point, Mann Vs. Machine will stop being updated. However, to bring the robot slaughter to a proper close, once a player finishes their Tour of Duty, they gain access to a new, optional map that involves Gray losing his mind and trying to kill the mercs himself whilst piloting the aforementioned robot. 9 players fight the boss together, only one of each class can be used, and Gray will use attacks and patterns to force the team to work together.

The "robot rebellion" game mode will play like StarCraft.

With the leader Heavybot of the rebellion (being controlled by a player) controlling the Mann Co. carrier tank and building new robots using Credits to fight alongside the normal Mercs, in addition to constructing Mann Co. Stores and research facilities for revenue and upgrades to both the Mercs and the Robots. Cue thousands of fully-upgraded Giant Rapid Fire Soldiers (with similar amounts of Über Medics and Steel Gauntlets as support) being summoned to take down a single group of Scoutbots.

Spy got himself bit by a zombie.

Part of the Halloween special features zombies. On the main blog page, Spy’s head has been replaced by a skull. This is to signify that he is accidentally responsible for the zombies. Seems zombies are attracted to the smell of tobacco. One bit him, he bit medic, medic bit heavy, heavy bit engie, engie bit scout, scout bit soldier, soldier bit sniper,sniper bit demoman and demoman bit pyro.

• How would pyro bite anyone though, with his/her face covered?
  • Pyro can eat consumables Heavy drops. Presumably s/he pulls the bottom of the mask up when necessary, Rorschach style.
• Variation; the zombie spy's deadringer allowed him to bite his team-mates, as it detected he was "dead" and constantly created decoys.

Barnabus Hale is Sasha Nein's father.

Eerily similar character designs, both lost a woman they loved, both games written by Eric Wolpaw and Chet Falisek...

Cracky Pop◊ contains crack cocaine.

It's an obvious parody of Coca-Cola and its ads from the 50's, and considering Coca-Cola used to contain trace amounts of cocaine, plus the rather... "questionable" practices of RED and BLU, it's no stretch of the imagination that they'd put something super-addictive in their soda to boost sales.

The Mad Milk IS milk

But the source suffers from Mad Cow Disease.

MONOCULUS Is related to Peeps.

MONOCULUS married another giant floating eyeball and gave birth to Peeps. Alternatively, Peeps is another eye of another person who opened the Bombinomicon.

• The person who opened the Bombinomicon became an expert with bombs. Maybe Peeps is from someone who open Merasmus' telemarketing guide?

The entire Gravel Wars thing was merely training for Mann vs Machine.

When the Administrator and Saxton Hale realized Gray Mann's true intentions, they decided to hire the two teams of nine mercenaries, made up of brothers, cousins or just clones. The fighting was simply a huge training session that lasted for years, not a forever war. The classes got to know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and all the non-stock weapons were simply Mann. Co copies of Gray Mann's weapons for his robots. Eventually, when it was time, the mercenaries, now experienced, were sent to fight the robots, and did a damn good job of it. Oh, and the Halloween Bosses? The VS Saxton Hale mode? These were simply more training for the huge special robot mooks. Which means, Merasmus was paid to fight.

Future Engineer is foreshadowing the Borderlands 2 Vs Team Fortress 2 update.

Because reasons.

Miss Pauling is The Administrator's illegitimate daughter.

At some point, the Admin got involved with a young worker of her, which lead her to get pregnant, due to her status as descendant of a wealthy family and obsession with her job, she decided to give the child to adoption, however, she never forgot about it even a second, years later, when Miss Pauling applied for a job at TF Industries, she had to review her application as part of her job, realizing the matching age and the fact Pauling is adopted, she investigated further, eventually finding out that she was, in fact, her daughter, at that point, The Administrator decided to give a very well-paying job (which is still pale in comparison to her birthright) as her personal assistant right away, both to ensure she would never have money troubles and to allow her to get at least a little bit close to her without revealing the truth, The Admin, however, did not expect the conflicts between Blutarch and Redmond to evolve the way they did, or even count on Gray Mann's existence, leading to Miss Pauling to get more involved with the conflict that The Admin was comfortable with.

Miss Pauling is Medic's illegitimate daughter.

Both Miss Pauling and the Medic have black hair, myopic vision, and a driven spirit, so there's some resemblance between father and daughter. After World War II, Medic left war-torn Germany and spent time in the U.S., where a romantic fling with an American woman produced an illegitimate daughter. He and his romantic partner put the baby up for adoption, but Medic financially supported the baby and her caretakers from afar through his mercenary work.

Gray's new allies are all TF2 Freaks, led by Christian Brutal Sniper.

Just look at the smile. At the silhouette. It's Christian Brutal Sniper! I'd bet my hats on it!

• Nope, jossed. From A Cold Day in Hell, that silhouette is actually Team Fortress Classic's Heavy, and the other allies are the other TFC mercs (barring TFC's Medic, who's replaced with OUR Medic.

The 2013 Halloween event will be a crossover with Left 4 Dead

After all, there were a lot of rumours about Left 4 Dead 3 this year, so maybe Valve will respond with this.

• Jossed as 2013 involved teams sending their employer's brother (i.e. RED sends Blutarch and BLU sends Redmond) to Hell on 'Helltower' (Halloween Hightower).

Gray is not Zepheniah's favorite

Wouldn't it seem odd that Zepheniah, who wanted to smother Gray at birth and charged Elizabeth with keeping the "miracle gravel" out of Gray's possession in his last will and testament, would refer to Gray as his favorite? No, Zepheniah still hates Gray, and he only tells Redmond and Blutarch that Gray is his favorite because he's trolling them. This is, after all, the same man who left the gravel pits to Redmond and Blutarch, knowing very well that doing this would mean they would wage Forever War with each other, as punishment for them convincing him to purchase the useless land. He's less concerned with parental favoritism as he is with making sure that his sons suffer, regardless of which one goes to Hell first, and he knows that telling them that they're not his favorite would cause them agony.

Gray really is Zepheniah's favorite

As an alternative to the above WMG, even though Zepheniah hated Gray in life, he has come to admire Gray in death. Whereas Redmond and Blutarch squandered their family fortune waging a Forever War over useless land, Gray has earned his own fortune and, in one fell swoop, single-handedly ended the Gravel Wars and is on the verge of claiming control of Mann Co. Tired of the incompetence of Redmond and Blutarch, Zepheniah finally sees that Gray has the potential to live up to the family name and has grown proud of him. Thus, when the ghosts of Redmond and Blutarch demand to know which son is Zepheniah's favorite, Zepheniah tells them the honest truth.

Olivia Mann is actually a robot.

Doesn't her apparent age seem odd when compared to that of her father? Not to mention we've never seen her mother, assuming she even has one. Plus it definitely sounds like something Gray Mann would do just to gain control of Mann Co.

• Seconded. This could be part of the "family records" plot point, i.e. they will show the real Olivia died decades ago. Corollary: if this is true, she will go One-Winged Angel upon the revelation of her secret (bonus points if she's this year's Halloween boss) and give Saxton Hale the fight of his life.

Olivia Mann is actually a midget or dwarf.

Gray adopted and paid her to change her last name to his and tricked everyone into believing she is his underage, young daughter including Saxton Hale knowing he would not fight a child as young as her.

• Alternately, she has a condition which keeps her from "growing up" she's a thirty-something year-old woman in the body of an eight-year-old.

At the end of the Team Fortress comic series, the guys go out too celebrate at a diner...

Only to find out that Gray Mann is running the diner, and the last line of the comic is Scout saying "Told ya, Frenchie!"

The Soldier has seen the Pyro's face.

He's got everyone else's heads, why not Pyro? He just hasn't said anything yet either due to him not realising that it's meant to be a mystery, or due to him not understanding the respawns and instead dismissing the dead Pyro as a decoy.

The Team Fortress Classic Medic is going to join the Fortress 2 team.

Well, the Fortress 2 Medic is otherwise indisposed, so they'll need a replacement.

The Red and Blu Medic collaborate frequently.

It's in neither's interest for either side to win the war, as it leaves one medic either dead or with no patients, and the other in a situation where the higher ups are no longer desperate enough to give the Medic free reign. So, in order to keep both in employment with a fresh stock of patients, they share their discoveries in order to maintain the stalemate. Hence why Blu Medic has a medigun identical to Red's home made one: He built it to his specifications.

The Medic is going to kill the Team Fortress Classic Heavy.

As the big face off reaches it's climax, the Heavy will demand an Ubercharge... Cue the TFC Heavy's chest exploding, and the Medic remarking on how he was earlier forbidden from implanting more baboon organs into the team.

In Meet the Spy, the Red Spy really was disguised as the Blue Spy.

He was carrying the Dead Ringer and Your Eternal Reward. Having previously killed the Blue Spy - which was not shown for obvious reasons of drama - he briefly turned invisible upon being shot by the soldier, backstabbed the scout and took his form while no-one was looking, and then abandoned the disguise on camera. This is why the Blue Spy actually "died" upon being shot by an ally.

Meet the Medic and Loose Canon occur at similar times.

Both are said to predate the regular play, and both demonstrate technologies that would become a staple of enforcing the stalemate in the Gravel Wars. The technology the Engineer acquires in Loose Canon is implied to be what he uses later in the game, and what he uses to revive dead players (and given that it even works on those who have been gibbed, it makes sense that it's some sort of cloning device rather than a life extender) could likely be used to duplicate players as well, allowing for the army of Blu soldiers. Either by negotiated exchange or a little help from the observing Miss Pauling, the technologies were subsequently exchanged, leading to the modern game.

Miss Pauling was wrong when she said the team had subnormal IQ levels

It turns out the team is very intelligent, It's just that Soldier scored so unbelievably low he skewed the team's average into the "subnormal" category.

• Engineers have to deal with multiple complex equations when constructing gear, he does have eleven PHDs after all.
• Medics need to master biochemistry, basic medical procedures, advanced medical procedures, all in all his doctorate is worth at least three of Engie's PHDs.
• Demoman warns us that the wrong chemicals could cause an unintended explosion. Given that he's rarely sober, and can still calculate the proper amounts, he's obviously relying on years worth of training.
• Other members of the team, such as Medic, Heavy, Spy and possibly Pyro don't speak english as their native tongue. learning additional languages (It's rumored that spy speaks at least twelve additional languages fluently) requires a significant amount of brain power.
• Years out in the bush have given Sniper survival skills. While these would not be recognized by any major university, they are still incredibly useful.
• Pyro has been shown to have a knack for business, making a company go gangbusters while out of commission.
  • The Scout seems to be a very quick learner, able to pick up on a lot of things the others do and say even in other languages, as well as being the only of the nine(as far as I know) to break the fourth wall. He also seems to have taught himself to read quite well before the Love and War video.
    • All perfectly explainable. They are all idiot savants with unusual levels of intelligence in one area but complete morons in others, especially, given their sociopathic tendencies, emotional intelligence. Come to think of it, even the Soldier must have some degree of special intelligence to maintain his unique military equipment.
    • Also it's likely that Pyroland caused Pyro to see the best option in a brighter color or he was running on blind luck the whole time.

The Mercenaries were trained to be able to stand in for one another.

At least, to an extent. They all seem to be able to use eachothers weapons and have some similarities in moves and tactics, some more than others. It also might explain a little why you can just up and change classes, even in the middle of battle.

Why you need a Hat to take off a Hat.

In this version of America, men wear hats to signify that they're upper class (or at least not poor). Examples? The Gentle Manne and Smelly Unfortunate, 7 of the 9 classes wear some kind of headgear, Redmond and Blutarch both wore bowlers when they were younger, the list continues. When you want to take off a hat, you have to use another hat to take it off (like Ritzy Rick's hair fixative or something similar), to still make people think that you're not poor.

Medic, Expiration Date, Sarcasm.

In Expiration Date, Spy asks how long until the tumors they assume are inside everybody will kill everyone. Medic then goes on a brief summary of the situation and concludes that they have exactly three days left to live. It's entirely possible, given his choice of words, that he was being utterly sarcastic and planned to get to the bottom of it the scientific way with Engineer later..."Well, let's see! We all use the teleporter, let's say six times a day, times four years, minus... we're not bread? Hmm...!"

Given he doesn't usually use sarcasm and prefers to be very honest and blunt with people, it'd make sense it slipped by everybody, even the viewers. Plus he just got a little carried away with the drama of declaring they had, of all times, exactly three days left to live because of massive burning tumors in their bodies.

In addition, some of the other characters may well have picked up on it, or been outright told, between the discovery and the third day, as during the Last Wish session absolutely nobody seemed to give a shit that they were terminal. Especially strange with Heavy, Sniper and Demo, whom all have families and/or parents to provide for.

The Demoman has a remote detonator inside his eyepatch.

He operates it by flexing his facial muscles, allowing him to detonate his stickybombs without lifting a finger.

The Medigun isn't magic.

Despite the fact that it heals people instantly. And from injuries that should have left them as a shapeless mass of meat and blood. And the fact that one of its component is piss. NNNNOPE! It's all science. ...Science. NOT MAGIC!

The Team Picked Their Own Class Names

Alternatively, Saxton Hale Picked their Class names Reservoir Dogs style

"Why am I scout""Because you Scream like a little girl! alright?"

The modern Medic is actually The Mole in the Classic team.

He was Genre Savvy enough to know that the Classic team would eventually be sent after the modern team, so he applied to replace the classic Medic, and he showed off his Medigun and bragged about the Ubercharge function. However, he conveniently left out the fact that the Ubercharge causes a human's heart to explode, and this will come into play later.

• Possible, although he did explain to Sniper that he only joined the Classic Team because he was looking for work. That said, he has proven to be a nuisance for the Classic Team without acting as the Mole, what with spending all of the medical budget on animal parts.

The teams are the characters of a first-person shooter game driven mad by being left on for years in a house that has been vacant for a long time

They act like lunatics, the Soldier says racist things (such as "Your white flags can't stop American bullets!"), and some things (such as Australium) are nonexistent.

The TF2 freaks are a monster movie DVD that someone left in the disc drive. The back stories of the classes were made up by the administrator (who is the computer's main account).

The mercs have had their lifespans extended

Team Fortress 2 has been going strong for almost a whole decade by the time of this writing. Assuming time flows in-game the same way it does in real life, it's kind of strange that none of the mercs have visibly aged much in 8 years. Perhaps there's a reason for that. It's stated that most of the weapons and equipment the mercs use day-to-day on the battlefield (such as teleportation and cloaking) are powered by austrailium. We also know that austrailium can grant people immortality by extending the lifespan. Perhaps, as a side-effect of using so much austrailium-powered tech on a near-constant basis, the mercs have had their lifespans extended. Not enough to be true immortals, but rather just enough to look a decade or two younger than they actually are.

Valve has no idea how the comics are going to end

The "Only two issues left" writing at the end of the fifth comic was based off the writers at Valve panicking as they realized they didn't know what to do.

The entire Forever War is just a ruse and the whole thing is a covert mercenary training camp

The Administrator just hires the survivors off to interested buyers, who are then instructed to refer to intended targets as "BLU"/"RED" agents.

when rd_asteroid is finished, it will revolve around a comic plot point

More specifically, an attempt to recover the australium sniper's real mom took with her into space.

the administrator, miss Pauling, and Olivia Mann are all the same person through the use of time travel

Though only the administrator is aware of it, altering her own past and moving them into the same time period to give herself more experience and knowledge, especially about Gray Mann. Gray using Olivia to his advantage to take over Mann Co. was an unforeseen side-effect, hence why she goes into hiding and instructs Miss Pauling to do the same until she can figure out her next move. This would also kind of explain Gray dying before taking over in future engie's time. The administrator's actions created an entirely new timeline!

Designing ones own model of the sentry gun is a rite of passage in the conagher family.

Despite the sentry being used by his father, and originally designed by his grandfather, the engineer still refers to it as designed by him. This discrepancy isn't explained directly, but the conaghers are a family of engineers, and the designs of the guns vary quite a bit, suggesting either this, or fraudulence on the engineer's part.

Straight, Gay, Bi, Asexual?

• Scout: Although he's still developing, Scout is clearly attracted to women. Without a father figure in the home he runs the risk of an Oedipus Complex, although all those brothers will help detract from it.
• Spy: Also straight. Quite likely to seek a stable relationship with Scout's mother.
• Demoman: Lives with his mother, and drinks heavily. Probably straight. If he can get over his drinking problem he will probably seek a stable relationship with a woman.
• Sniper: He had a normal upbringing, but ultimately disapproving parents. He prefers to keep people at arm's length, which actually fits in with Lowrie's claim. While probably straight, the Sniper is unlikely to show any interest in long-term relationships. He probably does use hookers a lot. The suggestion of sheep being a thing in his life simply adds to his sexual deviancy.
• Engineer: Now it gets complicated. Engie likes machines a lot more than he likes people, but his family upbringing would probably result in him marrying a woman, if just for show. He's probably Asexual and wouldn't display much interest in having sex for fun.
• Soldier: This guy just reeks of sexual repression. His behaviour around his room-mate, combined with his choice of the dominant Zhanna as a sexual partner (she demanded sex, he gave it; the relationship grew and stabilised rapidly), suggests that he's actually bisexual. That sort of thing probably stems from an extremely domineering, demanding father and an absence of a mother, which might result in him wanting his sexual partner to double as his mother figure.
• Medic: Sure, he acts all camp, but his behaviour around the males in his team is more of a working relationship, even with the Heavy. It's actually more likely that Medic is scared of women, putting on an act of what he thinks is homosexuality to keep them at arm's length, which might stem from a weak, submissive father and an abusive mother.
• Heavy: Forced to protect his family as the father/big brother figure to three sisters and a mother. He had a father in his youth but lost him. Heavy seems like the dominant side of a homosexual relationship, but his choice of career suggests he isn't necesserily interested in developing a sexual relationship.
• Pyro: Pyro displays that s/he's not emotionally mature enough to choose their preference yet. Possibly being Autistic, s/he maybe never will. Currently any relationships sought revolve around sibling and parental figures. However, bisexuality is also a high outcome in Pyro's future.
  • Wasn't Pyro looking at gay porn in "Expiration Date"?
    • Then again Pyrovision...

After Team Fortress #7, the game will be shut down.

An online game can only go on for so long before it peters out and dies. Team Fortress 2 is one such game that has been going for almost ten years, and there weren't many big updates in 2016. A combination of a broken matchmaking system, no new weapons, nothing but overpriced cosmetics, and of course, the release of Overwatch, have all caused the game's popularity to decrease (at least until Jungle Inferno rectified some of the issues). Now, Valve is wrapping up the story, answering all questions, and then giving the game a retirement. No use in continuing to keep the servers up without constant updates.

After Issue 7 drops, Valve will announce that the story is complete, and that all servers will shut down on a given date, thanking players for ten years of loyalty. On the date of shutdown, Valve will shutdown all servers except one, where players can come and have one last fight against Gabe Newell himself. At the end of the day, the server will shut down, all users will have the game removed from their Steam library, and it will be removed from the Steam Store forever. When trying to search for Team Fortress 2 on the Steam Store, users will be greeted with a page stating the game was shut down, and recommending they play Overwatch if they wanted to play a class-based shooter.

• haha NO. We all know Valve gets all dat money from dem hat sales.
• Lol far less successful games, games that have only a very small handful of people on everyday, still have their servers up and running. Even the original Team Fortress is still available on Steam! Not to mention even the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and its sequels servers are still running. TF2 isn't going to go any time soon. Even if, hypothetically, Valve stopped hosting official servers, there would be no reason to remove TF2 from the Steam store as the community would be able to host their own servers. Even Valve has no history at all closing down servers for their games, unlike, say, EA or Nexon.
• Valve might shut down their own servers but allow independent servers to keep running the game, as well as keep the item server up. Even with diminished returns, Team Fortress 2 is still far more profitable even if it's being run at just above bottom line.
• It's impossible how Valve going to far to recommend another game, unless if Valve was bought by say, Blizzard or Microsoft.
• Also another example would be Left 4 Dead 2. Support for the game and the first game is pretty much dead. The once bustling blog posts, since around 2014, were now filled with short update notes usually addressing fixes to several minor or persistent bugs, or the highly risky remote code execution exploit. Those games were now mostly run by community, in with the Workshop keep being bustling place due to the low price of the game.

In Team Fortress #7, Classic Engineer will undergo a Heel–Face Turn.

Whether or not he's convinced to by his son, though, is another question entirely.

Some members of Classic team were replaced before

We know that in TFC game Pyro was male (and he looked quite "male" in Catch Up comics), but now Pyro is female. We can assume that it was just a retcon and C!Pyro always been female, but there is simplier explanation. Original Pyro left the team (maybe he died, meybe he just retired) and Bea took his place.

Same could happen with C!Engie. Original C!Engineer was indeed Dell's father, but he left the team and current C!Engie that we met in comics is his replacement.

How much money the mercs are paid normally

• Upper limits:
  • Demoman in the War! comic made five million in a year, probably gross, not net. Given that this is either thirty or two hundred times as much as a doctor makes (depending on whether this was adjusted for inflation), the bulk is probably mercenary work.
• Lower limits:
  • Sniper in the Sniper vs. Spy update tells his mother that he makes more money than a doctor. In 1970, that's around $25,000 a year, or around $160,000 as of 2019.
  • Scout, over the course of at least five years, bought twelve cubic yards worth of Tom Jones memorabilia.
  • Heavy casually handed out a small child $7,000, ($45,000 adjusted for inflation). The Spy's tie cost $9,000.
• Muddying the issue:
  • Are Heavy's bullets considered a business expense?
  • Can the mercs take mercenary jobs outside of their fights?
  • Is everyone paid the same amount of money?

BLU is made out of clones

• Very simple they are all clones.
• This Explains why they die in droves in the videos and how more than one can show up at a time
• Also explains how the BLU soldier in the WAR update is a main character. There was a friendship be tween the two but they swapped the colors in their memories so it made sense
  • The reason that RED keeps winning is probably a case of Superior originals and luck

The mercs are the best, but they started as the worst

According to Ms. Pauling, the mercs are the best of the best, and have salaries to match. According to Saxton Hale and the Classics, they're also the laughingstocks of the mercenary world, and they were hired because they were the cheapest bidders. What if they were the worst, but they improved so quickly that their reputations couldn't catch up? Or they improved so fast that no one believes the reports? What makes them special? Respawn. You can have life and death battles without actually dying, and anyone who starts out bad can get better. Without Respawn, a bad mercenary will probably die quickly. The mercs were originally terrible, but by fighting each other over and over for years, they clawed their way up to being the best. The Administrator did this because she wanted a team that would be constantly underestimated, no matter what the rumors said. Also, she chose the lowest bidders, but pays them a much better salary.

• Corollaries: cheapest doesn't always mean worst; Demoman could have been hired over a nickel. Skill in their field doesn't mean skill in combat; Engineer and Medic are geniuses, but could have been terrible fighters.
• It's also much easier to convince the world that they're bad when they don't seem to have much work outside of fighting over gravel.

The mercs we actually play as are a Clone Army; the real mercs were busy elsewhere.

Ever notice how, outside Meet the Team videos, we pretty much never see more than one of a single mercenary at any given time? Even within Meet the Team, there seems to be only one of each class at a time on RED, whereas they seem to have suspiciously identical twins on BLU. Sometimes even entire squads of copies, in the case of BLU Soldiers.

Merasmus only obtained Soldier as a roommate due to a punny misunderstanding

Note that this WMG entry assumes there was a written agreement involved between the two parties. It's a bit of a stretch, but "Soldier" sounds a bit similar to "Soul Jar," something Merasmus would absolutely be interested in, and a term that the Soldier could potentially misspell his class name as. When he realizes his mistake, Merasmus doesn't have the heart to kick Soldier out of his castle until he really screws up.

The Invis-Watches are modified Stealth Boys.

Stealth Boys have a circular shape not unlike a typical clock face, and while most Stealth Boys are single-use, New Vegas shows the existence of a Mk. II model Stealth Boy that can be used infinitely. Perhaps the Invis-Watches are between the Mk. I and Mk. II, able to theoretically work forever but having to recharge in-between uses and making the user unable to attack.

Team Fortress Classic Pyro really is Beatrice. (Major Spoilers for Umineko Ahead!)

Not witch Beatrice since Sayo wasn't even born yet, but rather an alternate version of Beatrice Castiglioni. In the TF2 world, Kinzo died instead of her causing Bice to go insane. She found her way to America and was recruited in 1945 by Blutrarch after his Pyro died in battle. She channeled her grief into burning people, at least until she was fired, and eventually became cruel enough to inflict the torturous death she attempted on Soldier. It's also Bernkastel's fault this happened.

Australium is an isotope of gold.

The TF2 wiki shows the electronic configuration◊ of Australium, with 79 electrons, just like gold. However its nucleus contains two tiny kangaroos boxing each other. It's possible Australium is a colloquial name for this specific gold isotope, which could be named gold-A (for Australia) to distinguish it from gold-197.