History TeamFortress2 / TropesAToG

*** The less mercenaries that are alive in the round, the more damage that they can deal to Hale. If there are only three remaining, they get a permanent mini-crit boost, with the last one standing receiving full crits instead.

** Prior to Scream Fortress 2015, trolls would deliberately kill players while everyone focused on the boss who would give special achievements on death. From 2016 onwards, Valve servers now enforce truces while a boss is on the field (MONOCULUS! on Eyeaduct and Merasmus on Ghost Fort). [=PvP=] is enabled immediately after the boss' death, so you can still wind up denied the hat because some jerk on the other team killed you off.[[note]]{{Justified}}; [=PvP=] resumes immediately afterwards so that [[{{Griefer}} one person]] can't hide in Skull Island and have the grace period stall out the match as the game waits for him to get the hat.[[/note]]

** The Dead Ringer for the Spy, a Watch that allows its user to fake their own death, fake death message in the kill feed, fake corpse and everything. Upon activation, any afterburn or bleed damage is removed, and any further damage will be reduced during the cloak. Sounds awesome, right? Not so fast, as the Dead Ringer has a series of drawbacks. A full cloak meter is required to activate it, half if it is drained just by activating it and unlike the other Watches, it cannot be recharged using ammo kits. The Dead Ringer's decloak sound is also significantly louder than those of the other Watches and rather distinct, giving away its user. Last but not least, you can only really use the Dead Ringer at low health to make the fake death believable, as otherwise it would look like the spy just got one shot by a weapon that is usually incapibale of doing so, and in that scenario, any semi-skilled player should instantly realise what's going on.

* ExcusePlot:
** Two corporations erect fortresses 10 yards from each other (and sometimes in the same building) and then send waves of men to kill each other to steal a briefcase out of the opposing fort's basement. Alternately, one corporation sends waves of men from an encampment to kill more waves of men sent by another corporation and capture their fortress and related choke points. This has been expanded upon, mostly for humor. Weapons-monger and insane billionaire Zepheniah Mann goes to the US from Europe to harvest precious gravel, but dies -- leaving his twin identical younger sons Blutarch and Redmond to fight each other for all eternity. Meanwhile, he leaves his insane weapons factory to the ridiculously manly Australian Hale family. HilarityEnsues.

* EyeScream: MONOCULUS! You have this giant eyeball that shoots explosive eyes that act like critical rockets, see, and you have to ''attack'' it, before it kills you. The backstory introduced in the comic explains how Red Demoman lost his eye. MONOCULUS! '''is''' his eye! It doesn't help that from the front, MONOCULUS! looks like the average giant eyeball monster, but [[{{Gorn}} from the back...]]

** Related to this, the earliest major updates for the game generally focused on adding new weapons and achievements for one specific class - to the point one major update advertised itself as the "Classless Update" because the only changes to the classes were the addition of more hats. Even then, the first class-specific update was noticeably different from later ones for a number of reasons, the first and most visible being that it was named the "Gold Rush" update rather than something related to the Medic, the class it focused on; later class-specific updates would be named after the class in question, save the shared one for Demoman and Soldier, which was named the "WAR! Update" owing to the backstory given for the update. The real oddities lie in what came with the update: for one, acquiring all three of the Medic's new weapons originally required you to achieve ''[[HundredPercentCompletion all]]'' of the new Medic achievements, and for two, despite the necessity of unlocking all of them to get all three new weapons, many of the achievements were designed around the idea of AwesomeButImpractical stunts the Medic could ''theoretically'' achieve in a game under very specific circumstances, most commonly getting several kills on specific classes with a specific weapon or assisting another class as they do something very specific under the effects of your medigun, and not on what the Medic was actually ''designed'' to be doing 99% of the time, which (as is evident by the class's name but was apparently not so evident to the developers in April 2008) is healing people.

** Related to this, the earliest major updates for the game generally focused on adding new weapons and achievements for one specific class - to the point one major update advertised itself as the "Classless Update" because the only changes to the classes were the addition of more hats. Even then, the first class-specific update was noticeably different from later ones for a number of reasons, the first and most visible being that it was named the "Gold Rush" update rather than something related to the Medic, the class it focused on; later class-specific updates would be named after the class in question, save the shared one for Demoman and Soldier, which was named the "WAR! Update" owing to the backstory given for the update. The real oddities lie in what came with the update: for one, acquiring all three of the Medic's new weapons originally required you to achieve ''[[HundredPercentCompletion all]]'' of the new Medic achievements, and for two, many of the achievements were designed around the idea of AwesomeButImpractical stunts the Medic could ''theoretically'' achieve in a game under very specific circumstances, most commonly getting several kills on specific classes with a specific weapon or assisting another class as they do something very specific under the effects of your medigun, and not on what the Medic was actually ''designed'' to be doing 99% of the time.
** Many of the weapons and hats released in the earlier updates are just slight alterations of the stock versions. The Backburner is just the normal Flame Thrower with a special muzzle, Natascha is the normal minigun but [[PaletteSwap black]] and with an ammo belt on its side, and the Kritzkreig is the standard Medi-Gun with a different barrel, to name a few. Then there's the early hats, many of which are just normal hats with some additions (like the Soldier's Stash, Mining Light, and Trophy Belt hats) or [[YouHaveResearchedBreathing removing the class's existing hat]]. Later hats and items have become much more diverse.

** In "Meet the Soldier", the Soldier is supposed to be considered an idiot for thinking [[Literature/TheArtOfWarSunTzu Sun Tzu]] was behind Noah's Ark and the namesake of zoos. Comics and {{Easter Egg}}s introduced in later updates would reveal [=TF2=]'s universe has a very ridiculous history, where, among other things, something as mundane as stairs wasn't invented until the 1800s and {{Rocket Jump}}ing was necessary to go up a floor beforehand.

** In the Summer 2013 update, the Scout got a varsity jacket cosmetic called "Bigg Mann on Campus". In the Smissmas 2023, the Heavy got one called "Bigg''er'' Mann on Campus".

** In the Summer 2013 update, the Scout got a varsity jacket cosmetic called "Bigg Mann on Campus". In the Smissmas 2023, the Heavy got one called "Bigg*er* Mann on Campus".

* ContinuityNod: Gray Mann being the announcer for Versus Saxton Hale mode as well as the new CEO of Mann Co [[BadBoss and later firing the mercenaries whether they win or lose the mode]] is a reference to the first "Mann Co No More" comic " Ring of Fired".