Story and lore:
Non-playable characters that appear in shorts and comics, hell even
concepts, have a tendency to become this due to them still standing out as a
Cast of Snowflakes.
- Ganymede, the bird that follows Bastion around everywhere, is unexpectedly popular, mostly due to being very cute or being a factor of Bastion being a Memetic Psychopath thanks to how people find it hard to face it (see below). Its appearance and role in The Last Bastion only served to further skyrocket its popularity.
- Emily from "Reflections" is gaining a fanbase due to being Tracer's girlfriend.
- Efi Oladele, the preteen robotics genius who created Orisa, became this as soon as she showed up and stayed popular even after being revealed to not be the 24th playable hero.
- Gérard Lacroix is quite popular with fans due to being a core part his wife Amélie's, or rather, Widowmaker's tragic origin story, appearing in a spray that shows a pre-brainwashed/pre-transformed Amélie back when she was a civilian, and bringing out the human side in the otherwise sadistic Widowmaker. Many fancomics were made featuring him when he was alive or a What If? if he survived, giving him a suave personality. In fact, there are quite a few who hope that he has survived somehow and will be Promoted to Playable in the future.
- The Queen of Junkertown. Even when she had never been directly featured on screen and her only appearance was as a voice in the Junkertown map reveal, her gloriously hammy and charismatic voice acting had already managed to capture the hearts and imagination of many players. Then a poster featuring her
was discovered in the Junkertown map, and her popularity became even greater. Some are even hoping that she becomes a playable Hero somewhere down the line, especially since her axe and spear are both found next to her throne at the end of the Junkertown map. She would finally be announced at the 2022 Summer Games Fest to become a playable character as part of Overwatch 2, to the rejoicing of everyone. - Pachimari the Tamanegi-Teko! The adorable onion-octopus… thing who appears to be the Series Mascot for an in-story Merchandise-Driven franchise. The weird little thing has achieved enough popularity with the community to warrant real merchandise thanks to its tongue-in-cheek design as a parody of cutesy Japanese mascot series and the humorous reoccurring gag of Roadhog's infatuation with it.
- The initially-nameless female Blackwatch pilot from Retribution (later revealed to be named Fio) quickly gained fans for her Deadpan Snarker tendencies.
- The four MEKA pilots aside from D.Va seen in Shooting Star, despite only being shown and mentioned for a few seconds, garnered a massive amount of interest once they were revealed, with fans instantly jumping to theorize their personalities and character dynamics simply from their names, appearances, and unique mech designs.
- The Deadlock gang's unnamed omnic sniper in the "Reunion" short quickly became popular thanks to their badass design and for (much like B.O.B. himself) being another criminal-aligned omnic, something the fanbase loves. Some people even hope that they're Promoted to Playable.
Gameplay:
- A lot of the event-exclusive character skins are so popular among their players that it is considered mandatory to have that skin at least in reserve. Most notable examples include: "Witch" Mercy, "Yeti" Winston, "Palaquin" D.Va, "Dr. Junkenstein" Junkrat, "Track-and-Field" Tracer, "Jazzy" Lúcio, and "Chang'e"/"Luna" Mei.
- The Grillmaster: 76 skin released for the 2017 Summer Games event exploded in popularity thanks to whole-heartedly embracing the "Dad: 76" meme with the incorporation of dad jokes in its design, its plethora of unique voice lines, and the sheer hilarity of the idea of the stern Soldier: 76 doing things like wearing socks with sandals and using a can of diet soda to heal himself and his teammates.
- "Black Cat" D.Va achieved a very positive reception before it was even announced (having been previewed through a spray days earlier) for turning her into dark and elegant-but-cute Cat Girl, which is tantamount to catnip for her loving and significantly otaku fanbase.
- Pink Mercy is a beloved skin with an extraordinarily vocal fanbase, driven by its gorgeous Magical Girl Warrior design and infamously only being a limited-time offer as a tie-in for a charity campaign with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The skin hasn't been available for purchase since, and the demand for it to return to circulation (along with an accompanying suggestion to do another charity campaign to justify it) has only intensified over the years.
- One example that isn't even in the game itself, one hero concept played with during development but never saw the light of day was "a cat in a jetpack". While it was ultimately cut for being way too silly even for Overwatch's standards, fans and even developers find the concept amazing, and a demand for "Jetpack Cat" to be a playable hero constantly sprouts up.
- Pachimari, the onion-octopus animal that is an environmental decoration in the game, has acquired a rapid fanbase due to its cuteness as detailed here to the point that the developers starting to gradually give the creature increasing present in the game and lore.
- In term of Emotes, nothing can surpass the incredible popularity of Orisa's Puppy emote. It is almost considered mandatory to equip it as an Orisa player and anyone who shoots the puppy in Skirmish will be quickly punished. All of this despite being a Winter Wonderland-exclusive Emote. It is so popular that the puppy made a return in Retribution as a Victory Pose.
