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     A-D 
  • Ability over Appearance: Vocal variations.
    • Jonny Cruz was cast as Lúcio, even though he doesn't speak Portuguese or speak with a Brazilian accent, because he captured his personality perfectly. They actually auditioned several Brazilian actors to play him, but none portrayed him the way they wanted. Cruz has recorded some lines in Portuguese which were eventually added in 2018.
    • Roadhog has the deep, raspy voice you'd expect from his character design, but uses an American accent in spite of being Australian.
  • Acting for Two: Zhang Yu, on top of voicing Mei in both the English and Mandarin Chinese version of the game, also voices Symmetra in the Mandarin Chinese version.
  • Actor-Shared Background:
    • Both Reaper and Keith Ferguson were born and raised in Los Angeles, California.
    • While she's not an Omnidisciplinary Climatologist, Zhang Yu (voice of Mei) pursued science before getting into voice acting, and has a master's degree in chemical engineering.
    • While Chloé Hollings is about as far away as you can get from Widowmaker in terms of personality, she does happen to share a Parisian performance theater background in common with her; albeit in a different field as a singer as opposed to a ballet dancer.
  • Approval of God:
    • A fan named Dinoflask makes incredibly popular satirical videos featuring spliced-together voice clips of Jeff Kaplan's dialogue from Developer Update videos. When asked about them in an AMA, Jeff himself says he finds the videos hilarious, and later Dinoflask was invited to Blizzard campus.
    • Some less direct examples are the ships some VAs approve of:
      • Matt Mercer, the voice of Cassidy, approves of the popular Bara Genre Cassidy/Hanzo pairing.
      • Anjali Bhimani, voice of Symmetra, said that it would be "hot as fuck" if Genji/Mercy became a real thing while thinks that Ana and Soldier: 76 could work as a couple. Her interactons with Carolina Ravassa, voice of Sombra, imply that both of them are into the Symmetra/Sombra (Symbra).
      • Lucie Pohl, voice of Mercy, has expressed approval of several Mercy pairings, including "Pharmercy" (Pharah/Mercy), "Mom and Dad" (Mercy/Soldier: 76) and "Gency/Emergenji" (Genji/Mercy).
      • Both Charlet Chung (D.Va's voice) and Jonny Cruz (Lúcio's voice) approve of the Lúcio/D.Va (Bunnyribbit) pairing.
      • Jen Cohn, Pharah's voice actress, approves of Pharmercy.
      • Gaku Space, Genji's voice actor, enjoys Genji/Mercy and has fun playing along with Mercy cosplayers or Mercy's voice actress.
      • While not a VA, Michael Chu has also liked fan-art of D.Va being shipped with her team mate D.Mon, in addition to his nods towards Genji/Mercy.
  • Ascended Fanon:
    • Lots of speculation from the Sombra Alternate Reality Game was added to her character with her eventual release:
    • "Boostio" was a common nickname for a nano-boosted Lúcio, widely considered to be the worst target for a nano boost in the game (combined with a tendency to jump in the middle of the intended target at the wrong time). Blizzard took note of this, and added a new line of him yelling "BOOSTIOOO!!!" when he gets nano-boosted.
    • Many fans had joked that Torbjörn was Bastion's father, mainly due to Bastion being a giant turret and Torbjörn's main skill being that he builds turrets. This got even bigger after Bastion's new buff gave it the "Ironclad" passive, which is one of Torbjörn's catch phrases. The "Binary" comic reveals that he is indeed Bastion's creator or at least he designed the line and also "adopted" Bastion, after realising it might be more than the killing machine it was built to be, shortly after Overwatch was disbanded.
    • Doomfist was originally never intended to be a playable character, only just a minor background character to justify the events of the game's first Cinematic Trailer. His presence as a fully playable character and a major character in the lore is largely due to positive fan reception and demand, as well as hype from the prospect of Terry Crews voicing him.
  • Banned in China:
    • Overwatch (2), along with all other Blizzard games, became unable to be played in China starting from January 2023 after Blizzard's licensing deal with longtime partner NetEase (who handles their distribution in the country) ended, with attempts at renegotiation reportedly falling through amidst chaos at Activision Blizzard during the approaching acquisition by Microsoft. However, in April 2024, both companies announced that they reached a new deal, and the games would be returning to China after a year-long absence.
    • The Reflections comic is unavailable in Russia due to laws against LGBT-themes toward children.
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty!: A complicated example: there's a pre-game interaction between Mercy and Reaper, Mercy asking "What happened to you?", with Reaper snarking "You tell me, Doc." Many fans interpreted this as an implication that Mercy was actually responsible for his ghostly condition, but in reality, he's just snarking at her question since she's a doctor, and she has no relation to his current state. However, many fans took that accusatory angle and rolled with it, and the exchange was collectively misquoted as "This isn't what I intended for you, Reyes." / "You did this to me." It became so prevalent that Michael Chu had to step in to confirm the lines never existed.
  • Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Latin-American dub, Orisa is voiced by soap opera actress Vanessa Acosta, who previously did some voice acting, including Doremi Harukaze and Clarissa Darling. Also from the same version, Mei is voiced by theater actress Joanna Ruvalcaba.
  • Christmas Rushed: The Storm Rising event appears to have had a shorter development time than previous Archives events, beginning development in September 2018 (the Havana map it was based in began a month prior) for its April 2019 release date. For comparison, Retribution was reported to have had an 11-month development period, beginning immediately after the Uprising event concluded.
  • Content Leak:
  • Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Years before she was properly established alongside Echo, Mina Liao (a character who was known to exist but had virtually no known info about her aside from her place in the original Overwatch Strike Team) was claimed to be a cryogenics expert by a Brazilian Playstation magazine. If this wasn't the original plan which got changed later on, then it's this, possibly due to the reporter mixing up Liao and Mei.
  • Creator Backlash: While he definitely doesn't dislike the game itself, Jeff Kaplan regrets adding cosmetic rewards for competitive mode, since he believes that it's attracted too many competitive players who only want the physical rewards and wouldn't play it otherwise, rather than people who take the mode seriously and to climb up the tiers.
  • Creator In-Joke: In the Numbani airport, the big board by the central exit lists flights to various cities that are either On-Time or Canceled. The very last city is Irvine, which is Delayed. Blizzard is headquartered in Irvine, California. The fact that the flight is delayed is likely a reference to Blizzard's famous reluctance to release a game until they feel it is ready.
  • Creator's Favorite:
    • Jeff Kaplan states in a video with IGN that Tracer is "who he wants to be when he grows up someday".
    • During Ashe's "What's Next?" panel at Blizzcon 2018, director Jason Hill described B.O.B. as an extremely rare "unicorn" concept where the designers perfectly nailed their vision on the first try, requiring little to no design iteration to satisfy the entire team as a final product. His implementation was also surprisingly low on hassle; each hero has a "performance budget", and many devs were concerned that B.O.B. would be too technically intensive to add in the game alongside Ashe, but this was curbed since he required no voice assets and his model is almost completely symmetrical. In his Hill's words, "B.O.B. was just meant to be."
  • Creator's Oddball: Overwatch was very much designed to be the antithesis to Blizzard's most famous works, namely Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft, in every possible way.
    • Their forte is in genres like Roleplaying and Real-Time Strategy. On the other hand, Overwatch is a hero-based First-Person Shooter that stands as something very different than their normal material.
    • Also, tone-wise it fits. The other three are much more cynical in how they're presented, taking a pessimistic view in their general storytelling and themes. Overwatch deliberately prides itself with optimism and idealism. While very bad things can and do indeed happen, the overall message is that Hope Springs Eternal; to look at how things could be as opposed to what it currently is.
  • The Danza: A foreign dub variant, Baptiste’s French voice actor is Jean-Baptiste Anoumon.
  • Darkhorse Casting: Blizzard took the liberty of casting primarily unknowns for the large, multiethnic cast, including many who are not professional voice actors at all. The only well-known VAs among the cast are Fred Tatasciore (Soldier:76), Keith Ferguson (Reaper), Keith Silverstein (Torbjörn), Crispin Freeman (Winston), Matthew Mercer (Cassidy), Paul Nakauchi (Hanzo), and later on, Dee Bradley Baker (Hammond) and Jennifer Hale (Ashe). That said, some have become considerably well-known after they joined the cast, particularly Jonny Cruznote  and Carolina Ravassanote .
  • Defictionalization:
    • D.Va once had a StarCraft World Championship profile which could be seen on the real life internet.
    • Blizzard has started selling Pachimari dolls, complete with making rattling/squeaky sounds like they do in-game.
    • Blizzcon 2018 made two Lúcio-related announcements: Lucio-oh's as a real product, and a free online release of his album, Synaesthesia Auditiva (funnily enough, the latter is primarily a promotion for the former).
  • Demand Overload: In addition to the day 1 server overload that is practically standard of every big-name online game, there was also a queue to pay for the game.
  • Development Gag:
    • Roadhog's skin for the Year Of The Rooster Event has the same Mutated Pig Head from his early concept art, as described in Overwatch's What Could Have Been Page.
    • According to this IGN video with Jeff Kaplan, Ana was originally codenamed as "The Alchemist" and would be able to make different potions to heal teammates. This would later become her in-character title in the Junkenstein's Revenge brawl, and she refers to her abilities as "potions" and "alchemical boosts."
    • Orisa being a huge fan of Reinhardt, imitating several of his lines and poses, seems to be based off the fact she was recycled from some of Reinhardt's early concepts (where he was instead a wildebeest-themed protector from Numbani and piloted by a little girl).
    • In the Honor and Glory cinematic, Balderich ends up throwing a rocket hammer at an omnic from across the room. This is likely a reference to the original proposal for Fire Strike, which had Reinhardt throwing his hammer at people rather than shooting a wave of fire.
    • D.Va's legendary "Black Cat" skin appears to be a take on the fact she was originally designed with a cat motif in mind, but was later changed to a bunny theme to better fit her "hopping" MEKA.
    • Hanzo's "Cyberninja" skin could be a reference to when the original design for him included Genji's cybernetic look and weaponry.
  • Diagnosis of God: A letter sent to Jeffrey Kaplan, the game's director, has confirmed that Symmetra is autistic note .
  • Died During Production:
    • Roberto Draghetti, the Italian voice actor for Soldier: 76, passed away July 2020.
    • Christiane Louise, the Brazilian Portuguese voice of Mercy, was murdered on July 22, 2021.
  • Directed by Cast Member: The Latin-American Spanish dub was directed by Eduardo Garza up until December 2017. He still voices Lúcio, through.
  • Distanced from Current Events:
    • Patch 1.50 replaced Cassidy's "Noose" spray following multiple black people being hanged during the civil unrest caused by the killing of George Floyd.
    • Cassidy himself was originally named Jesse McCree after a Blizzard employee, but after said employee was fired from the company in August 2021 after being subject to multiple sexual harassment allegations, the character was officially renamed in October 2021 (before the change solidified, Overwatch League casters also exclusively opted for nicknames like "cowboy"). While "McCree" is still treated as an in-universe alias he took up as an outlaw, and old dialogue referring to him on that basis remain, he's now officially known as Cole Cassidy (his real birth name) from 2021 onward.
    • In April 2022, Zarya's "Arctic" and "Siberian Front" skins had a letter "Z" removed from her vest as a response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where the "Z"-sign gained traction as a pro-war symbol among the Russian military.
  • Dueling Works: On release in 2016, it was with the superficially similar game Battleborn, especially since Overwatch's open beta took place on Battleborn's release date. But now that Battleborn had dropped off the radar, it now duels with Paladins, Apex Legends, and Valorant.
  • Dummied Out: Cassidy's Van Helsing skin was supposed to change his ultimate line to "It's High Moon" with an accompanying wolf howl, but the line went unused.

     E-G 
  • Executive Meddling:
    • Though not from Blizzard itself; due to Microsoft and Sony's policies regarding hotfix patches, Bastion's infamous Season 4 rework was left unnerfed for nearly a month until the Orisa patch on consoles, rather than the 3 days it took for PC.
    • A similar story happens with "The Path Is Closed" achievement, which requires the player to destroy 3 of Symmetra's Teleporters in a single game, and was made when Symmetra only had one ultimate. After her rework, she was given the option of making a Shield Generator instead, but the achievement still doesn't count it due to a policy in Microsoft and Sony that forbids changing established achievements. It's still technically achievable, but far less likely.
    • Yet another console-based example, part of the reason the much-demanded reporting system for console has yet to be implemented is due to conflicts with the Xbox and Playstation's already-existing native reporting systems, and difficulties in properly integrating with them.
    • The reason for Overwatch 2's existence and its status as a Mission-Pack Sequel/Updated Re Release sequel is due to this reason. Blizzard, seeing how profitable Overwatch had become, requested a proper sequel from the development team, but Jeff Kaplan managed to convince them to make it an expansion pack rather than a true sequel, arguing that doing otherwise would split the playerbase, diminish profits, and would be a waste of resources maintaining two otherwise-separate games.
    • According to claims by former producer Tracy Kennedy, Overwatch 2 ended up facing tremendous meddling before it launched thanks to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who would often halt progress by pulling developers away to develop side projects that ultimately went nowhere, wasting months of their development time that ultimately resulted in their announced ambitions (including extensive PvE) being downsized. It was also reported that Kotick mandated the switch to the free-to-play release strategy and features like a battle pass and requiring new heroes to be unlocked, changes that were widely cited as having resulted in massive burnout and developer turnover due to just how unpopular they were. Somewhat tellingly, come the season 10 kickoff in March 2024 (the first new season after Kotick was officially booted from Activision-Blizzard following the Microsoft acquisition), among the first things the Overwatch team announced would be them undoing the pay-to-play hero mechanics and restructuring the game's monetization model in order to be more generous and accessible to players.
  • Fandom Nod: In a short story released by Blizzard starring Baptiste and Pharah, Baptiste asked Pharah about her relationship with Cassidy before revealing that she's a lesbian and assumed that everyone knew about it, referencing how Pharah is very popular to ship with other women.
  • Fanwork Ban: Blizzard has been hitting creators of Overwatch Rule 34 (specifically those who use edited game assets) with DMCA claims to get them to take it down.
  • Flip-Flop of God: Whether or not D.Va is specifically a professional Starcraft player has been somewhat waffled on. In February 2018, Michael Chu explicitly confirmed that despite popular notion, while that game is in her (and her father's) repertoire, she was more recognized for playing a different unnamed game whose interface was comparable to that of her MEKA. This is something the official lore has previously left consistently vague, only calling her a "pro gamer", never explicitly namedropping "Starcraft", but never denying it either. There have been a few instances prior of others within Blizzard calling her a Starcraft player, though given it's not in-universe lore and they're not of the official writing team, it's unclear if this bit is a Retcon or an internal communication error.
  • Follow the Leader: It goes both ways.
    • They've made no attempt to hide the fact that Team Fortress 2 was the inspiration for them creating Overwatch, which was their very first FPS, because they wanted to do their own take on the Hero Shooter genre. It's probably one of the most successful examples of this trope. Also, for the seasonal PvE game modes, Blizzard cited Mass Effect 3's well-received cooperative multiplayer as a major influence.
    • Unsurprisingly due to Overwatch's success, the game has inspired other Hero Shooters with similar gameplay. Namely Paladins which can be described as "Overwatch in a High Fantasy setting", which was accused of riding on the coattails of Overwatch since release for having similar gameplay mechanics and some character similarities, though much of the latter similarities were chalked up to typical character archetypes, not direct inspiration from Overwatch. Moreover, Paladins was in development and closed beta before Overwatch was shown publically. And while the developers clearly did simplify the gameplay to attract Overwatch players before release, it still has a lot of gameplay depth (talents, items, character locking etc.) that stop it from being a direct copy.
    • LawBreakers (which features similar gameplay mechanics, albeit with more gore, profanity, and "zero gravity") also got accused of trying to copy Overwatch. While Paladins proved successful, despite some stigma, the latter... not so much, with Lawbreakers shuttering its doors on September 2019.
    • Probably the most Egregious example is the Chinese knockoff Legend of Titans, which features nothing original and compensates with shameless Fanservice compared to the more tasteful kind found in the original.

     I-N 

     O-S 
  • Official Fan-Submitted Content: The Talantis map was synthesized during a "Twitch Makes Overwatch" stream in December 2022, where various major Overwatch devs collected suggestions from fans and viewers elements that they'd like to see in a future map, contributing to its unusual abundance of jump pads, environmental hazards, floating platforms, and aquatic theme as a Talon-owned Underwater Base.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • In the beta, Mercy and Widowmaker were originally played by unknown voice actresses who weren't fluent in German or French. When Overwatch was officially released, they were replaced by Lucie Pohl and Chloé Hollings, respectively, who are both bilingual.
    • In the German dub, Pharah's VA Ghadah Al-Akel was replaced in patch 1.10 by Silvia Mißbach.
    • In the Italian dub, starting from patch 1.10, Reinhardt is voiced by Pietro Ubaldi rather than Paolo Marchese, with the update patch replacing all his voice clips with the ones done by the new voice actor.
    • In the French dub, starting from the 1.14 patch, Ana's voice actress was changed to Isabelle Leprince due to the previous actress Marie Vincent discontinuing her role.
    • Siho Ellsmore is replaced as the Junker Queen by Leah de Neise for Overwatch 2.
    • In the Brazilian dub, Marize Motta replaced Ângela Bonatti as the voice of Ana starting with the 2020 Summer Games Event due to Bonatti having retired from dubbing after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Tonia Mesquita also replaced Christiane Louise as the voice of Mercy for Overwatch 2 due to Louise's tragic murder in 2021, and Camila Maia replaces Carla Araújo as the voice of Junker Queen for Overwatch 2.
  • The Other Marty: During the sound design for Hammond, the developers originally used an audio mix of coyote and rodent sounds as his voice, but they were later given an audition from Dee Bradley Baker, who's well known for voicing creatures. The team liked his performance and eventually casted him.
  • Permanent Placeholder: As the game's initial cast was being developed, Blizzard was brainstorming the best name they could for their Cowboy gunman character, and somebody suggested "Jesse McCree", the name of one of their designers. Once the name was slotted in, everyone consistently found it superior to any other name they could come up with, and it stuck for a long time, until the real McCree was booted from the company in 2021 and the team chose to distance the character from him.
  • Pigeonholed Voice Actor:
  • Playing Against Type:
  • Promoted Fanboy:
    • The Animesque Doomfist Origin Trailer was created by the Shanghai-based Wolf Smoke Animation Studio, who almost exactly a year prior created fan art of Tracer under the theme of 'what would Overwatch look like as an anime?'.
    • Matilda Smedius, voice of Brigitte Lindholm, plays Overwatch and now voices a playable character in the game.
    • Valeria Rodriguez was also a fan of Overwatch from day one (and had played World of Warcraft since they were 8), later becoming the voice of Venture.
    • Blizzard commissioned Dillongoo, who is best known for his Katsuwatch series to create an official video for the Bastet event.
  • Queer Character, Queer Actor: Non-binary hero Venture is played in English by non-binary voice actor Valeria Rodriguez.
  • Real-Life Relative: In the Latin-American Spanish dub, Torbjörn and Zenyatta's voice actors (Arturo Mercado Sr. and Arturo Mercado Jr.) are father and son in real life.
  • Reality Subtext: As documented in this series of videos, when creating Overwatch, Blizzard Entertainment was coming off of the failure of what was supposed to be a new flagship: Titan. Failure — and rising up again in the face of it — is heavily written into the In-Universe backstories of Overwatch, from Tracer's Slipstream accident to the corruption and collapse of the original Overwatch Initiative, before its reinstatement.
  • Recursive Adaptation: After his release in Heroes of the Storm, some of Lúcio's features in that game made it back to Overwatch. Examples include a visual indicator for the range of his auras and increased movement speed while Wall Riding.
  • Referenced by...:
  • Role-Ending Misdemeanor: The limited-edition "Alien" skin for Zarya was made in commemoration of Jay "Sinatraa" Won, 2019 MVP of the Overwatch League. Following allegations in 2021note  of him sexually abusing and manipulating his ex-girlfriend, Blizzard opted to remove the skin from the game, offering refunds to those who obtained it — when they temporarily re-released the OWL-based "Vault skins" in 2021, the "Alien" skin remained conspicuously absent. In a broader scale, this is also widely believed as to why Blizzard made the decision to no longer produce MVP skins.
  • Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: Pornhub experienced a massivenote  spike in searches for Overwatch porn parodies in the days leading up to release. Blizzard Entertainment eventually sent DMCA takedown notices to Pornhub and other porn sites, instructing them to remove all videos of Overwatch porn. The initial and most prolific targets of their takedowns were NSFW videos done using modified (read: made nude and anatomically correct) 3D character models based on assets ripped from the game. Rule 34 website Paheal changed their Overwatch tag to "Overlook" in order to avoid any potential legal troubles with Blizzard, as the company really doesn't like the idea of kids and parents coming across Overwatch porn so easily. In 2017 Blizzard also issued a cease and desist on a Playboy styled fan magazine called "Playwatch" which was a magazine dedicated specifically to sexy Overwatch fanart.
  • Schedule Slip: While Overwatch 2 wasn't officially announced in 2019 with an expected release date, the interim between its reveal and expected release date was much longer than what Blizzard (and fans) were hoping for. As development shifted greatly onto 2, the presently-live Overwatch took a backseat, still receiving rebalances and event-based cosmetics, but heroes, mapsnote , and other major gameplay updates were put on pause in anticipation for the sequel. When combined with external problems compromising their internal production forecast and necessitating delays, the usual 2-3 month gap between new hero/map releases ended up pushed to around 3 years with Overwatch 2's official release date in late 2022. Even with that forecast, the future of 2's much-advertised PVE content wasn't fully confirmed due to additional production woes, eventually ending up diving into Development Hell.
  • Screwed by the Network: Overwatch 2's promises of PvE content were massively screwed over from extensive Executive Meddling, with a domino effect that severely hampered the game's developers to properly deliver on it, forcing them to renege on and significantly downsize certain promises until it ultimately fell into a Development Hell it would never return from. Despite PvE having already been announced as the major new expansion for Overwatch 2, Bobby Kotick repeatedly wasted much of the Overwatch team's development time on irrelevant side projects and forced them to implement certain approaches to the game's monetization model that were internally very unpopular, with many feeling that they would only alienate their playerbase. Those concerns appear to have been validated when the (already-downsized) Story Missions came out in 2023 and reportedly didn't sell well, resulting in the Overwatch team receiving zero in the company's biannual bonuses (itself the result of an internally unpopular, Kotick-enforced policy of rewarding bonuses to teams based on their projects' success rather than evenly across the company). While Kotick was eventually forced out of Activison-Blizzard at the end of December following Microsoft's acquisition of the company, they still ended up facing mass layoffs in January 2024 that included a majority of those involved in further PvE content, which was publicly confirmed to have been the killing blow for that side of the game. Anonymous sources within the dev team reported not being surprised by the possibility of cancellation, describing the atmosphere surrounding the Troubled Production and mistreatment by higher-ups as "'never outright negative' but 'increasingly pessimistic,'" and that had those in charge "just made any kind of decisions, the game would have shipped years ago."
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot: Out of universe, Cole Cassidy's abandonment of the name "Jesse McCree" was instigated by the former Blizzard developer he was named after being ousted and fired for sexual harassments allegations. This change in identity ended up being slightly written into the New Blood comic series, which was in production at the time: in-universe, "Jesse McCree" was an alias he chose to use while working with the Deadlock Gang and carried with him in the following years — by the present day, he's chosen to abandon it and officially go by his true birth name going forward, representing his "rebirth" as a hero of the newly-recalled Overwatch.
  • Spin-Off Cookbook: Overwatch: The Official Cookbook was released in 2019, containing recipes based on all heroes from release up to Ashe, inspired by their many various cultures and homelands (this also includes some peanut butter for Winston, hamster food for Wrecking Ball, and bird food for Ganymede, Bastion's bird).
  • Spoiled by the Merchandise: The existence of a Nintendo Switch port was first hinted at by an Amazon listing for an officially licensed, Overwatch-branded carrying case for the system (that was taken down within a day after going up). (It would then be subject to two more traditional Content Leaks before its official announcement.)
  • Star-Making Role: Many voice actors who get roles in Overwatch become insanely famous in the gaming community. Two examples are Darin De Paul and Carolina Ravassa. The latter's previously-obscure "Hispanglo Saxon" YouTube channel absolutely exploded due in large part to Overwatch fame—hitting 100,000 subscribers on 23 February 2018.
  • Streisand Effect: The complaints and eventual replacement of a certain Tracer victory pose caused a huge spike in search interest for the game, character and pose. Also, Blizzard's aforementioned crackdown on Overwatch porn has only increased interest and production of it (and in September 2016, a major porn studio actually released a live-action Overwatch parody scene featuring characters based on Reaper and Widowmaker).

     T-W 
  • Throw It In!: From the Blizzcon 2016 voice actor panel, Mei's line "Sorry! Sorry, sorry..." wasn't scripted, but her voice actress Zhang Yu apologizing for a bad line read. The team liked it so much, they added it as one of her lines in the game.
  • Tie-In Cereal: Originally a background prop in Overwatch, Lucio-oh's would later be Defictionalization into a real cereal.
  • Trolling Creator:
    • Cassidy's voice actor Matthew Mercer has admitted to saying "It's hiiiigh noooon" over voice chat whilst playing the game, making people freak out and try to hide for risk of being killed by his ultimate. He's also admitted to parodying the line by saying different times just to confuse people.
    • Jeff Kaplan spent Christmas day of 2017 doing a 10 hour long live stream on Twitch of himself sitting in front of a yule log, and doing nothing of any significance. The stream reached peaked at 43,778 viewers, and suffered from "technical difficulties" as he was about to announce the next hero who will join the roster.
    • One of the Twitter teasers for the then-unknown 27th hero (who would turn out to be Brigitte) had Blizzard playfully hinting the often-requested "Jetpack Cat", featuring an otherwise irrelevant cat tail and a covered-up diagram that definitely resembles the idea.
      • Later during the time of 2019's Archives event, Jeff Kaplan during a stream denied Jetpack Cat ever becoming a playable hero... sort of.
      Kaplan: I said, we are never making Jetpack Cat! Never ever ever. That would be so ridiculous. It would be like adding a hamster or something.
  • Troubled Production:
    • The Overwatch League got off to a strong start and was marked for enormous plans over the coming years, but by 2020 began experiencing several unexpected snags that had direct consequences on the game itself. 2020 was originally marked to be the year Blizzard expanded to an ambitious homestand format that involved more in-person events across the world, but not only did several popular casters and talent depart before season premiere for various reasons (from conflicts with management to personal life making the new travel demands unfeasible), the COVID-19 Pandemic broke out, throwing everything into chaos. Arrangements were made to begin playing the season remotely, but all homestand events were cancelled worldwide, and the major logistical shift proved too taxing for some teams, primarily the NA-based teams with all-Korean rosters and staff — the Vancouver Titans were so wracked with conflict between them and management that the entire roster departed not long after. Things wouldn't get easier for the League in the following years — the highly-publicized workplace lawsuit against Activision Blizzard in 2021 caused nearly all sponsors to pull out of the League, and in late 2022, Blizzard's partnership with Chinese distributor NetEase ended after their contracts expired and negotiations amidst increasingly strict national standards and the prospective buyout by Microsoft earlier in the year fell through, leaving many of Blizzard's games — Overwatch included — to be effectively Banned in China. The 2023 season saw many further shifts in teams changing region, changes in Chinese pro-am interactions in the wake of the ban from Chinese broadcasting, one team (the Chengdu Hunters) exiting the league altogether, and Blizzard starting a multi-team collective bargaining process in order to mitigate the high costs amidst continual viewership challenges. Ultimately, however, this wasn't enough to help recover from the damage, and with the end of the Overwatch League's 2023 season came the announcement that it would be its final one, with Overwatch's esports scene continuing in 2024 under a more traditional "open league" structure moving forward.
    • Overwatch 2 itself ended up experiencing a great deal of this as a mix of corporate politics and logistical circumstances. In January 2022 (shortly after the announcement of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard), Overwatch producer Tracy Kennedy publicly called out Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick for poor management, alleging that he would regularly shove large projects onto the Overwatch team, forcing them into overtime only to cancel said projects, costing the production of 2 months at a time and creating a massive turnover rate (including the losses of director Jeff Kaplan and executive producer Chacko Sonny). Hero designers Geoff Goodman and Brandon Brennan also relayed how the one-two punch of Kaplan's sudden retirement and the highly-publicized workplace scandals at Activison-Blizzard left a massive morale hit to the team. The game's ill-fated PvE elements were downsized significantly due to a combination of anxiety surrounding the game's long-term future (the aforementioned financial issues with the Overwatch League included) as well as development revealing them to be logistically unfeasible, with the scope of their goals becoming far too big to solve. Director Aaron Keller compared this directly to Overwatch's predecessor project Titan, which similarly was expected to include big gameplay elements like massive hero-exclusive talent trees and high reliability, but was also crushed under its sheer size — the Overwatch 2 team believed they were in a better position to reintegrate those elements into the successful game that did properly see the light of day, but thanks to more unfortunate setbacks left them still unable to realistically bring it all together. The final nail in the coffin surrounding the PVE content in particular was the laying off of a majority of developers working on that side of the game in January 2024 (itself an extension of mass layoffs across Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft, though the reportedly low sales of the Story Missions in 2023 probably didn't help), with Blizzard officially confirming in March that they had no plans to finish the remaining PvE content.
  • Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • Word of Gay:
    • At Blizzcon 2015, it was stated at least one member of the cast was gay upon being asked if one was included in the already diverse cast. Word of God from Blizzard is that some of the Overwatch cast are LGBT. Upon hearing this, fans quickly began their Ho Yay and Les Yay couples and engaging in major Ship-to-Ship Combat. It was later officially confirmed that Tracer has a girlfriend, Emily, in the 2016 Christmas comic, and it was clarified that she's a lesbian (rather than bi or pan).
    • The short story Bastet reveals that Soldier: 76 was once in a relationship with a man named Vincent and Michael Chu revealed that both Jack and Vincent identify themselves as gay.
    • Lifeweaver is confirmed to be pansexual, and unlike the previous examples, his orientation was established almost immediately upon reveal (demonstrated in-game with a particularly flirty interaction with Baptiste), not just through supplemental material.
    • During the beginning of Pride Month in 2023, Blizzard revealed the previously mentioned characters as well as confirming that Pharah is a lesbian and Baptiste is bisexual. While Baptiste's interest in both genders had been implied a few times in-game, while Pharah explicitly identifies herself as such during the "As You Are" short story.
  • Word of God:

Trivia tropes with their own pages:

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