Team Fortress 2/Fridge

A reminder of the rules of Fridge:

This is a personal moment for the viewer, so every example is signed by the contributor. If you start off with "This Troper", really, you have no excuse. We're going to hit you on the head.

This revelation can come from anywhere, even from this very page.

A Fridge does not have to be Word of God. In fact, it usually isn't, and the viewer might be putting more thought into it than the creator ever did. This is not a place for personal commentary on another's remark or arguing without adding a Fridge comment of your own.

---

Fridge Brilliance

• Team Fortress 2 is, upon further examination, very deep. It is the classic struggle of creation versus destruction. A construction company (BLU) and a demolition company (RED) hire mercenaries to kill each other, showing that industrialization can only lead to the destruction of traditional ideals and oh no I've gone cross-eyed. - G-X
  • Maybe someone can explain why, then, Reliable Excavation Demolitions (RED) is always on defense in linear point control maps and why Builder's League United (BLU) is always on offense. You'd think it'd be the other way around... - DanDaMan
    • You know, trying to justify this, I just had a moment of discovering Fridge Brilliance. I asked, "WHY does BLU destroy, and WHY does RED protect?" I toyed with the obvious "BLU hates RED for smashing their stuff," but that didn't seem too right. Every time BLU is making it a push, they're after a specific target. In Dustbowl, for example, BLU is attempting to destroy RED's missile. They only destroy to prevent more destruction. Still, they're compromising everything they stand for to destroy an eerily familiar enemy, which means that I've missed the obvious answer all this time: they're not so... well, you know... -Ankh
      • It's also loads of fun when you manage to link the whole Red/Blue teams with the Cold War setting.
      • So what does that mean when you consider that the "Meet the Team" movies always portray the RED team members as the heroes?
        • That's true, even in the Spy video where BLU team members have almost all the lines and are the viewpoint characters, it's the RED Spy hidden in their midst that is the protagonist of the video. I say, Valve's cinema team thinks the RED uniforms look better. I tend to agree.
        • Because they're RED team propaganda videos.
        • Wait... I just had my own Fridge Brilliance moment after taking the "construction vs destruction" idea into account, and wondering why the videos make the RED team seem like the good guys. Think about it... from what little the game seems to reveal about the world of Team Fortress 2, it seems like it's mainly the Cold War, with the sheer insanity factor turned up to eleven. The RED team could be the force of chaos and change, and the BLU team, whether they have good intent behind it or not, wants to keep the world the way it is... and if everyone else on the planet is even a tenth as psychotic as all of the main characters, it's obvious something needs to be changed.
        • Well, canonically, both Teams are simply front corporations for intelligence agencies. Perhaps the apparent contradiction in the naming can be explained as a sort of Paper-Thin Disguise.
• A little Fridge thought about the Dead Ringer; I always wondered why the action of holding a pocket-watch out to your left allowed the Spy to be ready to drop a fake corpse and cloak, and what made it so when the watch is down, the cloak and corpse are not activated whenever you take damage. This was until I realised what the Spy actually does when he holds out the watch. This image ^{[dead link]} shows exactly how the Spy holds the Ringer, notice the thumb. His thumb is poised on a button, and this is what activates the cloak and corpse. The Spy doesn't press it when he needs to, it instead is triggered when he is injured, as muscles contract as a response to pain. Thus, when the Ringer is up and his thumb is resting on the button, a stray bullet causes him to flinch, activating the cloak and corpse.
• "Sun Tzu said that... in one place, it's called a zoo!" Oh! Sun Tzu, Sun Zoo! NOW I get it!
  • How do people not get this joke immediately?
    • Since the two words are spelled differently, and are commonly used outside this joke, I'm guessing people simply aren't paying attention to the sounds directly, and thus miss it. (At least, this is how I think I missed it.) The Soldier is also nutty enough in the video that a completely nonsensical conclusion seems perfectly in character.
• The Demoman has one eye, and therefore no depth perception. As such, it would seem strange that his weapons revolve around landing explosives close or far enough. However, his Grenade Launcher projectiles bounce across the floor, meaning he can err on the side of caution and shoot too close intentionally, and the Sticky Bomb launcher can be charged up to the point where it fires in a near-straight line, removing the need for depth perception altogether.
  • Not only that, but if you watch the crosshair on the screen while firing the Grenade Launcher, you can see that the grenades fire a little bit to the right. Since the Demoman is missing his left eye, everything he sees is a little to the right.
• This one doesn't go so much to the game itself as the players, a sort of fan nickname for a critical rocket launcher shot is a Crocket, I'd at first only figured this was a portmanteau name for crit rocket, but then it dawned on me, it's both this and named for the Davy Crockett ^[1]!
  • Given the name of one of the Steam achievements, the third layer of "crock" as in "what a crock of s#@$" which is what you will likely say when you get hit with one.
    • It's also a reference to the term "cock block".
      • And that in turn has lead to the phrase "crock block" for someone who dodges a crocket. Or, in the case of a Pyro, airblasts it back.
  • The few lucky people who managed to get the Soldier's Medals item didn't earn it, other than click a link at the right time. Of course, the Soldier never served in the Army and made up his own medals, so he didn't earn them either.
    • And now you can buy them from the store or have them be a trade/gift from someone else, rendering them even more meaningless.
• After watching Meet the Spy, I thought that the "Scout's" reaction to the pictures of his mother and the Red Spy were just an act by the aforementioned Spy to keep his cover. It wasn't until a couple days after I watched it that I realized the Red Spy may have been genuinely horrified and angry at the pictures, as he apparently does have strong feelings for the Scout's mother. --Unknown Troper
  • That, and the pictures are of HIM. Pornography starring "his mother" the second-worst thing, indeed.
  • I mean, if somebody took pictures of you having sex, wouldn't you be a bit put-out?
    • Some people are into that kinda thing...
  • Another possibility: The Spy didn't realize the relationship between his lover and the dead young man whose identity he stole. Maybe he just found out he killed his son.
    • Nope. Word of God states that he is not the Scout's father (mind you, Valve have said nothing about him not being the Scout's stepfather).
  • This Troper thought it highlighted that the Spy was distressed that someone had managed to track him and collect photographic evidence. Being undetected is a major part of the Spy's purpose, so those pics mean he failed at a major, load-bearing pillar of his job description.
    • Note the picture he takes as a memento in The Stinger: a picture of them holding hands in a parking lot. "Ah, my petit chou-fleur..."
  • He could be horrified because he didn't realise the BLU Spy had successfully managed to outdo him by taking photos of him without him realising.
  • Alternate theory: he was faking distress as the BLU Scout, to mask his actual distress as the RED Spy.
  • Am I the only one who thinks that "chaufleur" sound like French for "fire flower"? Is it supposed to be another "Scout's mom is Pyro" hint?
    • The Red Spy is saying "Chou-fleur", which is the French word for Cauliflower, but is also a combination of the words Chou (Cabbage) and Fleur (Flower), which are both also used as terms of endearment in French, unlike the word Cauliflower, which just sounds weird. Which makes brilliant sense when one considers that the Spy's dialogue is mangled French: of course he'd mangle terms of endearment.
• One more for "Meet The Spy." When the BLU Spy says that the RED Spy could be "any one of us," the Soldier's first reaction is to shoot the BLU Spy. At first, this seems just like a response because the Soldier is, well...the Soldier. Then you realize who's standing behind him - the Scout and the Heavy, who are 2 of the worst classes for the Spy to disguise himself as due to their vastly different speed. Furthermore, before one of the updates (I forget which one) a RED Spy disguised as a BLU Spy (or vice-versa) would just appear to be an undisguised Spy, so the Soldier would have no way of knowing which Spy was standing in front of him except by shooting. In layman's terms, Soldier was being logical and Spy-checking.
  • The BLU Spy was also making no effort at all to confirm his teammates' identities. A Spy disguised as a member of his opposing team is not going to Spy Check for that team, as doing so would mean losing his disguise where he's in the most danger. Even someone as far off his nut as the Soldier would know that.
• If the Scout is part of the BLU team, why would he not know the password to get into the briefcase room, especially an easy to remember password like 1111?
  After the Soldier puts in the code, the RED Spy disguised as a BLU Scout can be seen grinning as he tells the Soldier "Let's go let's go!"
  As stated earlier, the RED Spy's initial reaction to seeing the pictures of the Scout's mother is not one of anger like it would be expected-- it is shock, shock that the BLU Spy was able to catch him off guard and take pictures of him and his lover. Then his reaction changes to anger so as not to arouse suspicion because that's what would be expected of the Scout at that point.
  When the BLU Spy brings in the dead Sniper, the disguised Spy turns his head to get a good look at the knife on the Sniper's back as he is carried by. Admiring your work, Mr. Spy?
  Notice that when the Soldier shoots the BLU Spy, the Scout is the jumpiest of the two. Both the Scout and Heavy are standing the same distance from the Soldier when he shoots, yet the Scout jumps back frantically yelling "WHOA WHOA WHOA" while the Heavy just stands there with a confused look on his face. You could say that this is because the Heavy is not as quick to process things as the Scout, or could it be that the RED Spy heard the gunshot and immediately assumed that it was directed toward him?
• After reading the comic that introduced the Engineer's update, I finally understand the REAL reason Sniper's parents disapprove of him. Every Australian (including girls) has a mustache, is relatively dumb, muscular, emotional, and wants to get into every fight with their fists. Our Sniper has no mustache, is very smart, lean, cold, polite, has standards, and only fights if necessary and using ranged weaponry. No wonder his parents ain't proud of him.
  • Notice the difference between the new weapons for the Sniper and any other class. The other classes have sophisticated pieces of technology. The Sniper has a bow, a shield, Jarate, and a homemade wooden knife. Even his original weapons feel more like something you could buy at a hunting store rather than customized weapons for mercenaries. If you take into account that Saxton Hale may be disapproving of the Sniper like his parents, it means that he probably never gave the Sniper any weapons (though he did sell him the Jarate pills). He's had to fashion his own out of wood, string, a ten thousand volt battery, a mason jar and his own piss.
    • There's also the theory that Saxton Hale is in fact the Sniper's father, which would explain why he disapproves of his son's career choice of shooting people from a long way away, instead of fighting hand to hand with a glorious mustache like a true Australian.
    • All three of the above ideas are Jossed by a single photograph of the Sniper's parents, neither of whom have moustaches or are very muscley. Seems there was no Australium in the land around their farm.
      • I guess it's still possible that his dad hoped Sniper would turn out "normal" and is hypocritically disappointed in him. Or maybe it bothers him that Sniper seems to embrace not being like other Aussies.
  • Speaking of his piss, urine contains sodium, aka salt. The Tribalman's Shiv, one of his melee weapons, causes wounds that are hard to coagulate, and leads to massive bleeding. Rubbing salt in your wounds makes them more painful. In other words, hitting your opponent with Jarate while they're bleeding is literally rubbing salt into the wound, which makes sense, since the mini-crits work on the bleeding effect as well. - CandyEntrails
    • And in the polycount pack, Saxton Hale put him through a rite of passage where after killing a big crocodile, the Sniper passed and Saxton gave him the weapons as his reward.
    • At first, the Meet the Sniper video seems to disprove this, with the line "I'm not a crazed gunman, Dad, I'm an assassin! ...Well, the difference being one is a job, and the other's mental sickness!" One might assume his dad believes he is a crazed gunman, and therefore disappointed in him, looking down on his job as a bloody mercenary. Add the above to this phrase, however, and you realize the Sniper's father is not ashamed his son is a crazed gunman, but rather that he isn't one! - MindGamer
      • Elaborating on the above theory: There was no Australium in the land surrounding the Sniper's parents' farm. The Sniper's father was always ashamed that he wasn't a huge musclebound mustachioed Australium-infused man like every other man on the continent, so he hoped his son would become one. Unfortunately, his son became the Sniper - an assassin, rather than a crazed gunman.
      • Sorry to debunk the above two theories, the Sniper told his mother in the postcard he wrote during the Sniper update (when Payload Race was introduced), to tell his father that he was a doctor, proving that his father is obviously not pleased with his son being an assassin, let alone a crazed gunman.
      • Well, in the mind set that the Sniper is trying to distance his association from being what his father wants, he might have done that to say, "See Dad, I'm operating in a non-Australian society and using my higher brain functions", rather than saying, "Get off my back, I'm doing something respectable."
      • The "Meet the Director" comic has also Jossed this for good, since the Sniper's parents are seen in a photograph and the father is clearly not Saxton Hale. Neither of them have mustaches, incidentally.
• Jarate seems like a fairly generic damage buff for the Sniper behind the hilarious thematic flavor (so to speak, eurgh). However, the undocumented true strength of the mini-crits it induces is that they don't suffer from damage falloff beyond their mid-range baseline amount... meaning even things like pistols and shotguns, and more importantly rocket launchers and Natascha, keep doing (moderate) damage at long range.
  • And the reason they give mini-crits? You just covered the enemy with (probably bacteria-infested) urine and shards of broken glass!
• There's something brilliant about giving a tactic that defies all logic to the Soldier, the class with the weakest grasp of reality. He gleefully rocket jumps places because it makes perfect sense to him to fire a rocket at his feet and go sailing three stories up.
  • A similar thing can be said for Demoman. He's often portrayed as not only rather calculating, but absolutely drunk off his ass.
  • So, to clarify, what you're saying is they can rocket/sticky jump, respectively, because they don't know they can't?
    • Bumblebee logic. We know that setting off explosives under our feet should by all rights result in gruesome maimimg, but the Demo and Soldier, defiant or ignorant of such knowledge, explode merrily on their way.
    • Maybe this is also how the Heavy's tauntkill works. I mean, the guy talks to sandwiches. Maybe killing people with a Finger Gun makes sense to him.
  • This troper also figured out why Demoman is so drunk in battle. We see him off duty in one of the comics, where he has a mansion, supports his mother, and genuinely seems like a nice guy while he's sober. He gets drunk when he fights because he can't stand to see the carnage and bloodshed he's wrought otherwise. -Dominus Temporis
    • And possibly also because, as shown in the "Meet the Demoman" video, he's sensitive about his missing eye. Not just because it's missing, mind you, but because it reminds him (as that was when he lost it) that he accidentally killed his own surrogate parents who'd raised him from from a very young age, and possibly from birth.
    • Wait, just this Halloween the Demo revealed his eye went missing because of the Bombinomicon cursing it and it being magically removed.
    • It's not necessarily true. He did say it's a ghost story.
    • And yet, moments after he finishes said story, SAID STOLEN EYE COMES BACK AND STARTS BLOWING PEOPLE UP WITH SMALLER EXPLODING EYEBALLS.
• In Meet The Scout, at first glance (putting Gameplay and Story Segregation aside) the Scout's fight with, and subsequent victory over the Heavy seems a bit unrealistic. But wait! At the start, the Heavy was about to eat a Sandvich, meaning that he was most likely rather low on health, making it a (bit more) possible for a single Scout to take him down.
  • As a Heavy who's been batted to death by a Scout mid-Sanvich scarfing more times than I care to admit, I can attest to this.
  • As a Scout who's batted to death Heavies even outside of mid-Sanvdich scarfing, I can attest that it's quite easy to do once you get into range.
• In the Engineer update page, more info regarding the Engineer's new arsenal were released as more and more people found Golden Wrenches. Something that only the most grizzled Valve fans noticed is that each time the page was updated, a hidden link with Radigan Conagher (who is Dell/the Engineer's grandfather) holding his newly invented weapon. Well, if you read back the comic book released with the update, you can notice that Radigan is a very collected and calm old man. When the Administrator's predecessor gives him Australium, she explains him that this metal turned all Australians into the most intelligent but aggressive people of the world. Coincidentally, all weapons made by Radigan use bits of Australium and all the pictures released throughout the update show him slowly becoming more masculine and menacing looking. The moment of fridge brilliance however comes when you take into account the behavior of the Engineer on the battlefield when he's using the new weaponry: not only he needs much better strategies, he also becomes extremely aggressive - you can notice it when he's hitting people with the Gunslinger and battle crying. - Meower
• Those familiar with either Australian, Scottish, French, Russian, or German accents notice immediately that the voice actors for the game are obviously not native speakers, with some of the characters (ex: Medic, Spy) pronouncing words completely wrong. It's hard to think a company like Valve would miss such an obvious flaw when they pay attention to every detail in their games. But if you consider that this game is set post-WWII, to the point that the art style adopted for the game reflects American WWII propaganda posters, then their mispronounced accents fit the game perfectly, reflecting the stereotypes held by Americans about foreigners through the 1940s and 1950s. Brilliant. - Addikt
  • Word of God actually confirms this, but I also figured it out before seeing the quote stating it. It also explains why Heavy's so much more eloquent in Russian, and why he's much deeper in character in Poker Night at the Inventory- for the Russian, the point of view is altered from the USA to the Soviets, and in Poker Night he's "off duty" and doesn't have to keep up the stereotypical facade! -Dominus Temporis
    • Fantastic! I knew that his eloquence in Russian reflected his personality, but I didn't think that the characters were putting up a facade for the game! That's an interesting idea, and makes complete sense.
• The Soldier's rant in Meet The Soldier seems pure Cloudcuckoolander, until we hear of historical characters like Shakespearicles. This means that either the supplementary material is written by the Soldier (well, he does post on the blog...) or, for all that the speech was Played for Laughs, he was telling the truth about Sun Tzu in the TF2 'verse.
  • Speaking of Sun Tzu, why would the Soldier, of all people, worship an ancient Chinese general? Simple! What's the Soldier's favorite weapon? A rocket launcher. What's his secondary weapon? A shotgun. What did the Chinese invent? Gunpowder and fireworks! Obviously he would idolize one of them!
    • I would think that because Sun Tzu's book is called "The Art of War" (a book about preparation and strategy), someone like Soldier would interpret that as "The Art of Beating the Crap Out of Everything". Why else would he misquote him so much?
  • Actually, that got debunked in the Replay Update comic. The Director tells the Soldier that Sun Tzu probably didn't write any books about punching through a man's ribcage, implying that the Soldier's ideas are wrong.
• So, the Engineer update came less than a month after the Mac update, which is atypical of Valve; they usually space things out more. But wait, in that update, the Engineer's name was revealed to be Dell. So why did they do it? To compensate for the Mac support; these items were for the PC.
  • The Frontier Justice even makes an Early-Bird Cameo in the Mac Update teaser video, indicating that the update was in development for quite some time.
• User:Quanyails: I was wondering why that the Medic's native German voice actor seemed soft and that the French voice actor seemed much harsher in comparison. Well, I realized, since the characters are based off of national stereotypes, and that the time period of TF2 (Cold War-esque), it made perfect sense that the French would perceive Germans as vicious compared to German's assumption of themselves. Nice job with the international outlooks, Valve.
• Terrace: Given that RED stands for Reliable Excavation and Demolition, and BLU stands for Builder's League United, it makes perfect sense that we know the canonical names of the Red Demoman (Tavish De Groot) and the Blue Engineer (Dell Conagher), but not their respective counterparts (Blue Demoman and Red Engineer, that is).
• Omny: Why does the Scout call the Heavy "Pancakes" when he dominates him? Because the Scout battered him to death!
• Soldier's slightly unhinged Sun Tzu quote ("If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!") might seem Captain Obvious for a moment. The full quote? "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even if the ruler forbid it." Remember how the Soldier got kicked out of all three arms of the US Military? (For the picky, yes, it would be "three"--the Air Force wasn't a separate branch until 1947, and a man like the Soldier would have no desire to consider the Coast Guard as a career option.)
• Regarding the "Meet the Team" videos and the nature of the game in general, why do the mercenaries from RED look exactly like their BLU counterparts? Also, why do the same BLU mercenaries appear in multiple videos, despite getting killed in each? In the game, this can be put down to simplicity, but in the videos and the universe, the explanation is also (surprisingly) simple:
  • See how those "Meet the Team" videos all represent RED from a sympathetic viewpoint? Well, we've already argued pretty well that they're corporate propaganda filmed by RED, and that's it: the BLU mercenaries are in fact the RED mercenaries acting the parts, and all the deaths we see on camera are just special effects.
  • This explains:
    • Why the BLU mercenaries look like the RED ones (with regards to the story, not how the game was made).
    • Why some BLU mercenaries keep re-appearing, despite it looking like they've been killed.
    • Why the camera crews (obviously working for RED) are seemingly able to get into unusually dangerous situations without being attacked, like right in the centre of the crossfire (and even in the line of the BLU Pyro's fire in "Meet the Soldier") without getting attacked deliberately or accidentally.
    • And everything else we've discussed about the how the videos could exist so far.
  • Of course the videos represent RED as the good ones: the videos are just interviews made by the Director (from the comic "Meet the Director"). The Director would have made videos of both teams, but the Administrator ordered Miss Pauling to kill him right after he finished only the RED videos. And about resurrection: it exists in-universe. Radigan Connagher (grand-father of the Engineer) made three life-extending/resurrecting machines: one for Redmond and one for Blutarch, but no one knows where the third is. That's probably what keeps those mercenaries alive.
• While there won't be any arguments about the Pyro's gender, the whole unlock set seems to be point out that the idea behind the Pyro's unlocks are usually based off being a housewife. If the Pyro could speak, it would have been jokes about being a better "Basemaker", taking care of the needs of 8 other squadmates and dealing with "unwanted" houseguests. Namely the spy...
  • Not to mention, Pyro literally defeats people by cooking and has no voice(though that sort of thing was changing in the sixties).
• According to the Loose Canon comics, the first Medic was Sigmund Freud, maestro of finding sexual innuendo in everything. And what is the signature Limit Break of our modern-day Medic? The rather suggestive ÜberCharge.
  • Freud was also Jewish, which may or may not be playing into the "The Medic is Ambiguously Jewish and escaped from the Nazis" fan theory.
• In the WAR! Update, the Announcer tries to convince the Soldier that the Demoman hates him. The Soldier refuses to believe it's the Demoman (it's not, it's a picture of Demoman with a robotic voice) until he's called a civilian. Most people unfamiliar with the game or vaguely familiar with the Soldier's bio will assume that the Soldier is mad because he thinks of himself as a man of war and refuses to be known as not shelving his duties. However, those familiar with the game's history will remember an old bug called "The Civilian", an old placeholder for escort missions. By activating it, you control your character in their T-pose and move very slowly and in general be a useless asset to your team. By doing this, Valve is doing a rather subtle call-back to long time players who know just how useless and infuriating a "civilian" teammate can be.
  • If you read the Soldier's bio, you'll know that he technically is a civilian. It's his dirty little secret; no matter how much he likes to think of and present himself as a military man, he isn't one. (And note his initial Soldier's reaction when he hears Demoman call him a civilian: "He promised he'd never...") That's why he gets so angry: he told Demoman the truth because he trusted him, and Demomon had seemingly just broken that trust.
• A small fridge: In the new comic Meet the Director the Soldier is angry about losing his heads, questioning where the other seven are (he received one in the mail). It's a reference to the other members of the team: there are nine classes. He himself is one, received one head in the mail, and now is worried about the other seven.
  • Why would he be one of the heads? He collects heads from the BLU team, not his own. Also, if you re-watch Meet the Soldier you'll notice that he's already collected the head of his counterpart, the BLU Soldier. The only head he's missing is the BLU Scout's (assuming it wasn't just off-screen).
  • It's a small reference to the number Valve picked for the gag, not who the actual heads came from.
• User:Gigaspine 7: Oh look, they redesigned the Blog! But why would they do that? And what was up with all those doves shitting on th-oooooh.
  • Just thought of something else: if this is essentially a second Medic update, why does it seem to focus on every class? Because it's the Über Update. A Medic's purpose is to strengthen teammates.
    • Except for Engineers, because they suck.
      • To elaborate, there's no strategic reason to Über an Engineer, since it's not the Engineer himself that needs to stay alive. (Before you say anything, Spies can steal Übers from opposing teams and the Medic's new items make Übering a Scout without worrying about speed a non-issue).
    • I just was thinking about it. The third day was an update for Soldiers, and there was a speech about going to war. In Meet the Medic, we see that the BLUs went with mass Soldiers all equipped with updated weapons and new hats. So that means the 'War' the other soldiers were talking about was the attack on RED in Meet the Medic.
• Look closely at the perspective of Meet the Sandvich. Now, look at Meet The Medic. Meet the Sandvich is from the perspective of the BLU Spy.
  • Making this a very literal case of Fridge Brilliance.
  • Also, if the Medic lets the Spy die, he'll respawn. Keeping his head prevents him from respawning.
  • Maybe it's slight fourth wall-breaking? "Meet The Spy" was the last team video released before "Meet The Medic" came out. Spy got his video after two years of the game being out. Medic had to wait four. If I were him, I'd be bitter, too. And who got most of the lines in "Meet The Spy"? The BLU Spy.
• The X-rays on the back wall and the unexploded bomb in the tray behind the Medic indicate that the Heavy initially showed up in the Medic's clinic because he had a bomb lodged in his chest, and the Medic just decided to "upgrade" the Heavy while he was visiting and he had a perfectly good open chest on his table.
• To do with the Boston Basher, a bat for the Scout: if the swing with the bat doesn't hit anything, damage and bleed effect is applied to the Scout himself. Why? Because the bat is heavy and the Scout can't control it-- if nothing stops it from moving, it comes all the way round and hits him.
  • On that note... You know how Scout's bio says he has a "penchant for baseball"? It goes beyond using a baseball bat as a weapon; take a look at his costume: it's a modified baseball uniform, right down to cleats and a cap.
• In the Meet The Spy video, the style of movie changed entirely. Why? The first director was killed.
  • Not so. The comic with the director states he finished films for all nine RED team members before Miss Pauling offed him, and the Administrator said they wouldn't bother with any BLU films.
• In Meet the Medic, the Medic doesn't receive the same ÜberCharge appearance as the Heavy, whereas in the game he does -- but in Meet the Medic, he's not 'upgraded' himself to receive ÜberCharges yet. The Heavy was his test subject.
  • Actually, if you notice, Medic's not using the standard medigun. He's using the new Quick-Fix, which normally doesn't grant invulnerability with its ÜberCharge. I suspect the "Über Hearts" are meant as a work around that.
    • Actually, the Quick-Fix started out with a very unstable Invulnerability function. For the first run, it worked even without healing the target for awhile after activating it. However, the invuln function shorted out after the first battle.
    • Further Fridge Brilliance: According to the description, the Quick-Fix was the prototype Medigun. He's using it because the original Medigun doesn't exist yet.
• The Medic's description caused some players to realize he was most likely born in Nazi Germany, but Valve was quick to say the Medic hadn't been a Nazi himself. At first, this looks like a case of But Not Too Evil; even if the Medic is fascinated by pain, he wouldn't sink that low, right? Then Meet the Medic comes out, which not only shows he's just as...quirky as the rest of the team, but also has him telling a story about how he lost his medical license and had to go on the run for somehow removing someone's entire skeleton. Conclusion? The Medic and his ideas were TOO CRAZY for the Nazis (and these are the guys who had friggin' Mengele)!
  • That, and Medic's clearly not into the whole racial superiority/inferiority thing. You can't be on a team that ethnically diverse.
    • I wouldn't call that ethnic diversity if all you got was a token black but point taken.
    • Counts if you consider the fact that the Nazis thought people of German decent were superior to people from other countries. Everyone on the team is from a different country (or in the case of the Americans, different regions of the U.S.).
  • Nazis and Soviets did not get along. And yet, Medic and Heavy...
    • The Medic is not, and never was, a Nazi.
• Watching Meet The Medic, you wonder how he's so relaxed when in-game, he's so grumpy on the battlefield. Then you remember all the crap Medics go through in-game. People spamming the Medic call when they don't need you, being a high-value target, teammates running off and leaving you defenseless to an enemy ambush... you start hearing MEEEEDIIIIC in your sleep...
• One thing you noticed about Meet the Medic is that he did not kill a single person (intentionally) in the entire video. He just got the First Do No Harm Achievement.
  • Only if the Heavy he assisted didn't get all of the kills, in which case he did. No achievement.
  • The Heavy was on that table for a while with the medigun (or Quick-Fix, whichever) pointed at his open chest. Along with healing Scout and Demoman, the Medic got a lot of healing points.
• You might've noticed the character animations when they pull out a weapon (Heavy cracks his knuckles with his fists, Engie spins his pistol and clicks the on switch on his builder). But Scout flips his baseball bat! At first, I thought 'WHY WOULD HE DO THAT?!' because Scout does a lot of running and if he drops it, he'd have to go back and get it. I really scratched my head when he flips the Boston Basher, which, if you don't remember, has spikes all over it! But then I remembered: Scout's entire character is based around confidence, and the fact that he's an idiot! The game even calls him out on this on the description of the Boston Basher! No wonder!
  • This is likely also the reason he spins both cans of soda in the air, spilling half the drink in the process. BONK! and Crit-a-Cola both emphasize Scout's confidence in his ability to avoid damage.
• Of course it's hilarious in the 'Meet the Spy' video when the Soldier punches in the access code '1111' to get to the briefcase, but it gets funnier when you realize that, upon closer inspection of the number pad, the 1 is the only number that has any signs of wear and tear. The other numbers look like they've never been touched. In other words, it's very obvious that the 1 is the only number ever punched in.
  • Which makes you wonder why the RED Spy disguised at the BLU Scout didn't (or couldn't) figure the code out on his own. It looked like he was fumbling with the door when the Soldier arrived. You'd think he'd be able to figure out something like that.
    • He evidently thought it was too stupid to be true.
    • That, or he figured that if he feigned ignorance long enough, he'd gather the remaining BLU team in one area. Even the fact that he got there before anyone else makes sense; after all, he's disguised as the extremely fast Scout.
    • But disguising as the Scout wouldn't make him any faster, Spies retain their original speed even when disguised.
    • He was waiting for them. He fooled the Administrator into calling him out so he could stab the BLU team and capture the intelligence. (-1 Up)
• Why is the Administrator wearing purple? Because when you mix blue and red (at least with anything other than light), you get purple.
  • It's not just her wardrobe, but her assistant's wardrobe. And the company vehicle.
    • MONOCULUS! and the Horseless Headless Horsemann are surrounded by a purple aura.
    • Also when you are killed by them, their names are purple (indicating they are of neither side).
• The Soldier has the most weapons in the game. It makes sense that a man so obsessed with war would have such a large arsenal at his disposal.
• Of course the Medic's mentally unstable: any sane, rational field medic would have been at his sanity levels anyway after having to deal with patients like the mercenaries. And he needs to be able to shrug off having to kill people to defend himself. Any sane person wouldn't be able to deal with themselves as a result.
• The Conscientious Objector, a sign used as a melee weapon, cannot be used by Engineers or Spies. A wooden sign like that would plausibly break while using it to whack a (metal) building, and it is too big and unwieldy for backstabs.
  • Similarly, as of May 3, 2012, the Frying Pan can be used by all except by Engineers or Spies. Like the Conscientious Objector, it is too big and likely unwieldy for backstabs, though, as Fridge Logic, we don't know why Engineers can't use it to whack buildings.
• What's up with the Medic's pet birds? It's probably a shout out to Nikola Tesla, the real life Mad Scientist who had an abiding love for white pigeons.
• I wondered why Scout was drawn with somewhat bucked teeth in the comics until I remembered his 'humiliation' pose was him sucking his thumb (well, according to my mother at least, thumb sucking screws up your teeth).
• Pyro's 'Lumberjack' achievement name and Scout's milkman motif promptly become hilarious when you remember what Lumberjacks were stereotyped for doing in their spare time, as well as the traditional hot wife commits adultery with the milkman jokes.
• How does Spy know to taunt Demoman with "The black, Scottish cyclops, now extinct!" line? His job is to know everything about everyone, so he was most likely spying on the 'Meet the' filming (so he could better impersonate them, probably), and thus knows Demo's pissed off about being Last of His Kind.
• Why are there so many hats in this game? Well, look at any photograph from the 1950s (around the same era the game is set in)- EVERYONE wore a hat back then!
• In "Meet the Medic," it is implied that the Medic removed someone's skeleton. A blutsauger is a SKELETONLESS vampire.
• The idea of using the Spy's head as a reskin for the Solemn Vow, while funny, makes sense when you realize that one of the Spy's abilities is seeing how much health his enemies have.
• When reloading the Loch-n-Load, it appears that the Demoman is placing the grenades to the left of the barrel. I thought this was just a bug until I realized that the Demoman has one eye, so of course it looks like he's putting them in to the side.
• There's no backblast from the other end of the Soldier's rocket launcher. So either the rocket should be going much faster or that's some seriously weak rocket fuel. Then again, it has to be seriously weak rocket fuel, or the backblast would throw the other 3 loaded rockets out of the back, too.
• The Soda Popper has a "hype" meter that fills as the Scout moves. All the Scout's running around would obviously build up lots of carbonation in the Crit-a-Cola attached to the gun.
• After seeing this article: 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted could I see a lot of contexts:
  • Random drops, 12 per week, this means that if not playing at least a week, you lose 12 drops.
  • The purchase of various items for provide you with a higher status. And to give the items a higher value for you.
  • Achievements: They make you play because you are not a pro if you haven't received them ALL! And can you hear the cheering when you finally get one?
  • And not to mention the periodic updates, there is always something new and special you simply must have!
• Having seen Steam's gifting on their holiday sale, it depicts a Pyro who is happy to receive coal. Coal is flammable. That would mean that the Pyro has received extra ammunition.
  • That's the joke.
• I wondered for a while why the Medic doesn't simply turn his medi-gun on himself when his health dips. Then I realised that he believes healing is a side effect of whatever the gun does and has no idea of the long term effects of what he's shooting the others with. And we all know what happens to doctors who experiment on themselves.
  • Actually, one of his taunts is taking a wiff out of his medi-gun, which heals him a bit.
    • Though from his face, he's not exhibiting much sanity when he does so.
  • The Medic is the only class that self-heals. He is turning the gun on himself, all the time.
• For a while, I thought the whole Australian Christmas thing (specifically, Old Nick abducting children) was just another one of the zany differences between our history and theirs. Then I read this. - The Albino Primid
• I wondered why the BLU Soldier and Scout were partners in crime in the Smissmas comic, until I realised the Scout cries rather pitifully when the RED Heavy kills the Soldier in Meet the Sandvich. Maybe they're closer friends than they let on.
• I wondered why Demoman (along with the Soldier) wielded the frying pan, out of all of the classes. Then I realized a common Scottish stereotype is that they deep-fry all their food, so it fits perfectly.
  • It does raise some unfortunate implications, considering telling a black man eating fried chicken is not exactly politically correct.
• Valve prefers the RED team over the BLU team, since in the "Meet the Team" videos, RED is awesome and always wins, and BLU, the bullet fodder, always loses. In fact, after "Meet the Demoman", not one member of RED dies, while as the videos go on, the mercenaries on BLU find more ways to get killed. The loadout screen in the game defaults to RED, the loading screen and main menu only has images of classes on RED, and the group shot in the end of each video and on the Festive items promotional image feature the RED team. The Mac trailer alludes to the Mac vs. PC thing by heavily implying, with strategic placement of transitions and text, that the BLUs represent Mac users, while the REDs are PC users. Additionally, the BLU mercenaries are wearing earbuds, an item only Mac users could acquire without trading. Valve has given Mac fans a Take That by saying the RED team always wins over the BLU team in the same way that the Mac will never beat the PC.
• Why does the Solemn Vow (an item the lets you see enemies' health) require eight Jarates to craft? They're urine samples from the other eight classes.
• In Meet the Director, we learn that it was the Director who made all of the "Meet the team" videos. (Well, except maybe the pyro, as the Director's dead but we haven't seen "Meet the pyro" yet).
  • All "Meet the team" videos are about the RED team, because the Director was killed by Miss Pauling before he could interview BLU.
  • During "Meet the spy", the BLU spy says: 'It could be you'(looking at the Heavy or Soldier, offscreen), 'It could be me, it could even be...'(looking at the camera). Meaning he thinks even the Director could be the spy.
  • Miss Pauling probably told the BLU team the Director would be taking their interviews when he was in fact doing the film about the RED spy. They let him in, unknowing the plan was to make a film about the spy deceiving and then killing them.
• For a while I wondered how the Medic in the "Meet the Medic" video got an ÜberCharge so quickly after just two heals. Then I remembered that he had just used his medigun to heal the Heavy, who had his entire torso open, whose heart and been removed, and who had just gotten a rib snapped off. ÜberCharge generates faster by healing teammates who are more seriously injured; all those injuries on the Heavy, combined with healing a broken leg on the Demoman and repairing what was possibly spinal damage on the Scout, he'd most likely have plenty of charge to go uber. -- Somerandomdude
• One has to wonder how the Soldier--a man who technically has no military knowledge whatsoever and is pretty much just an Ax Crazy military man wannabe--would end up on the team of mercenaries that would probably want a soldier that's just a little more sane. Then you realize something: The Soldier went on a killing spree up until 1949 because he didn't know WWII ended 4 years earlier. Who knows how many civilians he confused as Nazis he had killed in that time. Therefore, RED/BLU likely enlisted him so he wouldn't kill any more civilians out of paranoia in his own country.
• At the beginning of Meet the Scout, the Scout does a Dramatic Shotgun Pump just before launching an attack. This trope's common enough except we know in real life, you would be just ejecting a round with the shell if you did that before firing, though most works ignore this. But look closely and you see the shell does indeed get ejected. The Scout just wasted a perfectly good slug. - Tuckerscreator
• In Meet the Spy, RED Spy is disguised as the BLU Scout. But how did the BLU scout get killed? Simple- at one point, the RED spy disguises himself as a BLU Medic. As soon as he heard Scout shout for help, he ran over to him, killed him, and disguised as him. He didn't stay as the Medic because it would look weird if the Medic arrived first on the scene to protect the briefcase. For the Scout, it's much more natural- he's faster, and he has the shotgun.
• It may seem strange that Mad Milk is a component of the Fan O' War, until you realize Jarate is a component of Mad Milk, explaining the mini-crit side effect.
• Spy's most emphasized backstab targets are sniper and Medic. The butterfly knife is outlawed in Australia, New Zealand, and Germany.
• It might seem odd how the Scout is only able to fire off baseballs with the Sandman, when all the other bats are just as serviceable for hitting balls (with the possible exception of the Atomizer, which I firmly believe to be an inflatable toy bat filled with helium). However, given that the use of wooden bats in MLB is pretty much standard, and the Scout is a major league fan of baseball, it makes perfect sense that he'd consider using baseballs with his default aluminum bat to be unsportsmanlike.

Fridge Logic

Look here.

Fridge Horror

• User:Quanyails: I was thinking about The Ambassador, which I originally perceived as a pretty awesome name for a weapon. Then I thought about why it's named that. Said Hand Cannon apparently has an engraving of Scout's mother on the side. Scout's mother. The Ambassador. Ye gads.
  • If you have seen Meet the Spy than you will have already known that the BLU Scout's mom is dating the Spy, so why won't he engrave his lover on to his gun?
    • I think you missed the joke. Ambassadors are known for easing the way into foreign lands through diplomacy. Now do you get it?
• The Mad Milk is a Jarate-like (kinda) weapon for the Scout that's filled with a "non-milk substance." Seeing as though Jarate can be justified as the Sniper filling it with his own piss while waiting to kill his target...well...
  • Would certainly explain why enemies doused in it complain. Jarate is obvious, but why complain about getting doused in milk compared to all the other things that could happen? Because it's not really milk...
  • In early stages of development, the name wasn't Mad Milk, it was Mann Milk. Ick.
  • EW EW EW EW EW EW need some Brain Bleach need some Brain Bleach Brain Bleach Brain Bleach Brain Bleach...
    • Need a Brain Bleach dispensah here!
    • Erectin'...oh shit.
    • It's a non-milk substance that still apparently comes from radioactive cows... they were milking the bulls instead! Oh dear lord...
      • • Maybe he has a secret udder under his shirt. That would provide proof as to why seeing him without his shirt is awesome. He's a mutant!
        • Or maybe, it's from his mother (he does have one at home, remember).
    • Remember what the two components needed to forge Mad Milk are?
      • Piss and metal?
  • This troper firmly believes it's just soy milk.
    • Would have to be radioactive soy milk...and actually, that wouldn't be unrealistic. Soy plants are notoriously accepting of radiation.
• The author of fancomic Cuanta Vida pointed out that in real life, the Medigun would seal all shrapnel inside the wound. *shudder*
• There is no apparent place anywhere in any map for the classes to relieve themselves. Now, on most maps, the characters don't stay long enough for bodily functions to be an issue, but I have to imagine that a place like 24/7 Teufort would stink to high heaven.
  • The Sniper has those jars.
  • Bit of Fridge Logic in response. TF2 is a game where you die and respawn a lot. When you respawn, all damage, health conditions and health benefits are gone. You during the process of respawn is where you're relieved. Or, with the 2Fort example, there is a sewer there.
  • "Whoops. Bathroom." *Click-click* *BOOM* *Respawn* "Much better."
  • What about the Announcer? She just sits there, uh, announcing, and doesn't die, therefore isn't respawned.
    • Ten bucks she either has a personal bathroom or is in it when she announces.
    • Nice Nightmare Retardant, that.
    • Presumably they all go to the bathroom, eat things that aren't sandviches, shower, and what have you when you're not playing the game.
• The Übersaw has blood on it even if you haven't killed anyone with it during the current round. Either the Medic never cleans it, or as this troper's friend joked, it's hanging on his belt and every so often gets caught on his thigh.
  • Considering how much pain the team members can handle without slowing down, this may be, plus, the Medic may just use the Medigun to heal himself. Either that, or he painted it that way just to scare people.
• Going along with the "Meet The Sandvich takes place from the point of view of Spy's severed head"- the BLU Soldier and Scout were only in the RED base to get Spy's head back, and the RED Heavy punched them to death!
• The Sniper's mantra is to "have a plan to kill everyone you meet." He says this in a video called "Meet the Sniper". It ends with him pointing his rifle at YOU. NOOOOOOO- RIP, Tuckerscreator

1. ↑ The M-28 or M-29 Davy Crockett Weapon System(s) was a tactical nuclear recoilless gun for firing the M388 nuclear projectile that was deployed by the United States during the Cold War