Team Fortress 2/Tropes H to P

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  • Halloweentown: The Halloween event maps Mann Manor, Harvest Event, and Eyeaduct. Mann Manor also counts as a Haunted House.
  • Ham-to-Ham Combat: Everyone.
  • Hammerspace: Mentioned by name on this fan-made page.
  • Hat Shop: By now the game contains more than half of the hats listed on that page. See Nice Hat below.
    • The game now has a literal hat shop.
  • Have a Nice Death:
    • The game provides a freezecam shot of who killed you, and if gibs are on and any of your body parts are in the shot, it very helpfully points out which parts they are ("Your spleen! Your pancreas! Your torso! More bits!")
    • If it's a domination or revenge kill, your opponent's character may also make fun of you. (The Medic and Pyro are the only ones who don't.) And on rarer occasions, they will even if it's not.
    • Several classes have special achievements for taunting during the enemy's deathcams, sometimes more than one. The Sniper can either doff his hat at the enemy (basically, paying respect), or wave (to mock them). The Soldier has one where he taunts over at least three pieces of the enemy's remains, and the Medic has one for taunting over an enemy's ragdoll.
  • Headless Horseman: During the 2010 Halloween update, the Horseless Headless Horsemann appeared about every eight minutes in the new "Mann Manor" map. He's extremely powerful, and prances around the map gleefully with an axe decapitating all in his path. If a player actually manages to defeat him, they'll score an achievement and a free hat. If they go the extra mile and land a hit with a melee weapon near his dying moments, the player may get an extra rare crafting item as well.
  • Heal Thyself: In the event that a Medic is low on health and there are no medkits or other Medics present, the Sniper vs. Spy update introduced a taunt to the Kritzkrieg where the Medic will take a great huff of the health gas from the barrel to restore 10 health.
    • The Blutsauger Syringe Gun side-grade also allows a Medic to self-heal... by leeching health from his enemies.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Whoever pushes the cart during the last elevator push in PLR_Hightower. Someone must be with the cart to the very end of the elevator rise until it explodes to achieve victory.
    • Most payloads result in this, since the blast radius is huge. In most cases even Dead Ringers can't save you, since the floor automatically opens up to a instant-death pit afterwards.
  • High-Pressure Blood: Gibs have particle emitters attached for the first second or two after death.
  • Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: The classes' outfits are designed to be brightest around the torso, to make identifying and aiming at them easier.
  • Hilarity Ensues: Invoked in the description for Payload Race:

"Two teams. Two carts. Two tracks. Hilarity Ensues."

  • Hit Points
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: An Engineer can be killed by his sentry if he stands in front of it as it shoots, and a Demoman and Soldier can gib themselves with their own projectiles if they're too close to the blast. Scouts who can't aim with a Boston Basher/Three Rune Blade might bleed to death, and a Detonator-wielding Pyro can damage himself from the explosives.
    • Skilled airblasting Pyros can intentionally invoke this on any character using a projectile weapon (Soldiers and Demoman usually, but can also happen to Huntsman Snipers, Flare Gun Pyros and, amusingly, even Sandman Scouts) by reflecting the projectile right back at them, or at their teammates. This is actually encouraged, since reflected projectiles gain minicrits if they're not already full crits.
  • Hold the Line: RED team's job on Payload and the Attack/Defend style CP maps.
  • Holiday Mode: "Party Mode", which was set to activate on the anniversary of the original game's release. A Halloween event was started in 2009 featuring a special map, two hats (one with "Holiday Restriction: Halloween and full moon"), and five achievements. 2010's Halloween event added four more achievements, another special map (one of the Art Pass Contest winners), several hats (some with the restriction, and some that could only be bought during the 2010 event), and an exclusive weapon. The 2011 Halloween event added 9 achievements, some hats and miscellaneous items, and a new map with MONOCULUS!
    • The Australian Christmas Update has made it official with Christmas themed crates, weapons, and hats. Although it lacks a holiday related map, unlike the Halloween updates.
  • Holler Button: By default, pressing the E key makes you call out to Medics, warning them that you need assistance. The other voice commands are managed by small menus, though with some console commands any key can become a Holler Button.
  • Hot Bar
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: The Heavy's unlockable lunch item, the Sandvich, must be laced with Human Growth Hormone. It regenerates all of the big lug's health. Should he drop it by dying, it will heal 50 points of health to anyone who picks it up. However, if he drops it with right click, they will get half health recovered.
    • The Scout is the exception, receiving instead 75 points of health for a stolen Sandvich. This is an allusion to Sandvich's first appearance in Meet The Scout, where the Scout physically wrested it from the Heavy.
    • Speaking of which, his drinks also take effect immediately.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Like many First Person Shooters, most weapons that are not equipped do not appear. However, they still take up inventory space (the Scout and Heavy cannot carry lunchbox items and sidearms at the same time). The current exceptions are the Razorback and Chargin' Targe shields and the Buff Banner backpack (but not the trumpet).
    • The Medic also carries his backpack around all the time, supposedly holding much of the machinery that powers his medigun. Same for the Pyro's oxygen tank.
    • The Gunslinger's another exception, considering the nature of the weapon in question.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Some of the Engineer's domination lines against the Sniper insult his tendency to camp, despite the Engie being designed for much the same purpose.
    • Similarly, the Demoman has lines about the Sniper camping, yet defensive Demos lay out carpets of stickybombs and wait for long periods of time.
    • The Sniper will also insult his headshot victims for "standin' around like a bloody idiot", despite a Sniper's own tendency to do the same thing.
    • The Engineer, the shortest of the mercenaries, has the line "Take it like a man, shorty" when killing someone with his wrench. Also, he has a domination line that calls the Soldier a Yankee, when he's from the United States as well. If one applies the meaning of the term used within the States, the Soldier, who is not from the northeastern United States, is as much a Yankee as the Engineer is.
  • I Banged Your Mom: The Spy's Domination lines to the Scout, derived from the plot of "Meet the Spy".

Spy: Well, off to visit your mother!

    • The Demoman also claims to be shagging the enemy Medic's wife in domination taunts.
  • I Call It Vera: With the addition of Name Tags, players can now call their weapons and hats whatever the hell they want. Even stock items.
    • And the Heavy's miniguns, Sasha and Natascha.
  • I Love Nuclear Power: The aim of the attacking side on Payload maps is to detonate a bomb in the enemies' atomic fuel dump. This being a reasonable approach to nuclear waste disposal.
    • Bonk! Atomic Punch's ingredients: Water, radiation, sugar. "...which as we all know is pretty great for givin' people superpowers."
  • Incendiary Exponent: The "on fire" status effect. Exploding players with this will now result in burning gibs.
  • Incoming: It's a voice command. Also used by the Heavy in Meet the Spy before he mows down the door to the intel room.
  • Infinite Supplies: The Engineer's dispenser provides limitless ammo to anyone standing near it. Pyros and Heavies can fire an unending stream of pain this way, even from a level one.
    • The Dispenser also gives any nearby friendly Engineers more metal to build with. Nobody's really quite sure where the metal comes from.
  • Informal Eulogy: Some domination lines.

Soldier: You're dead, that's good, amen.
Spy: Here lies Scout. He ran fast and died a virgin.

  • Instant Win Condition: No matter how any member of the team fares individually, so long as the overall map objective is completed, victory is achieved. This is especially noticeable on Attack/Defend style CP, where a single BLU can win the game even if everyone else is getting massacred.
  • Instructional Film: The original release maps (as well as a few more recent maps) are introduced with a black-and-white instructional film explaining the map's objective and, sometimes, unique elements of its topology.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: tc_hydro has a commentary node about how its conspicuous waist-high fences are Lampshade Hanging and a major theme of the game.
  • Interface Screw:
    • Getting hit with the Sniper's Jarate causes the screen to go yellowish and warped until the effect wears off.
    • The Scout's Holy Mackerel causes the killfeed to broadcast whoever he's hitting with the fish until he stops or kills the target.
    • The Spy's Dead Ringer screws with the enemy's kill feed and, in some cases, gives out completely legitimate achievements.
  • In the Style Of: The art style is based off of J.C. Leyendecker.
  • I Shall Taunt You: Each class has a wide variety of taunts. Vocal taunts are triggered automatically as the result of kills, while taunt animations can be triggered manually at any time. Certain taunts can even kill other players if they stand right in front of the one doing it.
  • Item Crafting: Think of blueprints as recipes, but instead of making Chicken Cordon Bleu, they makes guns! And hats! And Sandviches, which in retrospect would have helped our analogy better if we'd mentioned that first.
  • Jet Pack: The Pyro's Thermal Thruster.
  • Joke Item: Given the huge number of weapons in the game, there's quite a few of them here.
  • Just Add Water: You can take unwanted items and smelt them into scrap metal, which then gets combined into reclaimed and refined metal, which then can be made into weapons and hats. Specific recipes exist to craft specific other items and weapons without having to wait for the random drop system to give them to you. There are many recipes that make little sense (metal + wrench = wrapping paper, metal + 8 jars of piss = marble bust) among some that do (metal + backpack = another backpack, batter's helmet + 2 cans of soda = batter's helmet with 2 cans of soda attached).
  • Just for Pun: Many of the achievement names, some of which would not be out of place on this wiki. ("Tartan Spartan", anyone?)
  • Kaizo Trap: After a success for BLU on Payload or either team for Payload Race, don't think you're sure to get some free kills in humiliation, as the detonation can still kill you. Of course, some people enjoy throwing themselves into the explosion or the pit of death that it leaves behind.
  • Kill'Em All: During Humiliation, the winning team gets a 10% speed boost and crits for 15 seconds so they can kill the losing team, who have been slowed to 90% of their normal speed and stripped of their weapons.
  • Kill Streak: Some achievements require this, albeit with restrictions, like using a certain weapon. Most classes also have increasingly enthusiastic responses when they kill a number of enemies within a short period of time. Also, killing the same player four times without being killed by them in between (doesn't have to be in a single life) results in a Domination.
  • Laser Sight: The sniper rifle has one, purely for the benefit of the targets since the weapon itself already has a scope with a crosshair. Sentries controlled with the Wrangler have one that shows the entire beam (to distinguish it from the rifle as well as to reveal its position).
  • Last Lousy Point: The grind-based achievements, particularly Pyromancer (1 million points of fire damage as a Pyro), Tartan Spartan (1 million points of explosive damage as a Demoman), The Best Little Slaughterhouse In Texas (5,000 kills with sentry guns), and the Replay achievements.
    • Also frustrating are achievements that require players to get a number of something (kills, points) within a life.
    • If you want to obtain all the items by crafting only, have fun getting the Rocket Jumper, Sticky Jumper, and Solemn Vow. The former two can only be crafted by luck, using the "fabricate class weapons" option. There's a 1/5 chance of getting a Rocket Jumper and a 1/4 chance of getting a sticky jumper, respectively. Then the Solemn Vow requires 8 Jarates, which is beyond what the average player might find in their lifetime. That's not counting the re-skinned promotional items.
  • Lead the Target: Required of some slower projectile-based weapons, such as the Syringe Gun and Huntsman.
  • Leitmotif:
    • Heavy: Arguably the main theme (simply titled "Team Fortress 2"), as he's almost the main character of the game.
    • Soldier: "Rocket Jump Waltz", "The Art Of War", "Intruder Alert"
    • Engineer: "More Gun" (based on Wilco's "Someone Else's Song")
    • Demoman: "Drunken Pipe Bomb"
    • Scout: "Faster Than A Speeding Bullet"
    • Sniper: Not in the game for copyright reasons, but his is The Jimmy Hart Version of the Magnum Force theme.
    • Spy: "Right Behind You", "Petite Chou-Fleur" (although that could arguably be Scout's Mother's theme, too)
    • Medic: "A Little Heart To Heart", "MEDIC!", "Archimedes"
    • Pyro doesn't have one as of yet, but most likely will when s/he gets his/her "Meet The" short.
  • Lethal Joke Weapon: All the melee weapons have a much higher chance to do Massive Damage by Critical Hit (except for the knife, which works differently due to its design around Backstabs, and all weapons that register headshots), including the bottle, the shovel, and especially (from a gameplay standpoint) the boxing gloves.
    • The Sniper has an unlockable jar of a certain yellow liquid that causes anybody within the "blast radius" of where it's thrown to take 35% more damage for 10 seconds.
    • All of the kill taunts also count as Lethal Joke Weapons. They are slow to play out and often have very limited range, but they usually instantly kill on contact. The Lethal Joke is most especially funny with the Heavy, who can kill people by pointing at them. Surprisingly, that taunt can kill from a damn good distance.
    • The Ullapool Caber is an unlockable melee weapon for the Demoman; all it is is a German WW 2 stick grenade that explodes when it hits an enemy or a non-friendly solid object, dealing 100 damage to the Demoman and launching him high up in the air, likely to be finished off by fall damage. But it's capable of dealing upwards of 180 damage to any enemies caught in the explosion, and, if combined with the Chargin' Targe for a guaranteed melee critical... 400+ easily. Your team not able to keep the cart back? Just charge in and clear out the entire thing and buy them some time.
    • The jumping practice weapons for the Soldier and Demoman, the Rocket Jumper and Sticky Jumper, respectively, do no damage and cause any damage taken by the user to be doubled; rightfully so, considering that the weapons are intended strictly to be used to learn how to perform explosive jumps. Until you realize that you can use the enhanced maneuverability to get behind enemy lines very easily.
      • And now the sticky jumper has been changed so the user no longer suffers increased damage, restoring its status as a lethal joke weapon.
  • Level Grinding: Somewhere from a half to a third of the Achievements to unlock new weapons are based on merely doing fairly common things several times, like running or double jumping. The Pyro has one for causing a million damage. The Medic has one for healing a million damage.
    • Complaints about this brought Valve to formulate a new mechanic for weapon unlocking for the Sniper Vs. Spy Update. It backfired and introduced the easiest form of grinding ever.
      • In response to these complaints, the achievement method was reintroduced with much lower requirements, making it fairly easy to get the alternate weapons without any of the excessive achievements. Good luck with getting Hats, though.
  • Lighter and Softer: Than most other games in the genre. Sure, it's rated M, there's a ridiculous amount of gore, and it's definitely not a kid's game, but the style very much averts Real Is Brown and looks like a Pixar film, the worst swear in the game is probably "bitch" (delivered in one of Engineer's Domination lines), many elements of the game are hilarious and not meant to be taken seriously, and it appears that none of the classes really die (see Resurrective Immortality in Tropes Q to Z).
  • Like a Badass Out of Hell: In the 2011 Scream Fortress update, the boss MONOCULUS! occasionally teleports around the map; and leaves behind a portal to the underworld, which grants the effects of Über, Kritz, and a speed boost to your character upon escaping it.
    • The doors through which the superpowered characters reemerge onto the map are labeled Warning: Dead End.
  • Limit Break: After filling his ÜberCharge meter, the Medic can unleash a devastating attack where he and one teammate are invincible (or, with the Kritzkrieg, have unlimited Critical Hits) for ten seconds. The soldier's backpack-type weapons work in a similar fashions: the Buff Banner fills as he does damage and gives all nearby allies guaranteed mini-crits (+ 35% damage); the Battalion's Backup allows him to protect nearby allies from critical hits and severe injuries (-35% to damage taken) -- but is charged by taking damage, rather than giving it; the Concheror fills rage both ways. Upon activation, it negates crits like the Battalion's Backup and everyone affected by it receives 20% of the damage they deal as healing.
    • Shooting Superman: Even when the Medic's ÜberCharge is activated, many people keep firing out of desperation. It makes more sense with rockets and grenades, though -- ÜberCharge does not protect from being thrown around. (In fact, a properly aimed explosive or a Pyro airblast can essentially ruin an ÜberCharge rush; even if the two aren't separated, they won't get their momentum back before the charge ends.)
      • Snipers even have an achievement for getting a killing shot on an Über Duo right as their charge wears off.
  • Loading Screen: The game's loading screen on Valve-made official maps shows the map you're going to, your stats, and a random tip. On community-created maps, instead of stats, there's a list of top donors, players who bought the most stamps that represent the map.
  • Locomotive Level: The custom Capture the Flag map Convoy takes place on and within two team-colored trains.
  • Loot Boxes: TF2's loot box system is similar to CSGO's, the boxes drop randomly and needs keys to open them (But the keys need to be bought from the virtual Mann.Co's store, buying the key from a seller in the Steam Market, or a fan trusted site, like Scrap.TF).
  • Loot Drama: Bound to happen.
    • Valve removed hats and other items from people who farmed items by idling and/or using other exploits. Valve rewarded players who didn't do this by giving them a halo hat as proof. This caused even more drama where people made fun of people who got the halos or even banned people from their servers outright from having it.
    • There are only 100 Golden Wrenches handed out during the Engineer Update. To get one you had to be either super-lucky while crafting.
  • Lost Forever: Between when Valve implemented the "Delete" button for unlockable items and the new method for unlocking items, there was no way to get unlockable items back after deletion.
    • The website describing the "Classless Update" had a hidden page that awarded a medal to the first 11,111 players who found it (the medal itself is just a Cosmetic Award for the Soldier). Players who missed that secret will never be able to get the award, so it is truly lost forever.
    • The Soldier/Demoman update featured the Soldier and Demoman fighting each other for one week. At the end of it, the Soldier class won the fight and received boots that dampen their own splash damage, which the Demoman will never receive.
      • Valve has since gotten into the habit of offering something for a limited time for doing something that usually has nothing to do with the game itself (such as preordering Left 4 Dead 2, and later having Left 4 Dead 2 by a certain date).
    • The Golden Wrench, which led up to the Engineer Update, was only obtainable by a rare chance when crafting. Only 100 in total were given, not including the six drops.
    • All the items from the Japan Charity Bundle cannot be crafted or traded. Since April 6, 2011, they are never available again.
    • Notice how long the list of "All Class" hats is? Notice how cheap the crafting cost is compared to class-specific hats? That's because of that entire list of items, only a few are actually craftable. Namely, all of the ones you can craft under normal circumstances (i.e: not event or promotion related) can literally be counted on one hand (there are 5 craftable ones as of this entry, as opposed to the 30 in total, 33 if you count the prize versions of the three Tower pile of Hats.). The rest are all promotion or event related, and are quite possibly lost forever.
      • This has been altered greatly recently, with the introduction of giving items in Genuine quality for taking part in promotional material, and releasing basic (yellow-name) versions of the item into the drop and crafting system about a week later.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Not only will characters who die from explosions explode into their component parts (which will be identified if they're in frame when the game shows who killed the player), but the game also offers a second set of gibs (developed for markets like Germany that prohibit high amounts of violence) where you explode into things like hamburgers and rubber ducks. Ludicrous gibs, indeed.
    • The Birthday mode made them even more ludicrous, turning the gibs into presents. If only you could find hats in said presents.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Frequent during the WAR update, when nearly everyone was playing Soldier or Demoman. The first five seconds of any game were a blistering hail of explosive ordinance from both sides.
    • Level 3 sentries send a barrage of missiles to their target in a spiraling inward fashion.
  • Made of Explodium: An update on June 8th, 2011 introduced doves into 21 of the maps. They explode rather violently (for no damage) when you shoot them. Or use your melee attack on them. Or just touch them.
    • The Bombonomicon introduced in the Very Scary Halloween Special, when found, can be equipped as a badge in the miscellaneous slot. When equipped, it causes the wearer to die in a glorious, flashy purple explosion no matter what their cause of death was.
  • Made of Indestructium: The CTF briefcase and the Payload.
  • Made of Plasticine: The game was originally going to take this literally, with all of the mercenaries replaced by claymation models of themselves.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: Two of the Spy's responses to being set on fire:

Spy: "I appear to have burst into flames."
Spy: "I do believe I'm on fire."

    • The Demoman will sometimes say, "Ohh, that smarts" when he's damaged, whether it's 3 hit points shaved off or most of his HP bar depleted.
  • Man On Fire/Incendiary Exponent: Any class who falls victim to the walking inferno that is the Pyro. Pyros themselves are an exception; while they still take damage from fire directly, their heavy asbestos suits and chemical filter masks prevent them from being set ablaze.
  • Marathon Level: The final stage of Dustbowl is usually an example. RED has to Hold the Line while BLU attacks. As the final portion of Dustbowl, the point is hardest to capture, and BLU has about 15 minutes to try to cap it.
  • Hachimaki: The game has two Hachimakis. The first of which was a tie-in with Homefront. The second one was part of the Japanese bundle, where the sales from the item were donated to help with the Japanese relief efforts.
  • Medal of Dishonor: There's an achievement for the Sniper called "Consolation Prize" that requires the player to get backstabbed 50 times.
  • Microtransactions
  • Milkman Conspiracy: Both teams, Reliable Excavation and Demolition and the Builders' League United operate like this, they are actually fronts for two organizations that secretly control every government in the world and are constantly at war with each other. Signs in the game's maps reveal more fronts for these organizations, such as Red Bread and Blu Corn. It's hinted that every major corporation in the world ultimately has ties to one or the other.
    • Of course, it reaches a new level when you find out that they're both run by the same handful of people apparently out of misanthropy and spite.
  • The Missingno: Since its removal in an early patch, the Civilian. Through cheating and bugs, players can enter the "reference pose" of the Civilian (standing with feet shoulder width apart, arms at sides).
  • Mistaken for Spies: Any sufficiently competent team will treat every living thing as a Spy and act accordingly.
  • Mobile Shrubbery: The mod PropHunt turns one team into map objects, and they must hide in the scenery from the "hunters". This frequently happens while the props find somewhere to hide or flee from the enemies.
  • Multiple Choice Form Letter: In variations from Saxton Hale.
  • Mutual Kill:
    • The Pyro can set enemies on fire, which does damage over time. This means that it's possible for someone to die from the burning even after they've killed the Pyro. The Pyro update includes two achievements for killing enemies this way.
    • The Huntsman fires relatively slow-moving arrows, which can kill a target even after the death of the Sniper who fired them. In one instance, two Snipers, one using the Huntsman, the other the normal sniper rifle, headshotted each other.
    • The WAR! update gave the Soldier an achievement for killing a Sniper with a rocket after he kills him first, aptly named Mutually Assured Destruction.
    • There are a few weapons that cause bleeding, also damaging the opponent over time.
    • This can happen to classes with splash damage weapons. If you're playing as Soldier, are badly wounded and fire on your attacker point blank, you can expect a shower of both your and your opponent's chunks. Can also happen with Demomen, and Engineers if they're foolish enough to stand between an enemy and their own turret.
    • Similarly, its quite common for an Engineer to die getting metal, only to watch their own sentries avenge them on death cam seconds later.
  • Mystery Box: Again, Mann Co. Supply Crates.
  • Named Weapons: The Heavy has some named miniguns, and naming one's items is possible thanks to the Name Tag.
  • Near Misses: A Scout under the effects of Bonk! Atomic Punch will dodge every attack until the drink wears off. Also, when an enemy shoots at you and narrowly misses, you can hear the bullet/flare/dart whiz by you.
  • Necro Cam: When you die, the camera shows you a still of whoever dealt the fatal blow (or his corpse/gibs), his health, and the weapon he currently has on hand. If your ragdoll appears in the shot, it may be labeled 'You!' If you were gibbed, your body parts are marked with humorous labels such as 'Your head!', 'A bit of you!', 'More bits!', and so on.
  • Never Bareheaded: Five of the nine classes wear hats by default. Four of them can be made hatless by obtaining hat-free items equippable in the headwear slot. However:
    • The Soldier can only have his hat replaced by other hats.
    • The Spy and Pyro can't have their balaclavas and gas masks removed, either. The Pyro can, however, have his entire head replaced with a different mask. The Spy just wears whatever over his balaclava.
  • Nice Hat: The unlockable hats introduced in the Sniper/Spy update began the madness, featuring nifty headwear of every possible size and shape, including several hats that are just hats stacked on top of hats.
    • They will also go down as one of the most base-breaking elements in video game history. Especially that goddamn halo.
    • This part of The Mac Update even describes it as "America's #1 war-themed hat simulator".
    • Reporting that the Retraux "demake" Gang Garrison 2 has been updated, the TF2 blog says "it's pretty much better than TF2 in every possible way now. Except for the total lack of hats. Guess we know who the real pros are around here."
    • In one of the Halloween 2011 blog posts: "...We’re debating taking all of the scares out of this year's Halloween Special. For instance, one playtester thought the Pyro was a little scary, so we’ll probably remove him as a class. Someone else swore he remembered reading something about somebody getting hurt by a gun once. And that sounded scary. So probably no more guns, either. Then Dracula called from the hospital. "Hey guys," he said, "hats are pretty scary." Well, now, that must have been the morphine talking. So we’re adding more hats just to be safe." Valve tends towards a lot of Self-Deprecation when it comes to hats.
  • No Fair Cheating: "This server is VAC-secured. Cheating will result in a permanent ban." Cheating on VAC-secured servers can permanently ban your entire Steam account from VAC servers in any game.
  • Noisy Guns: Every weapon makes a distinct noise when you select it in the Backpack, or switch to it during gameplay.
  • Non-Indicative Name:
    • A fairly funny example is the map "Gorge", whose eponymous land feature according to a blog post is not a gorge but "a large-ish hole not big enough to meet the U.S. Geological Survey’s standards for a gorge, disguised as a by-the-book, nothing-to-see-here gorge."
    • The unlockable Heavy secondary "The Buffalo Steak Sandvich" is not a "sandvich", just a steak. ("Who needs bread?")
    • What the team names are acronyms for, Reliable Excavation & Demolition and Builder's League Union, are rather the opposite of what the teams tend to when both sides don't have the same goal: RED is defense, while BLU is offense.
  • No Name Given: Ignoring team affiliation, the Scout, Pyro, Heavy, Medic, and Spy's names haven't been revealed.
    • The Scout, Medic, and Heavy's names were reveal in the course of the seven comic series.
  • No One Could Survive That: With the introduction of the Dead Ringer cloaking watch, your opponents will probably be thinking this quite often. Watch as a Spy takes a direct hit from a critical rocket (something only two fully overhealed classes can survive), bursting into gooey bits... only to appear behind the Soldier who fired it.
    • Incidentally the same item inverts the trope. Given that the Dead Ringer can activate when you suffer any damage, no matter how minuscule, be sure that enemies will be suspicious when you die from a single pistol shot.
  • No Ontological Inertia:
    • Killing a Demoman in will cause all the explosive traps he's laid to disappear. There's even an achievement for the Heavy for removing a certain amount of traps by killing the Demomen that set them.
    • Similarly, killing an Engineer during Sudden Death and Arena mode will make all his buildings explode. Note that this does not happen in any other game mode, where the Engineer can then respawn and go back to his hopefully still standing buildings. If the Engineer switches to another class, all of his buildings will disappear. If he switches melee weapons (but not classes), his buildings will be destroyed, presumably because of the differences between build time of the Jag and different sentries for the Gunslinger.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Two out-of-control sawblades on the aptly-named 'Sawmill' map stand between the competing teams and the Control Point.
    • A few maps are also home to numerous Bottomless Pits that can be the death of many players, especially if the control point sits over one.
    • Parodied with faux-safety warnings put in the levels. RED's building on the ctf_2fort map, for example, has "building condemned" notices plastered on the front.
  • No Recycling: Averted, as the Engineer can earn back most of a destroyed construction's metal by running over the scraps.
  • Nose Art: It seems that the Heavy (and on the Hoodoo level, also the Scout) likes to graffiti the Payload carts.
  • Nostalgia Level: 2Fort, Badlands, Dustbowl, and Well, though they've been redesigned somewhat.
  • Not Enough to Bury: Whenever a player is gibbed.
  • Notice This: Everything about the game's art direction is designed so you can figure out what's going on at a glance...
    • Each class has a unique silhouette, uniform, and character quirk. Valve wanted the characters to be immediately distinguishable by their physical build and their way of running.
    • The uniforms are the most brightly colored around the head and chest, to aid in the identification of the weapon each player is carrying.
    • The bases are uniquely themed with both color and architectural design, and you get color-coded arrows pointing you to the map objective.
    • The cart on Payload/Payload Race and the Intelligence on Capture The Flag have glowing outlines that can be seen through any obstacle. (Valve added this feature after something similar was successfully implemented in their Left 4 Dead series.)
    • Characters that are dominating you have a large icon over their heads.
  • Not So Harmless: Several classes that are usually meant to stay behind the lines/not get directly involved are actually devastating if they catch you by surprise thanks to their melee weapon's high crit rates.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You: The Scout can fall/jump from high places and double jump before a landing to negate any fall damage. The Soldier has a pair of tanker boots that also negates fall damage, but only if he's landing on an enemy from the jump. Other classes will take damage from a long fall, and at low health, can die from it. The kill feed will notify everyone of the player's clumsy, painful death. There's an achievement for the Medic for healing a player in the air that would've been killed from a fall.
  • No Updates for You: It's actually free updates for the Orange Box Xbox 360 version of Team Fortress 2, Microsoft prevented Valve from putting the much needed updates. The last patch was in 2009.
  • Numbered Sequel: The original game wasn't even a standalone game until Team Fortress Classic, which came out much closer to the original mod than the sequel.
  • One-Hit Kill: Headshots, backstabs and killtaunts. While those attacks deal more damage than even a overhealed Heavy can take, they are survivable under some conditions, usually a Dead Ringer. Tele Frags, however, always kill.
    • A plugin called "Roll the Dice" has Instant Kill as one of the possible results. Predictably this is best used with the Heavy, which can spray 1-hit kill bullets everywhere.
  • One Bullet At a Time: The Stickybomb Launcher can only place 8 bombs at once. If you shoot any more, the first ones start detonating in sequence. The second launcher available, The Scottish Resistance, can have 14 bombs out at once but will only detonate the ones you are actually aiming at when pulling the trigger. Other projectiles in the game (such as rockets, arrows, flares and syringes) are only limited by their reload rate.
  • One Bullet Clips: Played straight or averted, depending on the weapon. Some weapons like the pistol and syringe gun replace the entire magazine. Others like the shotgun and rocket launcher reload one shot/rocket at a time. Miniguns and flamethrowers don't have a reload function, they just need an ammo supply to keep them loaded. The only weapon that doesn't reload like the others is the double-barreled Force-A-Nature; if you have one round in the barrel and reload, that unused round is lost.
  • One Nation Under Copyright: Reliable Excavation and Demolitions controls one half of the world. Builders League United controls the other half. The woman officiating the war between the two companies is the CEO of both of them.
  • Only Sane Employee: The BLU Engineer. While not the Only Sane Man, as the Spy and Sniper seem more professional than psychotic, the Engineer's primary job in missions where BLU is on the offensive is to get his allies to the front lines quickly and keep them healed and stocked with ammo.
  • Only Smart People May Pass: Although not technically part of the game, there was a glitch where a Scout could get himself stuck in the door leading out of the spawn room in such a way where nobody else can leave the room if they die and come back, but the Scout can get himself out at any time. As you can probably already tell, some people have taken advantage of this glitch, and made a TF2 Trivia game out of it, where if you answer the Scout's question correctly, he'll let everybody out of the room. This video has a perfect example.
  • Organization with Unlimited Funding: TF Industries controls the world, utilizes armies of paper-pushers to solve problems, and has enough money to finance death rays, doomsday devices, bombs, and rockets, and outfit their mercenaries with guns that would be impossible today - in particular, they can resurrect the dead and build ammunition and health dispensers that defy the laws of thermodynamics, on a whim. In the sixties.
  • Ornamental Weapon: The Demoman's vest has extra pipes, the Pyro's bandolier has napalm grenades, and the Soldier carries a couple of frag grenades on his bandolier. The Soldier only uses a grenade in a kill taunt.
  • Overdrawn At the Blood Bank: The mercenaries lose a lot of blood when shot, especially if the weapon has a bleed effect. Coupled with the healing provided by a Medic, one can lose a lot of blood in a life.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: Valve has jokingly described this game as "America's #1 war-themed hat simulator". How many other war-themed hat simulators could there be?
  • Oxygen Meter: While there isn't a visible oxygen meter, staying underwater long enough and the player will flinch and make drowning-type noises and take damage. Health lost from drowning is restored by coming up for air. Medics and Dispensers can heal players faster than drowning can kill them.
  • Pacifist Run: The the Medic class achievement "First Do No Harm" entails reaching the top of the scoreboard in a game of six or more players on a team without killing anyone, instead relying on assist kills while healing others.
    • The Scout has a similar achievement called "No Hitter", where you take the intel and bring it back without firing a shot (the icon is even a dove holding an olive branch above an intel case).
  • Painting the Fourth Wall: In the Mann Co. store, you can click on the item and get a preview on what it looks like, both alone and on the character. Except for the Spy. This was probably a Good Bad Bug, and was fixed in short order.
  • Papa Wolf: The Sentries are often thought of as the Engineers' children. If the Engineer's Sentry is killed, and they are using the special Frontier Justice shotgun, which gives an automatic two critical hits for every time that the dead sentry got a kill, then you'd better 'Start prayin', boy', 'cause if you're not uber-charged, you're one or two shots away from the respawn room.
    • It's also clear from listening to his "<X> down!" lines that he sounds more distressed about Sentries being destroyed than any other building.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: To their teammates (or supposed teammates, if a Spy disguises as the enemy Spy), Disguised Spies use this trope literally, wearing a paper mask with the face of the class they are impersonating (see the trope's page image).
    • Inexperienced spies can also result in this in-game. The easiest way to catch a Spy is to find one that isn't using their weapon. Medic and Pyro disguises pretty much give themselves away. The other, more combat-oriented classes make better disguises.
    • Also, this holiday card.
  • Percussive Maintenance: Everything an Engineer can do to improve their buildings is performed by hitting it with their wrench.
    • Hilariously and heavily Lampshaded in the Sentry Operating Manual, where detailed instructions are given for sentry maintenance and upgrading, all of which boil down to "just keep smashing it with the wrench."
  • Personal Raincloud: One of the particle effects available for an Unusual hat.
  • Pimp Duds: The Hustler's Hallmark, an unlockable team colored pimp hat for the Demoman. For bonus points, the Demoman can pimpwalk by looking up and crouching while moving straight forward.
  • Player-Generated Economy: With hats and various metals as the main unit of trade.
  • Player Archetypes: Not on the Five Gamers list, but this seems to fit (of course, Your Mileage May Vary):
    • Real Men favor Soldier or Heavy.
    • Thespians favor Spy or Scout.
    • Brains favor Engineer or Medic.
    • Loonies favor Pyro.
    • Munchkins favor Sniper or Demoman.
  • Player Versus Player
  • Plot Based Photograph Obfuscation: Someone is obscured from the photograph of Zepheniah Mann and company, and his section of Zepheniah's will is similarly obscured. His will shows that he left the entirety of his something to somebody, and swore them to utmost secrecy in its keeping. In Loose Canon, the third recipient to a life-extender machine is out of the panel.
  • The Points Mean Nothing: It doesn't matter how many points you get as long as your objective is done, though it's an indicator of how well you're helping your team and how balanced the teams are.
  • Poirot Speak: The Medic, Heavy, and Spy do this.
  • Practical Taunt: Every class has at least one with the right weapon.
  • Prank Injuries: There's a hat that appears to be a butcher knife stuck in the mercenary's head. It's unclear whether this is a real knife or not.
  • Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: The Engineer. "Start prayin', boy." [1]
  • Premature Encapsulation: The first update to two simultaneous classes was named the "Sniper Vs. Spy Update". The next update, where kills between the two classes actually determined the results of the update, was known as the "WAR!" update.
  • Preorder Bonus: Not for TF2 itself, but items have been given out as pre-order bonuses for other games, including non-Valve ones. To date, they've given out Bill's Hat for pre-ordering Left 4 Dead 2, Max's Severed Head and replicas of Sam's and Max's guns for Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse, a Worms-style hat for the Soldier, complete with nonfunctional Holy Hand Grenades, for pre-ordering Worms Reloaded, and a poker visor for the Heavy for pre-ordering Poker Night At the Inventory.
  • Press X to Die: Pressing the taunt key as a Soldier with the Equalizer on hand will make him perform a taunt kill that blows him to gibs. However, it'll also gib anyone within 6 feet. Also, typing "kill" or "explode" into the console will result in just that.
  • Pretty Little Headshots: Exaggerated with most weapons, as headshots deal no extra damage at all. Played straight with the Spy's Ambassador and any of the Sniper's primaries.
    • During the Jungle Inferno update, the Amby's headshots ability was changed to do just normal damage. So, after the update, it's now just challenging to land a shot with it.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
    • The Soldier, firing/swing his weapon while standing on a control point will yell, "Stand! On! The! Point! Maggots!", and when ignited, might shout, "I am on fire!"
    • Parodying There Will Be Blood, the Scout has, "I. Eat. Your. Sandviches! I eat 'em up!" He also has a bunch of other punctuated phrases along the lines of "You! Suck!" and "You! Are! Terrible!"
  • Punny Name: Bots with certain names will tend to favor certain classes - for example, CreditToTeam usually spawns as an Engineer (the Heavy, upon being teleported, will declare: "Engineer is credit to team!").
  1. ↑ If the Engineer has the Frontier Justice equipped, when his sentry is destroyed, he gets revenge criticals based on the number of kills it had, boosting the damage up to 180 per shot if all pellets hit, enough to floor nearly any class in 1 shot, and a guaranteed 2 hit kill on any class that's not overhealed.
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