98 Fun Facts About Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 was released in October 2007 as part of which Valve compilation?

The Orange Box bundled Team Fortress 2 with Half-Life 2 and its two Episodes on October 10, 2007; the PlayStation 3 edition followed that December, ported by EA rather than Valve.

Which brand-new game shipped beside TF2 in the 2007 compilation that launched it?

Portal was one of the compilation's three new games, beside Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode Two; it grew out of Narbacular Drop, a student game whose entire team Valve hired to remake it.

What does RED, one of the two teams in TF2, stand for?

Reliable Excavation Demolition is the demolition firm that fronts for the red team; in the lore it belongs to Redmond Mann, who hires its mercenaries to fight his brother's rival company.

What does BLU stand for?

Builders League United is the blue team's cover company, a construction firm whose feud with the red team's demolition company drives the game's lore.

How many playable classes does Team Fortress 2 have?

Nine classes ship in the game, three each for offense, defense and support; Valve's artists gave each a distinct silhouette because spotting an enemy's class at a glance matters so much in play.

Which class, a baseball fan from Boston, can double jump and counts twice when capturing points?

The Scout is the fastest class; his official bio says the youngest of eight Boston brothers taught himself to run so he could reach a fight before his siblings ended it.

'Rocket jumping' at the cost of some health is a signature move of which class?

The Soldier fires a rocket at his own feet to fly; his official bio says every branch of the US military rejected him, so he bought his own ticket to Europe and fought World War II alone.

Which class can fire blasts of compressed air that repel enemies and reflect projectiles?

The Pyro's flamethrower doubles as an air cannon: its airblast shoves enemies back, returns rockets to whoever fired them and puts out burning teammates.

Which class hails from Ullapool in Scotland and can 'sticky jump' across the map?

The Demoman is a one-eyed Scot; his official bio says a terrible plan to kill the Loch Ness Monster at age six cost him his first set of adoptive parents.

Which TF2 class has named his primary weapon 'Sasha'?

The Heavy is the slowest and largest class, and Sasha is his minigun; his 'Meet the Team' video, the first one released, reuses his audition script almost word for word.

Which TF2 class's official bio credits him with eleven science PhDs?

The Engineer is the team's builder: his wrench both fights and upgrades the sentry guns, dispensers and teleporters he places, skills his bio credits to the PhDs and ten years in the oilfields.

What is the name of the invulnerability meter that the Medi Gun builds while healing teammates?

ÜberCharge is the meter the Medi Gun fills while healing; released, it makes healer and patient briefly invulnerable, and the healer can swing the beam to pass that shield to someone else.

Which class comes from Stuttgart, Germany?

The Medic was raised in Stuttgart when, his official bio jokes, the Hippocratic oath had been downgraded to a Hippocratic suggestion; healing is a side effect of his morbid curiosity.

The throwable jar weapon 'Jarate' belongs to which class?

The Sniper's Jarate is a jar of his own urine: it began as a background gag in his 'Meet the Team' video before Valve turned it into a weapon that makes soaked enemies take extra damage.

Which TF2 class disables enemy buildings by attaching a sapper to them?

The Spy's Sapper shuts down a sentry gun, dispenser or teleporter and wears it down until it breaks unless its builder knocks the device off; his invisibility watch and disguises get him close enough to plant it.

Who voices TF2's Administrator, the announcer who barks objectives over the loudspeakers?

Ellen McLain voices the Administrator; the same box also carries her as GLaDOS in its puzzle game and as the Combine's Overwatch announcer in Half-Life 2.

Which actress voices Miss Pauling, the Administrator's assistant?

Ashly Burch voices Miss Pauling, as well as Aloy in the Horizon games; in the short Expiration Date her character races to bury incriminating bodies while the Scout works up the nerve to ask her out.

What did earlier buyers get when TF2 went free-to-play in 2011?

A hat named the Proof of Purchase went to everyone who had bought the game, as Valve's thank-you for their support; paying players also kept premium accounts with bigger backpacks and full trading.

Which video ended 'Meet the Team'?

Meet the Pyro completed the ten-video series on June 27, 2012, five years after it began; it finally showed the world through the masked arsonist's eyes, a utopian fantasy land the game calls Pyroland.

Which of the promotional class videos leaked onto YouTube several days before its intended release?

Meet the Spy leaked onto YouTube in May 2009, days before its planned debut, so Valve published it early.

Which 2014 update was the short 'Expiration Date' released to promote?

Love and War arrived in June 2014 with new taunts and bread-themed items; the fifteen-minute short Expiration Date was made to promote it, and its plot about bread sent through a teleporter set up the jokes.

Which cooperative mode, added to TF2 in August 2012, pits players against waves of robots?

Mann vs. Machine is the co-op mode in which up to six players stop a robot horde from carrying a bomb into a Mann Co. site; the lore gives the army to Gray Mann, who built it to destroy the company.

Who is the Australian adventurer and CEO of Mann Co.?

Saxton Hale runs Mann Co. because its founder, Zepheniah Mann, willed the company to his tracker, Barnabus Hale, and left his own sons only worthless land; Saxton is that tracker's descendant.

In TF2's Payload mode, which team must push the explosive cart along its track?

BLU is the attacking team in Payload: the bomb cart rolls only while BLU players stand beside it, speeds up with more of them, and slides back if left alone too long.

In TF2's Capture the Flag mode, what object stands in for the flag?

An intelligence briefcase is the flag; when its carrier drops it, the owning team cannot pick it up and must guard it where it lies until a one-minute timer sends it home.

What does a TF2 King of the Hill clock do when its team loses the point?

Pauses is the rule: each team's three-minute clock runs only while that team holds the point, so a side seconds from victory can lose the hill and watch its rival's clock run down instead.

Extremely rare hats with particle effects attached are known as what?

Unusuals are hats with a particle effect such as Burning Flames attached; they cannot be found as ordinary drops, only unboxed from crates or traded for, which is what keeps them scarce.

What is the name of TF2's yearly Halloween event?

Scream Fortress is the yearly Halloween event; it brings haunted map variants, spell-casting and bosses such as the Horseless Headless Horsemann and the eyeball Monoculus.

Which wizard, owner of the Bombinomicon, is a recurring villain of TF2's Halloween events?

Merasmus is the wizard who debuted as a boss on Ghost Fort in the 2012 Halloween event; the lore makes him the rocket-jumping class's long-suffering roommate.

TF2's cartoon look drew on commercial illustrators including Norman Rockwell and whom?

J. C. Leyendecker was named with Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell in Valve's 2007 paper on the game's look, which copied their habit of picking figures out with bright rim highlights instead of dark outlines.

The original Team Fortress began in 1996 as a free mod for which game?

Quake hosted the original Team Fortress, released in August 1996 by the Australian group TF Software; Valve hired its makers and shipped Team Fortress Classic in 1999.

Under what subtitle was Team Fortress 2 first shown at E3 in 1999?

Brotherhood of Arms was the subtitle on the 1999 E3 showing, a realistic military shooter with commanders and parachute drops that Valve later scrapped for the cartoon style.

Which magazine's annual vaporware list regularly featured Team Fortress 2 during its long silence?

Wired ran the annual Vaporware awards, and Team Fortress 2 placed on the list repeatedly during the eight-year gap between its 1999 showing and its 2007 release.

Which 2009 map introduced the Payload Race mode?

Pipeline arrived with the Sniper vs. Spy Update in May 2009 as the first Payload Race map, with each team pushing its own cart across three stages.

Which 2016 update added TF2's ranked competitive mode?

Meet Your Match launched on July 7, 2016, adding ranked competitive matchmaking and reworking casual play into a matchmaking system.

What hashtag did the community rally behind in a June 3, 2024 protest against the bot problem?

#FixTF2 was the June 3, 2024 campaign against the aimbot bots; an earlier protest used #savetf2 in May 2022, and Valve ran ban waves within weeks of the 2024 push.

The July 2023 update that lifted TF2 to a record player count added which community mode?

Versus Saxton Hale, a long-running community mode in which a single player becomes the boss, went official in the July 2023 summer update, which was built largely from community maps and cosmetics.

After voice actor Rick May died in 2020, Valve added what tribute to TF2?

A new main menu theme was added in May 2020 as Valve's tribute, alongside temporary statues of the rocket-jumping class May had voiced since launch.

Which 2010 release added a store where items could be bought with real money?

The Mann-Conomy Update of September 30, 2010 opened the Mann Co. Store and introduced trading, laying the groundwork for the free-to-play switch the following year.

Which game engine does Team Fortress 2 run on?

Source is Valve's engine, introduced in 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2; TF2 began on the older GoldSrc engine, and Valve blamed one of its delays on the switch.

Which two creators of the original Team Fortress mod led TF2's development at Valve?

Robin Walker and John Cook, two of the Australians behind the 1996 mod, joined Valve in 1998 and steered Team Fortress 2 through its long development.

How many official maps did Team Fortress 2 ship with at launch?

Six maps shipped at launch, among them 2Fort, Well and Hydro; well over a hundred more have been added since, many of them community-made.

Which Texas town is the Engineer's hometown?

Bee Cave, a small town west of Austin, is the hometown in the official bio, which sends him out for ten years as a roughneck in the west Texas oilfields.

The Sniper was born in which country before being raised in the Australian outback?

New Zealand is the birthplace the comics give him; as a baby he was sent to Australia and raised there by adoptive parents, the Mundys.

What is the century-long stalemate between the Mann brothers over New Mexico land called?

The Gravel War is the lore's name for the feud: Redmond and Blutarch kept themselves alive with life-extension machines until their brother Gray murdered them both.

What is the 9v9 competitive format limited to one player per class called?

Highlander is 9v9 with exactly one player of each class per team, so no class can be stacked or left out; Prolander, its 7v7 spin-off, lets teams swap classes mid-match.

TF2's warm-to-cool, illustration-style lighting builds on which shading technique?

Gooch shading tints surfaces from warm to cool instead of light to dark; Valve's 2007 paper built on it and added rim highlights, because the illustrators it studied let shadows go cool, not black.

Which four classes does TF2's Training Mode teach to new players?

Soldier, Demoman, Engineer and Spy are the four with training courses; the first course, added in the 2010 Mac Update, uses wooden targets and bots on a dedicated map.

A Team Fortress 2 patch fixed a 17-year-old color bug in which piece of the BLU Scout's outfit?

His pants had been brown, like the RED team's, instead of blue. Valve reverted the fix a day later because cosmetic items had been designed around the mistake.

Which $100 Team Fortress 2 item from Valentine's Day 2012 is announced to every player when gifted?

A wedding ring called Something Special for Someone Special broadcasts both names to everyone playing once it is accepted. Players have since used the global message for jokes and protests.

Team Fortress 2's Meet the Soldier video credits which historical figure with inventing fighting?

Sun Tzu gets the credit in a lecture the Soldier delivers to a row of severed BLU heads. He then muddles the claim with the story of Noah and the Ark.

Team Fortress 2 is credited with laying the groundwork for which later multiplayer genre?

Hero shooter games such as Overwatch give each class a personality and backstory, the framework Team Fortress 2 set out in 2007. The label first appeared in publicity for Battleborn in 2014.

Which edible Team Fortress 2 item starred in an iPod-style silhouette ad for the game's Mac release?

The Sandvich sat highlighted in the Heavy's hand against a bright green background. The snack began as a gag in the promotional videos before Valve made it a usable item.

Team Fortress 2 began development as an expansion pack for which Valve game?

Half-Life was still months from release when Valve bought the mod's makers in May 1998, and the sequel was planned as its add-on. The promised year-end launch then slipped all the way to 2007.

Team Fortress 2 was announced in 2013 as the first game to officially work with which VR headset?

Oculus Rift compatibility came through a patch that added a VR Mode, playable with the headset on any public server.

Team Fortress 2's Sniper vs. Spy Update introduced the first of which cosmetics, one for each class?

Hats arrived on the bonus day of the update, among them a Fancy Fedora and a Prussian Pickelhaube. Valve retired the originals from drops, crafting and the store in 2013.

Team Fortress 2's console updates stalled after which platform's owner refused to let them be free?

Xbox 360 owner Microsoft insisted the updates carry a price, so Valve planned to bundle several together to justify one. No patch has reached that version since 2009.

Which planned Team Fortress 2 class was cut because players ignored the orders it gave from above?

The Commander would have played like a real-time strategy game, issuing orders to teammates and AI soldiers. The same early design promised parachute drops over enemy territory.

A 2018 Team Fortress 2 patch blocked crate opening in the Netherlands and which other country?

Belgium and its Dutch neighbor both had local laws making loot boxes illegal, so the July 2018 patch stopped crates from opening in either country.

Team Fortress 2's long delay was often mentioned alongside which other notoriously late shooter?

Duke Nukem Forever kept fans waiting even longer: announced in 1997, it finally shipped in 2011 after 14 years in development.

Which Steam feature grew out of the contribution site Valve built for Team Fortress 2 item makers?

The Steam Workshop began as a way for players to submit maps, weapons and cosmetics. By June 2013 Valve had paid more than $10 million to over 400 contributors.

Which publisher printed Valve's online Team Fortress 2 stories in a 2011 book alongside Left 4 Dead tales?

Dark Horse Comics released the book as Valve Presents: The Sacrifice and Other Steam-Powered Stories. Valve had brought in comic writer Michael Avon Oeming in 2009 to teach its team the format.

Team Fortress 2's first TV commercial premiered in 2013 during which Adult Swim animated series?

The Venture Bros. opened its fifth season with the ad, which showed off in-game accessories created with Adult Swim's help.

Which cosmetic, handed to early Mac players of Team Fortress 2, later served as a trading currency?

Earbuds went to anyone who played on a Mac in the weeks after the June 2010 launch. Traders later priced rare items in "buds", alongside crate keys and crafting metal.

Which weapon, carried by every class in earlier Team Fortress games, did Valve cut from Team Fortress 2?

Hand grenades split the critics: IGN was disappointed to lose them, while PC Gamer UK cheered that they were gone.

Team Fortress 2 splits its classes evenly between Offense, Defense and which third role?

Support is the category for the Medic, the Sniper and the Spy.

Which Team Fortress 2 game mode gives players no respawns, ending when one team is wiped out?

Arena rounds can also be won by seizing a single capture point, which only unlocks once a set time has passed.

Which movement tool does every player get in Team Fortress 2's Mannpower mode, alongside map power-ups?

A grappling hook lets any class swing across the map. Mannpower is based on Threewave CTF, a mod created by former Valve employee David Kirsch.

Which voice actor plays both the French Spy and the gas-masked Pyro in Team Fortress 2?

Dennis Bateman voices two opposites: one speaks in a smooth French accent, the other only in mumbles muffled by a mask.

Which prolific video game actor voices both feuding founders of RED and BLU in Team Fortress 2?

Nolan North, best known as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, also plays the brothers' father and a pair of Halloween villains.

What is the first name of the long-lost brother who murders the founders of RED and BLU in Team Fortress 2?

Gray ends his brothers' century-long stalemate by killing them both, then sends a robot army against the family's weapons company.

Which drink fills the glass bottle that Team Fortress 2's Demoman swings as his default melee weapon?

Scrumpy is a strong cider from the West Country of England. Land a critical hit and the bottle's lower half shatters, though it hits just as hard afterwards.

Which curved knife does Team Fortress 2's Sniper carry by default for close combat?

A kukri is the national weapon of Nepal and the utility knife of its Gurkha soldiers. The Sniper keeps one beside a submachine gun for enemies who get too close.

Which Team Fortress 2 launch map was built for Territorial Control, with territories picked at random each round?

Hydro has stayed the lone official map of its type, possibly because Territorial Control is so complex and difficult to design for.

Which Team Fortress 2 item quality tracks the number of kills made with a weapon?

Strange weapons earn new ranks as the tally climbs, each one added to the front of the item's name and announced to everyone on the server.

What name did players give the 2019 Team Fortress 2 bug that flooded the market with rare hats?

The Crate Depression began when a bug made some older crates pay out a top-rarity hat every time, instead of the nominal 1% chance. Valve fixed it the next day.

Which feature-length 2023 fan film recast Team Fortress 2's mercenaries in a psychological horror story?

Emesis Blue was acclaimed as genuine mainstream horror. It came out of a fan-animation scene that thrives because the game's models and assets are so widely available.

The early Meet the Team videos for Team Fortress 2 were adapted from which material written for the cast?

Audition scripts supplied the words: Meet the Heavy is almost line for line the script that actors read when trying out for the part.

Team Fortress 2's Soldier, rejected by the US Army, goes by which alias?

Jane Doe is the placeholder name normally given to a woman whose identity is unknown, an odd fit for a self-styled military man.

What name, borrowed from an ancient Greek thinker, does Team Fortress 2's Medic give his pet dove?

Archimedes appears spattered with blood on the RED team, a nod to Meet the Medic, where the dove burrows inside the Heavy's chest.

Which Team Fortress 2 pocket watch drops a bogus corpse and cloaks its owner the moment he takes damage?

The Dead Ringer is a gold-plated watch engraved with a hummingbird. The hit that sets it off does 75% less damage, buying its owner time to slip away unseen.

Which 2017 Team Fortress 2 update, the last major one for years, welcomed players to Mercenary Park?

Jungle Inferno brought new weapons and maps, replaced weapon skins with War Paint, and overhauled contracts with a gadget called the ConTracker.

Which 2013 Team Fortress 2 update was the first created entirely by community contributors?

Robotic Boogaloo added 57 community-made cosmetics, each a robot version of an existing item. Valve later said its contributors shared $250,000 from the release.

Which 2008 release, Team Fortress 2's first major content patch, introduced the Payload game mode?

The Gold Rush Update also made the Medic the first class to receive new weapons, along with the loadout screen needed to equip them.

Team Fortress 2's Heavy comes from the Dzhugdzhur Mountains of which country?

Soviet Union origins suit the character: a huge Russian man obsessed with firepower, with the highest health of any class.

Which Team Fortress 2 launch map sets rival bases facing each other across a covered bridge?

2Fort remakes a Team Fortress Classic map of the same name, and was the sequel's first official Capture the Flag map.

Which Team Fortress 2 status is earned by killing one opponent four times without them killing you back?

A Domination makes the killer that opponent's Nemesis, flagged on the scoreboard, until the victim ends it with a Revenge kill.

In Team Fortress 2 lore, which fictional golden metal paid for the founders' life-extending machines?

Australium looks much like gold, but every bar is stamped with a lone figure boxing a kangaroo. Rare gold weapon variants in the game are made of it.

Which film director's production company co-developed Team Fortress 2's ball-carrying PASS Time mode?

J. J. Abrams leads Bad Robot, which built the mode with Valve and Escalation Studios. It entered beta in 2015 and became official a year later.

Only 100 copies of which Team Fortress 2 melee weapon were handed out during 2010's Engineer Update?

The Golden Wrench had a chance of dropping whenever a player crafted an item, and each batch of 25 unlocked more of the update. Fourteen owners later deleted theirs for the charity Child's Play.

Team Fortress 2's Heavy appears as an opponent in which 2010 Telltale Games release?

Poker Night at the Inventory let players win Team Fortress 2 items by knocking out a character who had bought into the round with one.

Which short, double-barreled shotgun is the default primary weapon of Team Fortress 2's Scout?

The Scattergun fires the same pellets as the other classes' shotguns, but its damage ramps up harder at close range, rewarding a Scout who gets right in an enemy's face.

Which gadget does Team Fortress 2's Spy clamp onto enemy buildings to disable and slowly destroy them?

A Sapper is a small electric generator labeled ELECTRO-SAPPER. A sapped building stops working at once and keeps taking damage until it is destroyed.

Which Team Fortress 2 comic, released days before the Engineer Update, told how RED and BLU's wars began?

Loose Canon cuts back to an 1850 will reading, where two bickering brothers are left equal shares of the same land so they finally have something of consequence to feud over.

Team Fortress 2's Medieval Mode limits players mainly to melee weapons and does what to chat?

Makes it Ye Olde English: an automatic parser swaps in period phrases, so a typed "hello" comes out as "well meteth".

Which map, the setting of Meet the Soldier, holds Team Fortress 2's permanent statue of a saluting Soldier?

Granary kept its statue after a month-long memorial in May 2020, when saluting figures with commemorative plaques stood on most official maps.

Team Fortress 2's Pyro was added as a playable character to which co-op horror shooter in 2010?

Killing Floor traded favors with Valve's shooter: limited-edition Team Fortress 2 items were awarded to players of the other game in return.

Team Fortress 2's Halloween-only cosmetics can also be worn during which other recurring event?

A full moon unlocks them under a rule added in 2011, with the game estimating the lunar calendar by formula. The main menu changes its background for the occasion.