TF2: The Complete Character Lore

Soldier's real name, Scout's real father, Sniper's real nationality and even Pyro's real gender... sort of. TF2's lore and story are surprisingly deep. Let's meet the REAL characters of Team Fortress - their names, hometowns, families, relationships and more!

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Using the official TF2 comics, Valve's official Team Fortress trading cards and the boxes to the mercs' official NECA action figures, there is actually an impressive amount of lore to uncover about the 9 classes, as well as their families and associates.

EVERYTHING in this video is from the above official Valve sources. NOTHING is speculation or guesswork and where multiple official sources contradict each other that is stated in the video.

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🎬 Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
0:29 - TF2's story summary
02:38 - Meet the REAL Pyro
04:29 - Meet the REAL Heavy
05:11 - Meet the REAL Engineer
06:30 - Meet the REAL Sniper
07:25 - Meet the REAL Spy
08:52 - Meet the REAL Scout
09:53 - Meet the REAL Medic
11:14 - Meet the REAL Demoman
14:13 - Meet the REAL Soldier

🎵 Music:
Team Fortress 2 - Dapper Cadaver
Team Fortress 2 - Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 - The Calm
Team Fortress 2 - A Little Heart to Heart
Team Fortress 2 - Saxton's Dilemma
Team Fortress 2 - Seduce Me!
Team Fortress 2 - Red Bread
Team Fortress 2 - More Gun
Sniper Elite 4 - Main Theme (Alternate version)
Team Fortress 2 - Petite Chou-Fleur
Eastward - Sad
Team Fortress 2 - Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
Team Fortress 2 - Alchemies
Team Fortress 2 - Drunken Pipe Bomb
Team Fortress 2 - Haunted Fortress
Team Fortress 2 - Playing With Danger
Team Fortress 2 - Rocket Jump Waltz
Team Fortress 2 - Misfortune Teller
KD Knows My Name - Can't Relate (Vulcan Boy Lo-fi Remix)

Clarifications & Corrections:
3:19 - Correction, we only meet *8* of TFC because there is no Medic. But still, the other 7 are indeed all apparently male.
4:45 - "Heavy has a degree in Russian literature" - Whilst the Poker Night is a very high quality cameo from Heavy, it is not written nor published by Valve so lore "revealed" there doesn't belong in this video.
10:12 - I know the Meet the Medic short suggests otherwise, but the sources of "no formal medical training" are much stronger "canon" than the punchline "that's how I lost my medical licence" in the short. Check the pinned comment for a more detailed explanation.

#tf2 #gaming #savetf2

[Casperr]

*MEDIC'S MEDICAL LICENCE*


*"What he lacks in compassion for the sick, respect for human dignity, and any sort of verifiable formal training in medicine..."*

- Meet the Medic short (2011)

Medic: "When the patient woke up, his skeleton was missing, and the doctor was never heard from again!" [Laughs madly]
[Heavy pauses momentarily, and laughs again, banging his palm on a tray of surgical tools next to him]
Medic: *"Anyway, that's how I lost my medical license, heh."*

Given how the scene in Meet the Medic is delivered much like the punchline to a joke compared to the above sources which are intentionally player profiles and much more consistently repeated by Valve, it makes a lot more sense for those to be considered "canon". But if you want to eat your cake and have it too, the profiles say he has no *"verifiable"* medical training, so you could argue that the license he refers to could plausibly be an "unverifiable" one, thus both canons can exist as one. Hooray, everyone wins!

[alarmlessRifleman]

When you think about it, Heavy's friendship with Medic makes sense lore-wise. Heavy states that he's "yet to meet a man who can outsmart bullet", and Medic _is_ a man who can outsmart a bullet. And death. And the Devil.

[VinceMouse]

I like the idea that Soldier isn't there because he's the best man for the job, but because he just so happens to know half of the people there, is willing to kill on the cheap, and is surprisingly resistant to dying.

[agremlinwithart]

I like to imagine Soldier’s parents didn’t know about Jane Doe being the name of unidentified female corpses and just named him that by accident.

[hiddendesire]

Heavy has a PHD in Russian Literature and even in the Russian dub of the game speaks with a more refined manner than others.

[Judgement_Kazzy]

I love that there are two mercs with actual doctorate degrees, and the medic is neither of them.

[fandomaddict]

My favorite fact about the mercs is that if you play as red scout, you can sometimes here a bird cooing. There’s also a very small chance of a bird flying out of red scout when hes killed, both in reference to the ending of meet the medic

[haydenweck]

I love how Spy, Scout, and Soldier canonically has killed Santa Claus and everyone treats them like heroes for it. Also I believe the reason why Solider is as dumb as he is, is because he has been lead poisoned by the water in Tuefort which also poisoned the entire town.

[Readingeye]

One of my favorite facts about the mercs is how Medic's blatant ignorance of the hypocratic oath does not mean he doesn't have at least some inkling of how very odd his life is; as when Pauling asks how Medic is reviving them just by pouring a mix of the partially incongruous blood types into each of their bodies; he lightheartedly acknowledges it makes no sense and shouldn't be working. Then when she tries to parse the non-existent logic he becomes very serious about not questioning it in the moment.

[garrysmellfinger]

I know the canon validity of this is dubious at best, but we learn quite a bit about Heavy from his guest appearance in the game Poker Night at the Inventory
Here is a couple of them:

- Heavy got his PHD in literature from the Soviet College of Mines, Farms and Science. Heavy also uses his PHD in his line of work "more than you think"

- When asked by Tycho if he has any hobbies, Heavy states he collects rare coins. However, he only does so to melt them down and create custom bullets for his miniguns (which could be why his guns are so expensive to fire).

- Heavy has taken boxing classes. In his school, students had to sign up for either goat herding or boxing. He didn't like it at first but grew to love it.

- Heavy finds red-haired women attractive. This comes up after Tycho mentions his girlfrend.

- Heavy's favorite movies are The Dirty Dozen and the first twenty minutes of Rocky IV.

-Heavy's favorite book is Tsar/King Hunger by Leonid Andreyev

- Heavy has recurring nightmares of either himself or his teammates being killed.

[Langodan]

Demo is really underrated as a character imo in the fandom.
Also! The Eyelander is sentient, can talk, watches bad ghost dramas with Demo, and apparently likes churros.

[slimebucket]

Don’t know how cannon gameplay and the “Meet The” trailers are, but if we go off those, I love the fact that one of Medic’s Doves, “Archimedes” is actually stuck and living inside Scout’s chest. As seen at the very tail end of the Meet The Medic trailer, and it occasionally in game when gibbing a scout, who has a chance to have a dove fly straight out of the body parts.

[skengo]

I'm pretty sure medic does have formal training, because in the meet the heavy video he says "anyways, that's how I lost my medical license" which implies he at one point did have it

[PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth]

You missed a large portion of Demoman's backstory.

The parents we see in the comics ARE his biological ones. They simply abandoned him at birth until his "Degroot Blood" manifested when he accidentally blew up his adoptive parents. His real parents then immediately returned to take him in and teach him how to harness explosives.

This is all part of an old and extremely unnecessary family tradition, designed to ensure that Degroots never rely on (or get attached to) their parents.

In a twisted way there's a tiny grain of logic to this, because Degroot tradition ALSO dictates that every Degroot will eventually blow themselves up, meaning it's important younger members of the family know how to cope without parents.

Still, if you ever wonder why Demoman has a drinking problem, and why he sometimes breaks down and calls himself "jus' a one-eyed bloody monster, " this is probably why. Dude had a ROUGH childhood.

[Barthallis]

I think it's also worth mentioning that rumors started appearing after Scout's official name was revealed that he was named after Jerma985, a popular TF2 YouTuber at the time who now streams on Twitch and uploads the cut-down streams to his second channel, 2ndJerma. Years later it was confirmed that those rumors were true by one of the TF team members and one of the artists for the comics.

[cracklasco]

I always thought it was really sad that Spy was too scared to confess to scout who he was with his true body, even though it would’ve been the last thing Scout took in before he died 😢

[maxresdefault_]

It's funny to me that almost all the mercs are fabulously wealthy for some inexplicable reason. Demoman has the DeGroot estate, Pyro was the CEO of a major corporation, Scout has his priceless Tom Jones collection and lord knows how much Heavy spends on minigun ammo

[jarekwrzosek]

You forgot to mention how musically tallented are our mercs:

Scout can play bongos
Soldier is great with brass instruments (Bugles and Trombone to be specific)
Pyro propably knows how to play guitar (as his air guitar default melee taunt suggests).
Engie loves his accoustic Guitar.
Demoman not only plays his native bagpipes, but also was seen playing piano in "Expiration Date".
Heavy really likes to sing, mostly russian classical and folk music, and, let's be honest here, Kazotsky Kick, while it's an all class taunt, is based on a traditional Ukrainian and Russian dance. It would make sense if it was Heavy who would have teached other classes the Kick.
Medic can use his saw as a violin, plus he's great with accordeon.
Sniper knows how to play sax and digderidoo.
As of Spy, while he isn't shown to play any instrument, one can assume, that to impersonate other classes, he must have learned all of the above. Plus, in one of Miss Pauling's lines from Tough Break, The Spy is teaching her how to play piano, using electroshocks.

[tylerduncanson]

Thank you SO much for getting Heavy’s real name right. So many people think that Misha is his name, its so frustrating.

[evrstrm]

Fun fact: Scout’s first name, Jeremy, was inspired by Jerma985 (Jeremy Elbertson). When TF2 was being written as a TV show, one of the writers was a fan of Jerma’s TF2 content, and found Jeremy looked strikingly similar to the scout. (I’m not kidding, by the way. You can look this up.)