Do you know which of the Team Fortress mercs
is canonically named Jane? Or which two are officially father and son? Or which one has drank
so much alcohol that normal food makes his body think that it's been poisoned? ... Actually, you
can probably guess that last one pretty easily. Let's dive into the real lives of the Team
Fortress mercenaries, as revealed throughout the officially published comic strips, official
trading cards and other Valve published lore. Let's meet the *real* team. Firstly, some
important context on what the story of Team Fortress 2 even is. Now, I'm not going to go
into a lot of detail here as by the developers' own admission TF2's story is more convoluted
than Half-Life or even Portal's, but it is important to cover a few things so we can better
understand just who these nine people are and give some context to the important life events
that we're going to talk about in this video. The BLU team and the RED team are actually
two separate groups of mercenaries, both working for a company called TF Industries
- unbeknownst to each other - and employed to fight each other repeatedly at the demands
of the mysterious Administrator - the same person whose voice we hear whilst playing
the game. Despite the BLU and RED teams being canonically different people, the majority
of Team Fortress's story only focuses on one team and only ever really fleshes out the
personalities and life of one of each merc. So for the sake of this video, we won't be
talking about both Scouts or both Soldiers, etc. just *the* Scout and *the* Soldier and
so on. At a critical point in the story, the company that supplies the weapons to TF
industries and our mercs - Mann co. - gets taken over and set upon by the robots of Mann versus
Machine mode, ultimately leading to TF industries being abandoned by the Administrator and the end
of the fighting between the BLU and RED mercs. The majority of the story from this point on
then features Miss Pauling, the Administrator's assistant, reuniting one set of our mercs,
hunting down the robots and their creator, and fighting the Team Fortress Classic version
of themselves and a horde of killer robots in what ends in a massive cliff-hanger we've now been
waiting over five years to read the conclusion of. Now, as I said, that is an extremely short
version, and I've purposely left out some key details and character names in an attempt
to reduce confusion to anyone who might not be familiar with the story at all. But of course,
if anyone is interested in a more comprehensive story overview or a video in the same style as
this one focusing on the non-player characters of the TF2 universe, then please do let me know
and if there's enough interest, I would love to make those videos too. So with all of that out of
the way, let's profile our mercs, starting with those that we know the least about and moving
through to the juicier and juicier details. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most
that we know the least about is, of course, Pyro. We don't know their name. Heck, we don't even know their gender. With
that said, Pyro is referred to several times as "he", "him", "his" or "sir" in the
comics, including by Miss Pauling, who is second in command at TF Industries - the
company who employed Pyro in the first place. So if anyone knows Pyro's true identity then
it's going to be Pauling. But on the flip side, Soldier does at one point suggest that he had
always had a suspicion that Pyro was a woman. And it's also worth noting that in the comics we
meet all nine of the Team Fortress Classic mercs and only one of them is ostensibly female...
Pyro. And on the TF2 official website, official trading card and the back of the
NECA action figure box, Pyro's profile reads: "He's a fearsome, inscrutable on fire
Frankenstein of a man... If he even is a man" Of course, Pyro's lack of clear identity is,
ironically, part of Pyro's identity, and it seems unlikely that will ever be any straight answers or
smoking guns confirming who or what is underneath the mask. But believe it or not, that's not
actually where Pyro's story ends. In the comics, during a period between TF industries being
abandoned and Miss Pauling reuniting everyone, Pyro is found sitting as CEO at a successful
company called Frontier Engineering and is considered to be personally responsible
for the company having a record quarter. Another interesting tidbit is the fact that Pyro
genuinely appears to see the world in Pyrovision as originally shown in the Meet the Pyro short,
with multiple panels throughout the comics showing us the world through Pyro's eyes in the same
bubblegum rainbow wonderland point of view. Next up is Heavy Weapons Guy. From the comics,
we know that his name is Mikhail or Misha as a nickname. Whilst Heavy is, of course, outwardly
Russian, we learn from the comics that he's from Siberia, and this action figure box tells
us specifically the Dzhugdzhur mountains. Heavy loves his miniguns and he's named them all:
Sasha being his main one, Natasha, of course, being his best known other gun. But also Svetlana.
Oksana, I'm Sheila. But despite being attached to his metal killing machines, he also shows a lot
of compassion for his family. He lives with his mum and three sisters, Bronislava, Yana and Zhana,
th e latter of which we'll hear about a bit later. Engineer: Real name Del Connagher,
from the town of Big Cave, Texas. Whilst many of our mercs might appear clever, but mostly insane, Engineer is the most
genuinely intelligent. Having no fewer than 11 PhDs. Whils his personal history is never
explored in great detail, throughout the comics his family are among the most important to the
main storyline. We all know about Australium from the in-game universe: the extremely rare metal
used to decorate sought after expensive weapons. The Engineer's grandfather - Radigan Conagher -
built a series of machines that use Australium as fuel to extend a person's life and Dell
- our Engineer - has continued that work, iterating and improving on the design during
his time working for the Administrator. Throughought the comics's story obtaining
Australium and using it to extend life is *the* main plot point motivating the lead antagonist
as well as the other main non-player characters. If it wasn't for Engineer's grandfather,
and in the present day period of the comics, Engineer himself, this motivation wouldn't even
exist. So whilst the other mercs definitely get more screen time, Engineer is *the* most important
merc when it comes to the underlying story. The Sniper on the back sleeve
of his NECA action figure we find out that Sniper's real name is Mick Mundy. However, we find out in the course of the
comics that his birth name is actually Mun-dee in the same style as his parents' names: Bil-Bel and Lar-Nah. And perhaps most surprisingly
of all, he's actually from New Zealand, which in the Team Fortress universe is a
sunken underwater world covered in a glass dome. With that said, Sniper is shown to have
been blasted out of underwater New Zealand on a rocket whilst just a young baby adopted
by Australians and brought up in Australia. Miss Pauling also addresses Sniper's
adoptive parents as Mr and Mrs Mundy suggesting that Sniper's birth name being
Mun-dee and adoptive surname being Mundy making his name technically Mun-dee Mundy
is maybe just a happy little coincidence. The Spy. It goes without saying
that we don't know a lot about Spy. Arguably more so than Pyro, a lack of
identity as part of Spy's character. His name is unknown and whilst of course, being
a Spy, he could be pretending to be French, his France origin is confirmed on the website and
on the back of his action figure box, along with his ability to speak French, Spanish and Catalan.
As with Engineer, his personal history isn't much expanded on in the comics, but we do see a couple
of interesting moments reinforcing his in-game character, such as a mention of his suit costing
$10,000 and his teeth apparently housing a series of miniature items such as a full roast dinner.
Spy often hints about having a more than friendly relationship with Scout's mother: There's Scout
specific voice lines, the art and the side of the Ambassador is suggested to show an enemy's mother,
and there's straight up photographs of them together in the Meet the Spy short. But in the
comics, it is pretty much said directly: Spy *is* Scout's father. Spy believing the Scout to be on
the verge of death disguises himself as Welsh pop legend Tom Jones (who we see elsewhere in
the comics that Scout is a big fan of) and Spy admits to having dropped a sex bomb in Scout's
mother. He even then directly calls Scout "son". The Scout. During the epic reveal
where we learn that Spy is Scouts dad, we also learn two more things about Scout: he
is 26 or 27 years old, and his name is Jeremy. We elsewhere learn that Scout is from Boston
as his accent and multiple item names suggest. He's the youngest of eight brothers, which
is what ultimately led him to be able to run as fast as he can. Scout is frequently
shown as being not particularly intelligent including lacking basic reading skills. He's
a huge fan of Tom Jones - who we already know that Spy disguises himself as when revealing
himself to be Scout's dad - and Scout has a huge collection of Tom Jones memorabilia, as well as
having a misspelt Tom Jones tattoo on his chest. Scout is a hopeless romantic for the
Administrator's assistant Miss Pauling, constantly trying and failing to
woo her and is apparently completely unperturbed - or perhaps unaware - of
her polite and consistent rejections. The Medic: from Stuttgart, Germany. During
a brief time where the Medic is dead and negotiating a deal with the devil, we
find out that his name is Mr. Ludwig. That's right: Mister, not Doctor. Because it's
confirmed in multiple places that Medic apparently has no formal medical training. Instead, he
just takes a fascination and experimenting on living things. This experimenting even
involves somehow separating the very souls out of the other eight mercs
apparently without their knowledge and this is what ultimately allows
him to successfully trick the devil and come back to life after being very thoroughly
killed by the team Fortress Classic Heavy. Medic appears to have no real moral leaning
towards nor against our mercs and in fact, through much of the story, he's actually working
against the rest of the team. But similarly, he does bring Sniper back from the dead by replacing
his organs with those of various exotic animals, he brings a bunch of the other
mercs back from the dead by simply squishing any old blood back inside
them and he does ultimately avenge his own murder by helping Heavy kill the
Team Fortress Classic Heavy after having experimented on him by somehow surgically
implanting a baboon uterus inside of him. The Demoman. Full name Tavish Finnegan
Degroot. Place of origin: Ullapool, Scotland. Demoman is one of the more fleshed
out characters in the TF2 comic series with his background not just explored
a little during the main series, but also featuring heavily in
the Halloween event spin-offs. We know how Demo Man lost his eye: at seven
years old on Halloween night he goes to work for none other than Merasmus, the wizard
who haunts Ghost Fort during in-game events. Whilst working there that night, Demoman is
spoken to by the Magical Bombinomicon - The book, which is also a re-occurring Halloween and game
character. Demo is tricked into opening the book, he gets his eye haunted by the trickster spirit
of the magical book and thus Monoculus is fortmed. That's right. Monoculus is Demoman's
Haunted missing eye. However, during the course of the mainline comics,
Medic reveals that he has grown Demoman's eye back no fewer than eight times,
but something haunted always happens, leading them to conclude that it's the *eye
socket* which is haunted, not the eye itself. On his trading card, which released all the way
back at 2008, it stated that a failed plan to blow up the Loch Ness Monster at the age of
six led to the death of his natural parents. However, on the official website, this sentence
is changed to say it caused the death of his original *adoptiv*e parents, and this page doesn't
appear to have been updated since at least 2011. However, however, the box for his 2013 NECA
action figure (which for all the other mercs usually has exactly the same or similar text
as the trading card and official website) makes no mention of this at all, suggesting
a possible retcon to the parenticide, accidental or otherwise. And indeed in the comics,
whilst Demoman's dad is confirmed to be dead, we do meet his mum several times (who could
of course plausibly be an adoptive mother... Well, a second adopted mother if the official
website text is to be taken as fact). But either way, we do learn that he lives with
this mum and that working jobs and making money is apparently very important to her and even
though they live in a massive futuristic mansion and Demoman earns over $5 million a year,
she still thinks he should be working harder. And of course we can't forget Demoman's other
dear, loving relationship: Alcohol. At one point in the comics Demo is fed normal food and kept off
alcohol for a period of time, which leads his body to start reacting like it's being poisoned. But
fear not because his consistent drinking from an apparently young age enables his body to react
appropriately, with his organs seemingly under their own steam converting his stomach into a
distillery and fermenting bone marrow thus giving him a high enough blood alcohol level to start
poisoning the robots who are attacking him... It wouldn't be Team Fortress without
amazing nuggets of trivia like that. The Soldier. Throughout the comics soldier is
regularly referred to as Mr. Jane Doe. For those unaware, Jane Doe is the name typically given to
an unidentified female corpse. Now, obviously, soldier is not an unidentified female corpse,
but he is shown throughout the comics to be consistently the stupidest of our mercenaries,
leaving it completely open to possibility that he has somehow mistaken Jane Doe as being
his own name, even though it might not be. Despite this outward stupidity, Soldier
shows an impressive ability to acquire jobs and at various points is apparently a sergeant,
barrister, a priest in at least one state, a qualified exorcist in Guam, a public defender, a tour guide of celebrity homes and...
winner of a nose picking contest. Soldier has a more than business relationship with
more characters than any of the other mercs. Firstly is the wizard Merasmus, who Soldier is
revealed to have been roommates with. In a series of bizarre stunts, including inadvertently getting
Merasmus's castle turned into a raccoon sanctuary, Merasmus ends up moving in with the real Tom
Jones, only for a soldier to show up on the aforementioned celebrity homes tour and kill
Tom Jones, framing Merasmus in the process. Soldier also meets and seemingly instantly
falls in love with one of Heavy's sisters, Zhana. Soldier and Zhana's escapades form one of
the main subplots throughout comics three through six... and presumably seven, should it ever be
released. They start by immediately making love as soon as they meet; separating from the
main squad and infiltrating an enemy base; breaking out of interrogation; apparently get
engaged; get naked, covered, head to toe in honey and bare knuckle fight a horde of killer robots;
Zhana intimidates Miss Pauling for ogling soldier; and, rather fittingly, the last panel we see them
in together is alongside Pauling, Saxton Hale and his partner Maggie, the rest of the mercs except
Engineer... and a recently delivered baby baboon. So there we are. Those are our mercs. But as I said at the
start, there's plenty of other characters, like the Administrator, Miss Pauling,
Saxton Hale and his whole story arc, as well as the entire Mann family whose namesake
is Mann Co. that we hardly touched on at all. So if you think you'd like another "Meet the
REAL" episode focusing on the side characters, then please do let me know in the comments below. And whilst you're there, why not tell me what
your favorite factoid is about our nine mercs, whether it's one mentioned in this video
or not. If you enjoyed this video, you'll probably also enjoy this one about TF2's coolest
glitched items or this one that the magic YouTube algorithm thinks that you;ll like. And of course,
if you're new here, don't forget to subscribe. Thanks, and have fun!
