#tf2 lore

Incredibly late but incredibly adorable redraw of the family portrait seen in the hallway of Jeremy’s house in the final comic ❤️‍🩹 I love the blonde kid he looks like he bites

I love them so much I’m so happy he’s happy he means the world to me lol

What, did Zephaniah Mann do?

Look, if there's one thing I know about Valve Lore, is that its really hidden, really coded, and TF2 has been fucking TEASING for decades now.

And as far as I'm concerned...

We know who the mystery man in the rip is... That's Gray Mann, the missing brother. Gods knows he's been teased enough over the years.

But here, I'm interested in...

[ Spoilers below ]

НАДЕЖДА

Насилье родит насилье и ложь умножает ложь; когда нас берут за горло, естественно взяться за нож. translation:

HOPE

Violence breeds violence and lies multiply lies; when they take us by the throat, it is natural to reach for a knife.

Ludwig is forced to work in Team Fortress because he is wanted in a bunch of countries and his actions are illegal. Like any person, he definitely has anxiety about this, and it seems to me that Heavy might well understand this.

Compilation of merc handwriting I could find across the update logs. So far could find Spy, Sniper, Engineer (I believe that's his handwriting), and Soldier (either he got Spy to write it for him or he is actually really good at calligraphy). I could also add Saxton Hale but his handwriting is literally everywhere lol

Symphony of Flesh

An old gramophone, worn by time and stained with someone else's blood, creaked out a classical melody.

To the tune, the Medic moved his hands gracefully over Heavy’s slit-open abdomen, as if conducting an orchestra rather than rummaging through human entrails. Heavy slept peacefully under anesthesia, his tongue hanging out, periodically letting out a strange snore, like the grunting of a bear.

The Medic, without looking up from his work, smiled:

“Oh, mein lieber Freund, just in time! You are right at ze peak of ze melody!”

Archimedes tilted his head and cooed curiously. The Medic gently stroked his feathers with a bloodied finger.

“I knew you would like it. Unlike my ozzer big friend here… you are ze only living connoisseur of good music! And, of course—”

Before he could finish, Archimedes fell like a stone straight into Heavy’s gaping abdominal cavity.

SQUELCH.

The pigeon pecked at the intestine with predatory enthusiasm, mistaking it for a fat worm.

The Medic flinched in surprise. The scalpel slipped from his fingers. For a moment—absolute silence.

And then, the Medic made a completely insane, acrobatic movement with his hand, catching the scalpel in midair a millimeter from the floor, and instantly returned to his majestic pose as if it had been planned all along.

“…and science! Genau!”

He waved the scalpel theatrically. “Now, Archimedes, watch closely. Zhis is ze most important part of ze suture. See zis angle? Perfect technique! Absolutely perfect! If meat could cry viz joy—it would be crying right now!”

The Medic continued the operation, enthusiastically explaining his incision technique to the pigeon. But Archimedes wasn’t listening anymore. He was staring into a dark corner of the laboratory.

There, on an old hook, hung an object of unknown origin. Due to the dim light in the operating room, it was hard to make out exactly what it was—only its silhouette. The fabric was burnt…

The Medic snapped his fingers.

“Archimedes! Hey, mein Freund, look over here! I am creating art!”

The pigeon didn’t react. The Medic sighed and finally glanced in that direction. His smile became strange. Almost… nostalgic.

“O-o-o… so zhis piece of rag has caught your interest?” He set down his instrument and lazily adjusted his gloves. “Zhis rag… ah, what memories. I once had a colleague. She had a disgusting habit of correcting my formulas, which, of course, is bad form as far as I am concerned.”

The Medic set down another bloodied scalpel, lost in thought for a couple of seconds.

Sometimes she was right…

“Ze assistant was very talented. Not as talented as I am, of course. Zhat would be statistically impossible. But for…”

An unfamiliar scraping sound echoed through the ventilation shaft.

The Medic continued: “…for someone viz such experience, quite decent.” He chuckled briefly. “She adored chemistry. Biology. Autopsies. And frogs. Besonders frogs.”

The Medic snorted under his breath and rolled his eyes, as if he were recalling not a person, but a very stubborn lab rat.

“And, ach… she asked too many questions.” He thoughtfully pushed his hand deeper into Heavy’s abdomen. “Way, way too many. Always a bad sign. If a person starts taking too active an interest in chemistry—either somezhing will explode, or—”

CRUNCH!

“…Oops.” He looked down. “Hmm… Was zhat an important organ or just decorative?”

Heavy groaned painfully through his sleep.

“Ah. So, it is important.” He adjusted his glasses with the tip of a bloodied finger. “At first, I zhought she was just anoizzer eccentric student viz a genius complex. You know ze type? Zhey don’t sleep. Zhey don’t eat. Zhey look at a jar of acid as if zhey want to marry it.”

Archimedes cooed.

“Ja-ja, exactly! But then I saw her notes… Hm. Very neat. Very extraordinary. She looked at my research not like a normal person, who would scream and run away… but like a hungry dog at a piece of meat.” The Medic snorted with a mixture of irritation and pride. “It was almost brazen.”

With a single motion, he pulled a clamp out of Heavy and tossed it into a metal tray.

CLINK.

“And I zhought: ‘Well, vizzer she will die during ze experiment, or she will become somezhing very interesting.’” A brief pause. “To be honest, I was betting on ze former.”

The Medic shrugged as casually as if he were discussing the weather.

“But one cannot let potential go to waste just because of trifles like ‘ethics,’ ‘the body’s stability,’ or ‘the risk of complete destruction of ze human body.’” He smiled even wider. “And anyway, Archimedes… if a person agrees to work viz me after seeing my lab—zhey no longer have a future as a normal person.”

He paused.

“And zhen zhere was one… mm… minor planned-unplanned incident viz my improved version of ze ÜberCharge. To put it simply, a minor incident occurred.”

Brushing against the surgical lamp with his shoulder in his usual clumsy manner, the Medic cast light upon the rag.

There, on the old hook, hung a scorched lab coat. At least two sizes too small for the Medic. The fabric had yellowed with age. Brown chemical stains covered the sleeves. Dark mold had grown on the collar. As if the lab coat had long been forgotten. Or they had tried to forget it.

The Medic smiled wider. Too wide.

“And now she still works viz me. Well… more or less. Partially physically. Partially not. Ha-ha! Ach, technical details…”

Archimedes flew over to the lab coat. Peck.

The pigeon snatched up a photograph, but it slipped from the bird’s tiny feet, disappearing among the instruments and fabric. The Medic automatically reached for his forceps, then stopped. His gaze froze.

Oh…

The man bent down and retrieved the bloodstained piece with the forceps, handling it as if it were a carrier of infection—something that could contaminate him even more than blood.

In the photo, a young girl with a crooked fang shyly looked at the camera, holding a huge frog in her hands. On the back, in uneven handwriting, was written:

“A.Y. Don’t touch the frogs. Especially the one in the jar.”

The Medic didn’t look at it for long—just long enough for his mind to process such trifles—and then carefully… too carefully, he slipped it back into the pocket of the lab coat.

Then he chuckled quietly to himself.

“Stay away from ze spleen, my friend. It is not presentable today.” The Medic returned to his conversation with the pigeon. “If it weren’t for me, she would not have achieved biological greatness, but would have remained in a limited world among ze mediocre.”

A voice from the darkness spoke dryly from the ventilation shaft:

“I can hear everything, you idiot.”

The Medic didn’t even turn around.

“Oh, wunderbar! Zhen bring me a new spleen. Zhis one is kind of sad.”

Heavy mumbled through the anesthesia:

“…Sandvich…”

You've seen this image before, but have you noticed the dates on the prison card thingies? Presumably this is written the American Way (the writers are so american they make Scout and Sniper both call their mothers "mom" despite preferring "ma" and "mum" respectively, as shown previously SEVERal times), so Spy and Scout were arrested on

The 7th of September, 1972.

We can do a lot with this information.

Mann Co was taken over by Grey and Olivia half a month before this: roughly the 23rd of August

Contrary to popular belief, most of the comics have to take place in 1973! Seeing as 6 months after late August is late February.

This also means Scout had to have been born in 1946/7. Not sure about Sniper, I have yet to overanalyse the New Zealand timeline paragraph. I'll get to it eventually.

Medic implies in comic 6 that our mercs have worked together for "at least eight years", while talking about the lore breaking Demo eyeball halloween thing. Assuming the "at least" confusion is over the 1972 Halloween they missed while not working together, the Teufort Nine were hired in 1964.

(I've almost mentally rationalised the lore breaking eyeball as a thing they do at like 4am after regular Scream Fortress shenanigans. Almost.)

Scout claims he has known Ms Pauling for six years. During the War! update, Demoman is unfamiliar with Ms Pauling (he knows she works for the administrator, but thats it), so we can assume that is the point she started working more closely with the mercs, and also 1966/7

I really need to go back to actively working on my timeline instead of passively wondering at 11pm "hey what time of year is it in the comics" and going down a rabbit hole.

Uh if you want to build off this, feel free to, but tell society twas I, the great and nobel Jevil_Owo, who first conceptualised all this.

UPDATE! This post seems to be picking up reblog steam again, so now is a good time to say I was WRONG about the mercs being hired around 1964.

This blog post from 2009 claims the WAR update took place in 1962, meaning the mercs have to have been hired in early 1962 at the latest.

Seeing as Scout would have been 15/16 in 1962, and as that's kind of the youngest one can be hired for just about anything, I'd assume it actually is 1962 they were hired. Ok thats enough I just felt it was my duty as Person Timelining to update people on this Discovery.

SECOND UPDATE!!

Okay this is lowkey blowing up again and I just wanted to add that Valve themselves are not aware of the comics taking place in 1973. Idiots! This is why "7 years later" is 1979 instead of 1980 like it should be. Sigh.

It seems they have made a change in comic 6:

Old:

New: