Characters / Team Fortress 2: The Medic

Main Character Index
Offense Classes (The Scout | The Soldier | The Pyro)
Defense Classes (The Demoman | The Heavy | The Engineer)
Support Classes (The Medic | The Sniper | The Spy)
Non-Player Characters

The Medic

Real name: Mr. Ludwig (Humboldt?)

"My professional opinion? HAHA! You're dead!"

Voiced by: Robin Atkin Downes (English), Ricky Coello (Spanish), Nikita Prozorovsky (Russian), Dieter Memel (German)

"Now? Heheheheheheheh... Let's go practice medicine."

The Medic is a genius Mad Doctor from the fictional town of Rottenburg, Germany, incidentally famous for its centuries-old tradition of chasing the latest in the resident lineage of mad doctors out of town with torches and pitchforks whenever they transplanted one baboon heart too many. Interestingly, he had a medical license, but lost it after a patient woke up, only to find his entire skeleton missing. The Medic has little regard for the Hippocratic Oath, having been trained during an era where it had been downgraded to an optional Hippocratic suggestion, and is deathly curious about human flesh and/or pain, regularly performing crazy and unethical experiments on his teammates, and his battle healing is his investment to see more hurting in the future... not to mention that the healing benefits of the Medi Gun were originally just a side effect of whatever he was really shooting them with. The Medic's class page on the TF2 Wiki. Everyone, Meet the Medic!

With 150HP and 107% base speed, and a fast-firing, but rather weak syringe gun, the Medic is not suited for direct combat. However, he is a vital part of the team, so important that the competitive scene restricts every team to one Medic. Why? Because he has the powerful Medi Gun, which, when pointed at a teammate, can restore health, but also overheal them, granting them a decreasing 50% health buff (a world of difference in a gunfight). Moreover, the Medi Gun's healing will eventually allow him to activate the ÜberCharge, a powerful buff making the Medic and the teammate the Medi Gun is healing completely invincible for 8 seconds, which defines half of the meta-game. Because of that, he is a high-priority target for the enemy team and must evade shots and assassins, mostly relying on his teammates to defend him. His melee weapon is a bonesaw.

He was the first class to receive new weapons.

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A-C

• Achievements in Ignorance: According to his profile, he didn't intend the Medi Gun to be a Healing Shiv; the healing effect is an unintended side effect of whatever the hell it actually does to the target.
• Achilles' Heel: Due to being a class that focuses primarily on healing teammates around them who are killing nearby enemies, Medics are unfortunately vulnerable to pretty much everybody on the enemy team. But in particular, the classes he has to watch out for are:
  • Spies. Even an amateur Spy can easily backstab a Medic who’s too focused on healing his teammates. A good Spy can even trick a Medic into healing them, and backstab them the moment they turn around. There’s even an achievement for doing this!
  • Snipers also fit to a degree. While most people have to deal with the mercs that are near or being healed by the Medic while trying to take him down, Snipers have the easy job of simply headshotting them from afar, thus leaving the team without their healer, and with no one to immediately take retribution on.
  • Scouts. If a Medic is too preoccupied with healing on the front lines, a Scout can flank up to him, take him out with at least two Scattergun shots, and run off before his buddy can retaliate.
  • But most of all, there's the Pyro. Pyros are the only class that can menace a Medic even if he's ÜberCharged, as they can simply airblast the Medic away from the class he's charging, thus leaving him vulnerable to the enemy team, and wasting the Medic's hard-earned Uber. What's more, Pyros are even worse for Medics in regular play; being able to massively slow down their healing rate with their afterburn on top of forcibly removing them from their patients with the airblast.
• A God Am I: One of his voice lines in Mann vs. Machine mode is "I am a God." Not only is this a reference to the "Meet The Medic" Outtakes ("I can take men to the peak of health, and beyond! I can make GODS!"), but Robin Atkin Downes says it in the same inflection he did when he redubbed said outtakes.
  • And again, when the characters received new voice response lines for the Halloween 2013 event that are triggered when playing on the Helltower map, one of the Medic's lines is, "Today!! I am a God!!" (maniacal laughter) when he collects one of the major Halloween spells.
  • In "Old Wounds", he says "It's just like I always say; there's no harm in playing God, so long as you are good at it!"
• Affably Evil: He's a mad scientist who has no moral qualms about mercenary work or experimenting on his teammates. That said, he's also friendly, cheerful, and helpful to his teammates on the battlefield.
• Ambiguously Jewish: He was alive in Germany at the time of WWII but isn't a Nazi, he's an intellectual, the theme song of his bird Archimedes is klezmer music, he pronounces "danke schon" the Yiddish way, and he dressed as the openly Jewish Einstein for Halloween.
• Ammunition Backpack: The Medic has a backpack for his Medigun.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: Played for Laughs; in his Meet the Team short, he tells Heavy a (presumably) long, winding story that culminates in a patient losing all the bones in his body. At the end, he reveals that this incident actually happened and cost him his medical license. Heavy, who had been laughing the entire time while on Medic's surgery table, becomes visibly concerned for most of the transplant after.
• Animal Motifs: Doves. Not only does he keep several as pets, but his white-toned lab coat looks like the tail feathers of a dove. The "Medimedes" cosmetic turns his head into a dove head, he can have his dear pet Archimedes perched on his shoulder (along with a zombified counterpart for Halloween), the Meet the Medic taunt has him pose to a holy backdrop and a flock of doves, and the Blighted Beak makes him look like a plague doctor, whose masks were made to resemble birds.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • His various mediguns don't need perfect aim to heal their target. You can just click on them to start healing, and it'll stay that way even if you're looking elsewhere. And you'll probably need to look elsewhere, because everyone's gunning for you first.
  • In the options menu is the "Medi Gun continues healing without holding down fire button" option. Enable that, and you won't need to worry about straining your hand by constantly holding down the fire button: just click an ally and forget about it until you want to change targets.
• Artistic License – Medicine:
  • Personified. As a Rule of Funny, almost all of his methods include ridiculous amounts of anything not logically biological, such as firing a beam of energy to relieve a person to optimal health, splashing pints of blood into a person's gaping wounds with no regard to blood type or even the mud and filth contaminating it — to the point where he uses his own underwear as a sponge to retrieve it all from the ground — and even bringing his teammates Back from the Dead by recklessly putting animal organs into them.
    Medic: "I know, ja? Why do people even go to medical school?"
  • In between his shenanigans, he drops little hints that he actually does know something about real medicine (or at least he's aware of the consequences of his meatgrinder surgery), but chooses to ignore them because they (like ethics) often gets in the way of his experiments. He also often chooses not to tell his patients (especially the Soldier and Heavy), likely out of fear of being turned inside out.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: "Uppengraden" isn't real German. Neither is "Dummkopfs" the correct plural of "Dummkopf" (that would be "Dummköpfe"). Whenever the Medic talks in German, he does so with a noticeable American accent. His voice actor is also a Brit who lives in America, furthering the intentional disconnect from a natural German accent.
• Ax-Crazy: A twisted and sinister Mad Scientist who spends most of his time gleefully covered in blood. The main reason he bothers with medical experimentation (besides the aforementioned Mad Scientist curiosity) is that healing his teammates is far more efficient than doing the slaughtering himself.
• Back-Alley Doctor: In Meet the Medic, the Medic implies that he used to have legitimate medical training, but his ever-present desire to experiment on his patients ended up costing him his license. However, this didn't dissuade his curiosity. If anything, the incident only furthered it, causing the Medic to take more risks and drop any ethics and standards that would get in his way. He spends the first half of the trailer doing just that as he upgrades the Heavy's heart to interface with the first Medi-Gun: the Quick-Fix. Throughout the procedure, the Medic operates without gloves, the two men are surrounded by the Medic's pet doves (one of which, Archimedes, nests inside the Heavy's exposed guts), the already messy lab is covered in bird crap, and the Heavy is fully conscious, even holding a conversation with the Medic the entire time. Yet, despite the medical malpractice and blatant health hazards, the Medic's operation on the Heavy is a success. Together, the two mercenaries go on a tear against dozens of enemy Soldiers, proudly standing atop a pile of their corpses before the trailer's ending title card.
  Medic: An Ven ze patient voke up, his skeleton vas missing, and ze doctor vas never heard from again!
  (The Medic and the Heavy share a laugh. The Heavy can barely contain himself, exuberantly slapping a nearby surgical tray as his laughter winds down.)
  Medic: ...Anyvay, zat's how I lost my medical license.
  (All of the Heavy's happiness turns into deep concern.)
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Medics don't need to keep their crosshair on their patient. Once the healing beam connects, the Medic can move around freely as long as he roughly keeps line of sight to the patient (even around corners) and doesn't exceed maximum beam distance. With enough experience and coordination with the patient, the Medic can afford to look the other way of the combat zone, specifically to warn the patient if an enemy (Spies in particular) tries to flank them.
• Bad Liar: In the video, he claims that ribs grow back, and the Heavy looks unconvinced even before he turns to one of his pet doves and loudly whispers, "No zhey don't." It's unclear why he even bothered to say that, seeing as the Medi Gun should have made it redundant anyway. (The funniest part is, ribs actually do grow back if the perichondrium is still there.)
• Badass Bookworm: In the game, Medic is competent in physical combat when equipped with a bonesaw or Crusader's Crossbow. In the comics, he can also be formidable in combat when necessary. For example, check the fourth page of the "Shadow Boxers" official comic. His glasses are taped at the nose piece. He's also covered in blood, and his labcoat's been torn. In "The Naked and the Dead", he plunges his bonesaw into Classic Heavy's body, which would have killed Classic Heavy if he hadn't been equipped with life extension technology. This is a man who has simultaneously invented his own technology to heal bullet wounds in seconds, but can also tear humans and robots apart with rusty saws and dirty needles.
• Badass Longcoat: He wears one, and boy does it make him look cool in Meet the Medic.
• Balance Buff: The Medic was considered one of the worst classes in Mann Vs. Machine, since his focus on healing wasn't very useful in a mode where inflicting damage is extremely important and everyone can get upgrades to heal on kills. He later got several buffs, including a forcefield that damages enemies and the ability to revive his allies, making the Medic an invaluable ally in this mode.
• Barrier Warrior: In the A Tale of Two Cities update, he gets the ability to create a force field with his Medi Guns. It blocks all damage except for melee weapons, and causes damage to any robot that tries to run up and use a melee weapon.
• Berserk Button: Don't break his experiments, call him useless, or harm his doves, lest you end up on the receiving end of his bonesaw.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Tries to put up a fight with the Classic Heavy. It doesn't go too well, but he does get a few blows in. Additionally, he pulls off a bluff that distracts an Australium-powered Classic Heavy enough for Modern Heavy to remove his life extender. Which turns out that his bluff is actually true, he did put a baboon uterus inside the Classic heavy and fed him with artificial steroids in order to gestate the actual babies. It may or may not be three or four of them, though.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In "The Sounds of Medicine", robots mow down Sniper, Heavy, and Pyro. Just before they can finish off Scout, Medic suddenly appears. Medic leaps onto the scene, descending in slow motion, lit from behind with sunlight, with his lab coat waving behind him like angel wings. He uses new technology to resurrect his fallen colleagues and block a barrage of robot fire with a force field shield.
  • In "The Naked and the Dead" comic, Miss Pauling believes that she has died from blood loss (along with Zhanna, Soldier, and Demoman) after being attacked by Australium-extracting robots. Suddenly, she regains consciousness and discovers that Medic has found the party and is replenishing their lost blood.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: When he hangs around with the Heavy, he's — naturally — the little guy.
• Blind Without 'Em: When pausing the video during "Meet The Spy", before the fake Medic puts on his glasses, note that he's both squinting and a bit cross-eyed, just like someone with a strong prescription would be after taking off their glasses.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: It turns out that the real reason why the Medic joined the Classic Team was because he needed funding for his experiments (a good deal of which he spent on resurrecting the Sniper), not because he is genuinely evil. Granted, he is performing said experiment on the Classic Team, but he seems to think that's what his job is.
  Medic: "Black market organs don't march directly out of exotic animals into your body cavity. My experiments require funding!"
• Blush Sticker: Not him, but the Pocket Medic doll in his likeness.
• Boring, but Practical: The vast majority of players flatly refuse to play the Medic, partly because holding down the left mouse button and occasionally pressing the right doesn't exactly compare to running around, setting people on fire or backstabbing them, to the point that it's a bit of a community in-joke that Medics flat-out don't exist in Pubs^note Public servers. That said, the Medic is so fundamental to team strategy (and the ÜberCharge is so powerful) that if one team has two Medics and the other forgot, barring grotesque differences in individual player skill, the team without a Medic might as well not have bothered showing up, especially in Competitive matches where he is near-mandatory for a chance of success.
• Brandishment Bluff: At the climax of The Naked and the Dead, Medic shows Classic Heavy a pen and tells him that it's a "detonator" that will cause a surgically-implanted baboon uterus inside of Classic Heavy to rapidly gestate three baboon fetuses. He keeps this up this distraction until Modern Heavy is able to grab Classic Heavy's life extender and rip it off him. After he's taken out of the picture, Modern Heavy comments about the insanity of that bluff... at which point Medic obtains and activates the actual baboon fetus remote detonator, which he couldn't retrieve in time.
• But Not Too Evil: The Medic was around during World War II, is German, has a shady past, is insane like the rest of the team, and generally considers his healing an unintended side effect to his real work. But according to Word of God, he is not a Nazi and never was one. Initially, Robin Walker said it would have been "too easy" to make him one. The games' lore explains that Medic's entire family is full of mad scientists, and has been for generations — in fact, they're chased out of their hometown by mobs armed with pitchforks and torches at least once a generation.
• Carpet of Virility: The Burly Beast cosmetic item tears open the Medic's shirt and the top half of his lab coat, revealing his suprisingly muscular and hairy chest underneath it.
• Characterization Marches On: Originally, he started out as your typical cold, stoic, mad scientist with lines that were mostly insults directed towards his team. This has been completely phased out ever since "Meet the Medic"; now he's an enthusiastic lunatic who's more crazy than sadistic.
  • Further supported by the extra Medic voice lines specifically added for the Halloween 2012 Scream Fortress event: Coming face-to-face with a mad magician, the Medic sounds more and more unhinged, but at the same time terribly enthusiastic at the prospect of learning actual magic.
  Medic: (giddily) Oh ho hoh! I have been in zhe wrong profession... I must learn zhis magic!
• Charge Meter: Medic's ÜberCharge meter goes up by healing teammates. The effect it has when full varies depending on the type of medigun.
• Chewing the Scenery: This video confirms it; Robin Atkin Downes is having too much fun as the Medic! Per his own words, Robin's delivery of Medic's lines almost always goes into No Indoor Voice territory due to how incredibly hammy the character is most of the time.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: He's clearly a creepy weirdo and despite the team's doctor, his methods are very depraved and unorthodox
• The Colored Cross: He has blue crosses on his outfit as a member of the BLU team, for team coloring's sake rather than real-life legal issues.
• Combat Medic: His syringe gun and bonesaw never see use as medical tools, and his Medi Gun is best suited for breakthrough support.
  • There also exists the "battle medic" playstyle, Medics that both heal and use their weapons as the situation calls for them, though the logical extreme exists on both sides. It is entirely okay to capture the point/push the cart/take the intelligence after the ÜberCharge is done and the defense has been completely broken.
  • In Mann Vs. Machine, he can actually play this straight and make it damn useful thanks to one upgrade: the Medi Gun shield. The shield's main purpose is to block projectiles and to block the movement of the robots, but it has a secondary bonus of dealing low amounts of damage to any robot that tries passing through it, and it dishes it out fast enough to kill anything but a Heavy or a giant. It's completely viable to use the shield to quickly kill any stray robots or just using it to annihilate the wave that's coming through. Hell, you can even use it on the damn tanks and it would be a considerable help. Even better, it can deal mini-crits with the help of the Buff Banner or Jarate.
  • Also in Mann vs. Machine mode, he can actually become both the team DPS and tank during the last round thanks to the Blutsauger and mad milk syringes. With all upgrades applied, the Blutsauger has a DPS that puts the Heavy's miniguns to shame and has clips and ammo reserves so large they can't display properly. On top of that, it will heal the Medic an astonishing average of 11 health per successful hit, which can in turn heal the Medic by more than his entire health bar in less than a second. If the Medic has max resistances, he will be unkillable even when the entire robot horde is trying to kill him. The best part is that you don't even need to heal anyone at this point with the Medi Gun; anyone who shoots anything you have shot will get some health back — not that anyone else will be taking much damage anyway, as the robots will prioritize you because they will still Shoot the Medic First even though it has virtually no effect.
  • Notably, a Medic has a huge chance of winning a head-to-head confrontation against another non-frontline class (Sniper, Spy, Engineer) given his superior movespeed and health, and his Syringe Gun, while not being a hitscan weapon, outdamages the SMG, Revolver, and ties with the Engineer's shotgun.
• Commissar Cap: One of his hat cosmetics is an M. Bison-styled hat called the Team Captain, which he shares with Soldier and Heavy.
• Con Man: Or in the Medic's case, he is the ultimate bullshit artist. Even more incredible than his ability to break the laws of biology is his incredible talent to fast-talk people into giving him what he wants, such as agreeing to let him perform experimental surgery on them, despite the fact they should know better (see the "Meet the Medic" short movie, and the comic "Blood in the Water"). He even conned the Devil to send him back to Earth and give him 50 extra years of life on top of it… and a pen (in the comic "The Naked and the Dead").
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Inverted in Vs Saxton Hale: he has partial immunity to Hale's attacks, taking around 135 damage from a basic punch as opposed to 195. Since his base health is 150, that effectively means he's able to tank one normal attack at full health, like Soldier or Heavy. He also experiences increased knockback that can make it easier to surf out of the range of a follow-up punch.
• Cowardly Lion: As with the other non-frontline classes, the Medic is extremely weak in combat and will spend most of his time behind his teammates when they get into a fight; however, when the Medic has a full ÜberCharge they can make one of their teammates deal massive damage or be immune to all forms of incoming damage, and the Medic is most effective when they're retreating due to their syringe gun dealing the most damage when an enemy is running straight at the Medic, and the Ubersaw enables the Medic to be more aggressive. The Cowardly Lion aspect is often played straight by some Medics who will flee in the middle of a push in order to save themselves, but slightly justified since they're also the only class capable of healing teammates and if the push fails, then it would end up being a Senseless Sacrifice.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: He's drawn with these in the comic sometimes. It's subtle underneath his spectacles, but they're there. Most likely due to both long nights of experimentation and a stressful job.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The Engineer and the Medic are both explicitly credited with refining and inventing their tech, respectively. Between the two of them, they could turn the world on its ear if they ever started selling their technology, a la Saxton Hale. Instead, they're content to be mercenaries. Though in The Medic's case, he likely prefers mercenary work, since selling his inventions wouldn't satisfy his medical curiosity. And by "medical curiosity", we mean "savage bloodlust."
  • That being said, he seems to like money a lot — his Mann Vs. Machine lines when picking up dropped money are, quite frankly, the most enthusiastic out of the classes who got new lines. "EVERYONE! FREE MONEEEEEEYYYYY!"
  • He does get himself a "Fancy" job in "Ring of Fired" after he lost his old merc job, too. It happens to be the Original Team's new Doctor, and is still as unethical as ever. Although his experiments set them back a few billion dollars...

D-L

• Deadly Doctor: He's a creepy and eccentric doctor who uses medical tools and gadgets in insane and dangerous ways.
• Deadly Euphemism: "Let's go practice medicine.", spoken in the same tone as one would dramatically utter "Let's go kill them all." Considering how he's referring to ÜberCharging his Heavy as he mows down dozens of enemy Soldiers, that's basically what he's doing.
• Deal with the Devil: The Medic already sold his soul to the devil, but grafted his teammates' souls onto his own to keep him alive. See Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?. He also barters one of his teammates' souls for Satan's pen.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Every syringe gun save for the Crusaders Crossbow deal a measly 10-11 damage per syringe at a rapid fire rate. In open combat and a straight fight, this is a pathetic amount of a damage versus everyone else's weapons, especially considering their slow projectile speeds. In tight rooms and if the opponent isn't in a position to dodge the volley of syringes, or are just cocky enough to not bother trying to evade, they can chew up players while the Medic makes his getaway.
• Determinator: He has no idea what he's doing half the time, but he rarely fails in his operations and experiments sheerly because he refuses to stop until he reaches a solution that satisfies him, for better or worse.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: While downplayed, since he actually did sell his soul to Hell, his Deal with the Devil was supposed to be a contract solely to his own. Instead of death being a quick ride to Hell, he sewn himself to the other eight souls of his own team, essentially making him immortal if he is killed personally since there is no practical method of purging the life out of his body other than pulling his soul out.
  Medic: "See, you're well on your way! I don't like my chances."
• Dies Wide Open: In "The Naked and the Dead" comic, Medic is lying motionless on the ground with his eyes open after Classic Heavy shoots him to death. Fortunately, he gets better.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Medic naturally has to be somewhat near his patient to keep healing him in combat, leaving him often at the mercy of enemy spam. Good medics keep up the healing on his entire team while dodging all the enemy fire, and keep his uber charging at as fast as possible. One team having a better Medic than the other can single-handedly decide the match.
  • The Crusader’s Crossbow requires you to consistently be able to hit far away targets when the class normally requires little aiming to take most advantage of the projectile’s distance scaling but, if mastered, it allows the Medic to achieve respectable damage from a safe distance and save far off teammates with its powerful burst healing.
  • Mastering melee combat with the Ubersaw is a valuable skill to have, as each strike grants you an unbelievable 25% Uber per hit. Two Medics going into melee with the Ubersaw and Übercharging each other can keep the invulnerability up indefinitely until they run out of targets in melee range. And in competitive level, a single Ubersaw hit can literally turn the match into a Curb-Stomp Battle, as 25% Uber advantage is nothing to sneeze about.
  • Speaking of Competitive, Medic is especially difficult when playing in organized teams. In pubs, you can get away with pocketing the topscoring Heavy to destroy that sentry nest, but in Competitive, the Medic has so much more to deal with. Counting Übercharge, crit heals, and knowing where all your teammates are are all things that a Competitive Medic should all be expected to know, and you have to do this all during the fighting, AND the whole enemy team is out for your blood. But, your enemies are out for your blood for a good reason; an Übered push is a major deciding factor in who wins the round.
  • The Quick-Fix. It has an increased heal rate that's boosted when the ÜberCharge is deployed, with the trade-off of not making the heal target invulnerable, and having half the overheal. A bad Quick-Fix medic is generally worse than one with the stock medigun, because the poor overheal can make pocketed heal targets easier to defeat. A good Quick-Fix medic, however, can single-handedly keep an entire team afloat, quickly delivering bursts of healing to each teammate as they need it, provided they don't rush headlong into the enemy and get themselves overwhelmed, and by popping the ÜberCharge, he can bring several teammates from almost dead to completely healthy in the span of a few seconds, all while flying around the map at ludicrous speeds thanks to it's unique ability to replicate the knockback of rocket jumps. And since the Quick-Fix ÜberCharge also gives the medic the same ludicrous heal rate and makes him immune to knockback, pyros can't separate him from his teammates with the Compression Blast.
  • The Vaccinator. It's ÜberCharge is much, much harder to take advantage off from its alternatives, since you need to micromanage the shields, keep track of what your patients are getting shot with, and it leaves you completely vulnerable to melee weapons. However, it's near-instant charges and the ability to deploy multiple shields at once on different patients, and combine those shields with the Crossbow, can render your entire team (including yourself) completely impossible to kill. Those two Mediguns are SO effective in the hands of competent medics, that both are outright banned in the standard competitive formats due to making it impossible for either team to actually attack if both Medics run either of them.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Competitive format limits only 1 Medic per team. Pub games can have more, but 2 Medics are generally enough for a 12-man team. 3 Medics might be workable, but any more would actively work against the team, as they would be lacking combatants, and the Medics would have to compete with each other to build ÜberCharge as fast as possible.
• Discount Card: The Medic can share his Power Up Canteen with his patient and (since the Two Cities update in 2013) can purchase upgrades for his Medi Guns in Mann vs Machine to buy canteen fillings at a discount to a minimum of 5 credits.
• Distressed Dude:
  • In "The Naked and the Dead" comic, Medic is brutalized and pinned down by Classic Heavy, unable to defend himself. Heavy comes to Medic's aid.
  • In the "End of the Line" video, BLU Spy takes RED Medic hostage. RED Heavy subdues BLU Spy, thereby saving his friend.
• Ditzy Genius: Let's see... "The Ditzy Genius who, while very intelligent and talented, has absolutely nothing in the way of common sense, logic, wit, or tact". Check. He seems to mood-swing between this trope and Deadly Doctor. He certainly has the most chipper, manic, brilliant smile of all the mercs when he's happy.
• Dressed to Heal: Medic wears a white labcoat and gloves. A patch eventually added a Randomly Drops mirror for his head and a surgical mask for his face.
  • In Beta, he had a stethoscope slung around his neck for absolutely no reason. While he no longer carries it with him, it can still be seen in his cubby in the respawn room, and another Randomly Drops item allows him to put it back around his neck.
  • Strangely, in "Meet the Medic", he only puts on his labcoat and gloves when going into battle, performing his Meatgrinder Surgery WITH BARE HANDS.
• Dr. Jerk: His initial characterization pre-"Meet The Medic" was a cold, harsh doctor whose teammates rarely met his expectations and who liked to throw out juvenile insults.
  • "Vould you like a second opinion? You are also ugly!"
  • "Did zat sting? Saw-ry!"
  • Even afterwards, with the "Results Are In" taunt: "Diagnosis: Ha! Ha! You're dead!"
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Medic's release characterization had tinges of a sadistic Dr. Jerk. That angle is absent from his dialogue updates, which have emphasized his jovial Mad Scientist side.
• Einstein Hair: Part of his Halloween 2011 costume.
• Emergency Weapon: Because any time you're not healing your team using a Medi Gun is time wasted not building ÜberCharge, Medic's actual offensive options — his Syringe Gun and his Bonesaw — are relegated to these. There are a few sidegrades that allow him some more utility using those weapon slots (such as the Crusader's Crossbow, which can be an effective long-range Healing Shiv, or the Ubersaw, which grants a huge boost of Über on hit), but otherwise, Medic's actual offensive ability is purposefully near-nonexistent, and shouldn't be relied on in an offensive situation.
• Enraged by Idiocy:
  • In "Expiration Date", Soldier spent several days teleporting a loaf of bread, after Medic and Engineer explained to the team that doing so was creating tumors in the bread. Medic was so livid when he learned about Soldier's stupidity that he tossed aside the jarred bread sample to the floor and grabbed Soldier by the collar.
  • He also flips out at Heavy in "End of the Line" over the former not knowing how to play chess.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He cares about his pet doves. When Classic Heavy kills Archimedes, Medic is beside himself. He’s also visibly saddened to see Sniper’s dead body and goes out of his way to spend the next 6 hours reviving him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the "Gargoyles and Gravel" comic, Engineer offers Medic a beer, but Medic politely declines because he's performing surgery. For all his crazy antics, Medic does not drink while performing his duties.
  • Don't insinuate that he'd intentionally kill you on his operating table. He is a Doctor. He only kills people while he's on the battlefield.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Due to the practice of Shoot the Medic First. In particular, Medics make ripe targets for Spies, Snipers, Scouts, and Death from Above Soldiers and Demomen (with cabers).
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He is shocked, nay, flabbergasted when he finds out that the Team Fortress Classic Medic barely experimented on his team, if at all.
• Evil Laugh:
  • He doesn't even possess specific domination quotes, as his class is rarely used for combat only, so most are nothing but evil laughter.
  • In "Meet the Medic", he throws his head back and howls with laughter as the Uber device successfully interfaces with a mega-baboon heart. Heavy watches him with consternation.
• Exact Words: Prone to doing this in the supplementary materials. He apparently told the Original Team that he put them under to fill cavities, just meant chest cavities (that he made himself), not dental cavities. He also reassures one antagonist that as a doctor, he'd never intentionally kill him on his operating table... because he can kill him right there and then.
• Expy: The Medic is a pretty clear Egon expy, from his similar uniform, Awesome Backpack, suspiciously similar goggles, round glasses, Mad Scientist tendencies... Medic even fights ghosts each year around Halloween!
• Face of a Thug: In the comics, Medic admits to Sniper that even his sincere, jovial smiles look "smug and evil".
• Flat-Earth Atheist:
  • He only begrudgingly admits that Demoman’s empty eye socket is cursed after it spawns a Monoculous! every Halloween for 8 years in a row because he is a man of science. This is despite the fact that during Halloweens he fights said giant floating eyeball, Merasmus (an actual wizard), and uses magic spells along with the rest of his team.
  • Also, he tells Sniper in Blood in the Water that his vision of his parents in Heaven was a hallucination before brain death. This is despite the fact that Medic has been revealed in the following comic to have bargained with Satan himself, is taken to the other afterlife to settle those terms when he dies, and surgically implanted eight souls into himself at some point in preparation for that moment.
• Flechette Storm: A rapid-fire rain of needles from his Syringe Gun, Blutsauger, or Overdose.
• Foreign Cuss Word: Fond of insulting people in German.
• For Science!: Progress sounds like hearts exploding, apparently.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Played with. The Medic is most definitely a sadistic bastard with glasses, but at the same time he clearly cares for his teammates and pet.
  • Subverted literally as of "The Naked and the Dead", where it is revealed that while he sold his own soul to the Devil, he also has the souls of all eight mercenaries.
• Fragile Speedster: While he won't be outpacing the Scout unassisted, the Medic's base speed is still 7% faster than the standard 100%, which helps him approach and heal up his slower teammates more easily. However, the Medic cannot be reckless with his speed. He has a higher maximum health than the other light classes by default—150 instead of 125—and he has Regenerating Health, but both of these traits are undermined by his poor offensive skills. More often than not, he must rely on his teammates' protection to survive, with self-defense being encouraged as a last resort. As a bonus, if he is healing someone faster than him, such as a Scout or a charging Demoknight, then the Medic will mirror their speed.
• Funny X-Ray: His "Results Are In" taunt has him displaying an X-ray of a rib cage with a bomb implanted inside, presumably the same one seen in "Meet the Medic".
  My professional opinion? AH HA! YOU'RE DEAD!
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • The Medic actually uses the Quick-Fix in the "Meet the Medic" video, explaining why the RED Heavy was immune to rocket knockback. The Quick-Fix having an invulnerability ÜberCharge is also explained as being an original feature which got shorted out by its debut use.
  • A Medic and Heavy are one of the deadliest team combos in the game, and one both classes typically try to assemble a lot. Thus, in Meet the Medic, they're both shown enjoying each other's time, and Heavy is the only one Medic outright calls a friend (more than likely a Fire-Forged Friendship). This even doubles back on itself; Because Heavy considers Medic such a genuine friend, he's the only class in the game that will not have any lines for dominating a Medic, not even generic domination quotes. Medic doesn't have specific lines for anyone due to the nature of the class, but he won't use his generic ones even if he somehow manages to dominate an enemy Heavy.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: He laughs likes crazy when he inhales his Kritzkrieg's healing energy in his Oktoberfest taunt.
• Giant Medical Syringe: The Medic's Crusader's Crossbow is a crossbow that fires a giant syringe, which can heal allies in addition to hurting enemies.
• Glass Cannon: The Kritzkrieg encourages an almost strictly offensive playstyle compared to the other mediguns. Its ÜberCharge bequeaths the healing target with an eight-second Critical Hit-boost, and it can be called upon more frequently due to the weapon's 25% faster charging rate than the default medigun's. However, the Kritzkrieg offers no defensive benefits past overheal on healing targets, and the Medic is left far more vulnerable than usual—especially when alone—since he can't apply the weapon's effects to himself. Despite its offensive leanings, the weapon functions best on defensive teams, where the Medic is less likely to engage the Engineer's crit-immune buildings in combat. This immunity is acknowledged by an in-game tip:
  "As a Medic, remember that critical hits have no effect on Sentry Guns. Use the Kritzkrieg in areas full of players instead."
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Recipients of an ÜberCharge get them.
• Good Powers, Bad People: The Medic owns a medical marvel of a Healing Shiv, but he merely views its use as a side effect of his Mad Scientist experimentations. He even provides the page quote for the trope.
• Gratuitous German: Uses the improper pluralization of "Dummkopf" and "Schweinehund". Correct in the German translation, however. The incorrect usage is in-character with the Stylistic Suck of the writing, though (the game was written as a parody of 1960's pulp stories written by people who didn't check their facts).
• Harmful Healing: His healing is said to be an unintended side effect of his curiosity.
• Healing Factor: The Medic regenerates health constantly. The Blutsauger reduces it in exchange for draining the life out of stricken enemies. The Amputator bonesaw has a +3 self-healing per second as well. Specifically, he can heal up to 7 hit points a second — so fast that there's typically no point in running to find health, as by the time you get there, you'll have already healed yourself. Coupled with not relying on ammo in normal circumstances, a properly equipped Medic can go indefinitely without any form of external resupply, leaving his allies to fight over ammo drops.
  • This briefly causes an issue with Demoman, who's furious at his ability to drag people kicking and screaming back to the land of the living, yet is unable to restore his missing eye. An irritated Medic retorts he has, indeed, regenerated his eye, more than eight times already — and every single time, it grows into a new MONOCULUS! the next Halloween, and the team has fought several of them already. Every time, the Medic destroys the memories of having the eye restored, along with giving Demoman a slight case of brain damage triggered by attempting to remember, which sends him back mentally to being the cheerful battlefield lunatic he usually is.
• Healing Shiv: The Crusader Crossbow bolts heal when hitting teammates and damage when hitting enemies.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: The ability to heal and grant temporary invulnerability doesn't seem so lame when you and an ally are mowing down enemies and punching through defenses with abandon as a Two Man Army.
• Herr Doktor: Hails from Germany. Fellow Medics even say "Thank you, Herr Doktor!" when they're being healed.
• Hidden Depths: Like Engineer, he doesn't seem to be much a fighter, but isn't afraid to bite if backed into a corner. Classic Heavy notes that he didn't think much of him until Medic was plunging an Übersaw into his ribs. Furthermore, despite being a Mad Scientist, he cares greatly for his teammates and pet doves, working hastily to revive one of each when Classic Sniper takes out Modern Sniper and Classic Heavy takes out Archimedes.
  • For all his insanity and blatant disregard of his patients wellbeing, as well as general grumpiness in gameplay, he really seems to like his friends. So much so that when Sniper died, he spent a lot of time and money to bring him back to life on his operating table, and is quick to change sides back to his pals when it's clear the Mercs are coming back together.
• Hollywood Healing: Necessary, since if in-game healing took even a tenth of the length of Real Life battlefield surgery, nobody would play the class. This is lampshaded in the original draft of "Meet the Medic". Before he invented the Medi Gun, healing people took so long that (by his standards) there was little point to it; anyone who didn't die would be laid-up for weeks and as soon as he finished with one guy there'd be another five victims.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • The aptly named "Hypocritical Oath" achievement requires the Medic to kill a disguised enemy Spy he's been healing.
  • The Solemn Vow is a bust of Hippocrates, complete with a plaque with his oath—"Do no harm"—printed upon it. The Medic uses it as a melee weapon.
• Immune to Bullets: He can grant this ability to a teammate (and himself) for up to eight seconds. Uses it memorably on the Heavy in "Meet the Medic":
  Heavy: I AM BOOLLETPROOF!
• In Love with Your Carnage: "Ha ha! Vat a bloodbasz!"
• Irony: The Solemn Vow has you use a bust of Hippocrates with “Do No Harm” inscribed on the base… as a weapon to bludgeon people to death with.
• It Runs on Nonsensoleum:
  • According to the "Meet the Medic Outtakes", the Medipack is powered by an odd mixture of an unknown red liquid (presumably something to do with surgery), pain pills, blood, Sandviches, and Sniper piss. And lots of high-voltage electricity.
  • His methods in general, even when he does surgery "properly". His method for reviving the Sniper after the Team Fortress Classic team killed him involves injecting a blue whale's pineal gland into Sniper's brain stem, and apparently giving him pigeon blood.
• Joke Item: The Vaccinator in Vs Saxton Hale ends up being a straight downgrade, since its ÜberCharge offers damage resistance against bullets, explosives or fire, and the gamemode has you fighting a single enemy that uses only his bare fists. Hale even has a voiceline pointing that out.
• Kill the Ones You Love: The Second Opinion hints that deep, deep inside the Medic's monstrous insane core, he considers the other mercenaries to be his friends. Existing parallel to that sentiment is a desire to murder them all on a whim.
• Lamarck Was Right: The Two Cities update reveals that Medic is the descendant of a long line of resident Mad Doctors in their "vaguely European" hometown of Rottenburg. ^note There are two cities called Rottenburg in Germany; one in the South-East in Bavaria, the other just 60km south-West of Stuttgart. Valve's creative team must've been ecstatic. Prior to the update, the Medic's hometown was listed as Stuttgart, so it's probable Valve meant Rottenburg am Neckar.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: He is oddly enough drawn this way in the comics, contrasting his actual model, and also serves a very heroic role in the story.
• Large Ham: Notable in that he was fairly quiet when the game first launched, but became progressively hammier following the release of "Meet the Medic", which solidified him as one of the maddest of scientists. The lines he had recorded for Mann Vs. Machine and Scream Fortress just kept going with it.
  Medic: I am going to murder so many robots!
• Laughing Mad: Medic is prone to fits of deranged laughter.
  • In "Meet the Medic", he howls with laughter as the UberCharge device interfaces with a mega-baboon heart, much to Heavy's consternation.
  • In the 2013 "Scream Fortress", Medic laughs hysterically when he receives a dove head.
• The Leader: In competitive games, the team's Medic (as there always has to be one), is usually the one calling the shots, as a result of his superior point of view from the back of his team, and allowing the combat classes to concentrate on shooting. Even in pub games, a competent Medic can quickly gain respect from his fellow players, to the point that he becomes the de facto leader of the team, coordinating pushes, calling out targets, watching his teammates' back, and more.
• Leitmotif: A Little Heart to Heart, MEDIC!, and Archimedes, although the latter could be more associated with his pet dove than he himself.
• Light Is Not Good: He's the only team member who wears tons of off-white clothes, is a sworn healer with tons of bright particle affects around him, is associated with beautiful doves and his theme has an angelic choir to it. He's also a complete nutcase with a proud and blatant sadistic streak, and probably is the last person you'd ever want to operate on you, let alone meet at all given he's a wanted criminal for a myriad of past incidents, which range from petty crimes, to cruel torture and medical malpractice, all the way up to scamming everyone out of their souls so he can cheat death.
  • The Medic even received his own class-specific taunt action slot item: The Meet the Medic taunt, which replicates the scene from the trailer where bright light shines around the Medic as he strikes a heroic pose to a holy choir, and white doves fly out of his labcoat. Given it's a taunt, you'll probably be using it to piss off someone you just killed.
• Limit Break: Medic has the most prominent example of this in the game in the form of his ÜberCharge: while healing allies with his mediguns, he builds up charge, and when fully charged, he can activate it to grant an incredible buff for himself and his patient, coming in different varieties for different situations:
  • The stock Medi Gun grants himself and his patient Nigh-Invulnerability for up to 8 seconds — while they're vulnerable to knockback, they are almost completely unkillable^note The only things that can take them down are environmental One-Hit Kill effects like Bottomless Pits and trains, as well as telefragging, oddly enough. and allowed to push forward with impunity.
  • The Kritzkrieg grants the patient guaranteed full Critical Hits for the duration of its ÜberCharge, and comes with an added bonus of being faster to charge up than the stock, but it provides no Nigh-Invulnerability nor any kind of defensive boost — it will simply heal the same amount as usual.
  • The Quick Fix ÜberCharge massively increases the gun's already-higher healing rate, as well as grants invulnerability to stun or knockback effects, and allows the Medic to follow the patient if they're Rocket Jumping or using any similar launching ability. It's still not quite Nigh-Invulnerability, meaning Medic and the patient can still be killed from burst damage, such as from headshots, backstabs, or enough explosives all at once.
  • The Vaccinator has a unique ÜberCharge system, where its charge meter has four separate segments of 25% each, with each activation expending one of these segments for a shorter ÜberCharge at a time. The Vaccinator normally allows the Medic to grant 10% damage mitigation to a particular kind of damage (bullets, explosives, and fire), and the ÜberCharge increases it to 75% for 2.5 seconds, along with immunity to Critical Hits of the kind.
• Lovable Traitor: Became the Team Fortress Classic team's Medic, replacing the original one. When told that the team would be facing his old teammates, he seemed to relish at the thought. It's later revealed he's pretty fond of his RED teammates, and that's just how he looks when he's sincerely happy. He even brings Sniper back to life despite being loyal to the Classic Team at the time and thus having nothing to gain from it.

M-Z

• Mad Doctor: The Medic isn't just a Mad Doctor, he comes from an entire family of mad doctors. According to the Two Cities update, he's from a little town that's gotten used to running its doctors out of town with torches and pitchforks about once a generation, when somebody transplants one Baboon Heart too many.
  • And then there are the Halloween voice lines added in 2012 and 2013, which sound even more unhinged.
  The Second Opinion: DO YOU EVER THINK THAT YOU MIGHT BE GOING MAD?
  Medic: "Oh, all zhe time. I don't zhink it's anyzhing to worry about."
• Mad Scientist: "Meet the Medic" is basically how the Medic invented the ÜberCharge system using the Heavy as his personal guinea pig by replacing the Heavy's heart (which could not stand the ÜberCharge system. As in, the heart exploded) with that of a mega-baboon.
• Magic Music: The Amputator's signature feature is changing Medic's taunt to the "Medicating Melody", where Medic mimes playing it like a violin or singing saw (despite not using an actual bow, it still produces violin sounds). While using this taunt, Medic rapidly heals all nearby allies a decent amount, making it a decent option to keep a large group alive in a pinch if the Medigun isn't fast enough. The Bonesaw and Vita-Saw use the same animation for their taunts, but they both lack the effect.
• Magic Versus Science: As much as it rankles him to admit it, as far as he's concerned the Demoman's empty eye socket is cursed.
• Meaningful Name: 'Ludwig' is an old Germanic name, from 'hlud' (famous, great) and 'wig' (War). WWI was also known as the Great War, which the Medic is generally considered old enough to have participated in.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: Provides the trope's page image.
  • During Meet the Medic, he spends a fair chunk of the surgery telling Heavy a story about how he lost his medical license. While Heavy is on the table. With an open ribcage. And awake. He then proceeds to shoo one of his pet doves out of Heavy's torso cavity, explode Heavy's heart, replace it with a giant baboon heart, and ask Heavy to hold open his ribcage so that there's more space for the larger heart — and Heavy promptly breaks a rib on accident. During The Stinger, Scout finishes receiving his own surgery, where it's revealed Archimedes got stuck inside of Scout during the procedure.
  • In A Cold Day in Hell, Medic mentions he surgically sewed baboon uteruses into the team he joined during the time skip. Still functioning baboon uteruses, as The Naked and the Dead shows.
  • Speaking of which, The Naked and the Dead opens with Medic soaking up rags full of the mercs' blood from puddles on the ground, squeezing them out into buckets, and dumping those buckets back into the team's open wounds without even attempting to clean out the dirt and leaves from said buckets. Miss Pauling and Medic lampshade it in their conversation.
    Miss Pauling: "I refuse to believe it's that easy."
    Medic: "I know, ja? Why do people even go to medical school?"
    Pauling: "Wait, how'd you separate out all the blood types?"
    Medic: "Miss Pauling, I've been using my own underwear to sponge blood out of puddles. Trust me, the type is the least of your problems."
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • The Crusader's Crossbow is quite a different weapon compared to its contemporaries. Instead of firing a steady stream of 40 syringes per clip, it fires a single, long-distance syringe per clip that can heal teammates from afar. Meanwhile, unique to this weapon on a broader scale is its reverse damage fall-off—as in, its projectile damage increases with distance rather than diminishing. This effect also applies to how much a teammate is healed when hit by the Crossbow.
  • The Vaccinator functions very differently from every other Medi Gun option. For starters, it exhibits three different uber variations, those being resistances for bullet, explosive, and fire damage applied to both the Medic and his healing target. In addition, with a 67% quicker charging rate than the default Medi Gun, its uber prepares the fastest out of every option. Since it can be activated at every 25% charge interval and for however long the Medic chooses, the Medic has a lot more control over how and when the uber is used. These qualities grant the Vaccinator unprecedented versatility, provided the Medic using it is skilled with micromanagement.
• The Medic: An interesting case in that, even though he's the one character in all of gamedom you think of when the word "medic" is uttered, he's not usually interested in healing anyone out of goodwill. It's just easier to experiment on people when they're not dying on you.
• Mighty Glacier: The default medigun's ÜberCharge effect—eight seconds of damage invulnerability—is the single most powerful, game-changing, and versatile uber in the game. It trumps every other uber when pitted against them and is very difficult for every class to counteract across all contexts. In return, it requires the most prep time among its contemporaries, giving the enemy team ampler opportunity to kill the Medic and prevent the ÜberCharge from occurring.
• Mini-Me: The Pocket Medic is a doll version of him for the Heavy and Soldier.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After the Classic Heavy insulted him and hurt Archimedes in "Old Wounds", the Medic turned against him in the next comic.
• Morality Pet: Medic is kind to his pet doves and patient with their antics. He's horrified when Classic Heavy kills Archimedes and spends the rest of the scene feverishly bringing the bird back to life. Granted, Medic remained loyal to the Classic Team even after Classic Heavy hurt Archimedes (as well as kidnapping and shooting several of his former colleagues), but it’s heavily implied in the final moments of the scene that Medic found harming his pet to be unforgivable and at least one of the reasons for his return to the Modern Team.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: The only reason he heals his teammates is so that they can kill the other team that much faster. Regarding his experiments, they satisfy his morbid curiosity regarding human flesh. As for the "Doctorate" part, Valve isn't very clear about his medical qualifications. For sure he doesn't have a license now.
• Mr. Fanservice: The Burly Beast item gives him a ripped chest gaping from his opened coat, complete with manly chest hair.
• Mugging the Monster: In the "Gargoyles & Gravel" comic accompanying the Halloween 2015 event, this is what happened to a luckless mugger when he tried to rob a "nerdy German tourist in an alley" on Halloween, only to wake up as a Brain in a Jar... or in his case a brain in a jack-o-lantern pumpkin, with the Medic enthusiastically greeting him with: "Welcome to your new life! As a Halloween decoration!"
• Nigh-Invulnerable: The biggest reward for playing Medic with the default Medi Gun is his ÜberCharge, which, when deployed, makes himself and whoever he's currently targeting invulnerable to all types of damage (though vulnerable to knockback), making them the two most powerful people in the game for up to eight seconds.
• Nightmare Fetishist: While fighting Merasmus, his lines indicate he's absolutely fascinated by his magic and seems to be having the time of his life.
  "Oh ho hoh! I have been in zhe wrong profession. I must learn zhis magic!"
  • He is also morbidly fascinated by the bread monsters that show up in "Expiration Date", even when they're trying to kill him. He also responds to Scout's inquiry as to what's wrong with the bread with the most cheerfully wrong use ever of the word.
  "Tumors!"
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: He takes great delight in bizarre medical experiments, much to the consternation of onlookers.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: When he's especially jolly over a Domination, he lets out one of these.
• No Experience Points for Medic: Averted, between getting half-points for Assists and getting a full point for every 600 healing done (note that this does not take very long at all), Medics often end up scoring highly on their team without getting a single kill.
• Noodle Incident:
  • According to him in Meet the Medic, the Medic lost his medical license after somehow non-lethally removing a patient's skeleton.
    "Vhen ze patient voke up, his skeleton vas missing, and the doktor vas never heard from again! Ahaha!"
  • Also, Archimedes' in-game Flavor Text has a funny story behind how the Medic found him and his fellow doves. It involves the Medic stealing a catering van from a prime minister's wedding.
• The Not-Love Interest: To Heavy. Medic is very warm and jovial with Heavy in "Meet the Medic", affectionately pinching Heavy's cheek at one point. Medic and Heavy have a platonic, quasi-romantic dynamic in the "End of the Line" video. In "The Naked and the Dead" comic, Heavy comes to Medic's rescue as Classic Heavy is about to kill him, and flies into a berserk rage when Classic Heavy kills him. However, they are confirmed to be just friends, Medic referring to Heavy as such.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: So you've cornered that lone defenseless Medic, good for you! Just be sure that when you close in on him, he doesn't One-Hit Kill you with that high-crit Bonesaw of his. Or perforates you with a hail of syringes, should they hit you.
• Oh, Crap!: Should he spot Saxton Hale in-game and not have his ÜberCharge ready, his response is a panicked demand that his teammates protect him.
• Oktoberfest: His accent is very German, one of the first Medic-specific hats added to the game was the Vintage Tyrolean (a classic Oktoberfest hat), and his hometown of Rottenburg is an archetypical spoof of Bavaria.
• Out of Focus: The Medic is one of the least appearing of the classes in the comics. "A Cold Day in Hell" is where he starts becoming more prominent, especially after his Face–Heel Turn.
• Overclocking Attack: "Meet the Medic" revealed that ÜberCharge is this. Without a heart modification, it would kill even the Heavy.^note To be more specific, the Heavy's heart didn't even last a second in the ÜberCharge before literally exploding.
• Parrot Pet Position: Archimedes can sit on his shoulder as a cosmetic.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite being an obvious Mad Scientist, the Medic owns a bunch of doves he's very kind to. One is named Archimedes. Then again, the doves too are literally bloodthirsty...
  • In the comics, Medic resurrects Sniper after Classic Heavy kills him, even though they were on opposing teams at the time. It's also later revealed that he easily managed to replace Demoman's missing eye, but eventually gave up after each replacement turned into a monster around Halloween due to the eyesocket being haunted.
  • One of Valve's holiday cards shows Medic offering Heavy a colossal sandvich, Heavy's favorite food.
• Pet's Homage Name: The Mad Doctor / Scientist named his dove after the famous Greek mathematician, Archimedes.
• Plague Doctor: Can have the look of one with some cosmetics such as the Blighted Beak mask.
• Playing God: As the man himself explains in the comic "Old Wounds":
  "It's like I've always said! There's nothing wrong with playing God, so long as you are good at—[choked]"
• Playing with Syringes: Fires a lot of syringes from his guns, plus giant needles from the Crusader's Crossbow.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: The Vaccinator is meant to exploit this part of the games class design, offering three of the most common damage types in the game as damage resistances while also negating all incoming critical hits for the duration of its Uber. Classes who specialize in one damage type, such as Demoman with explosives, Pyro with fire, and Sniper with bullets, will find that their primary means of attack are nearly useless against a patient who has a Vaccinator Uber applied on them, which also makes the weapon double as a good way to combat class stacking and critical/mini-critical hit reliant classes like Buff Banner Soldiers, Kritzkrieg Medics, Combo Pyros and especially Snipers. While this can seriously screw opponents over in 1v2 scenarios and in team battles where one side is stacking one particular kind of damage, it’s easily countered by players who stick with their teammates to cover each others shortcomings and teams with a diverse damage range during all-out fights.
• Practical Taunt:
  • Exclusive to the Kritzkrieg is the Medic's Oktoberfest taunt, which heals him a bit on top of his normal health regeneration. Since he has to stay put to use it and the amount it does heal is pitiful, it's pretty much only useful to stave off being killed by afterburn or bleed if there's no enemies around and another healing source is unavailable.
  • The Amputator's signature power is its taunt animation (which can be activated using the taunt button or simply the alt-fire), where Medic plays it like a violin and continuously heals all surrounding allies. While this forces Medic into a prone animation for a fixed 4.4 seconds, the area-of-effect heal is useful for keeping the team healthy in a pinch, especially in tight environments where they're more likely to stay in his radius and line of sight.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: After finishing his operation on the Heavy in "Meet the Medic," the Medic declares, "Let's go practice medicine" upon Heavy asking him what happens next. What follows when they enter the battlefield is the very first application of ubercharging in-canon, with the Medic rendering the Heavy invulnerable as he mows down wave after wave of approaching BLU Soldiers.
• Professor Guinea Pig: He's implied to have done heart surgery on himself to make himself be able to ÜberCharge. More horrifyingly, the Medimedes hat is formed from the Medic replacing his own head with that of his dove Archimedes! He alternates between thinking it is awesome and hugely regretting it.
• Purposely Overpowered: As a class, Medic is designed to be insanely powerful. His healing allows teammates to stay in fights for longer, while his Overheal capabilities allow him to influence fights even when he's not immediately adjacent. He's also the only character with a Limit Break by default, which defines the pace of the game; everyone else either has a less influential limit break (Scout's Soda Popper, Sniper's Hitman's Heatmaker) or a limit break that trades out a crucial part of their kit (Soldier's backpacks, Pyro's Phlogistinator). This is by design, as the unique ability to turn the tides of the match is a reward to the otherwise dull "healing specialist" role. It's spelled out directly in the in-game developer commentary for Gravelpit:
  "Invulnerability adds an element of pacing to the multiplayer experience. [...] When an invulnerable Medic and his friends come running in, it's an extreme high point for them. It's also a rush for the defenders when they just gotta hold on for ten seconds until invulnerability fades. [...] In addition, invulnerability is a great goal for the Medic and awards him for being an effective healer."
• Putting the "Medic" in Comedic: The invoker of this trope, as well as the unintentional name-dropper.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon:
  • Despite occupying the Medic's primary weapon slot, the Syringe Gun is this, as a vast majority of the time, the Medic should be healing up his team with the Medi Gun. The Syringe Gun has a fast fire rate, but it's not hitscan — instead firing parabolically-travelling projectiles with pretty mediocre travel speed — and the projectiles deal only meager amounts of Scratch Damage. While this actually can be useful in some defensive scenarios (such as retreating — spraying syringes while walking backwards from the combat zone can make for a decently effective deterrent), it otherwise lacks any practical offensive application and shouldn't really be used unless absolutely necessary for Medic's survival.
  • The Overdose leans into the "emergency" side while downplaying the "weapon" part even further: it deals even less damage, but when holstered, it grants Medic significant amounts of bonus running speed based on the Über he has, making him even better at retreating if things get too spicy.
  • Meanwhile, the Blutsauger leans more into the "weapon" aspect by healing Medic for each syringe hit in exchange for reducing some of Medic's passive health regeneration, enabling him to be slightly more aggressive-minded with their gunplay.
  • Zig-Zagged with the Crusader's Crossbow, which fudges around the entire Syringe Gun design in exchange of being a one-shot-magazine crossbow, firing a single bolt at a time that deals a more respectable, if still fairly average burst of damage on hit. What the Crossbow is most used for, however, is its ability to heal allies on hit, often making it much more useful as a long-range utility tool than a ranged damage weapon most of the time.
• Regenerating Health: See Healing Factor.
• Required Secondary Powers: Without a modified super-heart, not even a Heavy could survive having an ÜberCharge applied to them.
• Retcon: His hometown was changed from Stuttgart to Rottenburg^note Although Rottenburg am Neckar is in close proximity to Stuttgart.
• Sanity Slippage: Medic sounds downright unhinged as the other mercenaries are killed in "Mann vs. Machine". If Medic is the only character left standing, he becomes overwhelmed with grief and rage, loudly swearing that he'll destroy the robots. His voice acting is chilling.
  • In a slightly more humorous situation, Halloween events tend to fling him off his rocker using a freakin' trebuchet. Be it happily warbling about the uses of Magic, or screaming at the top of his lungs that he has a bird for a head, October is probably the month where the Medic makes even Pyro look sane.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: On the last page of "Blood In The Water", he salutes his old team as his glasses are covered with an eye-obscuring glare upon their surface.
• Shirtless Scene: The Burly Beast item, where Medic opens up his shirt to expose his pecs and hairy chest.
• Shoot the Medic First:
  • Well, he IS the Trope Namer, more or less. Very much an occupational hazard for Medic players, with Headshots and Backstabs being the worst to deal with. If you want to play Medic, first thing you need to learn to do is hide or at least stay out of trouble if on the frontline.
  • Especially comes back to bite him in the "Naked And The Dead" comic, wherein Classic Heavy pumps him full of bullets so he'll be free to take on the Modern Heavy one-on-one.
• Skill Gate Characters: He's recommended by the official source as the class you should play if you're new to the game, as it allows you to observe how the game is played and how other classes work. But at higher level, a Medic can't just go tunnel vision with their single pocket; it takes a good situational awareness to watch out for enemy teams out for your blood, the ability to build ÜberCharge as fast as possible, and the right time to push.
• Slasher Smile:
  • Based on the "Meet the Medic" video, the Medic would be a perfect candidate for a B-list horror movie villain.
  • The smile that Medic gives to Heavy near the end of the "End of the Line" video veers straight into Nightmare Face territory. Brrrr...
  • He lampshades this when the Sniper calls him out on it. After the Medic defected to the TF Classic team, who then wounded Sniper, the Sniper calls out Medic on his wide evil grin as that happened. Medic responds meekly that he was just happy to see Sniper and the entire thing about his 'happy' smile is that it looks "smug and evil". Sniper didn't seem happy, but he did accept it as truth after Medic demonstrates that toothy smile.
• Smart People Play Chess: He tries to teach the Heavy the game in the "The End of the Line" movie^note The 15 minute movie was entirely created by an outside team of freelance artists for a community update of the same name, but Valve officially added the update to the game. All community updates with story content are considered an "alternate timeline" to the main canon by Word of God. Even after Heavy learns the game properly, he takes so long to make a move that Medic ends up Flipping The Board in frustration.
• The Sociopath: Zig-zagged in the comics. On one hand, he sides with the Classic Team and doesn't bat an eyelash when they try to kill his former RED teammates, grafts his teammates souls onto his soul so that he can escape eternal damnation, and sells one of his teammates souls for Satan's pen. On the other hand, he has several moments of real humanity, such as his horrified response when Classic Heavy kills Archimedes, his frantic efforts to replenish the blood lost by Miss Pauling, Soldier, and Zhanna, and his joy upon resurrecting Sniper.
• Soul Jar: He sold his soul to the Devil, and in a bid for control — and to avoid being sent to Hell once he dies — surgically-implanted the other eight mercenaries' souls into himself, either those of his teammates or those of the aged Team Fortress Classic team he previously worked for. He makes use of them to not only return to life for at least another 50 years, but also get the pen he uses to defeat Classic Heavy.
• Squishy Wizard: Averted. His health is higher than that of the Scout, Sniper, Engineer, and Spy, he regenerates health, and his speed is the second-fastest in the game. He does make for a popular target. But his healing and ÜberCharge can make or break a game, turning him into a vital part of any team.
• Stat-O-Vision: When you have the Solemn Vow equipped, you can see the names and health of your enemies.
• Stoners Are Funny: Look at his face after inhaling Medi Gun fumes from the Kritzkrieg. (However, it's more likely a reference to inhaling beer fumes at Oktoberfest.)
  "Ha ha haaa! Oktoberfest!"
• Stone Wall: The Quick-Fix has the fastest healing rate of any Medi Gun, and it can mirror a healing target's blast jumps as an extra mobility option for the Medic. When fully charged, its uber triples its healing rate and applies immunity to knockback to the Medic and the healing target. These benefits come at the cost of lower overheal—a 125% health buff instead of 150%. This leaves the Medic and his healing target more vulnerable to focus fire, even when the ubercharge is active, so generating offensive momentum from a single healing target is much harder. Thus, its benefits truly shine when it's used to rapidly heal multiple teammates in succession, all while they generate that momentum.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Forms a higher-level "strategic" one between himself, the Engineer, and "Roaming" pick Soldiers and Scouts. The Medic's ÜberCharge serves as the most reliable way to break past an Engineer's defensive line, while being vulnerable to being picked off by roaming Soldiers and Scouts, even if at the cost of their own life from the inevitable retaliation of the Medic's team, killing a Medic and resetting his ÜberCharge is worth more than the life of a single combat class. At the same time, such roaming kill-seeking behavior is heavily discouraged within the radius of an Engineer's sentry gun.
• Talking to Themself: The Second Opinion item from the 2013 Halloween update gives him this trait, a side effect of experimenting on himself.
• Team Pet: Archimedes and the other doves. He even tells them his secrets!
• The Smart Guy: Shares the role with the Engineer.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Subverted. At first people assumed so, but Word of God from Robin Walker stated that the Medic is not and has never been a Nazi — it would have been "too easy". Medic can be egotistical, but he doesn't seem to be particularly biased — a body is a body. ^note The Soldier seems to view him as one, most likely due to him being German.
• Token Evil Teammate: The Team is composed of misfits, maniacs and idiots, but none of them is are particularly bad people deep down, even though their chosen — and very much enjoyed — profession is one that involves violence. Not so the Medic. Affable as he may be, the dude's a creepy, sadistic Mad Scientist who performs immoral experimentation on his own teammates, with his medical expertise being merely a convenience for him on account of his subjects not dying.
• Turn Your Head and Cough: This is one of the lines that may be spoken when holding a melee weapon, aiming at an enemy player, and choosing the "battle cry" speech.
• Uncatty Resemblance:
  • Medic resembles his pet doves in that he wears white on the battlefield. The tail of his lab coat resembles a dove's tail. When Archimedes is perched on his shoulders, they share facial expressions.
  • Medic looks like an anthropomorphic dove when equipped with the Medimedes item.
• Useless Useful Spell: The Vita-Saw is a melee weapon that trades 10 total health for the ability to store some Über upon death, the percentage of which increases if you manage to hit enemies with it before going down. On paper, this sounds like it might be a useful crutch for Medic players who get jumped a lot (itself a reasonable expectation) and doesn't want to waste time having to rebuild lost ÜberCharge after respawning. However, dying in general wastes a ton of time and is something players should be best avoiding altogether, and with the Vita-Saw otherwise providing no other upsides when Medic is alive, players tend to opt with more practical melees that reward active use, such as the Übersaw (which instantly grants a huge chunk of Über on hit) or the Amputator (which increases his Regenerating Health and has an effective AoE heal that can be used in a pinch).
• Waistcoat of Style: What he wears underneath the labcoat, as seen in "Meet the Medic".
• Worst Aid: It's not clear just how much Medic knows about real medicine. If he invented the uber-heart, he's a genius. Still, you wouldn't want to be on his operating table.
  "Oops! Zat vas not medicine..."
• Your Mom: Inverted. Somehow, he manages to bluff the Classic Heavy to believe that he is going to be a mother, which the bluff eventually became true.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The Medic somehow stole the eight souls of his teammates and grafted them into his, thus having a total of nine souls inside him and allowing him to manage a Did You Just Scam Cthulhu? on the Devil himself since any Deal with the Devil is binding only if the Devil owns a majority stake on his soul(s).

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"Anyvay, zat's how I lost my 'medical license'. Heh..."

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