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electric-bluejay · 1 month ago

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ive never had an original thought process and i will continue not to, aka, Grey's TF2 BLU team clone theory post. This is a long one boys.

i was talking about this with some people yesterday but i really wish tf2 canonically acknowledged blu team more and i think everyone who likes tf2 agrees with me. In case you're one of my hfjone followers who are unaware of tf2's story, Ill just give you the basic overview cause the story is like scrambled around in a bunch of comics, videos, and updates so it might be kind of overwhelming but i do recommend trying.

THE BACKGROUND INFORMATION

There's like these two richass brothers fighting over ownership of a plot of land inherited from their father who gave it to both of them in hopes theyd learn to cooperate with each other. Like reasonable people, they decided to hold an all out war in the American southwest by hiring the world's most skilled mercenaries to fight their battles for them in hopes one of them would claim the land. They each own their own company, RED or BLU, and in the game you fight on one of these two teams usually with the objective of taking territory or intel. A key plot point, that neither the mercenaries or the two brothers are aware of, is that this whole war is being orchestrated to be in a perpetual stalemate by a woman known as the Administrator, so she's the one involved with managing the mercenaries and coordinating attacks so that nobody makes any substantial victories. The gist makes this sound like a more serious story than it is like theyre fighting over a plot of gravel its really dumb actually. And then there's robots and shit that happens later just dont worry about it for now. dont even worry about it

In the game you can play as one of 9 classes of mercenaries, shown above with the aforementioned brothers and also saxton hale (dont worry about him either). Youll notice that in this image its a mix of red and blu people, but these guys exist on both teams. When it comes to promotional material, you almost see them as red team, but the exact same classes exist on blu. And they look the same, and sound the same, and have the same weapons and stats.

Obviously from a gameplay standpoint, it makes sense for these guys to be identical, but they aren't just identical in the game. There's a ton of stuff in videos and comics where they just use the same designs or models, same voices, same personality, everything.

So that's where the popular Clone Theory comes from. Basically one or both of these teams are clones of the original mercenaries to keep the fight between teams fair, because as stated before, these guys are in an orchestrated stalemate.

Again, if youre unfamiliar with tf2, you may be wondering what these guys canon reactions are to the fact that they are fighting somebody who looks and acts exactly like them right? Like, there's a ton of comics and videos about them, so they probably noticed or something? well they FUCKING DONT. ITS NEVER BROUGHT UP.

MY FRUSTRATION WITH THE LACK OF BLUUUUU

i really want them to like. fucking acknowledge what the hell is going on there? like are they actually clones in canon? it would make sense but its never fucking talked about. like even if they didnt actually give a definitive answer, i wish at the very least they pointed out the fact that HEY. these guys we're paid to kill look just like us thats fuckign weird. granted like most of the team are idiots, but while someone like soldier might not question what's going on, i'd think someone like Sniper or Spy who's jobs involve keeping a close eye on the enemy team would probably notice right?????

to be fair also theyve like. never interacted with themselves in any media stuff? the closest we ever get to seeing a red and blu counterpart interact outside the actual game is in meet the spy but we'll get to that later. It's interesting that they either purposefully avoided having them interact or they just overlooked a chance for the funny. we never see what its like for the mercs when they originally get hired (maybe cause they were never hired at all!!!!!!!!!! THEYRE ALL CLOENSSSAAGHG) so we dont really get to gauge their reactions

well why focus on blu team? pretty much all the media is very red centric. the meet the team videos are all about their respective red members, and the proper comic series is about red team (or is it?). the only meaningful stuff we see from blu team is from the war update, meet the spy, and that one christmas comic where spy told a child to murder someone. why's it so red centric, you may ask? well its cause they look better in the promotional art dumbass. do you think people would buy the orange box with blue people on the cover? fuck no think about the color theory

of course its entirely plausible that the red and blu team only use the same character designs for simplicity sake. its possible in universe they are two different sets of people who just look the same to us for the sake of gameplay, but that seems a bit outside the style of storytelling, where everything is sort of ridiculous and literal. i feel like in writing they would commit to it, but they've just managed to write these guys so they never have to interact and acknowledge how weird it is

so i wanna explore what of blu team is actually acknowledged and see if we can reach some sort of conclusion about them? cause clone theory seems to be the most prevalent but what do we actually know that would support that? But before we can even get into that we have to talk about the unavoidable elephant in the room

IS RESPAWN EVEN FUCKING REAL??????

In tf2 you dont stay dead when you die unless youre playing like a specific gamemode that nobody plays. you respawn after a short period of time in a little room and then go back out to get killed again. this is like crazy magic shit so that probably wouldnt be canon right. except crazy magic shit is canon, but that doesnt mean people are getting brought back from the dead- no thats canon too. While nothing in the videos and comics explicitly states that the mercenaries that are getting killed are able to just pop back to life, its not out of the realm of (tf2) reality. Furthermore, certain voicelines that activate after killing the same person multiple times in the game indicate that the characters themselves are in fact killing the same people over and over again, and they do just come back to life. The reason this is even relevant is just cause like BLU team has all canonically died at least once, and the BLU Spy has died two different times at least, so if they can respawn it would make more sense

Since we're talking about voicelines, what do the voicelines tell us about BLU team? really not a lot. The voicelines are the same no matter which team youre on, which supports them being the same people, but again is probably a game mechanic thing. Now onto the videos.

We can sort of skim over most of the meet the team videos because Blu's central role in almost all of them is getting killed, but there's a couple meaningful interactions in some of them.

Meet the Soldier

There isn't a whole lot going on in this one, but I find it interesting that they made the choice to include the BLU soldier's head here, but mostly obscured. This could be an example of an instance where they purposefully chose to avoid showing these two guys at the same time, which couldve been easily avoided by not putting it there at all honestly. Also why does he have that many blu helmets

Meet the Spy

This is the most we ever see of blu team in the videos. Characterization is mainly featured with Blu Spy, Soldier, and Heavy. These characters share the same mannerisms and personality of their Red counterparts here for sure. Most interestingly, Spy also talks a lot about his Red counterpart here. It's pretty clear he seems to consider the two to be similar in terms of skill and threat, which would make sense if he suspected the Red Spy was one and the same.

The Scout here isnt the actual BLU Scout, so his behavior is a bit suspect. It'd make sense that Red Spy is behaving like the Blu Scout and that their behavior isnt actually meaningfully different from the Red Scout. Furthermore, he's the one who specifically draws the comparison between himself and the Blu Spy ("I've killed dozens of spies... like you!"). So it seems the feeling is mutual.

This video is interesting also cause it implicates that Red Spy is Blu Scout's father, while the comics implicates that he's the Red Scout's father. Like what is it? Is he both of their dads? Is Blu Spy anyone's dad? Do the scouts have separate moms? Are the moms also clones? if both scouts went to see their mom and would they end up meeting at the same place and freak out? See this is all interesting which is why i WISH THEY WOULD AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ITS STRA

Meet the Medic

Blu isn't really characterized here a whole lot. A minor joke that's in here is Blu Spy's head, which is a reference to the unused concept for mtm if you weren't aware. But that's just like a one second joke and we don't ever see him again except for that one taunt. Honestly i really shouldve just skipped talking about th WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT

That is about 5 million BLU Soldiers. This is i think the ONLY time we've ever seen multiples of a single class on the same team in tf2's story universe. This is perhaps the most damning evidence for the clone theory we're going to get.

However, this is pretty easy to write off as a production streamlining choice. They want to make a mountain of bodies to stand on, so it's probably easier to copy and paste the same model than take the time to get a good mix of classes in there, and I can respect not wanting to waste that much effort on a minor detail of what was probably their highest quality production at the time. They did take the time to give them different hats though, but that's not hard to do in sfm. But if this scene is literal I really wanna know what the fuck happened here. At least we know where all those helmets came from

War Update Comic

Speaking of BLU Soldier, this comic is all about him. We learn a lot about him in this comic, such as his name being Jane Doe, a trait he seems to share with the RED soldier

(though this panel comes from the mann co no more series and its possible that, at this point in the story, this IS the blu soldier for. reasons. we'll get to that)

He behaves in the irrational violent manner we're accustomed to for the red soldier, though there is an interesting detail that he lives alone in an apartment, as its later revealed that red soldier is roommates with a wizard (dont worry about it). in game voicelines being the same for both classes means that both red and blu soldiers claim to be his roommate but voicelines being the same doesnt really mean a whole lot

Loose Cannon

This is around the time TF2 decided to have lore. We learn that BLU engineer is contracted to keep the two Mann brothers alive so the war can go on perpetually, as his family have a history of doing this apparently. The fact that BLU Engineer is the one who's got this specialized role is actually something thats consistent later in the comic as he specifically is revealed to be personally aiding the administrator

As for Red similarities, well. Blu Engie here is referred to as Dell Conagher, and I don't know think the red engie ever is. However, they both have a cool robot arm known as the Gunslinger, an item that specifically the Blu engie got access to in this comic, not the red one.

either the red engineer has some sort of shared memory with blu, or he was given access to these files after the blu engineer built his own gunslinger so things could stay in a stalemate. there's more evidence for the former, but i would believe the latter too.

Meet the Director

The origin behind the meet the team videos is revealed to be "interviews" staged to keep an eye on the red team and also make a point of how stupid it was for them to agree to an interview in the first place. Blu is basically absent from these comics, but they are mentioned. They made the explicit choice to skip videos of them for whatever reason, hence why all the meet the team videos are red team focused. I dont know how much weight this comic holds though cause its just announcing the saxxys. rip.

A Smissmas Story

This Christmas special is the most blu the comics ever get. It's also pretty standalone though. So while the characters are all pretty in line with their red counterparts as far as personality, not much extends outside of this to really point any fingers. The main tie in to the main series is this courtroom scene where Soldier is acting as Scout's lawyer.

This, as it turns out, gets referenced far later in the main series where the Red Soldier wants to act as Red Scout's lawyer in a courtroom.

Well. okay. case closed then? These two different red guys remember this exact scene that occured with the blu guys as if it happened to them. Theyve got some weird shared experience thing going on right. Guess theyre clones???

YOU FOOL WE HAVENT EVEN TALKED ABOUT MANN VS MACHINE

You remember those two brothers who are the whole conflict thing well they fucking Died. Turns out they had a secret eviler brother who killed them. "Oh what's his name grey?" uh. dont worry about it.

This event causes both the red team and blu team to have to work together in a new coop mode where they fight new brother's army of robots so he cant take over mann co, which is what the administrator and saxton hale (still dont worry about him) oversees.

(this video is so badass man)

So red team and blu team are mixed together now. That's fine though they're still color coded. ARE THEY????? ARE THEY??????

in mvm, all players wear red, and all evil robots are blue. It seems like they had plans to let people play as blu team against red robots cause red robot models exist but they didnt implement it.

This is consistent in the comics as well, where we in The Shadow Boxer see all Ms Pauling is planning only with the red team to fight the robot uprising.

See all red wait-

ive seen this image before. what the hell. lemme check back at the main page

WHAT THE FUCK WHYS THE HEAVY BLU IN THE THUMBNAIL

DID THEY. DID THEY ORIGINALLY MAKE THE COMIC WITH A MIX OF RED AND BLU AND THEN GO BACK AND MAKE THEM ALL RED? LIKE THE HEAVY WAS BLU IN THE ORIGINAL MVM UPDATE AS WELL, SO IT MAKES SENSE HE WAS BLU. IS HE. IS HE JUST WEARING A RED SHIRT NOW????

so whats this mean? it means that in the main story series, the red team we follow MIGHT NOT EVEN BE THE FUCKING ORIGINAL RED TEAM. they couldve all just put on red shirts to distinguish themselves better from the robots or something. there's just no way to be certain who's who anymore

well damnit grey guess thats theory over then BITCH YOU THOUGHT

GRAVE MATTERS

Grave matters is a comic released after the shadow boxers for that years halloween update. Despite this, it explicitly takes place after the two brothers are killed

These two guys become ghosts disputing who actually died first because all they can do is bicker. So they turn to a lawyer to actually figure things out. What lawyer you ask?

JANE MOTHERFUCKING DOE

they go to RED TEAMS SOLDIER, who is named Doe, who also claims to be a lawyer. this is EXPLICITLY before the teams can be mixed up, so this is the ACTUAL RED SOLDIER REMEMBERING SOMETHING THE BLU SOLDIER DID. I DID IT. I PROVED CLONE THEORY. ITS REAL. AHAHAHLDKGHDKLASHLGHKSLGGJ

well. honestly no i didnt. its highly likely clone theory is real if you take all this evidence as legitimate, but tf2 is kind of a bullshit game when it comes to how seriously it takes itself. there's contradictions about demo's upbringing, about whether or not medic actually had a license, shit like that. so its all suspect and thats okay. i dont blame them for not having a concrete plan for the story of a silly shooter game.

theres been good news for tf2 lately but i somehow doubt they're ever going to bring attention to this one specific thing i find interesting, and thats okay. there's plenty of fan made media that explores the blu team. Emesis Blue and Lil Pootis are amazing animations about them. You've also got fanfiction like Kith and Kin and You Need to Get a Head that specifically explore the angle of the tf2 teams being clones. And I think that's what makes tf2 special is the community that gets creative with it. Yeah it may be cool for valve to come out some day with the 7th chapter and the heavy update and the adult swim series, i know id be ecstatic. But we've got tons of people who can create all on their own and thats enough for me I think.

#guys my bf is so normal

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