#healthy coping mechanisms that don't backfire and actually help you grow into a somewhat functional adult

[obscurewatch]

The Three Teddybears of Overwatch

You’ve noticed Zarya has one. You see it in that one emote where she opens gifts

You may have also noticed there is one on Sombra’s bed in Castillo

EDIT : Apparently Sombra calls her bear “Arturito

(there’s a new interaction she has with Hammond where she mentions him

“ Sombra: You remind me of my stuffed bear, Arturito.

Hammond: squeak

Sombra: I like him better. “

Arturito, spanish for Arthur which means “bear”, “protector”, “guardian” in a bunch of languages.

Makes sense for a teddybear given to children in times of war.

And the third is really hard to notice. I’ve played Uprising dozens of times and never noticed it until one day I decided to just explore the map and take it slow in Normal mode.

This third teddybear is NOT there in regular King’s Row. It only appears in Uprising and it’s the only teddybear I found on the whole Uprising map.

Blizzard loves doing clues in sets of three. Three Moira books in Oasis and then the same three books in the Diablo Section of BlizzardWorld, three Hammond wall panel stashes in Horizon Lunar Colony, three ana wanted posters on Anubis and many others. I don’t think there are other teddybears out there but keep your eyes open :D

This right here is the texture file of the teddybear. All three bears have the same texture.

Notice the faded Overwatch logo? It’s on the bear’s chest, on all three of them.

See it?

My theory is that Overwatch was never a purely military organization, they likely also had a humanitarian branch who helped the dislodged population, the injured and the sick during and after the Omnic Crisis.

We know Sombra’s parents died in the Crisis. She was made an orphan by war young, probably around age 7-9.

The way I see it, Overwatch used to give those teddybears to children to help them cope with the loss of a parent and as such, young Sombra received one.

20+ years later, she still has that teddybear, which proves two things : Overwatch knows how to make quality plushies that won’t fall apart in 6 months and that’s really commendable AND Sombra never really got over the loss of her parents and has kept her whole life that bear who’s likely been her only “true” friend while growing up.

She keeps it on her bed. Not on a shelf, not on display behind glass, not in a toy chest or some random cardboard box, forgotten. No, on her bed. She sleeps with it, at age 30. And there’s only one teddybear. Not a dozen others that she’d have added to her collection over the years, just this one, that she was given by Overwatch when her parents died. It clearly means a lot to her. That bear is the cornerstone of Sombra’s personality and a daily reminder for her of the cost of war. Which is just, beautiful. It adds so much depth to her already rich character.

She probably looks at it every day and thinks about her place in the world, what she can do to make sure something like the Omnic Crisis never happens again. She’s on a mission and that bear is helping her stay focused.

 Well, that’s how I see it.

There’s also a theory by CowboyVigilante that I love because it add yet more depth to her relationship with the bear.  

Sombra could also be using that bear in a process called "Rubber duck debugging” which is a practical tip coming from a book called “The Pragmatic Programmer”. Basically when as a programmer you are stuck with code that won’t work, the idea is to explain the code line by line to an inanimate object, for example a rubber duck, which has zero knowledge of programming. By explaining the code line by line to “someone” who knows nothing about coding with very simple words, your brain will take another look, a fresher look, on what is wrong with the code and you’ll eventually pinpoint the problem, whereas, had you kept on going insane over what was wrong from your point of view, you’d have missed it. You just tricked your brain into thinking about a problem differently, congrats ! Best part is that this can be applied to everything in life, not just programming.

Sombra might be doing that with her teddybear when she can’t figure out how to hack something ! It would explain why she has kept the bear for 20+ years, he’s been her silent partner in crime all those years :D

She also might have hidden a USB drive inside of it, something with critical info?But that’s a massive reach and I don’t see what use she could have for it. Anyway there’s not much happening when you shoot the bear in game. The head pops off and that’s it.

The Overwatch logo on the bear’s chest and the fact that Sombra didn’t sew something on top of it, or removed the logo, makes me think Sombra is at the very least neutral towards Overwatch. She doesn’t seem to have anything particular against Overwatch as an organization, maybe it’s the only “good” one she sees out there, and her hacking skills probably provided her with the opportunity to see for herself what Overwatch was really about internally.

Remember the devs said that someone was working very hard to decrypt the old Overwatch Archives. It’s likely Sombra. Now we have to wait and see why she wanted those archives.

Emotes aren’t canon. However Zarya keeps talking about what happened to her village. Did she lose relatives in the Crisis? Probably. No confirmation about her family situation, we don’t know if she’s an orphan. 

In the emote, she opens a present and finds the teddybear which she then hugs tight until its head pops off. It could be just a joke about her voiceline “I want to hug you like big fuzzy siberian bear”. If I remember correctly, Russia has always refused Overwatch’s help during the Crisis. While I understand why they wouldn’t let a foreign military force on russian soil, I like to think they would still accept humanitarian aid. And Zarya might have received a teddybear after her village got destroyed by omnics, I don’t think only orphans are entitled to a teddybear. The emote could be a way to show that Zarya as a child grew up to “love” or at least see the good in Overwatch (hugging a bear with the Overwatch logo on its chest) and hate omnics (crushing a robot toy in disgust). Or maybe the emote is showing adult Zarya reunited with the teddybear she lost years ago? I’m reading too much into it.

The teddybear in the Uprising subway could belong to anyone. It could belong to the young child of someone who got it during the Crisis, or to another adult who, like Sombra, never quite managed to forget what happened and takes it around with them at all times. But it’s in the subway, on a bench. So I think it makes more sense that it belongs to a young child who was in the subway with their parents during the Null Sector attack, had to evacuate the city quickly and just left it behind in the panic.

Maybe Overwatch never stopped to give those teddybears away to kids, maybe through a kind of organization like Make a Wish that they would operate themselves after the crisis. Maybe the Uprising one is simply merchandise that parents bought for their kids. There are posters of Genji and Tracer in game, they seem canon, maybe Overwatch had a merch shop before they were disbanded x)

Either way, those teddybears are heavily linked to the suffering caused by Omnics turning against humans, be it Null Sector or older units during the Omnic Crisis.

If we ever see new teddybears added in game, or in shorts or comics, we can take that as a bad omen. I’m sure they’ll eventually become something, so many clues out there that seem random until something else is introduced and suddenly everything makes sense.

If you’re open minded and if you enjoy wasting time hunting for the many obscure things the devs have put in the world of Overwatch, I have an all new discord server :D

https://discord.gg/Eg8pZdn