Team Fortress 2 voice actors go for the Oscars with recreation of its most iconic fan skit

A scene from the Heavy is Dead parody video, showing a dead Heavy surrounded by other classes.
(Image credit: Valve)

Valve may have its eyes elsewhere at the moment but, for some, the attention never shifts from 2007's Team Fortress 2. While its developer continues to support the game, with an update as recently as March, that and everything for the last few years has been largely community authored and the game's ongoing vibrancy is entirely down to the dedicated fans that keep making Steam Workshop mods, silly videos, and endless memes (most recently about a plump and lovely seal). 

Perhaps the most popular Team Fortress 2 skit is Heavy is Dead, a 2019 YouTube video by Antoine Delak that currently has just under 20 million views. It is extremely daft, a Gmod-infused pisstake of a detective story where, at the start, the Heavy dies. The various classes of TF2 then enter the video, with most proclaiming "Heavy is dead"—their expressions and animations messed with to create some surreal effects. Its instant popularity saw the parody parodied endlessly, both in TF2 and with other games as the backdrop. It even has a Know Your Meme page.

The original Team Fortress 2 cast has recently been having a bit of a love-in with the community, and doing things like terrorising America's small towns on a hunt for sandviches, ABBA parodies, and even playing the game itself. Now you guessed it: the majority of the TF2 cast came together once more, minus a few cast members, to recreate the Heavy is Dead sketch on YouTube.

The video (below) is the work of ShorK and begins with the cast watching the video itself, which they haven't seen before, and reacting with some polite puzzlement at the fast-paced and often bizarre nature of TF2 humour. But they're game alright and you can watch the full sketch with their new voiceover around four minutes in. My personal highlight has to be Robin Atkin Downes, the Medic, who's calling in from LA with an Archimedes toy in his top pocket and obviously having an absolute blast with the absurdity of it all. Give that man an Oscar. 

It's been great watching the actors have a good time reprising their roles, though does make one wish that Valve would use some of its treasure hoard to produce some official TF2 spinoffs again: I don't think the studio's ever topped Meet The Team and, in the absence of Team Fortress 3, maybe it could get around to something like adapting the (great) TF2 comics (or at least finishing the series off).

TOPICS
Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

Read more
Image of Soldier in Team Fortress 2 comic issue 7
After nearly 8 long years, a new Team Fortress 2 comic is finally here and the TF community is rejoicing
A yellow engineer standing in front of stacked pipes in Team Fortress 2 Classic
Excellent throwback mod Team Fortress 2 Classic is coming to Steam later this year
Team Fortress 2 Engineer
Valve releases 'Team Fortress 2 SDK,' enabling creators to 'build completely new games based on TF2'
The G-Man looking at the camera.
G-Man's voice actor rings in the new year by dropping a cryptic tweet grenade promising 'unexpected surprises' into the starving Half-Life 3 fanbase
Half-Life: Alyx
Valve's Steam page currently lists a second mystery game alongside Deadlock, sending Half-Life 3 theorists into another frenzy of speculation
The jester from Balatro, portrayed in unsettling detail in real life, wears an uncanny smile and stares at the viewer.
The outtakes from that live-action Balatro trailer are unhinged
Latest in Action
Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3.
Mass Effect's Jennifer Hale, who played femshep, 'saw no line' before she recorded them for Bioware's flagship trilogy: 'It was all cold reading on the spot'
A hunter hefts a massive Mega Barrel Bomb in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds players can't stop blowing themselves to smithereens with its rollable barrel bombs
A hunter poses with a large hammer as their palico cheers nearby in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds weapon tier list
Naoe looking at the wrist blade in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Ubisoft backflips, says Assassin's Creed Shadows will support Steam Deck at launch, but I doubt I'll actually want to play it there
character creation in Monster Hunter Wilds
The best Monster Hunter Wilds mods
Two rising ronin facing each other
Rise of the Ronin is another crappy PC port, performance patch coming 'soon'
Latest in News
Closeup of the new Copilot key coming to Windows 11 PC keyboards
Microsoft co-authored paper suggests the regular use of gen-AI can leave users with a 'diminished skill for independent problem-solving' and at least one AI model seems to agree
A lolporrit squeals in excitement while being driven in a moon buggie in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, patch 7.2.
Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2's trailer has me finally hyped to get stuck back in—and to go to the moon and pilot some mechs, because why not
A pink GameSir Nova Lite, and a purple 8BitDo Ultimate 2C float in a teal void.
Hall effect controllers are so cheap now I’ve got a deal for you AND your player two
Peely from Fortnite with banana-fied Wolverine claws.
Fortnite comes to Snapdragon: Epic Games announces upcoming Arm support for its Easy Anti-Cheat software
Texas Instruments MSPM0C1104 tiny chip
World's smallest microcontroller looks like I could easily accidentally inhale it but packs a genuine 32-bit Arm CPU
Varjo Aero
Varjo Aero VR headsets seem to be not working on RTX 5090s, and its community is opting for strange solutions while waiting for an Nvidia driver release to fix it