Corpse Carrier

Submission 24,136

Part of a series on Team Fortress 2. [View Related Entries]

About

Corpse Carrier is a cosmetic item for the character Scout in the multiplayer video game Team Fortress 2 (TF2). Upon release, the item attracted significant attention within the game's community, becoming a subject of memes and fan art, with some memes comparing the design of the cosmetic to sexual intercourse. On October 11th, 2021, Valve restricted the item to Halloween and Full Moon, which caused a spike in the price of one limited version of the item and inspired discussions on social media.

Origin

On October 17th, 2015, Steam users JZeeBat, Sparkwire, Horrid McCoolghoul and Yikes submitted "The Corpse Carrier," a Team Fortress 2 cosmetic item for Scout designed as a "carry me"-style Halloween costume with a Scout dummy holding what appears like a severed Scout's upper torso (thumbnail and multiview image shown below).^[1]

On October 5th, 2021, the item was added to Team Fortress 2 as a part of its annual Halloween-themed "Scream Fortress" update.^[2] The item was originally released without restrictions but was restricted to Halloween and Full Moon on October 11th, 2021,^[3] which made players unable to unlock new Corpse Carriers of Strange quality.

Spread

Immediately following the release, the item received viral reactions on social media, with users questioning the decision not to make the item Halloween-restricted and comparing the design to sex. For example, on October 5th, 2021, Twitter^[4] user @KayaDLX made a tweet that gained over 90 retweets and 1,200 likes in one week (shown below, left). On October 6th, 2021, Redditor^[5] jeandarcer posted a meme that gained over 10,700 upvotes in /r/tf2 in one week (shown below, center). Also that day, an anonymous 4chan^[6] user posted an Abby Buttsex Edit referencing the cosmetic in a /v/ thread (shown below, right).

In the following days, multiple memes in which users insinuated the similarity between the design of the item reminded and a sexual act were posted on social media. For example, on October 14th, 2021, Twitter^[7] user @Antoine_Delak posted a clip of a Scout with the item equipped utilizing the Zoomin' Broom taunt to give the impression of two Scouts having sex. The video received over 860 retweets and 4,800 likes in one day (shown below).

On October 11th, 2021, a Team Fortress 2 update made the item Halloween-restricted.^[3] As a result, the item could no longer be obtained in Strange quality, meaning that only a limited supply of Strange Corpse Carriers would exist. The change caused a rapid surge in the price of the item on the Steam Community Market,^[8] with the price of Strange Corpse Carrier peaking at nearly $60 on October 11th before falling to approximately $25 by October 14th.