Madcap (TF2)

Submission 36,764

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

About

Madcap is a rejected Steam Workshop submission for the multiplayer shooter video game Team Fortress 2 that achieved notoriety in the community due to its extreme crudeness, becoming a subject of references and fan art. In October 2023, the /r/tf2 subreddit engaged in a spontaneous unreality campaign similar to Goncharov as they collectively imagined Madcap to be a Team Fortress 2 class that was removed shortly after the game's release.

Origin

On May 16th, 2012, Steam user Bog submitted Madcap, a cosmetic item for the Scout class in Team Fortress 2, to Steam Workshop.^[1] The item consisted of a crudely made, low-polygonal and janky oversized jacket with large spiky epaulets and a red spiky helmet of the same production quality (images shown below). In 11 years, the item received multiple community awards and accumulated over 880 comments, mostly owing to its meme popularity.

The item first achieved notoriety within the community sometime around May 2015. On May 3rd, 2015, YouTube^[2] user Wolfcl0ck posted a video titled "Mr. Madcap" that gained over 17,000 views in eight years (shown below). On May 20th, Redditor DeerJesus made a post about the author of the item and their other creations that received over 60 upvotes in the /r/tf2^[3] subreddit in eight years. On September 26th, Redditor gvarados joked that they wanted Valve to add the item for that year's Halloween update. The post received over 230 upvotes in /r/tf2.^[4]

Spread

In the second half of the 2010s, Madcap was repeatedly mentioned in the /r/tf2 subreddit, with some users creating fan art of the item. For example, on September 23rd, 2016, Redditor demi-sfm shared a Source Filmmaker still of Scout with the item equipped that gained over 330 upvotes in the /r/tf2^[5] subreddit in seven years (shown below, left). On August 9th, 2018, Redditor Mallraider-sixtyfour posted^[6] a promotional image of Madcap from Steam Workshop, commenting, "Reminding of the best cosmetic to grace to steam workshop." The post (shown below, right) received over 2,700 upvotes in five years.

October 2023 Resurgence

On October 4th, 2023, Redditor Doksumar posted a fan-made render of Madcap, pretending that it was the 10th playable class in the game back in 2008 and inquiring about what happened to it. The post gained over 4,100 upvotes in /r/tf2^[7] 10 days (post and image shown below, left and right).

In the following days, multiple users in the subreddit joined in on the joke, supporting the idea that Madcap was once a playable character in the game with memes, fan art and doctored images. Notably, on October 5th, 2023, Redditor^[8] i-am-sandvich posted a 10-panel retrospective analysis of the character, with the post garnering over 3,100 upvotes in nine days (shown below).

On October 11th, PC Gamer^[9] reported on the trend, quoting a comment stating that Team Fortress 2 community was on its way to "meme a character into existence through the power of mass gaslighting." On October 12th, X^[10] / Twitter account @heavyfortres shared a snippet of the article, with the post garnering over 1,100 reposts and 15,700 likes in one day.