Team Fortress 2 Soldier Smiling

About

TF2 Soldier Smiling, also known as Team Fortress 2 Soldier Creepy Smile, is a reaction GIF depicting the Soldier from the video game Team Fortress 2 being zoomed in on with a blank expression that slowly turns into an exaggerated creepy grin. The GIF is typically used as a reaction to humorous or witty captions above, often including unsettling aspects or wordplay.

Origin

The original GIF (shown below) comes from an upload by user Killroy on August 2nd, 2014, to the Team Fortress 2 artwork tab on Steam’s Community^[1] section. The post has since accumulated nearly 3,000 likes and 200 comments.

The clip used in the GIF also appears in a YouTube^[2] video on Kilroy0901’s channel, specifically the video titled “All My Garry's Mod Screenshots in 120 seconds + Scrapped Videos,” which was uploaded on August 4th, 2014. In the video (seen below), several screenshots and short clips are shown and the particular part the GIF is pulled from occurs right around the 1:56 mark.

Spread

After the GIF was uploaded to Steam and YouTube, it appeared on the website JoyReactor^[3] (under the Russian version) where it was uploaded on August 20th, 2014, by user )|(ENAT as a reaction to a news story about the central McDonald's in Moscow closing.

The GIF reappeared on Tenor^[4] after being uploaded on December 7th, 2015, by an unknown user.

On Twitter, the GIF has also been frequently seen as a reaction to various posts and tweets over the years, an example of which can be seen on October 16th, 2019, from user @A_Tiny_Pyro.^[5] In this post (seen below), the GIF is used to react to an image encouraging people to boycott Blizzard and play TF2 instead.

In 2020, the GIF began to see rampant use on Reddit as several users posted it alongside captions in a more traditional meme format, particularly on the r/dankmemes sub. The first post came from Redditor^[6] TomMcWeedy on March 10th, 2020, under the title “he did nut…” The meme received over 90,000 upvotes, several Reddit awards and 376 comments.

The meme continued to spread as several versions were posted to the r/dankmemes subreddit later that day. Shortly after the original, Redditor^[7] mijuzz7 posted another example (shown below) with the title “My time has come,” also receiving a few Reddit awards in addition to 84,300 upvotes and 382 comments.

Other variations of the meme began appearing on Reddit after the initial wave, where a still image format was posted on March 11th, 2020, by Redditor^[8] SneakyEnch (shown below).

Another version where the Soldier doesn't smile was uploaded by Redditor^[9] SquiggerMyNibber shortly after, under the title "Guys fr though I'm sick," due to the massive influx of memes using the original GIF.

Various Examples

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External References