Character Analysis: The Spy

Character Analysis: The Spy



Background

  • Name: Unknown (Goes by Spy)

  • Age: Unknown (Likely around 40-50)

  • Height: 6’1" / 185.4 cm

  • First Appearance: Team Fortress 2

  • Location: Right Behind You…

  • Place of Birth: France


Ah… Ze Spy. In truth, not much is currently known about the Spy’s personal life, he’s one of the few mercs who’s name hasn’t been stated, we don’t know much about his past life before becoming a mercenary and assassin, and we don’t even know what he looks like aside from a singular shot from the comics that doesn’t reveal much. What we do know is that before getting hired as the Spy in 1968, he would take various jobs across the globe specializing in Espionage and Assassinations. It’s very likely that during his trips across the world, he would meet a lovely lady that would end up being none-other than Scout’s own mother.


Yeah, so it’s outright confirmed that Spy is Scout’s father, before the comic’s reveal, there would be several hints, such as an achievement being titled “Who’s Your Daddy?” which involves headshotting specifically Scouts, there would be several domination voice lines where Spy would reference Scout’s mother, and of course there’s the ending scene of Meet The Spy. Finally, when reading the comics, Spy would have an emotional scene where he disguises himself as Tom Jones, who Scout thought was his real dad, and declares how proud he is of Jeremy. While he disguised himself as Tom Jones to keep up with Scout’s fantasy, it’s clear the words spoken were from Spy himself.


Fast forward to the end of the TF2 Comics, and we have Spy fighting alongside the rest of the mercs, Saxton Hale, and Ms. Pauling in a fight against the original Team Fortress Classic mercenaries along with several of Gray Mann’s Robots, thoroughly defeating them, which is where we currently stand in the story, at least until the 7th comic which has finally been confirmed as actually happening let’s goooooo!!!


Before We Begin…

This will be fairly straight forward, we will be looking at pretty much every official TF2 piece of media, such as the game itself (duh), TFC, all the official shorts, and of course comics. No crossovers will be used except for one notable exception which we will get to later.


Also this was written a bit after the 2024 TF2 Summer Update, so any possible new changes such as maps, weapon changes, or even comics that happen after said update won't be included.


Also shoutouts to KingCorporeal’s and Saul’s respective TF2 Blogs, as some calcs were grabbed from them. They get shouted out again in the Sources section at the very bottom of the page, go check them out!


Abilities/Skill

Skilled Assassin

It’s no surprise that the Spy is a skilled Assassin, having taken many assassination jobs before being hired as a mercenary. He possesses many tools at his disposal in order to carry out his jobs as efficiently as possible, such as his various knives, guns, disguises, and gadgets.


Espionage

The Spy is obviously a skilled Spy. Despite what those various TF2 Spy montages tell you, Spy doesn’t tend to run in and go for trick stabs, instead he prefers to lay low and stay hidden, gathering information, and kill when the time is right, and he has all the tools he needs to stay hidden, which we will get to later.


Critical Hits

Love them or hate them, Critical Hits are canon, as we see them in the Jungle Inferno trailer, and hear the crit sound in Meet the Soldier. Spy also has various ways of granting himself crits, such as with his Diamondback, which grants crits with every backstab or structure sapped, or with the Power Up Canteen. 


Crits grant a 300% boost in damage and also ignore resistances, such as Medic’s vaccinator.


Arsenal

Revolvers

Contrary to popular belief, Spy has a gun. He has a few different revolvers, which grant different stats or abilities.


  • Stock - Ol Reliable, holds up to 6 rounds, and has 24 in its reserve.

  • Ambassador - a 15% damage penalty, with 20% slower firing speed, but guarantees critical hits on headshots

  • L'Etranger - Has a 20% damage penalty, but upon a successful hit it regens his cloak timer, it also provides a longer (40%) cloak duration

  • Enforcer - 20% slower firing speed, but has a 20% damage boost if he shoots while cloaked, in addition it also ignores resistances and bonuses.

  • Diamondback - 15% damage penalty, but for every backstab and building destroyed with his sapper, he gains a critical hit

Knives



Spy’s signature weapon, they all insta-kill every mercenary upon a successful backstab, with some providing some stat changes or boosts.

  • Stock - Doesn’t provide any stat changes or boosts, but like all knives, will insta-kill upon successful backstab.

  • Your Eternal Reward - While equipped, cloak drains 33% faster and disguising with the disguise kit drains the entire cloak meter. Upon a successful backstab, Spy instantly disguises as the victim, there is no noise produced, the body instantly disappears, and there is no kill notification on the kill feed.

  • Conniver’s Kunai - Ah yes, the tryhard knife. -55 max health when equipped but upon a successful backstab he absorbs the health of the victim, at minimum 75 health, with max health peaking at 210 HP.

  • Big Earner - Spy has 25 less health, but upon a successful backstab, he gains a 3 second speed boost along with regening 30% of his cloak meter.

  • Spy-Cicle - Upon a successful backstab, turns its victims into solid ice. When Spy gets lit on fire, the Spy-Cicle allows him to extinguish himself, making him fireproof for 1 second and immune to afterburn for 10 seconds. When melted, it takes 15 seconds to regenerate, but picked up ammo can speed up the process. 


Disguises

Spy has a disguise kit that allows him to fully disguise himself as any mercenary he wants, both enemy or ally. This isn’t limited to just the mercs, he can disguise as Tom Jones and the TFC Engineer, showing that he can disguise as just about anyone. He also has the ability to disguise objects, such as weapons whenever he disguises as other mercs and things like wooden boards, such as when the board he was using as a crutch disguised into a Tom Jones sign. He can also taunt to be a spycrab


Invis Watches

With the use of his Invis Watches, Spy can go invisible, each watch having different durations. While invisible, he can still be interacted with, and certain things reveal him even when cloaked, such as fire and liquids such as Jarate and milk.


While in gameplay Spy can’t attack while invisible, obviously for balance purposes, but within official animations, he has physically grabbed someone while cloaked and even attacked and killed people while cloaked, meaning that Spy is fully capable of attacking while cloaked. As for the watches in his disposal

  • Stock - Cloaks the Spy for 8 seconds. It takes about 30 seconds to recharge when fully drained but can be charged faster with ammo boxes.

  • Cloak and Dagger - Allows Spy to cloak indefinitely, as long as he is standing still. The consumption rate varies on Spy’s movements but in general depletes faster than stock if Spy is running. While invisible, Spy can’t pick up ammo boxes to fill up the meter, and they fill about 35% less otherwise, but recharges 100% faster naturally.

  • Dead Ringer - Allows Spy to fake his death. Doesn’t cloak Spy until he gets hit with an attack, which will trigger the Dead Ringer, leaving a fake corpse. When activated it lasts for approximately 7 seconds, and gives Spy a 3 second speed boost. In addition, it reduces the initial damage by 75%, and any subsequent damage by 65% for 3 seconds, and then for 20% after.


Sappers

Spy can shut down machinery and slowly destroy it with the use of his sappers. They are fully capable of destroying Engineer’s machinery, and stun and slow down robots. Spy can also toss his sappers in order to destroy structures at a distance. However Sappers can be destroyed after enough swings.

  • Stock - Disables and destroys all of Engineer’s buildings after some time.

  • Red-Tape Recorder - This item is bad Disables Engineer’s buildings but it also slowly downgrades them over time, turning a level 3 sentry into a level 1 given enough time. It also takes much longer for the sapper to destroy structures.


Saxxy


Spy canonically owns a Saxxy. In gameplay, it functions identically as a stock knife. However it can fully transmutate enemies into Australium, functioning as some form of durability negation.


False Teeth

All of Spy’s teeth are fake, each one containing a different thing within. Such as:


Power Up Canteen

Spy can hold a Power Up Canteen, which can hold 5 different powers (however one is exclusive to Engineer), with only one at a time, but up to 3 charges. These powers include:

  • Become Ubercharged - Lets Spy become ubercharged for 5 seconds, making him invisible during that duration.

  • Become Crit Boosted - Spy boosts himself with crits for 5 seconds, dealing times 3 extra damage. 

  • Refill Clips and Ammo - This fully charges Spy’s ammo reserve, however it doesn’t regenerate his cloak meter

  • Teleport to Spawn - Instantly teleports Spy back to spawn along with applying a small speed boost. This allows Spy to retreat to safety, heal, or buy additional upgrades.


MVM Upgrades

In MVM, there’s a station that allows the mercs to buy upgrades that physically boost them and their weapons. These upgrades do cost money but thankfully Spy is very rich. The list of upgrades include:

  • +25% Blast Resistance - Take less damage from explosions, including rocket and sticky jumps.

  • +25% Bullet Resistance - Take less damage from hitscan weapons and taunt attacks.

  • +10% Movement Speed - Adds 10% to movement speed.

  • +2 Health Regen - Regenerates health every second.

  • +20% Jump Height - Jump higher.

  • +25% Fire Resistance - Take less damage from fire and afterburn.

  • +30% Crit Resistance - Take less damage from critical hits.

  • +50% Clip Size 

  • Projectile Penetration - Allows Spy’s bullets to penetrate and hit multiple targets

  • +10% Firing Speed

  • Armor Penetration - Allows Spy to deal more damage to Giant Robots by ignoring a percentage of their amor per upgrade

  • +2s Crits On Kill  - Gain 2 seconds of crits per kill

  • Robot Sapper Power  - Increases robot Sapper radius and duration


Soul Gargoyle

When equipped, enemies killed by the Spy drop their souls, allowing him to harvest said soul inside the Gargoyle, which could be useful against opponents who can persist after death.


Grappling Hook

“Now will you admit the grappling hook is useless?” - Dipper Pines

“Nope!” - Mabel Pines


Pretty self explanatory item, it allows the user to grapple into any surface it clings onto, pulling them towards that area. It has a max range of 2000 hammer units, which according to the wiki, translates to roughly 38.1 meters or 125 feet. It can also latch onto enemies, damaging them slightly per second.


Not So Standard Arsenal

So… real quick, I don’t think Spy should be given any of the following in any of his matchups, for numerous reasons, such as being restricted to a specific gamemode or only being available during halloween, which doesn’t really fit Spy nor any of his matchups. That being said, I might as well go ahead and list them for the sake of being thorough.

Spellbook

During Halloween, Spy can equip a spellbook, allowing him to obtain several different spells, each with different abilities. These spells include: 

  • Shadow Leap - Spy throws a smoke ball, which teleports the user to wherever it lands.

  • Fireball - Spy throws a fireball that sets enemies on fire within a large radius, it contains 2 charges

  • Blast Jump - Propels Spy up into the air, contains two charges

  • Overheal - Instantly heals Spy and any allies within a radius, and overheals them to double their max HP. It also Uber Charges them for 1 second.

  • Swarm of Bats - Spy shoots a glowing ball that assaults enemies hit with bats, causing bleed damage. Contains two charges

  • Pumpkin MIRV - Spy throws a bomb that produces a ring of pumpkin bombs, which all explode when shot at.

  • Stealth - Cloaks the Spy for 8 seconds, while invisible he can attack but this ends the spell early.


There are also spells that are considered rare, which are obtained through specific methods

  • Summon MONOCULUS - Spy summons a mini Monoculus, which shoots rockets at an enemy it finds.

  • Skeletons Horde - Spy summons a horde of skeletons which will target the nearest enemy. These skeletons can be destroyed or will automatically die after 30 seconds

  • Ball O’ Lightning - Spy shoots a ball of lighting that deals damage to any enemy who comes into contact with it

  • Meteor Shower - Spy summons meteors to rain down on his opponents

  • Minify - Shrinks the Spy, making him hard to hit along with granting him infinite jumps, speed boost, attack speed, reload speed, and increased knockback.


Finally, there are also spells that are locked to a very specific mode in Carnival of Carnage and Gravestone, specifically the bumper car games

  • Bomb Head - Applies a Bomb to Spy’s head, which deals damage to the user and nearby enemies. It explodes after its timer runs out or if the user drives into an enemy.

  • Boxing Rocket - Spy fires a giant boxing glove out of his bumper car that knocks away opponents and dealing damage

  • B.A.S.E. Jump - Launches the users Bumper Car into the sky and deploys a parachute that slowly lowers the user onto the ground, though they can drop the parachute at any time.

  • Overheal - Similar to the base spell, but heals for 50% and remains invincible for longer.


Powerups


These powerups are locked to a specific gamemode, Mannpower. They are only dropped in this mode, so they shouldn’t be considered standard. Also no one plays this mode.

  • Strength - Double damage for all weapons

  • Resistance - Reduces incoming damage by 50%, Nullifies crits and mini-crits, Immune to Plague, Immune to Reflect, Blocks backstabs

  • Vampire - All damage dealt is returned as health, 25% damage resistance, Max health increased by 80

  • Reflect - 80% of damage received is reflected back to the attacker Max health increased to 400

  • Haste - 2x firing speed, 4x reload speed, Double clip size and max ammo count

  • Regeneration - Ammo is fully refilled every 5 seconds, Health is regenerated at a rate equal to the class base health regeneration

  • Precision - Bullet spread reduced by 90%

  • Agility - Movement speed increased by 50% Grapple speed increase Jump height increased by 80% Immune to fall damage Instant weapon switch Reduced grapple movement speed bonus when carrying the intelligence.

  • Knockout - Restricts Spy to Melee and grappling hook only, gains 175 additional health, Immune to damage knockback. Melee damage increased by 190%

  • King - Increased Max health, firing and reload speed, gains health regen.

  • Plague - Touching an enemy gives them and their nearby teammates the plague; Plague victims bleed to death in 10 seconds unless they pick up a health kit or touch a resupply cabinet

  • Supernova - Discharge your supernova attack to stun visible enemies within a large radius for up to 4 seconds

  • Revenge - Grants crits for 30 seconds


Feats

Overall


  • Was hired as The Spy for the gravel wars

  • Assisted in the Robot War, taking down several robots and helped defeat the original TFC mercs.

  • Took down most of the BLU team in “Meet The Spy”

  • Successfully carried out multiple assassinations before being hired as a mercenary

  • Banged Scouts mom


Power

(Image Source)



Durability



Speed



Scaling

The Mercs

While it's obvious that some mercs are physically superior than others, all of them should be roughly comparable to each other, for example: Scout, who is the weakest merc physically, can keep up with a BLU Heavy, and knock out a BLU Soldier. Plus, both RED and BLU should be comparable to each other, otherwise the Gravel War wouldn’t have been a stalemate for as long as it was.


Merasmus


The mercs canonically fight Merasmus every year, and have canonically killed both him and bosses directly empowered by him, this is further re-iterated by Medic who states the mercs have fought Monoculus every Halloween. They can also tank a hit from Merasmus in game.


Saxton Hale

Alright, let’s break this one down real quick. Saxton Hale is commonly seen as the very peak of the verse, and well, he is. But all mercs are fully capable of keeping up with him thanks to the Versus Saxton Hale gamemode. Hale does typically one shot most mercs, but thanks to the Dead Ringer, Spy can tank several hits from him, and is fully capable of beating him, all mercs are technically capable of beating Hale solo if they were good enough. In addition, in the comics, the Mercs and Hale were fighting together in the Robot War, being comparable to each other for the most part. While it’s clear that Saxton Hale is still the peak of the verse, the mercs are likely in a similar ballpark.


QNA


Can We Scale The Mercs To Their Weapons?


While the mercs have a good amount of feats that land them physically within the Multi-City Block range, there’s a few feats that range from Kilotons to Megatons, but these rely on weapon statements and seemingly only scale to those weapons. However there’s a few ways you can argue them scaling the attack potency of their weapons.


  1. They can all tank at least a hit from the “Mountain Level” Weapons. Yeah, it’s a bit of a simple argument, but it's true. The Cow Mangler does at most 100 damage, which means even the lowest HP class, like the Spy, can survive a hit, even though said weapon can affect things at the subatomic level.

  2. The mercs are capable of defeating Gray Mann’s robots, despite being built in order to completely surpass any combination of the mercs, however according to Gray Mann’s own words, this just resulted in another stalemate. Several of the mercs were able to defeat these robots without weapons, such as Soldier and Scout, showcasing they don’t need their weapons to keep up with these robots.

  3. The mercs can keep up with Saxton Hale, who oneshot the yeti when it was stated that nothing on Earth could stop him. This would also include the merc’s own weapons, while it’s possible that the caretaker doesn’t know about their weapons, this statement would include nukes, which can reach upwards of 50 Megatons, which is within the range of the mercs weapons, showing some consistency to this scaling chain.


Personally, I think there is enough to argue that the mercs can scale to the peak AP of their weapons, putting them in the Mountain level range. Regardless, the mercs would obviously get their weapons, so at minimum their weapons would reach that level of AP.


Sub-Atomic Statements

Sub-Atomic statements are what get TF2 as high as Mountain level, but how valid are these statements? In all fairness, most of these statements come from a completely different website disconnected from TF2, however these weapons are literally meant to be the exact same. Even so, these statements can also be found within TF2 itself, meaning there’s nothing going against it.


They’re also consistent, while the Cow Mangler gets argued against due to “Quantum Disentanglement” not being a real thing, it’s not the only weapon with Sub-Atomic Statements. The Pomson and The Manmelter also state they’re Sub-Atomic, pretty bluntly too. And in regards to the Cow Mangler, while Quantum Disentanglement isn’t a real thing, it’s based on a real phenomenon that is at the subatomic level, so disentangling particles at the subatomic level is akin to subatomic destruction.


FTL TF2

There are a few weapons in TF2 that essentially state they move at lightspeed, all of which being projectiles that the mercs can react to and dodge. These weapons include The Pomson, The Manmelter, and The Bison. The Pomson is stated to shoot radiation, which would move at lightspeed, and both the Bison and the Manmelter are called particle smashers, which move near the speed of light.


Personally, I think using in game tandem movements to get the mercs at such speeds is fine. Death Battle themselves have done so a few times, and TF2 should be no different. There’s even a direct FTL statement in the image above, so there’s that going for them.


Moon Level TF2

No.


Alright let’s humor it for a second. So basically, the argument is that because Saxton Hale one shotted the Yeti, when it was stated that nothing on Earth could stop it, this would include the IBlewUpTheMoon, which does exactly as the name suggests, and because the mercs can keep up with Hale, they also scale to this Moon Bust.


Yeah, so at best, this is a massive outlier, but in reality it's a gag comic that’s completely unrelated to the storyline. Even then there’s too many assumptions to make for this to even work, such as the Yeti Caretaker knowing about the moon destroying technology, assuming they know for a fact that it wouldn’t put the yeti down, when they obviously haven’t tested something to such a degree before. Not only that but the comic and the moon being blown up is contradicted by the fact that there’s a map that takes place on the moon.


Are Respawns Canon?

I’ve seen the idea of respawns being canon numerous times. I’m not sure where exactly this came from but there was a point where even I believed it because, yeah it tracks with TF2’s typical shenanigans. However upon looking deeper, I believe that this simply isn’t true, respawns as far as I can tell are not canon.


To start, Sniper canonically died in the comics at the end of Blood in the Water, and spent 12 hours dead while Medic spent a few hours himself trying to revive him. Medic likely wouldn’t have tried so hard to bring Sniper back from the dead if respawns were a canon mechanic, Medic bringing him back instead implies that death is permanent. Spy also told Scout he was proud of him when disguised as Tom Jones because he thought he was dying. Spy likely wouldn’t have been as concerned if he knew Scout would come back, and was even surprised when he did come back.


With this in mind, it’s likely respawns are just a game mechanic, and in lore they do not come back when they die.


Summary

Attack Potency: Physically Small Building to Multi-City Block, possibly higher (Can hurt and keep up with the rest of the mercs) Town Level to Mountain Level with weapons (Can destroy Engineer’s buildings when they can tank a Nuke point blank. Can destroy Gray Mann’s robots despite being built to surpass the mercs, including weapons like the Cow Mangler) Possibly Mountain physically (Can potentially scale to his own weapons) Higher with Crits


Speed: FTL (Can dodge projectiles from The Pomson, The Manmelter, and The Bison. All of which are light speed. Isn’t much slower than Scout, who was stated to be faster than light) Higher with Speed Boosts from his weapons


Durability: Multi-City Block to Town Level (Can tank a hit from the Meteor Shower Spell, comparable to Sniper who survived a rocket crash landing at escape velocity. Can tank hits from Merasmus, who was able to cover the sky in clouds at an instant with his magic) Mountain Level Can survive a shot from weapons that can destroy things at the Sub-Atomic level.


Potential Opponents

Agent 47 (Hitman)

(Thumbnail by me)


Outright, I think this is his best matchup. Connections are simple but effective, Sharp Suited Assassins who disguise and kill their target and get out all without being spotted. Not only do I think it’s his best matchup but I think it should be the next TF2 matchup outright. Due to Hitman’s grounded nature, we can keep TF2 at its low ends for the episode since Spy wins either way, and save the higher end stuff for other episodes that would need it. It was also in the original Ballot, so it has that going for it!


Loid Forger (Spy X Family)

(Thumbnail Source)


I’m not gonna pretend like I know anything about Spy X Family, nor do I know if these 2 are actually a good fit for each other, but I’ve seen this idea thrown out a few times. That being said, I don’t particularly care for this one, given I have 0 attachment to Spy X Family, but maybe there’s something to be found here.


Sombra (Overwatch)

(Thumbnail Source)


Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, TF2 Vs Overwatch is such a forced rivalry nowadays. Back then? Sure I guess, but in current day it just doesn’t work anymore. This goes for pretty much all TF2 Vs Overwatch matchups, I’m not a big fan of them and personally believe that both sides can have much better ideas. As for the matchup itself, it’s ok, basically the stealth based classes of each game, but other than that, not the biggest fan.


Closing Thoughts

Hi, so fun fact this wasn’t originally gonna be my next blog, I had two other character’s in mind and had already started looking through media for them, but ever since Valve actually got rid of the bot problem, I’ve been playing so much TF2 lately, which shot up my motivation to do a Spy Blog. You may have also seen me throw out my thoughts on TF2 Stats occasionally, so I thought it would be nice to have a concise place to share all my thoughts about where the mercs land.


As for me, I don’t know when my next blog will be out, as I tend to do these whenever I have the urge to do so, so as to not feel burnt out. I also pretty much intend to keep doing Character Analysis Blogs rather than full on Character Vs Character Blogs, at least for the meantime. I don’t like to reveal who I plan on doing next since I tend to change my mind a lot and tend to switch up.


Anyways, uh, go play TF2, top tier game, and also time for the Sources Section:


Sources:

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