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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Now? *Evil Chuckle* Let's go practice medicine... | „ |
| ~ Medic |
| “ | It's like I've always said! There's nothing wrong with playing God, so long as you are good at- | „ |
| ~ Medic after reviving Sniper. |
Herbert Ludwig, commonly known as The Medic is one of the nine playable classes of the 2007 first-person-shooter videogame Team Fortress 2 and one of the protagonists of the supplementary animated shorts and comics.
A mysterious scientist wanted in his homeland of Germany, he is a very eccentric but also scarily efficient doctor who uses a vast array of high-tech medical equipment to aid his mercenary colleagues in the turf wars between the RED and BLU Teams. Amicable to his teammates, especially his best friend, the Heavy and his pet dove Archimedes, Medic is willing to indulge in all sorts of horrors to advance science, or even just out of morbid curiosity.
He was voiced by Robin Atkin Downes, who also voiced Talbot in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
What Makes Him Magnificent?[]
- The legendary Robin Atkin Downes gives him a deliciously hammy, amicable yet deranged performance and Medic is arguably his most iconic role.
- He is outright paranormally skilled in the field of surgery, having accomplished medical feats that should be beyond impossible, including but not limited to raising the dead or transferring people's consciousness into objects.
- Although "The Naked and the Dead" confirms Medic had a deal with the Devil, which could mean his medical expertise could be dismissed as the Devil granting him amazing knowledge rather than any ingenuity from Medic himself, it's not stated what Medic exchanged his soul for, so there's no confirmation on how much of Medic's abilities depend on Satan's doing, if any.
- As the team medic, he is an essential ally for the mercenaries, providing healing and even short periods of invincibility through his Medi Gun and supporting his teammates in battle.
- Although first and foremost a support class, Medic isn't afraid to fight himself when push come to shove, be it through his syringe gun or his melee weapons, mainly the bone saw. In-game, those who main Medic tend to be the best players when it comes to melee confrontations.
- Although he expresses it in an eccentric, sometimes even disturbing way, he is arguably the second most outwardly friendly and affable of the mercenaries after Engineer, being always cheerful and ready to help.
- While they're sometimes off-put by him, he virtually has no rivals among his teammates and is well-liked by all of them, him and Heavy having a particularly strong friendship, with the latter even going berserk when Medic is briefly killed in the comics.
- He successfully disappeared off the radar when he became wanted in Germany.
- He deeply cares for his pet dove, Archimedes.
- Although he's anything but ethical in his procedures, not even putting gloves during surgery, he has some standards, such as refusing to drink alcohol while operating.
- Although he's from Germany in the first half of the XX Century, the developers have stated with no ambiguity that Medic isn't and never was a supporter of the Nazi party.
- In "Meet the Medic", Medic finally understands how to achieve the Ubercharge and briefly make his teammates invincible by transplanting mega baboon hearts in them so they can withstand the charge's voltage.
- In "Expiration Date", when it seems Engineer's teleporters gave the team tumors, him and Medic spend what Medic diagnosed to be their last 72 hours on earth to experiment and find a possible solution, eventually realizing only bread was negatively effected by teleporters.
- In-game, if the player wishes to, the Medic will forgo his animosity against the enemy team and join them in various group dances.
- His lines range from endearing to hilariously megalomaniacal.
- When Gray Mann attacked Mann Co., the RED and BLU Medics allied themselves with their respective enemy team to stop him and his army of robots.
- When Gray outwits Saxton Hale and fires the mercenaries, Medic manages to get hired by Team Fortress Classic in spite of their very high standards and the TF2 mercenaries being seen as lunatics in-universe. Although this could be seen as treachery to his old team, Medic did this only out of need for money for research.
- Unwittingly to them, he uses animal organs purchased from the black market to surgically modify the TFC mercenaries and is highly implied to have done the same to his previous team beforehand.
- He was genuinely happy to see his old team again after so much time when TFC tracked them down, even if his smile unintentionally came off as smug and sadistic.
- Manages to revive Sniper after he was shot dead by TFC.
- After plenty of abuse from the TFC Heavy, culminating in him harming Archimedes, Medic defects from Team Fortress Classic and goes to help his old friends, putting all the blood back in them and saving their lives when TFC Heavy sent Gray's australium-harvesting parasyte drones to suck them dry of blood.
- Tries taking on TFC Heavy himself with a bonesaw and manages to wound him before being overpowered.
- When TFC Heavy kills him, it's revealed Medic had made a deal with the Devil, but had actually tricked Satan himself since he had the soul contract specify that the Devil needed a majority hold of his soul and Medic had surgically sown 8 more souls (heavily implied to be his teammates') to his own, meaning the Devil now owned only 1/9 of his soul and Medic had the full say on his soul's fate.
- He smooth-talks the Devil into bringing him back to life so he has some more time to con Medic out of his other 8 souls and Medic even sells one of them for the Devil's pen.
- The revived Medic disguises the Devil's pen as a detonator and bluffs to an Australium-empowered TFC Heavy that pressing the button will immediately make TFC Heavy birth baby baboons through his stomach. This buys TF2 Heavy enough time to defeat TFC Heavy for good.
What Makes Him a Baddie?[]
- He is beyond immoral with his medical procedures and experiments. Some of his most disturbing actions as a surgeon include:
- Leaving an unnamed, probably innocent person alive but with no skeleton. Medic then escaped the premises.
- Sowing 8 souls to his own so as to outwit the Devil, and it's heavily implied it's the souls of his teammates and very friends (even selling one of them so as to defeat TFC Heavy).
- Using animal organs to horribly modify his teammates, both on the TF2 and especially on the TFC teams. For example, TFC Heavy really did have baboon uteruses in his abdomen, but the real detonator was just too far when Medic needed to bluff.
- Keeping a still living, disembodied head of an enemy Spy in his fridge and constantly procrastinating on killing him and ending his misery, like the Spy head repeatedly asks of him.
- Trapping a mugger's consciousness inside of a pumpkin in "Gargoyles and Gravel".
- He assists his team in brutally murdering the enemy team and then mocks and laughs at his deceased enemies. He arguably stands out as the most sadistic of the mercenaries in-battle, which is saying something.
- Like all the others, his battles against the enemy team often end in some casualties and destruction even among civilians.
- Although he simply needed the money, he joined the Team Fortress Classic mercenaries after Gray Mann took over Mann Co. and presumably helped them take out the rest of the Administrator's henchmen looking for the Australium.
- When wearing the dove head cosmetic, he seems to have become dissociative with Archimedes as his split personality and doesn't rebel at all when Archimedes tells him to kill all his teammates.
Trivia[]
- Medic, Engineer and Spy are, so far, the only three Magnificent Baddies from the Team Fortress games, even if some other characters have high potential to qualify.
- They're also three of the four MBs to come from a Valve game, the other being GLaDOS.
External Links[]
- Medic at the Villains wiki
- Medic at the Heroes wiki
- Medic at the Inconsistently Heinous wiki
- Medic at the Team Fortress 2 wiki
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Template:Team Fortress Magnificent Baddies