About

"Bonus Ducks" is a memorable quote voiced by the non-playable character Merasmus in a holiday minigame for the first person shooter Team Fortress 2 (TF2).

Origin

On October 29th, 2014, the "Scream Fortress 2014" update was released for Team Fortress 2, which included the "Carnival of Carnage" map featuring a fictional wizard character named Merasmus. After each round was completed, a "Looting Gallery" minigame would sometimes launch, where players would compete to collect rubber ducks while driving bumper cars along a racetrack. When crashing against an enemy player, Merasmus would yell the phrase "bonus ducks!" while populating the track with additional golden ducks. Initially, the recording did not have a cooldown and would repeat whenever cars collided.

Spread

On November 1st, 2014, YouTuber Uncle Dane uploaded a video titled "Bonus Ducks Hitsound", featuring Team Fortress 2 footage in which the "bonus ducks" recording is played whenever a player is hit with an enemy weapon, along with a download link to the game mod in the description (shown below, left). On November 8, 2014, YouTuber Purple doom uploaded a video titled "CS:GO BONUS DUCKS!", in which the audio clip is mashup up with audio from Counter Strike: Global Offensive. (shown below, right). On the Team Fortress 2 subreddit /r/tf2, the upvote arrow was replaced by a duck, and duck flairs were added in November, 2014.^[7]

End of the Line Update

On December 8, 2014, the End of the Line update was released, which featured the Duck Journal event, spawning collectible ducks whenever a player is killed.^[4] Upon gathering the ducks, a player received experience points but could only view their level by purchasing a Duck Journal from the game shop. The event was poorly received by the fans, who viewed the update as a "pay to win" scheme.^[8][9]

On December 12th, YouTuber MrBreadedchicken uploaded a video titled "BONUS_DUCKS.exe.avi.mov.mp3", in which he parodies the event by changing his name and avatar to Merasmus (shown below, left). On December 14th, YouTuber Dapper Dog uploaded an animated video title "BONUS DUCKS!", featuring a music remix featuring the "bonus ducks" clip (shown below, right). Within two years, the video gathered more than 400,000 views.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References