About

Heavy Like A Brinks Truck, also known as TF2 Yaoi, TF2 Bara or Buff TF2, is a viral video of Team Fortress 2 (TF2) Mercenaries drawn in Bara and Yaoi art styles with Joji's song "Tick Tock" playing over them. The video alludes to a broader trend of Rule 34 TF2 Mercs being used as image macros in exploitable templates. The trend most notably references a GIF of the Engineer and pictures of Femboy Scout. The use of the image macros in memes dates back to 2015 while the viral video was uploaded in late 2021.

Origin

The majority of the TF2 yaoi images and GIFs used in the "Heavy Like A Brinks Truck" video were created by since-deleted DeviantArt artist SniperStalker, also known as Sarah Borrows. For instance, on September 3rd, 2015, SniperStalker posted an original GIF to DeviantArt^[1] called "Tig Ole Bitties" that showed a shirtless Engineer from TF2 looking up while his pecs bounce (shown below, left). Other images were posted by SniperStalker in 2015 like one called "Aussie Dad" uploaded to DeviantArt^[2] on April 17th, 2015 (shown below, right).

Many of SniperStalker's GIFs and images were used in imageboards and forums from 2015 to 2016. For instance, on February 15th, 2016, an anon on 4chan's /pol/ ^[4] imageboard uploaded the "Tig Ole Bitties" GIF. On May 15th, 2018, Twitter^[5] user MonsieurSabs tweeted a TF2 Engineer bara image, earning roughly 79 likes in four years. Additionally, throughout 2020, many of SniperStalker's TF2 bara art surfaced on Tumblr. ^[3]

On July 27th, 2021, YouTuber^[7] Laurennnx2tiu posted a video a compilation slideshow of many SniperStalkler TF2 bara images and GIFs using the song "Tick Tock" by Joji^[6] as the audio. In one year, the video received roughly 1,000 views (shown below).

The aforementioned video was shared in private Discord servers and many did not know who the original creator was. In turn, YouTuber^[8] ExoNeoCD uploaded their own version of the video on October 22nd, 2021, claiming in the description, " I once found a video with this same song, it was basically the same as this video but I can't find it anymore no matter what so I made my own version." In nine months, their video received roughly 19,100 views (shown below).

Spread

In mid-2022, Instagram user nonbinary.tomboy started using the aforementioned "Heavy Like A Brinks Truck" video in their content. Nonbinary.tomboy used to be Instagram user kiibomaeda, who was deleted sometime in December 2021. Kiibomaeda is a likely creator of the original "Heavy Like A Brinks Truck" video, however, this has not been confirmed.

Regardless, on June 1st, 2022, nonbinary.tomboy uploaded a carousel post on Instagram^[9] including "Heavy Like A Brinks Truck"2 TF2 bara videos, earning roughly 2,300 likes in one month (shown below).

Instagram's nonbinary.tomboy uploaded many more "Heavy Like A Brinks Truck" videos continuing into July 2022. For instance, on July 11th, 2022, nonbinary.tomboy uploaded a carousel post on Instagram,^[10] earning roughly 4,200 likes in two weeks (shown below). Most of the videos were made by nonbinary.tomboy except for two: one being anonymous and the other being private Instagram user calamarinkantation.