On April 8, 2020 Rick May, who voiced the Soldier from TF2 as well as Peppy Hare from Star Fox 64 (among other roles he’s played) passed away at the age of 79 due to COVID-19. I love each character from the TF2 series, while the game is nonsensical and might not seem like much to someone who hasn’t looked into it or played it much (if at all), there is so much lore and story than you could possibly imagine, and it is really, really ridiculous. The Soldier was the only other American character out of all 9 classes (that we know of) and easily the craziest American of the two… I mean this is taken directly form the official site:
Though he wanted desperately to fight in World War 2, the Soldier was rejected from every branch of the U.S. military. Undaunted, he bought his own ticket to Europe. After arriving and finally locating Poland, the Soldier taught himself how to load and fire a variety of weapons before embarking on a Nazi killing spree for which he was awarded several medals that he designed and made himself. His rampage ended immediately upon hearing about the end of the war in 1949.
The Soldier is actually my 4th most played class (from when I actively played TF2). I think my proudest moment using him was during one of the Halloween events. I was playing on a public server with my Dad and Bro with a bunch of random people, and the opposing team had these soldiers that liked to rocket jump in the air using the practice rocket launcher (the rockets don’t harm you or anyone else, they just make it easy to jump), then parachute back down and try to either shoot you with a shotgun or hit you with a shovel. I used my Disciplinary Action to outrun them, and Direct Hit to not only rocket jump up to the payload (Helltower) but to also shoot at anyone around me (the Direct Hit is basically a Rocket Launcher that requires the accuracy of a sniper rifle, you have to be dead on in order to get a hit which in most cases is deadly) and sending us all to hell to race for the Bombinomicon, the two soldiers on the other team were both pissed and confused that I got past them, and inevitably my team won the round.
Rest In Peace, and thank you for voicing such an amazing character. If it hadn’t been for COVID-19 he would have still been working to this day. You can argue that he was old, and that he would have probably died from something else, but that isn’t the point. Him, like many people, are dying from something that could have been better handled if we actually had a government and people that could take it seriously… but that’s for a whole other post entirely.