Bonus Ducks

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About

Bonus Ducks is a voice line by the non-playable character Merasmus from the first person shooter Team Fortress 2(TF2). In one of the minigames from the game’s 2014 Halloween update, the line would repeat various times without a cooldown in a similar fashion to Overtime,. The line is associated with the Duck Journal Event released in December 2014.^[3]

Origin

The Team Fortress 2 Annual Scream Fortress VI update was released on October 29, 2014, and featured a carnvial-inspired map where, every time a team won a round, a bumper car minigame was triggered with several variations.^[5] One of the variations, “Duck Collectors”, featured a large figure-8-shaped race track where the teams had to collect 200 golden rubber ducks in order to win. When a player dealt damage with the car by crashing into another player, “bonus” golden ducks would appear, along with the audio clip “Bonus Ducks!”, as spoken by the NPC Merasmus.^[2] The clip lacked a cooldown, however, meaning whenever a car collided with another car, the clip would play continuously. A cooldown was added on November 7, 2014.^[6]

Spread

On November 1, 2014, Youtuber Uncle Dane uploaded a video titled “Bonus Ducks Hitsound”, featuring the voice line as hitsound and givind a link to download the mod. On November 8, 2014, YouTuber Purple doom uploaded a video titled “CS:GO BONUSDUCKS!”, where the voice lineis mixed with kills from Counter Strike: Global Offensive. As of March 9, 2015, the video has over 7,000 views. 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, where whenever the player was killed, ducks were spawned and could be picked up.^[4] These ducks gave experience points, though being able to view one’s level was only available by buying a Duck Journal in the game shop. This was poorly received by the fans, who saw this as a Pay to Win event.^[8][9]

The next day, a Bonus Ducks game page was created, where one can click the ducks to hear the voice line.^[1] On December 12, 2014, 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. As March 9, 2015, the video has over 48,000 views. On December 14, 2014, YouTuber Dapper Dog uploaded a video title “BONUSDUCKS!”, featuring a remix of the voice line. As March 9, 2015 the video has over 400,000 views.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External Links