In March of 2018, a passive effect called "Sketchek’s Bequest" was added to the Pyro's weapon the Axtinguisher which granted the player a speed boost after killing a burning opponent. This was named in honor of the YouTuber known as Sketchek, a prominent Pyro player in the community, who in 2015 claimed in a video to have a "terminal illness" that was getting worse and had later presumably died. However in 2019, Sketchek returned and stated that he lied about dying because he wanted to retire from the game as it had "ruined his life" and he wanted to "go out with a bang." The effect was subsequently removed in an update.

Underneath the BLU spawn on the Banana Bay map is a summoning circle made up of toxic waste, candles, and a large collection of bananas. The circle was created to summon Poopy Joe, the first American Monkeynaut in the game's storyline, who died in his rocket moments after launch due to its Australium fuel supply (a mysterious metallic element first introduced in the 2010 Team Fortress 2 comic "Loose Canon") having been maliciously switched with gravel water by Mann Co., who was supplied America's entire stock of Australium fuel by the United States government in the first place.

Underneath the RED spawn on the Banana Bay are two conveyor belts that appear to be used for converting dozens of bananas into Australium bars.

In 2013, Valve and the tabletop game company WizKids collaborated to produce an exclusive chess set themed around Team Fortress 2 that was sold on Valve's website and on ThinkGeek. Each copy of the set came with a digital code for a hat called the Grandmaster, where the head piece would change as your killstreak increases. Aside from "Grandmaster" being one of the highest titles awarded to chess players by the International Chess Federation, the hat's item description references a pair of highly publicized chess matches in 1996 and 1997 between former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, and IBM's chess-playing computer Deep Blue.