50. Gordon Freeman vs. Tina Armstrong (2002) R1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3a229669.jpg
Gordon Freeman 40.03% 22560
Tina Armstrong 59.97% 33801
TOTAL VOTES 56361
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(3)Gordon_Freeman_vs_(14)Tina_Armstrong_2002
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/953-east-division-round-1-gordon-freeman-vs-tina-armstrong
There are four rules to GFNW:
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Gordon Freeman Never Wins
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The characters he loses to will have a very generic first and last sounding name.
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Despite losing, Gordon Freeman will always break 40%.
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See Rule Number 1.
Is there any character whose popularity on the board is more closely contest linked than Gordon Freeman? Sure, Frogs legacy of contest matches has added a new dimension to his support, but he would clearly be well liked without all of that. Gordon Freeman, on the other hand, almost feels like an original character from the contests themselves. The appeal he holds over all of us, the reason hes made every single Character Battle, oftentimes with a higher seed than his popularity at the time would entail, is pretty much solely due to his performances in them. People might like Half-Life, but the reason why the Board loves Gordon is due to a meme, the most popular meme in contest history: Gordon Freeman Never Wins.
There was something undeniably entertaining and impressive about the fact that this random character would make it in every year and basically follow a series of rules that were all established in his first match. And despite the fact that the rules were all premised on Gordon Freeman always losing, they would feature impressive feats as well. Like breaking 40% in every loss. After 2005, the fourth Character Battle, there were only four non-Clinkeroth characters who had made every contest and never fallen below 40%. They were: Snake, Kirby, Ryuand Gordon Freeman. And to make this even more absurd he would keep doing this against progressively stronger opponents. And also impressively, he would would have a huge chunk, often a majority, of brackets behind him. This weird mix of success and, at the same time, constant failure is what GFNW was all about, and in the classic years of the contests, it was the biggest meme we had.
A meme, which all started with this match. Yes, I know that Amazing Telephone came up with the term in 2003 during his match with Max Payne, but while it might have been named later, the concept that GFNW refers to started back here, and out of all Gordons losses this has to have been the most ridiculous. There were some odd results in 2002, but this one might just be one of the oddest, and even early on in 2002 there was a lot of head scratching. Just one more notch in TJFs favor, we all guessed. GameFAQS, especially at this time, has never entirely embraced PC games, but even so, its one thing for Gordon Freeman to be weaker than youd expect and its another for him to be in danger of losing to (or to be more precise, barely break 40% against) a second-tier character from a second-tier fighting game series. Especially when, as we saw in Sp2004, Half-Life has a fair amount of support on the site. You might think, But Tina was stronger than we all thought, right? No, not in the least. She looked completely awful in the following round. Someone on her tier would never be able to beat the Gordon we saw in later years. But voters in 2002 were just built different I guess, and a blurry picture of a generic hot chick was enough to get nearly 60% over Mr. Freeman. Yes, out of the all his opponents during the GFNW era, *Tina Armstrong* was the one Gordon did the worst against. There was an anecdote I recall from that time of people going to a Half-Life forum to rally for Gordon Freeman, and they were met with a response of Whos Gordon Freeman? Perhaps the anonymous nature of the FPS hero had done him in in 2002, but one thing became clear as the years went on. In the contest community at least, no one would ever ask Whos Gordon Freeman? again.