Holy Mackerel

The Holy Mackerel is a community-created melee weapon for the Scout. It is a fish, presumably a mackerel, wrapped in faded, dirty newspaper and tied with a rubber band. The end of the newspaper is shaped for easy handling. The Festive version replaces the newspaper with gift wrap, and places five small, team-colored lights around the handle, as well as one large one in the fish's mouth. The Festivized version of the Holy Mackerel is similar to the default, with nine small team-colored festive lights wrapped around it with a battery pack charging the lights. While the Scout is moving, the Holy Mackerel bends around, depending on your direction.

The Holy Mackerel functions identically to the default Bat. However, every successful hit by the weapon on another player is announced in the kill feed, showing the weapon's icon in addition to the number of times the victim has been slapped recently. Upon killing a player, the kill feed replaces this number with the message "FISH KILL!" alongside the icon.

The kill feed does not register hits or announce "FISH KILL!" on non-player objects such as buildings or bosses. It also only displays the number of hits when it triggers a Spy's Dead Ringer, instead of saying "FISH KILL!", which can be used to determine if a death was legitimate or not.