Sergeant Steel Reference

I just want to say if you only play the Sentenels Video game you might want to check out my related topic here before reading this one.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/337150/discussions/0/1368380934244754312/

So I just finished my first game of Villains of the multiverse (Ranatic, Scholar, Guise, and  Bunker vs Greazer, Sergeant Steel, Miss Information, and Biomancer). After a close win (Biomancer did not want to die but Scholar eventually put him down) I started my usual post using a new deck ritual of going through all the cards, seeing the ones that I missed and reading the little comic on each. Now during the game Sergeant Steel had gotten a rather raw deal. First Fanatic had End of Days away his whole team, and then she had used Wrathful Retribution on him at 1 hp basically one shotting him so he never really got a chance to show off any of his stuff.

The first thing that caught my eye was his birth place, New York, New York. Like me. Hey I already feel a connection to this guy! The first card listed was Arsonator and his little comic mentions how he doesn't speak much because his lungs don't work. "Hey just like the Pyro in Team Fortress 2" I think to myself. Next card is the Battle Medic. "Hey a battle medic *thinking pause* just like in Team Fortress 2? Hey wait a minute." So I look at all his cards at once and begin to see more and more familiar faces. I count up the number of Agents and sure enough there are 9 (counting Sergeant Steel) and each one of them is a mirror of the 9 mercenaries (playable characters) from Team fortress 2. Coincidence? Maybe but the resemblance is so blatent that I'm sure it couldn't be so I begin to search teh internets to see if I could get confirmation.

Although there is nothing on the Wiki about the reference there is one topic on BGG where someone else noticed the resemblance too:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1516951/sergeant-steel

So then I searched this site for the word Team Fortress and would you look at what I found:
https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/team-fortress-2

I don't know about you but it seems pretty compelling to me