McCree Renamed to Cole Cassidy

[Zuben]

The thing with McCree's name is that unlike with real people referring to his 'deadname' isn't a violation of human decency, since he's, you know, not a real person. He's an entity whose traits are controlled by committee. Compare to buildings, e.g. Chicago has a skyscraper named Willis Tower, which used to be Sears Tower. Many still refer it with the old name, since that's what they've known it as and aren't obliged to show human decency towards it, since it's not a person.

With McCree you can also count in the matter of his name-change being highly questionable, so some may not be inclined to support it.

I've come to a compromise of headcanonizing Cassidy as his new code name, while McCree is still his real name (not that I ever refer to him as Cassidy, it's just what I think when someone else does).

[Kathranis]

Wow. Now I’ve seen it all. That’s some extreme mental gymnastics to try to make this change sound as if it was done as a lore thing.

Nobody's saying it was done "as a lore thing," they just incorporated it into the lore. The developers have been very clear in saying they want to remove the references to the guy from their games.

And they've always hinted that McCree isn't his real name in voice lines going back to like 2017.

[Beefhammer]

Nobody's saying it was done "as a lore thing," they just incorporated it into the lore. The developers have been very clear in saying they want to remove the references to the guy from their games.

And they've always hinted that McCree isn't his real name in voice lines going back to like 2017.

Yup. I believe Sombra mentioned it being a nickname or something well before the lawsuit came to light.

[Zuben]

Yup. I believe Sombra mentioned it being a nickname or something well before the lawsuit came to light.

Honestly, that's clearly just a homage moment to what McCree was originally concepted to be, Joel McCloud. That they can actually use it to legitimize this name change is purely incidental.