Gordon Freeman being a theoretical physicist is probably the best joke to come out of Half-Life

I know it's a low effort post, and that I'm probably some 20 years too late realizing it, but if you think about it, it's funny.

So Gordon is a physicist, specializing in theoretical physics, a real branch of physics that - according to that one popular website - "employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena". Yet in the games we don't really see him doing any physics. Sure, he participates in the Mass Spectrometer experiment, and yes, he does physics puzzles, but that barely qualifies as him being a physicist (and also, that's more practical physics, which is the opposite of theoretical physics). In fact, he does so little science that a lot of people reviewing the games even say things like "he is allegedly a scientist".

So Gordon is not a theoretical physicist, he is theoretically a physicist. 😁