You probably know that HL2's Gordon Freeman is a scientist. Did you ever ask yourself why is he categorized as a scientist? All he does is run around, duck and blow stuff up. Now, what does this have to do with science? Absolutely nothing...
Half-Life 2's writer , Marc Laidlaw feels the need to clear this issue and grants an interview to CVG in which he reveals some interesting facts about Half-Life 2 and its characters. He explains that, at the beginning, Gordon Freeman was just a name and they wanted to create a character that didn't get in the way of the players exploring on their own, wanting at the same time to make them feel like they had a specific role.
Laidlaw mentions that when creating the Gordon Freeman character, he wanted to mess with the implications of telling you that you're doing one thing, when actually, everything else is forcing you to do something different from that. The game has an ironical implication, namely that everybody tells you that you're a scientist, but all you're actually doing is running around and shooting stuff. All these things fall into the bucket of Gordon Freeman, Laidlaw concludes the Gordon Freeman characterization.
The HL2 writer goes on and vaguely refers to old plot ideas implemented into the upcoming Valve game: "We do still pick stuff out of the mix and make it work. I mean, there's a scientist you hear a lot in the test chamber in the early part of Half-Life, and he's never reappeared. And we've finally worked out a place for him where he's been all this time! It's been pretty fun figuring out how to bring that guy back."