Garden Gnome



The Garden Gnome, or simply Gnome, is a prop garden gnome from Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The gnome is found in the first area of chapter one, To The White Forest, just under the bunk bed. To earn the Gnome achievement (Little Rocket Man), you need to carry the Gnome around for the whole game, until you reach the rocket in White Forest in Chapter 6: Our Mutual Fiend, then the Gnome will be shot into space, living his dream.

This Vortal Coil
The Gnome can be left in the chamber with Alyx and the others, you will return here before the end of the level.

Freeman Pontifex
Be warned, just leaving the gnome in the main room is a doomed strategy, as you won't be able to get back to the room after. If you don't want to carry this burden among the zombie, you must lay the gnome against the door. That way, it will fall outside the room once you remotely open it.

Muscle Car
The Garden Gnome is tough to get around with your Muscle Car, drive slowly. If the Hunter-Chopper is on your tail, don't worry, just destroy it early with its mines, another Chopper will appear in the next level.

Another easy strategy to get the achievement done is to put the Gnome in the back seat next to Alyx and drive carefully since it will only come out of the car if the brakes are hit hard enough. Also during the Chopper fight its easy to put the Gnome under a boxcar and destroy the chopper, go back, grab the Gnome, and continue.

You can only get the "Little Rocket Man" achievement by placing the Gnome inside the rocket and SHUTTING the rocket's hatch to get it along with the 40G.

Trivia

 * If you go to the Aperture Science website recently (First checked on August 15, 2008), you will see a holiday video with the gnome on a fireplace. If you watch the video a couple of times, the gnome will occasionally move to the camera which is supplying the video (and it also is up on the wall like most cameras of the Enrichment Center, so the gnome could be levitating).  So far this gnome has nothing definite about it in the video, just an easter egg along with other Valve items.  If you look closely, you can see that the gnome has its eyes painted in and the white tip of the hat is removed, unlike the "Little Rocket Man" in Episode 2.  This new gnome model could mean the the gnome will return in Episode 3, for what, nobody but Valve knows.
 * The idea of you moving around the Garden Gnome relates to the real life "Traveling Gnome" prank, which an Garden Gnome is stolen and "taken" to famous landmarks in the world. In addition, it is also possible that this may be a parody of the Travelocity "Roaming Gnome" commercials (Parody of the Travelocity commercial by the gnome: )