Why is `rm` seemingly ignoring escapes?

Question

I'm trying to rm a directory and its contents, however for whatever reason rm is ignoring escape characters.

In this example, I'm trying to remove the folder Team Fortress 2 from ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common:

[redacted@host common]$ rm -r Team\ Fortress\ 2/
/usr/bin/rm: cannot remove ‘Team’: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/rm: cannot remove ‘Fortress’: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/rm: cannot remove ‘2/’: No such file or directory

I've also tried wrapping the directory name in quotes:

[redacted@host common]$ rm -r 'Team\ Fortress\ 2/'
/usr/bin/rm: cannot remove ‘Team\\’: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/rm: cannot remove ‘Fortress\\’: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/rm: cannot remove ‘2/’: No such file or directory

Here's the output from rm --version:

rm (GNU coreutils) 8.21
...

Why would this be happening?

Answer 1

My first guess would be that rm is a poorly defined function or script, e.g., something like

rm()
{
    /usr/bin/rm -i $1
}

To find out, execute this command:

type rm

If I'm wrong, it will say:

rm is /usr/bin/rm

If I'm right, it will tell you exactly how rm has been redefined.