Would They Fight? Death Battle Season 1
Death Battle needs no introduction. It’s the front runner for the battleboarding genre, having gone 12 seasons and managing to outlast not only its original parent company ScrewAttack, but its replacement parent company Rooster Teeth, going independent and becoming crowdfunded. While not without its criticism and debate over matchups and their results, the series has maintained a steady and loyal fanbase. But, I’m not really interested in the question of who would or should win a hypothetical fight to the death.
I wanna know if these proposed fights would even get off the ground.
This is Would They Fight? A multi-part blog series where I look at the characters featured in each episode of Death Battle and figure out whether or not they would even fight each other if they crossed paths. I’ll look at each fighter and consider who, if any of them, would be willing to start a fight and if the fighters would see said fight through to the end. This probably won’t be a super detailed analysis of the characters, just something quick and easy to read as you’re scrolling by. And thanks for stopping if you did catch this out in the wild.
Basic rules are that to be considered a “yes” then the combatants have to
Be willing to fight each other.
See the match through to a conclusion.
Kill the opponent. It is *Death* Battle I’m looking over, after all.
With that said, let’s get started.
Episode 1: Boba Fett vs. Samus Aran
From what I can see, nothing indicates that Samus hunts human targets. However, I can imagine a scenario of the Space Pirates scrounging up enough space bucks to send Boba to attack Samus in an effort to keep her off their backs, so I’m gonna say that this fight goes through.
Episode 2: Akuma vs. Shang Tsung
Oh, easy. The thing about fighting game characters is that you rarely need to justify them starting fights with people. It’s just a thing that they do. Whether it’s for power, money, glory, thrills and challenge, they’ll throw down at the drop of a hat. And Akuma and Shang Tsung are great examples of that in action. Akuma wants to take on powerful fighters and Shang wants the souls of powerful fighters.
Another one in the “yes” column.
Episode 3: Rogue vs. Wonder Woman
I could see these two getting into a scuffle. Rogue, being a mutant, has trust issues when it comes to non-mutants. However, in this case I can see Diana managing to bring the conflict to a stop by managing to talk Rogue down, her compassion towards others getting through to the troubled mutant. Making this the first “no” for this season.
Episode 4: Goomba vs. Koopa
Yep. Look, Bowser’s got to have an army of Troopas and if they gotta fight to earn their spot, then that’s the way it’s gotta be.
Episode 5: Mike Haggar vs. Zangief
This is the first instance of what I like to call “Yes, but not to the death” in the season. Sometimes a match-up is perfectly believable, but neither one would pull the trigger and make this into a full fight to the death. For all intents and purposes, I’m gonna count these as basically a “no” under rule three. This is more likely a match that we’d see at a CPWA show with Zangief heeling it up as the evil Russian for Haggar to take down.
Episode 6: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Battle Royale
Another “but not to the death” situation as the four brothers would likely spar with each other, and have in multiple versions as part of training under Master Splinter. They wouldn’t tear each other apart like they do in the actual episode, just go until Splinter tells them their training is up for the day.
Episode 7: Leonardo vs. Zitz
This one would go down briefly as the Turtles have had scuffles with other humanoid reptiles similar to the Battletoads, such as the Punk Frogs. However, it’s likely that whatever misunderstanding brought these two to fight would be cleared up and the two would shake on it and join forces, no doubt to fight some sort of unholy alliance of Krang and the Dark Queen.
Episode 8: Yoshi vs. Riptor
Riptor’s more animalistic nature would probably take hold here and bring her to attack Yoshi, so I can see this one happening.
Episode 9: Felicia vs. Taokaka
I weirdly made that whole point about how easy it is to get fighting game characters to fight when Wiz and Boomstick matched up the two least likely fighting game characters to pick fights with strangers. Both are more motivated by caring for and protecting children (orphans for Felicia and the Kaka Tribe kittens for Tao) so they’d more likely get along then fight to the death. So that’s another no
Episode 10: Kratos vs. Spawn
I’m not super well-versed in Spawn, but from what I can see, Al Simmons is mostly out to protect Earth, but he’s also a bastard, so he’s likely to start shit with the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos would probably see Spawn as some sort of obstacle sent by the Gods to stop him from getting revenge, so he’ll throw down.
Episode 11: Bomberman vs. Dig Dug
I dunno, I feel like Taizo Hori would probably want the help of a dude who carries around tons of bombs when dealing with all the monsters. Neither one seems like they’d fight anything other than bad guys.
Episode 12: Vegeta vs. Shadow
This feels like a fight Vegeta would start. He’d hear about an “Ultimate Lifeform” and see that as a challenge to his Saiyan pride and charge right at Shadow while he’s probably just having himself a deep think about the nature of his existence and now here’s this monkey-man asshole fucking up his day.
Episode 13: Mario vs. Sonic
Most likely not to the death, but these two would absolutely go at it for old time’s sake.
Episode 14: Justin Bieber vs. Rebecca Black
…Do I have to dignify this one with an answer? Really? You tell me, readers, do you think that at any point we’ll see a fight to the death between Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black?
Episode 15: Luke Skywalker vs. Harry Potter
Nah, these two are too white hat to try and kill each other. They’d probably be more fascinated by concepts like the Force and Magic or teaming up to face off against some unholy alliance of the Sith and the Death Eaters.
Episode 16: Chun-Li vs. Mai Shiranui
Another one where I can’t see either one killing the other. Just fighting.
Episode 17: Starscream vs. Rainbow Dash
Yeah, and it’d probably happen like it did in the episode with Starscream starting it.
Episode 18: Master Chief vs. Doomguy
They’re both Space Marines, so it’s more likely they’re gonna team up to kill all the aliens or demons or whatever is threatening human life this time.
Episode 19: Dr. Eggman vs. Dr. Wily
Pretty easy to pit two egomaniacal mad scientists against each other, but technically these two don’t do the fighting so I guess this is more a no, but not one I’m really happy about.
Episode 20: Zelda vs. Peach
Nah, they’d probably just talk over tea and cakes, as seen in Subspace Emissary.
Episode 21: Thor vs. Raiden
I can see this one. Raiden would probably see Thor as some sort of otherworldly threat sent by Shao Khan to destroy Earthrealm and Thor might not be too keen on someone trying to claim his title of God of Thunder.
Episode 22: Link vs. Cloud
They might clash swords for the fun of it, but no. These two wouldn’t fight to the death. They’d probably instead fight some sort of unholy alliance of Ganondorf and Sephiroth… or Shinra steals the Triforce of Power to use as an energy source, I dunno. Point is, Link and Cloud aren’t gonna kill each other.
Episode 23: Batman vs. Spider-Man
Ya see, Batman has this whole rule about not killing, so…
Episode 24: Pikachu vs. Blanka
Jimmy would never hurt a cute little guy like Pikachu. He’d probably take him home and beg his mom to let him stay as a pet.
Episode 25: Goku vs. Superman
And we come upon the finale, the last match-up of the first season and while these two would fight (It’s Goku, he’s always down to fight a strong opponent) they wouldn’t fight to the death. Hell, they’d probably take it off-planet to keep from harming the Earth. Probably take it to King Kai’s planet.
And there you have it. From the first season, we have the following match-ups that would actually be a full-on, to the death fight.
Starscream vs. Rainbow Dash
So… not a large crop of flights to choose from. But hey, I had fun making this post and hope you all had fun reading it. I’ll probably work on the season 2 rundown sometime in the near future. Lemme know if I got anything wrong or make a case for why a fight I said wouldn't happen would happen.
Seeya next time, or maybe I won’t. I dunno, I’m not the boss of you, you can do your own thing on this site.
…Oh, and if you’re wondering about the Death Battle shirt vs. every other t-shirt in the world… shirts don’t fight.
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
2087
