History Series / BattleBots

A fifth was to air in May 2020; due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming of the season was delayed until later in the year with its format temporarily adjusted: three Fight Night matches per bot and no qualifier events like the Desperado Flash Tournament, instead expanding the tournament to a 32-seed bracket. The season also added a series of side tournaments (''[=BattleBots: Bounty Hunters=]'') hosted after the main event.

** Desperado Flash Tournament: Lock-Jaw (eliminated by Minotaur in semifinal)

** Desperado Flash Tournament: Black Dragon (eliminated by Lock-Jaw in round of 16)
* '''Season 5 (2020):''' TBA
** ''Bounty Hunters'': Rotator (defeated Bronco), Skorpios (defeated Icewave), Gruff (lost to Tombstone), Lock-Jaw (defeated Beta) %% (Witch Doctor), (Son of Whyachi)

** Black Dragon, Copperhead, Hydra, and Mammoth each resemble their namesakes.

** ''Bounty Hunters'': Rotator (defeated Bronco), Skorpios (defeated Icewave), Gruff (lost to Tombstone) %% (Beta), (Witch Doctor), (Son of Whyachi)

** The designer of Bite Force states that his robot is designed to have interchangeable weapons and defenses in order to adapt to whatever he has to face next.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Hundreds of robots have competed, but only a fraction of those have made it to television. However, as far as televised seasons go, Season 2 of the ABC reboot takes the cake -- ''56'' different robots will be competing. Compare that to the comparatively tiny 24 of the first season. And you thought that was big? Discovery Channel run had seasons with ''60+ robots.''' And they've just had two seasons, with the third bringing potentially just as many as the last two before it even during the COVID-19 epidemic.

** During the Comedy Central seasons, each team could enroll only one robot per division. Several teams however, have gotten creative in entering two robots in the same division, most notably Team CoolRobots, which owned both Minion and Dreadnaught. Minion was entered under Team CoolRobots while Dreadnaught was entered under Team C2.

** The Whyachi's were at it again in the 2020 season. [[spoiler:The rules permit pinning an opponent robot for up to 10 seconds before you must release them, but the rules don't say for how long or how far you must move as part of that release. For Hydra's match against Huge, they attached a large framework to the front of Hydra allowing them to trap Huge in the corner, and then just sat there and didn't let Huge move. When the referee instructed them to release Huge, they just backed up a few centimetres (not enough for Huge to actually get away) and them immediately re-engaged a few seconds later.]]

* Mêlée à Trois: The Rumbles at the end of each Comedy Central tournament gathered up all the robots that were still working and threw all of them in the arena at once. One Rumble in Season 2 had about twenty heavyweight robots in it. Twenty. In an arena meant for two. It got confusing.

** The Discovery Channel tournament system features a mini "Desperado Tournament" where eight teams with losing records could compete in a three-round knock-out tournament with little time for repairs in between bouts. The winner receives a guaranteed spot as one of the Final 16 bots in the post-season tournament. They also receive a Giant Bolt trophy (as opposed to the Giant Nut the season winners traditionally receive; Donald Hutson has proved that an old Comedy Central Giant Nut is indeed threaded to fit a Discovery Channel Giant Bolt!).
%% Removed this one because it does not explain how it is an example of this trope (i.e. did one of them give their name to the other?) Seems unlikely since the bots are announced ahead of time and they're on separate sides of the box. If this example is legit, please add more details explaining why.
%% * MyNameIsInigoMontoya: Season 1 gives us [=KillerHurtz=] vs. Mauler. Season 5 offers Iceberg vs. Phrizbee-Ultimate. In both fights the latter uses a spinning weapon to thoroughly destroy the former before the former mounts a comeback later in the fight. The Iceberg fight was especially brutal.

** After being virtually untouchable for the entire 2018 season, Huge suffered one of these to Icewave. Icewave's horizontal spinner ripped Huge's virtually unbreakable wheel into pieces, and Huge ended up literally breaking itself in half trying to fight on one wheel.

** The active weapon rule added in the reboot was to ensure that fights wouldn't devolve into three minute bouts of moving ramps jumping over each other. After Bite Force won the first season with a wedge and lifting arms, they made it even more extreme by adding a new rule stating that damage done without using your primary weapon doesn't count towards aggression. However, they clearly DidntThinkThisThrough, as it completely eliminated factors such as strategy and control in favor of outright damage, making it ''extremely'' biased in favor of destructive bots, and fights are won merely by ''turning on the weapon without hitting anything''. It's quickly become reviled by both audiences and builders, and is seen as a massive ScrappyMechanic added to the tournament for the sake of cheap entertainment value.

* OutOfFocus[=/=]OffscreenMomentOfAwesome[=/=]ShooOutTheClowns: The original Comedy Central version of ''[=BattleBots=]'' was criticized for this, often skipping lower-seeded bot fights in favor of more "TV-friendly" matches, later adding comedy sketches and player backstories that took more time away from the bot fights. As such, even bots that made the TV rounds got ignored, which had the effect of making the tournament seem really disjointed. The Big B is a perfect example of this in Season 4.0, having been completely ignored until its last battle despite the fact that ''it reached the finals''. The ABC reboot thankfully averts this, showing almost every fight in its glory and thankfully avoiding the comedy sketches. The only matches that were skipped were a few in the qualifiers, and they were uploaded online. Only averted in the Discovery seasons further by showcasing at least 5 fights in their first season, and a minimum of ''seven'' fights in the second season.

** The wedge lower to the ground has the advantage in lifting the other bot, so bots have been pushing their wedges lower and lower. In Discovery Channel Season 2 the wedges got so low that multiple matches featured a bot either getting briefly stuck in the killsaw slats or hitting a bump in the floor with their wedge. The Battlebox was finally rebuilt for 2020 to remove the imperfections, although a bot's own damage can still leave them high centered, as nearly happened to Hydra. This was especially noticeable in the Hydra vs. Uppercut match in Discovery Season 3, since both bots were as low to the ground as they could be and as a result both of them wound up catching on the floor or the killsaws multiple times throughout the fight.

** Walkers. Mechadon and Snake, two robots built by combat robot pioneer Mark Setrakian that competed in the early seasons, are excellent examples: They were both gorgeous and marvels of engineering, but they weren't exactly useful in a combat setting. Son of Whyachi is a heavy aversion though, being a walking robot that plowed through a competition undefeated due to its spinning armor and tiny but rapid steps.

** The wedge lower to the ground has the advantage in lifting the other bot, so bots have been pushing their wedges lower and lower. In Discovery Channel Season 2 the wedges got so low that multiple matches featured a bot either getting briefly stuck in the killsaw slats or hitting a bump in the floor with their wedge. The Battlebox was finally rebuilt for 2020 to remove the imperfections, although a bot's own damage can still leave them high centered, as nearly happened to Hydra.

ABC did not renew the revival for a third season, but Creator/DiscoveryChannel's sister network Science picked up reruns of the ABC seasons in 2017, and then [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/battlebots-revived-discovery-science-channels-1081917 greenlit a third season]] which premiered May 11, 2018 on both Science and Discovery. The Discovery iteration of the show now features a new setup (dubbed "Fight Night") in which all robots compete in four matches, and their record from those fights determines their qualification for a 16-seed tournament at the end of the season. A fourth revival season began airing on Discovery in June 2019. A fifth was to air in May 2020; due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming of the season was delayed until later in the year with its format temporarily adjusted to three Fight Night matches and a 32-seed bracket, eliminating automatic qualifier events such as the Desperado Flash Tournament, in addition to a series of side tournaments (''[=BattleBots: Bounty Hunters=]'').

** Desperado Flash Tournament: Lock Jaw (eliminated by Minotaur in semifinal)

** Desperado Flash Tournament: Black Dragon (eliminated by Lock Jaw in round of 16)

** Warhead: Resembles a scorpion, and in ABC Season 2, it has a large T. rex head.
** Chomp: Its name, flamethrower, and color make it resemble a dragon.
*** Though in discovery season 3, it seems to be going for “fire breathing horseshoe crab” instead.
** Lock-Jaw: Its color and weapon make it resemble a lizard.
** Copperhead: Very clearly based off of the snake of the same name

** Kraken: Despite the name, it resembles an anglerfish.

** Quantum’s weapon looks like a wolf.
** Mammoth: its name.
** Death Roll: Crocodile, duh

* ArtifactTitle: The Judge got its name because its original design resembled [[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/battlebots/images/4/49/The_JUDGE.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121127181154 a large courtroom briefcase]]. Its redesign looked [[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/battlebots/images/2/29/Judge.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121216200128 nothing like it]], but the name remained. Its final design however, was [[http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/battlebots/images/a/a5/The_Judge.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120623232107 closer to the original]].

** Invader is this to Megabyte.

ABC did not renew the revival for a third season, but Creator/DiscoveryChannel's sister network Science picked up reruns of the ABC seasons in 2017, and then [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/battlebots-revived-discovery-science-channels-1081917 greenlit a third season]] which premiered May 11, 2018 on both Science and Discovery. A fourth revival season began airing on Discovery in June 2019. A fifth was to air in May 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming of the season was delayed until later in the year. The Discovery iteration of the show now features a new setup (dubbed "Fight Night") in which all robots compete in four matches, and their record from those fights determines their qualification for a 16-seed tournament at the end of the season. [[note]]For the 2020 season, this was at least temporarily adjusted to three Fight Night matches and a 32-seed bracket, eliminating automatic qualifier events such as the Desperado Flash Tournament, to help control everyone's proximity in the pandemic.[[/note]]

* {{Animal Motif}}: Various robots, but most notably...

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** Bil's segment on how champion drivers [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxV92vHgyCA&t=3m50s display their (Giant) Nuts]]. Arguably, the Nuts themselves count too.
** Some of the bot names too, such as S.O.B. and Bit Schlap.

ABC did not renew the revival for a third season, but Creator/DiscoveryChannel's sister network Science picked up reruns of the ABC seasons in 2017, and then [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/battlebots-revived-discovery-science-channels-1081917 greenlit a third season]] which premiered May 11, 2018 on both Science and Discovery. A fourth revival season began airing on Discovery in June 2019. A fifth was to air in May 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming of the season was delayed until later in the year. The Discovery iteration of the show now features a new setup (dubbed "Fight Night") in which all robots compete in four matches, and their record from those fights determines their qualification for a 16-seed tournament at the end of the season.

** "Untethered projectile weapons" (Such as cannonballs, bullets and arrows) were long considered to be the ultimate taboo in robot combat, and they were banned outright at the very start of the sport. For the reboots, these rules were relaxed and the first projectile robot, Double Jeopardy, competed in 2018. Double Jeopardy could have been a game-changer, but it was inaccurate, unreliable, had only one slug per match and didn't seem to do a whole lot of damage.

** Some people actually consider Tombstone to be pretty boring, as it's just a devastating spinning weapon attached to a black box with a pair of wheels, with no style or aesthetic appeal to its design at all. It's massively destructive of course, but all it does it turn its weapon on, drive towards its opponents, and let the weapon destroy them (especially since the only counter to it, heavy wedges, have been {{nerf}}ed so heavily by the scoring changes they might as well be banned outright). If all you want is destruction, you'd get the same effect by watching robots simply drive into a rock crusher. This is not [[HistoryRepeats a new train of thought about a dominant horizontal spinner]] -- some fans thought the same of the nearly-undefeated Hazard in the Comedy Central era.

** "The box is locked, the lights are on: It's robot fightin' time!"

** HUGE was the only bot to actually put Bite Force on the defensive in Discovery Channel Season 1, and it looked like it was set to actually defeat the former champion--until HUGE just suddenly broke in half, seemingly all on its own. Even Bite Force's team captain Paul Ventimiglia thought he was going to lose, quietly whispering that he attributed this win to luck. It was inferred by both the show and the fans that the team behind HUGE weren't restore all the damage that Icewave caused to them in their last fight in time for the tournament.

** And calling the action is Chris Rose. Who can make a fight between two wedge bots sound exciting with his sheer level of ham.

** HUGE is a full-body vertical spinner, the second of its kind in history after the poorly-performing [[http://battlebots.wikia.com/wiki/Gyrax Gyrax]] and has gigantic plastic wheels (high-grade polypropylene, a tougher version of what 7-Eleven drink cups are made of). It has an incredibly high center of gravity and those wheels are always bending and look like they're about to snap...but they never actually collapse under the weight of the 250-pound bot and allow it to be flexible enough to stay balanced at all times. Said height also proves to be an asset in its debut match against [=SubZero=], whose launching arm is unable to actually reach the main body, and indeed, so little of HUGE is touching the ground that it is near impossible to actually flip or lift.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Hundreds of robots have competed, but only a fraction of those have made it to television. However, as far as televised seasons go, Season 2 of the ABC reboot takes the cake -- ''56'' different robots will be competing. Compare that to the comparatively tiny 24 of the first season. And you thought that was big? Discovery Channel run had seasons with ''60+ robots.''' And they've just had two seasons, with the third bringing potentially just as many as the last two before it even during th COVID-19 epidemic.

** During the Comedy Central seasons, each team could enrol only one robot per division. Several teams however, have gotten creative in entering two robots in the same division, most notably Team CoolRobots, which owned both Minion and Dreadnaught. Minion was entered under Team CoolRobots while Dreadnaught was entered under Team C2.

* MeleeATrois: The Rumbles at the end of each tournament gathered up all the robots that were still working and threw all of them in the arena at once. One Rumble in Season 2 had about twenty heavyweight robots in it. Twenty. In an arena meant for two. It got confusing.

** The Discovery Channel tournament system features a mini "Desperado Tournament" where eight teams with losing records could compete in a three-round knock-out tournament with little time for repairs in between bouts. The winner receives a guaranteed spot as one of the Final 16 bots in the post-season tournament. They also receive a Giant Bolt trophy (as opposed to the Giant Nut the season winners traditionally receive).

** The active weapon rule added in the reboot was to ensure that fights wouldn't devolve into three minute bouts of moving ramp jumping over each other. After Bite Force won the first season with a wedge, they made it even more extreme by adding a new rule stating that damage done without using your primary weapon doesn't count towards aggressive. However, they clearly DidntThinkThisThrough, as it completely eliminated factors such as strategy and control in favor of outright damage, making it ''extremely'' biased in favor of destructive bots, and fights are won merely by ''turning on the weapon without hitting anything''. It's quickly become reviled by both audiences and builders, and is seen as a massive ScrappyMechanic added to the tournament for the sake of cheap entertainment value.

** Son of Whyachi's opponent during the Season 3 Heavyweight finals was Biohazard. During that match, Son of Whyachi did so much damage to Biohazard that not only did it lose the right side of its drivetrain, it also ended up high centered and unable to move. The countdown was issued, and ''just before'' the countdown was finished, Biohazard was able to move, albeit in a circle. Biohazard was counted out anyway, causing some level of consternation amongst his team. The executives decided that instead of awarding Son of Whyachi the win by KO, they decided to allow for a judge's decision, in which Son of Whyachi would end up winning anyway. After that season, they put in another rule that stated that if any robot was unable of transitive motion without driving around in circles, they would be classified as incapacitated. Given that Biohazard was moving around in circles during the final moments of that fight, that meant that Biohazard would have lost anyway.

** The wedge lower to the ground has the advantage in lifting the other bot, so bots have been pushing their wedges lower and lower. In Discovery Channel Season 2 the wedges got so low that multiple matches featured a bot either getting briefly stuck in the killsaw slats or hitting a bump in the floor with their wedge.

** Another builder whose reputation greatly improved after an unimpressive run on the Comedy Central show was Paul Ventimiglia, who built the lightweight robot Tantrum[[note]]not to be confused with the bot of the same name competing in the third reboot season[[/note]] which lost its first and only fight in season 3. His next robot Green Wave went 1-1 in season 5. But then, after ''Battlebots'' went off the air, Ventimiglia became one of the top competitors in the indie circuit. Green Wave won an untelevised ''Battlebots'' competition in 2005, and then his next robot Brutality won another ''Battlebots'' event in 2009. When the show returned to TV, he entered Bite Force and proceeded to win the first ABC season.

** Gigabyte suffered a "box rush" at the hands of Witch Doctor. Before the announcers could even finish saying "Let the bot battle begin!", Witch Doctor was already thrashing Gigabyte around the arena, [[HomeRunHitter launching it up in the air]] ''several times'' before trapping it under the hammer.

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: One of the most significant changes made in the 2015 revival are the addition of [[DeathFromAbove drones]]. While still having a ways to go before [[AwesomeButImpractical they could be viable competitors]], they would have been unimaginable in the show's original run, where the technology for drones simply wasn't available at the time.

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: One of the most significant changes made in the 2015 revival are the addition of [[DeathFromAbove drones]]. While still having a ways to go before [[AwesomeButImpractical they could be viable competitors]], they would have been unimaginable in the show's original run, where the technology for drones [[TechnologyMarchesOn simply wasn't available at the time]].

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: One of the most significant changes made in the 2015 revival are the addition of [[DeathFromAbove drones]]. While still having a ways to go before [[AwesomeButImpractical they could be viable competitors, they would have been unimaginable in the show's original run, where the technology for drones [[TechnologyMarchesOn simply wasn't available at the time]].

[[folder:Revival ABC/Discovery run (2000-2002)]]

->It's robot fighting time.

** Son of Whyachi vs. Nightmare

ABC did not renew the revival for a third season, but Creator/DiscoveryChannel's sister network Science picked up reruns of the ABC seasons in 2017, and then [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/battlebots-revived-discovery-science-channels-1081917 greenlit a third season]] which premiered May 11, 2018 on both Science and Discovery. A fourth revival season began airing on Discovery in June 2019, and a fifth will begin airing in May 2020. The Discovery iteration of the show now features a new setup (dubbed "Fight Night") in which all robots compete in four matches, and their record from those fights determines their qualification for a 16-seed tournament at the end of the season.

** Tombstone tends to [[HoistByHisOwnPetard damage itself with its own recoil]]. Most of TheDreaded bot's injuries throughout the ABC seasons were self-inflicted due to the enormous force placed on it whenever it hit something solid with its spinner, including a hit in Season 1 that ''ripped it open and spilled its guts on the floor''. Subverted in that Tombstone still has an excellent driver and has won many a match with a broken or disabled weapon.

** HUGE was the only bot to actually put Bite Force on the defensive in Discovery Channel Season 1, and it looked like it was set to actually defeat the former champion--until HUGE just suddenly broke in half, seemingly all on its own. Even Bite Force's team captain Paul Ventimiglia thought he was going to lose, quietly whispering that he attributed this win to luck.

* DemotedToExtra: Bite Force in Season 2 of the reboot. The robot that ''won the championship'' the year before had just one televised fight. Which it lost.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Hundreds of robots have competed, but only a fraction of those have made it to television. However, as far as televised seasons go, Season 2 of the ABC reboot takes the cake -- ''56'' different robots will be competing. Compare that to the comparatively tiny 24 of the first season.

* MightyGlacier: Son of Whyachi, at least during season three when its primary method of propulsion was its slow walking feet.

* OutOfFocus[=/=]OffscreenMomentOfAwesome[=/=]ShooOutTheClowns: The original Comedy Central version of ''[=BattleBots=]'' was criticized for this, often skipping lower-seeded bot fights in favor of more "TV-friendly" matches, later adding comedy sketches and player backstories that took more time away from the bot fights. As such, even bots that made the TV rounds got ignored, which had the effect of making the tournament seem really disjointed. The Big B is a perfect example of this in Season 4.0, having been completely ignored until its last battle despite the fact that ''it reached the finals''. The ABC reboot thankfully averts this, showing almost every fight in its glory and thankfully avoiding the comedy sketches. The only matches that were skipped were a few in the qualifiers, and they were uploaded online.

ABC did not renew the revival for a third season, but Creator/DiscoveryChannel's sister network Science picked up reruns of the ABC seasons in 2017, and then [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/battlebots-revived-discovery-science-channels-1081917 greenlit a third season]] which premiered May 11, 2018 on both Science and Discovery. A fourth revival season began airing on Discovery in June 2019. The Discovery iteration of the show now features a new setup (dubbed "Fight Night") in which all robots compete in four matches, and their record from those fights determines their qualification for a 16-seed tournament at the end of the season.

* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning: Mechavore, Hazard, Son of Whyachi, Ziggo, etc.

** Not to be outdone by Donald Hutson, Ray Billings brought enough parts to construct ''three'' models of Tombstone. Good thing he did, the Tombstone that fought Rotator caught fire and burned so intensely that ''everything'', including the frame, was considered to be a writeoff.

** Mark Bairo in the original series provided hammy announcements for each robot before they fight. The reboot features Faruq Tauheed in his place.

** Son of Whyachi famously exploited the walkers rule in Comedy Central Season 3. The rule stated that any bot that uses a form of motion other than wheels gets an additional 50% weight allowance over the limit. Given that Son of Whyachi's initial form of motion were several sets of lengthy alternating pads continuously driven by a camshaft, it was classified as a walker and allowed the weight allowance which it used to add weight to its weapons systems. Not surprisingly, the bot tore through the heavyweight tournament and won. ObviousRulePatch came into play and the bot was forced into the super-heavyweight division in the next season where it promptly lost its first fight.[[note]]It should be noted that Team Whyachi also had a second bot in the super-heavyweight division that also had the same form of motion of Son of Whyachi. This bot was simply known as Whyachi and it was a gargantuan beast. Unlike his "son", Whyachi did not make it far in the Super-Heavyweight division and has since been retired.[[/note]]

** Son of Whyachi's opponent during the Season 3 Heavyweight finals was Biohazard. During that match, Son of Whyachi did so much damage to Biohazard that not only did it lose the right side of its drivetrain, it also ended up high centered and unable to move. The countdown was issued, and ''just before'' the countdown was finished, Biohazard was able to move, albeit in a circle. Biohazard was counted out anyway, causing some level of consternation amongst his team. The executives decided that instead of awarding Son of Whyachi the win by KO, they decided to allow for a judge's decision, in which Son of Whyachi would end up winning anyway. After that season, they put in another rule that stated that if any robot was unable of transitive motion without driving around in circles, they would be classified as incapacitated. Given that Biohazard was moving around in circles anyway, that meant that Biohazard would have lost anyway.
* OneHitKO: There are a lot of matchups that featured these. Some of the most notable ones include:

** Bronco vs. Plan X was a one-flip KO.

* SingleStrokeBattle: Nightmare versus Son of Whyachi. Unfortunately, operator error on the arena hazards caused Nightmare to miss and be [[PunchedAcrossTheRoom knocked across the arena]] with some help from [[HoistByHisOwnPetard its own disc hitting the floor]] after it flipped over due to gyroscopic forces.
** The reboot featured Plan X versus Bronco. It ended in about ten seconds with the latter flipping the former upside-down and rendering it completely useless.
** Also from the reboot, Son of Whyachi versus Poison Arrow. The latter's team captain [[{{Foreshadowing}} foreshadowed]] and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] it during the pre-fight interview, stating that whoever survived the initial collision would be the winner. Said winner ended up being Poison Arrow, as the collision sent Son of Whyachi flying ''ten feet into the air'' and [[PunchedAcrossTheRoom halfway across the Battlebox]], knocking it out instantly.