Characters / BattleBots – Discovery Channel Season 1

BattleBots characters index
Classic Era: Comedy Central seasons 1–5
Revival Era:
ABC seasons: 1 | 2
Discovery seasons: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

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Champion

#3-Bite Force

Team: APTYX Designs

Driver: Paul Ventimiglia

Hometown: Mountain View, California

Matches (Season): Blacksmith (W/JD), HyperShock (W/KO), End Game (W/KO), Bombshell (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): HUGE (W/KO), RotatoR (W/KO), Whiplash (W/KO), Minotaur (W/KO)

• The Ace: Won every fight it took part of this season with just a single one of them being through a judges decision. (Even if one of them was mainly through luck.)
• Beware the Nice Ones: Ventimiglia is one of the most soft-spoken and polite of people in BattleBots, and he's always in a good mood. Never ever think lightly of him though: That record above speaks for itself.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: After dismantling HyperShock in under 10 seconds, its innards could be seen draped on the bot.
• Curbstomp Battle:
  • Took out Hypershock with a literal one-two punch.
  • Then did the same with End Game of all bots, flipping over End Game and deciding the match right then and there.
• Crazy-Prepared: The team kept a fresh frame in reserve to make sure that their bot was as strong as possible in the latter stages of the tournament.
  • Downplayed when it fought Blacksmith and relied more on its wedges up front to fight.
• Dark Horse Victory: Downplayed, while the robot is a former champion, the controversial nature of said victory combined with their embarrassing exit last season meant that they where in general overlooked compared to more colorful machines like Tombstone, Minotaur and Bronco. Boy did it prove them wrong though.
• Heroic Second Wind: Perhaps the greatest in all of BattleBots, a big impact to End Game looked as though it took Bite Force out from the recoil. Ventimiglia, correctly figuring that Bite Force lost signal from the controls, then wandered closer to Bite Force, then rebooted both units quickly enough to avoid getting counted out for a knockout. Bite Force then proceeded to flip End Game upside-down in a way that it couldn't move.
• Hurricane of Puns: Faruq dished out a rapid-fire series of Star Wars-related puns introducing Bite Force in its battle against Blacksmith.
• Legacy Character: This version of Bite Force is a completely different robot than the one that competed in 2015.
• Lightning Bruiser: Very powerful, fast and durable.
• Make Sure He's Dead: Bite Force flipped HyperShock over with its first hit, then hit it again when it was flipped upside-down, as Ventimiglia knows HyperShock can self-right.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: What looked like just one hit to HyperShock was actually at least three due to how rapidly Bite Force's spinning disk was hitting HyperShock.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Bite Force team is the Blue Oni to the HyperShock team's Red Oni: The former is always calm, collected, and organized-looking wearing black clothing, whereas the HyperShock team is much younger on average, is full of energy, and wears bright, reflective, gaudy clothing.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: Remember in 2016, when Chomp's ultra-precise peck took out Bite Force's weapon by damaging the mechanisms inside? They're covered up this time.
• Ring Out: Bite Force defeated Bombshell by flipping it out of the arena, the only instance in 2018 not done by a flipper bot.
• Spectacular Spinning: Its disc might not be the fastest spinning or heaviest in the competition, but the way its designed meant its one of the more effective ones.
• Stone Wall: Against Blacksmith, at least. Blacksmith kept hitting it again and again with its flaming hammer, but Bite Force looked completely unaffected by it.
• Technician vs. Performer: In its debut match against Blacksmith, Bite Force is definitely the technician. It's not nearly as flashy as Blacksmith and is more focused on getting the job done, and getting the job done it did.
• Single-Stroke Battle: The first hit in the Hypershock fight was from Bite Force, and that was all it needed to decide it.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Got its ass pummeled by HUGE only for the later to just fall to pieces halfway into the match.
  Paul Ventimiglia (after the victory against HUGE, whispering): That was luck...

Runner up

#4-Minotaur

Team: RioBotz

Driver: Daniel Freitas

Hometown: Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Matches (Season): Tombstone (L/KO), Hypothermia (W/JD), Blacksmith (W/JD), SubZero (W/KO),

Matches (Post-Season): Witch Doctor (W/KO), Monsoon (W/KO), Lock-Jaw (W/KO), Bite Force (L/KO)

• Attack Its Weak Point: Immediately went after Hypothermia's scoop, Daniel Freitas (Minotaur's driver) knowing that if that scoop takes damage, the rest of Hypothermia is unable to meaningfully fight. One that scoop was rendered useless, Minotaur then took out pieces of Hypothermia's weaker underside, scattering metal plates around the arena.
  • Loves to target the wheels of its opponent.
• Brick Joke: A clash near the beginning of its debut match between Minotaur's drum and Tombstone's spinning bar gouged out chunks of the floor and scattered them around the arena. Much later in, Minotaur got caught atop one of these chunks and was rendered unable to move. This cost Minotaur an otherwise golden opportunity to land a devastating hit to Tombstone: On the moment it got caught, Minotaur was directly facing Tombstone's back (Tombstone's weak spot), and Tombstone's bar was facing the screws lining the sides of the arena. Had Minotaur been able to simply drive straight, it would've been able to push Tombstone to the screws, causing Tombstone to slam its bar against the screws and take heavy damage.
• Crowd Pleaser: The Minotaur crew were satisfied after their fight against Tombstone, despite losing, because the audience loved the duel. Downplayed, of course, because showmanship is not their only motivation for competing.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Kept taking hits from Tombstone without actually losing its ability to move.
• Determinator: Though its drum went out rather quickly against Tombstone, it was still able to move and kept going at Tombstone, no matter how many hits Tombstone gave it. What did it in was not that it could no longer move within its own power, but that it got stuck on a piece of twisted-up floor.
• The Dreaded: Not to the extent of Tombstone, but it is one of the more favored bots to win, considering RioBotz's history in non-televised events. Minotaur and Tombstone together wrecked a significant chunk of the floor when their weapons clashed, and Minotaur's drum rendered Hypothermia's weapon unusable with one hit.
• Lightning Bruiser: Not as hard-hitting as Tombstone but a lot faster. The two of them clashing with their weapons, however, managed to gouge out a chunk of the floor.
• Made in Country X: Team RioBotz revealed on their post-season AMA that they'd made the same mistake as The Robotic Death Company had- buying Chinese parts. Minotaur's side panels ended up made from the same cheap cludge material that Gigabyte's securing bolt had been, which is why Bite Force was able to rip through it. If there's one lesson to be taken away from BattleBots 2018, it would be never buy Chinese.
• Noisy Robots: The noise from Minotaur's drum spinning up still sounds like a jet engine. Apart from Icewave, it's the loudest robot in the competition.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Smacked Hypothermia around for the entire three minutes. RioBotz knows not to underestimate Hypothermia though, as the two had fought at least three times in RoboGames as Touro Maximus and Polar Vortex.
• Spectacular Spinning: Has a long, toothed spinning drum and is the most well-known wielder of this weapon type. To give an idea of how crazy this thing is, the gyroscopic forces the drum generates when spinning at full speed are enough that Minotaur can use them alone as a srimech.
• Signature Move: If a robot has exposed wheels, Minotaur will take them off.
• Stone Wall: Minotaur took by far the most hits from Tombstone without actually losing power, numbering in the dozens in just these 2 minutes. It lost via knockout because it snagged itself on a chunk of floor that had broken off. The reason it's able to do this is that the framework on either side of the front brackets that hold the drum are made of thick blocks of solid steel- Tombstone chipped and gouged away at them, but wasn't able to do any real crippling damage to Minotaur anywhere it hurt.
• Victory Dance: Lifted up on one side while spinning around after a decisive win against Hypothermia.

Final 4

#9-Lock-Jaw

Team: Mutant Robots

Driver: Donald Hutson

Hometown: San Diego, Florida

Matches (Season): Bombshell (W/KO), End Game (L/KO), Broncos (L/JD), Kraken (W/KO), Valkyrie (W/KO), Lucky (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Son of Whyachi (W/JD), Bombshell (W/KO), Minotaur (L/KO)

• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Lock-Jaw was on the offensive against End Game, chasing it around—and then got snagged on the floor that prevented it from moving. After a few solid hits from End Game, Lock-Jaw was then doing the running away for the rest of the match.
• Ass Kicks You:
  • Added a metal wedge of armor on its backside for its match against Valkyrie. It worked perfectly, snapping the other bots weapon in a few solid rams.
  • Said metal wedge a return in its tournament bout against Son Of Whyachi. And worked to perfection yet again, holding up until the repeated force of hitting it knocked Whyachi's main weapon out.
• Born Unlucky: Off to a good start with a decisive win against former runner-up Bombshell, only to then get an arm snagged in a Killsaws slot against End Game and losing power to its right side for seemingly no reason against Bronco.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Hutson brought a second complete Lock-Jaw to the event, just in case the first one is destroyed beyond repair.
  • As Matt Spurk at the helm of Kraken discovered, Lock-Jaw is also armored on the inside and within the vent holes. When Kraken managed to get ahold of one of those vents, it was unable to reach the electronics inside due to Hutson having anticipated something like that might happen.
  • For the first time, Lock-Jaw can be equipped with a shield. This proved essential to its victories against Valkyrie and Son of Whyachi, both of whom would've been good counters to Lock-Jaw's control-based style.
• Cruel Mercy: Flipped Bombshell over and incapacitated it early into its first season match, then allowed it to keep moving...so that Lock-Jaw could incapacitate Bombshell again. Averted in its rematch against Bombshell, in which it flipped Bombshell over and let it sit there emitting smoke.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Grappling robots like Lock-Jaw are not easy to use due to having to position themselves perfectly compared to their opposition. Hutson is such a skilled driver, however, that he makes it look easy.
• Friendly Rivalry: After their match against End Game, Hutson put one of Lock-Jaw's mutilated parts (most likely a wheel rim) into the End Game team's refrigerator. The two teams then engaged in friendly banter with each other, including the End Game team's discovery of said part in their fridge.
• Glass Cannon: Lock-Jaw is capable of, as its name suggests, completely locking down an opponent once it gets an opportunity. However, as the matches against End Game and Minotaur indicate, it isn't that useful in mounting a comeback from behind.
• Grapple Move: Like Hutson's other robots, Lock-Jaw has a set of moving arms at its front that can grab onto the opponent.
• History Repeats: Remember when Diesector got one of its hammer arms stuck in the Killsaws? It happened again during Lock-Jaw's fight against End Game, only this time, it's the tip of one of its grappling arms. As the Killsaws don't activate until the last 60 seconds in this competition, this allowed End Game to have its way with Lock-Jaw until the arm broke down.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The bot's famously low sitting arms proved its undoing against End Game. Getting caught in the Killsaw slot after a missed ram, and allowing End Game several early hits that proved to be all she wrote.
• Just Toying with Them: Lock-Jaw spent a significant part of its match against Bombshell just sitting there so Bombshell could move helplessly about. Was then on the receiving end against End Game as Lock-Jaw became mostly unable to move and End Game roamed around tossing one of Lock-Jaw's disattached wheels around.
• Lightning Bruiser: Lock-Jaw moves fast, and it is one of the best at controlling a match from wire to wire.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Hutson's go-to weapon has always been those lifting arms at the front of his robots. If any of these arms ever breaks down, the robot's ability to fight is severely compromised. This came up after Lock-Jaw's left arm got stuck in one of the Killsaw slots, and Lock-Jaw couldn't free itself without rendering it nonfunctional, putting it at a severe disadvantage against End Game. This weakness came into play again against Minotaur, whose spinning drums quickly warped and disabled Lock-Jaw's arms and prevented Lock-Jaw from being able to get underneath Minotaur.
  • Lock-Jaw, and all of Hutson's robots before that, have fully exposed wheels. This is usually not a problem for him, as he makes sure never to create that opening for his opponents, but being forced to go on the defensive against End Game allowed End Game to attack it as it was turning around, knocking a wheel loose. Like with Lock-Jaw's other major weakness, RioBots exploited this weakness with Minotaur by destroying Lock-Jaw's tires once Lock-Jaw's mobility was inhibited.
• Long Runner: Along with Inertia Labs and C2 Robotics, Hutson and Mutant Robots are one of the only three teams who have competed in every Battlebots competition since the 1999 pay-per-views.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Lock-Jaw has had a difficult time in the first two revival seasons. It was having a fairly mediocre season 3, too...but then it won the Desperado Tournament, giving it an automatic bye to the round of 16.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Absolutely dominated its match against Bombshell, the 2016 runner-up. Lock-Jaw did it again during the Desperado event against Valkyrie and Lucky. Averted with Kraken, of all bots, which was giving Hutson a hard time until he got the chance to flip it over.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Like with Bite Force, Lock-Jaw's jaws can not only be used to hold onto opposing bots, but when all of them are angled down, they become a wedge, and when angled forward, they become spikes. Lock-Jaw also demonstrated in 2016 that they can move quickly enough to flip opposing robots too, though it didn't use that in the 2018 competition.
• Victory Pose: Yawned and spun in place after defeating Bombshell.
• Victory by Endurance: How it handled Son Of Whyachi, just let them pummel at the back wedge until the weapon breaks and then deal with the machine.
• Weapon Specialization: The arms at the front of Lock-Jaw have been present in all of Hutson's robots, though they've varied in quantity, shape, and length. Lock-Jaw also has a third arm that can take the place of that spinning disk, though it was not used for the 2018 competition.
• Wimp Fight: During its battle against Bronco, both bots' drive trains started malfunctioning soon after the match began, leaving both robots unable to move properly.

#10-Whiplash

Team: Team Fast Electric Robots

Driver: Matt Vasquez

Hometown: Newbury Park, California

Matches (Season): Hypothermia (W/KO), Mecha Rampage (W/KO), Tombstone (L/KO), Warhead (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Yeti (W/JD), Bronco (W/KO), Bite Force (L/KO)

• Attack! Attack! Attack!:
  • This was Matt Vasquez's strategy against Mecha Rampage, as he and Jeff consider it the most viable one against it. Indeed, they kept attacking it until they propped it up against the walls.
  • Attempted the same strategy against Tombstone. It worked...less well.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Matt Vasquez chose to go after Hypothermia's large wheels. Once he succeeded in removing one of them, he then targeted Hypothermia's other wheel.
• Fragile Speedster: How durable Whiplash is is uncertain besides that it has a little over half as much armor as Hypothermia, but Matt Vasquez certainly drives Whiplash like one, darting it around the arena and never letting up once he gets the advantage.
• Glory Days/Took a Level in Badass: The Vasquez family had much earlier success but were starting to lose ground around Comedy Central's Season 5.0. It also doesn't help that they specialize in the lighter weight classes and struggle in the heavier ones, and BattleBots is all heavyweight. However, it looks like they are turning things around and improving in the heavyweight division, with their victory against Hypothermia being their first in a televised competition in over a decade.
  • They firmly turned things around, being one of very few teams to actually threaten Tombstone in the battle box.
• Mutual Disadvantage: Both Whiplash and Hypothermia are very vulnerable to each other's weapons. Whiplash happens to be of the perfect shape and size for Hypothermia to carry around, as is what happened when Hypothermia picked Whiplash up and carried it to the screws at the beginning of the match between them.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • To Hypothermia. Once Vasquez got Hypothermia on the run, he had Whiplash relentlessly chase it and attack it all over the BattleBox and never gave Fuzzy Mauldin even a second to breathe, even after one of Hypothermia's wheels fell off.
  • Then another one to Mecha Rampage, with Whiplash tanking the first hit from Mecha Rampage, then repeatedly ramming it to prevent Mecha Rampage from spinning back up to full speed—or anywhere close to it, for that matter.
• Offhand Backhand: The pivoting arm allows Whiplash to attack from behind, which is exactly what it did to Hypothermia whenever it had the chance.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Jeff feared the fight with Mecha Rampage would end this way, definitely wary of the damage it did to DUCK! and Free Shipping. Averted in the fight though, as Whiplash's frontal armor proved too much for Mecha Rampage to handle.
• So Proud of You: Jeff Vasquez was ecstatically cheering once his son Matt, who was Whiplash's driver, delivered a decisive knockout to Hypothermia, slapping Matt's shoulders and hugging him from behind.
• Spectacular Spinning: Whiplash's weapon is a spinning buzzsaw mounted on a movable arm. It shares this distinction with Red Devil, Skorpios, and SawBlaze, and the design is practically identical to the weapon of Splatter, the bot they entered in the previous series.
• Victory Dance:
  • Spun in place in the middle of the arena, swinging its saw arm back and forth, after knocking out Hypothermia.
  • Did the Worm using its arm after defeating Mecha Rampage.

Top 8

#2-Bronco

Team: Inertia Labs

Driver: Reason Bradley

Hometown: Sausalito, California

Matches (Season): Bombshell (W/KO), Lockjaw (W/JD), DUCK! (W/KO), SawBlaze (W/JD)

Matches (Post-Season): WARHawk (W/KO), Whiplash (L/KO)

• Combo: Bronco did a series of flips to Bombshell without allowing Bombshell to properly recover until it flung Bombshell out of reach.
• Heroic Second Wind: After enduring a relentless assault from Bombshell, Bronco managed to get a very good hit in and turned a 180 on the match.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: While the anti-spinner armor configuration was supposed to keep spinners at arms' length, it was used against itself thanks to Whiplash's front plow to control the majority of the match by ramming Bronco into the Battlebox and force it into a Heroic RRoD.
• Lightning Bruiser: Has the strongest flipper in all of BattleBots and can move about very quickly. It was no match for Bombshell in terms of speed though.
• Logical Weakness: Exposed wheels aside, Bronco's launcher can only work if it gets underneath its foes. This means if the opponent can consistently get underneath Bronco, it cannot use its weapon at all. Bombshell tossed Bronco around like a rag doll during the opening moments of their fight, for instance.
• Long Runner: Last season, there were seven teams competing who hadn't missed a Battlebots event since the 1999 pay-per-views. This season, only three - Inertia Labs, C2 Robotics and Mutant Robots - are left. ^note The other four were Team Nightmare (who couldn't make it due to a scheduling conflict), Team Hurtz (of Killerhurtz and Beta fame, same scheduling conflict as Nightmare; They didn't compete in the first ABC season, but would have and technically count here), Mission Destruction (best known for Complete Control, their leader Derek Young is now one of the show's judges) and The Robot Action League (of Tentoumushi and Chiabot fame, their lead member Lisa Winter is also now a judge for the show).
• One-Hit Kill: One good hit from Bronco, and Bombshell is upside-down and unable to move.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: Bronco normally loses battles due to it losing its wheels. This time, Bronco is equpped with wheel guards to block attacks on its wheels and to prevent them from slipping off. Well, for its rear wheels, at least.
• Ring Out: Bronco was able to flip a helpless Bombshell eight feet into the air and straight out of the arena. Bronco also attempted this with Lock-Jaw, but Lock-Jaw always bounced off the glass and back into the arena. In its third fight, Bronco was able to toss DUCK! out of the area, giving it two ring-outs in a single season.
• Running Gag: An unintentional one that the fandom has dubbed "The Bronco Curse", every robot that has beaten Bronco will lose its next match.
• Spectacular Spinning: Stands out for being an aversion; Bronco is the only robot in the Top 16 not to be armed with a spinning weapon of some sort.
• Took a Level in Badass: Bronco has 30% more launching power than last time. It really showed during its battle against Bombshell.
• Theme Naming: Follows Inertia Labs' naming convention based on bulls and the Wild West, after Toro, The Matador, T-Minus (likely based on how NASA headquarters is in Houston), and The Butcher.
• Weapon Specialization: A pneumatic launcher, which has been Inertia Labs' go-to weapon ever since their great success with Toro.
• Wimp Fight: During its battle against Lock-Jaw, both bots' drive trains started malfunctioning soon after the match began, leaving both robots unable to move properly. Despite the issues, which perplexed the commentators and both teams, Bronco was still able to launch Lock-Jaw an impressive 11 feet into the air.

#11-ROTATOR

Team: Team Revolution

Driver: Victor Soto

Hometown: Doral, Florida

Matches (Season): Petunia (L/JD), Predator (W/KO), Warrior Dragon (W/JD), Skorpios (W/JD)

Matches (Post-Season): Icewave (W/JD), Bite Force (L/KO)

• Attack Its Weak Point: Disabled Predator with ease by targeting Predator's wheels.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • Got one of its wheels shredded by the Killsaws when Petunia carried it into them during the final moments of its first match.
  • Did the same to Predator on the following match, in which Soto went straight for Predator's wheels to stop it from moving.
• The Backwards Я: Not used in its traditional sense, but the second "R" in ROTATOR's name is written backwards on the bot itself so the logo could be horizontally symmetrical.
• Bling of War: Has a lot of gold colors, like Brutus, though done in a different style.
• Caps Lock: Its name is officially "ROTATOR," in all capital letters, presumably to reflect its palindromic nature.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Scored a perfect KO against Predator, with Predator having failed to attack ROTATOR at all.
• Determinator: Refused to go down against Warrior Dragon and narrowly won via Judges' Decision.
• The '80s: Both the bot and the team have adopted this theme in the 2018 competition, between the gaudy, flashy gold on both the bot and the humans and the team's glow-in-the-dark sunglasses.
  • The lower disc can also be swapped for an titanium Wedge, which was used to great effect in its fight with ICEwave.
• Fun with Palindromes: ROTATOR's name is a palindrome, to reflect the fact that it operates exactly the same when flipped upside-down. This bit of trivia makes up its intro for its battle against Skorpios.
• Glass Cannon: Even more so than it was last time—whereas most of its battles in 2016 had one of its saws disabled, ROTATOR's first match in 2018, against Petunia, had this happening to both of its saws.
  • Subverted with the rest of the robot, though, as it remained mobile up to the end of the fight, even after the killsaws had completely shredded one of its tires.
  • Also averted when its in its defense configuration (the lower disc swapped for a wedge), where it managed to take several hits from Icewave like they where nothing.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: ROTATOR continued to attack Predator once it stopped moving, only ceasing once the referee counted Predator down. Justified, though, as Predator would periodically stop moving, then resume moving, making it unclear if it was actually down or not. Soto wanted to be certain.
• Mutual Disadvantage: ROTATOR and Warrior Dragon both have low-endurance weapons at roughly the same height, meaning their weapons are going to take heavy beatings and lose most to all of their functionality.
• Rhymes ONA Dime: With Faruq's introduction to ROTATOR against Predator.
  Faruq Tareed: With a three-sixty view all around, this bot will grind its opponents into the ground. Two weapons—a wedge and a spinner—will it come out unscathed and come out a winner? It's ROTATOR!
• Spectacular Spinning: ROTATOR has kept its signature dual spinning metal disks. They can be swapped for spinning bars, much like Tombstone's, which was used for its fight against Warrior Dragon.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: A last resort tactic used to block Petunia's approaches after both of its sawblades have stopped spinning. It worked initially, but not after the first time.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: The concept behind ROTATOR is that it always has one saw low to the ground and another one higher up to deal with different threats without having to make any modifications between rounds.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the previous season ROTATOR had come across as an interesting idea that hadn't really worked and had gotten a bit unlucky. This time around, it really worked and its luck was much better.

#12-Monsoon

Team: Team Monsoon

Driver: Tom Brewster

Hometown: Turvey, England

Matches (Season): Red Devil (W/JD), Petunia (W/KO), Son Of Wyachi (L/KO), Axe Backwards (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): SawBlaze (W/JD), Minotaur (L/KO)

• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Once Red Devil disabled Monsoon's spinning bar, Monsoon then spent the next 15 seconds or so desperately trying to run away from Red Devil, before settling down and trying to push back against it.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Brewster realized that Petunia's wedge lifts off the ground a little bit when it accelerates. Monsoon then proceeds to kick Petunia's behind, though it's unclear how well Monsoon could apply that strategy.
• Battle Cry: "MONSOOOOON!!!"
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Monsoon was able to quickly disarm Red Devil by smashing off its spinning saw with its vertical bar.
• Cast from Hit Points: Its spinning bar stopped working after a few hits to Petunia, despite Petunia having never attacked back. The same happened, to a lesser extent, earlier with Red Devil. This is pretty normal for robots with attack power as fierce as that of Monsoon.
• Color-Coded Characters: Black with highlights of midnight blue.
• Combat Breakdown: Both bots' weapons were rendered inoperable during its fight against Red Devil. Its spinning bar had soon stopped spinning after taking too many hits to Red Devil's heavily armored plow. The rest of the match became one extended shoving contest, with the both of them roughly equal in pushing power.
• Death or Glory Attack: An unintentional one against Petunia in that the attack that set Petunia on fire also caused Monsoon's spinning bar to stop working.
• Expy: Brewster says that this was what he had intended for his previous robot, Tauron, should Robot Wars be renewed for 2018. It wasn't, so Monsoon was created for BattleBots.
• Glass Cannon: Hits very hard, but its spinning bar only lasted longer than 90 seconds in one match (its win against SawBlaze).
• Heroic Second Wind: Got moving again after being seemingly knocked out, allowing it to win the battle.
• I Shall Taunt You: During the pre-battle testing, Monsoon traveled all the way to right in front of Red Devil before heading back to its starting position.
• Large Ham: Some of the Monsoon team members are prone to yelling out "MONSOON!" whenever they deem appropriate.
• Lightning Bruiser: A lot faster than it looks for something of its shape and weapon power.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Monsoon uses an asymmetrical spinning bar as its weapon, which is shorter but thicker on one side and longer but thinner on the other. While they pop up pretty often on Robot Wars due to their proven reliability as a self-righting mechanism (though Monsoon is invertible), they are a lot rarer in US competitions, where nearly all spinning bars are symmetrical.
• Mutual Kill/Double Knockout: Narrowly averted in its fight with Petunia. Petunia stopped moving due to being on fire at the same time Monsoon stopped moving due to damage. Monsoon eventually clawed back basic mobility whereas Petunia could not, winning the fight.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Monsoon was able to run circles around Petunia due to its faster speed, never letting Petunia's wedge get the better of it. Monsoon also quickly disabled Petunia's crushing spike by attacking Petunia's hydraulic fluid tank. This got Petunia's spike to lower and severely hampered its ability to fight.
• Punched Across the Room: Monsoon was on the receiving end of a classic Son of Whyachi knockout blow, which violently threw it across the room. The team detailed the significant damaged that Monsoon took from the hit on their Facebook, joking "Good news is that we’ve all just witnessed nuclear fission. Bad news is that our bot got cremated."
• Running Gag: Monsoon keeps getting pieces of its opponents embedded within its spinning bar. Brewster jokingly calls them "trophies."
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses an asymmetrical spinning bar.
• Theme Naming: Though it's not restricted to a single team, there is a tendency of bots from the UK to be named after rainy and/or windy weather conditions, such as Storm, Tornado, Typhoon (as well as Storm 2, Typhoon 2 and the Typhoon Twins), and so forth. Monsoon seems to be the latest following that trend.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Back: Brewster occasionally spends his time backstage wearing a United Kingdom flag like a cape.

#16-Bombshell

Team: Chaos Corps

Driver: Michael Jeffries

Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia

Matches (Season): Lock-Jaw (L/KO), Bronco (L/KO), Yeti (L/JD), Bite Force (L/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Tombstone (W/KO), Lock-Jaw (L/KO)

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Jeffries requested Hutson to get Bombshell back moving again. Hutson had Lock-Jaw do just that, but just enough for Bombshell to keep moving while still upside-down.
• Born Lucky: Despite it going 0-4, the withdrawal of both Warhead and Skorpios after the Fight Night matches gave Bombshell an opportunity to sneak into the Final 16 in the Last Chance Rumble. Then, after dealing so much damage during the Rumble, it got itself high-centered in the arena and was just about to be declared dead when it was able to move with only seconds remaining in the fight. Then, the rules that determined damage had ruled that Bombshell was the winner of the Rumble as it had done more damage than DUCK! despite DUCK! playing the Rumble much better and in far better shape. And even when paired up against Tombstone, he was able to break the chain of Tombstone's weapon, culminating in Tombstone getting high centered on said chain and earning Bombshell its only win.
• Butt-Monkey: Seems to be having major issues with getting flipped upside-down, having lost to both Lock-Jaw and Bronco in this way.
• Covered in Scars: By tournament time, Bombshell's nose art was almost completely obscured by scratches and dings.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Was one of the bots to be feared considering its unexpectedly impressive performance in BattleBots in 2016. Then, in a new-and-improved form, Bombshell spent nearly the entirety of its debut match flipped upside-down and not able to do much except scoot around helplessly. In its next match, it got flipped out of the arena by Bronco. It then went on to lose all of its 2018 matches, with three being by knockout, and finished the season with a terrible 0-4 record.
• Color-Coded Characters: Olive green.
• Crippling Overspecialization: This iteration of Bombshell was specifically designed to beat Tombstone. While it did, it lost every other match.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end of this against Lock-Jaw. Bombshell got flipped over and couldn't right itself twice and spent most of that match upside down and thus unable to use its weapon or wedges.
  • This happened again in a rematch in the post-season tournament. Except this time, their internals were smoking.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Of all the robots that could have eventually ended Tombstone's campaign for a second Giant Nut, who would have banked on Bombshell, who went 0-4 during the Fight Night season and looked very poor while doing it?
• Deus ex Machina: The rules for the Last Chance Rumble meant that only the bots still running at the end of the Rumble were to be considered by the Judges, and that Damage from the Primary Weapon was the main consideration despite the fact that DUCK! played the Rumble much better and was in much better shape. Both these rules allowed Bombshell to secure the victory and the 16th seed despite everyone expecting DUCK! to win.
• Fragile Speedster: One of the fastest robots in this season but has severe problems with incapacitation through getting flipped over.
• Legacy Character: Jeffries says that Tombstone destroyed Bombshell so bad in the previous tournament that a new Bombshell had to be built from scratch, which is why it looks drastically different than before.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Managed to get a spot in the Last Chance Rumble despite its record, where it was one of two bots left functional at the end. It won the Judges' Decision and moved on to the Round of 16.
• Nose Art: Like in 2016, its paint job is based on US fighter jets during World War II. This time, it has that famous shark grin.
• Put on a Bus: Short Fuse is gone completely, leaving Bombshell a solo bot.
• Ring Out:
  • Its match with Bronco ended with Bombshell getting flung over the spike wall and out of bounds.
  • Met the same result against Biteforce.
• Spanner in the Works: In the "Botopsy Report" segment, Jeffries says that the belt spinning the disk was going so fast that it was unable to grip properly, something he didn't realize until Bombshell's battle against Lock-Jaw—this led to the disk lacking the strength to help right Bombshell over after Lock-Jaw flipped it upside-down. This issue got worse when up against Bronco—Bombshell could still at least move about against Lock-Jaw, but it became immobile when flipped over against Bronco.
  • Bombshell itself was the single biggest spanner in the works of the 2018 season, accomplishing effectively nothing other than to make it into the round of 16 in the jammiest manner possible^note people said it didn't even deserve to enter the Last Chance Rumble after its miserable 0-4 performance, and the decision that gave it victory over Duck! was universally considered just flat-out wrong, take out Tombstone, then quietly get curb stomped again by Lock-Jaw. Popular website Battlebots Update put it nicely:
    It was at this moment I realized that Bombshell wasn’t meant to win the Giant Nut this year. Hell, it wasn’t even meant to win its fights for that matter, with the exception of one. Bombshell existed purely to fuck up Tombstone’s stride and prevent it from claiming another title, and that’s it. No more, no less. In fact I’m not even certain Bombshell existed in this realm to begin with, this robot is a fucking ghost and now that its “unfinished business” has been completed it can rest in peace for eternity.
• Spectacular Spinning: Has at least two different kinds of saws and a thin spinning drum.
• Tough Act to Follow: Undoubtedly, part of the reason Bombshell performed so well in 2016 was because it was not expected to be capable of much. The other competitors now know not to underestimate Bombshell, and this iteration has encountered far more problems than the previous one.

Top 16

#1-Tombstone

Team: Hardcore Robotics

Driver: Ray Billings

Hometown: Placerville, California

Matches (Season): Minotaur (W/KO), Gigabyte (W/KO), Whiplash (W/KO), DUCK! (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Bombshell (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Tantrum (W/KO)

• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Lampshaded by the hosts when they mentioned that there were cheers from the teams participating in the Final Tournament when news of Tombstone's elimination reached the pits.
• Big "YES!": Billings yelled one when Gigabyte got counted out.
• Cast from Hit Points: A robot that hits as hard as Tombstone is going to suffer from some pretty nasty recoil with each hit it delivers. Minotaur got hit so many times, Billings discovered heavy internal damage to Tombstone after the battle. Said internal damage also slowly builds up over a competition, despite Billings doing his best to fix Tombstone after each match, that it will eventually disable itself after enough matches. This was evident in Tombstone's increasing difficulty fighting Whiplash and DUCK! and culminated in its defeat to Bombshell.
• Combat Pragmatist: When DUCK! proves just too sturdy for Tombstone's normal plan of ripping to shreds, Billings took out the others bots tires to win.
• Crazy-Prepared: Ray Billings even built a bot with treads solely to transport Tombstone to the BattleBox.
• Death by Irony: Started the series by winning against Minotaur after it lost its weapon and got stuck on something, exited the series in the exact same way when it lost to Bombshell.
• The Dreaded: Ray Billings even admitted that because of its long history of wins, he suspects every other competitor has plans specifically in case they have to fight Tombstone.
• Graceful Loser: After Tombstone's Knockout, Ray Billings spent the rest of the tournament giving pep talks to the remaining teams. He even participated in an Exhibition Match against Tantrum.
• Heel: Billings says outright that he loves playing this role when piloting Tombstone. The opening narration in the first episode also describes him as a man viewers "love to hate." Downplayed in the Discovery Channel era in comparison to the ABC era though, in which he tones down the Trash Talk and refuses to do more damage than is necessary (most notably in the match against Gigabyte).
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Managed to get stuck on its own loose chain in its rematch against Bombshell.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Subverted in the Gigabyte fight, where Billings declined to attack Gigabyte's still moving, but exposed and delicate, chassis after Tombstone knocked the spinner's dome off.
• Laser-Guided Karma: As mentioned in Bombshell's entry, Tombstone ruined the original Bombshell so thoroughly in the grand final of the previous season that the team had to build an entirely new machine for this one. This all-new Bombshell was designed to do one thing and one thing only- defeat Tombstone. It did.^note And given how ridiculously jammy Bombshell's path to its rematch with Tombstone was, you could almost believe there was some higher power at work to make it happen.
• Lightning Bruiser: Is pretty fast and has that legendarily hard-hitting metal bar. This time, it reaccelerates frighteningly quickly after delivering a hit.
• Luck-Based Mission: Against Gigabyte, Billings's only strategy he could come up with was just hitting Gigabyte and hoping to get lucky. Considering what happened during that fight, lucky he got.
• Not So Invincible After All: Despite a 4-0 record, a couple of bots (Whiplash and DUCK!) have proven Tombstone is not the unstoppable force of seasons prior. Especially DUCK!, who brought the champ within 2 seconds of a K.O. This reached its logical conclusion when Tombstone entered the Round of 16, where Bombshell proceeded to systematically cause it to destroy itself.
• Precision F-Strike: Billings delivered one as he was counted out against Bombshell.
• Pyrrhic Victory: According to Billings, Tombstone was actually heavily damaged during the fight against Minotaur. Tombstone may have looked fully operational, but it suffered extensive structural and mechanical damage, among the most he had ever seen.
  Ray Billings: We had extensive damage after the Minotaur match. Most of the frame was either bent, twisted, or just cut. (examining Tombstone) I mean, this is some brutal stuff here! It may have looked like it was still running correctly, but it was really damaged after the last match.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: One of Tombstone's biggest weaknesses was its internal damage done to its spinning bar—bots like Witch Doctor and beta that could withstand it tended to kill Tombstone's destructive power. Not this time around, as Billings has tweaked Tombstone's insides to allow Tombstone to deliver way more hits. Minotaur rammed Tombstone at least several times, for instance, but never succeeded in disabling Tombstone's bar, whereas that would've been guaranteed in the ABC years.
• Robot of Mass Destruction: To the point where, in the premiere fight against Minotaur, Tombstone tore a massive, jagged chunk out of the Battlebox floor. This turned out to be inadvertently decisive to the fight, because Minotaur lost by being stuck on that debris. According to Ray in a Reddit AMA, the damage was "down through all three layers of floor steel and down into the support structure underneath. I think it's the most I've done to this box." He also said it took about three or four hours for the show crew to repair the hole.
• Worthy Opponent: When Brent Rieker purposely stopped Gigabyte from moving so it could be counted out, Tombstone stayed far away so Gigabyte would not sustain any further damage. After the hit, Ray Billings even called out to the team urging them to stop moving.

#5-SawBlaze

Team: Team SawBlaze

Driver: Jamison Go

Hometown: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Matches (Season): Overhaul (W/KO), Reality (W/JD), Mohawk (W/KO), Bronco (L/JD)

Matches (Post-Season): Monsoon (L/JD)

• Animal Motifs: It's hard to notice at first glance, as it's black on black, but SawBlaze is based on a dragon. It's most evident in the flamethrower attachment bearing the shape of a dragon's head.
• Badass Boast: Go stated that Reality's drum won't have much power against SawBlaze. He was right.
• Bludgeoned to Death: SawBlaze itself has no hammer, but it was able to get Mohawk underneath a Pulverizer in such a way that the Pulverizer's head slammed down directly onto Mohawk's crushing spike, drastically reducing Mohawk's weapon's effectiveness.
• Call-Back: Go refers to SawBlaze as a saw-and-dustpan robot, undoubtedly referring to S.O.B. in the Comedy Central era, which popularized this design.
• Color-Coded Characters: Black with highlights of neon green. It shares this color scheme with Basilisk.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: Along with the saw blade, SawBlaze's arm is also equipped with a green-tinted flamethrower.
• Fragile Speedster: Seems to be on the fast side. Its superior speed allowed it to flank Overhaul again and again and what allowed it to continue to put up a fight against End Game after the latter disabled its saw. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to be built for much defense, requiring SawBlaze to never let go of its upper hand once it pulls ahead.
• Funny Back Ground Event: One of the SawBlaze team members spent the entire time during the fight against Reality holding a banana. No one outside the team knows what that banana was for.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Go sometimes introduces himself by putting his hands in that clamshell position, then emitting fire from a hidden torch.
• In the Back: Repeatedly able to get the better of Mohawk by charging at it in the midst of Mohawk turning around.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Was eliminated very early on in the 2016 competition, before Overhaul. These wins had to be quite the catharsis for Jamison Go.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Against Overhaul — once SawBlaze got its prong-like wedges underneath Overhaul, SawBlaze never gave it a chance to fight back.
  • Remained in control of the match against Reality from start to finish, never letting Reality get an edge in where possible.
  • Through incredibly precise driving, SawBlaze never allowed Mohawk to attack it even once.
• Offhand Backhand: Its weapon can bend backwards and forwards, meaning it can smack bots without even looking.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Go throws some shade at Guan as SawBlaze pins and finishes off Overhaul —
  Jamison Go: Hey buddy, go back to school, man! You need to practice driving!
• Punny Name: The machine's name is a pun on "saw blades", referencing both its cutting disc and flamethrower weapons.
• Spectacular Spinning: SawBlaze's weapon is a spinning circular saw mounted on a movable arm. It shares this distinction with Red Devil, Skorpios, and Whiplash.
• Technicolor Fire: The arm-mounted flamethrower projects brilliant green flames, in keeping with the rest of the robot's color scheme.
• Trash Talk: Go couldn't resist sending a few choice words to Charles Guan after his win against Overhaul.
• Victory Dance:
  • Spun in place and swung its saw arm back and forth after defeating Overhaul.
  • It did the same against Reality, though since Reality remained fully mobile, Reality just drove in circles around SawBlaze as it happened.
  • Played straight against Mohawk, however, but this time, it began with the saw arm, as if to bow to the audience.
• We Used to Be Friends: As mentioned in Overhaul's entries, the people behind SawBlaze used to be part of Overhaul's team but split off due to creative differences. It's only appropriate that they would be matched up against each other right at the start.

#6-Icewave

Team: Team Icewave

Driver: Marc DeVidts

Hometown: Burlingame, California

Matches (Season): Vanquish (W/KO), Yeti (W/KO), Skorpios (L/JD), HUGE (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): RotatoR (L/JD)

• The Cameo: Though Nightmare is not in the 2018 Discovery Channel competition, clips of Icewave's history tend to center around the Icewave vs. Nightmare match, downplaying the fact that Icewave lost.
• Cast from Hit Points: A bot with this much hitting power, through Newton's Third Law, is going to damage itself in the process. This became a problem during the match against RotatoR as the blade powered down after two solid hits, allowing RotatoR to use its top blade against the lightly armored engine block.
• Combat Pragmatist: Some of Icewave's bars are painted to camouflage with the BattleBox floor, making it hard to see where the blades actually end. Looking at what happened after their fight against Yeti, even DeVidts can be thrown off sometimes.
• Color-Coded Characters: A cerulean blue with accents of a bright yellow.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Shredded apart Vanquish, showing once again the fearsome power it exhibited in past years.
  • Repeated the same success against HUGE, albeit after tearing down one of their wheels first.
• Didn't Need Those Anyway!: Very much downplayed as Icewave most certainly did need the parts that ROTATOR destroyed, but the big boxy engine on top of the robot only powers the spinning bar weapon. So while destroying it pretty much ensured ROTATOR was going to win the fight, it only allowed them to do so on a judges' decision, as the damage had absolutely no impact on Icewave's ability to still drive and, consequently, avoid being knocked out (which also still allowed it to function as quite an efficient wedge).
• The Dreaded: Humiliating losses aside, this is still a bot that many builders hope never to go up against, and it has so far been proving itself once the show moved to the Discovery Channel.
• Fun with Acronyms: The "Ice" in Icewave's name stands for "internal combustion engine," as this is what powers the spinning bars.
• Glass Cannon: While extremely strong, the ICE has practically no armor whatsoever. Meaning that if a robot can get close enough (such as Rotator did), they can shut it down in a single hit.
• Kick Them While They Are Down:
  • Was about to strike Vanquish after it had already been split in two but stopped upon request from Vanquish's team.
  • Seemed to accidentally graze Yeti's tires after he was down for the count. Greg Gibson was not pleased.
• Lightning Bruiser: It looks exactly the same as it always has, but it moves a lot faster now. This was key to its decisive victory against Vanquish, as its increased speed allowed Icewave to get away from Vanquish's lifting wedge before it could actually attack. But…
  • Mighty Glacier: It still wasn’t fast enough to outrun Skorpios.
• Logical Weakness: If it gets flipped over, it's done for. The Icewave team is fully aware of that as Icewave frequently loses in that way, and their strategy is to try to prevent that from happening in the first place.
  • Like all bar spinners it has to get its bar moving before it can inflict damage, which can be a problem if the first hit isn't crippling. Skorpios exploited this by using its superior speed and raised weapon arm to lock Icewave's bar in place and shove it into arena hazards.
• Made of Plasticine: Demonstrated when ROTATOR shredded the engine housing to pieces. While the robot could still move, Icewave now had its weapon torn apart.
• My Greatest Third Chance: Icewave had become almost something of a joke when it kept getting taken out in a humiliating fashion in 2015 and 2016, but its fight against Vanquish showed just how destructive those spinning blades can be by literally tearing Vanquish in half.
• Noisy Robots: In the most literal sense, as the engine within Icewave makes it the loudest bot in this competition. There was even a special segment as Episode 2's Cold Open in the 2018 competition to demonstrate how loud it was.
  • Its introduction against Yeti also makes reference to this. "Do you believe in decibels?!"
• Off with His Head!: ROTATOR, through the fight, shredded away pieces of Icewave's engine head bit by bit. By the end, there was almost nothing left.
• Repeat Cut: About halfway through the episode that features Icewave's fight against Yeti, Icewave's attack that ripped Vanquish in half was shown three times, each from different angles.
• Spectacular Spinning: As usual, Icewave is weaponized with a rapidly spinning metal bar.

#7-Yeti

Team: Team Yeti

Driver: Greg Gibson

Hometown: Wasilla, Alaska

Matches (Season): Witch Doctor (W/KO), Icewave (L/KO), Bombshell (W/JD), Petunia (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Whiplash (L/JD)

• Attack! Attack! Attack!: This is Gibson's general approach when he brings Yeti into the arena: He always goes on the constant offensive, without any strategy beforehand, and leaves the rest to instinct and luck.
  Greg Gibson: You know, the nice thing is I am never going to have any strategy other than full forward, full offense, and everyone here knows it. They know it's gonna be coming.
  • The same goes for when he was interviewed on how he would deal with Icewave:
    Greg Gibson: I've always been the one leaning forward, hitting first. Mike Tyson said, "Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth." So, instead of trying to make a plan and avoid getting punched in the mouth, I'm gonna go punch the other guy in the mouth!
• Attack Its Weak Point: After Witch Doctor's top armor was exposed, Yeti took Witch Doctor to the Pulverizer hammers, where he could attack it from its now-exposed top side.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The namesake of this robot. Despite the Yeti being associated with cold climates, though, it's the only one of the three not said to inhabit Alaska, where this robot comes from.
• Color-Coded Characters: Cerulean blue. It shares this color with, appropriately enough, Icewave. The wedge installed to fight Icewave is a darker shade of blue, however.
• Fragile Speedster: Though Yeti is by no means defenseless, its fight against Witch Doctor had it bear only 6 pounds of armor, as opposed to the 30 pounds on Witch Doctor. Yeti can get away with that, however, due to its high acceleration and top speed (especially considering its heavy spinning drum weapon) and Gibson's skilled driving.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Had its signature arms bent by Witch Doctor. But the damage was more cosmetic than anything, and actually allowed the spinner to get in easier.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You can tell how much Yeti's team feared Icewave when, for the first time, Yeti was outfitted with defensive armor, whereas Gibson's normally about pure offense.
• Precision F-Strike: Not a lot of swearing that needs to be bleeped out in BattleBots, but Gibson had to unleash one after Icewave shredded Yeti's right tires after it was incapacitated.
  Gred Gibson: Hey! Don't be a dickhead!
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Those signature arms can be used as a wedge, to poke opponents with, to lift them up with, or as a self-righting mechanism (not that it actually needs that, as it can drive inverted...though if Deviled Egg is any indication, an invertible robot can still get stuck upside-down).
• Tempting Fate: Gibson said, shortly before Yeti's fight against Icewave, that he doesn't care what happens to Yeti, even if it's very expensive. Unfortunately, he didn't account for a Kick Them While They Are Down situation after Icewave had KOed Yeti.

#8-Son of Whyachi

Left: Son of Whyachi. Right: Nuisance Bot.

Team: Team Wyachi

Driver: Luke Ewert

Hometown: Dorchester, Wisconsin

Matches (Season): Brutus (L/KO), Lucky (W/KO), Monsoon (W/KO), End Game (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Lock-Jaw (L/JD)

• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Luke's strategy against Brutus is to just hit it from anywhere possible.
• The Band Minus the Face: SOW builder Terry Ewert has retired from combat robotics, and has passed on SOW to his son Luke.
• Cast from Hit Points: A bot with this much hitting power, through Newton's Third Law, is going to damage itself in the process. This was readily apparent in its final fight with LockJaw in which LockJaw used a large metal plate attached to its rear against Son of Whyachi's hammers. After repeated hits to the plate, the spinner gave up the ghost, causing Son of Whyachi to lose via Judge's Decision.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Whatever battle strategies Luke had, Brutus just tore them all apart and proceeded to cleanly flip Son of Whyachi over. Happily for the Ewerts, SOW's next fight was one of these in the other direction, as it knocked Lucky around the Battlebox like it was a toy for the whole fight.
• Dual Boss: Is now accompanied by a (very) small wedgebot, called a Nuisance Bot.
• Fun with Acronyms: Commonly abbreviated to "SOW."
• Genius Bruiser: Son of Whyachi is one of the hardest-hitting bots in combat robotics. Luke Ewert also manufactures high-end components and demonstrates great knowledge in how these bots work. He's also a tactician in the BattleBox, having learned his lesson against Brutus to not charge in ahead, and instead, dodge Lucky's attacks until that canopy can spin up to full speed.
• Glass Cannon: With Nightmare not in this event, Son of Whyachi is arguably the bot that fits the bill the most: The Ewert family is very good at bots that hit extremely hard, but Son of Whyachi has no defenses whatsoever outside of that spinning canopy. However, as shown in its fight against Lock-Jaw, said canopy is actually very effective at keeping bots away from hitting the actual machine, and also lets SOW be a decent pusher.
• Legacy Character: This is a completely different robot than the one that famously competed during the Comedy Central era and swept the heavyweight division. It's also a different one than the one that competed in ABC Season 2. The Ewert family no longer even has the frame for the latter. It's been sold off. Despite this, SOW was the only robot in the entire 2018 season to carry both the name and design of a robot from the Comedy Central show.
• Logical Weakness: Has no means to right itself upon getting flipped over, which is how Brutus got the better of it in less than a minute—and Brutus did so by exploiting another weakness, one common to all powerful large spinners, which is that Son of Whyachi needs time to reaccelerate that spinner: As Brutus could recover faster than Son of Whyachi, Brutus drove into Son of Whyachi again before that canopy could reach a decent speed and did so at such an angle as to turn Son of Whyachi upside-down.
• Make Sure He's Dead: Kept attacking an immobile Lucky until the knockout countdown started. Lucky kept recovering after many devastating hits, so it makes sense for Luke to never trust that Lucky will actually stay down.
• Mighty Glacier: Not that fast (way faster than its old Comedy Central incarnation though) and relies on its weapon for defense, but it is one of the hardest-hitting bots of all.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: As opposed to getting curb-stomped by Brutus, Son of Whyachi did the curb-stomping in its second match to Lucky.
• Playing with Fire: Nuisance Bot has a flamethrower.
• Punched Across the Room: Did this to Monsoon, with a devastating blow that sent the British robot across the Battlebox in a broken heap. The hit also sent SOW itself flying in the other direction with little noticeable damage (although the Monsoon team later said the Ewerts told them that the collision had broken one SOW's titanium arm hammers).
• Rhymes on a Dime: Faruq's introduction in the match against Lucky.
  Faruq: It'll bowl you over like a game of bocci, grill you up like a sizzling habachi...remember that show, Joanie Loves Chachi? It...wasn't very good. But this bot's great! It's SON OF WHYACHI!
• Sibling Rivalry: As with 2016, Team Wyachi are the only team to have entered two robots into competition. Luke Ewert is driving SOW, while his brothers Jake and Clint are operating Warrior Dragon.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Disabled End Game on the very first hit.
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses a canopy made of hammers that it spins at a high speed.
• Tough Act to Follow: Luke feels a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed considering his father's time building and driving the previous Sons of Whyachi. He looked pretty sunk when Brutus defeated it so quickly, but he was redeemed when SOW won its next three fights with decisive, brutal knockouts.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Nuisance Bot just drove off in the beginning of the fight against Brutus and never came back. Presumably, looking at the background, Brutus ran it over and disabled it in that way.

#13-Witch Doctor

Team: Team Witch Doctor

Driver: Andrea Suarez

Hometown: Miami Springs, Florida

Matches (Season): Yeti (L/KO), Blacksmith (W/JD), Ultimo Destructo (W/KO), Overhaul (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Minotaur (L/KO)

• Agony of the Feet: Got every one of its wheels torn of by Minotaur.
• Armor Is Useless: To prepare against Yeti, Witch Doctor was equipped with thicker armor than usual at the front and at the top. Though the frontal armor held up just fine, and the armor at the top was as strong as Andrea Suarez said it would be, it didn't do much good if whatever was attaching the top armor to the rest of the bot was not strong enough for attacks from Yeti.
• Color-Coded Characters: Forest green.
• Curbstomp Battle: Absolutely manhandled by Yeti.
• Dem Bones: Like with previous years, follows a skeletal motif. It can be found all over Witch Doctor, including its ribcage-like top armor, as well as the clothes of its crew.
• Exact Words: Yes, that top armor was able to withstand all of Yeti's attacks. No, that doesn't mean it would stay attached as Yeti attacked it.
• Heroic Second Wind: Blacksmith pushed it into the screws, where Witch Doctor was getting pulled away and a Ring Out looked imminent...but Witch Doctor's flapping ribcage armor allows it to dislodge itself from the screws and land back in the arena with the knockout countdown at 1.
• Put on a Bus: Shaman has been retired, it seems. It weighed 30 pounds, which is now used for Witch Doctor's thick front armor plating. Nevertheless, Shaman's name still appears on some of their decorative material.
• Rule of Three: Invoked in Faruq's introduction for Witch Doctor against Yeti:
  Faruq Tareed: Gloopity gloppity glippity glee, the Voodoo Princess is back for Number Three!
• Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Without the gaining speed part.
• Stone Wall: Witch Doctor's armored plow, ribcage armor, and downplayed spinning disk puts it in this category, even if that spinning disk is one of the faster ones in this competition, able to reach a top speed of 200 mph. Unfortunately, said armor, as was shown in its battle against Yeti, can come off a bit too easily.
• Voodoo Doll: They have one for Yeti, which is, of a snowman. It didn't work as planned.

#14-HUGE

Team: Team HUGE

Driver: Jonathan Schultz

Hometown: South Windsor, Connecticut

Matches (Season): SubZero (W/JD), Free Shipping (W/JD), Chomp (W/JD), ICEWave (L/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Bite Force (L/KO)

• Achilles' Heel: HUGE is able to handily defeat many bot types without a sweat, but at the cost of weaknesses so severe it arguably falls into Crippling Overspecialization.
  • Horizontal spinners. Prior to its bout with ICEWave, HUGE hadn't encountered a horizontal spinner. The second it did, its so-called invincible wheels were torn apart and the bot itself went soon after. To be precise, the Achilles' Heel is the spokes on the wheels, which causes them to collapse when torn through, unlike the solid disc wheels of HUGE's inspiration, Gabriel.
  • The point where the two halves of HUGE's body connect to its spinner experiences enormous amounts of stress and is a failure point that can be exploited by teams that can tank damage from HUGE's spinner. In fact, as HUGE progressed in the competition, the central rod at that point began to warp and bend, and finally snapped after a pummeling from ICEWave.
• Acrofatic: It's HUGE, but it can turn well enough to avoid getting attacked too much.
• Caps Lock: The bot's name is officially "HUGE." It shares this distinction with DUCK!, though whereas DUCK!'s capital letters are to indicate a raised voice, HUGE's capital letters are because they're, well, bigger than lower-case letters. Spelling its name in all-caps is also important, as it has a smaller counterpart simply named Huge.
• Confusion Fu: This thing is so weird-looking, and fights in such a strange manner, some of the opponents weren't sure how to deal with it.
  Jerry Clarkin (team captain of SubZero): [W]e got really messed up. We had no idea how to really fight him at first. We weren't sure what to expect.
• Crazy Enough to Work: HUGE functions a lot better in action than it sounds on paper. In particular are its plastic wheels, as plastic had been derided as a flimsy material in this competition due to Radioactive's plastic chassis getting shattered to pieces in 2015.
• Down to the Last Play: Received a narrow victory against Free Shipping. According to Schultz on Reddit, HUGE sustained more internal damage against Free Shipping than it looked...though said damage was pretty obvious on Free Shipping.
• Eye Scream: One of HUGE's eyes gets attacked in each match and causes it to droop, making the eye go from angry to sad. It was the left eye against SubZero and the right eye against Free Shipping.
• Expy:
  • HUGE was partially inspired by Gabriel from Robot Wars, and it shows.
  • On the flip side from Gabriel, HUGE has been a trendsetter at other robot combat events, having inspired other bot builders to make their own variants on HUGE's basic design, namely the plastic spoked wheels.^note BIG mistake, as it's the decision to use spoked wheels that rendered HUGE so vulnerable to Icewave- solid wheels are much more durable, although they do take up more weight.
• Funny Background Event: During its match against SubZero, look closely in the background and you can spot the occasional camera drone zipping about. This was made and flown by a third party and eventually destroyed itself by crashing into HUGE. Its footage can be seen here.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Never recovered after getting split in half by Icewave and just fell apart halfway into its fight with Bite Force.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The second bot to be bisected by ICEWave.
  • And again against Bite Force.
• Humongous Mecha: Not exactly the size of giant robots in fiction, but HUGE, true to its name, is the tallest robot in the Discovery Channel era.
• Lethal Joke Character: This is a full-body vertical spinner supported by two gigantic plastic wheels. It sounds incredibly dumb, but it was able to handily defeat SubZero because so little of it actually touches the ground (and hence a flipping bot like SubZero cannot meaningfully affect it) and because its main body is so high up that most bots cannot reach it. The plastic wheels were proven incredibly durable and flexible, able to deflect kinetic energy away from itself by twisting and bending. They can even handle sustained heat from flamethrowers without melting. HUGE also happens to be the bot that came the closest to defeating Bite Force in 2018, having the upper hand until it suddenly snapped in half all on its own.
• Logical Weakness: HUGE was based on Robot Wars competitor Gabriel, another massively tall robot that rides around on gigantic plastic wheels that hold its body up out of reach of most weapons and can absorb powerful blows rather than breaking. The difference is that Gabriel has solid wheels rather than HUGE's 6-spoked wagon wheels and is a thwackbot rather than a vertical spinner, so it can absorb phenomenal amounts of damage while still remaining functioning- its wheels aren't invulnerable to damage, they just keep functioning regardless of how torn up they are. HUGE's wheels collapsed the first time they met a horizontal spinner that could just tear through the spokes and rips entire sections out of the rims (Icewave), completely crippling it.
• Meaningful Name: True to its name, HUGE is the tallest bot in the Discovery Channel era thus far (though it is still shorter than the Comedy Central era's Mechadon and Tower of Power).
• Mechanically Unusual Class: The design of a small, narrow body between two very large wheels had been done twice before in BattleBots, in Towering Inferno and Gyrax, neither of which had much success. This design approach was soon forgotten until it was proven viable in Robot Wars with Gabriel. It's also very unusual by being one of the few robots in the competition to bounce, thanks to its flexible, bendy wheels made of high-grade plastic.
• Mighty Glacier: Looks the part and acts like it too: Not very fast, but that spinning blade carries some pretty nice power. It's not quite to the level of Tombstone or Icewave, but it was at least strong enough to tear SubZero's arm extension and weapon, as well as most of Free Shipping's exteriors, to scrap.
  • Subverted hard by ICEWave, who showed that HUGE's chassis isn't very durable if you can actually hit it.
• No-Sell: Its body is about two feet off the ground, out of reach of most bots, which are designed for short, flat designs. They can still hit the wheels, however.
• Shout-Out:
  • The introduction against SubZero spoofs the 'Wheel of Morality' gag from Animaniacs.
  • And against Free Shipping, Faruq recites some lines from Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Proud Mary," though with the usual "robotic destruction" twist to it.
• Staring Contest: Kenny and HUGE engage in one during the Cold Open of Episode 5 of the 2018 season. Kenny wins. HUGE is not pleased.

#15-WAR Hawk

Team: Western Allied Robotics

Driver: Rob Farrow

Hometown: Seattle, Washington

Matches (Season): Axe Backwards (W/KO), Brutus (L/KO), Overhaul (W/JD), Free Shipping (W/JD), Brutus and End Game (W/KO)

Matches (Post-Season): Bronco (L/KO)

• Animal Motifs: A hawk, as its name suggests. Specifically, it seems to be based on familiars of upper Pacific Coast Native American folklore.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Farrow wanted to attack Axe Backwards's wheels, as they are the only nonweaponized external parts on it. Sure enough, one of Axe Backwards's wheels came loose in one of WAR Hawk's attacks and flew off in another, guaranteeing WAR Hawk's victory.
• Combat Pragmatist: Wisely stayed back for the majority of its Last Chance Rumble with End Game and Brutus. Waiting for one bot to knock out the other. When End Game did just that to Brutus, Farrow quickly flipped End Game when its back was turned.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Can be seen in the backroom featured in "Botopsy Report," in Episode 2 on the Science Channel version, before its proper introduction later. Downplayed, however, as said proper introduction would air 2 days later.
• Fun with Acronyms: The "WAR" part of the robot's name stands for its team: Western Allied Robotics.
• Genius Bruiser: Rob Farrow has two PhD's and is a veteran roboticist. He's also quite the strategist at the BattleBox.
• Large Ham: Faruq tends to be way hammier when WAR Hawk is present than with most other bots, ending its introductions with loud cawing sounds.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Faruq's introduction in WAR Hawk's first match:
  Faruq Tareed: More magical than a warlock, shuts you out like a doorlock, walks on you like the boardwalk... all right, there's no more talk. It's WAR Hawk!
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses the now pretty common heavy spinning disk. This disk is made out of the ultra-resilient AR500 steel.
• Stone Wall: WAR Hawk took seemingly minimal damage from Axe Backwards, a robot focused on sheer damage, though Axe Backwards struck only at its armored plow. It landed some pretty brutal damage to Axe Backwards too, however, after Axe Backwards's drum was disabled.

Did not qualify for postseason

Axe Backwards

Team: KuTrox Robotics

Driver: Kurt Durjan

Hometown: Palm City, Florida

Matches (Season): WAR Hawk (L/KO), Basilisk and Deviled Egg (L/JD), Monsoon (L/KO), Ultimo Destructo (W/KO)

• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Durjan's pre-battle strategy amounts to relying entirely on the strength of Axe Backwards's weapon to damage its opponents.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Relentlessly attacked Deviled Egg until its drum stopped functioning, after which it spent the rest of the match retreating.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Though it landed a couple of hits on WAR Hawk, it soon found itself unable to break through WAR Hawk's frontal shield and wound up disabling its own weapon, allowing WAR Hawk to have its way with Axe Backwards—WAR Hawk first removed one of its wheels, then it broke off one of Axe Backwards's axes.
• Explosive Overclocking: Like most full body spinners, it can be its own worst enemy. As displayed with its tire came off after one hit on War Hawk.
• Expy: To the Barber-Ous series of robots from Robot Wars, the only other known full-body drum spinner ever made.
• Graceful Loser: Once the referee counted Axe Backwards out for a knockout against WAR Hawk, Durjan smiled and nodded, in a "We tried our best" kind of way.
• In the Back: Began the fight against Basilisk and Deviled Egg not moving until Deviled Egg and Basilisk, fighting each other, both had their backs turned to Axe Backwards, upon which Axe Backwards successfully hit them both from behind. The hit to Basilisk, albeit indirectly via sending Deviled Egg tumbling over it, seems to have prevented Basilisk from moving properly for the rest of the match.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Due to its low speed and focus on high damage, it cannot really control where it can hit its opponents. If the opponent has armor tough enough to deal with its blows, Axe Backwards has no choice but to strike that armor.
  • Its wheels are quite vulnerable compared to the main body. Rob Farrow, captain of WAR Hawk's team, mentioned as such, and sure enough, one of Axe Backwards's wheels came loose very early into the battle and then eventually came off completely, leaving Axe Backwards mostly helpless.
  • Because it was built to fight solely with its drum, if that drum ever stops spinning, there is little Axe Backwards can do except run away.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Axe Backwards is the only BattleBots entry that's a full-body drum. (However, this design has had precedent in Robot Wars in the Barber-Ous series of robots.)
• Meaningful Name: Axe Backwards began its match against WAR Hawk with its axes behind itself. Averted in its second match, however.
• Mighty Glacier: The spinning drum and the mechanisms used to make it spin weigh a collective 110 pounds, almost half of the bot's weight. Between it, its large wheels, and its two pickaxes, this leaves it relatively lacking in the motor used to move it, which it makes up for by its emphasis on high damage. This is best seen when it took on Deviled Egg, repeatedly flinging Deviled Egg high into the air and peeling off its outer rim.
• Non-Indicative Name: The axes used against WAR Hawk were removed when fighting Basilisk and Deviled Egg.
• Punny Name: A play on the term "ass backwards", which almost certainly couldn't be used by itself as a name.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Despite its slow speed moving around, it can spin in place surprisingly quickly. Axe Backwards has a tendency to do this when its drum stops working, doing it against WAR Hawk to guard itself from further damage and then doing it against Deviled Egg to avoid losing the damage points it gained earlier (which ultimately failed when Deviled Egg went after Basilisk instead). Interestingly, it could continue to do this even after one of its wheels came off.
• Victory Dance: Did one in the rumble against Basilisk and Deviled Egg despite it losing.

Bale Spear

Team: Forge & Farm Combat Robotics

Driver: Earl Pancoast III

Hometown: Salem, New Jersey

Matches (Season): Basilisk and Double Dutch (with Parallax) (L/JD), Valkyrie and Predator (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Petunia and Predator (with Double Dutch) (L/JD)

• Awesome, but Impractical: Most of Bale Spear's configurations have its front wheels larger than its back, causing the spike to point upward. It's not too effective against most of the other bots in this competition, which are built as low to the ground as possible. In addition, that spike is quite sharp and would likely maim a human, but it won't do much against the military-grade armor of the bots it would be fighting.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Was on the receiving end of Valkyrie's relentless spinning disc the whole match.
• Determinator:
  • In the USA vs. The World match, Bale Spear lost a tire very early on, but it continued to remain operational until roughly one minute remaining on the clock.
  • Bale Spear continued to try to attack Valkyrie even as Valkyrie disabled its wheels, one by one, until it had none left. Even after all of its wheels were gone, the axles are still visibly madly spinning through the whole knockout countdown.
• Down on the Farm: This bot is themed on farming tools and implements, right down to its somewhat sloppily written name on the top. Certainly a rare theme in BattleBots.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Appeared in a promotion for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ahead of its first normal televised match. For Bale Spear, however, it would get that televised match 5 days later.
• Fighting Clown: Pancoast appears to be one of the least serious competitors in the Discovery Channel era (and that's saying something considering he is in the same competition as Poor Life Choices). For the three-way rumble against Valkyrie and Predator, the signature spear was swapped out for a small metal fist for no apparent reason other than that it's weird.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Inverted. Bale Spear has two brightly lit taillights and no headlights.
• Joke Character: Seems to be largely ineffective in the BattleBox. This might have been intentional to an extent.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: In the USA vs. The World match, Bale Spear shoved Predator into the Pulverizer corner when Predator stopped moving. Turns out it wasn't completely dead though, as it started moving again and escaped.
• Large Ham: Pancoast seems to like enthusiastically yelling into the camera, no matter how badly the match is going for Bale Spear.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Bale Spear has some of the most prominently exposed tires in the whole competition. Despite this image, its default look actually has wagon wheels for front tires, which come off very easily. Valkyrie took off all four of Bale Spear's tires, akin to Bronco in 2016 when it fought Minotaur. A rubber tire also fell off all on its own when Predator drove beneath it and dislodged it. Bale Spear has lost at least one tire in every match it's been in, to the point that it looks more like a Running Gag.
  • The spear is apparently unable to hit very short bots, despite it looking like it can be pointed down. Not once was Bale Spear actually able to hit Valkyrie with the spear...though it was replaced with a metal fist. Because it has no wedges either, if Bale Spear cannot use its spear, it has no choice but to ram, and ram it did when fighting Valkyrie.
  • Bale Spear also has a very high ground clearance (though not to the ridiculous extent of HUGE), making it vulnerable to any bot with a wedge.
• Shout-Out:
  • Bale Spear vaguely resembles a Radio Flyer wagon, adopting the wagons' signature shiny rubber wheels (when new) with white rims and the red sides.
  • In its tag-team fight with Double Dutch and against Petunia and Predator, Faruq sings a parody of the nursery rhyme "The Farmer in the Dell" called "The Farmer in the Hell."
  • In its tag-team fight with Parallax and against Basilisk and Double Dutch, Faruq instead sings a parody of "Old MacDonald."
• Spanner in the Works: Quite a literal example of this trope, Double Dutch's initial attack on Bale Spear, in the match with Basilisk and Parallax, caused one of Bale Spear's tires to come off—but it got stuck between Double Dutch's body and its top bar, preventing it from spinning.
• Stone Wall: Say what you want about Bale Spear's lack of ability to even harm Valkyrie short of scratching its paint job, but despite the brutal beatdown Valkyrie gave to it, Bale Spear's internal components didn't exhibit even take an iota of damage.
• Wimp Fight: The match between Bale Spear, Basilisk, Double Dutch, and Parallax wound up with none of their weapons working after some time, and all of them were slow, causing the match to soon turn into ineffectual pushing and shoving.

Basilisk

Team: MBS Robotics

Driver: Lucas Sloan

Hometown: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Matches (Season): Bale Spear and Parallax (with Double Dutch) (W/JD), Deviled Egg and Axe Backwards (L/JD)

Matches (Exhibition): Chomp (W/KO)

• Animal Motif: Based simultaneously both on its namesake mythological creature and a snake.
• Color-Coded Characters: Black with neon green highlights. It shares this color scheme with SawBlaze.
• Crazy-Prepared: They brought their own high-end 3-D printer in case they run out of any extra parts (provided a 3-D printer will be useful for that).
• Determinator: Against Deviled Egg and Axe Backwards, Basilisk was constantly losing power, only to regain it again. Because it never lost power or connection long enough to be fully counted out, Basilisk was never actually KOed in the 2018 competition.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Basilisk is not only visible in a couple of shots at the introduction to "The Fight Card" segment on the Science Channel's airing of Episode 3, but the Basilisk team was interviewed for it too, ahead of their first match and actual introduction. It also appeared in a promo for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom before that first (normal) televised match too.
• Graceful Loser: Somehow embodies this trope mid-match. Sloan was cheerfully encouraging Deviled Egg to attack Basilisk while Basilisk couldn't move, then hollered in joy as Deviled Egg's attacks caused a shower of sparks.
• Hurricane of Puns: Basilisk gets its own against Chomp. The writer was thinking about Basilisk's shape rather than its theme.
  Faruq: It's the pyramid of pain that'll make you want to call your mummy. See it, and you'll say, "Pharaoh no!" It's Basilisk!
• Joke Character: Has a lot of trouble even moving around due to unknown technical issues. Commentator Chris Rose even compared Basilisk to Glass Joe from Punch-Out!! between its ineffectiveness and its uncanny ability to get back up every time it goes down.
• Mighty Glacier: One of the slowest-moving bots in the 2018 competition when it's not stopped in place. Presumably, it has strengths in other fields, but they've yet to be exhibited.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: Faruq played this up during its introduction in its fight against Deviled Egg and Axe Backwards.
  Faruq: This bot is about to serve a full stack of slamcakes and a side of Canadian breakon! It's going to kill you...with kindness! It's Canadian, eh? It's BASILISK!
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Basilisk scored a victory against Chomp by being barely functional and with no weapon power while Chomp was completely nonfunctional. Sloan looked disappointed as Chomp was being counted out and unsuccessfully tried to restore functionality to Chomp. When the referee told Sloan that he won, Sloan shook his head in frustration.
• Playing with Fire: Has a flamethrower, which seems to be mounted to the flipping arm.
• Put on a Bus: Afterbyte does not return alongside Basilisk this time around.
• Spanner in the Works: Allowed Deviled Egg to gain the damage points needed to win the three-way match between Basilisk, Deviled Egg, and Axe Backwards, likely inadvertently. Basilisk's intermittent movement caused it to spend much of its time immobile without actually getting counted out, which Deviled Egg took advantage of by attacking it when it couldn't move, then retreating when it could. Deviled Egg was getting curb-stomped by Axe Backwards for much of the rumble, but once Axe Backwards's drum stopped working, Deviled Egg went to town on Basilisk, stealing the damage, aggression, and control points away from Axe Backwards for the win.
• Wimp Fight: The match between Bale Spear, Basilisk, Double Dutch, and Parallax wound up with none of their weapons working after some time, and all of them were slow, causing the match to soon turn into ineffectual pushing and shoving.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing:
  • Averted twice in the doubles match against Bale Spear and Parallax. Basilisk lost power early on, but it was able to start moving again not long afterward and never lost power for the remainder of the match. Also averted in that it looked like it would contribute nothing, then flipped Parallax over late into the match to severely inhibit its movements.
  • Happened again in the match against Chomp in which Chomp flipped itself over by swinging its hammer as usual, but this time, its hammer was damaged and it was unable to get up. Sloan's actions indicate he does not like winning in this way.

Battle Royale with Cheese

Left: Battle Royale with Cheese. Right: Shorter Pounder

Team: Poor Life Choices

Driver: Miles Pekala

Hometown: Oakland, California

Matches (Season): Tantrum (L/JD), HyperShock (L/KO)

• Big "NO!": Two of the Poor Life Choices team members yelled this in unison after Tantrum flipped Battle Royale with Cheese over at the beginning.
• Curbstomp Battle:
  • Couldn't get its blade revved up, leaving it a juicy target for Tantrum to show around the box.
  • Fared no better against Hypershock, nearly getting torn in half when its weapon yet again failed to get going.
• Dual Boss: In addition to the main unit, there is a second, smaller unit. It shares this two-bot multibot trait with Gemini, though unlike Gemini, the two units are very different in size, with one clear "leader" and the other a subordinate.
• Edible Bludgeon: Invoked. The spinning weapons deal blunt damage and are painted to look like either a strip of bacon or a pickle slice, depending on which one has been installed.
• Edible Theme Naming: The whole team is based on fast food, with both bots being made to look like cheeseburgers (even having a bacon-themed spinning blade!). Even the team's attire carries on this theme.
• Fighting Clown: Just look at that thing—it's a pair of large robot cheeseburgers. However, Battle Royale with Cheese is, functionally, a heavy bar spinner,^note That spinning bar painted like a strip of bacon can be swapped out for a spinning disk painted like a gherkin slice meaning it packs a wallop. That slanted bar made to look like a toothpick is also a self-righting device.
• Graceful Loser: Exaggerated. This team was even happier than Tantrum's team, screaming in joy and jumping up to hug each other, even though they lost. It's because they managed to bring a match to a judges' decision rather than get knocked out.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: A robot cheeseburger with spinning metal bacon went up against a robot armed with a spatula, a carving fork, and tongs. That alone makes it this trope.
• I Am Not Shazam: No, the minibot is not "Cheese" as one might think. It's "Shorter Pounder".
• Joke Character: Team Poor Life Choices definitely played up the goofy nature of their robot, up to and including the ridiculous food costumes they wore to their fights. Their tone was best summed up by Miles Pekala himself before their fight with Tantrum: "I can't believe a brought a hamburger to Battlebots! I mean, what the hell am I doing?!" Note that this was supposed to be when he'd tell the viewers his strategy, and instead he says that.
• Large Ham: The entire team is prone to bursts of excited and energetic screaming at even minor things when Battle Royale with Cheese is out there fighting, let alone the most ridiculous costumes ever worn among BattleBots teams. Pekala, in particular, loves to joke mid-match even when he's pretty far on the losing side.
• Lethal Joke Character: According to Pekala on Reddit, that spinning strip of bacon could reach speeds up to about 360 miles per hour (580 kilometers per hour), over twice that of Gigabyte. The team had to tone it down in order to safely compete in the BattleBox, but it seems they turned it down much too low when they fought Tantrum and HyperShock.
• Logical Weakness: Battle Royale with Cheese is the bar spinner in this competition whose weapon is the furthest off the ground. Even if that bacon could spin at full power, it was barely close enough to the ground to hit Tantrum. Battle Royale with Cheese is unable to fight any bots shorter than Tantrum, which Pekala admits would likely be the bot's worst matchup. He also believes Battle Royale with Cheese will have a rough time against bots armored at the top, rather than the usual bottom armor (as is seen on entries like Chomp and Blacksmith).
• Overly Long Name: "Battle Royale with Cheese" is already a bit of a mouthful, but factor in the minibot and it becomes ludicrous as "Battle Royale with Cheese and Shorter Pounder".
• Power Limiter: Battle Royale with Cheese has a torque limiter inside of it to prevent it from spinning its bacon to speeds unsafe for the spectators, and Poor Life Choices was required by the officials to set it at a lower speed. Unfortunately, they accidentally set it much too low, which is why the bacon struggled to function during Battle Royale with Cheese's fight against Tantrum. It seems they couldn't get that worked out when facing HyperShock either, and the bot was retired after that.
• Playing with Fire: Shorter Pounder has a flamethrower built in.
• Shout-Out:
  • To the subject of the famous Seinfeldian Conversation between Vince and Jules at the start of Pulp Fiction.
  • Faruq's introduction briefly mentions the Big Mac, likely a reference to the McDonald's Original Character, Mac Attack, which appeared in a 2002 set of Battlebots Happy Meal toys and whose concept Battle Royale with Cheese is very similar to.
• Spectacular Spinning: By default, it has a spinning metal bar painted to look like a strip of bacon. It can also be swapped out for a spinning disk painted to look like a gherkin pickle slice.
• Stone Wall: Even if that bacon couldn't get spinning against Tantrum, that armor held up incredibly well, showing no signs of damage other than scratches when the 3 minutes had run out. Averted against HyperShock though, which mangled Battle Royale with Cheese's top bun into an unrecognizable shape.
• Tyop on the Cover: The BattleBots Fight Card for Episode 4 omits the "E" in "Royale."

Blacksmith

Team: Half Fast Astronaut

Driver: Al Kindle

Hometown: Edison, New Jersey

Matches (Season): Bite Force (L/JD), The Four Horsemen (W/KO), Witch Doctor (L/JD), Minotaur (L/JD)

• Boring, but Practical: That flaming hammer is anything but boring, but Kindle used only the front wedge to fight The Four Horsemen during the first 60 seconds of the match, the strategy being to inflict enough damage through ramming and the hammer when when they're weakened, and also to avoid getting the hammer stuck or damaged on Famine and Pestilence's spinning bars.
• Born Unlucky: Maintains its history of getting early matchups against opponents who are either The Dreaded or have had a long history of wins—this time, it had to begin its Discovery Channel career against 2015 champion Bite Force. It still put up a fight though.
• Determinator: As always, it took a hell of a beating from Bite Force but it just kept going. It was only immobilised at the end when it got stacked on the side of the arena, and it was still too late for it to be counted out.
• Meaningful Name: "Blacksmith" is straightforward enough, but a bot with a hammer and flames has a team captain whose last name is "Kindle."
• Not the Intended Use: The wedge in front of Blacksmith is mainly there for protection and to get underneath opponents. It was used, instead, as Blacksmith's primary means of attacking The Four Horsemen during the first minute of that fight.
• Playing with Fire: Fire comes out of the hammer head at all times. Whether this improves Blacksmith's potential is debatable.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: Though it's uncertain what has been improved about Blacksmith, or if it's just Al Kindle's driving, after very narrowly avoiding losing to Gemini in the previous BattleBots event, the Blacksmith of 2018 is much better prepared to fight multibots than before.
• Retraux: A minor case, through the usage of a Gothic-style font for the Blacksmith logo.
• Ring Out: Bite Force pinned Blacksmith up against the screws during the final moments of that match. It was too late to actually get knocked out, however.
• Stone Wall: Bite Force's attacks, which tore HyperShock to pieces, did next to nothing against Blacksmith. Blacksmith also used its great defense to shrug off every attack from The Four Horsemen and to shove them around the BattleBox.
• Technician vs. Performer: In its debut match against Bite Force, Blacksmith is decidedly the performer. The flames on the hammer's head look intimidating and put on a good show, but not only will it rarely actually contact the opponents over them, they reduce the weight of the hammer by having to create a path for the flames to go, as well as devote some of the bot's weight to fuel.

Brutus

Team: Team Brutus

Driver: Adam Bercu

Hometown: Somerville, Massachusetts

Matches (Season): Red Devil (L/KO), Son of Whyachi (W/KO), WAR Hawk (W/KO), Gigabyte (L/KO), End Game and WAR Hawk (L/KO)

• Armor Is Useless:
  • Brutus was equipped with 100 pounds of armor to deal with Red Devil. Unfortunately for them, it was all for naught when it quickly encountered issues with its motor and couldn't actually attack Red Devil.
  • Averted in the fight against Son of Whyachi, where that seemingly unbreakable armor was exactly what allowed Brutus to completely overwhelm Son of Whyachi.
• Bling of War: Has a color motif of a muted gold. This makes it look gaudy, but that's likely the point considering it had a pair of guns held gangster style in 2016.
• Cherry Tapping: Didn't even need to use its spinning disk to defeat Son of Whyachi. It used only its wedge.
• Color-Coded Characters: A dark gold.
• Explosive Overclocking: Burnt out its motor getting its spinner up to speed, handing Red Devil an easy win.
• Funny Background Event: Pay close attention to the audience in its match against Red Devil, and you'll find someone holding up a banner in support of Kraken for some reason.
• Glass Cannon: Its defenses are nothing to sneeze at, but that weapon seems to stop working after only a short time. This means Brutus must inflict a knockout before that happens. Brutus is quite fast and with very good handling, however, so it can still put up a fight with its wedge after its drum has stopped spinning.
• Gratuitous Latin: Carries a Roman theme in its decorations, complete with U's that look like V's, due to the robot being named after the man who murdered Julius Caesar.
• Irony: Brutus was able to defeat Lock-Jaw in 2016 because Lock-Jaw's weapon was considered ineffective (by the rules, at least). In 2018, it's pitted against Red Devil, and it's Brutus's weapon that gives out, allowing Red Devil to have its way with it.
• Stone Wall: Once the weapon stops working on Brutus, it becomes this trope instead, relying on its very sturdy titanium armor to outlast opponents even without a working weapon. It even managed to take a hit from the powerful Son of Whyachi with hardly a scratch.
• Shout-Out: The commentators couldn't resist making the pun of "Oh-two, Bruté?" for the possible loss of Brutus against Son of Whyachi. Brutus managed to defeat Son of Whyachi quite handily though.
• Tear Off Your Face: Ended its season by getting its wedge ripped off by End Game in the last chance rumble.

Captain Shrederator

Team: Team LOGICOM

Driver: Nicholas Nave

Hometown: Ormond Beach, Florida

Matches (Season): End Game (L/KO), Subzero (L/KO), Petunia (L/KO)

• The Band Minus the Face: Brian Nave was unable to attend this competition. In his place at the helm is his son Nicholas. This happened again in its battle against Petunia, when Nicholas left to attend a gaming convention and he was replaced by team mechanic Joe Johnson, who had never driven a robot in competition before.
• Captain Patriotic: As always, an America-themed robot with "Captain" in its name.
• Cast from Hit Points: Each hit Captain Shrederator does will damage itself, as is universal among full-body spinners. The bot was able to take this self-inflicted damage much better against SubZero than against End Game, however.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Stood no chance against End Game. Also got creamed by Petunia, owing in part to an inexperienced replacement driver being behind the controls.
• Face Palm: Nicholas did one when he got his second loss, against SubZero.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Nicholas knew what SubZero would be up to, so he had Captain Shrederator move evasively to ensure the spinning shell could reach full speed, or at least close to it, before going in to attack.
• Glass Cannon: As it always has been: It can tear opponents a new one, but if they manage to withstand more than a few hits, Shrederator's motor that spins its chassis will give out, leaving it helpless. It was then averted in the match against SubZero as it attacked SubZero again and again without the spinning chassis ever losing power.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Was flipped onto the screws by End Game, angled such that it couldn't move under its own power.
• Logical Weakness: Captain Shrederator's top part is completely flat, making it vulnerable to getting flipped over. End Game was able to deliver an attack that flipped Shrederator over, though it was lodged onto the screws too, so there was nothing it could've done.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Delivered a series of blows to SubZero without rendering its spinning shell nonfunctional, as is a common problem with full-body spinners. Unfortunately, it suddenly was unable to move about the arena, allowing SubZero to win by knockout.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: Captain Shrederator showed incredible durability in the motors keeping its chassis spinning in the fight against SubZero. It never struggled to reaccelerate, and SubZero was ultimately unable to cut power to it. SubZero DID manage to cut power to its mobility, however.
• Shout-Out:
  • Flatter than ever, and resembles Captain America's shield even more so in the process. Then it got even flatter between its first match and the second.
  • Faruq begins his introduction for Captain Shrederator against End Game with Superman's famous "It's a bird! It's a plane!" statement.
• Took a Level in Badass: After it got curb-stomed by End Game, Nicholas looked to see what went wrong and tried to fix whatever he could. By the time Captain Shrederator fought SubZero it became much more resilient and with much faster acceleration for its speinning shell. It wound up all for naught though, as Shrederator encountered another, unknown technical problem that rendered it immobile against SubZero.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Or painted on the chassis, in this case.

Chomp

Team: The Machine Corps

Driver: Zoe Stephenson

Hometown: Seattle, Washington

Matches (Season): Warrior Dragon (L/JD), Overhaul (L/JD), HUGE (L/JD), Warhead (L/JD)

Matches (Exhibiton): Kraken (W/KO), Basilisk (L/KO)

• Animal Motifs: Though it isn't obvious, Chomp is themed on a large theropod, most likely the Tyrannosaurus rex.
• Artifact Title: Chomp was originally a clampbot. It was changed to a hammerbot without changing its name.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Chomp has a computer-guided system that allows the hammer to pound down on wherever the opposing robot is weakest.
• Audience Participation: Chomp's team invited a member of the audience down to join their team and control a few things for their match against Warrior Dragon.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Chomp is falling into this. It's undeniably the highest-tech bot in the current series, with AI-assisted controls, automatic weak-point targeting, and an automated self-righting system, but its long list of weaknesses listed below have so far denied it a win.
  • Chomp's powerful hammer also turned out to be this, as they put up their best fight once they dialed back the hammer's power so the bot wasn't constantly knocking itself over.
• Butt-Monkey: The absolute punching bag of the season, losing every bout it fought in.
• The Cameo/Funny Background Event/Self-Deprecating Humor: During Episode 8's Cold Open in which Chris Rose talks about Will Bales's driving, an overturned Chomp is visible inside the safety testing area.
• Determinator: As out-of-control as it looks, and as many matches that it lost, no one actually succeeded at knocking out Chomp in 2018, at least until its final match against Basilisk, and that was because the hammer was jammed, preventing it from firing and righting the robot, rather than any damage that Basilisk did.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Typically the master of averting this trope, the spiked hammer finally gave out in the match against Basilisk, rendering it knocked out for the only time in the 2018 competition.
• Hurricane of Puns:
  • For some reason, Faruq was given a series of puns related to European and South American ballroom dance for Chomp's introduction in its match against Overhaul.
  Faruq: Battling this bot is no waltz in the park. It takes chew to tango, and this bot's about to cha-cha-chomp all over you. Let's get ready to rhumba! It's CHOMP!
  • Happened again in the match against Basilisk, only this time it pertained to the equally random theme of the US Supreme Court.
  Faruq: If this bot were a judge, it would be called Tooth Bader Ginsburg. Order in the BattleBox—the mean, green, robot supreme...Chomp!
• Ironic Name: Chomp vs. Kraken: Chomp was doing the cracking, and Kraken was doing the chomping.
• Kick Them While They Are Down:Chomp continued to roast Kraken and swing the hammer at it as Kraken was unable to move and getting counted out.
• Kill It with Fire: In contrast to the other matches where Chomp's flamethrower was used sparingly (see Logical Weakness and Playing with Fire below), the thing was active the entire match against Basilisk whenever it was upright.
• Lethal Joke Character: When you see Chomp in action, it tosses itself around any time it swings its hammer, sometimes tipping itself onto its side, due to the top-heavy design and the sheer force of that swing. However, there is a reason why Chomp got a complete changeover from 2015 to 2016 but has continued mostly unchanged into the 2018 competition: Somehow, it works.
• Logical Weakness:
  • As Chomp is more controlled by an AI than it did last time, this actually makes Chomp more predictable in its movements. Clint Ewert saw the flaws in Chomp's AI-controlled movements and used Warrior Dragon to pick Chomp apart. Charles Guan, of Overhaul, then took advantage of the AI in the same way, exploiting its inability to learn from mistakes. HUGE also used a minibot to cause Chomp's automatic targeting system to misfire repeatedly.
  • Chomp's unusual shape gives it a high center of gravity. As it uses a vertical swinging weapon, this means Chomp will frequently tip over, especially as they still couldn't work out how to anchor Chomp to the ground with its electromagnets when swinging its hammer. Additionally any wedge-using bot, or even just a much shorter bot, can often tip Chomp just by running into its side. Clint Ewert says as much regarding Chomp's tendency to fall:
    Clint Ewert: I think Chomp's biggest weakness is its center of gravity. That's where I gotta control the matches, get it on its side and then hopefully chew at the bottom with the ring spinner.
  • Less obviously, the flamethrower is operated manually and by someone other than Stephenson (who handles manual controls for Chomp's movement and hammer). This setup requires a great deal of coordination, one that they haven't quite mastered considering Stephenson was desperately trying to get her teammate to activate the flamethrower toward the end of the fight against Overhaul.
    Zoe Stephenson: Flames! Flames! Flames! Flames! Flames! Fire! Fire! Fire! Flamethrower! (Chomp's flamethrower is activated.)
  • Chomp's weapon arms are extremely vulnerable if a swing fails to connect, which can result in the weapon getting bent or broken very easily. Warhead capitalized on this in a different way by grabbing the weapon and dragging Chomp around the arena by it. Kraken did the same and controlled the pace of the fight.
• Mighty Glacier: Not very fast, but opponents know not to underestimate Chomp because its pecking is so precise, even just one good hit can end them. The AI also seems to need about a second to move from one task to another, making the AI-controlled Chomp one of the slowest attackers in BattleBots. It's also one of the most durable bots, having never lost a match to a knockout or malfunction. Every match they were in went to the judges.
• Missing Secret: Chomp has a QR code on its top. Scanning it doesn't seem to yield anything related to Chomp. More likely, this is a tool for the team rather than for use by the general public.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • When Warrior Dragon's minibot Meddler drove underneath Chomp to prevent its wheels from touching the ground, Chomp's hammer was switched to a manual override, and they quickly swung Chomp's hammer to allow Newton's Third Law to throw Chomp out of Meddler's control.
  • Kraken was able to pin Chomp to the Screws early on. Chomp used its hammer to propel itself out of danger.
• Playing with Fire: Chomp now has a built-in flamethrower. The camera looks dangerously close to it.
• Put on a Bus: Was slated to compete in Discovery Channel Season 2, but dropped out at the last minute due to Zoe's pregnancy.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: Attempted. Stephenson looked for flaws in the AI that gave it so many problems against Warrior Dragon and tested them out against Overhaul. However, Overhaul proved much too fast for the AI to react properly to, and it was only able to damage Overhaul once its movements slowed considerably during the final moments of that fight.
  • Done much more successfully in its fight against Warhead. By dialing down the power of the hammer swing, Chomp was able to keep itself upright most of the fight and landed more hits than its previous three fights combined, making a solid effort and putting forth its best showing of the season. Unfortunately, the dinosaur head configuration Warhead took into the fight — augmented with strips of thick rubber padding from old tyres — was basically designed to absorb overhead blows with no damage, meaning Chomp had finally gotten into form against an opponent who was effectively optimised to defeat them.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Chomp is unusually tall and very oddly shaped, which causes it to tip over on its side a lot. However, Chomp's shape renders it unable to be captured by grappling and crushing bots for very long. It performed noticeably better against Overhaul, Warhead, and Kraken, and even winning against Kraken.
• Took a Level in Badass: Despite it looking much the same, Chomp has a more complex AI than it did two years prior. As long as nothing goes wrong, it should now be able to detect when it's tipped over, then self-right, and it can also steer itself to keep at optimal range for its hammer. Stephenson calls the latter "Keep Your Distance."
• Two Girls to a Team: Though there are more than two female team captain in this competition, Chomp is one of only two bots of these 55 to be referred to as female (the other being Valkyrie).
• Weapon Specialization: Has stuck with the pointed hammer it used in 2016.

Deviled Egg

Team: Recoil Robotics

Driver: Zak Hassanein

Hometown: Vallejo, California

Matches (Season): Kraken and Sharkoprion (L/KO), Axe Backwards and Basilisk (W/JD)

• Attack Its Weak Point/Counter-Attack: At one point, Hassanein waited for Basilisk's flipping arm to come up, then drove Deviled Egg into the gap created, allowing Deviled Egg to attack Basilisk's internal parts.
• Born Unlucky: It was designed to be able to move while inverted. However, a solid hit from Sharkoprion bent the top part of its frame in such a way as to prevent that from happening.
• Color-Coded Characters: A faded goldenrod, a similar color as a cooked egg yolk.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Got flipped over in its debut match and taken out of the fight due to that.
• Hurricane of Puns: Faruq dished out a series of egg-related puns for its introduction in its initial match.
  Faruq: Omelet you finish, but this robot will leave you shell-shocked, and that's no yolk. It's DEVILED EGG!
  • He launched into another string of egg-related puns for Deviled Egg's second match.
    Faruq: It's time to say "fri-tata" to your bot. You're about to get egg-sterminated. It's DEVILED EGG!
• Irony: In a three-way rumble against Kraken and Sharkoprion, two bots that don't seem to have a way to right themselves, it's the only one that DOES wind up upside-down and cannot move.
• Logical Weakness: Deviled Egg is unbalanced in its weight distribution because of that 70-pound spinning drum at the front. This causes Deviled Egg to frequently tip itself over from recoil, though it has yet to actually flip itself upside-down. Its cylindrical shape, combined with the gyroscopic effects from the drum, also cause it to wobble around like a coin each time it loses balance, costing it a few valuable seconds of movement each time.
• Mighty Glacier: It cannot move very fast, nor are its defenses that great, but that spinning drum is capable of delivering devastating blows. The bot moves even slower than Axe Backwards, and by a large margin.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Kraken and Sharkoprion immediately take each other on, with Deviled Egg keeping its distance (presumably to attempt to win via Divide and Conquer, which DUCK! did successfully). Deviled Egg then struck one of Kraken's wheels and shredded it, drastically hindering Kraken's mobility and allowing... Sharkoprion to win.
  • Deviled Egg then became the recipient of this trope in its second match: At first, Axe Backwards was dominating the fight against it. However, when Basilisk was discovered to have driving issues, Deviled Egg started attacking a defenseless Basilisk when Axe Backwards was not around, allowing it to score enough points with the judges to take the win away from Axe Backwards.
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses a drum spinner, much like Minotaur's. It doesn't spin as fast, but it's quite heavy, taking up 70 pounds of the bot (or almost a quarter of its weight). That so much of its weight has been concentrated on its front causes Deviled Egg to lose balance every time it hits something. See Logical Weakness below.
• Steampunk: The overall motif of the robot. It has gold painting, engravings, and decals that make the robot look like something out of Dishonored. Even the team has a steampunk theme with what appears to be a Tin-Can Robot (in the traditional sense) among them.

Double Dutch

Team: Iron Lungfish Robotics

Driver: Kevin Lung

Hometown: Wadsworth, Illinois

Matches (Season): Bale Spear and Parallax (with Basilisk) (W/JD), Gamma 9 (W/KO) Gigabyte (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Petunia and Predator (with Bale Spear) (L/JD)

• 10-Minute Retirement: Before Double Dutch even entered the BattleBox. Lung submitted Double Dutch for ABC Season 2 but was rejected and said he wouldn't apply for future BattleBots competitions...until he tried for the next one (that is, this one) and got in.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Several seconds into the match against Gamma 9, Double Dutch's top bar spun off. Double Dutch's operator responded by keeping distance from Gamma 9. It didn't work as Gamma 9 stayed on its tail the whole time, but Double Dutch eventually won the fight anyway.
• Cast from Hit Points: Not the main body like with most other hard-hitting spinners, but the spinning bars themselves don't last long in battle. This is due to the parts holding the bars to the body being somewhat weak, causing the bars to come loose easily.
• Color-Coded Characters: A deep red with black.
• Dual Wielding: Using two spinning bars in opposite directions.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Appeared in a promotion for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ahead of its first normal televised match.
• Glass Cannon: Near untouchable when a match begins due to its very fast spinning bars, which are the same materials and construction as Tombstone's, but they are disabled in short order against bots with tough armor, like Predator and Petunia. It shares this trait with Mecha Rampage, who have similar shapes and weak points.
• Logical Weakness: Double Dutch, due to its design, is completely dependent on dealing damage with its spinning bars. If the bars ever stop working or are removed from the body, Double Dutch becomes an underpowered, awkwardly-shaped push-bot. This also means Double Dutch has a hard counter in defensive bots that can break its weapons.
• Meaningful Name: Double Dutch is named after double dutch jump roping, in which two jump ropes are spun in opposite directions, just like Double Dutch's two counter-rotating spinning bars.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted with Double Jeopardy.
• Shout-Out: Faruq makes reference to Muhammad Ali's "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" quote in his introduction to Double Dutch against Gamma 9:
  Faruq Tareed: It floats like two butterflies and stings like two bees! Its dual attacks will have you begging "Please." It's Double Dutch!
• Spanner in the Works: Became the victim of one when Bale Spear was an opponent. Double Dutch's attack on Bale Spear caused a rubber tire to come loose, but it jammed itself onto Double Dutch's top bar, preventing it from spinning.
• Spectacular Spinning: Its counter-rotating bars are its weapon.
• Victory by Endurance: Along with Double Dutch, it won the match against Bale Spear and Parallax by outlasting them. In part, this was due to Basilisk flipping Parallax upside-down.
• Wimp Fight:
  • The match between Bale Spear, Basilisk, Double Dutch, and Parallax wound up with none of their weapons working after some time, and all of them were slow, causing the match to soon turn into ineffectual pushing and shoving.
  • The initial collisions between Double Dutch and Gamma 9 detached Double Dutch's top spinning bar and broke Gamma 9's pincer and its left wedge. Double Dutch's bottom spinning bar would break off later, leaving every weapon disabled. Both bots then encountered mobility issues, causing them both to awkwardly roam about the BattleBox, with Gamma 9 eventually ceasing movement altogether.

Double Jeopardy

Team: Team Double Trouble

Driver: Evan Woolley

Hometown: Irvine, California

Matches (Season): Gamma 9 and The Four Horsemen (L/JD), Mecha Rampage (L/KO)

• Awesome, but Impractical: They said an effective and practical projectile weapon on a combat robot couldn't be done. As Double Jeopardy proved, they were right.
• Color-Coded Characters: Scarlet red.
• Desperation Attack: In its first match, it fired its cannon once it was pinned against the screws by Gamma 9 and it had no other options.
• Fighting Clown: The Woolley twins said that Double Jeopardy wasn't built to be a serious Giant Nut contender, but to be weird, as a projectile-based primary weapon hadn't been done before in combat robotics.
• Fragile Speedster: Is actually quite fast and has good pushing power. Too bad it has one of the most unreliable weapons in the entirety of combat robotics and fizzled out pretty early on in its first match.
• Graceful Loser: Once War of The Four Horsemen took Double Jeopardy out of commission, the Double Jeopardy team watched intently at the remaining entrants go at it, and one of them patted Ian Watts on the shoulder in satisfaction when the match ended.
• It Only Works Once: Double Jeopardy can only shoot one slug per match.
• Joke Character: The 5-pound slug shot out of its cannon is a LOT less powerful than any of the other weapons used in this competition, and unlike the slug, they can all be used multiple times, meaning it's not over yet if they miss. However...
• Lethal Joke Character: ...the slug's cylindrical shape means it's designed not for a lot of force over a small area, but a moderate amount of force over a large area, which can damage the insides of a robot without doing much to its frame or armor. Judges are trained to observe signs of said internal damage. In addition, Double Jeopardy, due to its weapon, has by far the longest range of any combat robot and can thus hit from anywhere in the BattleBox.
• Long-Range Fighter: The only one in combat robotics.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: The primary weapon is the shooter, think like the kind Brutus used last season. Since that in itself is largely ineffective, it also has a strong wedge.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted with Double Dutch.
• Power Limiter: Double Jeopardy is actually fighting with its weapon at 50% power. Apparently, it didn't pass the safety test at 100% power, as it was discovered the slug could break the bulletproof glass lining the BattleBox. In addition, they chose against a pointed slug for the same reasons.
• Spanner in the Works: That shot to Gamma 9 didn't seem like it did anything, but it actually disabled Gamma 9's claw. This allowed The Four Horsemen to survive long enough for the match to go to the judges' decision, which they won.
• The Worf Barrage: Much was made of its weapon. When it finally lets it go...it bounces harmlessly off the front of Gamma 9. Or so it seems—Gamma 9 actually sustained significant internal damage and the loss of usage of its weapon.

DUCK!

Team: Team Black & Blue

Driver: Hal Rucker

Hometown: Hillsborough, California

Matches (Season): Mecha Rampage and Free Shipping (W/JD), Reality (W/KO), Bronco (L/KO), Tombstone (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Gigabyte (W/KO)

• Animal Motifs: Take a guess.
• Beware the Silly Ones: DUCK! may have a comical appearance, but underestimate it at your own risk, because this is one of the sturdiest, strongest bots in the entire competition.
• Caps Lock: It's not "Duck," it's "DUCK!"
• Color-Coded Characters: White.
• Combat Pragmatist: DUCK! is able to compete with the best of the best not just by being durable but by being crafty as well, taking advantage of anything available in the BattleBox as long as the rules allow it. They are explained below with Divide and Conquer for its first match and Grievous Harm with a Body for the Last Chance Rumble.
• Divide and Conquer: Had to go up against Mecha Rampage and Free Shipping in its debut match, two bots driven by veteran and talented drivers. Hal's strategy was to only lightly participate until it became clear the other two had taken heavy damage, then proceeded to flip them both over with its plow and shove them around.
• Fighting Clown: A duck-themed robot doesn't sound fierce, but since it's Nigh-Invulnerable that means it can take a world of punishment.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: During the Last Chance Rumble, Gigabyte had eventually stopped moving but was still able to spin. DUCK!, ever the Combat Pragmatist, shoved Valkyrie into Gigabyte to finish it off. The commentators were left wondering if DUCK! or Gigabyte would get the credit for that maneuver. Neither. Bombshell's Heroic Second Wind rendered the move irrelevant.
• Hurricane of Puns/Rhymes on a Dime: Faruq manages to do both of these at once introducing DUCK! against Gigabyte.
  Faruq Tareed: Don't call him chicken. He's no Jive Turkey. This bot's got plenty of pluck. You're about to be out of luck. It's DUCK!
• Lethal Joke Character: Painted to resemble a duck, hence its name, but it's one of the sturdiest bots in this competition. DUCK! is also, basically, Hal Rucker's previous bot Whoops! with a new name, and that bot impressively knocked out Tombstone's counterpart Last Rites at a 2017 independent competition
• Logical Weakness: The bot uses so much of its weight on defense that its weapon is incredibly weak. Because of the way points are assigned in a judges' decision, looking mainly at damage inflicted by the primary weapon, DUCK! is virtually guaranteed to go into any decision at a two-point disadvantage. It needs to either totally dominate the fight or get the other bot to knock itself out on its frame or Arena hazards in order to win. This came back to bite DUCK! hard in the Last Chance Rumble, as the modified rules emphasized damage and de-emphasized survival, which meant they never really had a chance unless they could be the Last Man Standing.
• Parent-Child Team: The members of Team Black & Blue are Rucker and his teenage daughter Hannah, who operates DUCK!'s plow.
• Ring Out: Flipped out of the ring when Bronco managed to get him on the screws.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Rucker's previous bot, The Ringmaster, was capable of huge damage but was a slow Glass Cannon, unable to keep going for long. DUCK! is its exact opposite, as a fast Stone Wall that isn't equipped to do direct damage aside from ramming.
• Stone Wall:
  • DUCK! was milled out of a single chunk of solid aluminium. This means it can take mountains of hits and barely feel it, like it did when it took Reality's powerful drum spinner head-on. Its previous incarnation Whoops! was so tough that Touro Maximus - the larger counterpart of Minotuar - launched it into the air straight into one of the arena walls at Robogames and it shattered the protective glass. Whoops! was still fully operational after that, by the way.
  • Was in full display against the dreaded Tombstone. Shirking off hit after hit, and forcing Tombstone to take out its tires to win.
  • DUCK!'s match against Gigabyte was a textbook example of how this trope works against a robot with powerful attacks Cast from Hit Points: Let Gigabyte's Hit Points deplete themselves first.
• Victory by Endurance: This is how DUCK! wins battles, in spite of its disadvantage with the judges' scoring system. It shields itself against the opponents' weapons until something on the opponent breaks. This is what it did against Reality, Gigabyte, and most of its opposition during the Last Chance Rumble and almost pulled it off with Tombstone.

End Game

Team: OYES Robotics

Driver: Jack Barker

Hometown: Auckland, New Zealand

Matches (Season): Captain Shrederator (W/KO), Lock-Jaw (W/KO), Bite Force (L/KO), Son of Whyachi (L/KO), WAR Hawk and Brutus (L/KO)

• Attack Its Weak Point: A more indirect example than most, but like with other full-body spinners, once they take a hit, they need some time to re-accelerate back to full speed. Against Captain Shrederator, End Game took one hit from Shrederator to stop it, then went over to attack any time it looked like Shrederator's chassis was gaining speed.
• Battle Trophy: After knocking out Lock-Jaw by ripping off its wheels, Donald Hutson left a wheel rim in the End Game team's fridge.
• Color-Coded Characters: Vermillion orange. It shares this color with Tantrum.
• Cool Shades: Everyone on the team has a pair of sunglasses they put on to pose for the camera.
• Death or Glory Attack: The attack that flipped Captain Shrederator over onto the screws also dislodged End Game's weapon belts and left them visibly hanging off the disc axle, causing the disc to slowly spin down on its own. Fortunately the fight was well and truly over by that point.
• Friendly Rivalry: Joked around and engaged in banter with the Lock-Jaw team after their match.
• Glory Days: Perhaps the quickest case of this in BattleBots, End Game quickly asserted itself as The Dreaded with one-sided victories against Captain Shrederator and Lock-Jaw, then nearly defeating Bite Force. However, End Game would proceed to find itself in a losing streak that would not end, with it later losing to Son of Whyachi, then to SawBlaze during the USA vs. The World event, and finally to WAR Hawk for the 15th Seed Rumble.
• I Shall Taunt You: Like with Monsoon when it faced Red Devil, End Game traveled right up to in front of Bite Force during pre-match testing.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: A downplayed case of this, but in the three-way fight for the 15th seed, Barker chose to continue to attack the heavily damaged Brutus, which by that point had lost its wedge and weapon functionality. This decision would bite OYES hard, as in doing so, End Game ignored a still fully-operational WAR Hawk, which proceeded to flip End Game over when End Game turned its back on WAR Hawk to chase Brutus around.
• Logical Weakness:
  • End Game was not built to self-right or drive while inverted. However, it was built as flat as possible to keep its center of gravity low and make it harder to flip over. Its match against Bite Force shows just how helpless End Game becomes when flipped over.
  • That spinning wheel hits like a truck, but it takes a good deal of internal damage with each hit it deals. While it controlled the fight against Captain Shrederator, it was actually on the verge of incapacitation. Furthermore, End Game was knocked out after its first attack against Son of Whyachi (though to be fair, Son of Whyachi specializes in this kind of knockout).
• Master of All: Does not seem to have any glaring weaknesses in its stats: It's fast, it can shrug off hits from Captain Shrederator like they were nothing, and it hits incredibly hard. It does have some design weaknesses, namely its inability to self-right.
• Make Sure He's Dead: Averted against Bite Force (presumably following the unwritten rule among combat robot drivers to not hit robots when they're already incapacitated), and sure enough, Bite Force recovered and incapacitated End Game in a matter of seconds.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Once Lock-Jaw got itself stuck in one of the Killsaw slots, End Game attacked it mercilessly, and continued to do so as Lock-Jaw escaped but having broken one of its lfting arms.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Didn't go in for a killing blow when it seemed Bite Force was incapacitated. This act of sportsmanship bit them when Bite Force got moving again and proceeded to flip them on their heads.
• Precision F-Strike: Barker let one out, slamming his hand against the glass, upon seeing Bite Force flip End Game upside-down and then End Game getting counted down for a knockout.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Faruq's introduction for End Game against Captain Shrederator:
  Faruq Tareed: This bot's builder is one of the youngest in the bunch. He's so young, he packs a brown bag lunch. He's new school, that is true. But he knows his bot will kill you—End Game!
• Shout-Out: Faruq's introduction for End Game against Lock-Jaw is full of references to The Lord of the Rings, likely based on the movies being famously shot in New Zealand:
  Faruq Tareed: This bot is...(in Gollum voice) my precious! You. Shall. Not. Last! It's End Game!
• Single-Stroke Battle: End Game's first hit against Captain Shrederator rendered it unable to move for some time, but once it did, the motor to spin Shrederator's chassis stopped working, deciding the battle then and there.
• Token Minority: The first and currently only representative of New Zealand in this series. Seems to be deliberately invoked: End Game is the product of a combat robotics program at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
• Trash Talk: Barker issued a challenge directly to Ray Billings, claiming he could beat Tombstone.
• Victory Dance: After defeating Lock-Jaw, End Game spun around but also lifted its left side up and down rhythmically.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Back: At all times, one of the team members wears a New Zealand flag as a cape. Which team member varies from scene to scene and can include team captain Jack Barker. End Game also has a New Zealand flag decal at the back. Then exaggerated during the lead up to End Game's fight against Bite Force, upon which every member, except one, is wearing a New Zealand flag like a cape.
• Worthy Opponent: Jack Barker has been watching Donald Hutson compete on BattleBots since he was a kid, and he holds a deep respect for the veteran builder. Their teams were located right next to each other in the pit, and footage right after their fight shows them to be extremely amicable towards one another.

Free Shipping

Team: Team Special Delivery

Driver: Gary Gin

Hometown: Oakland, California

Matches (Season): Mecha Rampage and DUCK! (L/JD), HUGE!(L/JD), HyperShock (W/KO), WAR Hawk (L/JD)

• Bare-Fisted Monk: For the only time in the 2018 competition, Free Shipping had no weapons whatsoever fighting against HyperShock, with its lifting arms replaced by Gary's preferred wedges. This match was also Free Shipping's only season win.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Gary Gin, before the match against HUGE, said that Free Shipping will need "a huge win." Once it was over, its adversary, HUGE, won.
• Butt-Monkey: Free Shipping has been cast into pretty unfavorable matchups, most notably against HUGE, a robot that can No-Sell anything it does.
• Determinator: Free Shipping continues the sheer resilience of Gary Gin's robots.
  • Continued to be able to move, at or near full capacity, after Mecha Rampage tore off one of its wheels and a forklift arm and DUCK! flipped it on its side. It was Free Shipping's continued mobility that took this match to the judges.
  • Even more so when pitted against HUGE, which not only mangled Free Shipping, but bent Free Shipping's flamethrower into itself, then topped Free Shipping upside-down, and Free Shipping still remained operational. Most of Free Shipping had to be replaced after its battle against HUGE, and yet it was never incapacitated.
  Chris Rose: It's the forklift that will not die!
  • Also happened during its match against WAR Hawk, in which the lifting forks on the front got detached and hanging on by the chain that would normally move them. It didn't hinder Free Shipping's mobility either, and Gary continued to use the detached weapon as a flail instead.
• Down to the Last Play: Narrowly lost to HUGE, with both sides making big hits and both sustaining a large amount of internal damage.
• Epic Flail: When WAR Hawk dislodged the bots forklift and left it hanging by a cable, Free Shipping unsuccessfully tried turning it into a flail.
• Fighting Clown: Resembles a miniature forklift, but make no mistake—this is driven by Gary Gin, one of the best in robot combat. It can also shoot fire, which it used to not only fry Mecha Rampage, but keep it on fire for the rest of the match.
• Fragile Speedster: A lot faster than it looks, but, in contrast to Gin's other robots, who adopt a more Stone Wall approach, Mecha Rampage and HUGE were tearing off various pieces of this thing.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Got flipped over by DUCK! and, despite the metal framework designed to help to right itself, was unable to do so for quite a while. Not completely disabled, though, as it continued to move around in one corner of the arena partially upside-down.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: A lot of the internal damage done to Free Shipping during its fight against HUGE was from its own flamethrower, which HUGE bent back into itself.
• Man on Fire: Ended up in small flames in its battle against WAR Hawk. The cleaning crew proceeded to lampshade this by driving a toy firetruck next to Free Shipping before hosing it down.
• Meaningful Name: Goes with its resemblance to a forklift. Free Shipping also introduces itself in each match with a similarly small pallet on its lifting arms.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Despite losing a wheel and a forklift arm to Mecha Rampage, it mercilessly thrashed Mecha Rampage. Too bad it became so heavily damaged that it became a, well, sitting duck to a mostly-functioning DUCK!
  • Trading the lifting arms for Gary's preferred wedges, Free Shipping made short work of HyperShock.
• Playing with Fire: It doesn't look like it, but this thing shoots flames. It was a bigger factor in defeating Mecha Rampage than the lifting arms.
• Spikes of Villainy: Free Shipping was given inward-facing spikes on its forklift arms during its match against HUGE. Presumably, this was to catch HUGE by its wheels.
• Technicolor Fire: For an unknown reason, Free Shipping gave off blue and green flames during its fight against HUGE in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.

Gamma 9

Team: The Gammatronic Robot Brigade

Driver: Curtis Nemeth

Hometown: Westminster, California

Matches (Season):The Four Horsemen and Double Jeopardy (L/JD), Double Dutch (L/JD)

• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Gamma 9 broke off Double Dutch's top spinning bar very early on by ramming into it. Double Dutch's bottom spinning bar fell off about midway through, leaving it defenseless.
• Butt-Monkey: During the Cold Open in which Inertia Labs is asked by the hosts to take out their trash, one of the things chucked into the dumpster in the back was none other than Gamma 9.
• Determinator: Was targeted by both Double Jeopardy and The Four Horsemen at the same time, with Double Jeopardy breaking its weapon early on, and still lasted long enough to bring the match to a judges' decision.
• Double Knockout: With War and Pestilence of The Four Horsemen.
• Grapple Move: Has a pincer mounted at the front to grab other robots with, as well as some irregularly-shaped forks right underneath to keep them in place.
• Long Runner: Gammatronic Robot Brigade are one of the oldest extant teams in all of combat robotics, having first participated in the original San Francisco warehouse fights in the early 90s that were the predecessors of both BattleBots and Robot Wars. For instance, here's their first robot, Namreko 2000, fighting Jamie Hyneman's Blendo all the way back in 1995.
• Non-Indicative Name: This is only the 4th robot from Gammatronic Robot Brigade, not the 9th. It is currently unknown what the "9" stands for.
• Signature Style: Has a dome on its back, which serves no purpose other than the fact that all of their previous bots had one.
• Stone Wall: Appears capable of shrugging off everything in its first match, with the exception of some damage to its side by War. Also took a point-blank shot from Double Jeopardy's cannon with seemingly no ill effect. Somewhat averted, though, as that shot actually broke Gamma 9's pincer.
• Theme Naming: Every robot created by the Gammatronic Robot Brigade has had a name beginning with "Gamma" since Gammatron in 2000.
• Wimp Fight: The initial collisions between Gamma 9 and Double Dutch broke Gamma 9's pincer and its left wedge and detached Double Dutch's top spinning bar. Double Dutch's bottom spinning bar would break off later on, leaving every weapon disabled. Both bots then encountered mobility issues, causing them both to awkwardly roam about the BattleBox, with Gamma 9 eventually ceasing movement altogether.

Gemini

Team: Team Gemini

Driver: Ace Shelander

Hometown: Santa Monica, California

Matches (Season): Kraken and Mohawk (W/KO), Lucky (L/JD), Skarkoprion (L/JD), The Four Horseman (W/JD)

• Balance Buff: In previous BattleBots events (such as the Comedy Central era), multibots were declared knocked out if any unit stopped moving, then if 50% or more stopped moving by weight. It has since been increased to 60% by weight, a rule change that benefits bots like Gemini greatly, as both units of Gemini weigh 123 pounds, meaning both units must be knocked out for Gemini to be declared knocked out. This came into play in Gemini's first match, against Kraken and Mohawk, in which Kraken was knocked out, then the red unit of Gemini, then Mohawk: As Gemini's black unit could still move, Gemini was declared the winner by knockout. Notably, because of this rule change, this is also the first time a televised BattleBots match has a symmetrical multibot win by knockout.
• Color-Coded Characters: One is red with black highlights, and the other is black with red highlights. That they're color-coded is important to the operators so as not to get one confused with the other.
• Confusion Fu: As a multibot whose units are functionally identical, their advantage is to confuse the opponents about which one to target. This didn't work against Mohawk, though, as Mohawk just targeted whichever unit was closer or trying to attack. It also didn't work against Sharkoprion, as Edward Robinson simply decided to pick on the red unit at all times.
• Dual Boss: As can be inferred from its name (and its previous appearances), Gemini is two independently-functioning bots working in tandem. It shares this trait with Battle Royale with Cheese, though unlike Battle Royale, each unit is equal in size and identical in function.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Can be seen in the backroom featured in "Botopsy Report," in Episode 2 on the Science Channel version, before its proper introduction later. A piece of the black unit's disk can also be seen in the background in which the End Game team and the Lock-Jaw team engage in playful banter, which was viewable on the Discovery Channel.
• Fragile Speedster: Both units of Gemini move pretty fast, able to outspeed both Kraken and Mohawk (though as both of them are piercing robots, they have to be geared down to carry more weight). At half the weight of their opponents, though, they have thinner armor and are more easily knocked around.
• Friendly Fire: The two units are prone to accidentally hitting each other eith their spinning disks. Downplayed in the match against The Four Horsemen, in which both attacked with their wedges instead, minimizing the risk of damage to each other when they collide.
• Mook Chivalry: During its Desperado fight against Lucky its two halves took it in turns to attack, which the commentators called out as an example of this trope. When they both tried to attack at once they ended up hitting each other instead.
• Not the Intended Use: The wedges on the back of the Gemini units were initially meant for defense, deflecting attacks done from behind. This was how they were used, too, until their fight against The Four Horsemen, upon which both Gemini units attacked primarily with their wedges and achieved much greater success.
• Shout-Out:
  • The design on the top of both units is the astrological sign for the constellation Gemini.
  • Faruq refers to Gemini in their introduction in their first match as the Gruesome Twosome, a pair of characters in Wacky Races.
• Spectacular Spinning: Both units are equipped with spinning disks, which are pretty big for their size.
• Victory by Endurance: Won the match between Kraken and Mohawk as the both of the others encountered mechanical failures while one of the Gemini units remained functional.
• Victory Dance: Upon winning against Kraken and Mohawk, the black unit spun in place in the center of the arena...though the red unit, unable to move, just sat where it was.

Gigabyte

Team: The Robotic Death Company

Driver: Brent Rieker

Hometown: Escondido, California

Matches (Season): Tombstone (L/KO), Double Dutch (W/KO), Lucky (L/KO), Brutus (W/KO)

-" Matches (Exhibition): DUCK! (L/KO)

• The Band Minus the Face: There are two faces of Robotic Death Company; One is Brent Rieker, who came to Battlebots with half of the team. The other, John Mladenik, missed the Battlebots taping to bring their other spinner Megabyte to King of Bots and This is Fighting Robots, two Chinese competitions.
• Cast from Hit Points: Like any bot with an incredibly hard-hitting weapon, it will have to take heavy recoil damage too. Gigabyte was repaired to full working order, with the faulty parts replaced with better quality materials the Robotic Death Company made on-site, in order to fight DUCK!, but it still lost because DUCK! tanked so many hits that Gigabyte succumbed to its internals being knocked loose from that recoil.
• The Dreaded: The Robotic Death Company has had quite the impressive record in the past. Invader's poor performance does not change the fact that their previous full body spinners landed a Curb-Stomp Battle to four-time Batlebots heavyweight champion Biohazard after the Comedy Central run had ended, as well as make Third Place in Season 1 of King of Bots. It is fitting that Gigabyte would face fellow dreaded bot Tombstone in the season matches.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: Unlike its previous appearances on BattleBots in green and metallic grey paintjobs, Gigabyte is colored red, yellow, green, and blue so that the colours blend together as it spins.
• Hurricane of Puns: For some reason, Faruq's introduction to Gigabyte against DUCK! consisted of a series of puns related to high achievements in academia.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: As explained further below, both teams involved in the Tombstone/Gigabyte fight decided to end the match early to avoid Tombstone having to do irreparable damage to the now-unarmoured Gigabyte after its entire spinning shell got sent flying off, despite the rest of it still being mobile.
• Loophole Abuse: Rieker, upon finding out that he isn't allowed to surrender in BattleBots, then gets the idea to purposely not move Gigabyte so that it can be counted down for a knockout against Tombstone. Ray Billings, operator of Tombstone, chose not to attack Gigabyte during this period so it could be counted out without sustaining further damage. The referee also looked perfectly fine with this decision.
• Made in Country X: Played devastatingly straight: That securing bolt made in China had all the shoddy workmanship associated with such things^note It was made from scrap material that was melted down and recycled. The impurities that caused the failure were clear to see, despite the manufacturer's claim that the bolt was machined from a fresh block of metal., and said shoddy workmanship caused Gigabyte's shell to detach. This also hit them in the Desperado Tournament as their self-righting rod was also apparently made in China, and detached during its fight against Lucky while the bot was on its side. As Bloodsport revealed in the very next year, that team obtained one of Gigabyte's other self righting rods, which also snapped during its fight, and they too said that these rods were also made in China.
• Mighty Glacier: As is the standard for Robotic Death Company, most of Gigabyte's weight is dedicated to its weapon, meaning it doesn't travel that fast, but it hits hard and is at or near the top of durability among full body spinners, allowing it to escape being a Glass Cannon (were it not for the faulty securing bolt as described above). Case in point: Gigabyte did more damage to DUCK!'s frontal shield than any other bot. This includes Tombstone.
• Not the Intended Use: Gigabyte's radial, conic shape is meant for it to maintain stability when spinning at very fast speeds. Gigabyte defeated Brutus after it had stopped spinning, however, by using that shape as a convex wedge, having Brutus drive over it and flipping Brutus upside-down in the process.
• Off with His Head!: Lost its securing bolt after the first hit from Tombstone, which sent its spinner section flying off after the second.
• Oh, Crap!: Rieker was visibly aghast when Gigabyte's spinning shell separated and went flying off.
• Pinball Projectile: Gigabyte's shell, after popping off during its fight during Tombstone, proceeded to bounce around the arena floor like an air hockey puck for several seconds. As a testament to Gigabyte's power, bear in mind that this shell is 110 pounds (50 kilograms), and that thing was bouncing around like it was weightless.
• Spectacular Spinning: Is a full body spinner.

HyperShock

Team: Shenanigans & Co.

Driver: Will Bales

Hometown: Miami, Florida

Matches (Season): Bite Force (L/KO), Battle Royale with Cheese (W/KO), Free Shipping (L/KO), Skorpios (L/JD)

• Born Unlucky: Not against matchups, but technical problems: Bales's team had constant problems with unusual sparks emanating from one corner of HyperShock that, no matter what they tried to fix it, kept persisting. HyperShock was somewhat unresponsive in its fight against Bite Force and is why it never used its arms to self-right—Bales suspects this is due to electromagnetic interference. Averted by HyperShock's second fight, however, as they discovered the problem was due to some unusually long screws causing the electricity inside HyperShock to flow in unintended ways.
• Call-Back: Bales brings a rake to the arena, referring to how HyperShock swatted down Warrior Dragon with it two years prior.
• Color-Coded Characters: Neon yellow.
• Confusion Fu: Like with Bombshell, HyperShock has a variety of weapons it can use. HyperShock attaches them to the front.
• The '80s: Has gone for this motif this time around, in the team's clothing, the even more fluorescent yellow of HyperShock's paint job, and the new HyperShock logo.
• Fragile Speedster: Was zipping about in its battle against Bite Force, but one hit from Bite Force flipped it over, and a second tore it apart.
• Hurricane of Puns: Throughout the matchup against Battle Royale With Cheese, many puns were said by Chris and Kenny relating to HyperShock being "hungry" for a win. This even continued to the post-battle interviews, with Will Bales referring to his spinners as "cookin'" to Shorter Pounder as an "appetizer".
• Ludicrous Gibs: The mechanical equivalent, anyway, with HyperShock's top panel, its batteries, and a bunch of torn wiring flying out of this machine when up against Bite Force.
• Mirror Match: Both Bite Force and HyperShock have small vertical spinners and a pair of clamping jaws as their signature weapons.
• One-Hit Kill: Two if you wanna get technical. But it was all said and done after one solid hit from BiteForce
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The HyperShock team is the Red Oni to the Bite Force team's Blue Oni: They're full of energy and wear bright, reflective, gaudy clothing, whereas the Bite Force team is considerably older on average and are calm and collected and wear mostly black clothing.
• Shock and Awe: Unintentionally. Electrical problems within HyperShock during its battle against Bite Force causes it to emit sparks whenever it's traveling above a certain speed. This can be seen quite clearly in the official footage.
• Single-Stroke Battle: The first hit was from Bite Force, and that was all it needed to decide the fight.
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses a pair of small spinning disks, similar to that of Bite Force, WAR Hawk, End Game, and so forth.

Hypothermia

Team: Team Toad

Driver: Fuzzy Maudlin

Hometown: Liberty City, Texas

Matches (Season): Whiplash (L/KO), Minotaur (L/JD), Valkyrie (L/JD)

Matches (Exhibition): The Four Horsemen (W/JD)

• Armor Is Useless: Mauldin focuses on defense, and to that end, for its fight against Whiplash, its armor was almost twice as heavy as that of its opponent. Whiplash still managed to tear it apart.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Averted in the fight against The Four Horsemen. It might look like it has no weapon, but that wedge is actually a flipping panel. The problem was that, according to Mauldin, the Horsemen were too slippery for him to use the weapon.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: This is essentially RoboGames competitor Polar Vortex, except with movable white arms installed onto the top of itself.
• Color-Coded Characters: Orange.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Got its butt handed to by Whiplash. After Whiplash tore off one of Hypothermia's wheels, it was over.
  • Hypothermia was then given an extra wheel on each side during its fight against Minotaur, but Minotaur bent Hypothermia's wedge very early on, preventing Hypothermia from ever getting underneath Minotaur.
• Grapple Move: Hypothermia is a grappling robot, designed to get opponents onto its wedge, then its white arms come down to keep them in place. It did exactly this at the beginning of the battle against Whiplash.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Though it usually has a thick, sturdy wedge (as pictured here), Hypothermia also has a narrow, thin scoop meant for bots lower to the ground. However, Hypothermia is compeltely dependent on getting underneath opponents with its wedge or scoop. Said scoop is a lot weaker than the wedge, and if it's ever warped or has pieces missing, Hypothermia will no longer be able to use any of its weapons.
  • Hypothermia's weapon is largely ineffective against multibots, who are small and can slip right out of Hypothermia's grappling arms. Its wedge is flat too, which allowed The Four Horsemen to keep driving right off before Hypothermia could capture any of them. Nevertheless, Hypothermia is resilient enough to get the judges' decision at the end.
• Mighty Glacier: Hypothermia's top speed is a measly 5 miles (8 kilometers) per hour, but that's because this bot is geared down. It sacrifices speed for power, as its weapon requires it carry twice its weight around.
• Mutual Disadvantage: Both Hypothermia and Whiplash are very vulnerable to each other's weapons. Hypothermia's grabbing arms are just the perfect size and shape to grasp Whiplash, but it's also slow and has an exposed top and back, which Whiplash's weapon specializes in attacking.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Faruq's introduction to Hypothermia in the match against The Four Horsemen:
  Faruq Tareed: Representing the Red, White, and Blue, coming straight after you, this bot provides thrills, spills, and kills, but most importantly, chills. So strap on the cold weather gear for Hypothermia!
• Signature Style: As mentioned in the tropes around this one for Hypothermia, this bot continues Fuzzy Mauldin's motif of orange-colored robots named after cold weather or things related to cold weather. They run the complete gamut of weapons though, from spinning bars to drums to thwackbots to weaponless bots.
• Stone Wall: This is Team Toad's normal approach to robot construction, as their victories mostly derive from making it to the end of a match in better shape than their opponents. It didn't work out this time around. Nevertheless, Hypothermia is one of only two robots to have fought Minotaur in 2018 and survived to the end (the other being Blacksmith).
• Take That!: Faruq does a very corny reading of "Hold on, Jack" from Titanic during Hypothermia's introduction against Minotaur.
• Theme Naming: Team Toad is one of the most prolific BattleBots teams, and with the exception of LionHeart, their previous bots—IceBerg, FrostBite, Snowflake, IceCube, WindChill, SnowCone, IceChip, IceMaker, Halfpipe, Avalanche, Blizzard, Polar Vortex, Cathadh, and most recently Hypothermia—are all themed on cold weather.^note From the lightweight class and up, at least. The naming is intended to be ironic, given that the team are from Texas.

Kraken

Team: CE Robotics

Driver: Matt Spurk

Hometown: Titusville, Florida

Matches (Season): Deviled Egg and Sharkoprion (L/KO), Gemini and Mohawk (L/KO), Lockjaw (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Red Devil (W/JD), Chomp (L/KO)

• Animal Motifs: Despite krakens being associated with squids and serpents, this bot is themed on an anglerfish.
• Born Unlucky: Mechanical failures aside, it got scheduled to fight two rumbles in a row, even though this is a robot designed specifically for one-on-one battling. This also means it has to defeat more opponents to claim a win than most of the other competitors. Kraken is also prone to technical failures rendering it unable to move as intended, which is easiest to see during its fight against Gemini and Mohawk, during which it encountered steering problems and got stuck on the sides of the arena.
• Brick Joke: An earlier hit from Deviled Egg may have seemed ineffective besides damaging one of Kraken's wheels, but it became a contributing factor to Kraken's inability to move later on—as Deviled Egg got flipped over and became unable to move too, this allowed Sharkoprion to win.
• Butt-Monkey: Not only is it repeatedly put in battles it wasn't meant for, Kraken keeps succumbing to something going wrong with its electronics. In its second match, for instance, it had many problems backing up, causing it to immediately crash into the arena wall after targeting Gemini's red unit and failing to catch it, then getting it stuck at the screws and became unresponsive. Due to these issues, Kraken is the first robot in the 2018 competition to get a 0-2 record. Both of these fights have also aired only as Science Channel exclusives. Averted once Kraken's matches started showing up on the Discovery Channel too, where it gave Lock-Jaw trouble and decisively defeated Red Devil.
• The Cavalier Years: The team was dressed up as sailors from this era. Overlaps with The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, as, well, they also look like a pirate crew, and operating combat robots is not something a pirate is expected to do.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Despite Kraken's rough start, it managed to deliver one to Red Devil in the USA vs. The World exhibition matches by disabling one of Red Devil's treads and dragging Red Devil to the Pulverizers and Killsaws.
• Expy: To Bucky the Robot on Robot Wars, which also uses a pneumatically powered crusher and a pair of sharp fangs. Whereas Kraken is themed on an anglerfish, though, Bucky is themed on chattering teeth.
• Glowing Eyes/Glowing Eyes of Doom/Glowing Mechanical Eyes: Its eyes glow very brightly and is visible from anywhere within the arena and the stands. Due to its anglerfish theme, the top of its hanging antenna also glows. There also seem to be green lights coming out from near the wheels.
  • Eye Lights Out: Quite fittingly, when Kraken received a mechanical failure after capturing Sharkoprion, the lights in its eyes started to flicker and dim, then went out completely as the referee counted it down.
• Graceful Loser: Matt accepted a huge hug from Edward Robinson, Sharkoprion's builder and operator, after losing to him.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: This version of Kraken did not have a self-righting mechanism upon entering. Spurk says that they ran out of time. A self-righting mechanism was eventually added onto Kraken, but it wasn't working properly. As a result, it got counted out for a knockout against Chomp.
• Ironic Name: Chomp vs. Kraken: Chomp was doing the cracking, and Kraken was doing the chomping.
• Jaw Drop: A rather literal case, as its upper jaw became unhinged during each match:
  • The upper jaw came loose the first time it clamped down on Sharkoprion, though it continued to function as intended.
  • Then, during its second match, against Gemini and Mohawk, it just kind of fell off on its own after pressing against the spike wall for long enough.
• Logical Weakness: Kraken is unable to do anything to bots of the wrong general shape and size. This wouldn't normally be a problem, as the Metagame tends toward flat and close to the ground, but Chomp is tall and bulky, too big for Chomp's jaws to sink into. It still landed a few solid blows to Chomp in spite of this disadvantage, however.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Kraken is a hybrid crusher (like Razer, Photon Storm, and Petunia) and clamper (like Complete Control, Diesector, and Lycan). Both are rather uncommon approaches and require precise driving to use properly, but Kraken is at the even rarer intersection of both. It is also the first, and so far, only robot in BattleBots whose crusher is pneumatically powered.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Its eyes turn red whenever it clamps down on an opponent.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Faruq's introduction to Kraken in its second match:
  Faruq Tareed: Your lips will be smackin', fighting spirit won't be lackin', destruction will be stackin'. It's Kraken!
• Teeth Flying: Sharkoprion's armor caused both of Kraken's large fangs to fall off after the first time it clamped down on Sharkoprion, though they didn't fly off as much as they just kind of dropped off.
• Took a Level in Badass: Fumbled its way through the Season matches due to a combination of mechanical issues and put into three-way matches it was not meant for, Kraken was then placed in the Desperado tournament and had to fight Lock-Jaw in the first round. This time, Kraken's mechanical issues were addressed and solved. The result was that it gave Lock-Jaw a surprisingly good fight, trading blow for blow with the former 6-time champion. Kraken lost but put up greater resistance against Lock-Jaw than any other bot in the Desperado tournament. Kraken then got to show what it's truly capable of when it annihilated Red Devil in the USA vs. The World side-event by destroying one of Red Devil's treads early on.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Kraken couldn't bite down on Chomp, so it went after Chomp's hammer. This nearly worked, were it not for Kraken getting flipped over suddenly.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Inverted. In Kraken's first two matches, it has taken itself out of the match. This is more so in its second match (against Mohawk and Gemini), where its steering problems turned it into a non-factor just a few seconds in.

Lucky

Team: Team Lucky Canucky

Driver: Mark Demers

Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Matches (Season): Skorpios (L/JD), Son of Whyachi (L/KO), Gemini (W/JD), Gigabyte (W/KO), Lockjaw (L/KO), Reality (L/KO)

• Armor Is Useless:
  • Lucky is covered in titanium armor, meaning that Skorpios's saw, which emitting a lot of spectacular sparks, failed to do any meaningful damage to Lucky's chassis. However, Lucky received tremendous concussive damage from the Pulverizer hammers, knocking around its insides, severely inhibiting its movements in addition to wheel damage Skorpios inflicted earlier.
  • This trope also came into effect in the fight against Son of Whyachi, but in a different way: Though the added armor and combination plow/wedge stood up fine against Son of Whyachi's attacks, they soon broke off after a few hits, demonstrating that it's all for naught if what connects the armor to the bot isn't as tough. Eventually, the front wedges cameflying off too.
• The Band Minus the Face: Gary Gin is no longer Lucky's pilot, as he's now on the Free Shipping team.
• Born Unlucky: Had the misfortune of Skorpios managing to damage Lucky's front left wheel despite it being protected, as the saw happened to get into the tiny gap between the wheel guard and the main body. This prevented Lucky from moving much and cost it the match.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Once Skorpios was able to damage one of Lucky's wheels—getting around the wheel's armor, no less—it no longer stood a chance against Skorpios.
  • Lucky's slow speed rendered it unable to build enough momentum to flip Son of Whyachi over the way Brutus did.
• Determinator: Took a pretty sizable amount of htis from the fearsome Son of Whyachi. Even the tank-like Lucky had to eventually succumb though.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Was briefly latched onto Skorpios and unable to move. Skorpios got Lucky off of itself by traveling past the Killsaws, whose upward movement dislodged the bots from each other...though it then got Lucky stuck on the Killsaws' slots.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Was working fine and actually winning against Skorpios until Skorpios managed to damage one of its wheels. It then wound up in a corner directly underneath a Pulverizer hammer, then got stuck onto Skorpios until some Killsaws dislodged them, where Lucky remained (and kept getting attacked by the Killsaws) until the match ended.
  • Happened again against Son of Whyachi as Son of Whyachi tore off Lucky's armor attachments, one by one, then tore off Lucky's left rear wheel, severely inhibiting its movements.
• Ironic Name: Lucky's been doing well in the non-televised events (see Took a Level in Badass below), but when it gets shown on national television, it receives bad luck comparable to Charlie Brown.
• Irony: In addition to Ironic Name above, the team's sour faces after having lost spectacularly to Skorpios does contrast very much with their shirts, which read "I'm Just Here to Have Fun."
• The Jinx: For something called Lucky, it seems to be this, as technical malfunctions and other unpredictable mishaps happened to every robot that would lose the day of its first match: Red Devil's saw went flying and its body got distorted, Battle Royale with Cheese's spinning bacon failed to start properly, Lock-Jaw got one of its arms snagged in a Killsaw slot, Gigabyte's securing bolt popped off due to faulty manufacturing causing its spinning shell to fly away, Kraken encountered steering issues and got stuck against the walls, and Mohawk just suddenly stopped moving while perched atop the Killsaws. Averted after that though.
• Mighty Glacier: Does not seem to be that fast, but it's covered in titanium, and it has one of the strongest flipping arms outside of Inertia Labs.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: Lucky is a Canada-themed bot, though it's been downplayed since the previous BattleBots competition. Faruq also invokes this trope directly when introducing it against Skorpios:
  Faruq Tareed: Hailing from Canada, eh, this bot's gonna make you pay—in Canadian dollars. It. Is. Lucky!
• Shout-Out/Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Faruq's introduction for Lucky against Son of Whyachi is the iconic jingle for Lucky Charms cereal, though slightly modified, presumably to avoid a cease-and-desist from General Mills:
  Faruq: Hearts, stars, and horseshoes, clouds and blue moons. Pots of gold and rainbows. Then, this bot kills you! He's got me feeling charmed! It's LUCKY!
• Took a Level in Badass: Remember Lucky in 2016, how its launching arm took ages to finally retract? Lucky has since been outfitted with one that retracts faster, which, between that competition and this one, has been racking up a pretty impressive record in the non-televised competitions. On the televised ones? Not so much.

Mecha Rampage

Team: C2 Robotics

Driver: Christian Carlberg

Hometown: San Luis Obispo, California

Matches (Season): Free Shipping and DUCK! (L/JD), Whiplash (L/KO), Double Jeopardy (W/KO), Tantrum (W/KO)

• Butt-Monkey: Had to spend much of its debut match on fire. Nothing it did was capable of putting it out. Then Whiplash flipped it such that it couldn't move, despite it being an invertible robot with fully functioning motors for its wheels.
• Cast from Hit Points: Any bot with a powerful spinning weapon must deal with this, but Mecha Rampage embodies this trope more so than normal in that every hit it deals causes its spinning bar to accelerate a bit slower than before. It takes only a few hits before it's not powerful enough to deal any real damage. See Glass Cannon below.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Was humiliated by Free Shipping, which tanked its hits (though Free Shipping lost a wheel and a forklift arm along the way) and shoved Mecha Rampage around. Then, when Free Shipping was too damaged to do much more, DUCK! then continued the curb-stomping.
• Glass Cannon: As it seems, that spinning bar can only take a few hits before it stops moving. Mecha Rampage must knock out the opponent before that happens.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Got flipped on its side, up against a wall, by Whiplash, effectively immobilizing an invertible bot.
• History Repeats: Seems to be suffering a similar fate as its 2016 predecessor OverDrive, being quickly taken out due to poor stamina (though it's hard to keep going for long when on fire).
• Logical Weakness: Mecha Rampage requires a bit under 3 seconds for its spinner to accelerate to full speed. During this time, Mecha Rampage has no way to defend itself. Whiplash got the better of Mecha Rampage by letting Mecha Rampage hit Whiplash once to stop the spinning, then not allowing it to reaccelerate for the rest of the match.
• Long Runner: Carlberg and C2 Robotics (formerly Team Coolrobots) are one of the three teams competing this year that have appeared in every Battlebots competition since the first one in 1999.
• Man on Fire: Was set on fire by Free Shipping during its debut match and stayed that way until after the match had finished, when someone came in with a fire extinguisher to put it out.
• Mighty Glacier: Doesn't move quite as fast as some of its competitors, but that spinning disk hits hard considering each hit it delivered in the three-way rumble broke off a piece of each bot it hit. It couldn't do much against Whiplash's armored front though.
• Shout-Out: To Peewees Playhouse in its introduction in its match against Whiplash.
  Faruq: Welcome to Peewee's Slayhouse. HA! (audience responds with a "HA!") Mecha-leka-die, mecha-hiney? Oh no! It's MECHA RAMPAGE!
• Spectacular Spinning: Has a big thick horizontal spinning disk in its middle. Unlike other similar designs, this disk occupies the empty space between the two motors operating the wheels.

Mohawk

Team: Euclid Robotics

Driver: Max Bales

Hometown: Miami, Florida

Matches (Season): Gemini and Kraken (L/KO), SawBlaze (L/KO), Reality (L/KO)

• Armor Is Useless: Had Kevlar fitted to the top to dealwith SawBlaze. SawBlaze proceeded to attack the less-armored back, sides, and bottom.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Its main weapon is a crushing spike.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Max realized, mid-competition, that he ought to get an actual mohawk hairdo to go with his bot. So he decided to do just that, receiving the haircut from Monsoon team member Tim Rackley, with the End Game team and his brother Will (Hypershock's driver) as spectators. Rackley even tells Max that, despite having a mohawk himself, he "doesn't do [his own] hair", resulting in the very...unusual mohawk Max is left with.
• Color-Coded Characters: A rusty brown, different from the previous years' deep blue.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Was on the receiving end of SawBlaze's offensive for the entire match against it.
• Exact Words: When the referee tells Max to show some movement on Mohawk before counting it down, Max jokingly points out that the Killsaws are allowing Mohawk to bob up and down in place.
  Referee: I gotta see movement.
  Max Bales: It's moving when the saws go up!
• Failed a Spot Check: Max dealt with the Confusion Fu that would normally be present with multibots, especially symmetrical multibots like Gemini, by going after whichever unit was closer to or was about to attack Mohawk. For most of the match, this was the red unit, meaning the red Gemini took the brunt of Mohawk's attacks. This also meant the black unit was mostly left alone, which would become a costly error as it would go on to incapacitate Mohawk with a lucky shot.
• Graceful Loser: Max takes losing the rumble quite well. He turns to the camera, shrugs his shoulders, and says, "What are you gonna do?" Does it again after the loss to SawBlaze.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Got pinned against a corner, propped up on its side against the wall. Not much Mohawk could've done to get out of that situation.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: That spike is real sharp. Unfortunately, the sharper something is, the more fragile it is, and after enough attacks on Gemini, the tip of Mohawk's spike broke off.
• Meaningful Name: Has bristles attached to the top of its curved spike to resemble the hairstyle of its namesake.
• Mighty Glacier: Mohawk is not a very fast mover, but once it catches a bot on its wedge, it's trapped there as the spike feeds fire directly into its victim.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Spent the entirety of its match against Gemini and Kraken roasting both units of Gemini with Gemini's spinning disks unable to do much to Mohawk due to its wedged shape (while Kraken had driving issues and was subsequently ignored). This trope is played with, however, as Gemini's black unit managed to attack the back of Mohawk in such a way as to make it stop moving, causing it to lose to Gemini by knockout.
• Playing with Fire: Equipped with a lot of small flamethrowers and one pointed at its tip. Mohawk's strategy is to pierce opponents with its spike, then burn the insides.
• Shout-Out: Mohawk's introduction during its fight against SawBlaze had Faruq recite the Mohawk version of "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses:
  Faruq: Welcome to the rumble. This bot's fun and flames. Its axle and slash will have you dizzy straddling. Here to bring the November pain, it's MOHAWK!
• Sibling Rivalry: Euclid Robotics team members Max and Greg Bales are the brothers of Will Bales, the driver and builder of Hypershock. The Mohawk team also includes their father Tom. In fact, Korey Kline, who actually built Mohawk, is one of the few team members who isn't part of the Bales family.
• Spikes of Villainy: In addition to the large curved spike as its primary weapon, Mohawk has since been equipped with spiked ridges on the left and right middle of its wedge. This has a function too, to make it more difficult for opposing bots to escape. It's most easily seen in how when it catches the Gemini units in its first match, they are seemingly unable to escape.
• Take That!: Mohawk's "Cutting-Free Zones" (Kevlar plates put on top of Mohawk as a shield) have drawings of SawBlaze's saw with half-crosses over them.

Overhaul

Team: Equals Zero Robotics

Driver: Charles Guan

Hometown: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Matches (Season): SawBlaze (L/KO), Chomp (W/JD), War Hawk (L/JD), Witch Doctor (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Valkyrie (L/JD)

• A.I. Breaker: Guan clearly watched Chomp fight Warrior Dragon, as he used the same tricks as Warrior Dragon to try to stop Chomp from self-righting properly.
• Animal Motifs: The housecat, though it switched over to the unicorn for its fight against SawBlaze.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak: Its string of losses has come to an end after it won against Chomp.
• Butt-Monkey: Continues its floundering record into season 3, landing its 5th loss in 3 seasons against SawBlaze. Averted against Chomp, which it narrowly defeated.
• Call-Back:
  • Against Chomp, Overhaul wears a hard hat with HUGE's eyes on it.
  • Guan repeats what Petunia did to ROTATOR and, carrying Chomp around with about 20 seconds left, held it over the Killsaws to damage it.
• The Cameo: Surrender Bot, who is normally associated with HUGE, came on by to assist Overhaul in the fight against Valkyrie. It didn't last very long due to it having no wedge and no weapon.^note Surrender Bot's presence is not as bizarre as it may seem, as Surrender Bot is actually an independent robot that fights on its own in the beetleweight division in various circuits.
• Color-Coded Characters: Turquoise, though a darker shade than Skorpios.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: After the first few moments, Overhaul was completely unable to get underneath SawBlaze. Guan was forced to go strictly on the defensive after that, which also proved ineffectual.
• Difficult, but Awesome: As a grappling robot, it falls into this by definition: They can only attack in one direction, their attacks are slow, and they don't do much damage, but if it can successfully pick up an opponent well, it controls the fight for the next 20 seconds.
• Double Knockout: Its match against Valkyrie ended with the first simultaneous double knockout of the 2018 competition, with both bots rendered incapacitated at the same time and two referees counting them down in unison. This invoked a seldom-seen ruling in that a judges' decision would decide the winner at the time both bots were counted out. As a result, Overhaul lost by a judges' decision before time ran out due to Valkyrie having broken off a chunk of Overhaul's claw.
• Grapple Move: Was designed to grab ahold of opponents and carry them to wherever it wants (preferably the box hazards). It has not been able to demonstrate that against SawBlaze, but it did pull it off against Chomp.
• Fragile Speedster: Overhaul moves pretty fast and has some nice acceleration. However, if it's not always at the right place at the right time, it's going to get pushed around.
• Off with His Head!: The entire upper part of Overhaul flew right off against Valkyrie's spinner.
• Pocket Protector: That hard hat was just supposed to be a decoration. Turns out it absorbed a blow from Chomp's hammer that would've otherwise struck some crucial internal parts.
• Shout-Out:
  • As usual, its turquoise-and-gray color scheme is exactly like that of Hatsune Miku.
  • Faruq's introduction for Overhaul in its match against Chomp uses lines from "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere":
    Faruq: From Cambridge, Mass., one if by flames, two if by spinner. This bot's revered. Will it be a winner? It's OVERHAUL!
• Unicorn: Though the pointed ears on Overhaul's crushing arm was meant to be cat-like, Guan installed a long spike onto the front of Overhaul to defend against SawBlaze and called it a unicorn horn. It also has the spiral-like ridges along them like that of a unicorn.
• We Used to Be Friends: The people behind Overhaul and SawBlaze used to be part of the same group but split apart after the 2015 competition. According to the commentators, Charles Guan and Jamison Go still dislike each other to this day. Averted offstage, however: Guan and Go have been dueling each other in friendly spars for years before even ABC Season 1, and they're not on nearly as unfriendly terms as their behavior on-camera in 2018 would make it seem.

Parallax

Team: Team Aberrant

Driver: Luke Bittenbender

Hometown: Northampton, England

Matches (Season): Basilisk and Double Dutch (with Bale Spear) (L/JD), Ultimo Destructo (L/JD)

• Color-Coded Characters: Despite being mostly unpainted, it manages to boast the shiny color of its metallic frame with highlights of orange.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: That spinning disk did no visible damage to Ultimo Destructo. On the other hand, Ultimo Destructo was able to flip Parallax over again and again. Parallax is invertible so it can still fight upside-down, but its effectiveness is greatly reduced due to the wedges no longer functioning as intended while upside-down.
• The '80s: Like with HyperShock and ROTATOR, Parallax is themed on that decade. Whereas the other two are themed on 80s fashion and colors, however, Parallax's theme seems to be technology of that decade, using colored stripes reminiscent of tape cassettes. It is also likely named after parallax scrolling in video games. More on that in Shout Out below.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Appeared in a promotion for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ahead of its first normal televised match.
• One-Steve Limit: Shares its name with another unrelated BattleBox competitor, a lightweight in Comedy Central's Season 3.0.
• Shout-Out: It seems to be named after parallax scrolling, a programming technique used in video games beginning in the 80s (but not widespread until The '90s) in which background elements scroll across the screen at different speeds to create an illusion of depth.^note Parallax, as a concept of its own to refer to objects further away moving less as your eyes or a camera moves, had existed long before that, but it didn't enter common usage outside of astronomers, artists, and animators until its usage in video games.
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses the now pretty common small but thick spinning disk positioned in the center of its wedge.
• Stone Wall: Parallax was not able to do much to its opponents, but none of its opponents could incapacitate it.
• Wimp Fight: The match between Bale Spear, Basilisk, Double Dutch, and Parallax wound up with none of their weapons working after some time, and all of them were slow, causing the match to soon turn into ineffectual pushing and shoving.

Petunia

Team: Team PCP

Driver: Mischa de Graaf

Hometown: Anna Paulowna, Netherlands

Matches (Season): ROTATOR (W/JD), Monsoon (L/KO), Captain Shrederator (W/KO), Yeti (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Double Dutch and Bale Spear (with Predator) (W/JD)

• Armor-Piercing Attack: Supposedly, the spike is able to apply 10 metric tons of pressure, strong enough to break through even the tough titanium and steel many bots are armored with. It has yet to actually pull that off though. de Graaf said that there were problems with the hydraulics system during its fight against ROTATOR and was fixed to fight Monsoon—but a direct hit to the tank by Monsoon meant Petunia still could not harness that power.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Petunia's crushing spike is one of the strongest ever made in robot combat—but it's going to miss. A lot. Against the fight against ROTATOR, it managed to grip ROTATOR several times but only firmly once, and it never got the chance to demonstrate that steel-crushing power Misha de Graaf frequently spoke of.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: The Petunia team are actually long-time Dutch Robot Wars veterans, who won the second Dutch series with PulverizeR and who attempted to enter Robot Wars Series 9 with this robot under the name PacifieR. When they were forced to pull out by a last-second electrical fault (and declined to reenter Series 10) they instead repainted the robot and renamed it (in accordance with a long-standing exclusivity clause between the two shows) and entered BattleBots instead.
• Combat Pragmatist: de Graaf's style is to use anything available in the BattleBox within the rules. As such, Petunia is one of the few competitors in 2018 to use the Killsaws and Screws to its advantage rather than treat them as areas to stay away from, as is what it did against ROTATOR, Double Dutch, and Captain Shrederator. Petunia also appeared to use a wheel that fell off of Bale Spear as cover.
• Counter-Attack: As a crusher, Petunia has to withstand an attack from an opponent before it can start using its piercing claw.
  Mischa de Graaf: Our robot...always has to take the first hit before it can be aggressive, so I have to be defensive first before I can be offensive.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Petunia got knocked around by Monsoon. As Monsoon disabled its hydraulics system, causing its spike to lower, this also rendered Petunia's wedge unusable, allowing Monsoon to thrash Petunia while Petunia couldn't fight back.
• Double Knockout: Subverted in its fight with Monsoon. Petunia stopped moving due to being on fire at the same time Monsoon stopped moving due to damage. Monsoon eventually clawed back basic mobility, winning the fight.
• Fluffy the Terrible: "Petunia" can be either a feminine name or the flower the name came from. Petunia, the BattleBots competitor, is a brightly-painted bot with a hinged curved spike designed to pierce (not unlike 2016's Photon Storm).
• Friendly Fire: Clamped down on its teammate Predator in the USA vs. The World match. According to de Graaf on YouTube, this was not an attack, but because Predator was having problems with Bale Spear's loose wheel on the floor and Petunia dragged Predator away from it.
• Grapple Move: Late into the fight against ROTATOR, Petunia started using its spike to pick ROTATOR up and drag it around instead of trying to crush it.
• Heroic Second Wind: ROTATOR was trashing Petunia in the first half of their fight. Then, ROTATOR's spinning disks stopped working, and Petunia went to town on ROTATOR, most notably picking it up and holding it over the Killsaws at the end.
  • Was the victim of one in its fight with Monsoon, below.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Petunia did not participate in the Last Chance Rumble. When asked on YouTube, de Graaf said that it took too much damage from Yeti to be repaired in time, and they had to withdraw from the competition. He also said that Petunia is not well suited for rumbles, as Petunia was built for one-on-one battling.
• Man on Fire: Suffered an internal fire in the battle against Monsoon. As Monsoon tore large holes in Petunia, this fire was visible to the spectators, though by the end, the flames engulfed much of Petunia's exterior as well.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Mercilessly pursued and shoved Double Dutch around all the way until time ran out once Predator and Bale Spear were down.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • That crushing spike was meant to, well, crush opponents. It failed to do so against ROTATOR, so Petunia instead used that spike to pin ROTATOR in place, then, later on, to pull ROTATOR onto the Killsaws to gain some valuable damage points with the judges.
  • Petunia did it again against Double Dutch, picking it up and carrying it to the screws.
• Shout-Out/Hurricane of Puns: To Little Shop of Horrors in Faruq's introduction to Petunia in the match against Monsoon.
  Faruq: It's a little bot of horrors, inflicting pain, and you're about to suddely Seymour. "Feeeeed meeeee!" It's Petunia!
• Stone Wall: Not very fast but is covered in tough armor. de Graaf even said that, as a crusher, this is a necessary setup, because in order to grip and crush a bot with its spike, it first has to bear the brunt of that bot's attack. It has lived up to this trope too, having disabled every spinning weapon used against it except for Yeti's.
• Token Minority: Petunia was built in the Netherlands. It shares this trait with Reality. Petunia was also painted in the colors of the Netherlands flag.
• Victory by Endurance: Won the USA vs. The World tag team match by outlasting Bale Spear and disabling Double Dutch's weapon.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: As mentioned above, Petunia's paint job is themed on the flag of the Netherlands, though stylized so the white stripe resembles a pair of rows of sharp teeth.
• When Trees Attack: Petunia's insignia is of the flower it's named after, except with a mouth full of sharp teeth and a forked tongue for a stamen.

Predator

Team: Team Danby

Driver: Craig Danby

Hometown: Knightdale, North Carolina

Matches (Season): ROTATOR (L/KO), Valkyrie and Bale Spear (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Double Dutch and Bale Spear (with Petunia) (W/JD)

• Agony of the Feet: ROTATOR targeted its wheels. Each time ROTATOR hit it with a spinning disk, a wheel would come flying off.
• Animal Motifs: A wolf. An unusually large amount of attention was given to make Predator resemble one, though not quite to the extent of Sharkoprion. It appears to be Craig Danby's approach to constructing a chassis. See Signature Style below.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Not much armor is capable of withstanding the 29,000 pounds of force Predator is capable of. The hard part, though, is getting the opponent in Predator's jaws and safely keeping it there.
• Color-Coded Characters: It's hard to make out due to the angle and reflectiveness of this photograph, but Predator's body is a royal purple.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Predator found itself losing in very one-sided battles in every match it was in due to its very low stamina.
• Fragile Speedster: Looks to be of above average speed, but it got knocked out after one hit from Valkyrie.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Danby's driving style seems to be this, charging forward and then running away. This proves very ineffective against opponents faster or more maneuverable than it.
• Help, I'm Stuck!:
  • Got high-centered on a tire that fell off from Bale Spear. Petunia helped get it back down.
  • It happened again later that match, with Predator's engine giving out while directly over the Killsaws. Again, Petunia came to its aid, shoving it away to prevent further damage to the bottom.
• Martial Pacifist: Though Predator is pretty fast with a lot of pushing power and looks intimidating, it never attempted to attack with any of its weapons even once, staying strictly on the defensive and evasive. That being said, Predator's time spent being operational was very short, so it never had many opportunities to be aggressive. Said defensive driving, however, did get Double Dutch's bars to stop moving, making it an easy target for Petunia to push it around.
• One-Hit Kill: On the receiving end of this, as Valkyrie only needed to attack it once for it to stop moving. Subverted against ROTATOR, as Predator stopped moving after one attack from ROTATOR, but it got moving again a few seconds later.
• Sequel Escalation: Foxic's lifting arm was...not very strong. Predator, meanwhile, has 14 1/2 tons (about 13.2 metric tons) of crushing power, making it one of the strongest crushers in robot combat up to this point and significantly above Petunia's 10 metric tons.
• Shout-Out: Faruq made a series of puns relating to Arnold Schwarzenegger introducing Predator in each of its matches, probably in reference to the film Predator. And in the exaggerated accent too.
  Faruq Tareed (vs. ROTATOR): It's the Schwarzenegger of bots! There's no way to stop her. AAAAAAH! Get to the chopper! It's Predator!
  Faruq Tareed (vs. Valkyrie and Bale Spear): Ah! He's come back! The Schwarzenegger of bots! Watch your keester, or the last words you'll hear are "Hasta la vista!" It's Predator!
• Signature Style: Each of Danby's heavyweight robots—Hyena, Foxic, and Predator—take the shape of a quadrupedal mammalian carnivore.
• Spanner in the Works: Went charging into Double Dutch's bars at the start of the USA vs. The World match and got the bars to stop working, leaving the USA team without any viable weapons. Subverted, though, as word from Mischa de Graaf is that the two teams planned this out in advance.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Due to the unusual shape of its clamping jaws, it can double as a grappling weapon or simply as a wedge.
• Token Minority: A downplayed example, Predator comes from North Carolina. It's the only BattleBots competitor since the ABC reboot to come from either of the Carolinas. Danby originally lived in the UK, however, so Predator is sometimes described as a British bot, as was the case in the tag team battle with Petunia and against Double Dutch and Bale Spear.

Reality

Team: An collaboration between four Dutch teams: Team Bonx, MSR, Kodox and Tie-Rip

Driver: Tim Bouwens

Hometown: Tilburg, The Netherlands

Matches (Season): SawBlaze (L/JD), DUCK! (L/KO), Lucky (W/KO), Mohawk (W/KO)

• Cast from Hit Points: It isn't that apparent in the fights against SawBlaze and Mohawk, but the repeated hits done to DUCK! had taken its toll on Reality, and eventually, Reality simply stopped moving.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Spent most of the match against SawBlaze getting pushed and sawed around. It was not a complete thrashing, however, as Reality's drum managed to bend SawBlaze's fork's middle prong, hindering its ability to scoop opponents.
• Determinator: Would not go down against SawBlaze no matter how many times it was rammed up against the spikes lining the walls or got sliced into by SawBlaze's saw.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Got pinned against the screws fighting SawBlaze. Luckily, the screws' spinning helped to get Reality back on the ground.
• Hurricane of Puns: The commentators can't help making puns off Reality's name.
  Chris Rose: Reality must be thinking, "Get me out of this nightmare!" But SawBlaze just keeps coming back for more! It can't escape this reality!
• Logical Weakness: The motor spinning that drum is inside of the drum itself. Though this helps optimize the allowed weight, it also means direct attacks on that drum have a high chance of disabling the drum outright. Toward the end of the match against SawBlaze, SawBlaze managed to lower its saw down onto Reality's drum, and it was not shown to be fully functional from that point on.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Bouwens looked to be hoping for this in the fight against SawBlaze, saying that it's critical Reality deals the first strike. Of course, it then went the entire 3 minutes.
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses a long spinning drum as its weapon without a wedge to accompany it, much like Minotaur.
• Stone Wall: Despite taking a wire-to-wire beating from SawBlaze, Reality continued to display full mobility right up to the end. It's also rather fast. The same could not be said of its mobility against DUCK!, however.
• Token Minority: Reality was built in the Netherlands. It shares this trait with Petunia. The two are the only Dutch BattleBots entrants so far.
• Use Your Head: One of the Reality team members headbutted the button indicating they're ready to fight SawBlaze.

Red Devil

Team: All Black Robotics

Driver: Ravi Baboolal

Hometown: Spanish Fork, Utah and Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

Matches (Season): Brutus (W/KO), Monsoon (L/JD), SubZero (W/JD), Valkyrie (L/JD)

Matches (Exhibition): Kraken (L/JD)

• An Arm and a Leg: Lost one its treads in its bout against Valkyrie. Which continued to drive around the arena for the rest of the match.
• The Band Minus the Face: Red Devil builder and driver Jerome Miles is competing in King of Bots this year, and handed Red Devil off to an all-Canadian team.
• Color-Coded Characters: Crimson red.
• Combat Breakdown: Both bots' weapons were rendered inoperable during its fight against Monsoon. Red Devil's saw was flung away, and the hinge on its plow stopped working. Once Monsoon's spinning bar came to a stop too, the rest of the match became one extended shoving contest, with the both of them roughly equal in pushing power.
• Determinator:
  • Kept moving even after losing its weapon in the Monsoon fight and taking several nasty hits. According to the Brutus team on Reddit, Ravi Baboolal's driving in this fight was a lot more impressive in-person than it was on TV, and that was what resulted in one of the three judges giving Red Devil a vote in the split decision.
  • Valkyrie broke off one of Red Devil's treads, which started moving about on its own. In spite of this, Baboolal continued to pilot both the disembodied tread and the rest of Red Devil simultaneously. As both the left and right sides of Red Devil were technically still capable of translational movement, this was not enough to count Red Devil out.
• Fragile Speedster:
  • This thing is very nimble, and thanks to those treads, has great traction with the floor. However, those treads are fully exposed, creating a huge weak spot that must be compensated by skilled driving. That saw was also not very effective at cutting through Brutus, but it didn't matter when Brutus was not able to inflict meaningful damage onto Red Devil. This weakness was exploited by Kraken, which tore into one of those treads, preventing Red Devil from moving as intended as Kraken went to town on it. Bombshell later completely tore off one of those treads during the Last Chance Rumble as well.
  • It also took only two solid hits from Monsoon's spinning blade to cause Red Devil's saw to go flying off. While Monsoon failed to attack the treads, it did attack Red Devil's armored plow enough times to visibly warp it and disable the moving arm.
• Funny Background Event: As mentioned above under Brutus's entry, there is an audience member holding up a support banner during Red Devil's fight against Brutus...for Kraken.
• Grapple Move: Has a pair of grappling arms by default. This was replaced with a plow against Brutus.
• In the Back: Red Devil's last attack on Brutus was directly from behind.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Continued to saw into Brutus even after the referee started counting down Brutus for a knockout.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Red Devil is being operated this year by a team comprising of the builders of robots Lycan and Bucktooth Burl, neither of whom won a single match last season.
• Organ Autonomy: Both tread pods contain their own electronics, independent of the main body. This is how the separated tread pod in the fight with Valkyrie was able to keep going on its own.
  • Effectively, this means Red Devil is three robots bolted together, pretending to be one robot.
• Shout-Out: Faruq's introduction to Red Devil during its fight against Monsoon is a spoof of The Charlie Daniels' Band's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia":
  Faruq Tareed: This devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for some parts to steal. He's not in a bind, he's got an axe to grind, and he's gonna make you squeal. It's Red Devil!
• Spectacular Spinning: Red Devil's main weapon is a spinning buzzsaw mounted on a movable arm. It shares this distinction with Whiplash, Skorpios, and SawBlaze.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Really had to do nothing in its fight with Brutus, as the bot fried its own motor revving its weapon up. Averted, however, in that Brutus could still move, so Red Devil had to at least avoid getting rammed by Brutus's front wedge.

Sharkoprion

Team: Team Blaze

Driver: Edward Robinson

Hometown: Poway, California

Matches (Season): Deviled Egg and Kraken (W/KO), Warhead (L/JD), Gemini (W/JD)

• Animal Motifs: A shark, of course — and not a prion.
• Behemoth Battle: Sharkoprion's battle against Warhead was presented in this light to help promote Discovery Channel's own Shark Week, being machines being based around giant monstrous creatures (monster shark and fire-breathing dragon, respectively).
• Color-Coded Characters: Deep blue.
• Dark Horse Victory: Of all the people who witnessed the beginning of this fight, just how many expected Sharkoprion to emerge victorious, compared to those who predicted Deviled Egg or of Kraken?
• Defeat Means Friendship: A behind-the-scenes moment showed Team Blaze getting along famously with Team Razer, makers of Warhead, after their Behemoth Battle.
• One-Hit Kill: Sharkoprion hit Deviled Egg once with its saw and proceeded to flip Deviled Egg upside-down. As Deviled Egg was unable to move after that, that was the only hit it needed.
• Pun: You're gonna need a bigger bot.
• Sudden Name Change: Different people pronounce "Sharkoprion" in different ways. The commentators call it "shark-OP-ree-un," whereas Faruq Tareed pronounces it "SHARK-oh-PREE-un."
• Threatening Shark: Much like its predecessor — Snookums, from Robot Wars Extreme Warriors — Sharkoprion is designed to resemble a shark. However, it trades out Snookums' lifting arm for a more powerful vertical disc spinner.
• Victory by Endurance: Won its first match, a three-way battle, by being the only bot remaining that could still move.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: It spent most of the match at the mercy of Kraken. Then, Deviled Egg got turned upside-down and was unable to move, and Kraken's second capture of Sharkoprion caused a mechanical failure in Kraken that prevented it from moving, allowing Sharkoprion to win by default.

Skorpios

Team: Offbeat Robotics

Driver: Orion Beach

Hometown: Santa Rosa, California

Matches (Season): Lucky (W/JD), Icewave (W/JD), Rotator (L/JD), HyperShock (W/JD)

• Animal Motifs: The scorpion.
• The Berserker: Skorpios gets more aggressive the more damage it's taken and nothing seems to slow it down, including having its weapon arm broken by Icewave or having the entire top half of the bot ripped off by Rotator.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: As would be expected of anything based on a scorpion.
• Color-Coded Characters: Unlike the previous years, Skorpios is now painted with a turquoise, though a lighter shade than Overhaul.
• Fragile Speedster: Quite fast for a robot of this type, and its speed advantage was how it got the edge over Lucky. However, Skorpios has two large, exposed wheels, making its sides a glaring weak point.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Lit with a cyan rather than the usual red.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Managed to get the saw into the gap between Lucky's main body and its left wheel guard, allowing it to destroy the wheel inside and prevent Lucky from moving freely.
• Improbable Weapon User: With its saw destroyed and one fight still left on the card, the Skorpios team strapped a cheap hardware store angle grinder to the arm so they could still compete, against fellow improv expert Hypershock no less. Subverted in that the grinder broke before it could be used when Skorpios got launched airborne at the very start of the fight and landed directly on it, and double-subverted when Skorpios used the weapon arm to grapple Hypershock and shove it into arena hazards, the same way it won against Icewave.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Despite a 3-1 record and guaranteed admission to the Tournament of 16, Offbeat Robotics decided to withdraw as they had suffered a lot of damage during the Fight Night competition and felt they did not have a good shot with the rest of the lot.
• Large Ham: In the pit area, Beach is quite the ham. He loves to take selfies with other people and notable things, and always with a pillow of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Once it inhibited Lucky's movements, the match was like shooting fish in a barrel for Skorpios—and because Lucky's right wheels were still working from time to time until the last few seconds of the match, Lucky was never actually counted out, allowing Skorpios to keep beating up Lucky for the full time allotted.
• Offhand Backhand: Skorpios can tilt its saw backwards such that it can attack foes behind it. It can also do this to self-right, as is what it did to recover from Lucky flipping it over early into that match.
• Spectacular Spinning: Skorpios's weapon is a spinning circular saw mounted on a movable arm. It shares this distinction with Red Devil, SawBlaze, and Whiplash. Of the four of them, however, it's the only one with two joints on its arm, allowing for a greater degree of movement at the cost of less durability.
• Sword Sparks: Lots of bright flying sparks come out of Skorpios's saw any time it makes contact with something while spinning. Though this is natural in the case of Lucky's titanium frame (as titanium creates sparks easily), it also happened when Lucky flipped it over and Skorpios's saw scraped the BattleBox floor.
• Technician vs. Performer: In its fight against Icewave, Skorpios played the technician role. While Icewave was able to get in some serious damage on Skorpios and disable its weapon, Beach chose to use Skorpios' superior speed to its advantage. Skorpios controlled the entire fight, regardless of the damaged it sustained, and chased Icewave around the Battlebox. There were many points in the fight where Icewave was unable to its devastating weapon up to full speed due to Skorpios crashing into it and plowing it into the other side of the arena. Skorpios won a split judge's decision and once and for all proved that damage sustained from a primary weapon no longer wins fights on Battlebots by itself.
• Took a Level in Badass: Beach took note of the damage done to Skorpios's wedges and saws in the 2016 competition and redesigned Skorpios, with stronger materials for the wedges and a sturdier saw.
• Victory Dance: After defeating Lucky, Skorpios returned to its starting point and spun in place, then "bowed" with its saw arm.

SubZero

Team: Team Hammertime

Driver: Jerry Clarkin

Hometown: Malvern, Pennsylvania

Matches (Season): HUGE (L/JD), Captain Shrederator (W/KO), Red Devil (L/JD), Minotaur (L/KO)

• Armor Is Useless:
  • Narrowly averted: The armored back Clarkin hoped would tank hits from Captain Shrederator had come loose and could no longer be relied upon while Shrederator looked none the worse for wear. SubZero would then have to hit Shrederator from the weaker, more vulnerable front, but luckily for SubZero, Shrederator stopped working before it could significantly damage SubZero's front.
  • The armors luck ran out against Minotaur. The tiny spinner ripping the bot apart like it was made of paper.
• Ass Kicks You: Rammed Captain Shrederator with its behind for most of the match, in an attempt to knock something loose. All it did was tear the ass off the bot.
• Attack Drone: Not pictured is Spitfire. Where these flying drones were prevalent in the ABC era, they were soon proven mostly ineffective and most of the drones were Put on a Bus. Team Hammertime went in the opposite direction, bringing Spitfire to accompany SubZero where it never had one before. It was used only in the matches against Captain Shrederator and Red Devil, the latter of which ended up with it being completely mashed to pieces by a Screw.
• Batman Gambit: Clarkin installed AR500 armor to SubZero's back to deal with Captain Shrederator, under the idea that Shrederator is not mobile enough to hit SubZero except where Clarkin wants it to hit SubZero. He was right, though the plan barely worked.
• Born Unlucky: Its first match during the season portion had it go up against a thoroughly anti-flipper bot.
• Determinator:
  • In addition to SubZero never actually going down repeatedly despite getting completely overwhelmed by HUGE, Clarkin says that, in the aftermath of that battle, he would spend as much time as is needed to get SubZero back in top shape for its next battle.
  • Despite the heavy armor added to SubZero's back, it proved largely ineffective at getting Captain Shrederator to stop spinning. Once the armor broke off, a desperate Clarkin tried SubZero's less armored front... which ultimately worked.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: This happened to Spitfire, SubZero's Attack Drone, in their battle against Red Devil. After crashing into the ground and generally being a non-factor in most of the fight, SubZero got pushed back by Red Devil into Spitfire — sending it into a nearby screw and causing it to get completely crushed and torn apart, the gas tank for its flamethrower exploding as its pulverised wreckage is hurled back out.
• Funny Background Event: As mentioned above under the entry in HUGE, its fight against HUGE had a third party inside the arena: A camera drone wildly zipping about, which can be spotted at times in the match's official footage.
• The Goggles Do Nothing: The team behind SubZero installed a pair of metal arms onto it specifically to protect it from HUGE, but HUGE proceeded to just contort them with its powerful spinning bar, rendering them useless immediately.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Has a powerful flipping arm, even though it wasn't able to use that to its full effect against HUGE.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: For a brief moment, SubZero got stuck on the screws in an attempt to ram HUGE into them. Averted, though, when SubZero was able to come back down due to the screws' movement.
• Mighty Glacier: Not very fast moving but is equipped with a powerful flipping arm. It didn't get to use that against HUGE though. Note that SubZero is glacier-y enough to have defeated Icewave in the past in only 12 seconds.
• Playing with Fire: In contrast to its name, SubZero has a flying drone called Spitfire equipped with a downwards-mounted flamethrower.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Faruq says "Click" when he turns off his phone introducing SubZero against Captain Shrederator.
• Spikes of Villainy: Ever since when it began battling, SubZero has grown two rows of spikes along the top of its launching arm.
• Stone Wall: SubZero moved to this role against Captain Shrederator, with AR500 steel armor installed onto its back with the plan being to shield hits from Captain Shrederator until its chassis loses power.

Tantrum

Team: Team Seems Reasonable

Driver: Aren Hill

Hometown: Mountain View, California

Matches (Season): Battle Royale With Cheese (W/JD), Mecha Rampage (L/KO)

Matches (Exhibition): Tombstone (L/KO)

• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Invoked. Tantrum was fitted with a spatula as an attachment to its flipping arm, and it was given tongs on its right hand and a carving fork on its left to add to the barbecue theme.
• Chef of Iron: Fought with cooking utensils against Battle Royale with Cheese, invoking this trope.
• Color-Coded Characters: Vermillion orange. It shares its color with End Game. The team also has orange flags to wave around.
• Cruel Mercy:
  • Flipped Battle Royale with Cheese back up to continue the fight, as if knowing that the bacon would never really become a threat, allowing it to pursue Battle Royale with Cheese for the whole three minutes.
  • Found itself on the other side against Tombstone, with Tombstone focusing on the fists while eventually knocking Tantrum out anyway.
• Fighting Clown: Tantrum is modded in appearance to suit the battle, carrying barbecue equipment against the hamburger-themed Battle Royale with Cheese and having its eyebrows turned to the sad-position against Tombstone.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Though both parties were fighting seriously, the Tantrum vs. Battle Royale with Cheese fight was essentially a robot backyard barbecuer versus a robot bacon cheeseburger. It ended about as well as a fight between a griller and a burger would be expected to go.
• Improbable Weapon User: Tantrum was equipped with a spatula to fight Battle Royale with Cheese. In this case, however, perhaps it's not as improbable as the trope's name suggests, considering Battle Royale with Cheese does resemble a hamburger.
• Lightning Bruiser: Has a powerful launching arm and is fully armored with titanium, traits it shares with Lucky. Tantrum's armor is viewed by some of the other competitors as sturdier than Lucky's, however—the Woolley twins, of Double Jeopardy, consider it one of only two robots in the entire competition without a clear weak spot (the other one being DUCK!). It has also, so far, exhibited faster speed than Lucky.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Tantrum chased after and attacked Battle Royale with Cheese the whole way through with the latter unable to attack back.
• Not the Intended Use: Tantrum's spatula was originally used to flip Battle Royale with Cheese around. About halfway through that match, however, Hill seems to have realized that, when in the up-position, the spatula fits cleanly into the gap where Battle Royale with Cheese's spinning bacon occupies, so he kept it in that up-position, inserting the spatula into Battle Royale with Cheese to push it around and to jam the bacon any time it actually starts spinning.
• Oh, Crap!: Tantrum's angry eyes were modified to appear sad or scared during its match against Tombstone, giving it this look.
• One-Steve Limit: Shares its name with an unrelated lightweight robot that competed in Comedy Central's Season 3.0.
• Running Gag: Aren Hill says that any of Tantrum's fists broken off by an opponent are for the opponents to keep. Christian Carlberg of Mecha Rampage and Ray Billings of Tombstone have taken him up on that offer, as both have deliberately aimed for Tantrum's fists.
• Stealth Pun/Russian Reversal: Tantrum is equipped with a flipping arm. In other words, this Tantrum throws you.
• Stone Wall: That aforementioned titanium armor was, much later, tested against Tombstone itself in an exhibition match. Though Tombstone inflicted internal damage to Tantrum that rendered it unable to move, that armor held up perfectly.
• Sword Plant: One of Tantrum's fists got embedded into the BattleBox frame during its fight against Tombstone. It was in there real tight, apparently.
• Take That!: Faruq's introduction to Tantrum when up against Battle Royale with Cheese was one to New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady, which Faruq enjoyed every second of.
  Faruq Tareed: It'll make you a bigger crybaby than Tom Brady! (audience groans) Aw, come on! You think I care if Boston fans hate me? (does wavy arm motions) It's Tantrum!

The Four Horsemen

Team: The Four Horsemen

Driver: Ian Watts, Sam Watts and Ryan Pratt

Hometown: Miami, Florida

Matches (Season): Gamma 9 and Double Jeopardy (W/JD), Blacksmith (L/KO), Gemini (L/JD)

Matches (Exhibition): Hypothermia (L/JD)

• Armor Is Useless: Ian Watts assured that since all four have plating of AR450 steel that Blacksmith's hammer can't hurt them. Blacksmith indeed couldn't damage the chassis for any of them, but they suffered a lot of internal damage, which is NOT made out of AR450 steel.
• Attack Its Weak Point: War shredded one of Double Jeopardy's wheels to hinder its movements. Then, it shredded one on the other side to knock it out.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Buttercup is weaponless. It's just a wedge, albeit one with an unusual shape.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: The robot is more or less a repaint of Ian Watt's entry to the Chinese show, King of Bots, which was The Grubs. Like The Grubs, there was three robots with a spinner and one as a weaponless wedge.
• Confusion Fu: The operators of Gamma 9 were quite puzzled over which unit among The Four Horsemen to attack. Eventually averted, though, as Gamma 9 was seen to focus on Pestilence.
• Determinator: Buttercup is incredibly durable. It went up against two other bots three times its mass and outlasted them both.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The smaller size of each unit means they can't hit as hard, but they can hit a lot more often than most other competitors can. This came into play against Hypothermia—while The Four Horsemen lost, they dealt dozens of little blows to Hypothermia.
• Double Knockout: With Gamma 9.
• Explosive Overclocking: Buttercup appeared to be on the verge of this at the end of the fight against Hypothermia, profusely smoking while carrying a bot almost four times its weight on its back.
• Expy: To Creepy Crawlies in the previous competition, as a multibot from the UK with Ian Watts in a creator role, and to The Swarm on Robot Wars, an earlier 4-part multibot from Watts with asymmetrical weaponry (not to be confused with The Swarm on BattleBots, which is unrelated).
• Friendly Fire: Buttercup skidded into Pestilence's spinning bar and lost its left wheel during the fight against Blacksmith. Notably, this was exactly where the fight started turning to Blacksmith's side.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Buttercup. That being said, it IS the only one that doesn't actually attack.
• Fragile Speedster: War, Famine, and Pestilence are much smaller than their opponents, so they won't win any battles of endurance, at least not on their own. However, they are fast enough to keep up with their bigger adversaries. Michael Mauldin, of Hypothermia, said that they kept zipping away every time he tried to use Hypothermia's lifting arm, preventing its use from beginning to end.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Discussed in Faruq's introduction in the match against Hypothermia as "The Mean of England."
• Logical Weakness: Each unit's small size aside, Buttercup's weight distribution causes it to perform wheelies any time it moves too fast, rendering its wedge ineffective. Though it wasn't much of an issue against the (relatively) slow-moving Gamma 9, this tendency for Buttercup's wedge to go flying up drastically reduced its effectiveness against the faster Blacksmith.
• Made of Iron: In their fight against Gemini, War remained active for the entire match despite taking a lot of hits from Gemini's weapons and the pulveriser. Pestilence and Buttercup weren't so lucky.
• Mini Mook: As mentioned above, three of the four units making up this multibot are basically smaller Tombstones working as a team.
• Odd Name Out: War, Famine, and Pestilence are named after the actual mythological Four Hoursemen of the Apocalypse and, except for their paint jobs, identical in the form of miniature Tombstones. The fourth, Buttercup, is a weaponless wedge.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: War, Famine, and Pestilence are a little over one-quarter the mass of most of the other robots in this tournament, but they pack a wallop, as can be seen by how War, by itself, managed to incapacitate the much bigger Double Jeopardy through precise blows.
• Put on a Bus: It was discovered that the combined weight of The Four Horsemen went over the weight limit of this weight class, requiring Ian Watts to sit one of them out. For its debut battle, he chose to not use Famine. Against Blacksmith, Famine was brought in with War sitting it out.
• Technical Pacifist: Buttercup. It does no attacking itself, but rather, is used to disrupt the opponents' movements to make it easier for War, Famine, and Pestilence to attack them. Buttercup did this to great effect to high-center Gamma 9 toward the end of their debut match.
• Victory Dance: Buttercup spun in place in the middle at the end of its first match.
• Wolfpack Boss: Each individual bot is about one-third the weight of most of the other bots; though all four together exceed the weight limit, two spinners must be out of commission for the team to be counted out.

Ultimo Destructo

Team: Carnage Robotics

Driver: Sean Irvin

Hometown: Valkaria, Florida

Matches (Season): Valkyrie (W/KO), Parallax (W/JD), Axe Backwards (L/KO), Witch Doctor (L/KO)

• Awesome, but Impractical: Perhaps the single biggest example of this trope in combat robotics, Ultimo Destructo's missile launcher is a real crowd-pleaser and a big surprise to anyone not aware Ultimo Destructo can do this, but it has no accuracy and cannot do much damage if it does hit due to the safety rules. Ultimo Destructo used this weapon only once, against Axe Backwards, to no effect whatsoever.
• Born Lucky: It won its first two matches but both Chris and Kenny noted that the wins were not as resounding as other bot victories^note Both Valkyrie and Parallax encountered technical problems that rendered them largely unable to fight and it saw the test against Witch Doctor as a real test of its abilities. Sadly to say, it got KO'ed by Witch Doctor.
• Color-Coded Characters: Lime green.
• Confusion Fu: Ultimo Destructo has at least four weapons, completely unrelated to each other, that can be attached at the front of its body to keep opponents guessing and to counter what they'll most likely have. It's not quite to the intricacy Bombshell exhibited last season, but its shape is affected to a greater extent. Notably, only one of these is a spinning weapon (the bar pictured here—the other three are a flipper, a hammer, and a missile launcher), whereas Bombshell almost always has a spinning weapon.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Ultimo Destructo can use a launching arm instead of the pictured spinning bar.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Taken a step up, as Ultimo Destructo was trisected by the end of the match against Witch Doctor.
• Logical Weakness: The modular weapon goes in the middle, sandwiched between the two driving halves, and not on top. The weapon is connected at four small points, two on each side. Naturally, the connectors would have to give out eventually. Such was the end of the match against Witch Doctor, in which Ultimo Destructo literally broke into three long pieces.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Ultimo Destructo has a missile launcher add-on that launches 24 small missiles, all at once.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Ultimo Destructo has one of the more intimidating-sounding names in this competition.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Ultimo Destructo's first two victories were not televised, though they were later shown on YouTube via BattleBots Basement.
• Shout-Out: Before its fight against Parallax, Faruq's introduction makes reference to the "box of chocolates" line from Forrest Gump.
• Spectacular Spinning: Pictured is the spinning bar.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Like with Bombshell in the previous season, Ultimo Destructo has a body as a base upon which other weapons (like a hammer) can attach onto it.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: During its match against Valkyrie, Valkyrie got high-centered all on its own due to its spinning disk tipping it up, lifting its wheels off the floor. Ultimo Destructo simply had to prove it's still operational to win.

Valkyrie

Team: Questionable Designs

Driver: Leanne Cushing

Hometown: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Matches (Season): Ultimo Destructo (L/KO), Bale Spear and Predator (W/KO), Hypothermia (W/JD), Lockjaw (L/KO), Red Devil (W/JD)

Matches (Exhibition): Overhaul (W/JD)

• Attack Its Weak Point: Valkyrie pretty clearly went for Bale Spear's wheels, and this trope got zig-zagged as the match went on. It began with Bale Spear's wagon-like front wheels, which snapped off easily but didn't seem to inhibit Bale Spear's movements at all (and actually allowed Bale Spear's weapon, which is normally pretty high up, to point down low enough to hit Valkyrie). Valkyrie then targeted Bale Spear's rear wheels, which did the trick once the last wheel was rendered nonfunctional.
• Call-Back: This is actually the third bot to name something after Sonic The Hedgehog—there was a Robot Wars entry known as Kronic the Wedgehog, as well as Robot Wars and RoboGames competitor Foxic, named after creator Craig Danby's childhood Sonic Original Character.
• Cool Shades: Valkyrie's team is sometimes seen wearing aviator sunglasses, similar to the ones End Game's team wears.
• Didn't Think This Through: The Sonic the Wedgehog spinning disk is very heavy. The idea is to inflict big damage, but initially, in its fight against Techno Destructo, the disk was so heavy that it tipped Valkyrie over once it started moving, lifting Valkyrie's wheels off the floor and rendering the bot unable to move. That being said, the disk was barely functioning—if it was spinning at its intended speed, gyroscopic forces would keep Valkyrie upright.
• Double Knockout: Its match against Overhaul ended with the first simultaneous double knockout of the 2018 competition, with both bots rendered incapacitated at the same time and two referees counting them down in unison. This invoked a seldom-seen ruling in that a judges' decision would decide the winner at the time both bots were counted out. As a result, Valkyrie won by a judges' decision before time ran out due to Valkyrie doing more damage to Overhaul than Overhaul did to Valkyrie.
• Fem Bot: Severely downplayed as it's nowhere near a humanoid, but it's one of the few robots in robot combat to be referred to with feminine pronouns.
• Help, I'm Stuck!:
  • Found itself tipped over by its own spinning disk fighting Ultimo Destructo and getting its wheels lifted off the floor, making it an easy target.
  • Got flipped upside-down by Overhaul and was unable to move, again, due to its wheels being off the floor. This time, though, Overhaul helped it get back upright, as it was an exhibition match with nothing at stake.
• Hurricane of Puns: Faruq let out a string of puns in relation to The Avengers, with a particular focus on Thor, during his introduction before the fight against Overhaul.
• Mystical White Hair: Cushing's hair is dyed a very light lavender for this event, bordering on white, complementing her bot's theme.
• Named Weapons: The spinning bar is named The Spirit of Boston, the two-toothed disk is Dr. Teeth, and the six-toothed disk is Sonic the Wedgehog.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Pursued and attacked Bale Spear until it ran out of tires.
• No-Sell: Valkyrie's low height rendered Bale Spear unable to actually attack it with that spear. Meanwhile, Valkyrie's weapon had a longer reach, allowing it to attack Bale Spear however it wanted.
• One-Hit Kill: Went after Predator at the beginning of its fight against it and Bale Spear and took it out of commission immediately.
• Shout-Out:
  • The six-toothed disk is named after Sonic the Hedgehog due to its blue color and its resemblance to Sonic when curled up as a ball. It may also be named after Kronic due to sharing the same Species Surname of Wedgehog.
  • Faruq hums out the iconic lines of Wagner's "Rise of the Valkyries" during his introduction to Valkyrie against Bale Spearand Predator. The audience eventually takes over. He previously did the same during its match against Ultimo Destructo, though the audience didn't join in during then.
  • Kenny talks about the Dr. Tooth spinning disk that "You can't handle the tooth!"
• Spectacular Spinning: Uses a horizontal spinner as its weapon. Said spinner can be one of three: A spinning bar, a disk with two teeth, or a disk with six teeth.
• Two Girls to a Team: Though there are more than two female team captain in this competition, Valkyrie is one of only two bots of these 55 to be referred to as female (the other one being Chomp).
• Victory Dance: Spun in place during Bale Spear's knockout countdown. Cushing was certain Bale Spear was not going to recover from the damage it took.

Vanquish

Team: Team Nebula

Driver: Jack Tweedy

Hometown: Kent, England

Matches (Season): Icewave (L/KO)

• Armor Is Useless: Additional armor was added to Vanquish to help deal with Icewave's colossal power. The armored wedge remained intact... but that's of little solace when the rest of the robot has been annihilated.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Was completely unable to use its lifting wedge against Icewave, whose mobility has increased substantially since the last time. The result was that it spent the entire match on the receiving end of Icewave's spinning bar until Vanquish fell to pieces.
• Failed a Spot Check: The reason Vanquish fell apart against Icewave, according to Tweedy, is because of faulty welding holding the upper parts together, which he didn't realize until after the battle. Downplayed in that it's not instantly obvious just looking at Vanquish when fully assembled, but it does become obvious upon examining the wreckage.
• Fragile Speedster: Quite a fast competitor, but except for its thick steel front, it's not very well protected. You can see the internal components viewing Vanquish from the above. It was fast and maneuverable enough to get underneath Icewave a few times, but it had to take a hit from Icewave each time, and after enough, Vanquish just couldn't take any more.
• Graceful Loser: Vanquish's teams had ear-to-ear grins when the referee counted Vanquish out. They definitely had fun.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Literally torn in half by Icewave. Tweedy begged for the Icewave team to stop and not hit the pieces further, which they complied with.
• Once a Season: A team from the UK comes to compete, only to see their bot get torn to shreds. This happened in ABC Season 1 with Radioactive and Season 2 with Creepy Crawlies, and now it's happened again on the first Discovery Channel competition with Vanquish.
• Visual Pun: Invoked during the "Botopsy Report" interview.
  Jack Tweedy: It went to plan for about a minute. And then, it kind of fell to pieces, literally and figuratively.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Fought in just one Fight Night match, where it was torn apart by Icewave. It was repaired enough to fight again in an exhibition against Captain Shrederator and lost that one too. However, unlike some of the other robots that did not complete a full season (like Deviled Egg and Bale Spear), both of its fights were televised on the Discovery Channel.

Warhead

Team: Team Razer

Driver: Simon Scott

Hometown: Poole, England

Matches (Season): Sharkoprion (W/JD), Chomp (W/JD), Warrior Dragon (W/JD), Whiplash (L/KO)

• Animal Motifs: A dragon, but also borrowing elements from a scorpion — including its articulating tail, claws and segmented armour-plating. It isn't immediately obvious without the flame-throwing, dinosaur-like head that it introduced last year, though.
• Behemoth Battle: Warhead's battle against Sharkoprion was presented in this light to promote Discovery Channel's own Shark Week, being based around giant monstrous creatures (fire-breathing dragon and monster shark, respectively).
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Played for Laughs. During the Cold Open of episode 12, Chris doesn't have a lighter to light the candles on Kenny's birthday cake. Cue Warhead with the Dinosaur Jaw approaching and literally setting the entire cake on fire.
• Combat Pragmatist: Warhead took this approach to a T against Chomp — equipping the Dinosaur Jaw and taking advantage of Chomp knocking itself over with its own hammer swings by grabbing hold of the hammer arms and using them to drag it around and actively stop it from self-righting.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: A screenshot of Warhead's fight with Sharkoprion reveals that its fire-breathing, Tyrannosaurus Rex-like clamping head returns as an alternate option besides its classic spinning dome.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: Although there were several teams who made late appearances in the tournament due to work, technical issues, or other commitments — this notably happened with Chomp and Bronco — Team Razer were the very last registered team to arrive in Long Beach. This resulted in Warhead appearing much later in the season than all the other robots, since the Discovery Channel has stuck to airing matches in chronological order.
• Eye Scream: Warhead had this inflicted on it by Chomp in their bout, with a solid hit to the top of the Dinosaur Jaw knocking out one of its glowing green eyes. It was only cosmetic damage however, and Warhead still went on to win the fight.
  • The other eye got knocked out of the socket by Blacksmith in the "US vs. Rest of World" special, winning there as well despite being left with a hollow-eyed, skull-like appearance.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The tips of its "wings" have flamethrowers built into them, and its alternate Dinosaur Jaw mode has them built into the clamp's "nostrils", to give it the appearance of a fire-breathing dragon. It used them to good effect against Sharkoprion — melting the top fin and softening up the tyres enough for them to rip up with their clamping teeth.
  • The Dinosaur Jaw was also used in an intro skit to light the candles on Kenny Florian's birthday cake — with fairly predictable results.
• Grapple Move: Warhead has a pair of arms it can use to not only self-right, but corral the opponent into its spinning dome or clamping jaws with. Unlike most of the other such instances in this competition, Warhead's arms are horizontal rather than vertical.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: It lost its last bout after getting flipped onto its back by Whiplash's lifting arm. Whilst Warhead can self-right just fine from the sides — as it did a few times in the same fight — it cannot when it's turned over with the self-righting wings down. So when Whiplash turned it over, it was left upside-down; rocking back-and-forth with the jaw until it was counted out.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Despite Warhead qualifying for the Post-Season with their 3-1 record, Team Razer opted not to continue and gave up their spot, due to their main weapon (the dome) being irreparably destroyed in the fight against Warrior Dragon and their dinosaur head not being suited to fighting the heavy-hitting spinners that mostly populated the Last 16. Doubles as a Non-Gameplay Elimination.
• Long Runner: Though it's had substantial improvements since, Warhead has been battling for almost 15 years as of 2018. Along with Son of Whyachi, it's one of only two bots in this season to have fought in both the ABC/Science Channel and Comedy Central incarnations of Battlebots as themselves. This ultimately proved significant as the dome that was shattered during the fight against Warrior Dragon was the original one they'd been using ever since Warhead's debut 16 years ago — which, considering the kinds of stresses it would have undergone in that time, would certainly explain why the metal would shatter like that.
• Spectacular Spinning: Pictured is its trademark spinning dome — which, unlike most spinners in the competition, can articulate up and down for precision shots and to aid in its self-righting, as well as helping towards its unique biomechanical creature-like appearance.
• Wrecked Weapon: Their iconic spinning dome weapon spectacularly shattered to pieces in their bout with Warrior Dragon, to the point where it could not be repaired for the rest of Warhead's time on the show.

Warrior Dragon

Left: Meddler. Middle: Warrior SKF. Right: Warrior Dragon Drone.

Team: Team Wyachi

Driver: Clint Ewert

Hometown: Dorchester, Wisconsin

Matches (Season): Chomp (W/JD), ROTATOR (L/JD), Warhead (L/JD)

• A.I. Breaker:
  • Clint observed that, under the AI's control, Chomp takes a long time to right itself when flipped and always does it in the same particular way. To that end, he moved Warrior SKF (and sometimes Meddler) to where Chomp should right itself back up to stop it from doing so, causing it to get stuck in a self-righting loop.
  • Chomp's "Keep Your Distance" AI causes Chomp to match movements of its opponent: Chomp retreats when the opponent advances and vice versa. In at least one instance, Warrior SKF drove in such a way as to invoke Chomp to drive itself into the screws on the side of the BattleBox.
• Animal Motifs: There is a dragon design on the red metal framework of the Warrior Dragon Drone.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Clint only needed to see Chomp's automatic self-righting at work once to know how to exploit it.
• Boring Yet Practical: Warrior Dragon defeated Chomp by mainly letting Chomp tip over, then moving next to Chomp's underside to prevent itself from regaining balance. Not the most interesting way to win, but it's the least risky way.
• Charge Attack: As Warrior SKF spins that ring, it charges up the flipping panel. Because the ring is always on when battling, the longer it goes without using the flipping panel, the stronger the flip will be.
• Dual Boss: More like triple boss, with one leader and two subordinates. Played straight against Chomp as the drone was not used.
• Glass Cannon: Has so far had problems getting its spinning ring to stay spinning for any decent length of time. This is nothing compared to the drone unit, however, destroying itself after it merely touched ROTATOR.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: When the spinning ring has stored up enough tension, the wedge at the front of Warrior SKF can then flip. The longer it goes without flipping something, the more tension it stores and the stronger the flip will be.
• Mutual Disadvantage: ROTATOR and Warrior SKF both have low-endurance weapons at roughly the same height, meaning their weapons are going to take heavy beatings and lose most to all of their functionality.
• No-Sell: Observing Chomp's movements, it looked as though Chomp's AI was confused with Warrior SKF's shape due to it being shorter than where Chomp's camera is located.
• Playing with Fire: Meddler and the Warrior Dragon Drone both have flamethrowers.
• Shout-Out: Faruq does a variant on The Warriors' "Warriors, come out and play!" introducing Warrior Dragon in the fight against Chomp.
• Spectacular Spinning: Warrior SKF, has a bladed spinning ring. This is uniquely tension-driven, with extra energy stored up to be used for its flipping panel.