What Could Have Been / DEATH BATTLE!

Given that DEATH BATTLE! is a long-running series about pitting two or more characters from, in most instances, different series against each other, there are bound to be ideas that did not make the final cut.

Spoilers are turned off. You Have Been Warned.

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Matchups

• Leonardo was originally supposed to fight Tommy Oliver (as his White Ranger form), but Zitz came instead. However, Tommy later got in with a battle against Zechs. It would take until season 7 for Leonardo to face a Power Ranger, only a different one, Jason Scott (Red Ranger).
• Kirby's opponent was originally Ditto before being switched out for Majin Buu. This was Ben's experience in his blog:
  I was writing the script, had the fight planned out, and everything was almost totally good to go! ...then I found a “Kirby: Right Back At Ya!” episode where the plucky pink puffball threw a giant worm all the way to the sun. (Beat) Yeah, Ditto was one hundred percent screwed.
• Harry Potter was originally meant to fight Aang, but after the team researched Aang, they realized just how one-sided the fight would be in his favor, so they opted to instead pit Harry against Luke Skywalker. Harry would still lose, but at least it wasn't as one-sided, and Aang would later battle Edward Elric instead.
• According to ultraguy, Ben originally wanted to pit Ganondorf against Dracula, but the higher-ups thought he was too niche and Ganondorf would fight Bowser instead. This fight later became a reality in Season 6.
• In this Death Battle Cast episode, Ben and Chad mentioned that Indiana Jones was going to be one of the major contenders to go up against either Lara Croft or Nathan Drake when deciding on an Adventurer Archaeologist match-up. Ultimately, Lara VS Nathan was decided because of the overwhelming response from the community wanting to see this fight. However, Ben has brought up the possibility of Indy still making it in to face off against the victor, though only time will tell if this will happen.
• In the Sub-Zero VS Glacius commentary, Ben revealed several possible opponents for Sub-Zero, including Elsa, Frozone, and Iceman. Glacius was chosen due to them wanting to research a Killer Instinct character, as Nick is a noted fan of the series.
• The hosts mentioned that Ichigo was originally going to fight Yusuke Urameshi, but they decided to pit him against Naruto due to getting more requests for Naruto.
• In this Death Battle Cast episode, the hosts revealed that other top 2 contenders for Raven in Season 5 were Scarlet Witch and Jean Grey, but they decided to use Twilight Sparkle because this matchup was the fairest for both characters and the one with the best connections. They also concluded during the planning stages that the fight would be too one-sided in Jean Grey's favour due to the Phoenix Force while Scarlet Witch has fewer connections with Raven than Twilight Sparkle. Scarlet Witch would later battle Zatanna in Season 9 and Raven would come back and fight Jean in Season 10. And ironically, contrary to their initial belief, Raven ended up defeating Jean Grey.
• In his Road to 100 blog, Ben revealed a few matchups for the first two seasons that were either cut, delayed, or changed opponents. The most notable examples include Naruto vs Luffy for Season 2, Crash Bandicoot vs. Spyro the Dragon planned to be out three seasons earlier, and Master Chief originally going up against Duke Nukem.
• Joker’s most requested opponents, Green Goblin and Kefka, were considered, but Ben realized that both would kill Joker immediately, so he choose Needles Kane instead as he was closer to Joker physically.
• In the ''Road to 100'' blog, Ben revealed that Hulk was originally planned to face off against Broly in Season 3, but fan demand shifted wildly in favour of Doomsday after he was revealed in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Hulk would eventually be pitted against Broly in the Season 7 finale.
• Ben mentioned that he considered Beast Boy and Danny Phantom as opponents for Ben 10, but the former was rejected for being ridiculously outmatched and the latter just felt too awkward to base a fight around. Danny would face Jake Long in the next season, and would fight Ben 10 himself later that year in DBX.
• Captain Falcon was originally planned to fight All Might, but Ben felt that there was too much of a power difference between them and happened to be contacted by Warner to have a Mortal Kombat character in Death Battle around this time and chose for him to fight Johnny Cage instead. All Might would later battle Might Guy as the season finale.
• The original Season 6 finale was Asura vs Broly. However, the team decided to push it back due to them finding All Might vs Might Guy to be a more fun match to make. By the time Season 7 rolled around, they figured that the Hulk was a better opponent for Broly.
• Both Android 17 and Cyborg were strongly considered to be opponents for Genos, but were ultimately rejected due to how huge of a Curbstomp Battle it would be, as Genos' Joke Character status combined with the massive stat gaps that both 17 and Cyborg had would have trivialized the fight in mere seconds. Ultimately, War Machine was chosen as the team saw him as the lesser curbstomp out of the three choices.
• Blake vs. Mikasa didn't materialize until Season 8, but it was considered for both Seasons 5 and 6. It was replaced by Optimus Prime vs. Gundam for the former because the team wanted to revisit Transformers after four seasons, and replaced by Weiss vs. Mitsuru for the latter because they thought Volume 6 of RWBY would center around Weiss.
• Goku Black vs. Reverse Flash wasn't originally planned to be in Season 8. It was actually suggested by Ultraguy because there was one open episode slot left.
• Korra vs. Storm was planned for a while, but due to animation limitations at various times, the episode hadn't been properly made due to the creators wanting to perfectly capture the elemental aspects of the battle until late Season 8. In addition, Storm was chosen due to her general popularity over Korra's two other popular opponents, Delsin Rowe and Rey; while there is still an interest to have Delsin join soon and potentially still have Korra be his opponent, Rey was foregone due to the worry that discussion about the episode would focus less on their abilities and rather on the Broken Base surrounding both Legend of Korra and the Sequel Trilogy, and that it would run contrary to how Death Battle wants to be a celebration of the characters and their lore.
• Magneto vs. Tetsuo was an episode the team wanted to do for a while and was initially going to be in Season 8 before being pushed back to Season 9.
• A little before Season 9 ended, Death Battle held a poll specifically made for DB Champions to vote for which two matchups would appear in Season 10: one of them animated in sprites, and the other animated in 3D. Bill Cipher vs. Discord and Alex Mercer vs. Cole MacGrath won both respectively, but there were other options.
  • For the sprite poll, there was Captain America vs. Kamen Rider Ichigo, The Imposter vs. the Fall Guy, Kyle Rayner vs. Simon the Digger, Ori vs. The Knight, and Finn and Jake vs. Mordecai and Rigby.
  • As for the 3D Poll, there were the likes of Kratos vs. Asura (which was actually announced to have been the runner-up in its Death Battle Cast description), Steve vs. Emmet, King Ghidorah vs. Deathwing, Illdian vs. Xiao and The Spy vs. Agent 47.
    • It should be noted though that every matchup listed here is still on the table, so it might be a case of them just happening later rather than sooner.
• Guts' return in Season 10 came down to either Dimitri or Clare, the protagonist of Claymore. However, Dimitri was chosen as Fire Emblem was one of the most highly requested franchises for a debut, and he and Guts both had 3D models to work with while Clare didn't.
• During Season 10, another poll was run to determine a matchup for Season 11, this time in a tournament style with significantly more options. Wile E. Coyote vs Tom Cat won that poll, but other matchups included (but were not limited to) Luz vs Anne, Sackboy vs Maxwell, Zeus vs Odin, and a composite Ryu vs Goku using all appearances.

Alternate outcomes

• The (now removed) annotations for the first Q&A video reveals that Yoshi vs. Riptor originally had Riptor as the winner. But after more research, they decided that Yoshi would win. The annotations of the same video also revealed that they back and forth over who would win in the TMNT Battle Royale.
• The original Link vs. Cloud reportedly had the entire crew arguing for weeks coming up with new feats and counters, which could've resulted in Cloud winning that battle. ^note Much like Mario vs Sonic undoing Sonic's win for the 100th episode, Link vs Cloud would get a rematch with Cloud winning.
• Ruby subjecting Ragna to a Curb-Stomp Battle in their DBX was enforced by Rooster Teeth themselves, as the animator had originally wanted Ragna to win a much closer fight instead.
• Zuko vs. Todoroki was originally going to happen in the first half of Season 7, with Zuko winning thanks to what was assumed to be an insane speed gap. However, due to technical difficulties, the episode was delayed to the second half of the season, and feats from the MHA manga released in the interim closed the gap enough for Todoroki to take the win.
• Wally West vs. Archie Sonic also had its outcome changed, right down to the wire. It seemed like Sonic would be the one to take victory... until at the last second, they found out that the Speed Force was more powerful than the Bleed, something that's more powerful than the 5th dimension, giving him enough justification to resist Sonic's chaos powers.

Scenes

• In the scene where Goku tries to read Superman's mind only to fail, they were originally going to have a brief Battle in the Center of the Mind that would've ended with Superman booting Goku out of his mind.
• Ben and Chad had hoped for "Mewtwo vs. Shadow" to be much longer than it was, and had recorded a number of lines that ultimately had to be cut, making the episode feel incomplete - to the disappointment and confusion of fans. Apparently, one particular scene was to have Shadow take down and kill a wild Onix to get the Green Chaos Emerald, incurring Mewtwo’s wrath and thus starting the fight. In the final episode, it was replaced with just a brief moment of Shadow getting incensed at a Zubat getting too close to the Green Chaos Emerald starting the fight. A big part of the issue was that the animator deliberately did a mediocre job on the project as a result of not wanting to make vs. battles anymore.
• In the commentary for "Lucario vs. Renamon", Lucario was originally going to destroy Renamon's jaw before thrusting a bone through the gaping hole in her face, but was changed to avoid any sexual comments that would arise from Lucario thrusting a bone down Renamon's throat.
• In the post-episode Death Battle Cast for "Power Rangers vs. Voltron", it was revealed that there was supposed to be a post-fight animation segment where Lance's survival would be confirmed. Unfortunately, this scene needed to be cut due to limited production time.
• During the post-episode Death Battle Cast for "Nightwing vs. Daredevil", it was revealed that there was supposed to be a scene where Daredevil bludgeoned Nightwing with a cinder block immediately following the scene where Nightwing was stunned after his attack at a stealth attack backfired. However, due to the props breaking ^note Ismahawk ordered two of them, but one was broken during shipping and the backup prop broke during filming, the scene needed to be cut.
  • Additionally, the episode's killing blow was originally supposed to involve Nightwing dropping a car on Daredevil. This was ultimately scrapped due to the considerable time and monetary investment that setting up such a scene would require.
• Weiss's death in Weiss vs. Mitsuru was going to have her smashed to pieces by Mitsuru's stab, with the broken Myrtenaster being visible in a pile of her frozen, dismembered remains. The team decided against it after heavy fan backlash from the death of Ben Tennyson in the prior episode: and because neither series was particularly heavy on gore, anyway.
• In the post-episode Death Battle Cast for "Dragonzord vs. Mechagodzilla", it was revealed that there was supposed to be scenes showing both Akane and Tommy alive after the battle, but they were cut due to limited production time. They originally planned to use either the Showa or Heisei Mechagodzilla with a Twitter poll for fans to decide which incarnation would be used in the final episode ^note which went between Showa, Heisei, Millennium and a Composite Character version that used all 3 incarnations plus comics at once, with the composite winning out only for it to be disregarded by the team due to different origins and continuities between the 3 (Showa was a villian used by the Black Hole Aliens, Heisei was a hero built by the JSDF off the remains of Mecha-King Ghidorah, Millennium (Kiryu) was also a hero built by the JSDF using the bones of the 1954 Godzilla) with Millennium having the second highest votes ultimately being the winner. But since the Showa version was too powerful for Godzilla (which required King Caesar's help in the first match while the sequel version was more range focused and far weaker overall) and the Heisei version briefly killed him, they decided they were too powerful for Dragonzord. ^note Making the Heisei one pure irony is that Heisei Era Mechagodzilla is not capable of melee combat at all, outside of it's video game appearances (compounding issues further is that it's physical durability is far weaker overall as seen in the climax where Fire Rodan easily destroys it's right eye laser cannon, and Godzilla severally damages the mech once he gets up close and nearly destroys the mech's left arm) and is overall slower than Dragonzord (on top of it's Plasma Grenade being completely useless as it relies heavily on absorbing radiation beams to fire which Dragonzord lacks in its arsenal), which would put the Heisei Era Mechagodzilla at a huge disadvantage against the far faster melee-capable Dragonzord. It's likely implied that the Heisei Era Mechagodzilla's big advantage would have come in form of Super Mechagodzilla (via combining with Garuda), as the improved firepower and the improved Shock Anchors (aka the G Crusher, which was what nearly killed Heisei Era Godzilla in the first place) which would have overwhelmed Dragonzord, especially the G Crusher Anchors which would have instantly killed Tommy if they scored a direct hit (as it would be targeting Dragonzord's second brain, AKA the pilot).
• The storyboards for "Hulk VS Broly" reveal that the fight was originally going to start on Vampa, and that the deer Broly was with at the start and end of the episode was originally going to be Ba. The commentary for the fight reveals that this was changed due to the amount of work it would have taken to make a 3D model of Ba.
• The storyboards for "Lex Luthor VS Doctor Doom" reveal that alongside Luthor using a Lexbot at the beginning of the fight, Doom was also originally going to start off with a Doombot, with the two of them only showing up for real when both of their robots are simultaneously destroyed. The actual fight only has the remains of a Lexbot shown, with it being implied that Doom just teleported back into the building after No-Selling the explosion that destroyed the Lexbot.
• The storyboards for Steven Vs Star show several scenes that were apparently cut from the fight, including Steven bubbling several of Star's fired off summons before she transforms and Spider With a Top Hat being sent flying to the camera as a result of Star's final attack.
• The storyboards for Dio vs Alucard showed that the scene preceding Road Roller Da was originally longer. Originally, after Dio used The World's time stop ability to evade Baskerville, Dio threw the destroyed car at Alucard, which misses via intangibility. Alucard was also going to shoot from Baskerville's mouth doing some damage to Dio before Baskerville would ultimately perish at the hands of The World. The music was made to play alongside this too, as the guitar segment (at 1:18) is much longer in the song itself, where it's cut shorter for the episode.
• The storyboards for "Omni-Man vs. Homelander" show that Omni-Man was supposed to do his memetic "Think, Mark!" pose over Homelander's corpse◊.
• According to Liam Swan◊, Doktor was originally meant to be a part of Excalibur vs. Raiden's battle animation in earlier docs, though due to budget, time, and necessity, his presence in the fight was cut.
• The storyboards for Excalibur VS Raiden revealed a lot of parts that didn't make it into the final production, to list:
  • Raiden and Excalibur were originally going to shoot each others bullets out of the air rather than simply deflecting them with their blades.
  • The Radial Javelin that sent Raiden onto the roof was supposed to get lodged in his armor, leading him to pull it out when he got up.
  • Excalibur was originally going to simply slash the cardboard box and have the claymores go off in his face instead of slicing it open with Slash Dash and having them detonate around him.
  • Excalibur was originally going to kick Raiden and use him as a spring board to fly faster with his Archwing instead simply ramming him and flying up.
  • Raiden was going to jump across Excalibur's missiles to reach him ala Metal Gear Ray rather than running up a nearby building and jumping off it.
  • Raiden was originally going to be kicked away by Excalibur instead of being forced back by the electricity by the Warframe's power surge.
  • Instead of the Murasama landing blade first into the ground, it was going to fall to the ground in pieces.
• The storyboards for "James Bond vs John Wick" show that Wick was originally looking at a photograph of him and his dead wife instead of the same image on his phone. When he is crushed by the chandelier at the end, he takes one last look at it before dying.
  • After the killing blow, Bond would originally remove the knife that Wick stabbed him with before collapsing against a pillar. This was likely scrapped because Bond would probably know that this would only cause him to bleed out faster.
• SpongeBob vs Aquaman was going to end on more of a downer note with SpongeBob walking away crying after drawing Aquaman’s grave. But one of the animators suggested at the last minute to change it so that he’s smiling over the memorial of the fallen hero instead to give it a more bittersweet feeling.
• Gojo vs. Makima's storyboards included an epilogue scene (that was never intended to actually be in the episode proper) where Gojo runs into Denji and Makima's reincarnation, Nayuta. Nayuta calls him a doggy and Denji scolds her for being rude, but she says it was a compliment. Gojo apparently recognizes her and tells Denji to take care of her before they go their separate ways.
• The storyboards for Scooby-Doo vs Courage the Cowardly Dog have a few notable differences from the final episode. Notably, the cameos of Bad Mr. Frosty and Godzilla replaced cameos of Thomas the Tank Engine and King Ghidorah (the latter of which appeared in the original Courage scene the battle was referencing), respectively, while Courage's "this could be bad" joke was absent. Eustace's Cruel and Unusual Death at the end was also absent from the storyboards; instead, an instruction was given to Luis Cruz, the battle's primary animator, to make it as brutal as he wished.

Other

• During the live stream of Samus Aran vs. Boba Fett Remastered, the unaired pilot for Death Battle was shown before the fight. In it, Ben (aka, Wiz) was the only host and the show was entitled Who Would Win?. The fight at the end was also placed against a live-action background rather than one made out of sprites.
• ScrewAttack originally contacted Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug and asked him to voice Superman for "Goku vs. Superman". He declined due to having a heavy workload at the time.
• Chris Rager really wanted to reprise his role as Mr. Satan for his battle, but ScrewAttack was too leery of legal repercussion.
• Nathan Vetterlein stated that he was willing to reprise the role of Scout in the "Scout vs. Tracer" episode. Ben Singer lamented that it was too late to recast, but thanked him for the offer and asked if Nathan would like to be cast in future episodes. Had this pushed though, Scout would have been the third character in the show's history to have his original voice actor reprise his role for an episode.
• In this Death Battle Cast episode, the hosts reveal a lot of trivia regarding the show. Apparently, Smokey VS McGruff wasn't the first time Sam tried to implement a pun battle in an episode and the first time was going to be Flash VS Quicksilver, but it got cut because the episode was already confusing enough as is, trying to explain the Speed Force and Quicksilver's parentage. They also revealed that Arnold Schwarzenegger VS Sylvester Stallone was also planned to be an episode, but got canned for some reason.
• "Leon Kennedy vs. Frank West" was meant to be 3D-animated, but the sheer number of weapons both sides had in addition to Torrian being tasked with animating "Crash vs. Spyro" (two episodes before this) and "Ryu vs. Jin" (two episodes after) meant that there was little time for him to push through with it.
• On Twitter, it was mentioned that Mitsuru's model was going to be based on her Persona 4: Arena appearance, but her coat was too awkward to work around.
• While "Deadpool vs. Mask" was going to be traditionally animated from the get-go, a different team was considered. Javier Ulloa and Shelbie Copas, the animators behind the similarly toon-force-themed DBX episode "Bendy vs. Cuphead", were originally asked to handle this fight, but they backed out due to not being able to make time for it.
• The Red vs. Blue fight was suppose to release on the 16th of October, but the fight was a bit Overshadowed by Controversy that went behind the scenes of Red vs. Blue Zero, which this match promoted, leaving there to be no Death Battle episodes for the rest of October, and Sabrewulf vs. Jon Talbain taking its place as the next match.
  • The episode also marked the first time Joel Heyman wasn't voicing Caboose... because he didn't check his messages and thus another actor was brought in.
• "Blood Moon" had multiple name ideas, a notable one being "WulfsBain", but Brandon found that "Blood Moon" fit the lyrics and the album art best of all of them.
• SpongeBob vs Aquaman originally lacked the narrative that the latter had no chance in hell at winning the fight. It only came into existence during development when the writers realize that Super Friends Aquaman actually is as lame as the internet portrayed him with nothing that could push the fight in his favor.
• Marty Grabstein, the official voice actor of Courage the Cowardly Dog, has stated that he was offered to reprise his role as Courage for Scooby-Doo vs Courage the Cowardly Dog, but the Death Battle team eventually stopped getting back to him, presumably after it was made unclear whether he could legally reprise it or not, and that Grabstein was disappointed that the team ultimately recast Courage for the episode without telling him.

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