YMMV / BattleBots

• Badass Decay:
  • Ghost Raptor was a massive underdog in the first ABC season due to Chuck Pitzer's improvisational ingenuity, reaching the final four before losing to eventual champions Bite Force. In season 2, they fought twice and lost twice- badly. In the first bout they were torn apart by Son of Whyachi when they tried to tank its attacks before striking back, only to have its blade get caught up in its design. After getting a wild card into the next round anyway, they got convincingly beaten by Razorback when they got turned over and were unable to self-right. It became even more pronounced when Ghost Raptor returned in 2020, its only wins being because the opponents had stopped moving on their own, with Chomp running out of power and Deadlift becoming inoperable for unknown reasons.
  • Icewave suffered from a similar scenario. In its first appearance, Icewave was seen as a top contender for the Giant Nut, and placed at #2 on the seeding. It made mincemeat out of Razorback and Chomp before losing in a Shocking Elimination to the aforementioned Ghost Raptor in the quarter-finals. However, due to a combination of this and the fact that it was virtually unchanged from before, it suffered heavily in Season 2. Icewave barely won its initial battle over SubZero, having lost the use of its weapon and only won because SubZero couldn't get under them to flip them over. In its second fight however, it wasn't so lucky. They lost in an endurance battle with Nightmare of all robots, dishing out several hits before promptly shutting down, losing the Round of 32. Now Icewave isn't nearly as popular as it once was, when it was initially considered to be almost unbeatable.
    • However, Icewave did recover a fair bit of respect (and dread) after its first fight on the Discovery Channel series when it literally tore Vanquish in half!
  • Tombstone is beginning to lose its nigh-invulnerable reputation at the beginning of Discovery Season 3 after three consecutive losses (To Bite Force in the S2 semifinals, Witch Doctor in a between-seasons exhibition match, and Endgame in the S3 opener). It's still The Dreaded due to the sheer amount of damage it can do and those losses all coming against highly-rated bots, but it's no longer seen as an automatic lock-in for the top seeds like it always has been.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Bite Force has become this, for some its consistent and overbearing success makes its fights too predictable and takes the fun out of watching it (the fact that a lot of those came down to sheer luck probably doesn’t help), not helped by its bland color scheme, generic design, and lack of any real distinguishing characteristics. While others believe that it is a well engineered and well driven machine that deserves all of its wins.
    • Its absence from seasons 5, 6, and 7 has also drawn a mixed reaction, with some fans wishing that Bite Force would come back to continue its legendary winning streak, others wishing it could come back so another robot could end said winning streak, and still others being glad it’s gone so other robots get a chance to shine.
  • Quantum from season 4 also has this to a more minor extent, with some praising it for being one of the few crusher bots in modern BattleBots (or ever) to do well, as well as its unique design and resemblance to the Robot Wars fan favorite Razer. While others are still bitter about the Blacksmith fight, saying that designing a robot that isn’t able to let go should be against the rules. Though this mostly died down after the DUCK! fight showed that it in fact could let go of its opponents quite easily when they’re made of the right material.
  • End Game also became this after winning season 5, with some criticizing it for basically being Bite Force, but orange. Others defended it, claiming that the robot came a long way from the Glass Cannon it was back in season 3.
• Broken Base: The revival has created plenty in the community.
  • The removal of weight-divisions. Before it was lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight, and superheavyweight. Now the tournament is based entirely around the heavyweight division. This either kills the variety, or adds more focus to the tournament aspect of the game.
  • Modifications before battle. Some say it's unfair to modify your robot before a match to give you an edge, going as far as to call it "cheating". However, others argue that it is necessary to adapt to an opponent in order to survive (Ghost Raptor vs. Icewave is often brought up) and that the fixes and modifications make for a fairer, more interesting fight.
  • Multibots. Like the above, some people don't think it's fair for one team to fight another two or three vs. one. But weight has to be divided into multiple bots, meaning there are disadvantages to doing so.
  • Weaponless robots are sometimes considered boring as they cannot inflict any direct damage, dependent on stage hazards. They didn't become the dominant type of robot until the time BattleBots went off the air, but there were already plenty of strong contenders in the Comedy Central run, such as The Big B, Zion, IceBerg, New Cruelty, Bad Attitude, Punjar, War Machine, Turtle, Electric Lunch, and Double Agent. At the same time, however, these robots gain admiration from some other fans due to their dependence on good piloting skills by their operators in order to perform decently.
    • Weaponless bots are a lot more popular among British fans, as Robot Wars competitor Storm II went almost completely undefeated in their original show using only good driving and unrivaled speed^note It had a lifting arm, but that was only because the producers thought that the audience would find a rambot to be boring., and is still a fan favorite.
  • In a more specific sense, the Skorpios vs. Icewave match in the Discovery Channel reboot. Skorpios took a colossal amount of damage but otherwise controlled the entire fight, shoving Icewave around and checking its aggression beyond one or two good hits, which forced a judges' decision. Either way someone was going to be upset, with fans of the more battle-oriented side citing the beating Skorpios took, losing most of its armor and its primary weapon, while more tactical fans pointed out that Skorpios still dominated the fight with aggressive shoving tactics and good strategy and that damage alone was only 40% of the points in the current scoring system. Even the commentators seemed divided on it. Skorpios was handed the win, and predictably the fans split immediately.
  • Bombshell's appearance and victory in the Last Chance Rumble. After going 0-4 in the season it gets a shot at the 16th seed despite several other bots with superior records not being in the Rumble.^Why?Several other bots were offered the 16th seed but couldn't continue due to crippled or broken parts they couldn't repair or replace in time, including Skorpios and Warhead. It does a fair bit of damage early, then gets knocked out after a minute or so, and when the dust settles DUCK! is the last bot standing... but Bombshell is able to regain partial control with less than ten seconds left in the fight after being immobile for over a minute, then wins the judges' decision due to the rules of the Rumble being different than a standard match. ^note One factor being that Bombshell removed one of Red Devil's threads, whereas then-wedgebot DUCK! had no means of active damage. Either people are confused as to how a bot that failed to get any wins would be allowed in the Rumble at all, upset that DUCK! lost the judges' decision to a bot that barely worked anymore, understand the decision but don't like it, or agree with the decision but understand why the other groups are upset. It all resulted in a fight nobody really enjoyed. This was amplified greatly by Poor Communication Kills - The different rules for the Rumble were never mentioned, let alone explained, in the television broadcast and even the live audience and the teams themselves didn't seem to immediately understand the decision.
  • The arena floor in Discovery Season 2 caused a lot of problems for bots early in the series, epitomized in Episode 4 when two fan-favorite bots experienced problems with it. Quantum stumbled on a rough patch trying to box-rush Lock Jaw while Cobalt's wedge dug into the floor with enough force to either get stuck or outright break the drive, causing its loss to DUCK!. This split the base in two, with some people saying the floor is woefully inadequate and needs to be replaced since other major competitions don't seem to have this problem and others countering that it's the fault of people who build zero-clearance bots incapable of handling slight height changes and that it's folly to expect the floor to remain perfectly flat and level after several hours of high-impact competition.
  • Publicity-influenced seeding causes some robots that have achieved fame and name-brand recognition to be seeded above other robots that may have had comparable or better records that don't have that positive reputation. On one hand, there is the simple idea to place robots in seeds based purely on their records and their opponents' records. On the other, these more famous robots bring in viewers, sponsorship, help sell merchandise, and otherwise keep the show running. Of note is P1, the only robot with a 2-1 record after the preliminary rounds not to get seeded into the Round of 32 while several robots (most notably, the more well known and popular HyperShock) with a 1-2 record were placed ahead of it.^note Pain Train may have had a 2-1 record as well, but records are unclear.
  • The rules are a major source of this, mostly due to several fairly important rules being seen as either too subjective or too poorly-explained to the average viewer, leading many to believe they're arbitrary and fueling Creator's Pet claims. Not helping is that the rules are always changing and adapting from season to season, and while the rulebook is freely available online for anyone to read, most viewers and fans aren't going to do that. Compounded further, the judges don't have nearly as good a view of the fights as the TV show portrays with its multiple camera angles and occasionally-misleading editing, so decisions that make sense to the referees and judges may look dodgy to a viewer who has an entirely different perspective.
    • Active weapon rules and judging systems favoring damage has led to a meta very heavy in scoring knockouts over durability and technicality, which often leaved the fanbase divided over preferring quick, destructive fights or strategic tests of endurance with clever driving and using the arena as a weapon. This splits the base between 'Weapons are meant to be used' fans who favor damage and 'Skill and smart play should count for something' fans who favor control and strategy.
    • This came to a head with Beta vs. Rotator in Discovery Season 3, where Beta won what may be the most controversial judges' decision ever. Beta controlled the entire fight, shoving Rotator into walls, driving its spinner into the floor, and throwing it around the box to try to disable its weapon, which would destroy Beta's hammer if they ever made contact. However Rotator got a lucky and possibly unintentional hit on Beta's hammer while bouncing around, breaking it off like Beta feared, while Beta never used its own weapon at all because they wanted to break the spinner first. Beta getting the nod in a 6-5 split Judges' Decision caused a split not only among the fans but among the teams, with the following segment interviewing team captains who were pissed off about the decision. BattleBots took the rare step of posting the judges' cards immediately after the fight, and mentioned they'd be looking into changing the rules next year to clarify what should happen in this situation.
    • And up to eleven with the Hydra vs. HUGE fight that aired later but happened earlier, where Hydra went into the fight, one they would normally be at a disadvantage in, with a modification to their bot that showed they clearly had no intention of ever using their weapon. Instead of using their flipper they simply had a long horizontal metal bar elevated from the top of their bot, knowing that HUGE's large wheels meant it wouldn't have enough torque to push Hydra around, then landed a single hit with the Pulverizer, pinned HUGE against the wall, and held them in place for most of the match. This garnered even more controversy than the above battle, earning Hydra's driver Jake Ewert no small amount of X-Pac Heat ^Why?Jake could be heard arguing with both the referee and the driver of HUGE about the definition of a pin in an attempt to get around the rule forbidding the exact thing he was doing, and even when officially warned only did the bare minimum to technically follow the rules before doing it again. and leading to a statement from Battlebots saying that intentionally not using your weapon will be punished next season.
    • The “Translational Movement” rule introduced in Discovery Season 2 means that crabwalking (being able to drive in circles but not a straight line) is no longer considered controlled movement, this meant that Copperhead was counted out in its fight against Chronos despite being able to move, this also meant that fans were divided, with some saying that the new rule spares the fans from having to watch a “fight” where both opponents that are just barely capable of fighting are struggling to reach each other, while others cite Tantrum vs Lucky and Mammoth vs Tombstone, where one robot was completely immobile and the other could still crabwalk, but both are counted out anyway, as one robot being robbed of a win. This came to a head in the Discovery Season 4 championships where the referees themselves couldn't agree if Minotaur was crabwalking or not in its battle with Witch Doctor, leading to confusion about whether or not a count would be coming that greatly affected the last half of the match. Fortunately the rule was done away with in season 7, to the delight of many fans.
  • The inclusion of reality-show drama is a divisive topic among fans. One group enjoys the drama and the tension that comes with it, making the show more interesting and exciting and providing a pro-wrestling style with Faces and Heels to cheer for and root against, but the other group enjoys the relative lack of drama in combat robotics and likes to see and hear stories of teams helping each other, good sportsmanship, and the generally positive atmosphere, resulting in controversial and drama-stoking teams gaining X-Pac Heat from them. Not helping is that Discovery has been rapidly shifting their own focus on it, as they've done from downplaying it to emphasizing it over the course of three seasons.^*The controversial Beta vs. Rotator decision in Discovery Season 3 was heavily downplayed. The Minotaur vs. Witch Doctor decision next season was shown as it happened, but only vaguely referred to after that. The season after that saw at least three segments dedicated to the feud between the teams behind Riptide and Shatter!. The incomplete picture presented by the television show and Discovery's reputation for using Manipulative Editing to stoke controversy on other shows doesn't help this either, whether or not it's true.
• Cheese Strategy: The case above with Hydra vs. HUGE was very much hated by fans and fellow robot teams alike for being a strategy that, while effective, is incredibly boring and goes against the spirit of BattleBots. Jake offered to allow anyone else to use his anti-HUGE device, but all of the other teams refused out of principle. Sure enough, for HUGE's next fight, which was against Kraken, Matt Spurk did not use it.
• Common Knowledge: Many fans think that the original run of BattleBots was cancelled due to wedgebots robbing the show of popularity. This actually wasn’t the case, the actual reason for the fall in popularity was due to the fifth season’s new time slot and reduced amount of airings (season 5.0’s episodes where only aired once, compared to previous seasons had reruns in the off season), which kept fans from watching it. And an incident during a battle where the fan favorite Nightmare launched a piece of debris through the lexan walls certainly didn’t help. Ultimately, production decided that upgrading the arena wasn’t worth the reduced amount of money, and the show was canned for 13 years. Additionally, wedgebots didn’t become the main kind of robot until after the show had already went off the air, and all of the previous champions (Biohazard, Diesector, T-Minus, etc.) had some kind of active weapon, so they weren’t just boxes with forks and wheels.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Enforced by the rules Battlebots uses. By the modern day, spinning weapons are pretty much the only weapons worth using due to the rules emphasizing 'active weapon' damage and penalizing heavy wedges, the spinner's natural enemy. Over 3/4 of the entrants in the 2018 series were armed with some kind of spinner (whether flywheel, drum, bar, or full body) and of the minority who weren't only Bronco the box flipper made it into the round of 16. Even long-standing control bot specialist Donald Hutson conceded defeat and added spinning bars to Lock Jaw for the 2018 tournament after being defeated twice in a row in the previous series by spinners, because control bots simply aren't viable any more. The problem is that, unlike in a video game, you can't Nerf the laws of physics, and a high-powered spinning weapon is simply the most-damaging robot weapon it's possible to make. Overall, this shift in the combat meta has led to a much higher knockout rate in the ABC and Discovery Channel seasons than the Comedy Central seasons, at least within the televised matches.
• Creator's Pet:
  • Tombstone
    • When it lost ABC Season 1 to a powerful wedge in the finals, Battlebots responded by changing the scoring system to make it so that defensive add-ons like the one Bite Force used will make you lose points for aggression, attacking without a primary weapon contributes no points whatever, and recoil damage doesn't count as damage towards the robot. It was all a completely transparent attempt to make sure their fan-favorite and rating puller wouldn't lose again, much to the dismay of the audience. They got their wish when, as expected, Tombstone steamrolled the competition to the Giant Nut with little effort. Sure enough, the ratings went down, and instead of changing the rules to allow for less monotony, ABC decided to just quietly pull BattleBots off the air and gave it to the Discovery Channel. On the first Discovery Channel season, Tombstone was given an extremely difficult schedule, and fought against robots like Minotaur, Whiplash and DUCK! that were by no means pushovers in a fight against the champion. Although Tombstone went 4-0 in the regular season, it very much did not have as easy of a time doing so as it did in season 2.
    • Even in Discovery Seasons 3 and 4, the producers gave Tombstone ridiculously easy matches after it lost its first fights, pitting it against a rookie that’s in its first fight ever, and Mammoth, a robot that seemingly stood no chance against it.
  • Witch Doctor
    • The bot is consistently hyped as a contender and given significant attention (even being seeded fairly high) and being given highly coveted wildcard slots later in the tournament despite never having a winning record in any single season, and having a measly 33% winning record overall. Come Season 2 Discovery, however, and this no longer appears to be the case, with Witch Doctor firmly establishing itself as one of the better bots this season, making it all the way to the tournament finals and giving Bite Force a hard time. Time will tell if it continues the upward trend in future seasons, but it appears to have finally shaken off the favoritism image.
    • The apparent favoritism came back in force during season 4. Sitting at 1-1 and facing the very real possibility of missing the tourney, who does Witch Doctor draw for its do-or-die fight? Rusty. Then when 3-0 rookie phenom Glitch, their first tournament opponent, was forced to withdraw due to technical issues they were replaced with the 1-2 Mammoth, one of the few bots ready to go on such a short notice who wasn't already in the tournament. These two matches led some fans to accuse the producers of throwing Witch Doctor softballs to make sure they'd get into the Round of 16. The perception later went up to eleven during the quarterfinals match with Minotaur when Witch Doctor was able to call a time out to get unstuck after getting entangled with part of the upper deck, something that several other bots in seemingly similar situations were counted out for earlier in the season.
  • Minotaur has also been accused of this in Discovery Season 2, when it started off the year with an 0-2 record, the match makers gave it a Desperado Tournament with some really easy competition, such as Lucky and End Game, and after losing in the final to Black Dragon, they gave it an easy match with Shatter! before a final “Win and You’re In” match with Cobalt. All seemingly to make sure that the fan favorite gets into the final 16. For reference, if, say, Blacksmith had been in that position, the match makers would have left it for dead to focus on the more successful robots.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Diesector and TazBot were very popular if merchandise sales were anything to go by. Neither were particularly flashy, but they had very unique and easily identifiable designs that contributed to their popularity. No surprise that both of these bots were Donald Hutson designs, who would continue this streak with Lock Jaw in the reboot run.
  • Season 2 on ABC saw the rise of Minotaur, whose popularity skyrocketed due to its simple yet cool design, skilled driver, and amazing carnage potential that caused many people to consider it on par with Tombstone in terms of lethality.
  • DUCK! garnered itself quite the fanbase during its first televised season on Discovery, thanks to its Stone Wall reputation and solid performance in the Battlebox, all without having a flashy weapon. DUCK!'s popularity is such that it was the only robot to not make the tournament that wound up appearing in Battlebots Inc.'s new official line of T-shirts that were rolled out after the end of the 2018 season.
  • HUGE and Mammoth have both become crowd pleasers for their similarly unorthodox designs that favor sheer size and endurance over raw power. It helps that both of them are also fun to watch, with HUGE making the tournament in each of its first three seasons, and Mammoth's surprising acrobatics and Spirited Competitor driver pretty much guaranteeing an entertaining match.
  • Discovery Season 3 saw a few surprise fan favorites.
    • Rusty is an oddly endearing Giant Scrap Robot built out of semi-random parts by an enthusiastic first-time competitor who was happy to be there and put on a good show even if he lost. Many fans came to view Rusty and driver/builder Dave Eaton as The Heart of BattleBots, the embodiment of the spirit of the sport, in a season marred by controversial decisions and poor sportsmanship incidents. Like DUCK! before it, it also earned itself a spot in the official T-shirt line despite not making the tournament.
    • Jackpot gets similar love to a lesser extent due to being a cheap but surprisingly effective bot in a sport that many see as increasingly dominated by wealthy and well-sponsored teams.
    • MadCatter's team captain Martin Mason is quite popular due to his pro-wrestling Hoax Hogan commentary, which most fans agree is a near-guaranteed Funny Moment.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Between fans of technically-minded, precision driven bots (Bite Force, Lock-Jaw), and fans of more carnage inclined spinners (Tombstone, Icewave, Minotaur).
  • For that matter, Tombstone fans vs. everyone else.
  • Also, Inertia Labs fans vs. those of Tombstone and Minotaur, who took down Bronco in reboot seasons 1 and 2, respectively.
• Friendly Fandoms: There is little rivalry between fans of BattleBots and Robot Wars, although occasionally they get into relatively good-natured arguments about which show has the better robots. Most fans of robot combat just watch both shows.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2002, McDonalds had BattleBots themed toys for their Happy Meals. Of the robots they used, one of the toys was an original called the Mac Attack, a burger-themed toy robot. It was widely considered to be a waste, and was thrashed as a joke. Come 16 years later, and there would be a legit burger-themed combat robot named Battle Royale with Cheese that is very similar similar in concept to the infamous toy.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Despite the show featuring interviews and glimpses at the work the builders have put into their bots, many fans are just there for the fights, and skip the commentary entirely.
• Love to Hate:
  • Hazard. It dominated the middle-weight division and won three tournaments without losing once. Naturally, it got a little annoying for some viewers. It made it all the more satisfying when it was finally defeated by T-Minus. Mark Beiro himself even lampshaded it right before that fateful match.
  • The Complete Control team deliberately cultivated this reaction in the 2016 ABC season.
  • After shaking off their Scrappy status and learning to the play the role of of a Heel much better, Jake Ewert and Hydra have largely gained this reputation.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Tombstone has achieved this level within the fandom, to the point where many still see it as unbeatable despite losing the finals. Bronco has gotten this reputation as well. Icewave was initially almost on the level of Tombstone, until it got uphanded by a weaponless Ghost Raptor.
  • After Discovery Season 2, Chomp became this as well, thanks to it being the only robot in 4 seasons to defeat Bite Force.
  • Nelly the Ellybot has also achieved this, despite going 1-3.
  • Deep Six has become a mixture of this and Memetic Loser thanks to its absurdly destructive weapon, and its tendency to destroy the opponent, the arena, and itself during its fights.
  • Rusty became this as well, it winning its first fight by KO, lasting the full three minutes against Sawblaze, and tearing off Kraken’s face during the Bounty Hunter’s Tournament probably helped.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Reinforced plastic" quickly became an in-joke with the community following Tombstone's "fight" with Radioactive.
  • "Jam up", due to co-host Kenny Florian's repeated use of the term.
  • The net in the box from Complete Control, joked so much that Derek Young may Never Live It Down.
  • Ghost Raptor having a sabretooth cat logo is commonly joked about.
  • Lucky's team being Canadian but the team captain being an American who yells "CANADA!".
  • "Win goes to Chomp", due to Chomp winning against The Disk O' Inferno despite being the obvious loser in the fight. The primary joke being that Chomp will always win a judges decision, just because the driver is female.
  • "PRIMARY WEAPONS", after the number of times the commentators would use this term during battles, as this was apparently the only judging criteria that was worth anything under the new rules.
  • "Chinesium," referring to how at least two bots had lost in the 2018 competition^note Gigabyte and Minotaur whose teams had inadvertently secured low-quality parts from China. The suppliers lied about what the parts are made of, so the fans created the catch-all term "Chinesium" to refer to these mystery materials.
  • Uppercut is often joked to have a grudge against judge Lisa Winter, after throwing half of Gemini at her, throwing SawBlaze at her, then blowing it up in front of her, then throwing Hijinx at her.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Borderline case, but this is the show that introduced basic-cable viewers (and producers) to the people who would become the MythBusters.
• Never Live It Down: Icewave was a Memetic Badass seen as an equal to Tombstone until it went up against Ghost Raptor. Team Icewave will never be able to escape the fact that they lost to a robot that broke its weapon in a Curb-Stomp Battle, where they were universally predicted to win. Now, hardly anyone is betting on Icewave to win a championship.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Although BattleBots didn't air its first season until 2000, there were two tournaments the year before: the first was a webcast, and the second was a PPV that added veteran boxing producer Lenny Stucker to the fold. The PPV was packaged into a Pilot that was used to pitch BattleBots to networks as a television series. The whole thing has its roots in Robot Wars, which began in 1994 in the USA. The Robot Wars USA tournaments continued until 1997. In 1998 The BBC took over the "Robot Wars" name to produce the TV show fans are familiar with, and the next year BattleBots began.
  • Some robots in the reboot fit. For example, most people think Icewave is a new robot that was introduced in the show, but it's actually been competing since 2004. Tombstone, under both that name (that version being a 330lb Superheavyweight) and as Last Rites, had been competing for longer than that.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Riptide was always considered quite a controversial bot and team, mainly due to Ethan Kurtz' hyperactive and cocky Jerkass behaviour, the fact that its design was possibly based on the team's beetleweight (3.3lb, or 1.5kg) Rival, which was itself allegedly copied bolt-for-bolt from a previous version of live circuit champion beetleweight Lynx that Calvin Iba of Team Iba Labs owned, and the controversy surrounding Stan Kurtz' involvement in unethical fake autism cures. In Season 7, it and its team's reputation took a nosedive when Ethan and his team continued attacking Captain Shrederator after it was already KOed — causing over $10,000 worth of unnecessary damage and destroying that particular version beyond repair when it still had fights left — in an abhorrent display of non-sportsmanship. This went on even as Team LOGICOM and the referees were literally pleading for them to stop, and the fight ultimately had to end with a referee physically taking Riptide's controller out of Ethan's hands. This continued into its later fight against Shatter!, where before the fight started and after the weigh-in, Riptide's team were seen changing the bot, allegedly to add on a fake axe for fun before the match. When Adam Wrigley of Shatter requested a re-weigh, Riptide inexplicably came out a couple of pounds lighter than it was before; this has led to people accusing Riptide's team of breaking rules outright. Then, after the same fight was concluded, Ethan spent most of his post-match interview gloating at and insulting Adam and the rest of Shatter's team. Ultimately, however, Riptide suffered a Karma Houdini Warranty revocation when it went up against Copperhead; with Ethan Kurtz sidelined due to a COVID quarantine, Riptide suffered a harsh beating that included its weapon being shattered. Then, adding insult to injury, when Kurtz and his team appealed the resulting split judge's decision, it was changed to a unanimous decision... in favor of Copperhead. The absolute standing ovation the Copperhead team got when they returned to the pits sums it up nicely.
• Replacement Scrappy: Common criticism for Carmen Electra being made a presenter by many fans. After Warhead (a robot designed by the team behind famed Robot Wars champion Razer) was defeated by Overkill in its final fight, Electra stated the team "Could really use some driving lessons", despite the fact that the Razer team was renowned for their driving ability, and that Warhead, despite being incredibly difficult to control due to the gyroscopic design of the weapon, had decimated every other robot it had faced due to its precision attacks. This was made even more glaring because Electra had replaced Baywatch star Donna D'Errico. Although hired for similar reasons to Electra, she proved her mettle quickly and became regarded as an excellent interviewer who did extensive research on the robots and their teams. The mistake Electra made above was one D'Errico certainly would not have.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Icewave seemed to be doomed to be remembered as the bot who got its ass kicked by a weaponless Ghost Raptor. Then came it's Discovery season debut where it tore Vanquish literally in half. Suffice to say, fans are suddenly in his corner.
  • Hydra and Jake Ewert were hated for their poor sportsmanship against HUGE. Thankfully, they've largely shaken off this reputation in Discovery Season 4 thanks to Jake learning to play the Heel role much more effectively and in World Championship VII when he dropped the Heel role entirely.
• Retroactive Recognition: Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman and Grant Imahara were competitors before MythBusters (and before Imahara worked for Hyneman's shop). Hyneman and Savage - who had known each other in special effects circles for years - collaborated on a bot called Blendo, which was considered to be too dangerous for competition several times. Imahara built Deadblow, a popular and beloved middleweight bot that often dominated its weight class (or would have if not for being in the same weight class as Hazard.)
• The Scrappy:
  • Evil Cheese Wedge, a robot Comedy Central bought off eBay, decorated, and used in several filler shorts in the fifth season.
  • Voltronic, mainly because of its Boring Yet Practical design that wasn't fun to watch, but highly successful.
  • Chomp briefly became this in ABC Season 2 and Discovery Season 1, thanks to its tendency to throw itself over and spend half of the fight floundering on its side, it beating Disk O’ Inferno in a judges decision despite not doing anything, and being too overly complicated for its own good. Though this died down mostly after it was revealed for Discovery Season 3 as a walker, with many doing a full 180 and becoming fans of the new Chomp.
  • Bombshell has amassed quite a hatedom due to its tendency to play spoiler. Denying the fans a Minotaur-Tombstone championship bout in 2016, and managing to spring to life in the 2018 season to keep Ensemble Dark Horse DUCK! from reaching the top 16. Which happened to deny the fans another anticipated Tombstone fight, that being a rematch against DUCK!. Not to mention actually beating Tombstone in the round of 16 and helping to deny yet another anticipated matchup (had Tombstone won, it would’ve fought Son of Whyachi if the latter beat Lock Jaw).
  • Hydra and Jake Ewert have wound up in this category after what was arguably the worst show of sportsmanship in the entire series in Hydra's match against HUGE. Some fans of flipping robots have taken to cheering on SubZero instead. They've largely shaken this off with the new season in Discovery Season 4 due to Jake learning to play the Heel more effectively and Hydra just not doing that well and in World Championship VII when Hydra did do well and Jake becoming more nicer to the other teams (that and the presence of the more controversial Ethan Kurtz and Riptide).
  • As detailed above under Overshadowed by Controversy, Ethan Kurtz and the rest of Riptide's team have more or less achieved this status due to their behaviour in the 2023 season, exemplified by destroying Captain Shrederator's then-current version even after the bot was immobilized and disabled, and then later on potentially illegally modifying their bot followed by (mainly Ethan) insulting and gloating over Adam Wrigley and the rest of Shatter's team when they called Riptide's team on it and requested a re-weigh-in. It made it a major Take That, Scrappy! moment when Riptide was later defeated in the quarterfinals of the knockout stage, and then lost their ensuing appeal of the judges' decision, although Ethan remained a Karma Houdini as he was away for the quarterfinal match due to illness.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • ABC Season 2 introduced the "primary weapon rule," stating that damage done without use of the primary weapon does not count toward aggression points. While the idea was to incentivize weapon use and prevent pushing matches, in practice, this meant bots that otherwise controlled the match would lose despite taking minimal damage, as "practice, aggression, strategy" had their definitions too intertwined with damage to be meaningful. Particularly emblematic were Chomp's defeat of Bite Force, despite spending half the match on its side, thanks to a precision hit on Bite Force's weapon chain, and Brutus' win over Lock-Jaw, where use of a primary weapon ensured its win despite being ineffective against Lock-Jaw controlling the pace of the match. Additionally, this heavily biased the completion in favor of spinning blades, effectively making their best counters null-and-void in judge's decisions. Some have gone as far as to speculate that this was a deliberate decision, an Obvious Rule Patch in response to fan-favorite Tombstone losing last season to a wedge, and ensuring something that wouldn't happen again. If so, this worked a little too well, as Tombstone went on to win the season, with Beta, who put up the closest fight, losing the judge's decision. This change was one of the most reviled in the sport, and to many, hammered home that BattleBots is a reality show first, and a legitimate sport second. Though at the time, Battlebots defended controversial decisions on social media (and edited out booing from the broadcast), the primary weapon rule was relaxed for Discovery Season 1, cutting down on similarly unpopular decisions and allowing more defensive bots to become viable.
  • Similarly to the primary weapon rule, the judging criteria for the Last Chance Rumble (Discovery Season 1) put extra emphasis on damage done with a primary weapon, to the point where Bombshell won the match despite Duck! lasting the full three minutes as the most active fighter, while Bombshell spent half the match immobile. In the following season, the rules were amended to prevent a repeat of this situation^note Worth noting: no rumbles of this size had been run since.
  • The Upper Deck, earlier known as The Shelf, which was introduced in Discovery Season 4 to serve as a replacement of the OOTA zones, which are now removed, wasn't warmly received from the fans, mainly due to taking up a lot of the arena and giving vertical spinners even more of an advantage. Not to mention not even being a good replacement, since robots that are put on the Upper Deck can just drive back off, as opposed to the OOTA zones where the robot would always be stuck.
  • The judging system has come under fire again after Hijinx beat Kraken despite the latter controlling most of the fight and the former being barely mobile by the end. With many claiming that the current system (5 for damage and 3 apiece for control and aggression) favors spinners too much, since a spinner only needs to get damage points and one of any other point, while control bots have to hog every point that isn’t damage to have a hope of winning.
  • The ‘translational movement’ rule has gone from base breaking to full on scrappy mechanic after Ribbot was counted out in the Hydra fight despite still being able to move around the arena, mainly due to how inconsistent it is. For example, in P1 vs Valkyrie, P1 was crabwalking, however was clearly able to engage with its opponent and still controlled the fight. However, in Hijinx vs Kraken, Hijinx could barely move at all, let alone chase around Kraken, yet was not counted out. In one case, this even derailed a quarterfinal match, as Witch Doctor refused to engage with Minotaur, believing it was set to be counted out, while Minotaur argued it was still functional, and the refs themselves seemed uncertain.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Season 2 of the ABC run received this reaction despite being on a much bigger playing field. This is largely due to the active weapons rule (explained in detail above) that's completely ruined strategy and control, making the obvious loser in a fight win despite being completely ineffective and solely due to having the weapon switched on. On the other hand, the rise of interesting new competitors like Minotaur has resulted in several matches that have gone internationally viral. Notably, the most popular fight from the entire season, Minotaur vs. Blacksmith, was one where the new rules never came into play.
  • Season 6 of the revival is regarded as being inferior to the previous three Discovery seasons, largely due to inconsistent rule sets, shady stuff happening behind the scenes, and controversial judges decisions.
• Sequel Displacement: Not of the show itself, but of two robots. There is a reason why Dr. Inferno Jr. and Son of Whyachi are named as they are, but the original Dr. Inferno and the original Whyachi didn't perform nearly as well as their championship-winning successors, nor did they receive any TV coverage, and subsequently are very obscure compared to them.
• Shocking Elimination:
  • DUCK! lost the final qualifying rumble to Bombshell, despite being the dominant robot for much of the match. This shocked both the crowd at the taping and fans when the episode aired. Bombshell builder Michael Jeffries even admitted that he was expecting DUCK! to be named the winner.
  • Bombshell wound up doing this again in its next match, when it became the first robot to ever knock-out Tombstone on television. Jeffries had specifically devised Bombshell's new design to beat Tombstone this year, but it lost every other fight it had with a robot that wasn't Tombstone.
  • Not many people expected Copperhead, which wrecked every robot it faced up to that point to get the 3rd seed, to get taken out of the Round of 32 in the 2020 competition by Mammoth—despite Mammoth's flimsy appearance, it took everything Copperhead threw at it and rendered Copperhead's spinning drum unusable, at least temporarily.
• Shocking Moments:
  • From the reboot, the biggest "Holy SHIT!" moment was probably at the end of the battle between Tombstone and Bronco, where Ray Billings taunted his already-disabled opponent with "You want more?" while Bronco was being counted out, went in for one more vicious attack on the crippled machine, and hit it so hard that Tombstone hurled ITSELF across the arena, tearing open its casing and spilling its internals across the floor, probably ending the battle in an even worse condition that its opponent — with the Grand Final still to come!
  • The 2016 season has seen a couple of these moments so far, especially Red Devil's sawblade cutting deep into Witch Doctor's battery, filling the Battlebox with choking smoke and spilling a spreading pool of battery acid across the floor, Warhead flying across the Battlebox floor balance upside-down on its disc to slam into a shattered and flaming Complete Control one more time, and Poison Arrow's clash with Son of Whyachi sending the favourites flying ten feet through the air, knocking them out with a single blow!
  • Another 2016 episode featured HyperShock knocking Warrior Clan's drone out of the air with a rake.
  • In the Discovery Channel debut of Minotaur vs. Tombstone, their powerful weapons immediately clashed face-on, and they managed to both gouge out and twist a chunk of the floor. This is by far the most damage ever done to the floor to this point, which has been limited to just scratches and scrapes.
    Ray Billings: Sorry about your floor!
  • Flamethrowers have been seen largely as a Cool, but Inefficient weapon, with only three cases of any bot having been noticeably damaged by the heat during the ABC run, when they were allowed ^note Complete Control vs. Bombshell, Witch Doctor and Shaman vs. Bronco, Poison Arrow vs. HyperShock, and Gruff vs HyperShock, but never has a bot actually been visibly set on fire on the outside, visible for the spectators to see—until the Discovery Channel days, when Free Shipping's flamethrower managed to do exactly that to Mecha Rampage, which remained on fire for the rest of the match and was pretty clearly the reason it finished a distant third in a three-way battle between it, Free Shipping, and Duck!
  • Icewave in general. The Icewave VS Vanquish battle ended with Vanquish literally ripped in two by Icewave's deadly blade. Taken up to eleven later in the season when Icewave breaks HUGE in half.
  • Tombstone has been put on the ropes twice in Discovery season 1, and both times it's been this. Tombstone Vs. Whiplash marks the first time in the later seasons that anyone has been capable of matching Tombstone blow for blow, and the result was a spectacularly violent fight that left fans on the edge of their seats and the announcers ducking for cover. In a later episode Tombstone would go on to fight DUCK! and come within seconds of being knocked out for the first time ever, having to resort to pure strategy to eke out a win.
    • Tombstone, however did end up getting knocked out twice in Season 2, and both knockouts were this. The first knockout was delivered by ROTATOR, who hit his blade which caused it to be unbalanced, causing Tombstone to shake itself to the point that the weapon motor caught fire. And when we say fire, we mean call 911 this is a real inferno fire. Tombstone laboured on for 90 seconds in this state before it ultimately expired on the middle of the Battlebox floor. The second knockout was from Bite Force in the semis, in which Bite Force was able to snap Tombstone's blade in half, taking out a wheel in the process.
  • The Cobalt vs DUCK! match in 2019. Cobalt was hammering DUCK!, eventually tearing off the other bot's entire front plow. But the DUCK! proved to be a Made of Indestructium Stone Wall, continuing to keep going and soak up the damage, and then the shocking point where Cobalt's fork, bent by slamming into DUCK!, got stuck in a killsaw vent, immobilizing it and giving a shocking victory to DUCK!.
  • Endgame vs. Tombstone in the first episode of Season 3, where Endgame beats Tombstone...by knocking him out of the arena.
    • To the same extent, Skorpios vs. Tombstone in the same season. Skorpios is a bot that, while solid, has never advanced to the elimination rounds before.^note They were qualified in 2018, but the team had to quit due to Skorpios being in terrible shape and not having enough parts on hand to repair it. And in 2019, they lost a Win and You’re In fight to Lock-Jaw. Skorpios took every hit Tombstone delivered, avoided damage to its exposed wheels, and eventually slammed its saw down at one of Tombstone's axles causing the wheel to fly off. This resulted in another Shocking Moment, namely that Tombstone ended the preliminary matches with an unprecedented losing record of 1-2.
  • Kraken vs. Witch Doctor in 2020: Kraken struggled every year prior while Witch Doctor defeated everything in its way until meeting Bite Force in the finals. Few people expected to see Witch Doctor, of all robots, being put on the ropes by Kraken.
  • Cobalt vs Ghost Raptor, everyone was expecting Cobalt to win, but no one was expecting it to do so by spitting Ghost Raptor into fourths. Suffice to say, not many teams are willing to fight Cobalt after that.
  • End Game versus RIPperoni in the 2023 qualifiers. End Game had a Giant Nut in the trophy case and was a destructive veteran. Their opponent was a silly looking rookie bot painted like a pizza box with stability issues that lost their opening fight to a mid-tier opponent (Gruff). Everyone was expecting End Game to have pizza dinner, not for RIPperoni to score a knockout win and establish themselves as a Lethal Joke Character.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Sometimes you can't help but feel a little sorry for the builders when they lose. A good example of this is Witch Doctor losing to Red Devil in ABC Season 2. While a CMOA for Red Devil, being a #30 seed that knocked out a #3, you could tell that the team behind Witch Doctor were saddened, having clearly expected to go far in the tournament this time around.
  • Something similar happened with Derek Young and Complete Control losing to Warhead in the next episode. Again, despite it being a CMOA for Warhead and that Mission Destruction had deliberately styled themselves as the competition heels since their infamous moment^*The "birthday present" filled with fishing nets, which they took into battle and used to entangle and break Ghost Raptor's spinning blade. of Loophole Abuse against Ghost Raptor in ABC Season 1, the shell-shocked look on Derek's face as he's staring at the remains of his machine after it's been smashed open and set on fire by Warhead is undeniably sad to see— which was made worse by the announcement that he'd retired from robot combat shortly after the episode aired. Somewhat averted, as Young was hired as a judge for the Discovery Channel era.
  • The first round of Battlebots: Bounty Hunters took a sadder-than-expected turn when Ed Robinson, creator of Sharko, revealed that he'd had to sell Sharko in order to afford to attend the match; this, not so long after he'd lost his long-time bot-building partner, the bot's co-designer, to cancer. He voiced his hopes that he'd be able to end his time with Sharko on a high note ... only to see his bot literally taken to bits in the first bout.
  • Prior to the filming of Season 6 of the reboot, Daniel Frietas, the driver of Minotaur lost his mother and grandmother to COVID-19, and while he was able to make it back to BattleBots, it was clear that he missed them dearly, as shown in the interviews for Dragon Slayer vs Minotaur.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The 2015 revival has four fights, a maximum of three minutes each... but the show is an hour long. Padding hell ensues, for those who are only interested in the fights. On the flipside, almost all of the fights in the tournament are shown, compared to the original where they skipped a lot of them.
  • The most common reaction to the new scoring system in ABC Season 2, see Scrappy Mechanic above.
• Too Cool to Live: The fan favorite Deep Six was rejected from season 7 due to its infamous weapon being powerful enough to dent the floorboards every time it got flipped over. However it will be replaced by Triton in season 7.
• Tough Act to Follow: After Vlad was retired, he was replaced by the less memorable and less win-prone Vlad II. His superheavyweight sibling Vladiator, on the other hand, was Lightning Bruiser incarnate and remained a serious contender right to the very end.